The staff at Laney Tower take a close look at the past, present, and future of Oakland’s artistic community.
art
Posted inArts & Culture, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
Nina Simone’s Three Years of Freedom
At Guernica, Katherina Grace Thomas turns a lens on the years Nina Simone spent in Liberia in the mid-1970s.
Posted inCurrent Events
Zadie Smith Takes on Black Pain With a Light Touch
At Harper’s, Smith doesn’t really feel like she is engaging in her subject matter with much care or heart.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Getting In and Out: Who Owns Black Pain?
“Their grandmother is as black as the ace of spades, as the British used to say; their mother is what the French still call café au lait. They themselves are sort of yellowy. When exactly does black suffering cease to be their concern?”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Philippe Petit Reflects on a Lifetime of Fear
For the high-wire artist, living in fear is the definition of death.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Diane Arbus: Describing the Loneliness that Shames Us
Hilton Als on photographer Diane Arbus’ uncanny ability to capture the humanity of her marginalized subjects.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Portrait of an Artist Who Flattered Donald Trump
Visiting Mar-a-Lago with Ralph Wolfe Cowan, who has painted celebrities like Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, and Donald Trump.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Palm Beach Van Dyck
A “willingness to flout the laws of space and time” help painter Ralph Cowan form relationships with the kind of people who will pay for a portrait of themselves with a lion, at the mast of a ship, or gliding through a Venetian dreamscape.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Before Becoming an Art Critic, Jerry Saltz Wanted to Draw 10,000 Dante-Inspired Altarpieces
On the project that almost drove Jerry Saltz into despair.
Posted inEditor's Pick
My Life As a Failed Artist
Jerry Saltz, New York‘s senior art critic, revisits his own short career as a Dante-obsessed artist in late-seventies Chicago.