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One of the rare 24-cent misprints sold at auction this week for a record-breaking $2 million
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A new Hollywood epic traces Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise and fall through his checkered relationship with his first wife
In his eighties, Claude Monet was spotted by a younger artist, “old but still very handsome”, wrapped in a sumptuous fur, sitting on top of a dyke “in a bitter west wind which ruffled his long white beard, mingling it with the foam of the waves”. This transporting biography by the Financial Times’s art critic Jackie Wullschläger paints the impressionist as a man for all seasons, out in the dawn and the dusk and the snow, obsessed, possessed, with capturing the fleeting effects of light, shade and water, calm as millpond or whipped up by a storm. Chocolate box? Jamais! Monet mounted the barricades of modern art, revolutionising the way the world could be seen and painted. A book for art-lovers — and for gardeners too. Art and literature, Monet proclaimed, were all humbug. “There’s nothing but the earth.” Laura Freeman
Who would have thought that the outstanding art book of the year would be written not by a curator or an art historian or even an artist — but by a museum guard? For ten years Patrick Bringley worked at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, directing visitors to the Islamic collections and watching out for angry protestors. It turned out to be a remarkably fruitful experience. Bringley weaves the story of a personal tragedy involving his sick brother with startling insights into museum life and — most impressively — into the great art in the Met’s collection. Waldemar Januszczak
If you have been living under a rock in 2023, you will not have noticed that this year was the 50th anniversary of the death of Picasso. The rest of us couldn’t avoid it. Countless exhibitions, events and books commemorated the occasion, but this was the most useful. Focusing on the art rather than the biography of the man, it’s a generous and sensitive text with brilliant illustrations. WJ
Pauline Boty was “the Wimbledon Bardot”, “an ice-cream of a girl” and by her own mocking, ironic reckoning, “a happy, dumb blonde”. She was so much more than that, as this fizzing biography shows. Meet Boty the Sixties It girl, pop artist, voice-of-a-generation broadcaster and “anti-ugly” campaigner against hideous postwar development. Marc Kristal gives you the crumbling studios of the Royal College of Art, the creative squalor of Notting Hill bedsitters and the thrill of finding your feet (in knee-high boots) in swinging London. Boty died appallingly young, but her life was no tragedy. It was full of mischief, provocation and promise. This book brings Boty to life, painting, protesting and dancing the miniskirted twist. LF
Venice isn’t just the most painted city in the world, it is probably the most written about too. Finding a fresh angle from which to view it is a challenge. Gayford’s answer is to understand the city and its history through the splendid and varied art it has inspired. Packed with potted histories and informed anecdotes, this is a tome to pack on a visit to La Serenissima. WJ
Alberto Giacometti used to claim that really he would have liked to carve and cast voluptuous women such as Marilyn Monroe. “The more I tried to make them broader, the narrower they got.” Giacometti’s beanpole people became icons of 20th-century art and Michael Peppiatt’s compelling portrait cuts to the core of the sculptor’s “strange life and his stranger fame”. Giacometti’s Paris studio is a character in its own right: a filthy lair filled with the most extraordinary figures and fragments, with a leaking roof, a tree growing up through the floor and a local fox given the run of the place. Appalling and fascinating. You’ll never look at a Giacometti the same way. LF
Monocle on Saturday, November 25, 2023: David Bodanis, author of ‘Art of Fairness: The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean’, joins Georgina Godwin for a look at the week’s news and culture.
Also this week, Marketing Manager, Carley Bassett, and Sales Director, Chris Unger, give us a taste of a limited-edition magnum from Hattingley Valley. The award-winning English winery specialises in sparkling wine and released the special bottle to celebrate a decade of excellence in wine-making. Plus: Jorg Zupan became the chef of the first restaurant in Ljubljana to earn a Michelin star – and the first to give one up. Guy de Launey finds out why.
Hamas freed two dozen hostages, Israel released 39 imprisoned Palestinians, and more than 130 aid trucks reached Gaza over the first day of a tense, temporary truce after seven weeks of war.
More than 24,000 Chinese citizens have been apprehended crossing into the United States from Mexico in the past year. That is more than in the preceding 10 years combined.
Carbon-free electricity has never been more plentiful. Wind and solar power have taken off over the past two decades, faster than experts ever expected. But it hasn’t yet been enough to halt the rise of coal- and gas-burning generation.
Powerful players in the business world have gravitated toward Nikki Haley, aware that she remains an underdog but beginning to believe she has a chance.
BARRON’S MAGAZINE – November 27, 2023 ISSUE:
Global turmoil has created opportunities, especially in emerging markets and commodities.
Pharmaceutical companies are currently developing vaccines for a range of purposes, from preventing disease to treating cancers.Long read
The transition to electric vehicles has hit a speed bump, but Vontier shares should benefit no matter what kind of car you drive.4 min read
We asked financial advisors to share their most surprising year-end financial-planning or investing moves.Long read
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (November 26, 2023): This week’s issue features Michael Cunningham’s “Day.”; the 2023 Notables list, “Kantika”, “The Nursery.” and “Western Lane” , because it’s a finalist for the Booker Prize, which will be announced on Sunday.
Michael Cunningham’s “Day” peeks into the lives of a family on one specific April date across three years as life changes because of Covid and other challenges.
By Caleb Crain
DAY, by Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham’s new novel, “Day,” visits a family on April 5 in 2019, 2020 and 2021 — before, during and after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which shadows the book although the words “Covid” and “pandemic” never appear.
In Chetna Maroo’s debut novel, an adolescent girl mourns the death of her mother in the empty reverberations between points.
By Ivy Pochoda
WESTERN LANE, by Chetna Maroo
At the start of Chetna Maroo’s polished and disciplined debut, Gopi, an 11-year-old Jain girl who has just lost her mother, stands on a squash court outside London. She isn’t playing. Instead, she’s listening to the sound of the ball hitting the wall on the adjacent court, “a quick, low pistol-shot of a sound, with a close echo.” It is not so much the shot itself that Gopi is hearing, but that echo, the empty reverb, the lonely response as the ball’s impact gives the striker a split second to retreat to the T, the center of the court, and prepare to counteract her opponent’s responding shot.
Video timeline: 00:00 – Introduction to the Dark and Moody Dream House 01:12 – Designed as Two Halves 01:40 – The Decorative and Private Sector 02:00 – Incorporating A Sense of Scale and Sculpture 02:38 – The Casual and Family Sector 03:01 – A Reduced Material Palette and Light Quality 03:53 – Incorporating Custom Made Personal Items 05:12 – Enjoyable Aspects of the Design
B.E. Architecture’s overarching responsibility was to create a residence that responded to the area and catered to the council, town planners, heritage planners, neighbours and, ultimately, its clients. Designed as two halves, the dream house features a distinct façade that hides the intimate and warm interior. Furthermore, when looking to simplify the expression of the building, the team used consistent materials across both the interior and exterior. Moving the house tour inside, the front half of the home holds the master bedroom, ensuite and study, as well as the formal dining and living areas.
Though facing the street, the front half of Shakespeare Grove is kept private and offers an inward-facing inner experience. The interior design is typified by the inlaid timber ceilings and cocooning walls of felt, and the first half of the dream house is designed to be more decorative than the second. Also shown through the house tour is a generous architectural scale, as seen in the details of the staircase. Moreover, a vaulted hallway leads from the formal part of the dream house to the casual spaces. The rear of the dream house holds the social areas such as the kitchen, lounge and dining space – all of which are open to the natural surrounds and flow to the outdoor entertaining zones.
And the world needs to learn from it
The agreement at the conference of the parties (cop) to the un Framework Convention on Climate Change, which took place in Paris in 2015, was somewhat impotent. As many pointed out at the time, it could not tell countries what to do; it could not end the fossil-fuel age by fiat; it could not draw back the seas, placate the winds or dim the noonday sun. But it could at least lay down the law for subsequent cops, decreeing that this year’s should see the first “global stocktake” of what had and had not been done to bring the agreement’s overarching goals closer.
How to thrive in a fractured world
The radical libertarian is taking over a country on the brink
The Globalist Podcast (November 24, 2023) – As a four-day ceasefire is announced in the Israel-Hamas conflict, we look at how the first two hours of humanitarian pause have unfolded and what comes next.
Plus: Finland closes all but one of its border crossings with Russia, what the Dutch election results mean for the right in Europe and the historic HMV shop on London’s Oxford Street reopens.
Prodded by the U.S., Israel agreed to the pause in hostilities and the release of 150 imprisoned Palestinians in exchange for 50 hostages held in Gaza.
The nearly century-old holiday tradition also provided a stage for activists.
Consumer spending has been strong in 2023 despite higher prices and waning savings. But some retailers have jitters heading into Black Friday.
The speaker fulfilled a demand of the far right, which has sought thousands of hours of footage to try to rewrite the history of the Capitol attack.
Boomers Daily 