The Art Issue

March 30, 2006

The Rules of Romance

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

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Arts and Crafts after Katrina

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

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Lascivious in Lascaux

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.

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8 bits be enough

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.

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A Day in the Life of Lil’ Kim

“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

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Down and Out in South Kensington and Fort Tryon

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

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The Whitney Biennial

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

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Munch at MoMA

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”.

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Statuesque

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

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Assault: 2, Silverman: 0

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

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Verbatim

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in Terrace

Guy: Wait, aren't you a Pi Phi?
Girl: No, I'm black.

in Ivy

SAE 1 (blowing cocaine): Loose lips sink ships, boys. Ivy club honor.
SAE 2: Ivy club honor.

Overheard in ENG413

Girl: Is Emerson referring to the Middle Passage?
Prof Howe: You mean the slave ships?
Girl: Oh, no. I meant Lewis and Clark. What am I referring to?
Zach Woolfe: Your own racism?