The Creative Life

By The New Yorker

From The New Yorker’s archive: The artist’s process.

Dealer’s Hand
The New Yorker - Nick Paumgarten
Why are so many people paying so much money for art? Ask David Zwirner. Very important people line up differently from you and me. They don’t want to stand behind anyone else, or to acknowledge wanting
Spot On
The New Yorker - Peter Schjeldahl
Damien Hirst’s global show. The art of Damien Hirst puts me in mind of a New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner, from 1997. One of two vultures on a bare branch argues, “Sure, dead is important. But it has
Eerily Composed
The New Yorker - Rebecca Mead
Nico Muhly’s sonic magic. Nico Muhly, a composer, was bounding through Chinatown, his hands thrust into the pockets of a black jacket, and a too small Icelandic knitted cap pulled halfway down over his
Banksy Was Here
The New Yorker - Lauren Collins
The invisible man of graffiti art. The British graffiti artist Banksy likes pizza, though his preference in toppings cannot be definitively ascertained. He has a gold tooth. He has a silver tooth. He a
The Misfit
The New Yorker - Judith Thurman
Rei Kawakubo is a Japanese avant-gardist of few words, and she changed women’s fashion. Does it really matter what one wears? I sometimes think my life might have been different if I had chosen the other
Forty-one False Starts
The New Yorker - Janet Malcolm
How does the painter David Salle know when to stop? How does the author know where to start? It’s all a question of process. There are places in New York where the city’s anarchic, unaccommodating spirit,