Help us raise $200,000 to keep the Rail independent, relevant, and free!
REPORT CARD
Our Fake School Board
By Liza Featherstone
The meetings of the Panel for Educational Policy may look like democracy in action, but nothing the public says can influence how the mayor’s appointees vote.
Express In Conversation
WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE “NEW INDIA”: SIDDHARTHA DEB with Scott Sherman
Finely written, carefully reported, and imaginatively conceived, Siddhartha Deb’s The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India (Faber and Faber, Inc.) is one of the outstanding nonfiction books of 2011.
Art In Conversation
GILLIAN JAGGER with Ben La Rocco
On the occasion of her installation of Reveal at John Davis Gallery (September 15 – October 9), the Brooklyn Rail’s Ben La Rocco visited sculptor Gillian Jagger at her horse farm and studio in Kerhonkson, NY to discuss her life and work.
Art In Conversation
CARRIE MOYER with Phong Bui
While busily preparing for her new exhibit Canonical at CANADA gallery (September 14 – October 16, 2011) the painter Carrie Moyer took time to stop by the Rail’s headquarters and talk with publisher Phong Bui about her life and work.
Art In Conversation
SARAH LUCAS with William Corwin
After a pub lunch of lamb kidney and sweetbread salad and with the cool breezes wafting in off the coastal Suffolk marshes, William Corwin sat down with Sarah Lucas on the back terrace of Snape Maltings to discuss her first ever public sculpture “Perceval” and her current project/exhibition with Gelatin at the Kunsthalle Krems.
IN CASE SOMETHING DIFFERENT HAPPENS IN THE FUTURE: Joseph Beuys and 9/11
By David Levi StraussBeuys was fascinated by the Twin Towers. He must have seen them to great effect when he flew into John F. Kennedy Airport on January 19. In the terms of his theory of sculpture, the Twin Towers were classic crystalline forms: rigid, dry, and cold, like the basalt columns of 7000 Oaks.
Books In Conversation
LYNNE TILLMAN with Caroline Ball
Lynne Tillman is a rare hybrid of fiction writer, essayist, art critic, and teacher. She is the author of five novels, one of which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as three collections of short stories, a collection of essays, and two other nonfiction works. Here she discusses experimentation, structure and her constant battle with language with Caroline Ball.
ACTIVISTS & ALIENS: Films of Unrest at the 2011 Festival del Film Locarno
By Leo GoldsmithSurrounded by mountains and cozily situated in a picturesque northern cove at the Swiss end of Lake Maggiore, the small Italianate resort-town of Locarno would seem like the ideal haven from urban unrest, protests against various forms of injustice, and similar pressing social and political issues.
Connie Congdon needs to have her mouth washed out with soap
By Julia BrownellWhen I was a sophomore at Amherst College considering being an Economics major, I worked on a production of Lanford Wilson’s Sympathetic Magic. One of the actors in the cast, Kim Rosenstock, told me I should take a class with Connie Congdon, “because she’s awesome.” So I did, and my life changed.
Mappa Mundi: The Structure of Western Thought
By Douglas GloverIn the third book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible, Moses is herding his father-in-law’s sheep on a hillside when the Lord erupts in sheet of flame from a nearby bush. The author presents the scene as a scientific impossibility: the bush burns furiously without actually burning up.
Editor's Message
A New Anniversary
By Theodore HammAs fall comes, and the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 goes, it’s worth considering what’s changed in the past decade.
ArtSeen
-
How to Proceed in the Arts (after O’Hara and Rivers, with love)
– By Ben La Rocco and Craig Olson -
CHARLES ATLAS Joints Array
– By Patricia Milder -
AI WEIWEI New York Photographs 1983 – 1993
– By John Yau -
RAILING OPINION:
– By Lisa Corinne Davis
GODDESSES, OVARIES, AND THE SEDUCTRESS: Bring It On Home To Me -
Tale of The Tables
– By Denise Lassaw -
TRACEY EMIN
– By Vincent Katz
Love Is What You Want -
BROOKLYN DISPATCHES
– By James Kalm
Game-Changer? -
CY TWOMBLY Sculpture
– By Anne Sherwood Pundyk -
La Saison de Claude-Oskar Monet
– By Robert C. Morgan -
IN VENICE: Schnabel and the Persistence of Art
– By Robert C. Morgan -
La Carte D’Après Nature
– By Cora Fisher -
KRISTYNA AND MAREK MILDE In Loving Memory
– By Gail Victoria Braddock Quagliata -
AGA OUSSEINOV In the Middle of Erewhon II
– By Veronika Sheer -
TALK TO ME: Design and the Communication between People and Objects
– By David St.-Lascaux -
MORGAN PACKARD
– By Charles Schultz
Dihedral Product -
AUROCH’S LIBRARY Chess Match
– By Benjamin Gottlieb -
Letter from BERLIN
– By David Rhodes -
Can I Get a Witness?
– By Linnea Kniaz
JOSHUA ABELOW, JOACHIM “YOYO” FRIEDRICH, and MATT CONNOLLY
Table of Contents
Editor's Message
-
A New Anniversary
– By Theodore Hamm
Local
-
CITYNOTES A New Anniversary
– By Theodore Hamm -
No Place to Sleep
– By Eleanor J. Bader -
REPORT CARD Our Fake School Board
– By Liza Featherstone -
After 9/11, Listening to the City
– By Abby Scher -
The City Revealed
– By Jillian Steinhauer
Express
-
Time for a New Dance
– By Justin Mitchell -
WORLD OF DEBT: DAVID GRAEBER with Spencer Woodman
-
WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE “NEW INDIA”: SIDDHARTHA DEB with Scott Sherman
-
THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF “TERRORISM” IF A TREE FALLS’S SAM CULLMAN In Conversation with Williams Cole
-
A Race to Nowhere
– By Ross Barkan -
A China Hand
– By Michael Terry -
Voilà, Paris!
– By Allen Wilcox
Art
-
ON ONE SIDE OF THE SAME WATER: Marek Bartelik with Wiesław Borowski
-
GILLIAN JAGGER with Ben La Rocco
-
CARRIE MOYER with Phong Bui
-
SARAH LUCAS with William Corwin
-
IN CASE SOMETHING DIFFERENT HAPPENS IN THE FUTURE: Joseph Beuys and 9/11
– By David Levi Strauss -
In Conversation with George Gittoes
ArtSeen
-
How to Proceed in the Arts (after O’Hara and Rivers, with love)
– By Ben La Rocco and Craig Olson -
CHARLES ATLAS Joints Array
– By Patricia Milder -
AI WEIWEI New York Photographs 1983 – 1993
– By John Yau -
RAILING OPINION: GODDESSES, OVARIES, AND THE SEDUCTRESS: Bring It On Home To Me
– By Lisa Corinne Davis -
Tale of The Tables
– By Denise Lassaw -
TRACEY EMIN Love Is What You Want
– By Vincent Katz -
BROOKLYN DISPATCHES Game-Changer?
– By James Kalm -
CY TWOMBLY Sculpture
– By Anne Sherwood Pundyk -
La Saison de Claude-Oskar Monet
– By Robert C. Morgan -
IN VENICE: Schnabel and the Persistence of Art
– By Robert C. Morgan -
La Carte D’Après Nature
– By Cora Fisher -
KRISTYNA AND MAREK MILDE In Loving Memory
– By Gail Victoria Braddock Quagliata -
AGA OUSSEINOV In the Middle of Erewhon II
– By Veronika Sheer -
TALK TO ME: Design and the Communication between People and Objects
– By David St.-Lascaux -
MORGAN PACKARD Dihedral Product
– By Charles Schultz -
AUROCH’S LIBRARY Chess Match
– By Benjamin Gottlieb -
Letter from BERLIN
– By David Rhodes -
Can I Get a Witness? JOSHUA ABELOW, JOACHIM “YOYO” FRIEDRICH, and MATT CONNOLLY
– By Linnea Kniaz
Books
-
LYNNE TILLMAN with Caroline Ball
-
THE POWER OF SECOND JOHAN HARSTAD with Ann Votaw
-
POETRY The Gay Man Who Loved Women
– By James Cihlar -
CRITICISM Death Agents
– By John Bengan -
COLLECTION Madame Futurist
– By Len Gutkin -
FICTION Smoke and Mirrors
– By Randy Rosenthal -
MEMOIR The Serial Name-Dropper
– By Ray Abernathy -
BIOGRAPHY Keeping Score
– By Connie Aitcheson -
FICTION Studio Portrait
– By Mani Parcham -
A Very Productive Season
– By Nicolle Elizabeth -
RAPID TRANSIT Or A Fistful of Fulfilling Fall Books
– By Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
Music
-
New York's Best-Kept Jazz Secret
– By William S. Niederkorn -
ALAN PIERSON: Making “Brooklyn's Orchestra”
– By George Grella -
The Thunder Sheet, the Zither, and the Mousepad
– By David St.-Lascaux -
The Geist of Independence
– By Laura Flierl
Dance
-
LALALALANDIA
– By Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly -
The Accidental Activist
– By Aaron Mattocks -
At the Merce Fair
– By M.J. Thompson -
In Proximity of a Public in Process
– By Ben Evans -
AUDIENCE-GENERATED PERFORMANCE: A Summer Spent Watching
– By Sarah Maxfield
Film
-
CINEMA AS AN EVENT: An Interview with Light Industry’s Ed Halter
– By Rachael Rakes and Leo Goldsmith -
DIFFICULT FACTS Esfir Shub and the Problem of Realism
– By Anastasiya Osipova -
GOD NEVER DIES Eugenio Polgovsky’s The Inheritors
– By Polly Bresnick -
ACTIVISTS & ALIENS: Films of Unrest at the 2011 Festival del Film Locarno
– By Leo Goldsmith
Theater
-
Come ’n’ Get It: Conni’s Restaurant Lands in Brooklyn
– By Melissa F. Moschitto -
Connie Congdon needs to have her mouth washed out with soap
– By Julia Brownell -
The Mindscape of Septimus and Clarissa: Ripe Time Adapts Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway
– By Patricia Laurence
Fiction
-
Mappa Mundi: The Structure of Western Thought
– By Douglas Glover -
Tragic Strip
– By T. Motley -
Shitty Mickey
–
Poetry
Art Books
-
Nicely Dressed Noise
– By Al Burian -
ANDY’S ANIMALS
– By Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa -
VITAL VICTUALS: A (POST)MODERN REMIX
– By Jeffrey P. Smith -
MUSIK ALS TRÄGER VON IDEEN
– By John Beeson -
Neither Wife Nor Widow
– By Abbe Schriber
ADVERTISEMENTS