N+1, the most important literary magazine of our time, now has a baby sister, the Observer notes! It's an art journal called Paper Monument, and it is totally against stuff! It is a project of Dushko Petrovich (Yale '97!) and Roger White (Yale '97!); both of them are not particularly good painters. But! The state of art magazines is pretty much "really bad." So this really is good news!
Hilarious:
In the messianic first issue, which shipped to bookstores last week with an initial print run of 2,500 copies, the editors resolved to put forth something more than a buyer's guide for the very rich--to offer, instead, a form of art criticism that rejects the language of publicity and avoids fossilized jargon pilfered carelessly from the academy. "There are enemies out there," is the magazine's alluring central conceit, "but we are stronger than them and we have some thoughts."(That quote's the Observer paraphrasing, by the way. Also: Mmm, thoughts.)
But, says the Observer: "[T]here's a problem, which becomes clearer in the issue's two other 'polemics'—the first an angry rant titled 'New York Must End,' in which D.C.-based Christopher Hsu comes out against 'ethnic' restaurants; the second a sharp denunciation of rock music in which John Daniels declares that 'if your favorite band exists, it is already part of the problem.'"
These vital young contrarians are fun!