What Are They Reading? What Are They Reading?
"People try to be so fussy and particular when they look at politics," observes Zillah, a character in Tony Kushner's 1987 play, A Bright Room Called Day, "but what I think an un...
Dec 22, 2003 / Books & the Arts / William Johnson
Rebel Without a Cause Rebel Without a Cause
By the time that Jeanne Moreau cut the cake for his twenty-fifth birthday on the set of Elevator to the Gallows, Louis Malle had already been joint winner of an Oscar for his wor...
Dec 18, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Richard Vinen
Go East, Young Man! Go East, Young Man!
In one of his sunnier moods, Jean-Luc Godard might have tacked onto The Last Samurai the subtitle une étrange aventure de Tom Cruise.
Dec 11, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Scully’s Way Scully’s Way
Generations of Yale students share stories about special moments in Vincent Scully's courses on art and architecture.
Dec 11, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Bender
The Abstract Impressionist The Abstract Impressionist
I have always marveled at the way in which Abstract Expressionism was able to transform a disparate group of painters, none of whom had shown any particular promise of artistic g...
Dec 11, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto
Second Comings Second Comings
To the fleet of symbolic vehicles currently cruising the screen--their number includes the "Pussy Wagon" that Uma Thurman (in Kill Bill) coldly claims as her own--we may now add ...
Nov 26, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
The Century of the ‘Son of a Bitch’ The Century of the ‘Son of a Bitch’
Errol Morris: After you left the Johnson Administration, why didn't you speak out against the Vietnam War?
Nov 26, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Eric Alterman
Ears Wide Open Ears Wide Open
It's a cliché to say that an artist draws his power from his contradictions, but the lives of the great composers provide easy grist for the mill.
Nov 20, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Russell Platt
Art Therapy Art Therapy
While filming in Western Australia in May 1999, the critic Robert Hughes survived--barely--a head-on collision with another car.
Nov 20, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto
A Documentary Coup A Documentary Coup
The lights go down in the courtroom, a 16-millimeter projector shoots out its beam, and into the trial blazes evidence of an unprecedented nature: not a report of criminal even...
Nov 6, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans