![Norman O. Mustill and 'OU,' one of his large collages from the 1960s. [Photo: JH, 2007]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/mustill-and-OU-400.jpg)
Click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click again.
Ground Zero ‘Visions’ That Never Happened
The tale I wrote at MSNBC.com back in 2002 on December 18, the day nine “visions of Ground Zero’s future” were unveiled in a design competition to rebuild the site, has long since been deleted from cyberspace. I offer it here as a lost document for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. If you detect a […]
A Poem from the Late 20th Century
The poet Nanos Valaoritis and I were good friends many years ago, in San Francisco. Here’s a poem of his, which I published in 1970, in a broadside edition of 500 or 1,000 copies — I can’t recall exactly. “Endless Crucifixion” is a collector’s item now. Jed Birmingham, who writes the RealityStudio column the Bibliographic […]
L’artiste Lui-même
Norman Ogue Mustill in his desert lair. [Self-Portrait With Collage] In 2007, at my request, he took a photo of himself with several of his collages from the mid-’60s. This is one of them. Blogs are personal (in case you hadn’t noticed).
Old Photos Never Die . . . Old Diners Fade Away
The Riss diner was on 8th Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets in Manhattan. It’s no longer there. In its place is a Murray’s Bagels shop. Much less interesting. This photo illustrated the front cover of Philip Corner’s The Identical Lunch, in 1973. Click to enlarge I published the book, which Graham Macintosh designed and […]
A Box of Chocolates
… for Valentine’s Day. There’s the Victorian way. And then there’s the Mustillian way. “February 14, is Valentine’s Day” © 1975 by Norman O. Mustill.
Obama W. Bush Does His Banana Republic Thing
When Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader or Glenn Greenwald or Paul Krugman or Chris Hedges or any number of Obama’s leftwing critics call him a disgrace and worse — ok, let’s say it, a finkified hypocrite — their opinions are dismissed on the right as the mutterings of ideologues who in some cases feel that […]
Janine Pommy Vega, R.I.P.
She was that rare human being whose identity transcended all the categories that defined her — poet, teacher, novelist, feminist, human-rights activist for prisoners and migrant farmworkers. Janine Pommy Vega died on Dec. 23. She was 68. Here’s her obit in today’s NYT. The last time I saw her was on the Lower East Side […]
Plat du Jour …
“The Unnatural Act Act,” by Norman O. Mustill [1974], is from the collectionof Knud Petersen. It appeared originally in a Copenhagen Fluxus show. More Mustill.
Cue ‘Ah POOK,’ ‘THE UNSPEAKABLE MR HART’
“Watchmen,” the movie, caused a stir at the box office when its opening weekend nabbed $55 million, the highest opening gross of the year and third-highest March opening ever. It’s a shame that none of the money will trickle down to the artist Malcolm Mc Neill, whose image of the Mayan Death God (right) in […]
Five Years Later
Words won’t do: No Penetration.
Putting Him Where He Belongs
President With His Head Up His Ass is well named. The column is also charming proof that Collins must be a fan of the 1940 screwball comedy
Take the What Train?
Some folks in Montreal want to name a busy subway station for the late great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson in the Montreal nabe where he was born and raised, The Globe and Mail reports. But zehr eez a leetle problem: The station is already named for Lionel-Adolphe Groulx, a locally famous Quebec priest notable for […]
Blog Miscellany
A reader from Oregon writes, “Help us, we who check your blog regularly!! Please add something — ANYTHING!!!! I forget about it being there and then get my The Blinding Titties! I’m wearing a string of garlic around my neck now which I clutch feverishly whenever they appear … and I’m stuffing chunks of garlic […]
Now for Your Hit Parade
Call it “Pissing Strange.” It’s not the rock musical Mother Jones magazine calls it
Is Ralph a Spoiler? Or Are We a Banana Republic?
The day after CNN reported that None of the above, “Go, Ralph, Go!”
Milton Glaser ♥ Information, Not Persuasion
The 79-year-old graphic designer perhaps most famous for creating the “Where the Truth Lies,” organized by the The Graduate Center, CUNY. “Beliefs must be held lightly because certainty can be the enemy of truth.” Propaganda “substitutes an alien authority for our own perception,” he said, adding that “the intersection of fear and persuasion has created […]