Celebrating Community
In 2014, a friend turned fifty. To celebrate, he organized a trip with friends to Paris—myself among them. At the celebratory dinner, a guest arrived late, walking into the restaurant on tottering heels. As she approached the table, men threw themselves out of their seats to help her with her coat. They quickly cleared a place for her. The party […]
Review of Invisible Ink by Patrick Modiano, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti Review by Michael Quinn What constitutes a life is not only our experiences, but our feelings about them. Especially as we grow older, our memories play a role here, too. We lean into some, and are unexpectedly overcome by others, triggered by a smell, the name […]
35mm black and white film photographs by Piotr Pillardy 35mm color photographs by Joan Ronstadt (developed & scanned at Exposure Therapy in Brooklyn) For the first time since February, during a year that has felt somehow infinite and compressed, I was able to visit a museum in person (a sentence that exists only in 2020). Going to the Met […]
Artists, when they reach a certain age, can feel the tug of legacy and revisit and tinker with their work. That’s as true for painters and sculptors as it is for filmmakers. George Lucas fiddling with his original Star Wars trilogy is the most notorious example, but Lucas’ old friend and patron Francis Ford Coppola has been in a contemplative […]
Review of Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass by Lana Del Rey Review by Michael Quinn Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, a collection of poems by the popular singer Lana Del Rey, wears its Beat-poet influences proudly. It reads like an unedited love letter to and from California, a place of “1,000 fires” and “scorched earth.” The small, hardcover […]
Uffizi’s Gallery in Florence is the most important museum in Italy and the 10th most visited museum globally, as it hosts the world’s finest Italian Renaissance art collection, which attracted over four million visitors in 2019. Amidst its greatest masterpieces, Uffizi exhibits The Birth of Venus (Botticelli, 1484-1486), Doni Tondo (Michelangelo, 1507), Annunciation (Leonardo, 1472-1475) and the biggest collection of […]
35mm color film photographs by Piotr Pillardy (Developed & scanned at Exposure Therapy in Brooklyn) Just a short drive or train ride from the city is Storm King Art Center (more often solely referred to as Storm King, named after the nearby mountain). Set in an idyllic landscape, this art center acts as the perfect and prescient solution to our […]
Progress sounds like a lot of things. The chugging of bulldozers excavating the earth. A ladle scraping new brownstone onto a rebuilt stoop. Construction guys a hundred feet up shouting commands to guide a steel girder into place. A crew of laborers laughing as they haul old dirt and timber from a gut renovation. In Gowanus, it’s EPA boats puttering […]
Review of The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey with Michaela Angela Davis Review by Michael Quinn The misleading title of Mariah Carey’s new memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey (written with Michaela Angela Davis), suggests an interpretation of the singer-songwriter’s public persona. After all, Carey’s had nineteen number-one hits—more than any other solo artist in history. What does […]
Review of The Street by Ann Petry Review by Michael Quinn Even successful books, continuously in print for generations, eventually fade into the background. New editions, repackaged with fresh cover art and introductions by contemporary authors, give us reason to see them with fresh eyes. Such is the case with The Street, Ann Petry’s critically-acclaimed 1946 novel (with an insightful […]