Dana Schutz and Richard Deacon.
Painting today may be ever so good, as in a magnificent show of new work by Dana Schutz, at the Petzel gallery, and still have you wondering what it’s good for. Can it make a significant difference in our culture? A Schutz painting in last year’s Whitney Biennial would seem to have done so, but haplessly. Her naïvely well-meant “Open Casket,” which presented a semi-abstract image of the murdered Emmett Till, jostled a hornet’s nest of prevalent racial hurts and angers. Protesters declared black suffering off limits for white artists. Defenders of Schutz invoked freedom of expression. The arguments sailed past each other, with one exception. After Schutz was accused of exploiting a sensitive subject for money, she swore that she would never sell the picture. Missing was a discussion of “Open Casket” as a work of art dealing with a theme that is characteristic of Schutz: the aftermath of a disaster. She consistently responds, though rarely so topically, to widespread alarms of social, political, and spiritual disorder—the daily unreason, the falling apart. She vivifies present conditions of life on a faltering planet as dramatically as an artist can while staying devoted to aesthetic ideals. Without respect for the sincerity of those ideals, painting will readily become prey to cynical imputations.
Denne historien er fra January 28, 2019-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra January 28, 2019-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
