Mario Naves, Left feet forward. “Hirshfield had already put into motion a coherent visual iconography, what with its subtle luminosities, sumptuous surfaces, and looping distortions. The work’s self-standing integrity puts it a considerable step above that of untutored contemporaries such as John Kane, Bill Traylor, and Horace Pippin. Indeed, Hirshfield’s mastery, if we can call it that, recasts even the grand eminence of Rousseau as a fallow talent.”
Bruno Maçães, The Microchip’s Secret Goal: the Metaverse. “The point of miniaturization is less size than power. Electrons must move through the semiconductor material as fast as possible. The smaller the distances, the faster and more powerful the chip can be. Shrinking the transistors by half on a chip of a given size yields approximately four times the computing power because both the number and speed of the transistors have been increased. Approaching the limit of miniaturization thus means approaching the limit of how the universe works: a construct built from scratch.”
David Harsanyi, The Future Of The First Amendment Hinges On The 303 Creative Case Before The Supreme Court. “Would Cole, who says the ‘A.C.L.U. has been this nation’s leading defender of free speech for more than a century,’ call for the state to intervene in the case of an evangelical customer who wants to compel a gay designer to create a website for an organization that works to overturn same-sex marriage laws or preaches that acts of homosexuality are a mortal sin? Christians, after all, are also a protected group under anti-discrimination laws.”
Cynthia Fleming Crawford, The Free Markets Case You Haven’t Heard About. “Unlike other similar cases, there is no dispute here about whether creating website content is speech. Colorado stipulated that it is and the Tenth Circuit acknowledged that Colorado is compelling Lori to speak a message she does not wish to speak. This means that Colorado’s application of the law to Lori Smith is subject to strict scrutiny, which is a test the government almost always fails. But the Tenth Circuit upheld the law for a unique, and heretofore unheard of reason: that an individual artist, ‘due to the unique nature of [her] services…is more similar to a monopoly.’”
David C. Rose, Culture Forms Our Common Life. “I am not arguing that culture matters because institutions don’t. Quite the opposite. It is because institutions are so important that culture matters so much. When certain kinds of moral beliefs—an obvious part of any society’s culture—are culturally transmitted from one generation to the next, a high-trust society exists, which is the pillar of a thriving free market democracy.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Author warns about “epidemic of self-censorship.” “To anyone who thinks, well, some people who have said terrible things deserve it - no. Nobody deserves it. It is unconscionable barbarism. It is a virtual vigilante action whose aim is not just to silence the person who has spoken, but to create a vengeful atmosphere that deters others from speaking.”
Amanda Fortini, Real Life Does Not Fit The Narrative. “My root objection to these fictions isn’t about politics or even ethics, purely; it’s one of aesthetics. Not only are these narratives untrue, they’re also uninspired and formulaic. They feel engineered with a takeaway in mind, assembled from a kit—with a moral, a villain, and a hero. They lack the pleasing strangeness of reality and the uncanny rightness of mimesis. As you consume them, there’s no sense of discovery or revelation.”
Bookforum, the literary supplement of Artforum, has closed following the acquisition of the latter by the Penske Media Company. Artforum, Art in America, and ARTnews are now owned by the same corporation.
Closing soon: Ophir and Friends: a tribute to Ophir Agassi. Ophir and I established a great beginning of a friendship after I reviewed his exhibition at the Painting Center in September 2020. We were in touch over the subsequent months until he was too sick to communicate. He passed away earlier this year, gallingly young. Here I am, not really part of the circle that knew him as a colleague but heartbroken over the loss all the same. Someone go see this show for me.
I can certainly relate to Amanda Fortini's piece, though I would say that seemingly everyone and everything is pushing an agenda, typically the same fashionably "correct" one, and the more it's pushed, the greater the impulse to recoil from being played. The often obvious attempt at manipulation is repellent, not least because it's an insult to one's capacity to judge and decide independently, as well as one's right to do so. People are free to follow fashion, but just because they are slaves to it does not entitle them to enslave others not so inclined--and there's the rub.