Contributor
Rennie McDougall
Rennie McDougall is a writer based in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, frieze.com, Guernica, T Magazine, the Village Voice, and other publications. He received an Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism in 2018. He was also the archival researcher on Stonewall Forever, a digital monument commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
Fashion and Art: Madonna’s Sex and Saint Laurent Rive Droite
This year’s edition of Art Basel Miami Beach brought Saint Laurent to America for a special exhibition curated by creative director Anthony Vaccarello celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Madonna’s groundbreaking book, Sex (1992). Staged on the Miami beachfront, the ephemeral exhibition was presented on the occasion of the reissue of Sex by Rive Droite and Callaway, New York, and featured large-format prints of Steven Meisel’s iconic photographs from the book, as well as unpublished images from the original photo shoots. Rennie McDougall reflects on the momentous impact of the publication, tracing Madonna’s ongoing influence on and provocation of popular culture.
Shirley Clarke’s Indefinite Truths
Rennie McDougall traces the blurred line between truth and fiction in the cinema of Shirley Clarke, with particular attention to the 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason. From her early dance films to later feature-length movies, themes of race, performance, and the body emerge in Clarke’s examination of the real.