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THE HELD ESSAYS ON VISUAL ART
CARROLL DUNHAM: Eyes Wide Shut

By Alexi Worth

“One more question,” announced the moderator, and a woman in the front row raised her hand. “What is it with all the female genitalia?” There was a ripple of nervous laughter from the crowd, who had come to hear Carroll Dunham being interviewed about his recent “Bathers” paintings.1 “Are you a pervert?” she continued, “Are you a feminist? What’s going on?” The laughter grew, acknowledging not only the glaring absurdity of the evening’s juxtaposition—two middle-aged guys talking while a procession of giant pink nipples and anuses and labia were projected above their heads—but also, an unexpected and curious detail: the questioner was Laurie Simmons.

Isamu Noguchi: Driven to Create

The peripatetic early life of Isamu Noguchi did much to shape his development as a diverse and ambitious artist. He was born in 1904 in Los Angeles to the writer Yone Noguchi, of Japan, and Leonie Gilmour, an American who edited his work; his mother moved with him to Japan two years later with the intention that Isamu would benefit by growing up in the orbit of his father. Instead Yone married another woman, and Leonie raised the boy alone. By 1912 Isamu and Leonie had settled in Chigasaki, on the central eastern coast, where he attended Catholic school, and in 1916 moved to an English-speaking community in nearby Yokohama. Here, Isamu never completely assimilated, recalling, “I became a stranger to myself, a stranger in the land.

Love and Magic:
Anna Biller’s The Love Witch

By Brittany Stigler

“All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable.” So reads the 1486 treatise Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer), also known as the witch-hunt manual that perpetuated the image of the witch as a phallus-stealing, sexually perverse puppet of Satan.

SLAVS AND TATARS Afteur Pasteur

By Ann McCoy

Slavs and Tatars, perhaps the smartest artist collaborative around, have returned for their first New York exhibition since Beyonsense at MoMA (2012).

InTranslation

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From the Publisher & Artistic Director

Dear Friends and Readers,

By Phong Bui

In the current horizontal media landscape, where everyone is deemed an expert, as Isaac Asimov wrote, “The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

Editor's Message Guest Critic

Recalling the Saints

By Susan Harris

As serious, trained professionals who care deeply about art and artists, and place a high value on the disciplines of art history and art criticism, we regularly reflect on the role of the art writer/critic—what it is today and what it should be in a rapidly changing art world.

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The Brooklyn Rail

NOV 2016

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