1. Great cover! R. Kikuo Johnson’s “Double-Parked,” showing two bicycles, one blue, one orange, locked to a no-parking sign, is my pick for best cover of the year so far.
2. Calvin Tomkins’s “Becoming Modern,” a profile of painter Salman Toor, provides fascinating background on the evolution of Toor’s “virtuoso personal style.” I’ve been a fan of Toor ever since I saw his wonderful “Sleeping Boy”: see my “Salman Toor’s Sensual Apprehension of Life” (May 8, 2021). Tomkins’s description of that painting is excellent: “In 'Sleeping Boy,' a young man who resembles Toor lies on white sheets so lusciously painted that they look edible, his face and his naked body illuminated by light from an open laptop.”
3. John Seabrook’s “On Alert,” an absorbing report on acoustic car styling, contains several excellent sound descriptions, including this beauty: “Many prospective buyers’ first experience of a car or a truck is the CLICK ker-CHUNK that the driver’s-side door makes when they close it, followed by a faint harmonic shiver given off by the vehicle’s metal skin.”
4. Speaking of inspired sentences, here’s one from Richard Brody’s capsule review of the 1928 silent film Show People: “Winking cameos abound: Davies takes a second role, as herself; Vidor plays himself, too; Charlie Chaplin, slight and exquisite, brings a Shakespearean grace to his self-portrayal as a humble moviegoer; and a long tracking shot of stars at a studio banquet table plays like a cinematic death row, displaying such luminaries as Renée Adorée, William S. Hart, and Mae Murray, just before they were swept away in waves of sound.”
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