Best New Yorker Onward and Upward with the Arts
Onward and Upward with the Arts features essays on artistic endeavors, creative processes, and cultural movements across disciplines.
34 picks · 1936–2023
Top authors: Pauline Kael (4), Lillian Ross (2), Arthur Lubow (2)
“A Strange Loop,” a story about a Black, gay theatre nerd, was a surprise success. In his latest work, “White Girl in Danger,” Jackson reimagines the soap opera, Hilton Als writes.
An American undergoes a gruelling apprenticeship to a Japanese master, Robert Moor writes.
He’s in his eighties. How does he keep it fresh? David Remnick reports.
The second season of Lyonne’s Netflix series explores inherited trauma with a riff on “Back to the Future,” Rachel Syme writes.
Alex Ross on Antonio Salieri, who was falsely cast as Mozart’s murderer and music’s sorest loser but is now getting a fresh hearing.
Adrian Chen writes about the Nigerian news-satire series “The Other News,” which is modelled on “The Daily Show” and aims to empower viewers to defend democratic principles.
Michael Schulman on Lynn Nottage’s play “Sweat,” a tough yet empathetic portrait of the America that came undone.
Sarah Larson on Billy Eichner, the creator of “Billy on the Street” and the star of “Difficult People,” which was created by Julie Klausner.
Rebecca Mead on “Hamilton,” a hip-hop, pop, and rap musical about the Founding Fathers, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which premièred at the Public Theatre.
Ta-Nehisi Coates drives around Los Angeles with the rapper and m.c. Metal Face Doom—formerly Daniel Dumile—of “Operation: Doomsday” fame.
Calvin Tomkins spends time with Philippe Petit, the high-wire artist who walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, in New York.
Roger Angell on growing up in a black-and-white world of cocktail parties, psychiatrists, talking dogs, and the deeply other.
John Lahr on how the tap dancer Savion Glover moved the rhythms of the street onto the American stage.
Arthur Lubow describes Wolfe’s attempt to restore charismatic leadership to the Public Theatre following Joseph Papp’s death, in 1991.
Arthur Lubow on the playwright haunted by unconditional love, guilt of survival, and Roy Cohn.
Joan Juliet Buck’s 1992 profile of Daniel Day-Lewis: “The impression he gives is of transition, flux.”
Kennedy Fraser profiles Josephine Esther Mentzer, the American businesswoman behind Estée Lauder, the billion-dollar, family-held cosmetic company, at work on the marketing for her new perfume, Beautiful.
Calvin Trillin’s 1985 report on the Memphis in May International Barbecue Cooking Contest, the country’s preëminent barbecuing competition.
Hendrik Hertzberg on their quixotic battle to stay off network television.
Part two of Pauline Kael's 1971 essay on “Citizen Kane,” Orson Welles, and Herman J. Mankiewicz.
Pauline Kael's 1971 essay on “Citizen Kane,” Orson Welles, and Herman J. Mankiewicz.
Francis Steegmuller’s 1969 profile of Barbette, the trapeze artist who always performed his first acts dressed in a ball gown and served as a muse for the writer Jean Cocteau.
Jacob R. Brackman on Mike Nichols’ film, starring Dustin Hoffman.
Pauline Kael on Arthur Penn’s 1967 film, “Bonnie and Clyde,” starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.
In the chopped-up world of television, where old movies now proliferate, the past has become meaninglessly present, Pauline Kael writes.
Renata Adler on radio and the history of rock and roll.
Katharine S. White pays tribute to the English gardener Gertrude Jekyll, “the beautifier of England,” while seed shopping for the autumn season.
James Thurber on the writing and adaptation of “The Wings of the Dove.”
From 1959: A. J. Liebling on French food and memorable meals with Yves Mirande, one of the last around-the-clock gastronomes.
Truman Capote on the Leningrad première of the opera “Porgy and Bess.”
In Part II of her 1952 series, Lillian Ross observes the on-set production of John Huston’s film “The Red Badge of Courage”—and the tensions between great art and big business in Hollywood moviemaking.
Lillian Ross on the making of the classic film about the Civil War.
ONWARD & UPWARD WITH THE ARTS about the early Model T Fords and their tricks. Only one page in the current catalogue of Sears, Roebuck is devoted to …