Issue 7
Summer 2017

The melodrama that undid Park Geun-hye was prefigured in Korea’s wildly popular genre movies, whose tales of corruption and gangsterism express deep anxieties about the country’s public maturity. Now — and almost uniquely, in this moment of global democratic contraction — comes a chance to clean house.
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Essays

The Stettheimer Set

by Matthew J. Abrams

Not just Duchamp, not just Picabia: Florine Stettheimer, painter of parties and department stores, is a modernist master. And today’s artists know it

Arrested Development

by Michelle Cho

South Korea’s first female president is behind bars; Samsung’s chief might end up there too. For the directors of the country’s cult film scene, Seoul is a viper pit and gangsters are in charge

Ordinary Beauty

by Emmett Rensin

The new US president plans, among other outrages, to kill the National Endowment for the Arts. Who would miss it most? A visit to central Iowa

Negatives

TESTAMENT OF YOUTH

Emmanuel Macron, culture vulture. The new French president has a philosopher’s mind and a geriatric’s vocabulary, but what happens when you put an intellectual in power?
by Siddhartha Mitter

Interviews

Charline von Heyl

“When I started out I wanted the paintings to basically torture people. What I want now is something that seduces more than it angers.”

Christodoulos Panayiotou

“Ballet is a highly sophisticated emotional expression, but it was central to a political project: the governance of Louis XIV. The world is ballet, and he is in the center of it.”

Negatives

The Bride (Almost) Wore Black

by Judith Thurman

Rei Kawakubo’s marriage advice. Wearing Comme des Garçons to the altar may seem wise, but the Met’s new retrospective reminds us there’s a time and place for everything

Can’t Buy Me Love

by Silas Martí

A brash host of The Apprentice takes power — in São Paulo. But if you think the new mayor is the most tasteless citizen of Latin America’s largest city, you should meet his artist wife

Imperial by Design

by Denise Y. Ho

Beijing offers its special administrative region a new museum; Hong Kong wonders if you can return a gift. The Palace Museum comes to Kowloon, with red strings attached

Stranger in Moscow

by William Lee Adams

Glitter and geopolitics. The new cold war comes to the Eurovision Song Contest, where Russia and Ukraine face off over Crimean annexation and a good Soviet-style bop

Portfolio

The art of Jane Chang Mi, and what you can find underwater