Editor's Message
We’ve only Just Begun…
I would say that I’m ready to lay down my sword and shield, except that I own neither. I also could serve up a cliché about pens and swords, but it seems totally irrelevant. There has been plenty of dissent in the press and elsewhere regarding the pending war in Iraq, but in the end it doesn’t matter. The president is ready to take on Saddam, Congress is quite willing to back him up, and the only real question is whether General Tommy Franks will be an able occupation ruler of Iraq.
And so, reluctantly, I must refrain from saying that “I ain’t gonna study war no more.” That’s because we are being given very little choice other than to do so. Last fall, Donald Rumsfeld promised a forty-year war on terrorism, and by my count, that means we’ve got 39 more years to go. That the richest, most powerful nation in human history can devise no better means for ruling the world other than through military aggression seems rather primitive. But perhaps I’m the one who’s being naïve.
The good news is that very few pages in this issue actually pertain to Iraq. In fact, this issue is dedicated to the proposition that there is more to life than war. Peace.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Renée Cox: Returned
By Jan AvgikosOCT 2019 | ArtSeen
Sometimes it takes years to fully appreciate the importance of a work of art, to evaluate what impact it might induce, and to see it in the context of a legacy that has yet to be realized. So it is with Renée Cox’s monumental black and white photo diptych, Origin, created in 1993. Initially only the left half, a towering nude full-length self-portrait entitled Yo Mama, was exhibited.
Barthélemy Toguo: Urban Requiem
By Ann C. CollinsMAY 2019 | ArtSeen
It started with a passport. For artist Barthélemy Toguo, movement through the world was tethered to the small book he was required to carry when he traveled, within which his progress could be tracked at every border he tried to cross.
Zombie Vérité: Olivier Meyrou’s Celebration
By Micah GottliebSEPT 2019 | Film
In 1998, French documentarian Olivier Meyrou was hired by Saint Laurent’s business partner and former lover Pierre Bergé to document YSL’s final haute couture collection before he retired and sold the company to the Gucci Group. Meyrou documented the house of YSL until 2001, following its legendary namesake in and out of 5 avenue Marceau with unprecedented access.
Stéphane Mallarmé's The Book and Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le Hasard
By Mary Ann CawsFEB 2019 | Art Books
To take just the 72 pages of Stéphane Mallarmé’s Le Livre (originally posthumously published in French in 1957), at once fragmentary and yet feeling so completely itself, every time we encounter it, it seems a more astonishing piece of work.
