Over the past few years, the line between the activities of galleries and those of auction houses has become increasingly blurred. In spring 2007, Christie’s bought London contemporary gallery Haunch of Venison, and in New York held an auction of Geneva dealer Pierre Huber’s collection. For the first time, old masters fair TEFAF Maastricht included […]

Iranian visual artists have fallen into a coma. After a decade of relative openness, we’re unclear about our future, thanks to the arrival of a new administration and attendant changes in artistic policies-and, indeed, aesthetic outlook. All around us, arts spaces are closing. The resignation of Mohammad Mehdi Asgarpour as head of the Cultural-Artistic Organization […]

Ziad Antar doesn’t play football. He doesn’t even like football. He comes from a part of the world where the popularity of football surpasses that of any other organized sport (the streets of Beirut erupted in fireworks and Italian, Brazilian, French, and German flags during the last World Cup, and local teams Al-Nejmeh, Al-Ansar, and […]

The notion of ideas and material “taking shape” is integral to Shahryar Nashat’s latest single-channel video work, Plaque (Slab, 2007). When I saw it a few months back, in the Swiss artist’s Berlin studio, it was still a work in progress, an audiovisual sequence that presented a kind of truncated, nonlinear documentary about the manufacture […]

In his 1995 book Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes, the essayist Peter Lamborn Wilson charted the emergence of a number of buccaneer-run micronations in seventeenth century North Africa, Temporary Autonomous Zones peopled by exiled Spanish Moors and European Christians who renounced the Roman Church in favor of the freedoms offered by Islam. Describing […]

My little sister Sarah got married when she was seventeen. I expressed some doubts to my mother. She defended my sister’s decision. “Honey, your sister is on a different path. She’s always wanted a home and family. You want glory and riches.” I was hurt at the time, but I have since decided that it […]

The Institute of Naturopathy and Yogic Sciences occupies some seventy acres of farmland on the outskirts of Bangalore. Innocent eyes might see the luxuriant foliage, the palm-fringed lake, and the swimming pool and conclude that the institute is a resort. As it happens, it’s a hospital, albeit a curious one, where the rooms range from […]

In 1966, a small group of Moroccan poets, artists, and intellectuals launched Souffles, a quarterly review that would over time become at once a vehicle for cultural renewal and an instigator of efforts to promote social justice in the Maghreb. From its very first issue, Souffles was a unique experiment, a Moroccan and Maghrebi effort […]

In 1382, glory descended upon the young men of England’s seminaries and theological schools, alongside such novelties as mystery, sex, female, and horror. Or rather, glorie descended, one of several new words improvised by Oxford don John Wycliffe and his band of translators for their controversial English-language version of the Latin Bible. The word’s first […]

For a long time, Mingering Mike was one of the greatest musicians no one had ever heard of. Based in Washington, DC, he released a hundred or so singles and albums between 1968 and 1976. The sleeve of his first record, recorded under a pseudonym, bore a testimonial from comedian Jack Benny: “GS Stevens is […]

“To leave is romantic, to return is baroque.” -Anton LaVey There are only so many ways to riff on the image of the World Trade Center. That was true before September 11; it remains true today. You can do the math: add a tower, remove one, take both away. A lot of people fantasized about […]