Advertisement

Category Archives: Arts & Culture

November 1, 2010
Arts & Culture

A Filmy Kind of Dread

By Liz Brown

Georges Simenon famously wrote in a kind of concentrated trance state, starting and finishing books within a matter of weeks, sometimes days. And that has always seemed to me the best way to read him, too—in a concentrated trance state. Quick, immersive, done. (See his Paris Review interview here.) I don’t necessarily remember many details afterward—just a blur of images, a filmy kind of dread—but once I begin to read his work, especially the romans durs, nothing else exists but the slide into whatever seedy underworld awaits: cheap hotel rooms, colonial outposts, occupied cities, whorehouses, and roadside bars. Whiplash quick, atmospheric, his are usually the skinniest books on the shelf.

So, at five hundred and forty-four pages, his autobiographical novel Pedigree is something of a departure, and not simply in terms of length. Pedigree is the book that Simenon spent the most time on, and it’s the one where the most time passes. Set in his birthplace, Liège, it opens in 1903 and continues through 1918, just after the Armistice.

Liège, the town where Georges Simenon was born.

Read More
October 29, 2010
Arts & Culture

My Werewolf Fantasy

By Kate Waldman

When I was in second grade, I wanted to be a werewolf. I’d been raised to think that most of my goals were within reach, if I only applied myself. Also, a good friend had just upped and moved to Martha’s Vineyard, so I had time on my hands. I practiced my snarl for half an hour after school each day, baring my teeth in the bedroom mirror. At recess, I crawled under the shed, convinced I was allergic to sunlight (I’d gotten my horror myths confused). I’m not sure where my werewolf fascination came from—maybe I felt social cliques tightening around me, and monsters suggested the blurring of boundaries: between humans and animals, for instance, or earth and the underworld. More likely, though, it was about power. I longed for the thrill of being feared, of commanding fear. Not all the time, of course. Once I attained shape-shifter status, I knew I would spend the majority of my day undercover. The secret would be part of the fun: Who would suspect that, beneath my quiet facade, a supernatural fury waited to erupt? Lycanthropy was an insecure girl’s backup plan, for use as needed.

As I got older, the fantasies took a new form. I started to imagine dating werewolves. They were, unfailingly, cute guys who turned into dangerous beasts when I needed protection. One, who showed up during my Ben Folds Five phase, played rock piano and hated the suburbs. Another, an ice-hockey player, memorialized a very short-lived interest in the Washington Capitals. They melted in and out of my high-school existence at odd intervals. Feeling lonely or undesirable, I would retreat to my inner woods, where they waited: strong, loving, but also ineffably menacing. I was deliciously aware that any one of these soul mates could hurt me if he wanted to. Apparently, it was intoxicating to be scary, but being scared was even better.

Read More
October 29, 2010
Arts & Culture

Carving for Blaze

By Dawn Chan

Traditional jack-o'-lantern carving is an art form governed by extreme constraints. Photograph by Matt Gillis.

By day, Van Cortlandt Manor is a historical estate where interpreters in colonial attire give tours, comb wool, and bake kickshaws (from the French quelque chose) at the hearth. The Hudson River borders the property. There’s a gift shop that’s quiet and renovated, and sells old-fashioned candy sticks. But in the weekend evenings leading up to Halloween each year, the manor becomes the site of the “Great Jack O’ Lantern Blaze.” Visitors follow a path that winds through thousands of illuminated pumpkins arranged thematically—dinosaurs, Celtic knots, sea creatures, ghouls.

From August through October, for several summers, I worked as as jack-o’-lantern carver for the “Blaze.” The workers were a mix of site staff and local artists. One day, we would be assigned to work on the undersea kingdom, which meant carving kelp-shaped gashes on twenty or thirty jack-o’-lanterns. Another day, it would be crunch time on the pirate faces. Whether we were stationed in the boathouse next to the geese, or outside on benches under a tent, we worked among garbage bags full of pumpkin guts, arrays of handsaws, X-Acto blades, and wood- and clay-carving tools, as well as dremels, paper stencils, and drawings for inspiration. A first-aid kit was always on hand. Many of the pumpkins were polyurethane, which allowed them to be stored in cardboard boxes for future “Blazes” to come.

Read More
October 26, 2010
Arts & Culture

2001: Art History with Metaphor

By Bruce High Quality Foundation

2001: Art History with Metaphor is part of a series of pedagogical videos by the Bruce High Quality Foundation. It debuted this month at “Retrospective: 2001–2010” at Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich, Switzerland.
October 13, 2010
Arts & Culture

The Woodcuts of Lynd Ward

By Art Spiegelman

It seems natural now to think of Lynd Ward as one of America’s most distinguished and accomplished graphic novelists. He is, in fact, one of only a small handful of artists anywhere who ever made a “graphic novel” until the day before yesterday. The ungainly neologism seems to have stuck since Will Eisner, creator of the voraciously inventive Spirit comic book of the 1940s, first used it on the cover of a 1978 collection of his seriously intended comics stories for adults, A Contract With God. It was a way to distance himself from the popular prejudices against the medium, and he often cited Ward’s 1930s woodcut novels as an inspiration for his work and for the euphemism. But Ward’s roots were not in comics, though his work is part of the same large family tree, belonging somewhere among the less worm-ridden branches of printmaking and illustration. Read More
October 8, 2010
Arts & Culture

Sarah Peters: Appeal to Heaven

By Sarah Peters

Sept 6, 1520, 2010, ink and pen on paper.

While drawing, I imagined myself on the Mayflower, looking out into darkness and seeing only water and sky. I thought about waves and drowning and being surrounded by everything unknown. I thought about how it feels to walk on an unstable surface. When I looked out into the ocean and the harbor in Provincetown, I understood, like the Pilgrims, what it meant to feel alone.

Read More