Unless you’ve spent the last 50 years cryogenically frozen in deep space, you may have heard of Rosanne Cash‘s father, Johnny Cash. When Rosanne locked in on becoming a successful country singer/songwriter, she had a formidable set of footsteps to follow. But she isn’t one to duck a challenge. Twenty of her singles cracked the top 20 in the country charts from 1979 to 1990, with 11 reaching the number-one spot. Her new album, The List (out next week on EMI/Manhattan), is a terrific reworking of country classics, handpicked from a list of indispensable songs her dad made for her 36 years ago. Having Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy and Rufus Wainwright appear as guest artists on the record is a nice fit. Rosanne will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week long. Read our Q&A with her.
Cash: Roberta Smith, the art critic for the New York Times, said this was one of the best shows to be seen in New York since the turn of the century. I think she meant the turn of the 21st century, but I’d have to argue that it was one of the best since the turn of the 20th. It was an absolutely staggering show, almost too much to take in, at least in one visit. There were several rooms of paintings and drawings, and it was a thrill to wander through them and let the full cumulative effect build in power. All the 50 paintings were completed in the decade before Pablo Picasso‘s death, and popular opinion held that he wasn’t painting anything relevant at this point, that he had descended into kitsch or narcissism. This show put the lie to that, once and for all. There is so much sex and humor and beauty and depth here; the feeling I took away was one of artful desperation, and a perfect tutorial of genius—perhaps he knew his time on this planet was short and he wanted to get every last impulse of artistry onto the canvas, with no desire to please others or repeat himself. There were post-modern polka dots and oversized matador heads and couples entwined with legs akimbo and erotic drawings and color—the colors were so rich I wanted to eat them. I went with my friend Joe Henry, and he said it was the best show he had ever seen. He’s not one to exaggerate. We ran into photographer Mark Seliger there, and he looked positively dazed. I always had a well-measured respect for Picasso, but this show put me over the edge into wild adoration. I only wish Gagosian would put it up again.
