Film
SIN, a Gritty and Sublime Biopic of Michelangelo
Andrei Konchalovsky’s film depicts an artist full of ambition, paranoia, loathing, and regret.
Weekend
Film
9to5 Strikes at a Missing Piece of Feminist History
In the late 1970s and early ’80s, women office workers banded together in a labor movement that sprouted up in 25 cities across the country.
Music
Throwing Everything Into the Rock Blender
The prog rockers of Black Country, New Road are stranded at the end of history, and don’t know where to turn.
Art
Required Reading
This week, a newly uncovered Aztec sculpture, hi-res images of the Raphael Cartoons and the Bayeux Tapestry, COVID in Yemen, comedy's alt-right problem, and more.
Books
The Story of Women Artists in Revolution, a Movement Against Patriarchy
W.A.R. existed for a brief yet prolific period, from 1969 to 1971, igniting a robust movement against New York City’s art industry.
Art
Alix Bailey’s Unfashionable Pursuit
Painting, as a verb, is a way of living in time, of inhabiting a state of solitude, even when you are with other people.
Art
The Commanding, Flamboyant Joyce Pensato
Pensato favored pop culture flotsam marred by the real world, which she transmuted into adventurous artworks dealing with raw, real world concerns.
Art
Dante: Our Medieval Contemporary
Why is Dante the Florentine still present with us 700 years after his death?
Books
The Modernist Poet Who Took on Colonialism
Since Aimé Césaire’s death in 2008 at the age of 94, as democracies devolve into autocracies, his Discourse on Colonialism remains prescient about the barbarity that informs civilization.
Books
Don Mee Choi’s Language of History
Just as collage artists might paste a scrap of newsprint or a piece of rattan chair-bottom to their canvas, documentary poets form their poetic work from public records, firsthand accounts, and newspaper reports.
Art
Required Reading
This week, how to reform political reporting, the most 2021 rejection ever, how gaming informs QAnon, and more.
Film
Two Dramas Plumb the Depths of Women’s Midlife Chaos
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Time and My Little Sister are complicated films about complicated people.