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A detail from Michael Kenna‘s “Cold Dog Decembrist Square, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1999″. “One of the foremost landscape photographers in the world”, according to Artworks magazine, Kenna is known for his use of hours-long exposures and his patient approach to understanding his subjects: I am not a paparazzi photographer. I don’t run out to a [...]

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A fast ride down a narrow valley

A prominent literary editor once told me that a good reviewer did not have to like every book that he read, but that he absolutely had to have the capacity to like every book. In this spirit, I make a habit of opening a new book with the greatest optimism and eagerness, convinced that I’ll [...]

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Japan’s Open Future

    At long last, my book Japan’s Open Future: An Agenda for Global Citizenship (co-authored with Tomas Casas i Klett and Jean-Pierre Lehmann) has landed in warehouses in the UK and the US. My fellow bloggers at Sans Everything will know that this has been a long time in the making, and I thank them for some very helpful [...]

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Where Obama Gets His Ideas

Here is some free advice to any any journalist who might be reading this blog: President Obama and his crew are policy wonks. So if you want to know what they are thinking, read magazines like the American Prospect, the Nation, the New Republic, and Democracy.  

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The Nakedness of Dr. Manhattan

Dr. Manhattan as drawn by Dave Gibbons (and worth comparing to Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man). Much has been written about the dangling blue penis of Dr. Manhattan, visible in many scenes of the Watchmen. Over at Tapped Phoebe Connelly defended the showing of the penis on feminist grounds, correctly noting that the film industry is usually [...]

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A Misunderstood Radical

Steve Ditko’s Mr. A. She hated religion and thought faith was “extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason.” She asserted that abortion was “a moral right” and believed the pro-life movement was motivated by “hatred.”  For her, creative work was more important than family, friendship or any human relationship. She had [...]

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A detail from Peter Funch‘s Babel Tales series, “Hommage à Fisher”. Danish-born and educated and now based in New York, Funch had already been a successful photojournalist before turning to art. The photographer’s remarkable urban streetscapes are created by taking many shots from a given corner and then skilfully collaging them together (um, somehow). They [...]

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In the keep of the tree

Plants, it is well known, have a remarkable ability — born, perhaps, of their immense patience and gradualism — to physically merge themselves with elements in their environment. Ivy will bind fast to brick, beans will curl around poles, and trees… well, consider the iron-eating sycamore of Brig o’ Turk, a village in central Scotland [...]

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Ware and Satrapi in Conversation

Satrapi’s Persepolis. On February 26, cartoonists Chris Ware and Marjane Satrapi were interviewed on stage in New York by Francoise Mouly. You can go listen to this very interesting hour-long conversation here. Very highly recommended.

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A Watchmen Defense

Responding to my negative take on Watchmen, the cartoonist Frank Santoro — a member of the Comics Comics collective and creator of the fine graphic novel Storeyville – sent in a very smart defense of the Moore/Gibbons book. So smart, I thought it deserves attenton from readers who might not look at the comment section. Here’s what Frank [...]

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