Always direct, stark, simple, reductivist, economical and refined, yet wildly raw and natural and usually funny, the videos of Barbara Rosenthal are personal and universal at the same time.

"Chavisa Woods' Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country is part Flannery O'Connor, part Kelly Link: darkly funny and brilliantly human, urgently fantastical and implacably realistic."

What does it mean to be normal? And is normalcy a guarantee of happiness? This is a thematic question that has animated countless films, plays, and novels--be it a high school comedy or historical epic, the desire to fit in is an animating force throughout one's life just as it is in film,

I love my city

And I love my people

The first thing I did after seeing Kerry James Marshall’s monumental paintings at the Met Breuer last week is to go home and read. I’ve been reading everyday since. I could give a lot of reasons for reading: I could list what I’ve been reading and that may help me to answer the reasons.

Nobody likes to talk about it, but the history of modern art is inextricably tied to the history of modern wealth and money.

Ms. Smith’s evocative pictures summon up dreamlike states to tease out complex emotions and ideas deeply embedded in the places and consciousness of her subjects.

Swing Time, the fifth novel from Zadie Smith, is a novel about little girls and the women they become; it’s about racial and class divides, but more importantly, friendship. Smith tackles big, complicated themes in this work

Year after year tinsel town can be counted upon to roll out an entire army of films featuring grizzled, muscular men, predictably going about doing what grizzled, muscular men do best—namely kicking ass and taking names all while stoically continuing to be grizzled, muscular men.

Like that other Bible, the Holy one, if you suspend your disbelief (in the banality of modern art) you can open this book to any page and find inspiration. As for being ‘Outlaw,’ now that our elites are illiterate, how long before ‘outlaw book’ is a redundancy?

In order to gain a sense of order and existential clarity, people often look for comfort and certainty by putting themselves in exotic or geographical distances. Traveling, for example, is one of those activities that cultivates and educates, and it seems that everyone wants to do it. 

I was working the polls on election day, handing people ballots and explaining how to fill them out properly. I made it my mission to come up with interesting uses for the removable tabs and entertain people for the 30 seconds that I had their captive attention.

It seems that the real story of the modern and contemporary culture (arts and letters) in Iran starts somewhere in the second decade of the 20th century, more precisely in 1925 when Reza Khan took over the royal throne from the ancient Ahmad Shah of the Qadjar dynasty.

A five-person play starring Robert Galinsky

Directed by Mia Cohen

Tuesday February 14th, 7:30pm,

Dixon Place

ome of the funniest moments in Jade Chang’s first novel, The Wangs vs. the World, are the offhand ones, such as when the Chinese-American family named in the title realizes they don’t know the name of the woman who raised most of them.

Eileen Myles’s 2016 collection of new and selected poems, I Must Be Living Twice is an

absolute must-read—and no, it’s not just for fans of her work, but for poetry lovers everywhere.

Historical montages, genre paintings, hidden symbols, landscape themes, religious undertones, racial subjects, murals, glitter, comic books, mixed media and a plethora of the black figures, merely touches upon what encompasses the Kerry James Marshall: Mastry Exhibition at the Met Breuer.

On a Tuesday afternoon, James Fuentes revels in an empty office. “It is what I’m used to,” the art dealer says, before catching himself. “Of course, I like it when everyone is here, too.”

Kevin Jack McEnroe’s 2015 novel, Our Town, is an impressive debut; it is beautifully written and heartfelt. It is also a page-turner, but not at all a potboiler. There is tremendous substance and heart underneath the beautiful prose

The painting by Missouri student David Pulphus, 18, was hung there after he won a local art competition in Clay’s district. Nobody objected to it until earlier this month, when police organizations began raising objections to the painting’s depiction of an officer as a pig.