Category Archives: Arts & Literature

New Photography Books: “The World’s Edge” By Thomas Joshua Cooper

From Barnes and Noble:

Thomas Joshua Cooper von Michael Govan
Thomas Joshua Cooper

Working solely with an 1898 Agfa field camera, Thomas Joshua Cooper has established himself as one of the foremost photographers of our time. His magnificent black-and-white seascapes explore specific points on the globe–often at the most remote areas, where sea and land meet. Fans of Cooper’s Atlas project, in which he has charted the Atlantic Basin, will be thrilled to find a generous selection of those images here–abstractions ranging from pitch black to clear white, and subtle gradations in between. Exquisitely reproduced, these photographs reveal the coastlines of the five continents that encircle the Atlantic Ocean. This volume also features images that deal with themes such as the earth’s changing environment, historical narratives, and North America’s great rivers and their sources. Enhancing this book are an essay by Michael Govan; biographies of the artist by Rebecca Morse and Anne Lyden, International Photography Curator at the National Galleries of Scotland; and a chronicle of the Atlas project by Christie Davis of the Lannan Foundation. Poems by Robinson Jeffers and Theodore Roethke round out this retrospective book of one of the most celebrated and distinctive photographers working today.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/thomas-joshua-cooper-michael-govan/1130039159?ean=9783791358260&st=PLA&sid=BNB_ADL+Core+Generic+Books+-+Desktop+Medium&sourceId=PLAGoNA&dpid=tdtve346c&2sid=Google_c&gclid=CjwKCAjwxOvsBRAjEiwAuY7L8m_OUQpkhNHK1CkT3i3Gx2nyNw_u4Vqd0ngHXy6v2b0MOdjYRGVCbxoC2JoQAvD_BwE

Top Museum Exhibits: “Paris In The Belle Époque”, Norton Simon Museum Through March 2, 2020

From the Norton Simon Museum website:

Belle-EpoqueBy Day & by Night: Paris in the Belle Époque surveys the rich range of artistic responses to life in the French capital through a selection of paintings, drawings, prints and photographs from the Museum’s collections. Together these works of art demonstrate that visual artists participated in the inventive spirit of the age by interpreting the everyday as something extraordinary.

The belle époque, a French expression meaning “beautiful era,” refers to the interwar years between 1871 and 1914, when Paris was at the forefront of urban development and cultural innovation. During this time Parisians witnessed the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the ascendancy of the Montmartre district as an epicenter for art and entertainment and the brightening of their metropolis under the glow of electric light. From the nostalgic perspective of the twentieth century, this four-decade period of progress and prosperity was a golden age of spectacle and joie de vivre.

To read more: https://www.nortonsimon.org/exhibitions/2010-2019/by-day-and-by-night-paris-in-the-belle-epoque/

London Exhibitions: The “Egyptian Fantasies Of John Frederick Lewis

From an Apollo magazine online article:

In the Bezestein, El Khan Khalil, Cairo (detail; 1860), John Frederick Lewis. Blackburn Museum and Art GalleryThings take an even stranger turn when he gets to Egypt, and his own features still appear again and again; not, as before, as a barely significant detail in an otherwise busy composition, but as a principal element. In a series of fine single-figure paintings brought together at the Watts Gallery, Lewis represents himself as a Syrian sheikh scanning the horizon of the Sinai desert; as the suave ‘bey’ of a Cairene household, lowering his eyelids as his servant offers him a water pipe; as an impassive carpet-seller in the Bezestein bazaar. In none of these, however, does he quite meet our eye.

In his mid thirties, an age at which most ambitious artists were making themselves as visible as possible, John Frederick Lewis (1804–76), a successful painter of sporting subjects and Mediterranean scenes, vanished from London for more than a decade. It was an audacious move. He spent two years in Italy, then followed in Lord Byron’s footsteps, travelling through Albania, Corfu, Athens and Smyrna, and after a year in Constantinople he sailed for Egypt. Once there Lewis fell in love with Cairo, and rather than returning to England with his sketchbooks he set up home, staying until 1851. Those years might have been something of a biographical blank had it not been for a visit in 1844 from his old friend William Makepeace Thackeray, who included a somewhat excitable account in his travel book Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo (1846). 

To read more: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/john-frederick-lewis-watts-gallery-review/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=APWH%20%2020191004%20%20AL&utm_content=APWH%20%2020191004%20%20AL+CID_8f41f662a8c7742f6db2d929c7188b59&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Apollo&utm_term=Read%20the%20full%20article

Top Non-Fiction Books: “Brooklyn – The Once And Future City” By Thomas J. Campanella (2019)

From a Princeton University Press online release:

Brooklyn - The Once and Future CityAmerica’s most storied urban underdog, Brooklyn has become an internationally recognized brand in recent decades—celebrated and scorned as one of the hippest destinations in the world. In Brooklyn: The Once and Future City, Thomas J. Campanella unearths long-lost threads of the urban past, telling the rich history of the rise, fall, and reinvention of one of the world’s most resurgent cities.

Spanning centuries and neighborhoods, Brooklyn-born Campanella recounts the creation of places familiar and long forgotten, both built and never realized, bringing to life the individuals whose dreams, visions, rackets, and schemes forged the city we know today. He takes us through Brooklyn’s history as homeland of the Leni Lenape and its transformation by Dutch colonists into a dense slaveholding region. We learn about English émigré Deborah Moody, whose town of Gravesend was the first founded by a woman in America. We see how wanderlusting Yale dropout Frederick Law Olmsted used Prospect Park to anchor an open space system that was to reach back to Manhattan. And we witness Brooklyn’s emergence as a playland of racetracks and amusement parks celebrated around the world.

To read more: https://press.princeton.edu/titles/13671.html

Boomers In London: Day 3 – Kensington To Mayfair, Soho & Bloomsbury

After a great British breakfast, hopped on the Tube at Tower Hill and headed for the South Kensington station. Arrived at the Victoria & Albert Museum as it opened at 10.

The V&A has an amazing collection from all over the former British Empire, Europe and the United Kingdom.

We then walked into the Kensington Gardens, and visited the Diana, Princess of Wales Fountain. There was swim race taking place in The Serpentine.

We then visited the Serpentine Gallery before walking to the northeast corner of Hyde Park.

We walked along Oxford Street and headed south on South Molton to New Bond St. to visit the Saville Row tailors.

It was Open House London on Saturday so we toured Huntsman, Cad & The Dandy, Richard Anderson and Hidalgo Brothers

We then walked to Hatchard’s Bookstore and Fortnum & Mason.

A very fun small alcove awaited at Neal’s Yard in SoHo.

The last major stop was the British Museum in Bloomsbury.

“Images Only” Profiles: Joanna Neborsky’s Illustrations Are Now Officially Everywhere

Joanna Neborsky

LITERARY, FRENETIC, AND BOLD, ILLUSTRATOR/ANIMATOR JOANNA NEBORSKY’S DARKLY HUMOROUS COLLAGE WORK HAS BEEN FEATURED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, TRAVEL + LEISURE, AND W MAGAZINE; AND HAS ATTRACTED NOTICE IN BOOKFORUM AND THE PARIS REVIEW. HER LATEST BOOK, HER OWN MODERN TAKE ON THE PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE, WAS PUBLISHED IN 2016. JOANNA LIVES IN LOS ANGELES.

https://joannaneborsky.com/

Joanna Neborsky Illustration Paris

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Joanna Neborsky Illustration Beatles

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View much of her work by clicking link below:

http://www.illustrationdivision.com/uploads/24300243/155208648675/Joanna_Neborsky.pdf

Boomers In London: Day 2 – South Bank To Tate, Westminster Back To The City

Set out at 9 am across Tower Bridge and experienced South Bank.

Borough Market is a must visit and it delivered delicious stall after stall of every cheese, meat, vegetable and savory or sweet foods.

We then continued along the Thames for a quick view of Shakespeare’s Globe, followed by a tour of the Tate Modern.

We then hopped aboard the Tate Boat for a trip to the Tate Britain at Millbank. This is the home of the largest collection of J.M.W. Turner paintings in the world.

John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough are also in abundance.

Headed north to Buckingham Palace before walking through St. James Park to the National Gallery.

The National Gallery is amazing. A must visit for Renoir, Van Gough, Monet and Rembrandt.

We finished up with a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral and a great final walk along the Thames to the hotel near The Tower.

Top Exhibitions: “Manet and Modern Beauty” At The J. Paul Getty Museum Opening October 8

The Rue Mosnier with Flags - Eduard Manet - Getty MuseumÉdouard Manet was a provocateur and a dandy, the Impressionist generation’s great painter of modern Paris. This first-ever exhibition to explore the last years of Manet’s short life and career reveals a fresh and surprisingly intimate aspect of this celebrated artist’s work. Stylish portraits, J. Paul Getty Museumluscious still lifes, delicate pastels and watercolors, and vivid café and garden scenes convey Manet’s elegant social world and reveal his growing fascination with fashion, flowers, and his view of the parisienne—a feminine embodiment of modern life in all its particular, fleeting beauty.

 

To read more: http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/late_manet/

Museum Exhibitions: “Beyond Midnight – Paul Revere” At The New York Historical Society

From an New York Times online review:

Grant Wood (1892−1942), Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, 1931. Oil on Masonite. Metropolitan Museum of ArtRevere’s place in history was cemented by the Longfellow poem, published in 1861, more than 40 years after Revere’s death. Longfellow “was flexible about the historical details,” said Debra Schmidt Bach, who coordinated the exhibition for the New-York Historical Society. “I mean, it was a fictionalized poem,” she said. “It was not intended as a detailed examination of the ride.”

NY Historical Society.JPGThe exhibition was organized by the American Antiquarian Society, of which Ms. Hewes is the curator of graphic arts. Nan Wolverton, the show’s other curator, is the director of fellowships at the antiquarian society, and of its Center for Historic American Visual Culture. The display includes more than 140 objects from the antiquarian society’s extensive Revere holdings; the New-York Historical Society’s own collection; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Massachusetts Historical Society, among others.

To read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/arts/design/paul-revere-beyond-midnight.html

Top New Music Videos: “Sacred Ground” Featuring Cellist Shaun Diaz By Shawn Reeder

Filmed, Edited and Directed by: Shawn Reeder

Cellist and Composer: Shaun Diaz

Sacred Ground Music Video by Shawn Reeder 2019

Every so often life brings a magical opportunity to collaborate with a fellow artist with whom you share deep resonance. This summer I got to share in that experience with my dear friend and phenomenal cellist & composer, Shaun Diaz. Here’s a film we created together from one of Shaun’s most powerful pieces of music that he remastered & renamed this summer, “Sacred Ground”. To see more of our work, please check out our sites and social media!

Sacred Ground Music Video by Shawn Reeder 2019