Anthony Mackie
November 24, 2008
On paper, actor Anthony Mackie and rap icon Tupac Shakur couldn’t be more different: Mackie is an up-and-coming Hollywood star who grew up in middle-class New -Orleans and is doing films with greats like Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood; Tupac was a gangsta rapper who was raised by a drug-addicted mother and vilified by mainstream America. The upcoming biopic Notorious, about Tupac’s onetime friend and, later, greatest enemy, Notorious B.I.G., exposes the stereotypes surrounding the early hip-hop scene. But the film also shows what a brilliant shape-shifter Mackie is.
Mathew Cerletty
November 23, 2008
In the early 2000s, a young painter emerged on the New York art scene, known for his hauntingly seductive figure paintings of friends and family members, executed in bright, bold colors and often set against elaborate wallpaper motifs. Mathew Cerletty, who shows at Rivington Arms gallery in New York, could have remained his generation’s premier portrait artist. But in the last few years the 28-year-old Wisconsin native went in a completely different direction, creating strangely confrontational sign and word pieces that range from bizarre koans like “The Feeling is Mutual” to “Diet Coke” logos. Turns out, the words are just as autobiographical.
William Eggleston
November 21, 2008
The legend who brought a rebel color spectrum to the staid black-and-white art of photography swears he’s never been in a fight, that all his drinking buddies are dead, and he just may be color-blind.