The last time I faced the agreeable task of opining on theatrical matters in a writerly fashion was a gaping decade ago. I was ten, I was wide-eyed, and I was smitten with Grendel. Or was it Grendel’s mother? That … Read More
It takes an impresario to found a Russian movement. But for a moment’s continued interest in the present, a queer and inexplicable slavophilia must appear to have its dance with history. And now, 15 years after the fall of the … Read More
Rule #1: Be Yourself (Unless Yourself Sucks) It is a delicate balance, understanding the difference between being sincere and being who you really are. But it is a balance you must master if you want to master us (that was … Read More
If there is a God, and a moral order to the world, making a 100 million dollar donation to Princeton earmarked for the arts will not get you into heaven. Wandering through Princeton’s art museum the other night for the … Read More
The minute details of sex never escape the eye of the prehistoric human artist. What registers here is a fascination with the sexual that extends beyond its ritual fetishization in functional appeals to some magical force for human fertility or robust herds. This art is uncanny and wonderful because sex is not sublimated or displaced into some other visual language, but is itself sublime, itself celebrated.
In the simple world that it posits, there is no World but the Hockey Rink. There is no Universe but the Firmament of Floating Crowd Heads. There is no Time but the Match Clock. There is no Woman, and there are but four categories of Man: there is Goalie, Fat Man, Average Man, and Skinny Man. There are Soviet Russians. There is no fucking around. Good luck, cupcake.
“Got a man in Japan and a dude in Tahiti, Believe me sweety I got enough to feed the needy.” Lil’ Kim, “The Jump Off” I do have a man in Japan and a dude in Tahiti. The Tahitian natives … Read More
I have an unusual number of early childhood memories that involve being dragged to museums by my art-loving mother. She would usually resign herself to the inevitable outcome: me sulkily plunking myself down on one of those 360 degree couches … Read More
If art possesses a State of the Union, it is the Whitney Biennial. Every other year, the museum assembles an enormous collection of works – paintings, photography, films, installations, sound mixes, and the like – and retrofits its otherwise drab … Read More
It’s a show of love, soul, ravished innocence, sexual passion, emotional pain, Nordic landscapes.
At a time in which art shows tend toward the massive; jam-packed galleries swarming with fat-upper-armed women loaded with streams of banalities, New York has been granted a reprieve at the MoMA by an artist best known for the now-stolen painting “The Scream”.
Dear Mr. Eastman, I don’t speak to just anyone. That’s by choice. Most people say really really dumb things. Even when they have the chance to figure out what they’re going to say beforehand. Like on the news. Ms. Fuchsia-blazer … Read More
History tells us that outsiders matter, that they are our richest resource of truthfulness. Strangers are best at diagnosing the state of a given community, and it is their involvement that can best spur a sense of communal self-reflection and … Read More