The Arts Archives - Page 16 of 36

Reviews

James Joyce’s Ulysses at 100

An exhibition at the Morgan Library

July 8, 2022 • by Mitchell Abidor

One hundred years ago, James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published in Paris. This year, the Morgan Library in New York is celebrating with a remarkable exhibition, “One Hundred Years of James Joyce’s Ulysses,” on display until October 2. ...

The Arts

How We Remember Leads Us to What We Remember

A review of the Noguchi Museum’s “No Monument” exhibit

May 10, 2022 • by Miko Yoshida

No Monument, contained within one and a half rooms on the first floor of the Noguchi Museum complex, challenges institutional accounts of Japanese Americans detention—often illustrated using photographs of disconsolate families surrounded by a few remaining possessions—by celebrating personal expression in a time of hardship. ...

How We Remember Leads Us to What We Remember

The Arts

The Invisible Labor of Asian Americans in New York Fashion

On the complexity of curating a fashion exhibit around identity

May 9, 2022 • by Shweta Nandakumar

To make plain the fact that there exists no singular Asian American aesthetic, the student organizers of this FIT exhibit made the unusual choice not to make reference to the specific heritages of the featured creatives: “We want viewers to focus on the craftsmanship that goes into the work the ...

The Invisible Labor of Asian Americans in New York Fashion

The Arts

The World’s First Revolutionary Artist

Was Jacques-Louis David an opportunist? Or a passionate propagandist?

April 18, 2022 • by Mitchell Abidor

Jacques-Louis David Radical Draftsman is a fitting exploration of the first great radical artist, a master of propaganda whose greatest triumphs were a result of his unflagging willingness to place his enormous talents at the service of his deepest political beliefs. ...

Art & Design

Souvenir

Adapted excerpt from Activities of Daily Living

April 13, 2022 • by Lisa Hsiao Chen

For her project about the Artist—at least that’s what she was calling it for now, a project—Alice read all that she could find about his yearlong performance works before he renounced making art altogether. There was the year he locked himself in a cage. The year he punched a time clock ...

Literature

Boris Pasternak in Spring

A translation of the poet’s very early work

March 18, 2022 • by Inessa Medzhibovskaya

Boris Pasternak, a Jew by birth, chose to remain in Soviet Russia when the rest of his family, his famous father, painter and portraitist Leonid Pasternak including, had left, never to return....

The Arts

“You Make it Art First”

A reply to my critics

March 3, 2022 • by Jed Perl

Authority and Freedom is dedicated to the freestanding value of the arts—a value that is absolute but not isolationist. ...

Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts

Pythagorean Mysticism

Three observations on “Authority and Freedom”

March 2, 2022 • by Paul Berman

Art has always been an instrument of social oppression, except on occasion when it has been an instrument of resistance. Such is art’s meaning. And, in order to resist oppression, we ought to go about judging art on the basis of which side it supports, the side of vice, or ...

Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts

The Arts and the “Fierce Urgency of Now”

Our supposedly universal traditions have left too much out

March 2, 2022 • by Katha Pollitt

Perl writes of the need to relate deeply to tradition and the past—he’s basically a proponent of art for art’s sake—but there are different traditions and different pasts. Maybe the problem is that our supposedly universal traditions have left out too much. ...

The Arts and the “Fierce Urgency of Now”

Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts

The Hip-Hop Revolution that Never Happened

Why it’s foolish to expect any form of art to change the world

March 2, 2022 • by John McWhorter

Today, hip-hop lives on without most fans taking seriously the fantasy that it will trigger a revolution or even increase political activism—that conceit now feels as antique as an iPod. Even a form of poetry as viscerally compelling as hip-hop cannot, it would seem, change the world....

The Hip-Hop Revolution that Never Happened

Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts

How Many Americans Believe that Art Has Any Value?

The real threat to the arts today

March 1, 2022 • by Lindsey Scharold

When I worked for an arts non-profit in suburban Minnesota, I saw the widespread lack of appreciation for the arts firsthand....

How Many Americans Believe that Art Has Any Value?

Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts

Authority as Freedom: Aretha Franklin at the Kennedy Center, 2015

A young woman’s love song finds its Platonic form

March 1, 2022 • by Ingrid Rowland

When the curtains opened in the Kennedy Center forty-eight years later to reveal Aretha Franklin in a floor-length mink with a glittering clutch purse in her hand, they didn’t herald a performance: they announced an epiphany....