“So, perceiving culture and society entirely in visuals, and before my eyes, I am up against my limits,” says Ezekiel Hooper Stark, the image-obsessed cultural anthropologist and protagonist of Lynne Tillman’s most recent novel Men and Apparitions (136) Continue reading
“Isn’t sex more erotic when spiced with a sense of danger? But how much danger?” asked music critic Stephen Holden in a review of a Donna Summer album. Those really are the questions, aren’t they? What is the line between eroticism and violence–or at least, threat–and how does one know if they’ve crossed it? Disco … Continue reading
“I’ll never forget the humiliation of bringing my portfolio up to Carmel Snow’s office at Harper’s Bazaar and unzipping it only to have a roach crawl out and down the leg of the table. She felt so sorry for me that she gave me a job,” writes Andy Warhol in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: … Continue reading
Scratch. Scrape. Scratch. Scrape. A chill flies down my neck, ricocheting down my spine. It’s not just the sound of A.K. Burns and Katherine Hubbard’s collaborative video Untitled (shaving performance 2010) that sends multiple senses into overdrive. It’s also the visuals–disembodied hands wielding a straight razor, slicing precariously close to a woman’s bare skin and … Continue reading
There are no words to describe how much I adored Adrian Piper’s retrospective at MoMA, but not for the reasons that seemed to preoccupy everyone else’s mind. Like with many art shows featuring Black artists at the moment, the white institution obsesses over artists of color who can “teach us” about gender, racism, and xenophobia. … Continue reading
You know I love dolls. That’s what John Waters snarled at Marion and me when we dragged our favored doll Carol Anne to meet her Uncle John at a book signing at Gagosian’s Upper East Side bookstore. Though I think of John’s demented doll declaration frequently, his words resonated especially deeply as soon as I … Continue reading
Whew! I don’t know about you, Filthy Dreams readers, but is it hot today or is it just me? *spontaneously combusts* As temperatures rise to 90 degrees outside, apparently they’re even hotter in that art-filled circus tent on the East River. I mean, the Frieze New York art fair on Randall’s Island! Now, I avoid art fairs … Continue reading
What does art accomplish? It’s not such an easy question. Will work made make an impact on a political scale in the present and in the future, will it even resonate with forthcoming generations? Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley tangled with these queries’ fatalistic conclusions in his poem “Ozymandias,” depicting the grand works of a great … Continue reading
“I can’t give everything away,” were some of the final words heard from David Bowie on this planet on the final track of his last album Blackstar. And true to form, he really didn’t–remaining the man who fell to Earth as much as a mere man since his first inhabitation of the Bowie name until … Continue reading
Happy Easter, dearest Filthy Dreams readers! The day that drag king Jesus rose again. What? Oh, didn’t you hear, Mary? This week, College of the Holy Cross professor Tat-siong Benny Liew angered the Fox News set after someone decided to read his chapter “Queering Closets and Perverting Desires: Cross Examining John’s Engendering and Transgendering Word … Continue reading