Susan Morris takes self-inventory — tracks the “I” — by actively collecting traces of herself through records of several kinds, and by several means.
Roland Barthes
Posted inOpinion
How Authors Are Killing Their Own Writing
As authors take to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites, the boundary keeping their personal and professional lives apart begins to blur.
Posted inArt
An Encyclopedia of Kitsch
LOS ANGELES — It took a while for me to actually sit down and stop flipping through the channels and start leafing through Sara Cwynar’s gorgeous book, The Kitsch Encyclopedia.
Posted inArt
The Spectator Is Present
I’m ashamed to admit that I am a reflection hog. On the subway or walking past big storefront windows, I constantly check my reflection. Even at a gallery or museum, I find myself looking at my reflection before I look at the art. I never really gave this a second thought; it wasn’t until I visited the Whitney Museum’s current retrospective of Yayoi Kusama that I was disturbed by my inability to focus on the art behind the glass.
Posted inArt
Thinking of Magazines as Art Objects
On average, we probably encounter magazines more frequently than art. To equate them, though, isn’t common practice. Is a New Yorker cartoon just a quirky little illustration, or is it a defining style of both humor and drawing that has become iconic not just of the weekly, but of the history of cartooning? Is a fashion spread in Harper’s Bazaar just luscious eye candy coxing consumers to buy clothes, or is it the collaborative result of aesthetic visionaries in the demanding creative fields of photography, creative direction and fashion? Are magazines glossy periodicals filled with ads, or are they works of art with revolutionary potential?
Posted inOpinion
(International Klein) Blue Is In Fashion This Year
Fashion, as it so often does, just caught a rash from the art world. The color spreading through the cheeks of this season’s clothes is none other than International Klein Blue (IKB), the same unique hue dreamed up by the proto-postmodernist bad boy Yves Klein in 1962. Now, IKB is on your mom’s purse.
