March 2011
15 posts
6 tags
Mourning Elizabeth Taylor →
Elizabeth Taylor was the twentieth century’s White Diamond—in an age that saw the decline of the Hollywood icon, her violet-eyed takes on high society Angela Vickers, hard-drinking Martha, and unhinged Maggie the Cat channeled pure lady power. It’s not surprising that so many felt touched both publicly and privately by the the much-married screen siren, humanitarian, perfume...
7 tags
David Antin: This Year's Model →
Artist, critic, poet, performer … model? While David Antin’s iconic image has adorned the covers of many of his most famous publications—from the stark black and white photograph of the author in a safari jacket on talking at the boundaries (New Directions, 1976) to the Colonel Kurtz-on-the-roof shot of Antin accompanied by an assistant in stonewashed denim jacket on A Conversation...
6 tags
Richard McKeon: Twentieth-Century Man →
Richard McKeon: Twentieth-Century Man
By all accounts, philosopher Richard McKeon (1900-85) was a legend in the classroom. The list of students for whom McKeon shepherded an academic pursuit or two reads like a roster of the twentieth-century’s most noted cultural figures: Robert Coover, Paul Goodman, Susan Sontag, Richard Rorty, Paul Rabinow, and Wayne Booth, among them. But McKeon never...
6 tags
The Cougar which isn't a Mellencamp →
The eastern mountain lion—called occasionally cougar, catamount, panther, painter, puma, or mountain screamer—was once one of the most widely distributed terrestrial mammals in the Western Hemisphere. But times have turned for these secretive and crepuscular big cats (the cougar is the largest of the small cats, actually, although it characteristically resembles those from the larger Pantherinae...
6 tags
TRAFFIC: Japan in Peril, Part II →
Welcome back to TRAFFIC: Japan in Peril, an exchange of thoughts on the nation’s future in light of the recent Pacific coast earthquake and the subsequent tsunami. This afternoon, we asked John Whittier Treat, professor of East Asian languages and literature at Yale University and acclaimed scholar of Japanese studies, and Margaret Morganroth Gullette, noted cultural critic, age activist,...
5 tags
TRAFFIC: Japan in Peril →
Welcome to TRAFFIC, an exchange of thoughts between leading figures from across the humanities, social science, and natural sciences, whose prescient views on current events help to shape the way we interpret the world around us.
Join us for the two-day exchange TRAFFIC: Japan in Peril on the future of that nation and the larger global consequences, in light of the recent tsunami and earthquake...
5 tags
Remembering Leo Steinberg (1920-2011) →
Sad news from New York about the passing of Leo Steinberg, one of the twentieth century’s most acclaimed art historians, whose critical insights, eloquent writings, and articulate ideas about art from Renaissance to modern, sharpened the minds of several generations of scholars, critics, and artists.
Born in Moscow, educated in Berlin and London, Steinberg earned his doctorate from...
5 tags
An apocalyptic ge(ne)ology: The Earth on Show →
John Martin (1789-1854), English Romantic painter, was born the same week that the Bastille was stormed—an event whose sturm und drang might be said to eerily echo the grandiose theatrical visions of Martin’s work in oils. Martin’s large-scale paintings bore the influence of contemporary diorama culture—indeed, Martin even claimed that D. W. Griffith was aware of his work and many...
5 tags
Unions, the public sector, and the struggle for... →
“Our democracy is out of control in Wisconsin,” Mr. Barca said. “And you all know it—you can feel it.”
A quote from this morning’s New York Times, by State Representative and Wisconsin Democrat Peter Barca reveals the escalation of already tense emotions in Madison as the State Assembly prepares to vote on a bill curtailing bargaining rights for many government...
7 tags
A Radically Coherent excerpt: BOMB HANOI →
David Antin, champion of avant-garde sensibility, performance poet, critic, and peerless conversationalist was once David Antin, small press magazine editor. As an excerpt—from Antin’s Radical Coherency: Selected Essays on Art and Literature, 1966 to 2005—recently published by Design Observer recalls, Antin’s days editing some/thing with his friend Jerome Rothenberg were not without...
5 tags
Arthur Koestler's Dialogue with Death →
Yesterday marked the twenty-eighth anniversary of the death of Arthur Koestler (1905-83), one of the twentieth century’s more complicated—and controversial—figures: a former Communist Party member and anti-totalitarian scribe; a university dropout, born in Budapest to a mother who was once a patient of Freud, who later renounced his citizenship; a pioneer of science studies with an...
5 tags
A Journey to Isolarion: Our free ebook for March →
Oxford is a city that with a rich history and receptive memory: a crossroads where the Thames changes its name to Isis; land of the ford, Tolkien, Murdoch, and Bayley; home of Pressed Steel to the east and a certain medieval University on its left-facing bank. The quintessential—yet entirely unique—university town. Or is it?
You’ll want to consider this before departing on your own...
5 tags
Riley's Order →
By all accounts, Atsuro Riley is having a banner year. Just this week, Romey’s Order, Riley’s first collection, voiced by the invented boy-speaker named in the book’s title, was one of five books nominated for the inaugural Believer Poetry Award. The poet, the son of ex-serviceman father and a Japanese mother, was raised in rural South Carolina and his work bears the...
