ArtiFact: Books, Art, Culture

Although considered one of Kurt Vonnegut’s minor works, 1987’s BLUEBEARD is an interesting novel that covers some fresh territory for the author. It follows the life and work of Rabo Karabekian, the son of Armenian immigrants who flee to California after the Armenian genocide. Starting as a highly realistic, technically proficient painter, Karabekian shifts his aesthetics to Abstract Expressionism...

Just as television eventually gave way to mass adoption and lowest common denominator programming, the Internet, once niche, has given a means for narcissists, sciolists, and other bad actors to carve out an unsuspecting audience. Taken from the Latin “scius” (knowing) and its diminutive “sciolus” (little knower), the word “sciolist” refers to a pretender towards knowledge – conscious or not. Of c...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861) was one of the best poets of the 19th century, yet remains little known today and even less read. At a time when feminist literary criticism (among other relevant lenses) is ascendant, how did Barrett Browning go from a much-admired writer to one that is neglected in favor of her literary inferiors? In ArtiFact #22, Jessica Schneider, Ezekiel Yu, and Alex S...

Taking up Mark Twain’s mantle, then expanding upon it, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was one of the greatest comic writers to have ever lived. His best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five, features everything from sci-fi to timeless political comment, thus overshadowing his other great works. One of these is 1986’s Galapagos, a novel which uses Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, as well as Kurt Vonne...

Like cinema, photography is a recent art form which has had to “prove itself” to a skeptical audience. After Louis Daguerre created the daguerreotype, photographers grew increasingly sophisticated, experimental, and art-minded, and soon a photographic language developed. Early photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Robert Demachy were surprisingly modern, while contemporary photographers, like Fa...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861) was one of the best poets of the 19th century, yet remains little known today and even less read. At a time when feminist literary criticism (among other relevant lenses) is ascendant, how did Barrett Browning go from an almost universally admired writer to one that is neglected in favor of her literary inferiors? In ArtiFact #19, Joel Parrish and Alex Sher...

Eva Schubert is a singer-songwriter, poet, and historian from Canada with several full-length albums, plus an upcoming record that was finished just weeks ago. In this conversation, Alex and Eva discuss growing up and growing into poetry, concepts of self-identity, the fears and imperatives surrounding human creativity, art as competition and communication, Eva’s thoughts as she writes her lyrics,...

As Alex Sheremet and Ethan Pinch argue, Woody Allen has been falling out of favor for a long time now – and not only for the more obvious and superficial reasons. Critics charge him with indulging a Pygmalion complex, by which he lives out his androcentric fantasies through his films, crafting the very same women he has an interest in, then letting them loose upon the screen. There are issues with...

Over the last few years, we’ve heard that white people ought to “shut up and listen” when it comes to questions of race and racism. Yet Dan Schneider’s 2005 book, Show & Tell: A White Man’s Antiphonal Primer on Race, argues the exact opposite: that understanding white psychology, white leverage and material advantages is the key to unlocking all else. As he writes in the text, racism, to black Ame...

In 1992, Edward P. Jones published what might very well be his best work of fiction: Lost in the City, a short story collection that deals with (mostly) black characters in Washington, D.C., set between the 1950s and 1990s. Primarily working through understatement, an amalgamation of poetic and prosaic style, and competing POVs, many of these characters could have been of any race, dealing with hi...

Taking up Mark Twain's mantle, then expanding upon it, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was one of the greatest comic writers to have ever lived. His best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five, features everything from sci-fi to timeless political comment, and has overshadowed his other great works. One of these is 1972's Breakfast of Champions, a novel Kurt Vonnegut had abandoned several times, even as it r...

Alex is joined by painter Ethan Pinch to discuss a variety of topics: growing up on the precipice of the Internet’s mainstreaming, the role that media censorship (and thus self-censorship) play in everyday decisions, the Golden Age of rap music, Alex’s rap-to-politics-to-art pipeline, NFTs vs. Abstract Expressionism, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s absurdist film “Satan’s Brew”, and Clement Greenberg’s...

Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist who’s written a number of pop science classics: The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and more. In 2011, he waded into the culture (if not political) debates with Better Angels of our Nature, a text whose basic premise – that the world has been getting more peaceful for millennia, and that the advent of a powerful state can be credited h...

Taking up Mark Twain's mission, then greatly expanding upon it, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was one of the best comic writers to have ever lived. His best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five, features everything from sci-fi to dramedy to timeless political comment, and has overshadowed his other great works. One of these is 1963’s black comedy, Cat’s Cradle, a 127-chapter novel split across a mere ~30...

Charles R. Johnson (b. 1948) is a scholar, cartoonist, and writer who approaches literature from the Buddhist tradition. His best-known novels – Middle Passage and Oxherding Tale – offer a unique philosophical twist on slave narratives that go well beyond ‘redemptive’ and Abolitionist writing, and have still remained fresh decades after publication. Oxherding Tale, especially, is a highly dense, c...

The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 1200 BCE, Standard Babylonian) is based on Gilgamesh of Uruk, a historical king subject to centuries of cult-worship and mythmaking before his exploits were written down. Although this was not unlike the fate of many ancient rulers, the Epic of Gilgamesh separates itself by its poetic modernity and psychological complexity. In this video, Joel Parrish and Alex Sheremet di...

Joel Parrish and I are joined by Ethan Pinch, a painter and art critic from the UK, for an interview (and debate) on his perspectives. In previous videos and comments, the 3 of us took some divergent approaches to visual art, with Ethan distinguishing “meaning” from “interpretation”. Ethan’s video (and my specific comments under the video) can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN9k5YH...

John Williams (1922 – 1994) is best remembered today for his 1965 novel, STONER. Mostly ignored during his lifetime, the book has become a cult classic after being re-issued in 2006 by the New York Review of Books. But is the novel worthy of its more hyperbolic praise (“perfect”, “almost perfect”, “the most beautiful book in the world”)? Is the text misogynistic, as claimed by the feminist literar...

Leonard Shlain (1937 - 2009) was a surgeon, inventor, and author whose 1991 book "Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light" shaped much of our artistic thinking. Shlain’s core argument is: the great (visual) artists are visionaries who are able to presage discoveries in other fields by cultivating their own, more individualistic work. But how can we actually use Leonard Shlain’s t...

In ArtiFact #5, Alex and Joel are joined by Dan Schneider to discuss his picaresque novel, The Custodian's B****. You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45J0Upz1_x0 Read the latest writing from automachination: https://automachination.com Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com Dan's website: http://cosmoetica.com Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ip...

In ArtiFact #4, Joel Parrish and I discuss growing up religious, the literary questions surrounding the Bible's Ecclesiastes, and other works of art by Rembrandt, Countee Cullen, and Robinson Jeffers. You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWgEDn4TXIY Read the latest writing from automachination: https://automachination.com Joel's website: https://p...

ArtiFact #3: Art & Art's Object | Alex Sheremet, Dan Schneider In this episode of ArtiFact, Alex Sheremet and poet, critic, and novelist Dan Schneider discuss the foundations of art. Unfortunately, tech issues cut the conversation short, but there is ~10 minutes of episode outtakes near the end. You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xse5XbhH7aE Rea...

In the first episode of ArtiFact, Alex Sheremet and co-host Joel Parrish discuss art and artists in light of Abraham Maslow's classic text, "Toward A Psychology of Being" (1962). This discussion can also be viewed on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFUooBvJAOo Read the latest writing from automachination: https://automachination.com Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com Mus...