March 8, 2010 Issue

This is a pretty rich issue. I read it through and then took it to Cuba with me, thinking I'd reread a couple of the articles, this time more slowly in order to absorb the nuances. As it turned out, Judith Thurman's piece "Walking Through Walls" is the only one I looked at, and I made it only about one-third of the way into its sunscreen-stained pages. It's not one of her best, anyway. There aren't any what I'd called inspired sentences, not like in (say) her great "The Absolutist," in which she describes a Balenciaga gown as having one seam, "like the axis of an elm leaf." "Walking Through Walls" is a profile of the performance artist Marina Abramovic. Thurman does a good job describing some of Abramovic's major performances, but the self-infliction of pain at the core of practically every piece is off-putting to say the least. So the problem I had with Thurman's article was really my problem. "Walking Through Walls" contains one memorable detail: the black Citroen van, "which figured in their performance of ideal couplehood." Thurman says the car "miraculously survived the beatings it took, and is part of the MOMA retrospective." If I lived in New York, I'd definitely go see it.