From The New Criterion, a special issue on art, including a look at the rise of the "starchitect", and an article on Tom Wolfe, radical un-chic. From NYRB, a review of A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917–1932 by John Richardson. An interview with Umberto Eco, and more and more on On Ugliness. Appetite for Destruction: A review of Modernism: The Lure of Heresy by Peter Gay (and more and more). Art, humanity and the "fourth hunger": Half-awakened, humans are constantly engaged in a battle to make sense of the world and our experiences within it — and a great work of art, especially music, helps us to do just that. Is photography dead? The last art form to be tethered to realism, its factual validity has lately been manipulated and pixelated to the point of extinction. A review of The Writer's Brush: Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture by Writers by Donald Friedman.
