By Emily Bobrow 11/14/05 12:00am

Graphic Novels on the Verge, A Genre Trapped in a Time Warp

Black Hole, by Charles Burns. Pantheon, 368 pages, $24.95.

Journalists have been heralding the rise of the graphic novel for decades. Ever since Will Eisner published A Contract with God in 1978, the adult comic book has hovered on the scene, always imminent, occasionally praised as a serious art form—as in the case of Art Read More

By Tom Scocca 4/11/05 12:00am

A Friend Writes: ‘Who Is Running The New Yorker?’

Officially, there is no such thing as the New Yorker masthead. The New Yorker is so averse to having a masthead that The New Yorker will not even comment about why it chooses not to have a masthead.

As a result, the people who make the magazine have spent generations veiled by the fictitious persona Read More

By Hilton Kramer 10/02/00 12:00am

If You Strike a Critic, You’d Better Snuff Him

There are exhibitions whose titles are as ill-chosen as the works that comprise them are ill-conceived, and one such show of this kind is something called Critic as Grist , which Michael Portnoy has organized at the White Box gallery in Chelsea. Clearly, the title is a misnomer. According to my handy dictionary, the word Read More

By Michael M. Thomas 12/13/99 12:00am

Stocks Seem Cheap to Me-How’s That for Contrarian?

In the United States, prophecy, with its emphasis on rational expectations concerning that which may come to pass, generally goes unattended by interest, let alone honor. Prophecy is by its nature a form of advocacy, and what is advocated is much more often dire than delightful, which gives displeasure to those people turning a nice Read More

By Hilton Kramer 9/20/99 12:00am

Even Artists Are Saying Whitney Show’s a Stinker

It will be recalled that when the first installment of The American Century: Art & Culture 1900-2000 opened at the Whitney Museum in April, both the exhibition and its oversize, overdesigned catalogue met with-how shall I put it?-a critical response that fell short of universal acclaim. My own verdict in The Observer of May 3 Read More