 Field notes on arts, culture, and everything else from our critic-at-large.
By Morgan Meis |
A Question of Timing On the appeal of Detroit ''ruin porn,'' Anselm Kiefer's concrete cities, and the Rapture.
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Oh My God Frans Hals' work is a grand experiment in non-religious art, yet it still pays tribute to God.
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Design-speak ''Talk to Me'' at MoMA believes that augmenting communication improves communication. So why the feelings of loss and confusion, then?
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Go East Our culture values the personal identity. ''Ostalgia'' at the New Museum explores a time and place that did not.
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A Life of "E"s The Abstract Expressionists found meaning in lines and form and color. Cy Twombly looked to letters.
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Eleven Steps Forward... With The Pale King, David Foster Wallace came very close to the end of his self-designed treatment. After his death, the novel may help us in ours.
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The Naked Truth The subjects of Boris Mikhailov's photographs do not reflect a time of pre-shame in their nakedness, but a condition of shamelessness.
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To Whit' The Whitney Museum is getting a new building. So long, Modernism. Hello, uh...
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The Smile Some madmen choose to scream and pound fists, but bin Laden stayed calm and smiled. There is a lesson in such a choice.
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Poetry: A Defense? How does David Orr explain what poetry is? By describing everything it isn't.
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Modern Times Arthur Rimbaud wrote more than a century ago, yet his feeling of being absolutely modern and not knowing what to do about it remains with us today.
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The Power of Ruins Humans have always mused on civilization's rubble. Nuclear power plants are particularly captivating: Every one is a ruin in the making.
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This Is Your Brain on Art Is a scientific theory for artistic experience possible? Maybe, but such gains in knowledge inevitably entail a loss.
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Reading Qaddafi Qaddafi's The Green Book might seem to be a bizarre work, but it rests comfortably in the tradition of 20th-century Modernism.
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Hubbard at 100 L. Ron Hubbard's career as a pulp writer seems like funny background material. But there would be no Dianetics without The Carnival of Fear.
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The Dictator's Speech Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak does a lot of talking, but he doesn't say much. That's no way to dictate.
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Old Man in Winter People often misconstrue the opening lines to Richard III. But they're right — winter is a time of discontent. The trick is finding contentment in discontent.
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Review Stand The Times books section has asked what criticism means today. The answer: less authority, more freedom and integrity.
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The Hopper Question You see that clown and think, This guy can't be serious. Can he?
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Time for a Change The Pre-Raphaelites had a dilemma: How do you both escape modern times and celebrate extreme realism?
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A Queer Thing The United States can't take credit for homosexuality. But as ''Hide/Seek'' at the National Portrait Gallery proves, the country deserves credit for gayness.
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| Hooked on Classics The classical world is still with us, though these days we may need a guide to find it. Enter The Classical Tradition.
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Chewing the Fat The people of Antwerp roll their eyes over Rubens. But the rest of the world cares, and I want to know why.
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The Cold Truth Despite all our attempts to find big meaning in Titanic, the ship offers just one simple lesson: mistakes happen.
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Art vs. the World The art museum can be such a complex place. But then you look out the window...
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Death to Belgium! Does the European Union render some nations useless? In other words, what's the point of Belgium?
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Art of the Game Anything that consumes hundreds of hours is worthy of critical examination. Even video games. Maybe especially video games.
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Photographic Memory We note American photography from Evans on for the subjects it captured. But more important may be the new structure of looking it created.
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Greenwashing The Jan Vanriet show at Antwerp's Koninklijk Museum expects more of the visitor than almost any other (I'm looking at you, Metropolitan Museum of Art).
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Art³ Working with cubes poses a big question: Do you launch from meaning or meaninglessness?
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A Woman of a Certain Age Discoveries are supposed to advance knowledge; the 4,000-year-old Beauty of Xiahoe just confused it.
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VW Recall India's Nano is ''the people's car.'' What, did they not like the Nazis' version of the same thing?
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| Brick Master Lego: Sure, you can make seemingly anything out of it. But can you really create art?
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Goo Goo Gaga It's amazing that a music video like ''Telephone'' can still have such an impact. But that's Gaga for you...
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Say "Fromage!" The Surrealists wanted to shake things up, but photographs reveal a more conservative side.
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Postmodern Man When it comes to Postmodernity, the prose is finally starting to match up with the condition.
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Fleshed Out It is hard to know oneself. Which is why Bronzino's ''Standing Nude'' is a lot more compelling than Leonardo's Vitruvian Man.
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Revolutionary Roads To say that we are all Haitians seems a bit trite. But let's not forgot how horribly wrong our own revolution could have gone.
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Party Like It's 2009 Everyone laments the '00s. But when we trash the last decade, how honest are we?
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The Change Gang Zadie Smith changes her mind — not about the need for fiction, but about what fiction can be. As she should.
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The Heidegger in All of Us The debate over Heidegger's politics rages every decade or so. But how did the philosopher make it into the curriculum in the first place?
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Prose Before...Regine For Kierkegaard, the power of repetition is that you come to know who you are, but never exactly what you will do.
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| The Problem with Polanski Moral luck shouldn't exist, but it does, and Roman Polanski's may have run out.
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Ripple Effect Henry Hudson stumbled upon his eponymous river 400 years ago. Such is the nature of the tricky waterway.
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The Reel World Inglourious Basterds reveals the tension between a love of film and the inability to explain why.
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Bird Brain A Japanese scientist has taught pigeons to distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' art. Should critics be nervous?
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Bauhaus Tour On its 90th anniversary, Bauhaus remains the most imperialistic of all design movements.
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Light Fixtures For James Ensor, to honor light was to honor the boundlessness of life.
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The Return of the Epigram Sure, there are a lot of things wrong with Twitter. But what else is going to save the epigram?
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Meis on Rye Some bemoan Holden Caulfield's fading appeal among young people. But why would metaphors that worked for 'us' work for 'them'?
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Say AHHHHHHHH! Critics feel tricked by Francis Bacon. But what's wrong with delighting in the aesthetics of the scream?
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| A Bloody Mess Americans like their Holocaust characters to be hopeful heroes, which may explain the reception to The Kindly Ones.
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No Exhibit for Old Men The artists in 'Younger Than Jesus' work in neither the past nor the future, but in the weirdness of the here and now.
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Bootylicious You have to give the Somali pirates this: They explore a universal insecurity few of us are willing to face.
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Quiet Ripples Paul Graham's photographs don't romanticize the everyday. There's a more uncomfortable truth at work...
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Egg Head Martin Kippenberger's work can feel chaotic in its variety, but notice the eggs...
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A Fuzzy Memory Donald Barthelme's critics accuse him of being insincere. He was anything but.
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Painting from Memory Bonnard's critics dismissed him as an Impressionist too late to the game, but he just preferred to take his time.
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Updike the Synthesizer To understand John Updike's genius, it helps to consider the difference between the liney and the painterly.
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A Second Opinion Waltz with Bashir forces the West to confront the image of Palestinians it's constructed for itself.
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Success Story Malcolm Gladwell, God bless him, wants to solve the problems he identifies in Outliers. But some problems can't be solved with a good story.
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Palate or Palette? The unlikely relationship between modern art and modern cooking.
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Put It to a Vote Just in time for the booboisie's vote, a reconsideration of Mencken's Notes on Democracy.
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Brownfields Morandi's tins and vases seem innocent enough, but look too long and you're trapped.
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Unnatural Selection Apply all the science to novels you want, Literary Darwinists. You'll still never quantify the human experience.
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Dear David Everyone appreciated David Foster Wallace, but never in quite the right way.
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The "Truth" Hurts With How Fiction Works, James Wood proves he has become a prisoner of what he got right.
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Street Life For Ernst Kirchner, the modern world expressed its deepest nature in the strut of the prostitute.
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Battle Scars PBS' The War of the World proves we're now ready to look back on the 20th century as we would any other.
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Nobody's a Critic So long, Kant! It's the end of days for the distance between critic and that being criticized.
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Deathmatch Conservatives will take death before tyranny. Liberals will take some time to negotiate.
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You Can't Take It With You For Rauschenberg, creating was about making the world more fascinating, about making art more real.
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Flatliner Murakami's Supeflat art celebrates one-dimensionality. What else could come out of Japan after the War?
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The Pacifism Quandary True pacifists believe all violence is counterproductive. What to do, then, about World War II?
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Light Show Art as theater: With its colors, lights, and mirrors, Olafur Eliasson's art is all about the viewer.
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Here Comes the Pope! How the pope's visit to the States is a test of our resolve.
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Charlton Heston's Last Act A benefit of getting old, we like to imagine, is the gaining of wisdom. Charlton Heston became a damn fool.
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John McCain: Worth the Fighting For What's interesting about John McCain's Worth the Fighting For aren't signs of a maverick, but rather evidence of a sad man.
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A Critic at Large Thoughts on art criticism from the 2008 Whitney Biennial.
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MoMA Has Designs Design used to take a back seat to art. Then came the messed-up aesthetics of today's world.
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Eliot the King How Eliot Spitzer's fall reads a lot like Oedipus Rex.
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Hillary Clinton: Living History There are no theoretical disputes in Hillary Clinton's Living History. There are just facts, facts as she saw them.
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Stare Master Frida Kahlo has The Look in her paintings. But is The Look a lie?
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Barack Obama: The Audacity of Hope If platitudes had weight, Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope would be impossible to lift off the table.
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Idoltry Fifteen minutes of fame — American Idol is brilliant because it actually delivers on the promise, then takes it away.
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The Car of the Future The automobile wowed both Futurists and fascists, who believed it would remake us or destroy us.
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The Ugly Truth On Ugliness is Umberto Eco's attempt at a treatise devoted to the homely and repulsive. It fails, but that's OK.
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The Dalí Shtick By the end, Dalí was a parody of the thing he'd created of himself. An exhibition reveals it wasn't all crap.
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The Death of Modernism Peter Gay's Modernism: So boring, so necessary.
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Art Basel Miami Beach: Day 4 Art Basel Miami Beach, Day 4: I take the plunge and finally make a purchase, once I find something I can afford.
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Art Basel Miami Beach: Day 3 Art Basel Miami Beach, Day 3: I relax on a $14 million yacht and return to the fair with a new perspective.
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Art Basel Miami Beach: Day 2 Art Basel Miami Beach, Day 2: I become overwhelmed by the fair's scope and focus on what's honest.
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Art Basel Miami Beach: Day 1 Art Basel Miami Beach, Day 1: I explore the host city for the country's most important art fair.
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Christmas: A Defense Christmas is about the presents. And the tree. And the idea that, for one night, space and time are controllable.
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Old Clams, Transparent Frogs, and Wordsworth Neither the world's oldest clam nor a transparent frog can solve the problem of life.
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Will You Please Stop Editing, Please? Raymond Carver needed help, like we all do, and his editor provided it. In the end, his stories are brilliant. Should anything else matter?
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The Prince The equalizing (and insidious) bad jokes of Richard Prince.
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Fear, Trembling, and a Shrug We failed to kill God the first time. Who's
to say what might happen the second time around?
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Malato Immaginario J.M Coetzee and James Wood agree on the human condition as revealed by literature; but for one it's a tragedy, for the other a comedy.
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Rembrandt Is Eyes For Rembrandt, eyes were more for looking at than looking through.
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The Meaning and Meanness of Mencken Mencken, in being such a relentless bastard, gave the American voice back a little of its humanity.
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Damien Hirst's Memento Mori Would you buy a $100 million diamond-encrusted skull from this man? Thoughts on Hirst (and Warhol).
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| The Trouble With Farmers Our critic tells gentlemen farmers where they can shove their homespun wisdom and self-righteousness.
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| Fragments From Budapest It is nearly impossible to get screws in Budapest. Screws are a dream here, an unfilled fantasy.
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| Emotional Animals Legislation proposed in Spain would have given monkeys the legal rights of humans. Our columnist agrees.
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| Was Ryszard Kapuscinski Beyond the Truth? Ryszard Kapuscinski was great, but great in a way that leaves an odd taste in the mouth.
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| Philosophy Is Dead Richard Rorty thought that philosophy was dead. And now he is, too.
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| The Summer Jam The summer jam is as real as the summer itself, and the summer jam is a complete mystery.
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Heidegger and the Milk in the Pan The world is always telling us about itself. Let us praise all this babble.
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