Good morning!
Happy college football rivalry weekend to those who celebrate.
The third(!) MR Gift Guide should be out soon, maybe tomorrow...
For now, entertain yourself with the sturdy half-dozen media texts that await you just around the riverbend.
Enjoy!
1/ KEEN’s UNEEK II Convertible
(the Uneek line turned 10 this year. Thanks for letting me grab these—you know who you are)
I fumbled and bumbled my way into this pair of Keens, and...wow. They are great. Quite possibly the most out-of-the-box comfortable shoes I’ve ever put on. The Convertibles are widely sold out--one of the Uneek line’s “most sought-after permutations” per GQ--but the slides seem quite nice as well, with the same divine cork soul (Engineered Garments has done a few versions, including one nice and primo set).
2/ “In the Water: A Staten Island Lap”
(by Daniel Shailer, a Talk of the Town from the August 28, 2023 New Yorker)
The New Yorkers in my car’s seat back pocket came in handy the other day whilst waiting for a breakfast sandwich. This (pictured) first paragraph hooked me right into reading about Leslie Hamilton’s record-setting swim.
3/ “Ten chairs that tell the diverse stories of the African continent
(by Rima Sabina Aouf, published by Dezeen on November 21)
This article highlights the exhibition Africa Chair from Design Week South Africa in late October. It was “A special curation of chairs from the continent, celebrating design, craft and above all, community,” quoting the exhibition’s web page.
This was a thought-provoking part of the article, from the creative director of Lookbook, Charl Edwards: “It is a problem, Edwards said, that objects from Africa are often exhibited in museums or collections with only the name of the country they came from and not the person who made it.”
My favorite was the Red plastic chair.
4/ “Why Are Millennials Still Attached to American Girl?”
(by Lizzie Feidelson for the New Yorker earlier this month; illustration my Sunny Wu)
If you had heard my sister’s gasp when we walked past the American Girl Doll store in New York last summer, you would have no doubt about the thesis of this NYer piece.
Feidelson nimbly contextualizes the new book on the matter, Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can’t Quit American Girl, while providing a history of the company, its catalog, and its general salience.
There are interesting parts about the research behind the doll Addy, “a girl who does hard labor while enslaved on a tobacco plantation”. The company’s “approach to telling this story seems remarkable for an American corporation in the nineties.” Another good chunk:
At American Girl, history was a narrative of progress, and ordinary girls were its protagonists. As Horrocks and Mahoney put it, the brand taught “girls (who could afford it) that the past was theirs to claim” by adopting a “ ‘girl stands in for nation’ vibe”—where “nation” is here “defined by whiteness, privilege, and a very specific vision of womanhood.”
5/ Lecture: Seen and Unseen—Japan's Postwar Women Printmakers
(55 minutes, published to the AIC YouTube channel in July)
From the video description:
Jeannie Kenmotsu, curator of Asian Art at the Portland Art Museum, discusses the resurgence of printmaking in postwar Japan and the women artists who rose with it.
In the postwar period of the 20th century, Japanese printmaking experienced a revival fueled by enthusiastic foreign collectors, new commercial galleries, and a talented young generation. Printing on blocks, plates, and stones, women artists were among those drawn to the expressive potential of the medium in the early 1950s. Today, however, many of their stories are unknown—despite the fact that their work is widely held in North American institutions and private collections. This lecture illuminates the women artists who forged ahead in creative new ways, both in and outside of the studio.
6/ “Trumpism, NFTs, and the Cultural Politics of 21st-Century Kitsch”
(by art historian Dorothy Barenscott, an excerpt from the book pictured below)
While making an effort to read more art news, I came across this excerpt on Artforum. The intersection of visual and political analysis was well done, for instance:
"Those who loved Trump aligned with his “look” and the signature gold, rococo, and shiny artifice informing his spatial aesthetics; those who did not poked fun at his “tacky” taste as evidence of vulgarity, ostentatiousness, and an overblown ego. Not surprisingly, these opinions were often cast along political and class lines."