My second-favorite periodical, Harper's, often features interesting paintings by relatively unknown artists. This month they have Dinner Table by Mary Henderson (her painting Baseball Game is above).
I find her work very striking. There's a clash between what I regard as painfully banal subject matter and a truly masterful technique, and the void left betwixt these two opposing forces I fill in with my own experience as a college professor and a long-time sufferer of neighborhood frat and sorority shenanigans. I'm both drawn to and repulsed by these paintings as a result. According to James Joyce's aesthetic theory, Mary Henderson's work is therefore pornographic.
1 comment:
I give a slight edge to The New York Review of Books. I've given up The Nation after 15 years and cancelled the Washington Post and the NY Times, so I don't even have enough to round out a top ten list anymore.
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