Zoe Roller

I was initially saddened by the news of J.D. Salinger's passing, but this sadness was quickly replaced by uncertainty. His books meant the world to me a few years ago, as I'm sure they did to countless high school kids, and popularity with teenagers is inherently somewhat suspect. Rereading Franny and Zooey this weekend left me dismayed by the message and tone of his work. This ambivalence has been beautifully described elsewhere, so I won't linger on my distaste for Franny, or the smarminess of the conclusion. The unseemly urge to critique the dead reminded me of a couple of great essays written and regarding recently deceased writers. It is a bit disrespectful to memorialize Salinger with a harsh review, but I find the clash of literary heavyweights endearing and impressive. Discussion and criticism are crucial to literature. John Updike's third to last paragraph captures exactly what I hate about Salinger, and inclines me to forgive some of what I hate about Updike himself. This pairing doesn't give Salinger a chance to defend himself, but I think David Foster Wallace's hilariously accurate appraisal deflates Updike and evens the score. His essay also gives us reaons to be grateful that Salinger didn't produce much, especially at the end of his life.

Anxious Days for the Glass Family, by John Updike

John Updike, Champion Literary Phallocrat, Drops One; Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?, by David Foster Wallace

Dubai's downward spiral, while completely predictable and well-deserved, is still a great disappointment to fans of hubristic architectural spectacles like myself. The opening of the Burj Dubai is cold comfort as stocks sink faster than the artificial islands of the Palm. Abu Dhabi's chastening bailout means that Dubai's future, if it has one, lies in the safe, predictable gaudiness seen all over the Persian Gulf. Dubai was certainly reprehensible in many ways, and inherently doomed to fail, but it was one of the most spactacular architectural visions the world has ever seen. I hope its end will be met with regret as well as schadenfreude.

Nursultan Nazarbayev

Thankfully, the void left by Dubai's collapse did not remain empty for long. Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, is vying for Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum's role as the world's most ambitious architectural mastermind. Grandiose cities are not unusual these days; vaguely avant-garde silver towers are popping up everywhere from Shangahi to Mexico City. Astana stands out for the speed of its construction and the sheer exuberance of its architecture. After Kazakhstan gained its independence in 1991, Astana was designated the new capital despite its remote steppe location and forbidding climate. Its population doubled in recent years, and Nazarbayev began constructing a massive governmental complex funded by oil dollars.

Like Sheikh Mohammed, President Nazarbayev shrewdly uses fantasy architecture to draw attention to a hitherto unknown corner of the globe. The ability to envision and construct such a flamboyant array of pyramids, palaces, and gilded pillars is more impressive than any display of might, and fits Astana's founding principles of religious understanding, nonviolence, and equality. I'm thrilled that Dubai's magnificence lives on, especially in a city that replaces slave labor with New Age-y spiritual harmony.

This is the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation. It contains houses of worship for many denominations, an opera house, and a museum of Kazakh culture.

It glows at night!

Bayterek, the city's most famous landmark.

The top of the tower surveys the city, as well as offering visitors the opportunity to place their hands in Nazarbayev's golden handprint!

However, doing so does not grant access to the presidential palace.

Enterntainment center designed by Sir Norman Foster; intended to be a gigantic transparent tent covering a portion of the city.

I will continue to mourn for Dubai, but Astana gives me hope for the future of fantasy architecture (at least until its economy crashes).

A Swiss shoe store owner, outraged by the government's recent ban on the construction of minarets, built a makeshift minaret on his chimney. The minaret, made of wood and plastic spraypainted gold, is meant as a "message of peace and tolerance". Nonetheless, Guillaume Morand has already received racist insults from his neighbors.

I hope weill continue to see such peaceful and creative resistance to the minaret ban. Here is a link to the article:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6954014.ece

Finding the McKee Gallery requires navigating the chaos of Fifth Avenue at Christmastime: a colossal snowflake suspended by frail guywires hovers menacingly above the seething masses of fur-hatted dowagers, while the hideously out of touch Louis Vuitton window mocks the unemployed with visions of international travel. Once inside, however, the vulgarity of couture is replaced a different sort of luxury: a spacious gallery filled with small Philip Guston paintings.

Guston's late figurative paintings, much maligned by affronted Abstract Expressionists when they premiered, have never been convincingly explained by critics. His realm of cartoon Klansmen, shoes, and cigarettes is usually dismissed as playful formal experimentation or spiritual transvestitism, but neither captures the strange power of the series. The uniformly tiny canvases in the show provide an insight into the process of transubstantiation at play. Guston transmitted his inner world directly through the paint; the pinkish-gray background of the images is the lining of his brain. Even cityscapes are interior, contained by the physicality of the paint and devoid of sky.

The recombinations of a starkly reduced set of images and colors suggest obssessive late night brooding. Guston reproduced the cyclical, insular workings of his mind, repetitively depicting a thought he could only face through the mysterious hood of the Klansman.

The show is up until New Years, at 745 Fifth Ave: http://mckeegallery.com/

Don't Flee the Art Market! captures the mood that the New Museum's Generational show aimed for but often spoiled with overly topical pieces. The show, curated by Paulina Bebecka and featuring 300 affordable works by young artists, is fresh and funny. Almost all the pieces are light, even sunny in tone: a kaleidoscope of Busby Berkeley swimmers frolic on a TV set, while a tiny ship sails through a rusty pipe, under the blank gaze of a cut-paper sea captain. Humor does not detract from aesthetic quality, however: even a painting of disembodied dog's mouth is rendered with care. At relatively low prices, Don't Flee the Art Market! is also an ideal source of Chanukah presents. A button and zine table features the always droll mini-art books of James Prez, most for under $10!

Here's a link to the site with directions to the gallery: http://www.postmastersart.com/