BY frieze in Culture Digest | 31 MAY 19

Weekend Reading List: Fiction After Autofiction; Criticism at the End of the World

What the frieze editors have been reading this week 

f
BY frieze in Culture Digest | 31 MAY 19

Katherine Bernhardt, Fruit Salad Basket, 2016, acrylic and spray paint on canvas. 96 × 120 cm. Courtesy: the artist and CANADA, New York

  • For the TLS, Alice Atlee considers what the fashion for autofiction means for the relationship between an author and their work.
     
  • For frieze, Juliet Jacques on the emergence of a literature that puts trans and non-binary characters at its heart, written by openly trans authors who draw from lived experience.
     
  • ‘The situation of the vagina in feminist politics today is, even by optimistic standards, hairy.’ Andrea Long Chu, in n+1, on the relationship between contemporary feminism and vaginas.
     
  • ‘It is always night-time. There is scant backlighting. No street signs or familiar buildings to give us our bearings. No context.’ Sukhdev Sandhu on the photographs of Soham Gupta, in Bidoun.
     
  • ‘Joss Sackler's husband and his family are accused of making billions off the opioid crisis. Does she get to be a rebel without a cause?’ For Town and Country, Norman Vanamee explains how ‘Sackler’ became the most toxic name in philanthropy.
     
  • ‘A Film of Immediate Pleasures’: Charles Bramesco on Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or-winning film, Parasite.
     
  • ‘Billionaires, Bombers and Bellydancers’: Omar Mouallem on a century of Muslim misrepresentation in Hollywood, for The Ringer.

Bong Joon-ho, Parasite, 2019, film still. Courtesy: CJ Entertainment

  • ‘The Artist Who Gave Up Her Daughter’: For Topic, Sasha Bonét tells the story of Camille Billops, who abandoned her four-year-old to become the artist she knew she was meant to be.
     
  • ‘It’s a strange feeling being a cultural critic at this point in history. It’s like standing on the deck of the Titanic, feeling it sink into the sea, hearing the orchestra play as they go down — then reviewing the show.’ At Longreads, Soraya Roberts asks: How do you engage in cultural criticism at the end of the world?
     
  • ‘Two centuries of calumny have created sympathy for the musical devil: I found Salieri’s grave festooned with bouquets.’ For the New Yorker, Alex Ross on the renaissance of Antonio Salieri, a composer falsely cast as Mozart’s murderer.
     
  • ‘Trump has told people to lie – including people who reported to him in his capacity as president – and he has done it often. The evidence is here.’ David Runciman on the Mueller report, for the London Review of Books.
     
  • In anticipation of this weekend’s Champions League final, the New Yorker’s Sam Knight discusses how ‘Football Leaks’ is exposing corruption in the European game.

Contemporary Art and Culture

SHARE THIS