Jane Hu
Most Recently: Gerhard Richter Is A Famous Painter Of Expensive Paintings
Jane Hu thought she was going to be late.
Gerhard Richter Is A Famous Painter Of Expensive Paintings
Right now an exhibit called "Richteriana" is on exhibit at Postmasters, a gallery located in West Chelsea. As the title suggests, the exhibit is by no means a straight-up reification of Richter's status as a father of conceptualist painting. Nor, however, is it a disavowal of his significance. Instead it's something much more interesting: an attempt to look at the different forces—the buyers and sellers, critics and academics and museums—that establish the "worth" of an artist. READ MORE
When Exactly Did It Get Cool To Be A Geek?
A Joyful & Malicious History Of 'Schadenfreude'
In an interview with Martha Stewart shortly before her 2003 indictment, Jeffrey Toobin asked the visibly exhausted celebrity if she felt herself the victim of “schadenfreude.” He didn't expand upon the Germanism, and Stewart certainly didn't need it defined. READ MORE
"Are You Airminded?" The Slang Of War
"Airmindedness” is a term that used to be everywhere and now it's nowhere. The word, as defined by the OED, means an interest in and enthusiasm for the use and development of aircraft. The expression emerged with the development of the airplane in the early twentieth century, during which an entire generation struggled to expand their conceptual boundaries skywards. Prompted by the invention of mechanical flight, this airminded cultural moment was sustained by the military incentives that ceaselessly pushed for improvements to air power. READ MORE
The 'Times' As Tardy Leader and the History of Women's Suffrage
The New York Times addresses current issues in three ways: as expressions of guidance on the editorial page, as expressions of individual opinion on the op-ed page, and as worthy (or not) of news coverage or analysis in the rest of the paper. It has grappled with how to cover Israel, for instance. And for the last 30 years, it has struggled with how to cover gay people. Now the paper has moved in all three departments from following to leading, from first using the word "homosexual" in 1926 to (tardily) using the word "gay" to pioneering gay wedding announcements. What can we learn about the paper's process of leading, following or getting out of the way from its coverage of the women's suffrage movement—and of the relationship of this coverage to future successes of social movements? READ MORE
The Full Duplex Press: My Gmail Phone
In Marshall McLuhan's prophetic 1964 analysis, Understanding Media, he defines the telephone as "speech without walls." At the end of the 19th century, the new postal system of telephone calls went beyond letters and telegrams to collapse the time and space between two distinct-and simultaneous-voices. Yet within the course of telephonic traffic, lines get jammed. We stare at phones with telepathic (if often futile) fervor, our eyes and mind willing it to ring. Our appetites for attention and news and scandal feed our wish for the phone to ring. As phones grow more digitized and versatile-and, sometimes, less versatile and less simultaneous-our dependence on them means we must continually readapt our roles as storytellers and listeners. Still, telephones may be the greatest symbol of modernity; the phone has never lost touch of our desire to stay in touch. READ MORE
Is the Trailer for 'The Shining' the Actual Film?
Stanley Kubrick was, to put it mildly, a meticulous director. On the set of The Shining, he drove poor Shelley Duvall mad. The famous baseball-bat scene was recorded an infamous 127 times. That striking poster of The Shining? Kubrick had Saul Bass draw over 300 versions of it. The director continued to tweak his film until its US opening, May 23, 1980 and even into its initial screenings; when he decided to cut the final hospital scene, Kubrick made bike couriers ride from theater to theater in order to personally remove the sequence. Kubrick's artistic compulsions were a double-edged sword. Not even considering the immaculate texture of his films, Kubrick's trailers are independent works of art in and of themselves. READ MORE
Have Editors and Writers Always Hated Each Other?
After publishing Richard Morgan's account of his life as a freelance writer, we heard from someone who'd been both a freelance writer and an editor at a major newspaper. "Was there a time, a long time ago, when editors and writers weren't at war with one another?" he asked. Although one would think a congenial relationship between the two would lead to clearer and more cohesive writing, writers and editors do indeed seem to be locked in perpetual conflict. How did we reach such levels of animosity? I looked to the historical record. READ MORE
The Truly Best-Dressed Characters in Literature
Recently our neighbors at Flavorwire picked their ten best-dressed characters from literature. It's fascinating, if slightly heavy on film adaptions. ("Isabelle Huppert in Claude Chabrol's Madame Bovary (1991)." No, that would be Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856)!) Isn't the best part of novels their ability to evoke striking images in the mind alone? Let's see if we can help! READ MORE
Shakespeare in Song, Categorized by Play
During a scene in Hamlet 2, Dana Marschz, played by Steve Coogan, laments to his cat, "Oh my God, writing is so hard!" It sure is, when you're writing a sequel to Hamlet 1! It's easier to borrow. These following artists took a page out of Shakespeare's own script and wrote songs borrowing from the Bard himself. READ MORE
