Art & Culture
Where art is going: the avant-garde, technology as a material, and the futures artists imagine.
-
Hidden in Plain Sight
What the Encyclopedia Was Told
In July 1940 a Reich ministry told the publishers of Meyers and Brockhaus which name to print for the inventor of the automobile. The instruction sounded like ordinary editing, and that is why it worked. Siegfried Marcus was the name dropped.
-
Beyond the Frame
The Second Visit Belongs to the Painting
Everyone at the Musée d'Orsay says "mother." Almost no one says what the painter called it. On a second visit, the names matter less than what happens to your own pace in front of Whistler's grey room, and what the sitter is made to do.
-
Beyond the Frame
What a City Trusts
Three visions of tomorrow from 1927, 2024, and 2026: Lang's warning, Coppola's wager, and Kaethia_'s invitation. What each trusts to build a world, and why the box office cannot measure what a work asks of its moment.
-
Beyond the Frame
A Sentence Spoken Before the Looking
In 1997 the word Sensation reached me in Hamburg before any picture did. A title is a sentence spoken before looking, and the best ones are those a show can survive. On what exhibition names promise, decide and quietly take away.
-
Beyond the Frame
The Camera Did Not Free Painting; Painting Left on Its Own
Everyone repeats that photography freed painting from likeness. The rooms Nadar left behind suggest a less flattering story, and five photographs by Florence_ show what that story means for the images machines make today.
