NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

At ten o’clock on a recent weekday morning, when the crowds were let in the door and up the stairs to the big hall on the second floor of MoMA, Marina Abramović was already seated in the center of a space that had been cordoned off by lines on the floor, strong lights making it seem like a movie set. She was wearing an immensely dramatic flowing red dress. Her black hair was in a single plait which folded around her left shoulder. She had her back to the stairs. She would not move from her own chair, not once, not even to eat or go to the bathroom, while the museum stayed open.

April 21, 2010, 11 a.m. | Comments

The Pope and the Hedgehog

Anthony Grafton

Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images

Charges and counter-charges are swirling around the Catholic church. Newspaper articles have raised questions about how much Pope Benedict XVI knew about particular cases and the ways in which he himself dealt with abusers. No one can predict what will happen as more cases come to light and more victims tell their stories. But it’s worth stepping back, for a moment, and remembering that Benedict is probably the greatest scholar to rule the church since Innocent III, the brilliant jurist who served from 1198 to 1216. He knows how to wield all the tools of historical research and theological and exegetical argument. No one has studied the development and meaning of the Catholic liturgy with more care and precision, or performs Mass more beautifully. His rich sense of the value of tradition—and the way it develops over time—will likely determine his response to the current crisis.

April 20, 2010, 9:25 a.m. | Comments

Toni

Tony Judt

I never knew Toni Avegael. She was born in Antwerp in February 1926 and lived there most of her life. We were related: she was my father’s first cousin. I well remember her older sister Lily: a tall, sad lady whom my parents and I used to visit in a little house somewhere in northwest London. We have long since lost touch, which is a pity. I am reminded of the Avegael sisters (there was a middle girl, Bella) whenever I ask myself—or am asked—what it means to be Jewish.

April 19, 2010, 12:30 p.m. | Comments

After the Smolensk Crash: “A New Community” of Poland and Russia?

Adam Michnik

Following is a special appeal by Adam Michnik, the editor in chief of the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, concerning the April 10 plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, in which Polish President Lech Kaczyński, his wife, and dozens of senior members of the Polish government and military perished. The 94-member Polish delegation was coming to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyń massacre, in which 22,000 Polish military officers were murdered by Soviet security forces. The massacre was named after one of the places in which it happened, the forest of Katyń, close to Smolensk. For many years, the Soviet leadership assigned blame for this crime to the Nazis and, until the recent tragedy, the leaders of post-communist Russia have been reluctant to acknowledge Russia’s responsibility for the killings.

—Irena Gross

April 18, 2010, 6:51 p.m. | Comments

The Third Party Surprise

Jonathan Raban

Britain’s Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg (Comment Central)

Britain’s first ever televised prime ministerial debate, which took place on April 15 in Manchester, can be seen on C-Span here (though when I watched it the sound and pictures were distractingly out of sync), or heard on BBC Radio 4 here.

There was another first, perhaps more consequentially important than the debate itself: for the first time, the broadcast media gave a Liberal Democrat leader equal time and prominence with his Labour and Conservative counterparts. Since the debates (two more will follow, on April 22 and 29) were announced in March, it’s been said that the outsider, Nick Clegg, would “win,” provided he could hold his ground against David Cameron and Gordon Brown. He not only held his ground, he exacted every possible advantage from the claim that his opponents represented the “old politics” while he stood for the new.

April 16, 2010, 4:15 p.m. | Comments

What Woke Me, Or a Story of the Earthquake in Quechereguas: An Old Peasant’s Account

Arturo Fontaine

“It was Guillermina who woke me. She always sleeps more lightly than I do. I jumped out of bed and grabbed Pedro and Rosita who never wake up, ever. You know, the young are like that, great for sleeping. The tremor knocked me over. I got up and managed to open the door. I threw them one by one down the corridor. First Pedro and then Rosita. And I held out my hand to Guillermina. She was trying to get out of the room but it looked as if the room was swallowing her . I could feel windows exploding and dust falling from above. The floor was shaking—it was like being in a boat. The orange trees were smashing into each other, their branches were lashing about like madmen, and we could hear the crashing of the zinc panels on the roof and the tiles hurtling off.

April 16, 2010, 9:30 a.m. | Comments

They Revived the Pritzker

Martin Filler

Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima standing in front of the building they designed for the Zollverein School, Essen, Germany, 2006 (Thomas Mayer/arcspace.com)

A usually melancholy springtime ritual for lovers of the building art is the announcement of the latest winner of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture. Thus the revelation of this year’s surprise winners—Kazuyo Sejima, 53, and Ryue Nishizawa, 43, principals of the Tokyo firm SANAA (Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates)—has been cause for rejoicing among those who treasure the honorees’ delicately calibrated and deeply humane sensibility. They are further unusual in architecture as a female-male pairing not married to one another, and rarer still, one in which the senior partner is a woman.

April 15, 2010, 2:01 p.m. | Comments

An Unfettered Mind: Justice Stevens

Anthony Lewis

In the celebration of Justice John Paul Stevens as he brings his long career on the Supreme Court to an end, it is worth remembering what might seem to be an untypical moment in that career: the flag-burning case of 1989.

Gregory Lee Johnson was convicted in Texas of “desecrating a venerated object,” the flag. When the case went to the Supreme Court, the radical lawyer William Kunstler argued that Johnson’s act was protected by the First Amendment as a form of free expression. Justice Stevens asked Kunstler whether the Government had “any power at all to regulate how this flag is displayed in public places.” Kunstler said he didn’t believe so. “There is no state interest whatsoever?” Justice Stevens asked. Kunstler answered that he saw none. “I feel quite differently,” Justice Stevens said.

April 13, 2010, 11:43 a.m. | Comments

Slide Show: Detroit, City of Ruins

Andrew Moore

Known for his large-scale photographs of dilapidated buildings in places like Cuba, Russia, and Times Square, Andrew Moore has now turned his attention to Detroit. These images are from his new collection, Detroit Disassembled, published by Damiani and the Akron Art Museum, where an exhibition of his work will be on view from June 5 to October 10.

April 8, 2010, 4:45 p.m. | Comments

Delhi’s Poor: Revolution by Latrine?

Malise Ruthven

Ianthe Ruthven

Walking above the village of Mehrauli on Delhi’s southern perimeter, we pass a woman with a half-empty bottle of water—one of several we have already noticed since daybreak. Dressed immaculately in a brightly-colored sari, she emerges from behind a prickly bush on a tract of waste ground. If she were a man we might not have merited such discretion. India is about the only country in the world where you actually see human adults defecating. When traveling by road or rail you can be struck by the image of men squatting openly, impervious to the public gaze. The UN estimates that 600 million people—or 55 per cent of the Indian population—still defecate out of doors. The practice is clearly born of necessity in a crowded country where the development of public amenities has conspicuously failed to keep pace with economic and demographic growth.

April 8, 2010, 9:23 a.m. | Comments

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