By: Joshua Glenn

*** An occasional series, which follows up on themes explored in the ten-part HiLobrow Cover Art series.

By: Joshua Glenn

“Chess is so inspiring that I do not believe a good player is capable of having an evil thought during the game.” — William Steinitz, Austrian-American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion, […]

By: Matthew Battles

As readers of HiLobrow know, Joshua Glenn shows the same mastery over the history of science fiction that a mad scientist exerts over his army of murderous fembots. While Roxxxy the Robot’s makers might claim […]

By: HILOBROW

Ellen (Gene Tierney) reads to Richard (Cornel Wilde) from his own (middlebrow) novel, Time Without End, shortly after meeting him on a train, in John M. Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Her homicidal jealousy […]

By: Joshua Glenn

Chess sets, and Scrabble, certainly. But not Battleship, Mastermind, Risk, Monopoly, Clue? Bicycles, and pipes (the kind you smoke). But not skateboards or cigarettes, muscle cars or cigars? Teapots and typewriters. But not coffeepots or […]

By: Joshua Glenn

“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem… I have come to the personal conclusion […]

By: Matthew Battles

This image comes from the sad, strange book children’s book The Dead Bird, by Good Night Moon author Margaret Wise Brown and Remy Charlip (1958). (SPOILER ALERT an extract: “And every day, until they forgot, […]

By: HILOBROW

“One may be strong intellectually and socially idiotic, as distinctly represented by this head and face.” *** According to Louis Allen Vaught, the purpose of Vaught’s Practical Character Reader (1902) is to acquaint readers “with […]

By: Peggy Nelson

Happy New Year! [Jump! dir. Peggy Nelson, 2006, vocals and guitar by Jeff Stern] *** Artists in residence archive.

By: Peggy Nelson

This concludes the Portrait of the Artist as Attention Span I started at the beginning of the month. [Salvador Dalí, 1947, photo by Bob Sandberg for Look Magazine] There’s been some buzz recently about how […]

By: Peggy Nelson

The last time Pandora opened the box there was kind of a problem. All sorts of uncontrollable wild things got all over the place, everybody started yelling and panicking, and Pandora got into lots of […]

By: HILOBROW

“Anyone with a head like the above is dangerous because Conscientiousness is weak and Amativeness very strong. In an immoral sense this man is positively dangerous.” *** According to Louis Allen Vaught, the purpose of […]

By: Peggy Nelson

The aura of ambiguity beckons in refusal; you can sense but not quite see. Something is out there. [Jackal Project, Andrew Sempere and Tangentlab, 2001-3] Every work of art is an attempt to bring something […]

By: Matthew Battles

With speculation on the appearance of Apple’s tablet computer rampant, a minor detail, which has entirely escaped the notice of breathless commentators, may prove the most important of all. Among Apple’s patent filings pursuant to […]

By: Joshua Glenn

Ringtone: “Swinging on a Star”