Certain exhibitions cast doubt upon the received wisdom. They force us to reconsider an artist’s achievement and standing—often deserved, sometimes not. Ralston Crawford (1906-1978): Photographs, at Zabriskie Gallery, is such an exhibition. Re-evaluations aren’t always happy. But the Zabriskie show doesn’t exact any damage whatsoever on Crawford’s underrated contribution to 20th-century American art. Instead, it Read More
Brendan Scott captures the moment when the Chairman of the Assembly's Ethics Committee decided to vote for the controversial ethics reform bill. Eliot Spitzer's appointments so far have not been confirmed by the Republican-controlled state Senate. The Jewish Press thinks Spitzer is too hard on Sheldon Silver. The snow storm has Newsday Read More
This column is not about the HBO series Big Love. Only flatterers or irritables ascribe culture-changing force to cultural artifacts like TV shows. Fiction, as Stendhal said, is a mirror carried along a road; it shows us what we are, it doesn’t make us what we are. If a new age of poly-relationships is upon Read More
This column is not about the HBO series Big Love. Only flatterers or irritables ascribe culture-changing force to cultural artifacts like TV shows. Fiction, as Stendhal said, is a mirror carried along a road; it shows us what we are, it doesn’t make us what we are. If a new age of poly-relationships is upon Read More
The modern city dweller must suffer rats, cockroaches, the occasional snakefish and lately, it seems, the biting of bed bugs. Vermin of one kind or another is the price of living in Xanadu. In many ways, I mark the day I became a passable New Yorker when, while walking along Madison Square Park, my then-girlfriend Read More
The modern city dweller must suffer rats, cockroaches, the occasional snakefish and lately, it seems, the biting of bed bugs. Vermin of one kind or another is the price of living in Xanadu. In many ways, I mark the day I became a passable New Yorker when, while walking along Madison Square Park, my then-girlfriend Read More
On the crowded streets of Park City, Utah, it’s difficult to leave the screening of a small movie like Friends With Money, directed by indie cult figure Nicole Holofcener, in a big limousine.
The movie’s star, Jennifer Aniston, spent the weekend in the company of her favorite accessory, her gay hairdresser, Chris McMillan; for press Read MoreThe New York Post greets plastic-surgery magazine Skin Deep today with a collection of quotes from the new title, assembled into a damning portrait of superficiality: * "It's a month before your wedding and you want everything to be just perfect! ... The good news is that you can get that Hollywood smile you've Read More
There are few things more humiliating than crying in Chicago. (One of them is crying in Detroit, which I have also done.) Not long ago, I spent the optimal amount of time in Chicago, which is five hours. As a matter of habit, I spent those hours at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1997, Read More
Granted, it's been a slow summer for hard news, but with the
alarums and excursions over the computer-created film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within , you'd think the Martians had landed and a digitized babe with a permanent good-hair day and her space-hunk cohorts were out to get everybody in Actors' Equity. "The synthespians are coming!" Read MoreWhen I recently announced that I was getting hitched at 31, a bunch of people started asking me why. My 29-year-old college friend Marina, who just started medical school and is more or less single, was one of the questioning ones. "Wow! I'm surprised!" she told me over the phone, sounding-well, genuinely surprised. "That's strange," Read More
In recent years, Deitch Project, a gallery in SoHo, has made a specialty of exhibiting the we-are-the-world style of art that's become known as "globalism." The gallery has shown artists from 20 different nations, bragged gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch, ranging from Y.Z. Kami, an Iranian, to Shahzia Sikander, a Muslim from Pakistan, to Mariko Mori, Read More
My buddy and I walked the D-Day beaches of Normandy in the spring of 1984, 40 years after civilization came to grips with barbarism in a crusade whose outcome was far from certain. We identified the beaches not by their political boundaries but by their once-secret code names: Juno, Sword, Gold, Utah and Omaha. At Read More
Day-Lewis K.O.'s Xmas Heavyweights
Instead of traditional year-end salvation, the 1997 Hollywood Santa delivered thistles and burrs. In the explosion of new movies this holiday season, an amazing number of bombs have been dropped that are alarmingly bereft of charm, excitement and commercial appeal. Except for Titanic, Good Will Hunting and As Good as It Read More