Books
Reader's Diary: Edward St. Aubyn's ‘The Patrick Melrose Novels’
To begin reading a contemporary novel isn’t easy, if you’re not in the habit.
Reviews
Art
An Ivory Tower Artist: Joe Bradley’s Recent Paintings, Sculptures, and Drawings
His work suggests that once Bradley conceives of his project, he is able to pass effortlessly through the style, like an adept actor able to play any role as long as it isn’t too serious and doesn’t require a lot of feeling.
Art
Full Steam Ahead: Steve DiBenedetto’s Recent Paintings
Steve DiBenedetto has not been sitting still. I cannot imagine that he ever does.
Art
Alexander Girard: Design for the World — and Just About Everything in It
Sometimes an exhibition can be so packed with information and ideas that it can send viewers racing home to try their hands at their own creations. That’s the kind of pay-off that can feel as rewarding as examining a deeply illuminating show itself.
Music
Kanye West Fragmented
First things first: Kanye West’s release strategy for his new album was a catastrophe.
Art
Graven Images and Desert Edens: The Art of Harry Sternberg
The political diction of the 1930s has made a comeback. Long-gone buzzwords like “socialism,” “fascism,” “the rich,” “worker rights,” “economic crisis” and “Wall Street bankers” have been bandied about these past few years, amplified by news cycles and social media memes.
Art
Theater, Science, Music: The Expansive Art of Fausto Melotti
There are numerous points of beguilement throughout the show, beginning in the very first room off the street.
Art
Darkly Funny Paintings Mash Up Comix and Cubism
Lucia Love is a talented, Brooklyn-based artist, but if you Google her name you'll probably find a different Lucia Love — a British hardcore porn star.
Art
If a J-Pop Girl Group Took Over Your Smartphone
Japanese hip-hop idol group Lyrical School's newest video, for the track "RUN and RUN," is a bit like an iPhone ad on acid, or a Luddite's nightmarish parody of what goes on in the worlds of screen-addicted teenagers.
Film
A Documentary About the Artist Who Stole Banksy’s Work Out of Spite
The Banksy Job looks remarkably like the 2010 mockumentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, but its co-directors maintain that the whole thing is unscripted.
Art
Could a Survey of American Indian Art Tell the Human Stories Behind Beautiful Objects?
TOLEDO — Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection presents a conundrum of conscience.
Art
Talismanic Calligraphy Made Contemporary in Marrakech
Unlike many of Koraïchi’s contemporaries, who seek to abstract calligraphic forms, he not only nods at tradition, but, as an artist of Sufi lineage himself, he inscribes his work within it.