FRONT COVER: Cecily Brown. All Is Vanity (after Gilbert), 2006. Monotype; 47 1/4 × 36 7/8 in. Private collection, courtesy Two Palms, New York. © Cecily Brown. LATELY WHEN I look in the mirror, I see death. Or rather, I see the signs of creeping middle age—the widening part of my hair, the grays which overnight have become too many to pluck, the deepening smile lines—and I ponder my mortality. Yes, I know that thirty-two
When I accepted three of Kathryn Kirkpatrick’s poems I didn’t realize that, in different ways, they were about the dialogue of life and death. That’s a measure of her variety of tone and her skill as both a poet and a storyteller. In “To Live,” a father is killed by a cluster bomb as he protects his child with his body. (Well, there are worse ways to go, like “a bullet / to the head,
In Sync I worked a bunch of minimum wage jobs in college, hard-selling suede bomber jackets at Wilson’s Leather, guzzling Frangelico-flavored coffee while reading Backlash at a failing coffee shop, and nude modeling for figure drawing classes. That last one paid twice the hourly wage of the others, but the real pay-off was the impact that holding a pose (nude, for two to three hours, in front of my peers) had on me as a
The artist at her exhibition Tracey Emin “My Bed’”/JMW Turner at Turner Contemporary, 2017 2018. Photo by Stephen White; courtesy Turner Contemporary. My in-laws live in the north of England. Their modest semi-detached home is decorated tastefully with trinkets from their world travels, family photos, and a few replicas of notable artworks. I love the juxtaposition of viewpoints when I’m in their house. Inside, my eyes bounce from the Mondrian-inspired glass door, a miniature painting
A detail from Stella Waitzkin: These Books Are Paintings. © Waitzkin Memorial Library Trust. Photo by Jennifer Baumgardner. IN THIS ERA of compulsory eyeball luring, saying no to self-promotion looks courageous to me. Perhaps this is why a deceased, somewhat-obscure modern artist named Stella Waitzkin so captured my curiosity recently. Her enduring subject was refusal—of feminine roles, the art business, throwaway culture. Her welcome mat read “GO AWAY.” She made art every day for more
Cecily Brown. ‘Selfie,’ 2020. Oil on linen, 43 × 47 in. The Swartz Family Collection. © Cecily Brown. Can a painting be its own opposite? The works in Cecily Brown’s mid-career survey Death and the Maid are both abstract and figurative, canonically referential and hedonistically maximal, their carnivalesque palettes slashed with monotone grays. They are, at once, both surface and core. The show greets you with a large canvas titled Selfie (2020), which depicts a
Edgar Degas, Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot, c. 1910, bronze. Degas made at least four variations of this sculpture; this version, made with plasteline and cast posthumously, is most likely the one for which Pauline posed. Courtesy of Tate. IN 1899, ONE Amélie Lang, eighteen, was abducted by her friend’s brother-in-law. When her guardian (an aunt who resented responsibility for Lang’s care) found her days later in the apartment where the
Naudline Pierre, ‘Too Much, Not Enough,’ 2019 2020. Oil on canvas, 60 × 40 in. For as long as I could remember, I wanted to be a girl. Even before I knew what it meant to be a girl, what a girl even was, I wanted it. I wanted to be pretty and to be adored in the way that only femmes could be adored. When you see a beautiful femme, it feels like getting
The Thumb of Thetis Grasping him by one little foot to dip him in the mystic river, Thetis (how can she forget?) overlooks this: that where her thumb presses his flesh, he still is dry instead of drenched in deathless wet, hence subject to mortality. When her baby is a man, that tiny disc of naked skin will let the fatal arrow in. This is where the wound will come. One vulnerable spot is all
Every Secret is a Little Casket When we got to my father’s grave, my mother apologized. Anthills puckered at the seams of the grave. Crabgrass hemmed in the nameplate. It was a flat grave, not high but deep. Another beside it with her name and single date seemed to wait, undisturbed. Seemed to wait. Tending was what she thought she hadn’t done: tiny minutes unstitched . . . RESTRICTED CONTENT Tbis content is restricted to
Books Are Magic in Brooklyn, NY
Book Shucker in Edison, WA
McNally Jackson in NYC
CASA Magazines in NYC
Square Books in Oxford, MS
Loyalty Bookstore in Washington, DC
Downtown Books & News in Asheville, NC
Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, NC
Skylight Books in Los Angeles, CA
Powell’s Books in Portland, OR
ISSN 2831-2759
195 Chrystie St, 303-N
New York, NY 10002
© 2024 LIBER/dottir press.
All rights reserved.
