6 BOOK REVIEWA novelist’s first
essay collection is
sharp and bright.
BY DWIGHT GARNERTHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019 C1
NNEWS CRITICISM
3 TELEVISION
Putting an inner reality
onscreen. BY LEIGH-ANN JACKSON
2 ALBUM REVIEW
Post Malone’s pesto of pop
music. BY JON CARAMANICA
At the Betty Cuningham gallery
on the Lower East Side recently, I
noticed an arresting painting: It
showed a nude woman curled
against a window, asleep, with the
old New Yorker Hotel and Empire
State Building in view and a fish
above her, hanging or floating. I
opened a smartphone app called
Magnus, snapped a quick picture,
and clicked “Use.” Seconds later, I
got that addictive, satisfying click.
The app had found a match.
The painting was by Philip
Pearlstein, according to the app,
known for reinvigorating the tra-
dition of realist figure painting. It
was titled “Model With Empire
State Building,” dated 1992, meas-
ured 72 inches by 60 inches, and
was for sale for $300,000. In 2010,
it had sold for $170,500 at Sothe-
by’s in New York, the app told me.
Magnus then slotted this informa-
tion into a folder marked “My Art”
for digital safekeeping — and fu-
ture looking.
Magnus is part of a wave of
smartphone apps trying to cata-
log the physical world as a way of
providing instantaneous informa-
tion about songs or clothes or
plants or paintings. First came
Shazam, an app that allows users
to record a few seconds of a song
and instantly identifies it. Shaz-
am’s wild success — it boasts
more than a billion downloads and
20 million uses daily, and was pur-
chased by Apple for a reported
$400 million last year — has
spawned endless imitations.
There is Shazam for plants or
Shazam for clothes and now,
Shazam for art.
The art-oriented apps harness
image recognition technology,
each with a particular twist. Mag-
nus has built a database of more
than 10 million images of art,Apps With an Eye
For Art’s Back Story
Companies hope
instant details add to
the gallery experience.
By SOPHIE HAIGNEYCONTINUED ON PAGE C4ROBERT FRANKkicked documentary pho-
tography into the present with a loud clang.
In place of the detached formalism of
Walker Evans and the poetic lyricism of
Henri Cartier-Bresson and Andre Kertesz,
he brought a moody, cool intensity that
stamped his pictures with a readily identifi-
able hallmark. Using a 35-millimeter Leica,
he could compose images as elegantly
framed as if he’d set up a tripod, or as blurry
and off-center as an amateur snapshot. He
took whatever means he needed to express
a vision that was alternately empathetic
and obstreperous, as contradictory as the
man himself.
Before Mr. Frank, documentary photog-
raphers didn’t necessarily attempt to be ob-
jective — like Dorothea Lange or Russell
Lee, they were often advancing a political
agenda. But when the Swiss-born Mr.
Frank, supported by a Guggenheim fellow-
ship, took the road trips across the United
States in 1955 and 1956 that resulted in his
groundbreaking book, “The Americans,” he
wasn’t so much depicting his newly adopted
country as he was recording his reactions to
it. This personally expressive style of docu-
mentary photography was something new.
Appearing during the heyday of Abstract
Expressionism and foreshadowing the rise
of the New Journalism, Mr. Frank’s ap-
proach was in sympathy with the ethos of
the age, valuing emo-
tional forthrightness and
personal engagement as
artistic virtues. It was his
attitude from the outset.
In 1946, when he was in
his early 20s and still liv-
ing in Zurich, where he was born, he put to-
gether a handmade book, “40 Fotos,” which
included two zoo pictures of caged animals
snarling in impotent fury at their confine-
ment.
It was his way of saying how he felt about
his living situation in the stodgy, conven-
tion-bound land of his birth. He arrived in
New York on March 14, 1947. He had es-“Fourth of July — Jay, New
York” (1954) by Robert
Frank, whose discovery of
America was partly a
journey of disillusionment.ROBERT FRANK FROM ‘THE AMERICANS’; VIA PACE/MacGILL AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ARTCapturing
Epic Poems
Of America
Robert Frank redefined the expressive
potential of documentary photography.
CONTINUED ON PAGE C5AN APPRECIATION ARTHUR LUBOW
Hanisya Massey, the owner of Higher
Ground Enterprises in Covina, Calif., first
heard from a lawyer for Higher Ground
Productions early this summer.
Barack and Michelle Obama wanted to
trademark their company’s name, but the
United States Patent and Trademark Office
had deemed it too similar to the mark Ms.
Massey registered in 2017 for her computer
training company. Higher Ground Produc-
tions was looking to strike a deal.
So began the dispute, which escalated
from an initial note sent by the Obamas’
lawyer to requests by Ms. Massey for on-
screen roles in their productions and, now,
an attempt by the former president and first
lady’s company to have Ms. Massey’s trade-
mark wiped off the books.
The case isn’t expected to slow the Oba-
mas’ post-presidency plans to break into
the entertainment business — or to prevent
them from using the name. The first film
from their Netflix deal, “American Factory,”
has already been released on the streaming
site, and more content is in the works.The Obamas Want What She Won’t Let Go
Hanisya Massey owns Higher Ground Enterprises, which offers computer training.BRAD TORCHIA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
CONTINUED ON PAGE C6A businesswoman won’t give in
to the former first couple over a
‘Higher Ground’ trademark.
By NANCY COLEMAN