Garth Greenwell: ‘I didn’t read Middlemarch until my late 30s. Why didn’t someone intervene? ’
The novelist on Virginia Woolf’s luminous prose, obsessively rereading James Baldwin and why Saint Augustine is his favourite writer
https://theguardian.com/books/2024/…
Sarah Crowner: Meeting in Time and Place
One way to read my work is through its process: I’m not making an edge by literally painting a line, the hard edges are made by joining cut shapes painted on canvas with a sewing machine.
https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2024…
A Secret Masterpiece by the Father of Hawaiian Modernism
This hexagonal home, hidden on an Oahu mountaintop, is the best example of Vladimir Ossipoff’s blend of Japanese and American midcentury design.
https://nytimes.com/2024/11/12/t-ma…
The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books
To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.
https://theatlantic.com/magazine/ar…
Light and Color: The Spirit-Led Work of James Turrell
Turrell is a lifelong Quaker… His work is motivated not only by curiosity and ambition, but also by a spiritual quest.
https://commonedge.org/light-and-co…
How the Artist Barry Blitt Turns Politics Into Cartoon Cover Gold
Armed with watercolors and a “passive-aggressive” sense of humor, the illustrator finds the funny, even in ugly times.
https://newyorker.com/culture/video…
An Artist Who Chronicles the ‘Doom Generation’
The artist Paul P. is a painter whose power comes from representing a scarcely documented, in-between generation of queer life.
https://nytimes.com/2024/10/31/t-ma…
Border/Town
Bemidji, Minnesota, is a border town. Every place was, at one time or another, or perhaps is still, a border town. It depends on who you are and where you’re standing.
https://placesjournal.org/article/b…
Gary Indiana, The Art of Fiction No. 250
Gary Indiana was in his late thirties by the time he began to publish fiction, which may account for his wide array of sidelines.
https://theparisreview.org/intervie…
The House that Agnes Martin Built
Painter Agnes Martin, who died in Taos, New Mexico, in 2004, had the ability to make seemingly restrictive, minimalist forms pulse with life.
https://imagejournal.org/article/ho…
Alexei Navalny’s Prison Diaries
The Russian opposition leader’s account of his last years and his admonition to his country and the world.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2024…
Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind.
Robert Paxton thought the label was overused. But now he’s alarmed by what he sees in global politics — including Trumpism.
https://nytimes.com/2024/10/23/maga…
Little Big Worlds
A theme park in Istanbul shrinks what is otherwise too gigantic to comprehend, transforming visitors into citizens and sultans of an imaginary Turkish time and narrative.
https://placesjournal.org/article/l…
Aesthetics Alone Do Not Give Sacred Space Its Meaning
In the post-pandemic era, an oversupply of underutilized churches is a growing reality.
https://commonedge.org/aesthetics-a…
On Nature and Artifice
A Conversation with Colm Tóibín.
https://garthgreenwell.substack.com…
Growing Up with the Writer Ved Mehta
My father, who was blind, was obsessed with the way things looked—sometimes it felt like the British Raj was alive and well in our New York apartment.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2024…
The Enduring Power of Peter Hujar’s “Portraits in Life and Death”
Since the photographer’s death, in 1987, the only book he published in his lifetime has attained the status of a classic.
https://newyorker.com/culture/photo…
Tacita Dean Draws Her Way Into the Menil
In the artist’s first major U.S. museum survey, she bonds with Cy Twombly through works on paper, films and photographs.
https://nytimes.com/2024/10/06/arts…
The Art of Biography: Christopher Isherwood
Katherine Bucknell, previously the editor of a four-volume edition of Christopher Isherwood’s diaries, has now published Christopher Isherwood Inside Out, an intimate and rigorous biography of the celebrated writer and gay cultural icon.
https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2024…
The Priest Who Helps Women in the Mob Escape
Don Luigi Ciotti leads an anti-Mafia organization, and for decades he has run a secret operation that liberates women from the criminal underworld.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2024…
San Francisco is changing before our eyes — just like it always has been
If there's one thing I could change about my 23 years as the San Francisco Chronicle's urban design critic, it would be how I spent my first day on the beat.
https://sfchronicle.com/sf/article/…
Design Q&A: Shigeru Ban
Shigeru Ban creates architecture where purpose intersects with form. While he says he isn’t an altruist, his work suggests otherwise.
https://eamesinstitute.org/kazam-ma…
‘Places to heal, not to harm’: why brutal prison design kills off hope
From razor-wire fences and crumbling cells to no windows and overcrowding, conditions in most jails mean rehabilitation is a nonstarter. Here’s how we can create better spaces for prisoners
https://theguardian.com/society/202…
For Fredric Jameson, Marxist Criticism Was a Labor of Love
The literary critic, who died on Sunday at age 90, believed that reading was the path to revolution.
https://nytimes.com/2024/09/23/book…
“What Would Jane Jacobs Do?” Is the Wrong Question
It is fascinating to see attempts to use the ideas of Jane Jacobs to justify New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes proposal.
https://commonedge.org/what-would-j…
Trump and Vance Are Using One of America’s Oldest Racist Playbooks
By falsely linking Haitians in Springfield to the spread of infectious diseases, the GOP candidates are joining a long, terrible history.
https://thenation.com/article/polit…
