All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.” -Walter Benjamin Nobody can accuse Jack Bauer of not having done enough for his country. He has killed more people than polio and saved more lives than Jonas Salk. … Read More
“If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” -Jesus, Matthew 18:8 “Your right eye is half-a-millimeter too high,” Dr. Christian Troy informs an aspiring model during the pilot-episode of Nip/Tuck. “And you have an Irish nose,” he quickly adds as … Read More
It’s fitting that the two floors housing the exhibitions “Picasso and American Art” (reviewed in the issue of October 12) and “Edward Hopper: Highlights from the Collection” are adjacent. These shows typify two different trends of 20th century American art … Read More
Before I launch into abstract, quasi-provable thoughts as to why the Vagina Monologues rocks my socks, I’ll put forth two concrete arguments for why this show, opening February 15th, is unique, funny,
and well worth seeing.
Frankly, I hope he rots in hell. There is no figure more odious than the man who supplants democracy with tyranny. Augusto Pinochet sailed into power on the crest of the military coup d�etat that threw democratic President Salvador Allende out of office and into a coffin.
Many works of art have emerged in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks as part of the collective struggle to commemorate, understand, and situate them within the rapidly coalescing frieze of our shared memory. Thanks to the plethora of novels sprung up in the ashes of disaster, we are now privy to such worthwhile phenomena of universal human interest as the tone-poetic hi-jinks of the chattering classes in the months preceding the big event, as in Claire Messud’s respectable novel The Emperor’s Children, and the annoyingly precious musings of the insufferably earnest, as in Jonathan Safran Foer’s not-so-respectable novella Extremely Loud and Incredible Close.
The existence of these inflammatory sermons was portrayed as a news-event in itself, but for many Americans the real news should have been this: black people are not happy with America the way you’re happy with America.
The Morning After Virginia said she would make the breakfast herself. For it was a beautiful London morning in June. She kicked back the covers and looked at Cady Stanton’s luscious ass. Smelled faintly of honeysuckle. Or was that patchouli? … Read More
“Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe,” plead Shylock to the barrister, and indeed what characterizes Jewish history in the main is calamity and tribulation of a scope and cruelty so reckless and undreamt they seem enjoined from another … Read More
The political history of South Carolina is full of funny stories. Yet amid a landscape scarred by utter military catastrophe, deep racial injustice, and still bitter historical tragedy, these stories seem sometimes not so funny. Or maybe they’re funnier. During the presidency of Franklin Pierce, Congressman Preston Brooks cudgeled Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner nearly to death with his cane.
I. “Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde” at the Met Investing Vollard with the almost statesmanlike title, “Patron of the Avant-Garde” is pretty generous for someone Paul Gauguin once called “the worst kind of crocodile.” Maecenas he … Read More