Essays and Reviews Nicholas Zurko Essays and Reviews Nicholas Zurko

Jay-Z Embraces the Feminine--and So Much More--on Astounding 4:44

It’s a foolhardy attempt to try and nail down any lyrics-driven album in a single set of bars, especially one authored by a rapper of Jay-Z’s legendary, layered dexterity. But early on in the confessional “4:44,” the rapper born Shawn Carter states: “I apologize, often womanize/Took for my child to be born to see through a woman’s eyes/Took me these natural twins to believe in miracles/Took me too long for this song/I don’t deserve you.” The dual facts that a truly soul-searching statement from such a titan of rap has been long forthcoming and that he now better understands both his feminine side and the myths of masculinity are two of the multiple animating elements at work on the rapper’s shockingly good thirteenth studio album, 4:44.

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Whitney Biennial Review

Biennials are a strange thing by their nature. Meant to represent the cream of the artistic crop, these biannual events offer an implicit promise for both artistic excellence (however one chooses to define that these days) and sharp social commentary. In this way the art displayed at a biennial serves a dual purpose: to assure highbrow connoisseurs that quality fine art is still being produced, and at the same time to reflect the zeitgeist. This zeitgeist does not belong to the rarified air of the New York art world, however, or the downtown scenesters sipping wine out of plastic cups in the antiseptic spaces of Chelsea art galleries. The zeitgeist is messy. It consists of violent video games, mass shootings, mind-boggling inequality, opiate addiction, racial tension, social media, and a consumer economy based on cheap labor, disposable products, and omnipresent advertising. In other words, it is about as far from 19th century French impressionism as one could possibly get.

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Essays and Reviews, Art & Dance Katherine R. Sloan Essays and Reviews, Art & Dance Katherine R. Sloan

At the Met: Irving Penn and Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons

Currently on view are exhibits featuring the work of Irving Penn and Rei Kawakubo for fashion house, Comme des Garçons. I went to view both spectacles in the same day and saw Irving Penn’s photographs first. This retrospective of Penn’s work is the largest to date and celebrates the centennial of the artist’s birth.

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Essays and Reviews Matthew Cole, Richard Esposito, Sam Biddle, Ryan Grim Essays and Reviews Matthew Cole, Richard Esposito, Sam Biddle, Ryan Grim

TOP-SECRET NSA REPORT DETAILS RUSSIAN HACKING EFFORT DAYS BEFORE 2016 ELECTION (The Intercept)

RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.

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