“He is one of a few of genius who did not sell out and who peaks in (relative) old age. That’s quite something nowadays.” — Gerard Bellaart +++ “Fame is the first disgrace because God knows who you are.” — Heathcote Williams, “The Local Stigmatic” +++ The videos comprise Parts 1 and 2 of a […]
‘The Lord of the Drones and the White House Fly’
My staff of thousands reminds me there’s an election coming up in the U.S. of A. For all the voters going to the polls, here’s a poem to cheer them on by the British poet Heathcote Williams. Part two … enter the realm of litrichur, narrated and montaged by Alan Cox. And here’s part three, […]
Viral Reading
More than two million YouTube viewers have watched this woman read a book. Imagine that.Update: Dec. 30, 2015 — That number is now 18.86 million. Yes, you read that right. Further Update: Oct. 2, 2024 — Viewers now number 30 million. The woman is Stoya, and she’s a porn star. The book is Necrophilia Variations, […]
Into the Toilet: NYT Has Fun on the Front Page
Was an online editor for the New York Times being cute? Have a look at the photo of a woman sticking her head in the toilet. It sat like an illustration from The Onion next to the headline “Putin Says Clinton Incited Protests Over Russian Vote.” Here it is on the digital front page of […]
L’artiste Lui-même
Norman Ogue Mustill in his desert lair. [Self-Portrait With Collage] In 2007, at my request, he took a photo of himself with several of his collages from the mid-’60s. This is one of them. Blogs are personal (in case you hadn’t noticed). EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
Boris Lurie, R.I.P.
!['Pinup with Flower' by Boris Lurie [1959]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1959_flower1-200x200.jpg)
The epigraph on “NO!art MAN,” a major 2001 documentary about Boris Lurie, who died earlier this month, says it all: “In a time of wars and extermination, aesthetic exercises and decorative patterns are not enough.” Those are Lurie’s words, and now they might as well serve as his epitaph. obit by Colin Moynihan in The […]
Mad Magazine + Tom Hayden = SDS
“Students for a Democratic Society, A Graphic History,” a new book due out in January from Hill and Wang. “My own radical journey began with Harvey Pekar and comics and politics at The Graduate Center, CUNY, on Monday — Dec. 10 — which also marks International Amnesty International Global Write-a-Thon. Pekar is best known for […]
John Bryan, RIP
They left 12 roses on his doorstep along with half of their kidnap victim’s California driver’s license. He was grateful for the roses. “They could have been 12 bullets,” he said. The kidnappers were the Symbionese Liberation Army. The license belonged to Patty Hearst. The year was 1974. The roses were both a warning and […]
MOCKING THE VICTIMS
Slate “Orphaned,” about children victimized by Hurricane Katrina. On the right is the opposite page, the first of four luxurious pages advertising Eileen Fisher “Alive in the World” clothing that were sandwiched inside DeParle’s piece. “New Orleans was always a place of unsettling juxtapositions,” DeParle writes. So, apparently, is the print edition of the magazine. […]
HERE’S A STRETCH
Almost forgot about Holland Cotter reports in this morning’s New York Times, there will be a boatload of special events, like Holly Crawford, who organized the event. I don’t know her, never met her. But she invited me, gawd help her. I’ll letcha know what happens. Postscript: From Los Angeles … EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
MASTER OF THE COSMODEMONIC
Somehow in all the reports I’ve seen about Western Union’s last telegram (sent on Jan. 27) and the end of an era, there was the usual chronicle of Samuel Morse and the invention of the telegraph, and Henry Miller. “The Tropic of Capricorn.” Describing his experience as employment manager for New York’s messenger department, he […]
ANTHEM FOR AMERICA
Wrapping up the week’s nervous breakdown, we bring you TwinPak. With Tom Delay coming to a head as Libby face possible indictment, a Harriet Miers debacle and her Congressional protection for the gun industry now achieved by the NRA, FEMA’s negligence and incompetence “some background noise here,” we think of Mustill’s score as a fitting […]
MILTON GLASER ♥ DISSENT
!['The Design of Dissent: Socially and Politically Driven Graphics' [2005]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/The-Design-of-Dissent-160.jpg)
To keep Independence Day from becoming a more empty patriotic ritual than usual, let’s celebrate the hearty dissenter Milton Glaser, designer of many famous logos and symbols such as interviewed on PBS’s “NOW” about the “Design of Dissent Exhibit” at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and his and Mirko Ilic’s new book, […]
WILL THE REVOLUTION BE CYBERIZED?
No pushover, book critic Jonathan Yardley takes the measure of Hunter S. Thompson this way: “Anything he writes is worth reading, even when it radiates serious signs of having been composed under the influence of something rather more hallucinating than office coffee.” The occasion is Yardley’s review in yesterday’s Washington Post of Thompson’s latest book, […]
SHOOTER
The rumor that American Media’s tabloid queen, Bonnie Fuller, shelled out $100,000 for a wedding photo of Britney Spears and ex-groom, reminds me to get cracking on the tabloid thriller I’ve been dawdling over. It’s called “Shooter,” and here’s how it begins: “Laszlo was a fabulist who put great store in truth-telling because the truth, […]
Books ‘n’ Stuff
My biography of the Hollywood director William Wyler, A Talent for Trouble, is available as an ebook at Amazon and an ebook on iTunes at the Apple store. Putnam published it in hardcover, and Da Capo Press published it in paperback. Several other books, include a collection of theater criticism, Second Nights (Vol.1) and (Vol. […]
My Checkered Career
I’ve been a staff writer covering arts and culture at the Los Angeles Times, a reporter and movie reviewer at The Daily News in New York, a reporter and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, a senior editor/producer and the theater critic for MSNBC.com, and a fellow in the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. […]