Quote of Note | Lorin Stein
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“We don’t have pressure to publish anything, or to satisfy a million subscribers. We have the luxury of being able to follow our own sensibility, wherever it takes us, at whatever length, with whatever kind of content. We can publish things that are risqué, or would put some people off. Until recently a clothing chain was carrying the Review. They complained that there was too much nudity in our last issue; they said they trusted that it would never happen again. We sent them the proof for the next issue, which sure enough had some nude photos from Francesca Woodman and they cancelled their order forever. And no one shed a tear. That’s a luxury not every magazine has.”
–Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, in an interview with Svbscription.
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“As architects, we often talk about the concept for something, and that’s interesting because I’ve never heard anyone walk into a building, drop to their knees, and say, ‘Whoa, what a fucking great concept.’ It just doesn’t happen. For us, the concept takes the form of a question. The question can be kind of mysterious or funny. The question can be dangerous. But the best questions, as any child will tell you, are questions that lead to other questions. And so what does that mean in terms of architecture? One of the questions we ask ourselves is, who are making things for? Obviously we’re making them for people. People are not abstractions. We can’t always predict what people do. Do as we design we’re asking, what range of reactions can we expect? The open nature of the design allows people to connect with each other in a civilized manner, even if they seek challenges.”
“In early 2002 I presented a lecture at the Design Indaba conference in South Africa, then newly free and celebrating liberation from eons-old social oppression and apartheid, extreme enforced inequality. The theme was ‘Can Design Feed People?’ The question wasn’t literal but was intended to pose the bigger question—what role can design and designers play today? Because we do not work in a vacuum. Design is not an innocent bystander. It is deeply integral to to the mechanisms of the social construct….We need to take more risks. As risks are no longer taken, minority interests become extinct and individual tastes are ignored. Just as governments limit the scope for intellectual and political debate, we don’t notice that the walls are moving inward and we no longer notice how shallow the cultural water. Vacuous top 10 lists fill our in-box and news feeds, cats, dinners, and prayers the rest. For mass communication, mediocrity is the goal, homogeny and vanilla the outcome.”
“It helps to know that the pitchers in his still lifes are almost always the ones with the spout sticking up like a phallus. And the fruit dish: a few soft peaches are the breasts. When you crack the codes, you understand that they are pictures about his love of a woman, his desire, his anger, his disdain. And you understand why his pictures that only show a pitcher and fruit dish can be so sexy and also so unbelievably sad. And then he turned everything over again and suddenly he was the very fruit dish himself. This is one of the greatest challenges when writing about Picasso, because for much of what one writes about him, the exact opposite is also true. A person with such an extreme personality, with such extraordinary hypersensitivity, with so many contradictions—that kind of person usually ends up in the nuthouse.”
“I’ve been blogging since 1999 so I’m neither [a print publication nor a website]. But there is a difference. Magazines are about editing and choice, while the Internet is about immediacy. The art of making a magazine is editing. You have to make a choice, stick with it, then it’s out in the world and it’s done. That’s why I don’t believe print is dead. It’s not just old people, it’s young people too. A 20-year-old photographer doesn’t care if their photograph is posted online. But if that photo gets in a magazine, they love it. They understand it’s a big deal.”