Issa Rae’s HBO show “Insecure” accomplishes something nothing else has: Showing the beautiful, complex tenderness of the Los Angeles that African Americans inhabit. “The city’s sprawl becomes a playground for both Insecure’s characters and its soundtrack’s artists, not a coincidence but an asset to the story itself.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
The Most Famous German Theatre Director Is Committed To Taking On The Far Right
Thomas Ostermeier has returned again and again to plays that strip the nationalist far right of its masks and pretenses, and he and his theatre have been sued and threatened for it. Why does he do it? “Because, he says, he’s ‘interested in truth.'”
How Did Westworld – Which Cost More Than Many Movies And Halted Production In The Middle – Become A Huge HBO Hit?
The project was ambitious, with $100 million in start-up costs, and the producers had to shut down production to revamp, revise and rewrite, so everyone in the industry thought it would tank. But it seems likely that “Westworld will surpass True Detective’s season-one audience and end up with the biggest viewership of any HBO first-year series ever.”
The Artist Whose Life And Practice Got Blown Right Up By A Kardashian Relative
Jonathan Valenta is a Christian tattoo artist whose life changed one day when Kim Kardashian’s younger sister, Kendall Jenner, got a white dot tattooed on a finger – and Instagrammed it.
What Does Fidel Castro’s Death Mean To A Generation Of Cuban Artists?
Fidel Castro was sidelined from power a decade before he died – and artists were still repressed and controlled. But his death “does mark a tremendous psychological milestone.”
Do These Photos Show A Glimpse Of Gauguin In Tahiti?
Maybe. “If these two photographs are actually of Paul Gauguin, then they tell us a great deal about his state of mind and his social entourage during the summer of that year.”
The Tale Of An Actor Who Looks Like The Vice-President-Elect
Howard Sherman tracks down the actor playing “Mike Hot-Pence” – and raising money for Planned Parenthood – in Times Square: “I decided to have some fun with it and dress as ‘Sexy Mike Pence.’ Once I decided on jacket and tie for the top half and short shorts for the bottom half, the ‘Hot-Pence’ moniker popped into my head.”
Why Don’t We Have More Famous Black Sci-Fi Writers?
Double problems: The U.S. literary fiction establishment’s problems with genre, and the genre’s racism. “The space for black authors in speculative fiction is continually being built, while the existence of those very spaces is still being challenged by their gatekeepers.”
What Images Of Flowers Have To Do With International Politics (And, How To Recover Your Art When You’re In Shock)
Teju Cole takes note of Taryn Simon’s work, and makes marching orders for our time: “We don’t turn to history because it is demonstrably relevant, and we don’t look at art only because it is monumental or beautiful.”
If Julian Barnes Can Admit He Was Wrong About E.M. Forster, We All Have Hope For Re-evaluating Books (And Writers)
Barnes thought Forster was stuffy and boring, and perhaps a little straitlaced. Then he read an anthology of English food writing. “Where was that fusty, musty, dusty writer I had imagined Forster to be? Nowhere at all.”