Books
Reader’s Diary: Elena Ferrante’s ‘The Lost Daughter’
What distinguishes the novella from the novel is not length, but the pursuit of intensity rather than breadth. A novella is devastating or it is nothing.
Reviews
Books
Reader’s Diary: Elena Ferrante’s ‘The Lost Daughter’
What distinguishes the novella from the novel is not length, but the pursuit of intensity rather than breadth. A novella is devastating or it is nothing.
Art
Teetering in a Dark Room
As much as we might feel that our lives are lived these days at breakneck speed, Bruce Nauman’s work suggests otherwise. “Films,” for Nauman, “are about seeing.”
Music
Frank Ocean Four Years Later
Blonde is a consistent, coherent, well-crafted album, but it feels anticlimactic. It’s a retreat.
Art
Tracking the 19th-Century Explorer Who Scaled Java's Volcanoes
An exhibition at the Canadian Center for Architecture uses the example of Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn, who between 1836 and 1848 climbed more than 40 of Java's volcanoes, to question man's relationship to the landscape.
Books
Jet-Age Dreams in the Vintage Posters of Pan Am Airlines
Pan Am: History, Design & Identity, a new book by Matthias C. Hühne, retraces the distinct design history of the defunct Pan Am airlines.
Art
An Iranian-American Artist's Unfinished Abstractions
“Caress my darkness, liminal lover” is the title of three paintings by Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi. Each depicts a brimstone hellscape speckled with cypress trees, plumages of seafoam-colored cabbage, and a single imperial gateway arch. The three paintings almost link up to form a triptych, but they fall just short of
Music
The Thinly Veiled Queerness of George Michael's Love Songs
His songs still stand as some of the most evocative descriptions of queer desire to achieve broad commercial success.
Books
A Graphic Novel Reimagines 'Romeo and Juliet' in 1980s Brooklyn
Combining a deep examination of Shakespeare’s play with memories of Wimberly’s own teen years, Prince of Cats is electric.
Books
The Persistence of Hunger: Dalí's Dissatisfying Cookbook
Salvador Dalí's 1973 cookbook, now reprinted by Taschen, doesn’t seem to know what Surrealist cuisine is.
Art
Painting the Violent Life Cycles of Bruises
In his new series at James Cohan Gallery, Mud Root Ochre Leaf Star, Byron Kim paints bruises that radiate tenderness and hurt.
Art
Mining Portraits of the Past for Stories of Our Shared Humanity
Whitfield Lovell reinterprets found imagery and references evocative cultural touchstones to add further layers and textures to his drawings and mixed media installations.