Even no. 8
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The fall issue of Even orbits around a sweeping cover story on the art and literature of a transformed China. From Beijing to Caracas, Istanbul to Washington, Even asks: how much can artists tolerate, and when must they say no?
Issue 8 of Even is on newsstands now. Visit evenmagazine.com to subscribe.
Essays
No Enemies
June 4, 1989, changed China—and art history—forever. Liu Xiaobo, Xu Bing, Mo Yan, and Ai Weiwei plotted four very different paths onward from Tiananmen Square, writes Jacob Dreyer.
“Provocative gestures of rebellion are sometimes OK in China. Plausible changes which threaten entrenched power are not.”
The Other Side of the Tracks
Just north of Chelsea’s galleries arises the largest private real estate development in US history. Who is Hudson Yards for, asks Jacob Moore—and is anyone paying attention?
“It shouldn’t be this easy—should it?— to be bored by the largest private real estate development in the history of the United States.”
House of Treasures
Wonderstruck, Todd Haynes’s kid-friendly new film, rambles through the Natural History Museum. As in Safe, Carol, and Far From Heaven, everything hinges on the rules of display, explains Max Nelson.
“Haynes is at his best when the rooms in his movies are redolent with unspoken desires, and the people whose stories he’s telling want more than they can say.”
Two interviews with editor Jason Farago
Camille Henrot on online shopping and the ideology of Throwback Thursday:
“eBay is the opposite of the museum: the objects you decide to get rid of. You don’t need them anymore, or they have an exchange value for another group that’s greater than the emotional value that you put on them.”
Liz Glynn on the value of gold and the beauty of labor statistics:
“The Getty Villa is paradise, but it’s also utterly fake. When I came to California, none of the materials that I would find on the side of the road were anything but garbage, really. Performance became a way to invest those objects with a history.”
Reviews
Dinner jackets and jockstraps: London museums’ very gay summer, by Huw Lemmey
Carol Rama, Sturtevant, and the double bind of feminism, by Allison Hewitt Ward
Biophilia in Paris, from Baroque gardens to synthetic cells, by Emil Leth Meilvang
Figurative heat and geometric cool: Mexico’s modern tradition today, by Devon Van Houten Maldonado
Negatives
Sex, drugs, and van der Rohe. Kyle Chayka drinks the worst martinis in New York at the renovated Four Seasons: “a Mad Men redux a few years too late even for Mad Men.”
Plus: Suzy Hansen reports from Istanbul as Turkey’s best newspaper goes on trial; Lauren Elkin offers a eulogy to Colette, and to the cool days of 90s Paris; Deirdre Loughridge listens to Venezuela’s musicians, and to Gustavo Dudamel’s silence.
Even More
Our picks for the fall’s most important shows, including Sergei Eisenstein’s drawings at the Uffizi, retrospectives of Laura Owens and John Baldessari, and the latest photography in Bamako.
Portfolio
Beijing in fog: A 13-page exploration of the art of Li Ran