NOV 2020 – The Brooklyn Rail

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From the Publisher & Artistic Director

Editor's Message

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

ArtSeen

Abstraction in the Black Diaspora
– By Elizabeth Buhe
Rafael Domenech: Bad infinities: laboratory of fragments
– By Yasi Alipour
Louise Fishman: Ballin’ the Jack
– By Ksenia Soboleva
Donald Judd
– By Lyle Rexer
Tanya Aguiñiga: Extraño
– By Jared Quinton
Gina Osterloh
– By Susan Breyer
Shahzia Sikander: Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues
– By William Corwin
Tau Lewis: Triumphant Alliance of the Ubiquitous Blossoms of Incarnate Souls
– By Lillian O’Brien Davis
Shari Mendelson: Animals, Idols, and Us
– By Ann McCoy
Interiors: hello from the living room
– By Alfred Mac Adam
Leilah Babirye: Ebika Bya ba Kuchu mu Buganda (Kuchu Clans of Buganda)
– By Elizabeth Buhe
Sari Carel: The Shape of Play
– By Naomi Lev
Susan Bee: Anywhere Out of the World: New Paintings, 2017–2020
– By Yínká Elújọba
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

Table of Contents

Editor's Message

The Prompt
– By Ralph Lemon

Publisher's Message

Dear Friends and Readers,
– By Phong Bui

Art

ArtSeen

Abstraction in the Black Diaspora
– By Elizabeth Buhe
Rafael Domenech: Bad infinities: laboratory of fragments
– By Yasi Alipour
Louise Fishman: Ballin’ the Jack
– By Ksenia Soboleva
Donald Judd
– By Lyle Rexer
Tanya Aguiñiga: Extraño
– By Jared Quinton
Gina Osterloh
– By Susan Breyer
Shahzia Sikander: Weeping Willows, Liquid Tongues
– By William Corwin
Tau Lewis: Triumphant Alliance of the Ubiquitous Blossoms of Incarnate Souls
– By Lillian O’Brien Davis
Shari Mendelson: Animals, Idols, and Us
– By Ann McCoy
Interiors: hello from the living room
– By Alfred Mac Adam
Leilah Babirye: Ebika Bya ba Kuchu mu Buganda (Kuchu Clans of Buganda)
– By Elizabeth Buhe
Sari Carel: The Shape of Play
– By Naomi Lev
Susan Bee: Anywhere Out of the World: New Paintings, 2017–2020
– By Yínká Elújọba
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
BILL SHANNON with Nicole Loeffler-Gladstone

Film

A Posthumous Palindrome: Raúl 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

A Library Alone Is Not a Poets House
– By E.J. McAdams
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
Brick Press’s N.E. Thing Co.: Companies Act
– By Jennie Waldow
Dejan Lukić and Nik Kosieradzki’s The Oyster: Or, Radial Suppleness
– By Sahar Khraibani

In Memoriam

A Tribute to Jane Walentas

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

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