This Week’s Issue: How Arthur Jafa Found a New Vision for Video Art

Plus: the uncanny allure of our unlived lives, murder in Malta, and when a virus is the cure. View in browser | Update your preferences Profiles Arthur Jafa’s Radical Alienation The filmmaker left an art world he found too white; years later, he made a triumphant return with “Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death.” By Calvin Tomkins A Reporter at Large Murder in Malta After a journalist was assassinated, her sons found clues in her unfinished work that cracked the case and brought down the government. By Ben Taub Annals of Medicine When a Virus Is the Cure As bacteria grow more resistant to antibiotics, bacteriophage therapy is making a comeback. By Nicola Twilley Comment The High Stakes of Georgia’s Senate Race The debate between Senator Kelly Loeffler and the Reverend Raphael Warnock showed how Republicans are approaching close races in a state where they’ve grown accustomed to winning with ease. By Jelani Cobb Onward and Upward with the Arts Cartoon Saloon and the New Golden Age of Animation The studio’s hand-drawn movies—including its latest, “Wolfwalkers”—offer an alternative vision of what children’s entertainment can be. By Mark O’Connell The Art World The Melancholy Gestalt of Isolation The works in “100 Drawings from Now” speak to our lockdown epoch with startling poignancy. By Peter Schjeldahl A Critic at Large What If You Could Do It All Over? The uncanny allure of our unlived lives. By Joshua Rothman Pop Music Paul McCartney’s Surprisingly Playful Pandemic Album Other artists used quarantine to produce work about the isolation of modern life. McCartney’s new album, by contrast, is cheery and optimistic. By Hua Hsu Performance Reimagining August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” on the Small Screen Viola Davis plays the blues singer, whose wounds live right next to her cynicism. By Hilton Als PAID POST The perfect gift | 30% off with code ICE30 “An astounding act of meditation and a guidebook back to our senses.”—Claudia Rankine, author of “Citizen: An American Lyric” Humor from The New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs Your Monthly Horoscope I know your sourdough starter is technically a living organism, dear Cancer, but it won’t love you back. How about adopting a pet? By Jena Friedman Cartoons From The Issue Cartoons from the Issue Drawings and drollery from this week’s magazine. This e-mail was sent to you by The New Yorker. To insure delivery, we recommend adding newyorker@newsletters.newyorker.com, to your contacts, while noting that it is a no-reply address. Please send all newsletter feedback to tnyinbox@newyorker.com. For more from The New Yorker, sign up for our newsletters, shop the store, and sign in to newyorker.com, where subscribers always have unlimited access. Contact us with questions. View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2020. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.