The Brooklyn Rail

Table of Contents

Editor's Message

• The Prompt

  – By Ralph Lemon

Publisher's Message

• Dear Friends and Readers,

  – By Phong Bui

Art

• JEFF ELROD with Phong H. Bui

• CATHERINE GUND with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve

• LESLIE HEWITT with Megan N. Liberty

• KENT MONKMAN with Amber Jamilla Musser

ArtSeen

• Cecily Brown

  – By Jason Rosenfeld

• Titus Kaphar: From a Tropical Space

  – By Dan Cameron

• Companion Pieces: New Photography 2020

  – By Graham W. Bell

• Mary Jones: Attachments

  – By Hovey Brock

• Sue Coe: It Can Happen Here

  – By David Carrier

• Diversity Billboard Art Project

  – By David Carrier

• Luca Giordano: The Triumph of the Neapolitan Painting

  – By David Carrier

• Akeem Smith: No Gyal Can Test

  – By Darla Migan

• Tjebbe Beekman: Symbiosis

  – By Mary Ann Caws

• Billie Zangewa: Wings of Change

  – By Ann C. Collins

• Bruce Nauman

  – By Amanda Gluibizzi

• Anna Horvath: precarious dazzle

  – By Alex Jen

• Genevieve Goffman: Here Forever

  – By Alex A. Jones

• Rodney McMillian: Body Politic

  – By Yxta Maya Murray

• Baris Gokturk: Public Secret

  – By Bat-Ami Rivlin

• Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings

  – By Hearne Pardee

• Shuzo Azuchi Gulliver: Cinematic Illumination

  – By Madeleine Seidel

• Orbits of Known and Unknown Objects: SFAI Histories / MATRIX 277

  – By Sam Korman

• Amy Sillman: Twice Removed

  – By Phyllis Tuchman

• Tishan Hsu: Liquid Circuit

  – By Simon Wu

• Peggy Ahwesh: Heart_Land

  – By Olivia Gauthier

• Tantra: Enlightenment to Revolution

  – By Toby Kamps

• Antoine Catala: alphabet

  – By Nina Wolpow

Critics Page

• Mr. Brown-Guy Falls To Leave

  – By Pope.L

• Note on Surrender

  – By Fred Moten

• Essayons

  – By Will Rawls and Thomas Lax

• Some Thoughts on a Constellation of Things Seen and Felt

  – By Adrienne Edwards

• Negroes in their prime

  – By Kevin Beasley

• Oceanic, porous, and monstrous thoughts

  – By Diane Lima

Books

• ANDREW ERVIN with Matthew Simmons

• GREG MANIA with Melissa Faliveno

• ROD KESSLER with Brooke Delp

• RICARDO MONTEZ with Theodore Kerr

• Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind

  – By Joseph Peschel

• Danielle Evans’s The Office of Historical Corrections

  – By Joseph Peschel

• Charles Bernstein’s Near/Miss

  – By Neeli Cherkovski

• Trump, the American Dream, and the Frontier

  – By Joshua Sperber

Music

• Home is Nowhere

  – By George Grella

• Lucrecia Dalt

  – By Martin Longley

• Listening In: Illuminating the Landscape

  – By Scott Gutterman

• THURSTON MOORE with Rob Duguay

Dance

• Simulations: Living Sculptures on the Public Stage

  – By George Kan

• Vahram Zaryan's Perf festival: Text, Gesture, and Translation

  – By Christopher Atamian

Film

• A Posthumous Palindrome: Ra’l Ruiz & Valeria Sarmiento’s The Tango of the Widower and Its Distorting Mirror

  – By Ethan Spigland

• Joy in Spite of Everything: Steve McQueen’s Small Axe

  – By Madeleine Seidel

• Self-Making and the Travelogue: Courtney Stephens's Terra Femme

  – By Caitlin Quinlan

Theater

• “Putting Your Shame Out There”: How a Booming Instagram Account Wields Comedy, Mimicry, and Advocacy

  – By Cam Cronin

• Through the Uncertainty, Agnes Borinsky and the Working Group for a New Spirit Are Taking Inventory of Our Lives

  – By Daniel Krane

Fiction

• Editor’s Note

  – By Will Chancellor

• Igifu

  – by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Jordan Stump

• from Difficult Light

  – by Tomás González, translated from the Spanish by Andrea Rosenberg

Poetry

• How to Breathe Underwater: The Pandemician’s Reprisal

  – By Edwin Torres

• “Herewith the Prologue:”

  – By Aditi Machado

• Muwashshaḥa Qalandariyya

  – by Taqi al-Din ‘Ali ibn al-Maghribi, translated from Arabic by David Larsen

• Guide for the Discouraged

  – By Albert Mobilio

• six

  – By Sara Larsen

• nine

  – By Maureen Owen

• three

  – By Michael Rothenberg

• Riding Death

  – By Joseph Lease

• A Conversation Between Maggie Dubris & Bob Rosenthal

Art Books

• Gordon Parks: The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957

  – By Re'al Christian

• Women in Concrete Poetry 1959–1979

  – By Megan N. Liberty

• Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Photostats

  – By Lee Ann Norman

• Dejan Lukić and Nik Kosieradzki’s The Oyster: Or, Radial Suppleness

  – By Sahar Khraibani

• Brick Press’s N.E. Thing Co.: Companies Act

  – By Jennie Waldow

Field Notes

• Happy Days

  – By Paul Mattick

• A Past That Is Not Past

  – By Frances Cathryn

• White Fear and Safety in the Struggle for Housing Justice

  – By Jerald Isseks

• JASON E. SMITH with Tony Smith

• Andreas Malm’s Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency

  – By Max Ajl

• JEAN-LOUIS COHEN with Ross Wolfe

• Inflation. Government Policy, and Profits—an Exchange

The Miraculous

• 26. (The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum)

  – By Raphael Rubinstein

• 27. (Ridge Street, Attorney Street, South Bronx)

  – By Raphael Rubinstein

• 28. (A series of telephone booths in Midtown Manhattan, several addresses in the East Village and an unidentified location in the Bronx)

  – By Raphael Rubinstein

• 29. (Saint Marks Place)

  – By Raphael Rubinstein

• 30. (Harlem, Flushing Meadows)

  – By Raphael Rubinstein