A Tennis Genius

There is a spookiness about athletic genius, a strangeness that resides in subtle contrasts. Why, amid others similarly gifted, does one competitor give us goose bumps?

You can talk all you want about stats, break down the biomechanics till the cows come home. Sportswriters used to rhapsodize about Ted Williams’ extraordinary vision, as did Williams Read More

From Gauguin’s Adopted Home, Ornaments of Remote Islanders

The 2005-6 art season has begun—but only barely. The notable museum shows—Fra Angelico at the Met, Memling’s Portraits at the Frick and Oscar Bluemner at the Whitney—won’t go on display until next month. Commercial spaces are out of the gate faster. In the next couple of days, many galleries in Chelsea—and, lest we forget, 57th Read More

From Gauguin’s Adopted Home, Ornaments of Remote Islanders

The 2005-6 art season has begun—but only barely. The notable museum shows—Fra Angelico at the Met, Memling’s Portraits at the Frick and Oscar Bluemner at the Whitney—won’t go on display until next month. Commercial spaces are out of the gate faster. In the next couple of days, many galleries in Chelsea—and, lest we forget, 57th Read More

Play That Hip-Hop Music, White Girls

A third of the way through their recent set at the East Village club Brownies, the ladies of Northern State-an all-white, all-female hip-hop group originally from Dix Hills, Long Island-were feeling the inevitable effects of jumping around in a small, crowded space under burning stage lights. Twenty-five-year-old D.J. Sprout (real name: Robyn Goodmark) was damp Read More