Category Archives: Arts & Literature

Interviews: Musician-Producer Ben Arthur On People And Stories In His “SongWriter” Podcast

Monocle 24 Meet The WritersBen Arthur is a songwriter and producer who hosts and interviews notable literary figures on his podcast SongWriter, where he explores stories and “answer songs”. It’s now his turn to be interviewed.

SongWriter PodcastBen Arthur is an American singer-songwriter and novelist. He has released multiple full-length recordings and novels, and shared stages with several notable acts. Arthur is also a producer and the host of the songwriting video series SongCraft Presents.

Website

Travel & Quarantines: Author Frances Mayes Writes Of Poet John Keats In Naples, Italy In 1820 (NYT)

From the New York Times (March 26, 2020):

I have seen Naples from his vantage of a ship anchored offshore — one of the most sublime locations in the world, that sweep of coast stacked with apricot, carmine, azure and rose villas; the blue, blue U of the harbor; the emphatic Vesuvius anchoring the view. 

Frances Mayes
Frances Mayes

In October of 1820, typhus raged in Naples. With his artist friend, Joseph Severn, the British poet John Keats rocked in the city’s harbor for 10 days, not nearly the quaranta giorni — 40 days — that give us our word quarantine.

Before this journey, Keats always felt intense melancholy. In “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Time,” he wrote “… mortality / Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep.” (And in the smooth pentameter of “Ode to a Nightingale”: “I have been half in love with easeful death.”) Not a holiday, this voyage out of England was a desperate trip to the sunny climate of Italy. His cough had grown steadily worse. Since the morning he’d seen a splotch of blood on his pillow, he knew he had little chance of surviving the consumption that had invaded his lungs. His last-ditch: Go to Rome. Meanwhile, exile at sea.

Read full article

Culture & Photography: “Granado – Rio De Janeiro” The Legendary Brazilian Apothecary (Assouline)

Granado Book by Hermes Galvao AssoulineSince it first opened its doors in Rio de Janeiro in 1870, Granado has remained true to its founding mission: to concoct local, natural remedies and cosmetics, crafted from flora of Brazil. Such a formula is responsible for Granado’s endurance through time and its current standing as Brazil’s oldest pharmacy and apothecary. 

This stunning and fascinating addition to Assouline’s Legends Collection chronicles Granado’s triumphant transformation from a small Rio shop into an international brand lauded for creating sustainable and stunningly-packaged products made from plants, herbs and flowers native to the region.

Granado Book by Hermes Galvao AssoulineToday, Granado has three boutiques in Paris and a significant online presence in Europe; but the story of Granado’s rise begins with the tale of one man’s singular vision. At a time when medicines used toxic substances such as mercury and arsenic, José Antonio Coxito Granado began to develop natural alternatives that would quickly revolutionize the world of pharmaceuticals in Brazil. In a text enlivened by more than 200 images that capture the bright colors, botanical terrain, and vibrant aesthetics of Rio, writer Hermés Galvao traces the brand’s history, from its modest roots to its time as the Official Pharmacy of the Brazilian Imperial Family and its eventual growth into a global brand under a new family’s ownership. Featuring an illustrious cast of characters and overlapping with some of the most influential eras in Brazilian history, the story of Granado is a tale as rich as the land that yields its products.

Hermés Galvão was born in 1975 in Rio de Janeiro. He is the author of Como Viajar Sozinho em Tempos de Crise Financeira e Existencial, published in the Brazilian market in 2016. He was a columnist for Vogue Brasil for five years and contributes to GQ and Casa Vogue, writing about travel and urban behavior around the world. Galvão conducted the image research for Assouline’s 2016 title In the Spirit of RioGranado is his his first book for Assouline as a writer.

Bruno Astuto is a Brazilian journalist and has been contributing to Vogue Brasil for more than a decade. A worldwide ambassador of Brazil’s fashion and lifestyle, and a bibliophile who owns more than 10,000 books, he is the author of several books, including Catarina de MédicisSomos Todos Iguais, and In the Spirit of Rio.

Read more or purchase

Music Interviews: Singer John Legend Talks About Career And Songwriting

Broken RecordDuring these tough times, Rick Rubin wanted to have a chat with an artist he finds inspiring. Top of mind was John Legend. So he called him up via Zoom, while both were sheltering in place, for a quick chat about his career and the creative process behind two of his biggest songs. 

Listen to John Legend’s new single “Actions” below and check for a new album later this year.

 

Art History Videos: “Michelangelo – Mind Of The Master” (The Getty)

Take a visual journey into the mind of Michelangelo, a painter, sculptor, architect, draftsman, and one of the most creative and influential artists in the history of Western art. See how he used drawings to create, explore, and prepare for some of his most famous works of art. Produced for the J. Paul Getty Museum’s exhibition, “Michelangelo: Mind of the Master.” https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions…

Art Insider: “The European Fine Art Fair” (TEFAF) – “Vetting Process” (Video)

TEFAF (The European Fine Art Fair) brings together the world’s leading experts across a multitude of disciplines to implement and adhere to TEFAF’s vetting procedures and regulations. This allows TEFAF to create a standard that applies across all of its fairs.

Established in 1988, TEFAF is widely regarded as the world’s pre-eminent organization for fine art, antiques, and design. TEFAF runs three Fairs internationally – TEFAF Maastricht, which covers 7,000 years of art history; TEFAF New York Spring, focused on modern and contemporary art & design; and TEFAF New York Fall, covering fine and decorative art from antiquity to 1920. TEFAF gives international dealers the platform to present museum-quality works of all eras and genres to a broad base of collectors and connoisseurs.

Website

Artist Profiles: 69-Year Old American Painter Sigrid Burton (Video)

“I draw literally and figuratively from the natural world. My drawing and mark making refer to and derive from botanical and biological anatomies, including marine life, as well as, the structures of both macro and micro cosmologies and writing systems, such as logograms.” 

Sigrid Burton is an American painter, long based in New York City, whose semi-abstract work is known for its use of expressive, atmospheric color fields and enigmatic allusions to natural and cultural realms. Burton has had solo exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Osaka, including at Artists Space and the Michael C. Rockefeller Arts Center, and been included in shows at A.I.R. Gallery, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard. Her work belongs to the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rockefeller Foundation, and Palm Springs Desert Museum, and has been reviewed in Arts Magazine, Arts & Antiques, Jung Journal, Chicago Tribune and LA Weekly.

Writers most frequently observe that Burton’s atmospheric works recall artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Odilon Redon, Pierre Bonnard and Mark Rothko, as well as the light of her native California. Art & Antiques described her approach as “chromatic expressionism” in which color is “her undisputed protagonist”.  Peter Frank observed, “The dialectic between color and form has always inflected, even impelled” Burton’s painting, with color the more omnipresent element, and form the more persistent. Art historian William C. Agee wrote, “The domains she explores […] meet, intersect, fuse, and then disappear, like apparitions, in liquid pools of mist and color. Her pictorial odyssey refers simultaneously to both a higher order, a timeless cosmic vastness, as well as to a private, interior world, abounding in personal histories and memories.” Burton has lived and worked in Pasadena, California since 2013.

From Wikipedia

“Watercolor In March”: Artist Thomas W. Shaller Releases New Works (2020)

The grasses up north are as blue as jade, Our mulberries here curve green-threaded branches; And at last, you think of returning home”  Li Bai

Inside - Thomas W. Schaller
“Inside” – Thomas W. Shaller (March, 2020)

“A feat, this heart’s control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hand’s size”
Edith Tiempo, Bonsai

Bonsai - Thomas W. Shaller (March 2020)
“Bonzai” – Thomas W. Shaller (March 2020)

Thomas W. Schaller is an award-winning artist, architect, and author based in Los Angeles. As a renowned architectural artist, he received a Graham Foundation Grant and was a two-time recipient of the Hugh Ferris Memorial Prize. He has authored three books; the best-selling, and AIA award winner, Architecture in Watercolor (VNR – McGraw Hill) The Art of Architectural Drawing (J.Wiley and Sons)and  Thomas W. Schaller, Architect of Light : Watercolor Paintings by a Master – a retrospective of his recent artwork released by North Light Books / F+W Media and now Penguin / Random House, NYC  in 2018.

“My work is a study in contrasts: light and dark, vertical and horizontal, warm and cool tones, the real and the imagined, as well as the past, present, and future. These elements and others are designed to collide and sometimes find resolution on the surface of the paper. And by so doing, I invite you to take part in my artistic process – not to determine the stories I am telling – but hopefully, to inspire you to tell stories of your own.”

Website

 

Museum Tours: View “The Garden Court – Frick Collection” In 5K Video

Enjoy this 360° video view of the Garden Court of The Frick Collection. Available through your phone with Google Cardboard or other viewer as a 360° VR video. Right click or control + click (on a Mac) to select loop and enjoy the soothing sounds of the fountain. Shot during the exhibition, Canova’s George Washington, on view at The Frick Collection from May 23, 2018 to September 23, 2018.

Health Lecture: “Sleep Medicine, Art & Literature” By Professor Meir Kryger

Sleep medicine, art and literature – ars longa, vita brevis. Organised by the Sleep Medicine Section 4 February 2020.

Professor Meir Kryger, Author and Professor, Yale School of Medicine – Sleep Disorders & Effective Treatments.

Lecture: Sleep in art: A 7000 year odyssey

Website