Opinion
Weekend Words: Leave
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
Weekend
Books
Reader’s Diary: ‘In the Empire of the Air: The Poems of Donald Britton’
When I wandered ingenuously onto the scene, Donald Britton was a young star, or so I considered him, just a few years older than me (actually a bit more than a few, it turns out — he always looked so boyish) yet somehow wiser.
Books
The Many Pleasures of Reading Donald Britton’s Poems
This slim volume of poetry might stir up the tears you have been keeping inside you, especially if, like me, you are old enough to remember the 1980s and the AIDS epidemic, the seemingly endless roll call of people you knew and didn’t know who died horribly.
Art
Stephen Westfall Unscrews His Grids Even More
Ten years ago, in an interview that I did with Stephen Westfall, he said that he was interested in a skewed grid because it looked as if “the whole thing could tremble and be knocked over.”
Art
Naked in the Berkshires: 'Splendor, Myth and Vision' at the Clark
Art and power have a strong mutual attraction; in the West, their passionately shared interest is the nude body – particularly the female one.
Film
The Lobster in Brief: Doctor Moreau and B.F. Skinner Captain the Love Boat through Orwell's Dreams
Like the diabolical spawn of Franz Kafka and Michael Haneke, the Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos sets unfortunate humans loose in mazes of arbitrary, absurd authority and films them with an indifference that borders on cruelty.
Music
They Might Be Assholes: Jake Bugg, Panic! at the Disco, The 1975, Drake
The artists featured below have little in common beyond deeply questionable, occasionally revolting public personas and a stubborn willingness to produce compelling art from these personas. Why do some succeed and others fail drastically?
Art
Austria’s Oswald Oberhuber: A Lifetime of Unstoppable Art-Making, Observed
VIENNA, AUSTRIA — Achtung, baby! The time has come for a comprehensive examination of the wildly diverse, voluminous oeuvre of the Austrian modern artist Oswald Oberhuber.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, bohemian Paris, a strange satirical Trump video, a floating villa, the disappearance of the rifle emoji, livestreaming death, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Summer
"I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year."
Books
Reader’s Diary: Man Ray's ‘Writings on Art’
Jennifer Mundy acknowledges in her Preface to Man Ray’s Writings on Art that, compared to his friends Duchamp and Picabia, he has come to be seen as something of a lightweight.
Opinion
Nicole Eisenman: An Exchange
Editor's Note: This letter to the editor was received this week and is presented here (without editing). It is followed by a response by the author, John Yau.