I keep coming back to a bit of skewed perspective near the bottom of Kehinde Wiley’s official portrait of Barack Obama, which was unveiled on Monday, during a ceremony at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, D.C. The painting Read More …

  The selfie, that ubiquitous symbol of millennial navel-gazing, is often used as Exhibit A in the argument by older generations that millennials are self-absorbed, narcissistic, and entitled. But is that really the whole picture? As Jia Tolentino pointed out Read More …

There’s a misguided distinction made between movies of political importance and ones of aesthetic merit. In fact, the best political movies are also artistically innovative, because their innovations reflect the place of the filmmaker and the viewer, and of image-making Read More …

My parents’ home, in Umujieze, Nigeria, stands on a hilly plot that has been in our family for more than a hundred years. Traditionally, the Igbo people bury their dead among the living, and the ideal resting place for a Read More …

The fashion world orbits in such a way that autumn sometimes starts in July. A short-sleeved Prada lounge shirt that has recently attracted the rubbernecked gaze of menswear enthusiasts was among the wares that the luxury house introduced for its Read More …

Patrick Melrose is going to be all right. We know this from the final episode of the TV series of that name, itself an adaptation of a string of novels spun from the calamitous life story of its creator, Edward Read More …

A couple of weeks ago, smartly dressed couples and googly-eyed teens filled Shepherd’s Bush Empire, a two-thousand-seat hall nestled in a mostly residential enclave of West London, for a headlining Valentine’s Day performance by the budding singer Jorja Smith. Partners Read More …

There were more homicides in London during February and March than there were in New York City. The count was thirty-seven to thirty-five. The way that the British media presented this information made it sound as if the two cities Read More …

Since the mass shooting on Valentine’s Day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, in which a former student of the school killed seventeen students and staff with a legally acquired semiautomatic rifle, several of the survivors have Read More …

In the film “Day’s End,” the artist Gordon Matta-Clark rides a whale-size piece of corrugated metal as it is hoisted away from the wall from which he just cut it. He’s a young man, age thirty-two. The feat was filmed Read More …