“I want the viewer to become part of the scene through memory and experience.” An interview with Pittsburgh painter Ron Donoughe.
A Dialog With Place: An Interview with Ron Donoughe
Storyteller and Gentleman: What is the Measure of Mike Ejeagha’s Influence on Highlife Music in Nigeria?
“Folklore rules the mythical landscape of Mike Ejeagha’s music; his lyrical calibrations are more about the prosody of folksongs and folktales; his language of the music is Igbo, and the purpose is didactic,” Brilliant essay about Mike Ejeagha by Chimezie Chika.
Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee
“Doris Lee’s example shows us that humor can be as legitimate as seriousness, simplicity as valid as complexity, joy as rational a response to one’s time as despair — and that they can and do exist together at the same time.”
Spirit of the Beehive: Surviving Tyrannies
“The night is the time when the order of the day loses its grip, the time when spirits come out. Ana calls the Spirit again, repeating her name: ‘Soy Ana’, and we hear the sound of the train as if the Spirit has responded.” A beautiful essay by Magda Mariamidze
March Issue, 2024
A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.
Letter From the Editor, March 2024: In the Pigeon Spaces
Late winter ramblings from the pigeon spaces of the mind.
Teeming Life: Killer of Sheep
“Burnett’s cinematic poetry arises from the hundred small “sensory-motor disconnections” of every damn day, gaps and dislocations from which a sad but resilient emotion flows.”
Mother Courage and Her Children
“I see that. In one sense it’s a war because of all the cheating, plunder, rape, and so forth, but it’s different from all other wars because it’s a religious war and therefore pleasing unto God.”
George Bellows in New York: Rambles and Excavations
As a flâneur of insatiable curiosity, he abandoned the main boulevards for the lushness of Riverside Park, the crowds at Madison Square, the excavation site for Pennsylvania Station, the kids at play on Coney Island, the private clubs where illegal boxing could be staged for paying members, and the “river rats” of the East River.
Beneath the Streets — Helen Levitt’s Subway Photographs
“Helen Levitt’s pictures haunt like intimate ghosts – ever present, never forceful, curious, receptive.”