Print Edition - April 11, 2011
Previous Edition
By Rachel Corbett | April 5, 2011 | 7:41 pm
When French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster noticed that the tilted white ramps of the Guggenheim rotunda looked like the decks of an ocean liner, she got an idea. The building "seemed to call for water," she said. But for this dystopian artist, whose most famous piece transformed the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall into a post-apocalyptic London, water meant something dark, sad and epically... MORE >
Artists generally like to have their works displayed in major museums. So when 130 artists, curators and academics signed a letter last month asking that their works not be shown by the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi until conditions improved for workers building the facility, it drew widespread attention to the cause. But the protesters may be getting ahead of themselves in several... MORE >
By Katherine Clarke | April 5, 2011 | 7:23 pm
Marina Abramović, the newest party... MORE >
It is hard for anyone to be entirely arcane, even if one were to work as hard at being secretive as most would at becoming famous. Carefully designed anonymity, after all, is one way of achieving the latter end. Take the case of WU LYF, an English band that refuses to do interviews or pose for publicity photographs and played their first show in America, at Glasslands in Brooklyn, on April Fool's... MORE >
Last Sunday morning, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was passing through customs in the Beijing airport when he was approached by uniformed officers and detained. Mr. Ai, his traveling companion was told, had "other business" to attend to. Shortly thereafter, police officers raided his studio in Beijing. They interrogated employees and members of his family, and confiscated his... MORE >
By Charles Peterson | April 5, 2011 | 7:55 pm
When Philip Connors--whose first book, Fire Season (Ecco, 246 pages, $24.99), about his job as a fire lookout on a mountaintop in New Mexico, arrives this month--applied for a job at The Wall Street Journal in 1999, he was asked to send along six clips of his work.... MORE >
By Julian Niccolini | April 5, 2011 | 7:50 pm
Monday was extremely busy--but don't worry, everyone was safe; Commissioner Kelly presided at one of the central tables in the Grill! Across the room, Governor Paterson was eating fruit salad with Bill... MORE >
By The Editors | April 5, 2011 | 7:57 pm
If they were trapped in an elevator at a governors' convention, Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie would have lots to discuss. Like how they closed yawning deficits without major tax increases--remarkable achievements. How they stood up to special interests to get their budgets passed. How they articulated their goals and rallied public opinion as they made politically unpopular cuts. And how they are preparing the groundwork for further reforms in the political culture of... MORE >
For the next few weeks, the painter Robert Feintuch will be slouching around the walls of the Sonnabend Gallery. Using himself as a model, Mr. Feintuch paints a single male figure wearing only white boxer shorts, usually alone but sometimes doubled or tripled. He stands in front of a blank wall in an exaggerated shade of his own Caucasian color--gray, peach or pink. He raises a bunch of grapes over his mouth, or raises... MORE >
By The Editors | April 5, 2011 | 7:57 pm
Anthony Weiner ought to consider the fate of a certain former governor of New York. His name is Eliot Spitzer, and he had a pretty high opinion of himself back in the day. He enjoyed issuing moral pronouncements about the behavior, ethics and other habits of mere mortals. One day, however, the world discovered that Mr. Spitzer didn't think the rules applied to him. He quickly became an... MORE >
On a recent Monday evening, Congressman Anthony Weiner strode to the front of a small multipurpose room in the Bronx, where about 75 college Democrats, in baggy jeans and hooded sweatshirts, greeted him with loud applause and a couple of scattered... MORE >
Any Webster's revisionist searching for a new way to define deadly, dreary or dreadful need look no further. Meek's Cutoff describes them all. Here is a film in 2011 about a wagon train in 1845. Talk about forward-thinking. Worse still, it lacks warmth, action, humor or any kind of narrative structure, and it moves at the pace of a donkey with arthritis. John Ford must be growling in his... MORE >
Royal blood doesn't always wear a crown. Hanna is an incomprehensible pile of gibberish with great credentials: Joe Wright, who directed Atonement, reunites with one of its stars, Saoirse Ronan, the phenomenally talented teenager with the unpronounceable name, and the cast also includes Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana. The result is unbearable junk. What went wrong? Just about... MORE >
Meet Monica Velour is the cheesy, often clumsy, sometimes wrenching study of an unconventional relationship between a teenage misfit and an aging porn star, one that will most likely be best remembered by the all-out, no-holds-barred, warts-and-all "centerfold" performance by Kim Cattrall. Whenever an actor bloats, starves or otherwise disfigures himself for a role, it usually results in awards, critical praise, gossip-column fodder or all three.... MORE >
At the Somos el Futuro legislative conference in Albany this weekend, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli could be seen hugging Senator Charles Schumer-not because he was feeling particularly affectionate, but because Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, chairman of the conference, which gathers top Democratic officials to discuss issues of concern to Hispanic New Yorkers, had urged attendees to "embrace the person that is sitting next to you." Mr. Schumer gamely hugged him back, to cheers from the... MORE >
