True crime stories, like Sarah Weinman’s Scoundrel, make for suspenseful reading. But do they exploit the criminal, and deepen a thirst for punishment?
The Howe family achieved an influential position of power in late-eighteenth-century Britain, propelled by the shrewd social intelligence of the Howe women.
Times Literary Supplement (February 17, 2023) – This week’s @TheTLS , featuring @jamesamarcus on Mailer at 100; Tom Seymour Evans on James Ellroy; @SPlokhy on Putin’s war in Ukraine; @nclarke14 on Blake Morrison; @CamilleRalphs_on Sylvia Plath; @natsegnit on Salman Rushdie; @rinireg on balloons – and more.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Joan Miró. Absolute Reality. Paris, 1920–1945, an exhibition that explores the career between the years 1920 and 1945 of one of the most outstanding artists of the 20th century. The start of this fundamental period in Miró’s oeuvre is marked by the date of his first trip to Paris, a key city in his life and work, and it closes with the year when Miró, after producing his Constellations (1940–41) and then hardly painting at all for some years, created a great series of works on white backgrounds that consolidated his language of signs floating on ambiguous grounds.
In the 25 years of activity covered by the exhibition, there is a constant flow of new ideas ranging from his initial magic realism to his language of constellated signs. In this development, it becomes clear that prehistoric art, including rock paintings, petroglyphs, and statuettes, held a special interest for Miró, a fascination confirmed by his notebooks, where he proposes returning to the dawn of art in order to retrieve its original spiritual sense.
 Illustration by Ben Giles |
The New York Times Book Review – February 12, 2023:
“Unscripted,” an account by the Times journalists James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams of the media titan Sumner Redstone’s final years, is a chronicle of corporate greed, manipulation, misogyny and sexual impropriety on a spectacular scale.
Laurie Winer’s new book, “Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical,” takes the measure of Sondheim’s mentor and spiritual godfather.
February 10, 2023: In this special episode, we are in Amsterdam for one of the shows of the year: Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum.
As an unprecedented 28 of the 37 surviving Vermeer paintings are gathered in the Dutch capital, Ben Luke talks to several people involved in the project: Gregor Weber, one of the exhibition’s curators, tells us about his new biography that reveals the depth of influence of the Jesuits and Catholicism on the artist.
In the exhibition itself, we talk to Pieter Roelofs, Weber’s co-curator; Ige Verslype, a conservator who led an extensive research project on Vermeer paintings in the Rijksmuseum, Mauritshuis and Frick collections; and Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum’s director. Plus, we bump into the artist Alvaro Barrington in the exhibition and he tells us what he makes of Vermeer as an artist working today.
In this episode’s Work of the Week, we explore a debate around the attribution of a painting: Betsy Wieseman, Curator and Head of the Department of Northern European Paintings at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington DC, discusses Girl with a Flute (around 1669-75). Wieseman and her NGA colleagues now regard the painting as a work by Vermeer’s studio, even though it appears in the Rijksmuseum show as an authentic work by the master.Vermeer, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, until 4 June. Gregor Weber, Johannes Vermeer: Faith, Light, Reflection, Rijksmuseum, €25 (pb)
Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) lived and worked in Delft. His work is best known for his tranquil, introverted indoor scenes, his unprecedented use of bright, colorful light and his convincing illusionism.
In contrast to Rembrandt, Vermeer left a remarkably small oeuvre with about 35 paintings. As his paintings generally considered the most prized treasures of every museum collection, Vermeer paintings are rarely lent out.
BIGGEST EVER VERMEER SHOW TO TAKE PLACE AT THE RIJKSMUSEUM IN 2023—AND IT WILL INCLUDE THE GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING
The Art Newspaper
The exhibition will include masterpieces such as The Girl with a Pearl Earring (Mauritshuis, The Hague), The Geographer (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main), Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid (The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) and Woman Holding a Balance (The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC).
Works never before shown to the public in the Netherlands will include the newly restored Girl Reading a Letter at the Open Window from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor By Andrew Kirtzman
Times Literary Supplement (February 10, 2023) @TheTLS , features Mark Mazower on Elgin and the Parthenon; James Fenton on El Cid; @NortonTaylor on Pegasus; Claire Lowdon on Aleksandar Hemon; @michaelscaines on Titus Andronicus – and more.
Now ninety, Lady Glenconner—a trusted friend of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret—has become a cheeky chronicler of the British élite.
Everyone seems to feel like they’re faking it. But, as the concept has spread, so has the criticism.
After a near-fatal stabbing—and decades of threats—the novelist speaks about writing as a death-defying act.
Literary Review – February 2023 Issue:
Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution
Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning By Nigel Biggar
Spying on the Reich: The Cold War Against Hitler By R T Howard\
Boomers Daily 