The making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville.

One man’s quest to ride the strangest wave.

A 1993 profile of Ricky Jay, world-class sleight-of-hand conjurer who rarely performs (and never for children), historian of unusual entertainments and confidence scams, bibliomaniac.

Stan Lee supercharged Marvel Comics into one of the most important cultural forces on the planet. But how much credit does he really deserve?

I used to believe the art world was at war with itself, that money was fighting art and vice versa. But I’ve been living in my own ambivalence about things for a decade now, or more, and I’m starting to think it’s not a war but a new equilibrium state, defined by that ambivalence.

Making ends meet in Iowa City.

A conversation between Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and William Burroughs.

It didn't matter if these clubs were in Cleveland, Portland, Corpus Christi or Baton Rouge—if it was a nightclub, the owners were the Mob. For a good forty years the Mob controlled American show business.

Should art be a battleground for social justice?

On growing up, writing, and succumbing to bullshit.

“The palace doors flew open. It was him. It was Rick Owens, the American-born designer known to his fans as the Lord of Darkness.”

On the relationship between rivalry and creativity.

Frankie Manning was the greatest swing dancer alive. Then the world forgot about him.

How a ragtag group of artists launched an art-entertainment empire.

“The ‘hard’–science fiction writers dismiss everything except, well, physics, astronomy, and maybe chemistry. Biology, sociology, anthropology—that’s not science to them, that’s soft stuff. They’re not that interested in what human beings do, really. But I am. I draw on the social sciences a great deal. I get a lot of ideas from them, particularly from anthropology. When I create another planet, another world, with a society on it, I try to hint at the complexity of the society I’m creating, instead of just referring to an empire or something like that.”

From 1968-1973, the three teenage Wiggin sisters, guided by a domineering father, played their strange music at New Hampshire ballrooms and recorded a single album. The Philosophy of the World LP goes for over $500 today, but the intervening decades have not been kind to the Wiggins.

The strange life of a 16-year-old model.

Is the Chinese government behind one of the boldest art-crime waves in history?

On the life and career of Richard Pryor, as he neared the end of both.

“It takes this huge amount of will and energy for anything to happen to you.”

An argument on the meaning of Cubism settled.

After two decades spent making movies, including last year’s record-
breaking Girls Trip, Malcolm D. Lee wishes he could stop paying his dues.

The first female Asian-American playwright on Broadway takes aim at identity and watches the audience squirm.

“The academy’s prestige has been shattered, probably forever,” by allegations of sexual harassment and corruption.

A profile of Mister Rogers.