Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Goldfield, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

December 18 & 25, 2017 Issue


Every now and then, there’s a note in “Goings On About Town” that strikes me as just about perfect. Example: “Art: Andy Hope 1930,” in this week’s issue, which reads as follows:

In what used to be Eva Hesse’s attic studio, and is now a gallery named after the Robert Moses highway project that would have destroyed the neighborhood in which it is located, four silicone brains sit in fish tanks on the floor. They’re thinking about Hegel’s “Phenomenology of the Spirit,” a section of which is busily typing itself on a nearby MacBook. They’re thinking about the shape that dominates the lacquer, oil, and acrylic paintings of Hope 1930, a German artist, who was born Andreas Hofer. (The shape is reminiscent of a male torso, but is actually the silhouette of a rolling garbage can.) They’re also thinking about the flat hierarchy of images in the Internet age, in which “Star Trek” and Francis Picabia—both sources here—have an interchangeable cultural value.

I’d love to know who wrote that. The brilliant combination of so many diverse elements – “Eva Hesse’s attic studio,” “Robert Moses highway project,” “four silicone brains,” “fish tanks on the floor,” “Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of the Spirit,’ ” “nearby MacBook,” “lacquer, oil, and acrylic paintings of Hope 1930,” “male torso,” “silhouette of a rolling garbage can,” “Internet age,” “ ‘Star Trek,’ ” “Francis Picabia” – into a coherent, shapely capsule review smacks of genius.

No comments:

Post a Comment