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Robert B. Silvers (1929–2017)
Dominique Nabokov Robert B. Silvers in his office at The New York Review of Books, early 1980s Bob Silvers, my friend and the editor of The New York Review, died on March 20, shortly after completing...
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The Earthy Glories of Ancient China
Henan Museum, ZhengzhouEarthenware dog, Henan Province, eastern Han dynasty, 25–220 AD French schoolchildren used to be taught that they were descended from the Gauls, a tribe that emerged around the...
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Myth-Maker of the Brothel
Freer|Sackler, Smithsonian/Charles Lang FreerUtamaro: Moon at Shinagawa (detail), 1788–1790 Of all the masters of the woodblock print in the Edo Period, Utamaro has the most colorful reputation....
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Fools, Cowards, or Criminals?
AFP/Getty ImagesNazi leaders accused of war crimes during World War II standing to hear the verdict in their trial, Nuremburg, October 2, 1946. Albert Speer is third from right in the back row of...
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Stray Dog
Daidō Moriyama/Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, ParisPhotograph by Daidō Moriyama from ‘Tokyo Color,’ December 2008–July 2015; included in Daido Tokyo One of Moriyama Daidō’s most famous...
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Doolittle Done Well
Joan MarcusLauren Ambrose and Harry Hadden-Paton in My Fair Lady, Lincoln Center Theater, 2018 Everything works perfectly in Bartlett Sher’s brilliant new production of My Fair Lady. The sets (by...
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Araki, Erotomaniac
Private Collection Nobuyoshi Araki: Marvelous Tales of Black Ink (BokujūKitan) 068, 2007 Nobuyoshi Araki and Nan Goldin are good friends. This is not surprising, since the seventy-seven-year-old...
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V.S. Naipaul, Poet of the Displaced
John Minihan/Evening Standard/Getty ImagesV.S. Naipaul, 1968 V.S. Naipaul’s fastidiousness was legendary. I met him for the first time in Berlin, in 1991, when he was feted for the German edition of...
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V.S. Naipaul (1932–2018)
Ian Berry/Magnum PhotosV.S. Naipaul, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, 1981 V.S. Naipaul’s fastidiousness was legendary. I met him for the first time in Berlin in 1991, when he was being feted for the...
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Art of a Degenerate World
LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur (Westfälisches Landesmuseum)/Sabine Ahlbrand-Dornseif/© Estate of Otto Dix 2018Otto Dix: Prostitute and Disabled War Veteran. Two Victims of Capitalism, 1923 On Hyde...
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