Style

The Sophisticated Kitsch of Blackpink
The London-based Nigerian singer Obongjayar has been steadily drifting toward his distinct sound. Initially discovered by XL Recordings head Richard Russell for a freestyle over the Kendrick Lamar song...
Beauford Delaney’s Light and Faith
Delaney’s style or, more accurately, styles, developed in the course of a long apprenticeship that can read like a novelization of the desperate life of an artist—van Gogh as...
“Cloud” Is a Cautionary Tale of E-Commerce—and the Summer’s Best Action Movie
Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda), the thirtysomething protagonist of the mesmerizing Japanese thriller “Cloud,” is never more content than when he’s in front of his computer. Some will surely relate,...
Justin Bieber’s Messy, Improbable Masterpiece
In the course of Justin Bieber’s nearly twenty-year career, his music has come to be somewhat immaterial to his celebrity. For many, he is an almost Kardashian-like figure, whose...
A New Agnès Varda Exhibition Is an Extension of Her Life’s Work
When Varda shot portraits on location, her practice was both observational and interventionist. She took subjects around town in her car in search of suitably photogenic sites and then...
Can A.I. Find Cures for Untreatable Diseases—Using Drugs We Already Have?
When David Fajgenbaum was a twenty-five-year-old medical student, at the University of Pennsylvania, he started to feel so tired that he could barely stand. Fajgenbaum, a former college quarterback,...
Ryan Davis’s Junk-Drawer Heart
On Easter Sunday, the Louisville-based singer-songwriter Ryan Davis opened a matinée show for Bill Callahan in the assembly room of a former Catholic school in Kingston, New York. Indoor...
Joost Swarte’s “Sunny-Side Up”
For the cover of the July 21, 2025, issue, the artist Joost Swarte portrays how New Yorkers have been feeling in the midst of a heat wave. “The part...
What Do Commercials About A.I. Really Promise?
If a recent crop of commercials touting the benefits of artificial intelligence is any indication, lots of Americans these days feel unduly burdened by the demands of everyday cognition....
Earth’s Poet of Scale
If there was one absence in Burtynsky’s account of our time, however, it was the single greatest result of all that mining, burning, and consuming: the transformation of the...
What Was Paul Gauguin Looking For?
In June, 1891, Paul Gauguin arrived in Tahiti. He was forty-three. With him—according to Sue Prideaux, whose new biography of Gauguin, “Wild Thing,” is the first to appear in...
Conor McPherson’s Reliable Treasure
Conor McPherson’s small 1997 masterwork “The Weir” has been one of the most reliable treasures of the Irish Repertory Theatre. First directed by Ciarán O’Reilly in 2013, revived in...