Blog

Maya Turovskaya, ‘The Soviet Susan Sontag’, Dead At 94

She co-wrote the famous documentary Ordinary Fascism, which was seen by millions of ordinary Soviet citizens (and got past the censors because it was, on the surface, about the Nazis), but she spent most of her career as a widely admired theatre and film critic, “writing cultural criticism that was erudite and cleareyed — and that managed not to outrage the Soviet authorities.” – The New York Times

Why Everyone Is Hating On Hudson Yards’ “Vessel” (Or Whatever We’re Calling It)

The Vessel has invited nearly universal vitriol, even amongst the politest architecture critics. It is an object lesson teaching us that, in our neoliberal age of surveillance capitalism—an era where the human spirit is subjected to a regime of means testing and digital disruption, and a cynical view of the city as an engine of real estate prevails—architecture, quite frankly, sucks. – The Baffler

You Know The Straw Man Fallacy — Here’s The Burning Man Fallacy (Which You’ve Definitely Seen In Action)

“It is not composed simply of a single distortion, but rather a slew of mischaracterizations bent on representing one’s opponents in the worst light. … In deploying the burning man fallacy, one not only stuffs an opposing figure with straw, but then proceeds to surround it with more tinder and additional flammable material, with the intention of committing the view at issue to the flames, along with whole traditions, movements, and ways of thinking.” – 3 Quarks Daily

The Exquisite Awkwardness Of Literary Parties

 It must be that people don’t remember real parties well enough to re-create them with any accuracy. There’s too much missing information. Fictive parties evoke this sense of impaired time by impairing the narrative, with non sequitur, snippets of nonsense conversation, and continuity errors. It’s often suddenly 2 AM. Whole hours may go by in the space of a sentence, as in A Handful of Dust: “They drank a lot.” Those four words are one paragraph, and contain so much. – Paris Review

The 25 Years And Seven Serious Tries It Took Terry Gilliam To Make His Don Quixote Film

There were the NATO jets overflying the filming location. The prostate infection that took out the lead actor. The woman who claimed she could get financing from the deposed president of Tunisia. Another lead actor who died just before filming was to start. The Portuguese producer who rescued the project and then sued to kill it. Bilge Ebiri talks with the director about the very long, very strange journey. – New York Magazine

How A Medieval Costume Show Became 2018’s Most-Attended Exhibition Worldwide

The show appealed to such a wide audience “because it put fashion in the context of the Medieval sculpture hall, and juxtaposed art with architecture to create an experience that was like a pilgrimage”, says Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Costume Institute, who organised the show. “It was very much an experiential moment for people, with the fashion and art mixing together in a procession-like way.” – The Art Newspaper

Why Arts Orgs’ Boycott Of Sackler Money Makes A Difference

Philip Kennicott: “What matters is that sometimes lightning strikes, and there is hell to pay, and suddenly a name is blackened forever. That kind of justice may be terrifying and swift and inconsistent, but it sends a blunt message: When the world finally learns that what you have done is loathsome, it may not be possible to undo the damage through the miraculous scrubbing power of cultural detergent.” – The Washington Post