Headlines

Simple and obvious… or nuanced and complicated?

Some choices seem obvious, while others demand care and insight. And some offerings are simple, while others have depth and multiple variables. As you’ve probably guessed, the choices that are simple and obvious tend to do best in the mass market. Where did you get your cup of

Aldo Leopold on How to Hear the Song of Life

The point, of course, is to see the whole — what Virginia Woolf called “the thing itself.” Not just to uncover the fragments and discover how each works but to understand their harmonic unity — the sum that, as the forgotten genius Willard Gibbs knew, “is simpler than its

Sweats & Swots

“Ugh, this kid is so sweaty!” my son exclaimed as he came under attack in some game he was playing. This was a few years ago; my ears perked up and I asked him what he meant. He explained that “sweaty” was a derogatory term for gamers who were trying super hard to win. Such

Surrealism Against Fascism

"A century ago, artists who survived the trenches captured humanity’s capacity for destruction. What can they teach us about confronting the far-right in a new age of genocide?"

An Online Collection of Found Cassette Tapes

Intertapes is a collection of found cassette tapes — some contain music and others voice memos. Each entry includes images of the tape, a description/track listing, and the actual audio (on Soundcloud). This one was recorded off of a NYC radio station in 1994 and includes

Janet Sobel, a Forgotten Pioneer of Abstract Art

The painting above was made in 1945 by self-taught artist Janet Sobel; it’s called Milky Way . Sobel was a Ukrainian-born artist who was a pioneer in abstract expressionist art and in drip painting; her work directly influenced that of Jackson Pollock. From Why This Pioneering