FINE ART & FICTION
SoHo Sins
What is the normal way to react to the violent death of your spouse? Maybe there is no proper answer, really. Only the stunned queer things we do automatically, because they seem expected—or inescapable—when the pain is new. Philip, as soon as he discovered his partner’s body jumbled and blood-soaked in a living room chair, walked into the local police station and offered a benumbed self-indictment: “My name is Philip Oliver, and I believe I murdered my wife.” ​
New China, New Art
​These disparities feed a national preoccupation with China’s place in the world—a matter both of pride and concern, and an implicit theme in a great deal of contemporary art. When and how will the New China assume its proper role as a global power? Will it do so by emulating Euro-American models and eventually beating the West at its own “modernization” game? Or will the country cunningly subsume all foreign influences into its own deeply rooted tradition, as it has done so many times in its 5,000-year history as the world’s oldest (and arguably most refined) major civilization?
ABOUT
RICHARD VINE
Richard Vine is the former managing editor of Art in America and author of hundreds of critical articles, interviews, and reviews. His books include New China, New Art (2008) and Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, Sketches, and Drawings (2001), as well as the artworld crime novel SoHo Sins (2016). He has taught and lectured around the world, and curated exhibitions in Beijing, New Delhi, and New York.