The New York Review of Books

The Radical Success of Comme des Garçons

Stephanie LaCava — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 12:54:20 +0000

Known for her voluminous, monochromatic, and architectural silhouettes, Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo makes designs that appear to be more concerned with novelty and sparking interest and dialogue than with straightforward attraction or luxury. One gets the sense, wandering the Met and walking the streets of New York City alike, that her label, Comme des Garçons, is one of the few that have built a viable business while truly challenging industry norms.

Louis Kahn’s Endangered Floating Concert Hall

Yo-Yo Ma — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 17:00:11 +0000

Launched in 1976, the ship Point Counterpoint II, designed by Louis Kahn, has travelled America’s rivers, lakes, and intercoastal waterways; the Caribbean, Baltic, and Irish Seas; and the rivers of northern Europe. Anchoring in large cities and small towns, in busy shipping lanes and at public parks, the barge opens like a clamshell to reveal a glittering concert stage. It sails as a powerful, living testament to American creativity and to the elemental role that culture plays in human life. Yet unless a new guardian is found for it, this remarkable, mobile cultural institution will be broken down to scrap in a Louisiana shipyard.

Shakespeare’s Pornography of Power

Geoffrey O’Brien — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 12:46:48 +0000

Measure for Measure invites updating, but it’s in the nature of the work that whatever contemporary analogies are invoked cannot quite make sense of what happens. The play is a perpetual questioning machine, exquisitely functional, set to a relentless tempo, yet a machine that bristles and crackles in its joints with contradiction and discomfort.

The Class Renegade

Colm Tóibín — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 11:00:33 +0000

Those of us who move from the provinces pay a toll at the city’s gate, a toll that is doubled in the years that follow as we try to find a balance between what was so briskly discarded and what was so carefully, hesitantly, slyly put in its place. More than thirty years ago, when I was in Egypt, I met a cultivated English couple who invited me to stay in their house in London on my way back to Ireland. They could not have been more charming. The only problem was that they had an Irish maid who, as soon as I arrived as their guest, began to talk to me in the unvarnished accent of home, as though she had known me all of her life.

The Perennial Student

Julian Bell — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 11:00:26 +0000

What is a shadow? Nothing in itself, you might say: a mere local lack of light, in a space that is otherwise lit up. Light, which allows us to see and know the world, is the normal precondition for picturing things. Cast shadows may help us interpret a picture by indicating where light comes from and where objects stand, but if you survey art history, you find the majority of painters giving them minor parts at most. A minority, however, turns these assumptions upside down, treating shadow as the preexistent condition and light as its shock interruption.

South Korea’s Real Fear

Anthony Spaeth — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 11:01:11 +0000

The primary worry in South Korea has not been its bizarre and militaristic neighbor to the north; most Koreans are by now long used to living within close firing range of Pyongyang and do not think it will attack unless provoked. What really worries them is that the new US president doesn’t know the complexity of the situation—and is too contemptuous of the State Department to be instructed.

The Snake in the Schoolhouse

J. Hoberman — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 12:27:38 +0000

Don Siegel's 1971 The Beguiled, starring Clint Eastwood, is a masterpiece of misogyny. Sofia Coppola has remade it, and where Siegel’s Beguiled was an expression of male hysteria, Coppola’s version is a dark comedy of manners. In Siegel’s movie the women are vivid types; in Coppola’s they are humanized.

Macron’s California Revolution

Sylvain Cypel — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 14:37:10 +0000

Among the many ideas put forward by Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, was to institute an annual speech to the French parliament, a sort of State of the Union à la française. He also introduced a raft of bold proposals for streamlining government. But even bolder than his proposals was the speech itself, and the American-style executive it seemed to usher in.

America On Two Wheels

Jon Day — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 09:00:19 +0000

Comics lend themselves to representing the experience of cycling: the flatness of the bird’s-eye-view map set in contrast to the scene-by-scene illustrations of Eleanor Davis’s daily experience biking from Arizona to Georgia. We are pulled into Davis’s perspective, seeing from her position on the road as well as from a close third-person view as if slightly above.

Iraq: The Battle to Come

Joost Hiltermann — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 11:32:19 +0000

ISIS’s military defeat, which Western officials believe will come sometime later this year or early next, will hardly put an end to the conflicts that gave rise to the group. For much of the battle against ISIS has taken place in a region that has been fought over ever since oil was found in Kirkuk in the 1930s. The deeper conflicts here will only escalate.

Tigers, Horses, and Stripes

Dan Nadel — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 14:47:53 +0000

Ellen Berkenblit’s striking new paintings at Anton Kern Gallery are a riot of luminous colors. Each layer of paint reveals shapes and colors, both painted and sewn, as if simultaneously pre-existent and made anew. In other works, the layers within Berkenblit’s paintings seem to display the history of their own making.

The Brave New World of Gene Editing

Matthew Cobb — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 19:00:18 +0000

In recent years, two new genetic technologies have started a scientific and medical revolution. One, relatively well known, is the ability to easily decode the information in our genes. The other, which is only dimly understood by the general public, is our newfound capacity to modify genes at will. These innovations give us the power to predict certain risks to our health, eliminate deadly diseases, and ultimately transform ourselves and the whole of nature. This development raises complex and urgent questions about the kind of society we want and who we really are. A brave new world is just around the corner, and we had better be ready for it or things could go horribly wrong.

Myth-Maker of the Brothel

Ian Buruma — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 11:11:06 +0000

Of all the masters of the woodblock print in the Edo Period, Utamaro has the most colorful reputation. Hokusai was perhaps the greatest draughtsman, Hiroshige excelled in landscapes, and Kuniyoshi had the wildest theatrical flair. Utamaro (1753–1806), whose work is featured in an exhibition at the Sackler Gallery, was the lover of women.

How Far Will the Court Go?

David Cole — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 12:48:59 +0000

The travel ban won’t be the only big case before the Court next term. It's a heady line up, and the news that Justice Anthony Kennedy will not retire—at a time when, given the Oval Office’s current occupant, the judiciary’s check on the executive branch is more essential than ever—is important.

The Nineteenth-Century Trump

Daniel Howe — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 15:42:29 +0000

Donald Trump has often been likened to Andrew Jackson; this is welcomed and encouraged by Trump himself. An important parallel between Trump and Jackson lies in their efforts to reshape the political organizations of their time, though Trump does not seem to have Jackson’s knack for political decision-making. The most important parallel between Trump and Jackson lies in their rallying the white working class against ethnic minorities.

Romania: On the Border of the Real

Adam Thirlwell — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 14:52:12 +0000

The image of an interior shattered by outside forces could be the emblem for all Cristian Mungiu’s films. He loves to present stories in which someone’s integrity is assailed by external influences, and Graduation offers one of his most melancholy contraptions for testing his characters’ limitations.

Britain: When Vengeance Spreads

Christopher de Bellaigue — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 12:08:27 +0000

For all the gestures of inter-communal solidarity that have been given much publicity since the June 18 attack outside a London mosque, the more significant and ominous sentiment has been one of vindication. Anecdotal evidence, the prevalence of online Islamophobia, and a spike in cases of anti-Muslim taunting in the street suggest that many Britons, from small towns in southern England to depressed, working-class areas in the north, feel that “they” had it coming.

A Presumption of Guilt

Bryan Stevenson — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 11:30:27 +0000

Late one night several years ago, I got out of my car on a dark midtown Atlanta street when a man standing fifteen feet away pointed a gun at me and threatened to “blow my head off.” I’d been parked outside my new apartment in a racially mixed but mostly white neighborhood that I didn’t consider a high-crime area. As the man repeated the threat, I suppressed my first instinct to run and fearfully raised my hands in helpless submission. I begged the man not to shoot me, repeating over and over again, “It’s all right, it’s okay.” The man was a uniformed police officer. As a criminal defense attorney, I knew that my survival required careful, strategic thinking. I had to stay calm.

Fathers & Daughters

Elaine Blair — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 15:00:11 +0000

When he started releasing hour-long comedy specials ten years ago, Louis C.K.’s material was long on kids, marriage, men and women, and getting older and fatter. These subjects are still a big part of his acts, especially in Louie, but he’s gotten even more traction with observations about our national mood disorder: the irritable, selfish public behavior and private melancholy of Americans in the smartphone age (or sometimes, more specifically, affluent white Americans). He’s most effective when he uses himself as representative American jerk and melancholic.

The Language of Diane Arbus

Neil Selkirk, Hilton Als — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 11:30:18 +0000

To the Editors: In an otherwise characteristically sensitive piece on Diane Arbus, Hilton Als repeats without qualification and as a truism that Diane Arbus “used the word ‘freaks’ to describe [her] subjects....” While often repeated, and in this case possibly unintentional in the implicit breadth of its meaning, nothing could be further from the truth, and the promulgation of the idea harms the reputations of both the photographer and the writer.

More Bresson Than Mozart

Joshua Rifkin — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 11:30:03 +0000

To the Editors: Michael Wood, alluding to Robert Bresson’s practice of letting quotations speak for him, writes, “When Mozart says of certain works of his that ‘they are brilliant..., but they lack poverty,’ he is close to the heart of Bresson’s aesthetics.” Mozart, unfortunately, never quite said this.

The Islamic Road to the Modern World

Malise Ruthven — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 14:30:36 +0000

In The Islamic Enlightenment, Christopher de Bellaigue aims to address a bias he perceives among general readers about the history of Islamic political liberalization. According to widespread assumptions, efforts to transform Islamic nations into modern societies were mainly imposed “from above” by Western-leaning autocrats—the underlying premise being that the Enlightenment was an exclusively Judeo-Christian (or post-Christian) movement that had no parallel in Islamic societies. This “historical fallacy,” in de Bellaigue’s view, has led “triumphalist Western historians, politicians and commentators, as well as some renegade Muslims who have turned on the religion of their births,” to insist that “Islam [still] needs its Enlightenment.” By contrast, de Bellaigue argues convincingly that efforts to bring modern political ideas to the Muslim world had a “natural constituency” among the educated minority and that, despite opposition, they slowly gained general acceptance.

Facing Off with the Old Masters

Ingrid D. Rowland — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 13:22:03 +0000

One of the favorite sports of Renaissance artists was a contest called the paragone, the “comparison,” the age-old debate about the most expressive form of art. Like sport itself, the fun lay in playing the game with headlong passion, insisting that painting, or sculpture, or architecture reigned as queen of all the other arts. This spring and summer, the Florentine exhibition “Bill Viola: Electronic Renaissance,” organized around the work of the acclaimed American video artist Bill Viola, has brought the paragone into the twenty-first century.

Matisse: The Joy of Things

Claire Messud — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 15:05:19 +0000

Matisse, unsurprisingly, had strong feelings about the objects of his daily life. They delighted, inspired, or confounded him, in their humble ordinariness and in all that they evoked. These mundane items, the organizing principle for the exhilarating show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, served as sparks for Matisse’s art. The exhibition's considerations of these objects enable us to see Matisse’s works anew.

The Nihilism of Julian Assange

Sue Halpern — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 15:00:07 +0000

About forty minutes into Risk, Laura Poitras’s messy documentary portrait of Julian Assange, the filmmaker addresses the viewer from off-camera. “This is not the film I thought I was making,” she says. “I thought I could ignore the contradictions. I thought they were not part of the story. I was so wrong. They are becoming the story.” By the time she makes this confession, Poitras has been filming Assange, on and off, for six years. He has gone from a bit player on the international stage to one of its dramatic leads.

The Banality of Putin

Robert Cottrell — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 17:33:56 +0000

It’s easy to see why Oliver Stone puts up with being lied to in The Putin Interviews, Stone's new four-part documentary. He needs Putin’s indulgence to make the series. The harder question is why Putin made so much time for Stone, given that Putin has a country to run. Stone does not have much to offer, and Putin cannot help but run rings around him for three of the four interviews.

Putting Profits Ahead of Patients

Jerome Groopman, Pamela Hartzband — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 10:00:32 +0000

At the center of both our flawed current system and its disastrous proposed replacement is a fundamental reality: health care in the United States is enormously costly, often in ways that are baffling not only to patients but to doctors themselves.

Afghanistan: It’s Too Late

Ahmed Rashid — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 09:00:53 +0000

To continue seeing the conflict in Afghanistan only through the prism of war and troop numbers as the US does will only lead to continuing erosion of the government's legitimacy. and loss of territory. Taliban attacks will increase, there will be continued loss of territory, and the government may collapse. This is a recipe for failure.

Consciousness: Who’s at the Wheel?

Riccardo Manzotti, Tim Parks — Sat, 17 Jun 2017 09:00:13 +0000

Parks: Where does that leave the concept of free will? Manzotti: We often confuse freedom with arbitrariness, as though freedom were tantamount to doing something in a random way. But we are only really free, or rather we savor our freedom, when what we do is the necessary expression of what we are.

Lost in Arabia

Colin Thubron — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 15:25:06 +0000

The 1761-1767 doomed Danish expedition to the Middle East was little known for many years. In Felix Arabia, an account of the expedition recently published in a new edition, Thorkild Hansen sometimes doubts the expedition’s influence. But since, its reputation has burgeoned. Despite the losses and decay suffered by its findings, the maps, studies in zoology and botany, and other discoveries were a gift to the future. In 2011, the 250th anniversary of the expedition’s departure was celebrated with pride.

The New Face of Russian Resistance

Masha Gessen — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 15:29:55 +0000

As long as some Russians, including some very young ones, are willing—as they were on Monday—to brave streets filled with riot police, they keep an unreasonable hope alive, and they increase the chances that opposition activist Alexei Navalny will survive and stay out of prison. That’s not nothing.

Words Still Matter

Francine Prose — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 12:42:35 +0000

James Comey's June 8 hearing proved that it is still possible for politicians to speak in complete sentences, to display a familiarity with history, to strive for linguistic and moral clarity: to make sense. But we are still waiting to hear from the senators and representatives with the fortitude to say lie as often as Trump’s supporters repeat not under investigation.