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Philippa Snow
Philippa Snow is a critic and essayist. Her work has appeared in publications including ArtforumThe Los Angeles Review of BooksArtReviewFriezeVogueThe NationThe New Statesman, and The New Republic. Her first book, Which As You Know Means Violence, is out now with Repeater, and she is currently working on an essay collection about famous women.  

Articles Available Online


You Don’t Think God Is Sexy?

Film Review

January 2023

Philippa Snow

Film Review

January 2023

On the most literal level, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s elliptical, spiritual-cum-sensual movie Teorema (1968) is about an entire family being driven to distraction by their...

Essay

Issue No. 31

It's Terrible The Things I Have To Do To Be Me

Philippa Snow

Essay

Issue No. 31

Here was a woman who had modelled her life so closely on Marilyn Monroe’s that doing so eventually helped...

Biography | Cattolicissimo trio composed of mother father beloved son God, why doesn’t the English language have an equivalent for –issimo?   Incidental beginnings: the mother (1951) broke off from her Milanese family in the early Seventies, got married rashly and in absence of her parents, by religious rite, for the sake of controversy, asking a cousin to be her best man She has been living in Rome with her husband ‘in exile’, as if in a colony, as if in Africa Nicola’s father (1948) was raised by a single mother, and lived with her in the council estate where they shot Una Giornata Particolare with Marcello Mastroianni and Sofia Loren   Nico’s first eight years of life: he lives with his father, mother and paternal grandmother   The father had attended seminary Then studied architecture Fatti di Valle Giulia (the Italian equivalent of May 1968 in France): the father does not partake, because of his cousin – who he is not really in touch with – who is a Carabiniere On the matter, Nicola quotes from a Pasolini poem, which is also often quoted by his father (remember to ask which one)   The father leaves university Joins the Navy for his compulsory military service   He goes back to uni with a newfound interest in ships and submarines, which will affect his creative production via the dissemination of portholes everywhere in his projects, even on the dividing walls between two rooms, which is unpalatable to the Berengo family, as well as slanted perspectives and sequences of rooms with no connecting corridors   He is a solitary youth; he spends his life putting The Way of a Pilgrim into practice, repeating to himself over and over (when he is angered by the endless queue at the post office; when his mother’s dinner is yet again tasteless; when he inadvertently tears up the wrong drawing) Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me   Despite his marriage he keeps his boyish good looks He becomes morbidly enamoured with his son He doesn’t want him to become sophisticated During a catechism lesson when Nico is eight years old, his father taps into his own reference material,

Contributor

November 2018

Philippa Snow

Contributor

November 2018

Philippa Snow is a critic and essayist. Her work has appeared in publications including Artforum, The Los Angeles Review of Books, ArtReview, Frieze, Vogue, The...

Essay

January 2021

An Uneasy Girl

Philippa Snow

Essay

January 2021

Even before Lucie arrives holding a shotgun, we know that the perfect family in this huge suburban house are...

Brilliant Muscles

Essay

December 2019

Philippa Snow

Essay

December 2019

‘Lindsay Lohan’s new film,’ I told almost everyone I spoke to for about two months earlier this year, ‘is about werewolf detectives.’ Nobody seemed...
Evita Vasiljeva, POSTCRETE

Art Review

February 2019

Philippa Snow

Art Review

February 2019

Lower.Green is situated in the unlikely surroundings of a near-dead mall in Norwich. It is not just any mall, but Anglia Square Shopping Centre:...
Gabriele Beveridge, Live Dead World

Art Review

November 2018

Philippa Snow

Art Review

November 2018

Several months ago, I went to a salon so small and so identikit that I do not recall the name, and against every sane...

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fiction

April 2013

Towards White, 1975

Scott Morris

fiction

April 2013

In the morning, the square was white. Voula’s hair was white. A pigeon on a bronze horse shifted, sent...

fiction

April 2015

Heavy

Chris Newlove Horton

fiction

April 2015

It is a two lane road somewhere in North America. The car is pulled onto the shoulder with the...

fiction

March 2015

House Proud

Amelia Gray

fiction

March 2015

It’s harder to leave your burning home after you’ve spent so much time cleaning its floors. Watching those baseboards...

 

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