Walt Disney was a wretched businessman.
This seems like a comically counterintuitive statement, with the Disney machine standing foursquare throughout the world as an impregnable marketing monolith, but this commercial hegemony is a comparatively recent phenomenon. It was only in the last 10 years or so of his life, with the opening of Disneyland, Read More
The photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971), on the evidence of Revelations, a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was incapable of taking a bad picture. Each and every photograph on display is, in its own way, riveting and, for that matter, definitive.
Arbus’ photos of drag queens, Jewish giants, James Brown and acne-scarred patriots are Read More
Con-trary to Belief, East Siders Do Part With Their Money
If one were a con artist, he or she-or he and she (they often work in teams)-might consider the Upper East Side a metropolitan Disneyland, given the high net worth of its inhabitants. However, those upon whom con artists typically prey tend to be Read More
With the Giorgio Armani fashion show now occupying the lion’s share of exhibition space at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, a Norman Rockwell retrospective soon to follow and the museum’s current film series devoted to Fever in the Archives: AIDS Activist Videotapes from the Royal S. Marks Collection , we are given a very clear Read More
