Editor's Message
We've only Just Begun…
I would say that I'm ready to lay down my sword and shield, except that I own neither. I also could serve up a cliché about pens and swords, but it seems totally irrelevant. There has been plenty of dissent in the press and elsewhere regarding the pending war in Iraq, but in the end it doesn't matter. The president is ready to take on Saddam, Congress is quite willing to back him up, and the only real question is whether General Tommy Franks will be an able occupation ruler of Iraq.
And so, reluctantly, I must refrain from saying that "I ain't gonna study war no more." That's because we are being given very little choice other than to do so. Last fall, Donald Rumsfeld promised a forty-year war on terrorism, and by my count, that means we've got 39 more years to go. That the richest, most powerful nation in human history can devise no better means for ruling the world other than through military aggression seems rather primitive. But perhaps I'm the one who's being naïve.
The good news is that very few pages in this issue actually pertain to Iraq. In fact, this issue is dedicated to the proposition that there is more to life than war. Peace.
Clotilde Jiménez: The Contest
By Simon Wu
SEPT 2020 | ArtSeen
The musculature of Jiménez's figures is exaggerated but also flattened, and their genders are ambiguous. Most of them are closely-cropped figure studies, but a portion of them appear to be drawn from memory-scenes or TV broadcasts.
INCONVERSATION
John Elderfield and Terry Winters on Cézanne's Rock and Quarry Paintings
JUNE 2020 | Art
A conversation between art historian John Elderfield and painter Terry Winters on the occasion of Cézanne: The Rock and Quarry Paintings at the Princeton University Art Museum.
Hélio Oiticica: Dance in My Experience
By Bruna Shapira
New Yorkers who had an opportunity to see the exhibition Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium at the Whitney Museum in 2017 may have tried on his "Parangolés"—multilayered garments and capes made of fabric, plastic, or paper often bearing political slogans.
Renée Cox: Returned
By Jan Avgikos
OCT 2019 | ArtSeen
Sometimes it takes years to fully appreciate the importance of a work of art, to evaluate what impact it might induce, and to see it in the context of a legacy that has yet to be realized. So it is with Renée Cox's monumental black and white photo diptych, Origin, created in 1993. Initially only the left half, a towering nude full-length self-portrait entitled Yo Mama, was exhibited.