Search

THE VERY LAST INTERVIEWBy David Shields Is it poor form to start a review of a book with a question? Not if the book is David Shields's ''The Very Last [...]

MAGRITTE A LifeBy Alex Danchev with Sarah Whitfield Even people who do not recognize the name René Magritte are likely to recognize his bowler-hatted man, that solitary wanderer in a [...]

In 1580, Henry Bynneman printed a slim volume titled Three Proper, and wittie, familiar Letters: lately passed between two Vniuersitie men. Collaboratively devised by Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser, it offers a choreographed display of their friendship, virtuosity, and poetic preferences, thus providing a unique perspective on the literary milieu of Elizabethan England. This essay explores a curious garden reference in this epistolary collection—one that deserves attention not just for the way it pairs a garden with a poetic exercise but also for the way it represents the kind of garden-based rhetoric popular among poets seeking patronage during this period. Harvey accesses the classical convention of equating the locus amoenuswith the locus poeticusbut does so in a way that localizes the setting and personalizes the drama of composition.

HOW TO BE AN ART REBELBy Ben StreetIllustrated by Jay Daniel Wright WHAT ADULTS DON'T KNOW ABOUT ARTWritten by The School of LifeEdited by Alain de Botton As an art [...]

Abstract:In 1912, Horii Duplication opened a branch office in Keijō, or present-day Seoul, aiming to sell what the company optimistically described as "a great invention of the East," its patented tōshaban (K. tŭngsap'an) duplicator. The tŭngsap'an was, indeed, a remarkably accessible technology. It was simple and inexpensive to operate; it could reproduce images, roman letters, and East Asian scripts; and it was capable of generating duplicates on any type of paper using readily available ink. Tŭngsap'an technology was deeply implicated in Japanese expansionism from its inception, and in Korea, its role in enabling knowledge production, surveillance, and other forms of political control furthered the reach of the colonial state. Even so, tŭngsap'an duplication was widespread beyond official use, and its unique combination of affordances led colonial authorities to view the tŭngsap'an as both a tool for and a target of state surveillance, especially as independence activists utilized tŭngsap'an duplication in fluid and interactive ways to further resistance efforts. The paradoxes that tŭngsap'an duplication embodied make it a unique site of textual practice, and a rich vantage point from which to study how arrangements of power in colonial Korea were enacted, experienced, navigated, and contested.

BERENICE ABBOTT A Life in Photography By Julia Van Haaften Illustrated. 634 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $45. Most of America's greatest photographers set out to be something else. Berenice [...]

THE COLLECTOR OF LIVES Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art By Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney Illustrated. 420 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $29.95. It is rare that [...]

MAD ENCHANTMENTClaude Monet and the Painting of the Water LiliesBy Ross King403 pages. Bloomsbury. $30. Is there anything left to be said about Claude Monet, the celebrated Impressionist who took [...]

KEEPING AN EYE OPEN Essays on Art By Julian Barnes Illustrated. 278 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $30. What is the point of reading biographies of artists? Critics have frequently come [...]

French painter Pierre Bonnard's life in the picturesque village of Le Cannet is described. Photographs of his house are compared with the paintings that depicted them.

Edward Hopper was the artist who distinctly captured Cape Cod's real image of serenity and emptiness in art. Hopper's house in South Truro, his works and life are described.

German expressionism turns 20th century anxiety into a celebration of modern sadness. Full of color and movement, the depictions portray emotions without words, sentiments without symbols. Their lack of precision reflects emotional confusion and misdirected apprehension.

IN MONTMARTRE Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris 1900-1910 By Sue Roe Illustrated. 365 pp. Penguin Press. $29.95. SHOCKING PARIS Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse By Stanley Meisler [...]

WAGSTAFF Before and After Mapplethorpe: A Biography By Philip Gefter Illustrated. 458 pp. Liveright Publishing. $35. The mention of Sam Wagstaff's name is likely to elicit a respectful nod from [...]

WHISTLER A Life for Art's Sake By Daniel E. Sutherland Illustrated. 440 pp. Yale University Press. $40. Of all the American artists of the 19th century, James Abbott McNeill Whistler [...]

The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage edited by Cathi Hanauer. New York: William Morrow, 2002, 304 pp., $23.95 hardcover. [...]

THE ART OF CONTROVERSY Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power By Victor S. Navasky Illustrated. 231 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95. It has been eight years since a set of [...]

SAUL STEINBERG A Biography By Deirdre Bair Illustrated. 732 pp. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $40. Saul Steinberg, the pre-eminent cartoonist of the 20th century, specialized in high-I.Q. humor. In an age [...]

SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis By Timothy Egan Illustrated. 370 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $28. Edward Curtis deserves to be [...]

DAVID HOCKNEY The Biography, 1937-1975: A Rake's Progress By Christopher Simon Sykes Illustrated. 363 pp. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $35. David Hockney is often described as England's most popular artist, but [...]

VAN GOGH The Life By Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith Illustrated. 953 pp. Random House. $40 Vincent VAN GOGH tends to be remembered as an art saint whose radiant [...]

MY FARAWAY ONE Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume I, 1915-1933 Edited by Sarah Greenough Illustrated. 814 pp. Yale University Press. $39.95. Georgia O'Keeffe never seemed to [...]

Your new documentary, ''Reagan,'' which makes its premiere on HBO on Feb. 7 in honor of the president's 100th birthday, includes some wonderful footage of Reagan as a small-town lifeguard, [...]

CORRECTION APPENDED ALICE NEEL The Art of Not Sitting Pretty By Phoebe Hoban Illustrated. 500 pp. St. Martin's Press. $35 Alice Neel has never commanded the household-name status of Georgia [...]

GRANT WOOD A Life By R. Tripp Evans Illustrated. 402 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $37.50 ''American Gothic'' has been described as the most reproduced painting in this country, which is [...]

As the co-chairwoman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose $33 billion endowment makes it the largest private foundation in the world, you've focused your efforts on the health [...]

Although you just signed with the Boston Celtics, your most daunting competition this month comes from Rachael Ray, whom you're facing in a cook-off on your reality television show ''Shaq [...]

The Israeli security cabinet just voted to ease the three-year blockade on Gaza, in the wake of the tragic naval attack on the Mavi Marmara by Israeli commandos. What does [...]

LEO AND HIS CIRCLE The Life of Leo Castelli By Annie Cohen-Solal Translated by Mark Polizzotti with the author Illustrated. 540 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $35. Most art dealers, by [...]

As a British-American critic, essayist and all-purpose iconoclast, you are known as one of the defining voices of the new atheism. But your just-published memoir, ''Hitch-22,'' is in fact an [...]

After years of sitting in a room in Southern California writing a blog for Slate magazine, you're planning to challenge Senator Barbara Boxer in the Democratic primary in California in [...]

As an Anglican archbishop who spent decades working to defeat apartheid and is widely considered the moral conscience of South Africa, what do you make of your country's current president, [...]

What was it like to spend nine years trying to persuade the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernard Madoff was a fraud, only to learn that the agency thought he [...]

Your once-quiet life as a congressman from Wisconsin was forever altered at the House Republican retreat in Baltimore last month, when President Obama singled you out as a ''pretty sincere [...]

You're a Harvard professor and a scholar of African-American literature; what led you to undertake your new PBS series, ''Faces of America,'' in which you research the ancestry and genetic [...]

As a novelist and social critic who lives in Vancouver and whose guidebook, ''City of Glass,'' chronicles such local concerns as Highway 99, cruise ships, drug addiction and homelessness, were [...]

As you make the rounds of television talk shows to promote your new book, 'Freefall: America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy,' many of us are wondering [...]

Your new book, ''I Am an Emotional Creature,'' is a collection of 30-plus fictional monologues in which you assume the confiding, often plaintive, voices of teenage girls -- from a [...]

Your latest book, 'The Professor,' comes out on Tuesday, and I'm not sure which is more surprising: the candid disclosures about your love life or the sparkling and witty prose, [...]

In your new film, ''Youth in Revolt,'' you play the sort of charmingly reticent and tongue-tied character we know from your roles in ''Juno,'' ''Superbad'' and the television series ''Arrested [...]

Your new book, ''Crisis and Command,'' is an eloquent, fact-laden history of audacious power grabs by American presidents going back to George Washington. Which president would you say most violated [...]

Your new memoir, ''A Simple Christmas,'' avoids the subject of presidential races and your decade as governor of Arkansas in favor of earlier trials, like your fervent campaign as an [...]

PAINTING BELOW ZERO Notes on a Life in Art By James Rosenquist with David Dalton Illustrated. 370 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $50 POP The Genius of Andy Warhol By Tony [...]

You're an eminent philosopher at the University of Chicago. What can you tell us about the state of ideas in America? There's just something about our public culture that's not [...]