[for The Telegraph, 8/12/23]
You sense that Stagg wants to be pithy more often, but refuses to trust the instinct. In an age where shrill essayists swarm the internet, writing as monotonously as they can, she prefers to inhabit grey areas.
the year in fiction (2023)
[for The Telegraph, 23/11/23]
Those who think fiction today is crushed under ideology were proven wrong in 2023. Instead, politics came in sidelong, with more cunning than belligerence.
what is internet art actually doing?
[for the LARB, 11/11/23]
The most gorgeous internet art offers us pictures of time preserved, whether peachy or strange or sad.
on jon fosse
[for The Telegraph, 12/10/23]
Fiction critics too often use “dreamlike”: it’s almost never accurate. But for Fosse’s writing, it is – both because dreams have a compulsive logic, and because they rework, in thin disguise, the many dreams we’ve had before.
pilvi takala, 'on discomfort'
[for Artforum, 8/5/23]
Pilvi Takala seeks honesty in Marc Augé’s non-lieux: those purposive spaces we visit but in which we never dwell.
bret easton ellis, 'the shards'
[for 4Columns, 13/1/23]
I’ve always associated Ellis with a yearning for tenderness, however occluded it may seem. Even the brutalised voids of Less than Zero are holes where emotions should be.
on luigi pericle
[for Artforum, 3/1/23]
He owned a Reichian “orgone energy accumulator” and, just as uselessly, a Cold War bug-detecting kit. Much was made in this show of his interests – a hinterland where curiosity and paranoia met.
derek jarman in paradise
[for Astra, 7/11/22]
The true paradises, Proust wrote, are the ones that we have lost. Eden was never a hope: it was the first departure point.
neon desires
[for the Spectator, 30/9/22]
Neon lends itself, like the Church, to kitsch.
why art criticism?
[for 4Columns, 10/6/22]
You don’t have to be bullied by writing like this, by its belief that its specialization makes it special somehow. Style, among other things, is a matter of mutual respect.
embarrassing fashion (on galliano)
[for Astra, 12/4/22]
And suddenly, even with two years to prepare for the question, Galliano is lost, exposed.
miko veldkamp, 'ghost stories'
[for Artforum, 1/4/22]
The picture planes go dancing between zones of space and time, both windows upon their scenes and surfaces free of illusory depth.
the deplorable 'fuccboi'
[for The Nation, 16/3/22]
Fuccboi may represent the last fumes of alt-lit – its clubbish stylistic tics, its hatred of “mainstream” writing, its contempt for the novel as a form. Fiction is a medium, not an intercom.
on sophie calle's immoral ways
[for art-agenda, 19/11/21]
How do you defend someone like this?
al freeman, 'paintings'
[for Artforum, 15/9/21]
Vibrantly coloured, poppy and rotund, few artworks have ever so begged for a squeeze.
on faces in paint
[for Frieze, 22/9/21]
As for fame, so for intimacy. Everyone is someone’s invention; that’s one precondition of love.
helen frankenthaler, 'radical beauty'
[for the Telegraph, 15/9/21]
Posterity loves an innovator, especially one it can defend.
eileen agar, 'angel of anarchy'
[for the Telegraph, 16/5/21]
Agar flowered in the Weimar era, and yet you’ll find her in Thatcher’s Britain, modelling for Issey Miyake.
sam mckinniss, 'country western'
[for Frieze, 10/5/21]
This show is about our desire to feel love and feel nothing at once; our belief that a person can be all artificial and all natural; our wish to find new objects of devotion; and our knowledge that they will disappoint us, as we would disappoint them, too.
lauren oyler, 'fake accounts'
[for the Telegraph, 13/2/21]
Lauren Oyler is suspicious of sincerity.