[contextly_auto_sidebar id="gUbWKQMto2pd9SNDW9DKGH0zVVcyuOMo"] WHAT happened to political art? Has it seen a revival during a period in which inequality and related subjects are flaring? Does tackling a topical theme doom a work of art to becoming ephemeral? Will activist art ever again be as visible as it was during height of the AIDS crisis in the '80s? We probably can’t answer all of that … [Read more...]
Artists Struggle For Studio Space
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="npP8u6de6KK3cPDVFRq7dyGjkAQtokuK"] OFTEN I wonder how visual artists -- most of whom are not rich and not famous -- are faring while the global art market booms and auctions hit new heights. Solid data is hard to find, and much of the market is opaque. But an illuminating new story makes clear: Rising rents make it hard for artists in big cities to hold their … [Read more...]
Pete Seeger, Llewyn Davis, and Sisyphus
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="o511ReiogmTCk65Pr1jtarJdMtJ8q5at"] IN the weeks since I’ve seen it, I’ve gone back and forth on the movie Inside Llewyn Davis. The film was beautifully shot and well acted, I love the way some of the scenes of Greenwich Village make it look like the characters are inside the cover of Dylan’s Freewheelin’ , and so on. But I also couldn’t help thinking that for all … [Read more...]
Print, Online and the Creative Class
TODAY I have another piece in Salon, this one about the folding of New York magazine into a biweekly, and the resulting conversation about where the media is (and isn't going.) HERE it is. People trying to be "counterintuitive" are framing this as a win for journalists and journalism, since more people will read New York related copy on the blogs (some of which are quite good.) It's like saying … [Read more...]
Digging the New Dean Wareham
DESPITE our well-documented bias for things West Coast, the Misread City gang has a deep and abiding love for the work of Dean Wareham going back to the Galaxie 500 and Luna eras. The day after seeing Luna on its first US tour (opening for the Sundays, if memory serves, and before the first LP), we walked to the local record store in Chapel Hill to pick up the band's Slide EP. (It was what we … [Read more...]
Fathers and Sons
ONE of the liveliest voices on the pages of the New York Times Magazine has just released a beautifully observed and heartbreaking book. Stephen Rodrick's The Magical Stranger: A Son's Journey Into His Father's Life justifies the overused word "poignant." Rodrick is known to sharp-eyed readers for a wide range of stories in the Times magazine as well as Men's Journal; a recent story, on Lindsay … [Read more...]
Rachel Kushner’s "The Flamethrowers"
ONE of our favorite debuts in recent years is Rachel Kushner's Telex From Cuba. I was aware of this novel only because of a tip from New York literary agent Chris Calhoun, and once I read the galleys I was a bit abashed to see what a substantial talent was here in my city, until then invisible to me.In any case, Rachel is invisible no more. Here sophomore novel, The Flamethrowers, which came out … [Read more...]
The New York Literary Life
A few years ago -- before the crash, back when everything seemed to me moving forward more or less fine -- I went to New York to interview three youngish writers with first novels due. I asked:Is it possible to lead a dedicated literary life in the billionaire-filled, media-crazed New York of today? To be heedless of the material world as you burrow into novels and ideas the way the old Partisan … [Read more...]
The Roots of Sandra Bernhard
MY Influences column in the LA Times always tries to be unpredictable, but this time I think we've really gotten there.This installment on Sandra Bernhard -- whose REDCAT show last year was one of the highlights of the season -- begins with John Updike, for instance. The singer/comedian/Letterman mainstay is working a new show at REDCAT this month.(By the way, in the last two nights I have seen … [Read more...]
BBC’s New "Copper"
COMING from BBC America this summer is a new series called Copper, created by Tom Fontana (Oz, Homicide, Borgia) and set in 1860s New York. Much of the show takes place in Five Points, the rough Irish neighborhood some of us know from Scorsese's Gangs of New York. The protagonist is a tormented, Irish born detective named Corcoran.I've not yet seen much of the show, but it hits several of my … [Read more...]