by Daniel Brown Two recently published books, one fiction, and one non-fiction, have recently come out, and both of them are utterly outstanding in trying to explain what is happening to our soldiers when they come back from either Iraq or Afghanistan. Phil Klay’s Redeployment is a work of unmitigated brilliance, and presents a powerful […]
I would like to thank everyone who came to, or helped with, the aeqai benefit party at Marta Hewett Gallery on April 17th. The event was highly successful, and generated 125% more money than last year’s. We also want to thank all the artists who were kind enough to donate their work for our silent […]
AEQAI SPRING BENEFIT Thursday, April 17th 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm AEQAI, one of the fastest growing online art journals in America, offers critical reviews, informative profiles and features, and insightful essays and analyses. Join us as we celebrate four years of success and help to support another year of critical reviews, informative reports and […]
by Daniel Brown As the search for a new director of the Art Museum continues, we have been made aware that the museum board places high priority on the director being part of the international art scene, known internationally. I wish that the board would be more specific in telling us why that is a […]
by Daniel Brown The Apartment, a new novel by Greg Baxter, is a very compelling, beautifully crafted and written book wherein all the action takes place on one single day in an unnamed Eastern European capital, most likely but not necessarily, Prague. The American narrator is a forty-one year old former Navy man with experience […]
by Daniel Brown Lucy Her eyes of sapphire blue Challenge you under quizzical brows. Like a Vermont wildflower, She was tough and unspoiled. Plucked, She might fail to survive. The girl from those green hills Wanted to try art school. She was our daily server At an elegant small mountain resort. I helped her to […]
The March issue of aeqai has just posted, and it’s a very large issue, full of reviews and essays and profiles and Letters from other cities. We are trying to put these different categories of article into groups, and the headings should help our readers go directly to what they want to read, and, too, […]
by Daniel Brown We are regularly informed that the arts have become big business; the investment potential of a work of art has become far more important in late capitalist culture than whether the art is any good, what it says, how it’s made, or whether it matters. It may surprise people under 50 that […]
by Daniel Brown Gary Shteyngart is a veritable force of nature, a whirlwind of words, anxiety, mania. Having spent the first seven years of his life in the old Soviet Union, in Leningrad, he and his parents emigrated to America during Carter’s presidency. Carter traded grain to the Soviet Union in trade for letting millions […]
by Daniel Brown In the past two years or so, America has generated some fantastic new young writers, among them Amber Dermott, Jim Gavin, Jamie Quatro, Eleanor Henderson, Chad Harwick all come to mind. Now, there is the remarkable Jenny Offill, she of the unfortunate name, with her second novel, Dept. of Speculation. When a […]
by Daniel Brown Our family’s car drove by A small white sign Bordered in black Placed by the side of the road Covered with masses of wildflowers Vermont, it said Green mountains dusted the horizon At fourteen, my soul lept Towards the home I’d just found.
The February issue of aeqai has just been posted, and we hope that you find some of our new essays informative. We are attempting to link the reviews we write with other issues going on in our community in the visual arts, with how the city is or isn’t integrating the arts into the wider […]
by Daniel Brown Aaron Betsky’s imminent departure as Director of The Cincinnati Art Museum brings up questions, in my mind, that have less to do with the pros and cons of his directorship, than of the methods by which directors are hired here in the first place. I believe that the processes have been flawed […]
by Daniel Brown Edward de Waal’s award winning memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes, published about three years ago, traces the ownership of a large group of Japanese netsukes from its original owner, the author’s great-great uncle, to the author himself. De Waal uses the history of these objects to explore and discover his own […]
Best of Fiction 2013 Daniel Brown 2013 was an odd year for new fiction: months of mediocre offerings were mitigated by the occasional novel of excellence and/or excitement. Although I can almost always fill this annual list with at least ten new offerings, and will again now, 2013’s dominant themes were frequently redundant and/or too […]
Letter from the Editor The December aeqai is now ready for your holiday reading; we apologize that it’s a couple of days late. December/the holiday period is an odd one in the visual arts (we have no “Nutcracker”, for example, though we do recommend the annual holiday show at The Taft Museum of Art; it’s […]
Book Review by Daniel Brown Dave Eggers is one of the world’s most fascinating contemporary writers, as he is also a political activist of the most noble sort. His many activities which enhance the literary arts are all based out of Northern California, and includes a series of books about oral history violations of human […]
Letter from the Editor The November aeqai is mostly ready–columns by Jonathon Kamholtz on the French alabaster sculpture show at The Dayton Art Institute and by Keith Banner on the Peter Halley print show at Solway Gallery will be posted early in the week, so check those two additional columns out before you zone out […]
Book Reviews By Daniel Brown I suspect that one could take Jenni Fagan‘s prose, or chunks of it, from her debut novel The Panopticon, and make it into poetry and/or song lyrics with ease. Not only has Fagan written a compelling novel about lost youth in London–those children born to parents who are drug addicts, […]
Letter from the Editor The October issue of aeqai has just been posted, and we think that you will find this issue our very strongest yet, indicative of both the artistic and literary talent in this region. As we have noted more frequently, the variety and complexity of the exhibitions offered has gotten more sophisticated and […]
Book Review By Daniel Brown Years elapse between novels by Alice McDermott, one of America’s most accomplished novelists. It’s been seven years since her last offering, and her new novel, Someone, is one of those occasional perfect pieces of fiction that you read slowly, marvelling at the simplicity of her writing style, her easy narrative […]
Letter From The Editor The fall art season has begun, with exhibitions of high quality all over the region. Aeqai is back with its monthly reviews, profiles, and issues, following our one summer issue. Our September issue is the largest we have ever posted, reflecting the growth in numbers of venues showing art here. We have also, […]
David Johnson: In Memoriam Many of us were shocked and horrified to learn of David Johnson’s tragic and untimely death last week. David was our colleague, a superb teacher, curator, educator, who enriched the visual arts with his knowledge, hard work and frequent wit. I first met him way back when Carl Solway was developing what […]
Book Review: Transatlantic, by Colum McCann Transatlantic, by Colum McCann, is a contemporary literary masterpiece. In a year where most fiction has been ordinary, his accomplishment seems that much greater. McCann, l like other living Irish writers (Coim Toibin and Edna O’Brien come immediately to mind) has that true Irish gift for language, and for […]
Letter from the Editor The summer issue of aeqai combines the months of July and August. and is now available to our readers. We assure you that many of the shows recently opened are some of the best of the year: once upon a time, in the fifties, for example, most visual arts programming was […]
Book Review by Daniel Brown Meg Wolitzer, whose often sharp and astute novels about contemporary urban women have brought her to the attention of serious fiction readers, has written her finest novel to date, The Interestings. It’s a very long novel, and follows the lives of six friends and their outer circle throughout their lives, […]
Letter From The Editor We are pleased to let our readers know that the June aeqai is now posted online. This issue rounds out the art season, which we think of as similar to the academic year – approximately from September to June. We will resume our coverage in the summer, with our one July/August issue, and […]
Interview with Martha Otero Editor’s note: Aeqai freqently receives art announcements from galleries, non-profits, museums and individual artists from all parts of the globe. Some galleries, like Martha Otero in Los Angeles, seem to show only the most elegant work, conceptually strong, beautifully crafted, and the vision of the gallery comes from its owner, Martha Otero. She […]
Book Reviews By Daniel Brown The Woman Upstairs, by Claire Messud, is important and refreshing on a number of levels. Messud, whose first novel The Emperor’s Children chronicles the lives of Milleniums and their very achieving parents, mainly in New York City, does such a good job at highlighting the lives of these Helicopter Parents […]
Letter from the Editor The May issue is a few days late, so that all the aeqai writers could have a breather after the benefit party that The Carnegie hosted for us on Thursday, May l6. We want to thank Katie Brass, Carnegie’s Director, for providing the space and the hospitality for aeqai, and are happy to […]
Book Reviews by Daniel Brown The acclaim surrounding Joyce Carol Oates‘ newest novel, The Accursed, is much deserved: it is the best novel of 2013 to date and replete with complexities yet utterly readable–it is actually a keep-you-up-at-night page-turner, and at nearly 675 pages, that’s a lot of pages to turn. Oates is probably the […]
Letter From The Editor The April issue of aeqai contains a good number of reviews of shows in this region, but also a few more essays and letters. Many aeqai writers are interested in pursuing issues which may grow out of reviews they write , or of general issues and ideas in the general area […]
The March issue of aeqai should inform all our readers and members of the arts communities here how to get a good handle on the directions into which aeqai is moving. We hope that you like the mix of articles that will become more regular and familiar as we meet visual artists and writers in other cities […]
Magical Realism Editor’s Note: Deborah Morrissey-McGoff’s new paintings are included in a group show at The Miller Gallery in Hyde Park titled “Local Artists”. Aeqai is thus reprinting a feature that Editor Daniel Brown wrote for The Artist’s Magazine on Morrissey-McGoff’s paintings . www.artistsmagazine.com – September 2010 Influenced by Italian Renaissance masters and naïve painters, […]
Camille Paglia, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars Book review by Daniel Brown Camille Paglia is herself a cultural necessity, an icon of exceptional brilliance, a no-nonsense analyst of Western culture and ideas of the first rank. She trucks no theoretical hijinks, refuses labels, isn’t associated with any particular school […]
Letter from the Editor Greater Cincinnati visual arts venues returned in earnest in February, with the holidays laid to rest. The February issue of aeqai should reflect the wealth of exhibitions, the variety of talent, and the very different types of art being made and shown, both in our own region and nationally. Aeqai is […]
Book Review: The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg ~ Daniel Brown Early in the new year, a young novelist’s new , or sometimes first, book is published and surprises me with its quality; last year, it was Nell Freudenberger’s The Newlyweds, a splendid look at an American man and a Bangladeshi woman who meet over the […]
Letter from the Editor The January aeqai is full of reviews, as well as a few new regular columns and some essays. A lot of institutions and most commercial galleries hold their December or fall shows through the first few weeks of January, as the remains of the holidays (bills, in most cases) wend their […]
End of the Year Best Fiction of 2012 Although The New York Times Books Review’s editors found 2012 to be an exceptionally exciting year for new fiction, I found the opposite to be the case: 2012 was one of the weakest years , overall, for new fiction in over a decade. Of course, good and some […]
We are pleased to bring you the December issue of aeqai, probably our largest issue ever, and perhaps our most comprehensive. One of our primary goals is to cover as many aspects of the visual arts communities in Greater Cincinnati as we can, in each issue. This aeqai again reflects the richness and diversity of programming and […]
Happy Thanksgiving Short Story Scene by Margaret Cummins The small West Side neighborhood is quiet in the early morning of November 22nd, 2010. The dark green Subarus bump down Cherry Avenue, on a mission to pick up the last-minute necessities for the lavish dinners taking place that evening. A woman runs by with her black […]
May We Be Forgiven, by A.M. Homes The contemporary family saga novel has been reinvigorated by writers’ awareness of the complexities of the merged family. Typically, remarriages force children who may barely know one another to live under the same roof as they adjust to parents’ new partners, new schedules, demands, “lifestyles”. How such children of […]
Dear Readers, Fotofocus provides the content for nearly all of the October issue of AEQAI. This first celebration of photography’s central place in contemporary art and culture is responsible for approximately 75 exhibitions in the Greater Cincinnati region. The shows range from the regionally acclaimed, the nationally, and even internationally renowned artists. AEQAI is one […]
Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon When a great writer like Michael Chabon disappoints, the disappointment is that much greater, because our expectations are high about virtually anything he writes, and because contemporary American fiction has been so strikingly poor in 2012. The real Telegraph Avenue became infamous in the l960s as a street in Berkely, […]
Letter from the Editor ÆQAI resumes its regular monthly edition with this September issue. We welcome everyone to a new and fresh fall art season, and are pleased to offer a number of reviews, essays, profiles and special guest columns. The entire visual arts community is now preparing for the region-wide celebration of photography, fotofocus, […]
Editor’s note: Since this is the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, and since her fame continues to grow ( a new twist includes some feminist writers claiming her as one of theirs ex post facto), aeqai is reprinting an article I wrote in 2004 and was picked up by Weston (Conn.) Monthly, where the […]
The much–and deservedly–praised English writer Martin Amis, newly moved to Brookyln (his wife is American), offers his latest novel, Lionel ASBO: State of England. Although it’s nearly impossible to critique or argue the quality of Amis’ prose, and one delights in his splendid word choices and tight structures, this novel falls flat and is a […]
I remember when Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, and Julian Barnes were still the angry young men of English literature. All three are now in their sixties, and their early promise has more than panned out. But England is still giving us young writers of great merit; two of them, Jo Baker and Harriet Lane, have […]
By: Daniel Brown Uniting gestural abstraction and calligraphic mark making, Frank Satogata celebrates nature’s beautiful juxtapositions. TWO APPROACHES to the globalized art market, though widely different, have evolved on parallel tracks. On the one hand, there’s an internationalized art market predicated on our consumerist culture and the consequent adoration of and obsession with American […]
By: Daniel Brown Donna Talerico wows us, once again, with her new paintings of France, currently on view at Greenwich House Gallery in O’Bryonville. Her annual trip to France has been generating some of the most energetic and engaging paintings in this region, where she lives. Talerico manages to be both an Impressionist and an […]
Book Review By: Daniel Brown Paul Theroux may best be known as America’s most engaging travel writer; the books that first brought him to my attention were The Great Railway Bizarre and The Old Patagonian Express, which he wrote almost four decades ago. Like Joan Didion, Theroux’s career includes writing both non-fiction and fiction, and […]
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Review by Daniel Brown Texan Ben Fountain has written the best novel of 2012 to date. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is an anti war book for our times; its M.A.S.H – like black humor mitigates the underlying horror of the Iraq war. Fountain proposes that ten soldiers, currently fighting […]
Dear Readers, We are happy to bring you the May 2012 issue of ÆQAI, your journal of the visual arts in Greater Cincinnati. Although we are nearing the end of the art season, which runs parallel to the school calendar, there is no lessening of interesting shows or of a richness in the overall tapestry […]
Still life is the most problematic—and most abstract—of genres, as the paintings seem to lack the grandeur associated with landscapes or with figures that can assume allegorical or mythological-religious resonance. Because the objects depicted are taken from ordinary life, however, they intimately speak to our daily existence and to our interior lives. Sheldon Tapley revitalizes, […]
Possibly because England is such a small and relatively isolated country, the literature that predominates, both past and present seem to be the relatively modest-in-scope psychological drama. Many of England’s finest living novelists clearly continue to be influenced by the great Jane Austen, the novel’s greatest depicter of manners and morals in all of literature. […]
André Aciman was born into an upper middle class-to-rich Jewish family in Alexandria, Egypt. He has described the nearly Chekovian life that his extended family lived in the waning days of a tolerant and multicultural Egypt. As anti-Semitism rose in Egypt, a manipulative political movement meant to target “outsiders” and “foreigners”, various members of the […]
Every now and again, the literary and/or publishing worlds discover or rediscover an author, living or dead, whose writings are so exceptional that they change the way we read, understand the world, and reexamine the act of writing itself. Three or four years ago, I read Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives, in which this recently dead […]
Every month, ÆQAI will be presenting one book review, generally contemporary fiction, for our readers’ edification and enjoyment . A lot of back and forth occurs between and amongst novels, the world of film, and visual culture in general. We begin this series with Love and Shame and Love, a novel by Peter Orner (Little, […]
Editor’s Note: The following is reprinted from the October 2011 issue of The Artist’s Magazine. Stacie Seuberling’s landscapes may seem like sets for Romantic ballets; the movement of trees equates to the movement of bodies in space; the lines convey form against curtains of color. Smaller in scale than a stage set, however, their magic […]
The year 2011 in new fiction began as bleakly as any in recent memory. By the end of summer, only two or three novels seemed even to be somewhat good – and we need to watch literary/politically correct trends, to make certain we’re not simply reading what’s been declared good for us/for the victimized but […]
The Artists of “Narrative Figuration” discuss their work. Editor’s Note: Because Daniel Brown is both Editor of Aeqai and the guest curator for the exhibition “Narrative Figuration” at The Weston Gallery in the Aronoff Center, it is Aeqai’s policy that our reviewers not review his shows. Therefore, we have asked the five artists in the […]
Ted Borman at The Miller Gallery Ted Borman’s astonishing new paintings, Ghost Clouds, are his most evolved work to date. They manage to combine rich references to art history and to contemporary popular culture wittily, intelligently, and seamlessly. Selecting a deliberately faux-naif painting style, Borman’s work is reminiscent of other artists prone to radical reductionism and […]
At The Weston Gallery Todd Reynolds’ oils’ and watercolors’ most salient contemporary features depict an America in which chronic violence is implied, hope is in abeyance. His quasi-narrative, usually large scale paintings rip the niceties and pieties off of middle class life, portraying, instead, a near-Surreal world of low-life characters, drug-induced or -inspired people in […]
