This cartoonist and her cousin, our featured musical guest Jill Sobule, were raised in Colorado, with ties to a disastrous nineteenth-century scheme that sent Jewish immigrants westward from the slums of the Lower East Side. Great story. Great song. (Somehow the words “disastrous scheme” evoke the White House. I can’t imagine why.) Continue reading »
Category Archives: Art
Episode 275: Mierle Laderman Ukeles
The shift in usage from “garbageman” to “sanitation worker” was not cosmetic but an acknowledgement of what – and who — helps a city survive, says the artist-in-residence of the New York Department of Sanitation. Music from Hubby Jenkins. Photo by Harry Wilks. Continue reading »
Episode 273: Chip Kidd part two
Our conversation with this terrific designer was part of the Museum of Arts and Design’s exhibition Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk Graphics 1976-1986. The musician was Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group, a luminary of that era, who made a shocking revelation: he played in a fraternity band. Continue reading »
Episode 272: Chip Kidd part one
He created book jackets for Michael Crichton to John Updike, without bloody conflicts: “It’s the author’s book, and if I’m not taking them where they want with the cover, they have every right to say so, and then we figure it out.” Talent and humility. Imagine my disappointment. A conversation at the Museum of Arts … Continue reading »
Episode 271: Art Spiegelman
Best known for Maus, his graphic novel about the holocaust, he’s drawn dozens of New Yorker covers, including the black-on-black memorial for the World Trade Center. He is less known for creating Garbage Pail Kids. High Art, low Art? A conversation at the American Academy of Arts and Letters with music from the Wisterians. Continue reading »
Episode 234: Samuel Levi Jones
He rips the covers from encyclopedias and law books – the texts of power – and stitches them together into artwork that is moving and beautiful. “Some individuals have found it problematic that I’m destroying this material.” Destroying or reconfiguring? A conversation about art and authority at the International Print Center New York, with … Continue reading »
Episode 233: Anthony Haden-Guest
Admired for his astute observations of the upper classes and the art world, he is loath to write about, let alone revisit, scenes of his own past: “I don’t want to see a bunch of young people running around doing what I used to do.” With music from the suspiciously youthful Vanisha Gould and the … Continue reading »
Episode 184: Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Marwa Helal
Surely a Muslim TSA agent will be sensitive to the feelings of Muslim travellers. And by “surely,” I mean “surely not.” Writer Marwa Helal and artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed describe their encounters with the TSA, disheartening stories delightfully told. Plus tales of the weight room and the irrational fear of Egyptian pumpkin seeds. A conversation … Continue reading »
Episode 178: Hallgrímur Helgason
Iceland is a paradise for writers, with its highly literate population, generous government grants and total absence of cockroaches. Unfortunately there are only 330,000 Icelanders, so even if they all buy your book your horizons are limited. Fortunately that’s why the novelist (and print-maker, and translator and more) Hallgrímur Helgason visited America. A conversation at the … Continue reading »
Episode 174: Benjamin Swett
Diane Arbus’s old contact sheets include images she never meant us to see, so would perusing them violate her rights as an artist? Photographer Benjamin Swett says he’d look at them with pleasure, and he makes a persuasive case that he’s not going to hell. Plus, the invention of the circular saw and celibacy reconsidered: surprisingly … Continue reading »
Episode 154: Maya Lin
At 22, she designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; she’s since created the stirring Wavefield at Storm King and is currently working on the Smith College library. So, artist or architect? “There are architects that make art, and then I think there are artists who make architecture,” she says, “and I would sort of see myself … Continue reading »
Episode 151: Renee Cox
Do happy artists produce better work than gloomy artists? Renee Cox contemplates her own work and says yes. I say: Beethoven. We considered the matter at the Interntional Print Center in conjunction with their exhibition Black Pulp. The featured musical performer was Norris Bennett of the Ebony Hillbillies, whose work made me so joyful … Continue reading »