[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.
All in essays
embarrassing fashion (on galliano)
[for Astra, 12/4/22]
And suddenly, even with two years to prepare for the question, Galliano is lost, exposed.
the end of beckett studies
[for the TLS, 10/2/21]
To the extent that Beckett’s work is “about” anything, it’s about knowing what not to say. It deserves a critical style that’s self-critical, because certainties are of zero interest; what person lives in certainty about the way they feel?
racine, or gossip girl (a mention)
[for The Drift, 3/2/21]
It’s gossip as pathology.
maggie must fall!
[for the Telegraph, 2/12/20]
Margaret Thatcher was an egotist. So said Charles Moore, her biographer, who had long suspected she was keen to be written about. Where sculpture was concerned, she proved him right.
art boys in slick suits
[for Burlington Contemporary, 30/7/20]
Age of the Image is a classy series, as classy as its leading man – and if it cannot be charming, it would rather say nothing at all.
talking with barbara london
[for the Telegraph, 30/1/20]
“Unfortunately, I think we have to wade through a lot of mediocrity. It depends who gets their hands on those tools: are they engineers, are they artists, are they hybrids?”
the deplorable banksy
[for the Telegraph, 6/10/19]
This isn’t anti-establishment at all. Banksy’s art is coercive, and its politics are trash, because its modus operandi is to make you ignore the complexities of things.
lana, norman, & the american dream
[for the Telegraph, 30/8/19]
Norman Rockwell’s dreams belonged to everyone – in wartime that was necessary, and in peacetime it was lucrative – but Lana Del Rey holds something back; an elusive quality that never quite allows your trust.
norman mailer on the moon
[for the Telegraph, 17/7/19]
What if you found the Moon landings dull?
samuel beckett & the gucci bag
[for Frieze, 20/3/19]
When Trinity College Dublin awarded Beckett an honorary degree, he groused to a friend that he had ‘no clothes but an old brown suit’. But unfashionability is itself a pose.
on eric griffiths
[for Frieze, 5/2/19]
He was never wrong, only cruel.
andy warhol at the super bowl
[for the Telegraph, 4/2/19]
To his detractors, Warhol has always been vacuous in some specially irritating way… To me, he seems dangerously honest.
on not going to DAU, and being glad
[for the Telegraph, 25/1/19]
DAU didn’t open that evening, and it’s now been postponed again. I don’t know if it needs to open at all. Khrzhanovsky’s dream is an old one, and we’ve seen it happen before.
the controversial enigma of edgar degas's little dancer
[for the Telegraph, 2/12/18]
As Camille Laurens says, ‘The sculpture provides no answer. Degas provides no answer.’ But not answering, in its way, is an answer too; it’s a refusal to simplify.
bored to death: at a séance with martin eder
[for the Telegraph, 5/10/18]
“It is not like you see in Hollywood,” Eder said, walking around a central table on which he’d placed a glass jar, four black cones, and an antique book.
alone together: on cécile b. evans, emotions, & video art
[for Frieze, 21/9/18]
Life online is like this: unpredictable, inconsistent, full of communicative gaps.
the UFOs we want
[for the LRB Blog, 12/7/18]
UFOs haven’t changed much since the 1960s, defying physics and outrunning fighter jets.
the zany grid: an essay on 'lego island'
[for heterotopias, 4/5/18]
For a child, the anarchy of ‘Lego Island’ has few downsides, because its whole world is just a playground, and what could be better than that?
couture naturelle
[for AnOther, 23/4/18]
People will always be drawn to the superficial, however ‘problematic’ they’re told it’s become; fashion is only a consequence of caring what others think.