Opinion
Required Reading
This week, Wim Wenders and reactionary sentimentalism, the importance of Palmyra, when civilization started to discriminate against women, the power of images, African Americans and appropriation, and more.
Weekend
Opinion
Weekend Words: Stumble
Last week an unfortunate 12-year-old boy stumbled into a 17th-century Baroque painting by Neapolitan artist Paolo Porpora, and this week Jeb! Bush continues to stumble in the wake of Death Star Trump.
Books
Obsession, Exploded: The Stories of Clarice Lispector
“How do I know?” asks a character standing in for author Clarice Lispector in “Before the Rio–Niterói Bridge,” included in New Directions’ recent release of The Complete Stories. “I know the same way you do by imaginative guessing. I know, period.”
Art
Will Some Bright Morning Ever Arrive?
NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — In 1963, while living in Los Angeles, Melvin Edwards welded “Some Bright Morning” out of different pieces of steel scrap metal, including a heavy chain and a dagger-like fragment extending from a circular, collar-like form.
Art
Justine, a Prophet: Blindness and Vision in Lars von Trier’s 'Melancholia'
The opening shot of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) is a close-up of Justine (played by Kirsten Dunst) her eyes shut, her wet, white-blonde hair wild, a feral halo around her face. And then she slowly opens her eyes.
Art
In and Out of Frame: Lorraine O’Grady’s “Art Is…”
Like a Choose Your Own Adventure story or a game of Mad Libs, the elliptical title of Lorraine O’Grady’s 1983 performance piece, “Art Is…,” creates space, playful and inviting, for structured audience participation.
Art
The Anti-Expressionist: Jack Tworkov’s Paradigm Shift
One of the many striking works in the exhibition Jack Tworkov: Mark and Grid is a large abstraction from 1977 called “Knight Series #8 (Q3-77 #2).” Resembling a Synthetic Cubist floor plan, it is in fact an experiment in gaming that looks back to the anti-art of Marcel Duchamp and forward to the rul
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, college and the market, foundations funding inequality, MoMA by the numbers, 1-star Yelp reviews of US national parks, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Plunge
Some call it a plunge, some call it a correction, some call it the end of the world. The global economy grips its seat as the stock market slide rattles nerves for a second week in a row.
Music
Galantis, Intimacy Machine
A cascading synthesizer shimmers as a nondescript female voice starts whispering various stock phrases. The melody builds a little, there’s a brief pause, then the singer becomes a chipmunk and the synthesizers start blocking out the beat.
Art
A Photographer Who Deserves to Be Widely Known
A few weeks ago, while a friend and I were driving to Rockland, Maine, where I was scheduled to give a lecture, we stopped in Portland, because I wanted to see the exhibition Rose Marasco: index at the Portland Museum of Art.
Art
Forty Years of Carolee Schneemann’s “Interior Scroll”
Forty years ago on August 29, 1975, the thirty-six-year-old artist Carolee Schneemann pulled a scroll from her vagina. The performance, titled Interior Scroll, is an essential moment in performance art history, and an important milestone in the artist’s provocative and influential oeuvre.