COVER STORY
Beauty
Kurt Andersen and his guest, Harvard philosophy professor Elaine Scarry, examine how contemporary artists embrace and reject notions of beauty.

Painting with Pills
For some art critics, calling a painter’s work "beautiful" is a subtle dis while calling a work “decorative” is a total slap in the face. But Fred Tomaselli’s work is decorative. It is also beautiful, smart and provocative. Tomaselli covers his canvases with beautiful arcs, ovals and swirls that he creates with medicine – actual, colorful pills by the thousands. Trey Kay took a closer look the artist and his work.
Go to the James Cohan Gallery website
Go to more of Tomiselli’s work
Purchase Fred Tomaselli

Bigger, Better Beauty
Our culture practically makes a fetish of the beautiful woman—but who decides what is beautiful, or for that matter sexy or feminine? Jocelyn Gonzales asked two photographers why they prefer to depict female bodybuilders.
Go to Andres Serrano at Paula Cooper gallery
Go to Andres Serrano’s website
Go to the Bernice Steinbaum gallery to find more on Deborah Willis
Go to the book, Picturing the Modern Amazons at Amazon
Purchase Objects of Beauty
Purchase Andres Serrano: Big Women

Stormy Music
The composer Lois Vierk names her music after dramatic phenomena, like Jagged Mesa or Demon Star or Simoom, an Arabic name for a powerful wind. So it seemed appropriate that when producer Jonathan Mitchell interviewed her about what makes beautiful music, the forces of nature weighed in with their own opinion.
Go to Lois Vierk’s website
Purchase Kyle Gann’s American Music in the Twentieth Century

SPECIAL GUEST
Elaine Scarry
A professor of aesthetics at Harvard University, Elaine Scarry is the author of On Beauty and Being Just, The Body in Pain, and Dreaming By The Book. Scarry was an editor on Who Defended the Country? A New Democracy Forum on Authoritarian versus Democratic Approaches to National Defense on 9/11.
Purchase On Beauty and Being Just

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Design for the Real World
Sheetrock It doesn’t exactly make anything beautiful, but without it our surroundings would be a lot uglier. Home renovation guru Duo Dickinson sings the praises of the invisible stuff that’s all around us. Literally. Produced by Alexis Schoenberg.

Queer Eye For The TV Guide
This Sunday on The Simpsons, Marge’s sister Patty falls in love and marries a pro golfer. One twist – her new spouse is a woman. This latest pop culture take on the highly charged issue of gay rights comes hot on the heels of the recent controversies over Spongebob Squarepants’ sexuality, and a cartoon rabbit’s visit to a family with two mothers. Kurt Andersen asked the screenwriter Paul Rudnick (Adams’ Family Values, Stepford Wives, Jeffrey) how the portrayal of gays on TV has evolved over the years.
Read the full text
Visit The Simpsons official site
See postcards from the Buster site
Visit a site about portrayals of gay women in the media
Purchase The Stepford Wives

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