Havana Hot Rod: A 1957 Dodge Coronet on the street, in Cuba. (Photo by San Suzie.)
On Curls
Wigs (Portfolio), 1994, by Lorna Simpson. (Courtesy of MoMA.)
It’s my spoken rule never to actually read the New York Times Style section, just look at the pictures. But I couldn’t resist poking into Judith Newman’s essay on curly hair. As a sporter and supporter of all things big and curly, I’m always happy to see someone call the blowout mafia on the bullshit. (Seriously, formaldehyde??? That’s so Damien Hirst.) But the piece, I thought, overlooked what I think is an ethnic issue that is also tied to curly hair. We live in a society that prizes WASP standards of beauty above all. I think there’s a certainly undesirability to curly hair because it’s seen as too ethnic, too Jewish, too Latino, too Black. Too, well, unruly.
It still feels like a bit of defiance to wear hair that is big and curly. But not for simple aesthetic reasons. This story could have been an interesting dissection of what we as a society consider beautiful and why. Opportunity missed.
Now, back to looking at the pictures.
Random Linkage
- Giovanni Garcia-Fenech is totally right. Drop whatever you’re doing and read this essay by David Levine about the destructive dissolution of the Rothko estate in Triple Canopy. It’s all kinds of fascinating and beautifully written to boot.
- This looks like it’s going to be EPIC: Chris Burden’s Matchbox cars installation at LACMA this fall. Edward Lifson has a good automotive photo essay to go with. (Art Fag City.)
- Press release quotes that make me snort-laugh.
- The sex sculptures of the idle rich.
- Danielle Steele, curator.
- The Day in Art Merch, otherwise known as the Department of Shut the Fuck Up: Cindy Sherman make-up. Girlfriend needs to STOP.
- A map of Warhol’s New York.
- The sky is falling. Spiderman is biracial.
- Wealthy sheikh hits the desert with a ginormous tag of his name.
- Hobo QR codes.
- Ciudad Nazca, a robot that draws a true scale map of an imaginary city onto the surface of the Peruivan desert à la Nazca Lines. This is wild.
- A massive Richard Neutra house in Beverly Hills is spared from the wrecking ball. For now.
- A round up of container architecture projects. (@JohnPerreault.)
- This looks interesting: A book by Rob Nixon that examines how non-Western writers like Ken Saro-Wiwa have been left out of the environmental canon.
- “The Quiet Despair of the Starship Enterprise.”
