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Wilfrid

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Posts posted by Wilfrid

    Marcel Duchamp -- MoMA

    in Visual Arts

    Posted

    In member previews, open to the public Sunday.

    This is a vast exhibit, heavily reliant on the Duchamp collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. One thing you still need to visit Philly to see is "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" as it would presumably be unwise to chuck a huge glass scupture in the back of a truck and tour it around. But there is a full-size replica here by Richard Hamilton.

    Otherwise, there's all the Duchamp you could possibly want. The early and relatively conventional paintings are better than I had remembered, and I had not known he was also a very funny cartoonist for the French press.

    Then you get the Cubist-ish turn putting "Nude Descending a Staircase" into context. Then the readymades. Apparently, Duchamp retreated from his original position that the readymades were unique objects and permitted reproductions. Which means you get to see more urinals than you expected and rather too many reproductions of the Mona Lisa with a little graffiti mustache. The late stages of this show are repetitive.

    Finally, the boxes, containing yet more (miniature) reproductions of his work. It would be fun to sit down with a box and unpack it, but I never thought they worked so well laid out in vitrines. If you want to look at these works carefully, allow a lot of time.

    The re-reading project

    in Written word

    Posted

    That was much weirder than I remembered. Such a static, event-free story until the last few chapters with their cluster of revelations -- and then an ending I find utterly ambiguous. James's notes, reproduced at the end of the Penguin edition, show he was fully aware of all this.

    Gayl Jones' wonderful Mosquito is next on my list, but there is no cheap Kindle edition and it's a big brick of a book to carry around. I might save it for next time I travel. Having heard David Amram talk about Kerouac at the Grolier Club a few days ago and seen the associated exhibit, it's probably time for On the Road. This will be a third reading. 

    The re-reading project

    in Written word

    Posted

    And (spoilers) everything with the suitor goes badly wrong after the marriage. One thing I didn't like, and had not remembered, is the time it takes for James to get around to exploring what went wrong. Osmond is so manifestly unlikeable, it's not clear why Isabel goes for him in the first place. We finally get to explore her mind in chapter 42 (out of 55 chapters).

    Dorothea's marriage to Casaubon was equally disastrous, but at least I felt there were clear motivations for the marriage.

    Chip Taylor

    in Goodbye

    Posted

    Well done on the lyrics to "Wild Thing" -- the riff was kind of already available.

    I grew up with P.P. Arnold's "Angel of the Morning."

     

    The New Yorker

    in Written word

    Posted

    Paler knows "dap"?

    No, I think the typical reader is older, college-educated, probably quite diverse. Maybe the reader knows "edgelord" and that's good, but I am surprised they need to have the Chitlin' Circuit explained.

     

    • Like 1

    The New Yorker

    in Written word

    Posted

    Well done. My gripe was that the first three were just sprayed into the article while Chitlin' Circuit needed to be explained to the reader,

    I have moved on to a new gripe: 

    Quote

    up-and-coming actress and model Laura Harrier

    She's 35. Notably, she was in BlacKkKlansman in 2018. She's established. Is the problem young editors who don't have a clue or old editors who once had a clue?

    This made me laugh

    in What's that got to do with anything?

    Posted

    Actual AI response to a Google search. Whatever I was looking for, it wasn't details on wombat faeces.

    Quote

    Recent news highlights a surge in dog waste complaints in New York City, with over 800 reports early in 2026, marking a 35% increase, particularly affecting Brooklyn. Residents are calling for better cleanup in areas like Sunset Park. Separately, studies show bowel movement frequency affects health, and wombats produce cube-shaped poo.

     

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