October 22, 2018 Issue

The best writing in this week’s issue is in “Goings On About Town: Art.” Two notes, in particular, stand out: Peter Schjeldahl on the Met’s Delacroix retrospective and Johanna Fateman on the Trish Baga exhibition at Greene Naftali. Schjeldahl’s piece, based on his longer “Performance” (The New Yorker, October 1, 2018), contains this brilliant passage:

A frontal, tumultuous scrum of two big cats, three horses, and five Arabian hunters threatens to burst from the canvas. Claws, hooves, teeth, and scimitars contend. Primary colors blaze. Black resounds. It’s a dazzling picture, but Delacroix’s open competition with Rubens, who was denied a riposte by virtue of being two centuries deceased, gives it the air of an elephantine bagatelle.

Fateman’s capsule review is worth quoting in full:

A motley assortment of enchanting ceramic sculptures fills the first room of Baga’s installation “Mollusca and the Pelvic Floor.” A half-dozen glazed poodle heads accompany melting guitars, volcanic islands, and fossil-like abstractions; two busts—a self-portrait and a deft rendering of RuPaul—house virtual-assistant devices. In a darkened interior room, a video spills off the wall onto clusters of rocks, cardboard file boxes, a bottle of salad dressing, and an oscillating fan. We glean, from the fragmented narrative, that Amazon’s Alexa has been rechristened Mollusca. Baga takes viewers on a strange philosophical journey—an extended hallucination in a messy bedroom—to elucidate her curious relationship with her nonhuman helper.

That “In a darkened interior room, a video spills off the wall onto clusters of rocks, cardboard file boxes, a bottle of salad dressing, and an oscillating fan” is marvelous! The whole passage is inspired.