Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (May 31, 2024): The publication in April of Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Index Annual Report has provided the art world with much food for thought.

We look at the implications for artists and institutions with Louis Jebb, the managing editor of The Art Newspaper and our technology specialist. As the Centre Pompidou in Paris is taken over on all its floors by what it calls the “ninth art”—graphic novels and comics—we talk to Joel Meadows, the editor-in-chief of Tripwire magazine and a comics aficionado, about the rise of this subculture in museums and the market. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Edgar Degas’ Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando (1879), which depicts a Black circus performer, Anna Albertine Olga Brown, who was briefly known as Miss La La.

She and the painting are the subject of a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London opening next week. We talk to Anne Robbins, the curator of paintings at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and external curator of the exhibition, and Sterre Overmars, the curatorial fellow for post-1800 paintings at the National Gallery, about the painting.

Comics on Every Floor, Centre Pompidou, Paris, until 4 November.

Discover Degas & Miss La La, National Gallery, London, 6 June-1 September.

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – June 10, 2024

Donald Trumps small hands reach toward outstretched handcuffs.

The New Yorker (May 30, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features John Cuneo’s “A Man of Conviction” – The former President is found guilty on all thirty-four counts.

Trump Is Guilty, but Voters Will Be the Final Judge

The jury has convicted the former President of thirty-four felony counts in his New York hush-money trial. Now the American people will decide to what extent they care.

When the Verdict Came In, Donald Trump’s Eyes Were Wide Open

In the courtroom with the former President at the moment he became a convicted felon.

News: Trump Guilty On All Charges In New York Trial, U.S. Weapons To Ukraine

The Globalist Podcast (May 31, 2024): Will Biden let US weapons strike Russia? How violence marred the final day of Mexican election campaigns and we take a look at who will be the next premier of the Netherlands.

Andrew Mueller also delivers What We Learned. Plus: the latest news from the world of music and why fries are off the menu at the Paris Olympics.

The New York Times — Friday, May 31, 2024

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Trump Convicted on All Counts to Become America’s First Felon President

A Manhattan jury found that he had falsified business records to conceal a sex scandal that could have hindered his 2016 campaign for the White House.

Trump Had Good Fortune So Far With His Four Cases. Then Came a Verdict.

Until the jury’s decision on Thursday, the four criminal cases that threatened Donald Trump’s freedom were stumbling along, pleasing his advisers.

Under Pressure, Biden Allows Ukraine to Use U.S. Weapons to Strike Inside Russia

White House officials said the president’s major policy shift extended only to what they characterized as acts of self-defense so that Ukraine could protect Kharkiv, its second-largest city.

The Economist Magazine – June 1, 2024 Preview

Meet America’s most dynamic political movement

The Economist Magazine (May 30, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Meet America’s Most Dynamic Political Movement’ – A backlash against abortion bans is energizing the middle ground in America

The three women who will shape Europe

At a crucial moment they encapsulate the dilemma of how to handle populism

The pro-choice movement that could help Joe Biden win

A backlash against abortion bans is energising the middle ground in America

What penny-pinching baby-boomers mean for the world economy

They are saving like never before. But even that may not bring interest rates down

Research Preview: Science Magazine – May 31, 2024

Current Issue Cover

Science Magazine – May 230, 2024: The new issue features ‘Cuckoo Coevolution’ – Host matching drives lineage divergence…

After crisis in interstellar space, stream of Voyager 1 data resumes

Before its computer crashed, venerable NASA probe may have entered mysterious new region beyond the Solar System

Theory of sleep as a brain cleanser challenged

Mouse study contradicts landmark finding, but some question its methodology

Mysterious sea urchin plague is spreading rapidly

Pathogen that kills victims within days leaps from Caribbean to Red Sea

News: ANC Losing Majority In South Africa Elections, UAE-South Korea Trade

The Globalist Podcast (May 30, 2024): Have South Africa’s elections marked the end of the ANC’s political dominance?

We head to Prague for an informal Nato summit with foreign ministers, take a look back at the Bratislava Summit 2024 and assess the South Korea-UAE trade deal. Plus: the latest news from the world of aviation and a check-in from the Hay Festival.

The New York Times — Thursday, May 30, 2024

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A Border Runs Through Their Families. Now It’s a Front Line.

In northeastern Ukraine, and in the part of Russia it touches, the war strains the emotions of people with relatives, and family histories, that span both sides.

Pentagon Opens Ammunition Factory to Keep Arms Flowing to Ukraine

A plant still under construction in Mesquite, Texas, will soon turn out 30,000 artillery shells each month, roughly doubling current U.S. output.

Once a Sheriff’s Deputy in Florida, Now a Source of Disinformation From Russia

In 2016, Russia used an army of trolls to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. This year, an American given asylum in Moscow may be accomplishing much the same thing all by himself.

Alito Refuses Calls for Recusal Over Display of Provocative Flags

“My wife is fond of flying flags,” the justice wrote in a letter to members of Congress who had demanded he step down from two cases related to the Jan. 6 attack. “I am not.”

London Review Of Books – June 6, 2024 Preview

London Review of Books (LRB) – May 29 , 2024: The latest issue features Daniel Trilling – Trouble with the Troubles Act; Primordial Black Holes; The Village Voice….

Solve, Struggle, Invent

By Rachel Nolan

How Things Fall Apart: What Happened to the Cuban Revolution 
by Elizabeth Dore.

The Tribe: Portraits of Cuba 
by Carlos Manuel Álvarez, translated by Frank Wynne and Rahul Bery.

In​ 1968, Fidel Castro invited an American anthropologist called Oscar Lewis to interview Cubans about their lives. Lewis was famous for an oral history project, conducted in a Mexico City slum, which he had turned into a book called The Children of Sánchez (1961). By recounting a poor family’s struggles and hustles, legal and otherwise, Lewis angered the country’s ruling party, which still described itself as ‘revolutionary’. The Mexican Revolution, like the Cuban Revolution after it, wasn’t supposed to have an end date. But after major gains, including redistributing land to landless farmers, it had been ‘interrupted’, as the historian Adolfo Gilly later put it. Lewis exposed the revolution’s unfinished business, and didn’t shy away from discussing the sexual peccadilloes of the poor. The Spanish-language edition of Children of Sánchez was published in 1964, but thanks to a lawsuit claiming the material was ‘obscene and denigrating’, the book wasn’t freely available in Mexico for several years.

Orgasm isn’t my bag

By Vivian Gornick

The Freaks Came out to Write: The Definitive History of the ‘Village Voice’, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture 
by Tricia Romano.

In the​ mid-1960s, the Village Vanguard jazz club in Greenwich Village held Monday night speak-outs. At one of them – an evening billed as ‘Art and Politics’ – the Black poet and playwright LeRoi Jones (soon to become Amiri Baraka) held forth, along with the Black saxophonist Archie Shepp and the white painter Larry Rivers. The audience was composed almost entirely of people like me and my friends: white middle-class liberals and radicals, many of whom were veteran civil rights activists. We had trooped into the Vanguard expecting to make common cause with the speakers, but Jones did not look kindly on us. In fact, he quickly told us we weren’t wanted in the civil rights movement, that we were just an interference, only there to make ourselves feel good. Then he pointed his finger and roared: ‘Blood is going to run in the seats of the theatre of revolution, and guess who’s sitting in those seats!’

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – May 30, 2024

Volume 629 Issue 8014

Nature Magazine – May 22, 2024: The latest issue cover features ‘Vision Mixing’ – Image chip combines cognition and action to sense the real world…

How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models

Researchers are striving to reverse-engineer artificial intelligence and scan the ‘brains’ of LLMs to see what they are doing, how and why.

Found at last: long-lost branch of the Nile that ran by the pyramids

Geological survey reveals the remains of a major waterway that ancient Egyptian builders could have used to transport materials.

Pig-organ transplants: what three human recipients have taught scientists

As researchers mark the loss of the first living recipient of a pig kidney, they share what they’ve learnt about xenotransplantation.