Drawing for The Nation, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, he created stinging caricatures of powerful people. You’d think they’d complain. You’d be wrong. “These people are delighted to be made fun of by the ridiculous people who think that they’re so funny. They know just how powerless we are.” Reflections at age 92 on the happy life of … Continue reading »
Category Archives: Art
389: Sylvia Plachy
When I moved to New York, in 1973, The Village Voice was at the center of downtown life, and her weekly photographs were at the center of the Voice, capturing not just the way things looked but also the way they felt. Today? “Now I’m in my seventies, and I no longer have a community.” Art, aging, and angst—presented … Continue reading »
376: James McMullan
In 1976, Milton Glaser sent him to a Brooklyn disco for New York magazine, to illustrate an article that would become the movie Saturday Night Fever. Jim showed his paintings to editor Clay Felker. “Clay looked at them and he said, ‘Jim, what are you showing me here? I don’t get it. Nothing’s happening.’” But it all worked out. And not … Continue reading »
353: Vinnie Bagwell
When this sculptor creates a statue of a historical figure―Sojourner Truth, Ella Fitzgerald, Teddy Roosevelt―she learns a lot about her subject. While conceiving a more metaphoric project, Victory, she made a disconcerting discovery: there are no Black angels in public art. “Are you trying to say there are no Black people in heaven?” she demanded. … Continue reading »
351: Alice Aycock
This sculptor, perhaps best known for a series of piece resembling captured tornadoes, describes how her darker feelings affect her work: “As artists, we are very sensitive to pain, but we don’t just use it as something to whine about, but as a probing tool.” No whining? No wonder I’m not an artist. Well, that … Continue reading »
313: William Wegman
Like millions of his admirers, I encountered him through his videos of his dogs, Man Ray, then Fay Ray, then her descendants – odd, surprising, sometimes funny, always full of feeling. Curiously, he used to say horrible things about video art. “That’s how a young artist thinks. I’m much more generous now as an old … Continue reading »
312: Garry Trudeau
He was still in college when he created his smart and funny comic strip, “Doonesbury,” and has since sent his characters to a disconcerting number of wars without disheartening the readers. His most recent book is Lewser: More Doonesbury in the Time of Trump, which nearly disheartens me. Laughing through my tears. Of rage. Continue reading »
Episode 299: Sarah Boxer
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 »
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 »