Category Archives: Arts & Literature

Boomer Interviews: Singer Patty Smyth Talks About Her Nearly Four Decade Career (Podcast)

From a Cincinnati Public Radio WVXU interview:

Patty SmythPatty Smyth & her band Scandal will appear on PNC Pavilion‘s stage with Rick Springfield and Greg Kihn on Friday, September 6th at 7:30 which also features a pre-show wine tasting.

Elaine began their conversation mentioning that she saw Patty (now 62)on tour with John Waite many years ago.  They discussed the members of her band, multi-generational fans, and a new recording that’s coming out in January.  Patty also mentioned that she calls New York City home with her kids and husband tennis legend John McEnroe.  They also mentioned her self-titled 1992 album (that went gold), the song “Hands Tied,” and covers of “Whole Lotta Love” and “Piece of My Heart” that she probably won’t be performing this tour.

To read interview: https://www.wvxu.org/post/patty-smyths-tour-rick-springfield-greg-kihn#stream/0

Top Photographers: Christian Vizl Shot The World’s Oceans In Black & White For Three Decades

From a MyModernMet.com online article and interview:

Silent Kingdom A World Beneath The Waves Christian VizlI have always loved the ocean and also photography. I started taking pictures as a teenager and was very inspired by black and white masters like Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson, but didn’t combine these two passions until 2010 after a dive I did with an underwater videographer friend. During this trip, we made an immersion when he suddenly gave me his camera and left. After a while, I turned it on and loved the feeling of having a camera underwater. That’s when I decided to buy my first underwater camera…

Award-winning underwater photographer Christian Vizl has been inspired by the ocean since childhood. Born in Mexico City, his career spans more than thirty years and in that time he’s earned an international reputation for his artistic documentation of life underwater. In particular, he’s recognized for his powerful black and white underwater photographs, which harness light and shadow to reveal different aspects of marine life.

https://www.christianvizl.com/index

In his new book Silent Kingdom, published by Earth Aware Editions, Vizl shares his vision of the underwater world. Schools of fish, sea lions, jellyfish, and manatees all get equal treatment in the book. Vizl manages to capture the elegance of life below sea level by using his keen eye for symmetry and composition.

To read more click on the following link: https://mymodernmet.com/christian-vizl-silent-kingdom-underwater-photography/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_term=2019-08-29

Cultural Destinations: The Huntington Library Launchess Centennial Celebration September 5

From The Huntington Library news release:

The Huntington Library and Gardens 100th CentennialThe Huntington’s Centennial Celebration kicks off on Sept. 5, 2019, with a special event for press and Southern California civic, higher education, and cultural leaders—a number of whose institutions are also celebrating significant anniversaries. Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence will host the celebration, sharing key news announcements and highlighting plans for the centennial year and beyond. The formal program will include a panel discussion with thought leaders on some of the big ideas shaping the future, brief presentations by Huntington leadership from each collection area, and a special musical performance interpreting sheet music from the Harold Bruce Forsythe collection. Public visitors will enjoy music in the gardens by Todd Simon and members of his Angel City All-Star Brass Band from noon to 2 p.m.

The Sept. 5 event will set the stage for a yearlong series of exhibitions, public programs, new initiatives, and more—inviting people with a range of interests to engage with the venerable institution’s collections and the connections they offer while exploring the interdisciplinary ideas that will shape the next 100 years. The Centennial Launch’s program reflects the interdisciplinary lens of The Huntington’s incomparable collections.

To read more click on the following link: https://www.huntington.org/news/centennial-celebration-sept-5

Top Literary Podcasts: Critic James Wood On The British, “Etonian Entitlement” And Brexit

London Review of Books PodcastsJames Wood: These Etonians

James Wood recalls his time at the college, with David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and others.

Even at a place like Eton, it didn’t seem likely that anyone in my year would actually become prime minister. At school, everyone is ‘ambitious’, everyone loudly stretching upwards, but perhaps true ambition has a pair of silent claws. None of us identified David Cameron as the boy marching inexorably towards Downing Street. When he became Tory leader in 2005, I had difficulty recalling him: wasn’t he that affable, sweet-faced, minor fellow at the edge of things? I remembered him as quite handsome, with the Etonian’s uncanny ability to soften entitlement with charm. Mostly, he was defined by negatives: he wasn’t an intellectual or scholar, a rebel, a musician, a school journalist or writer, even a sportsman.

Website: https://play.acast.com/s/londonreviewpodcasts/6baeeb08-0fd4-4149-af9d-7074e15b6244

Top Upcoming Exhibitions: “James Tissot – Fashion & Faith”, Legion Of Honor Museum In San Francisco Oct 12, 2019 To Feb 9, 2020

James Tissot, Self Portrait, ca. 1865. Oil on panel Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Mildred Anna Williams CollectionTissot consistently defied convention in both his professional and personal life. His contributions to the academy and the avant-garde are documented by participation at diverse venues such as the Paris Salon as well as London’s Royal Academy and the Grosvenor and Dudley Galleries. This exhibition explores his multifaceted career with a fresh perspective and original scholarship and will also question where and how Tissot should be situated in narratives of the nineteenth-century canon.

Tissot was arguably a painter of modern life although he did not formally belong to the Impressionist circle and never exhibited in their group shows, despite an invitation from Edgar Degas. 

Legion of Honor Museum

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris are co-organizing James Tissot: Fashion & Faith, the first major reassessment of the artist’s career in over 20 years. In San Francisco, this international retrospective will examine approximately 60 paintings, additional works on paper, and cloisonné enamels by Tissot. Exhibition highlights are drawn from the permanent collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, including Tissot’s Self Portrait (ca. 1865) as well as prints and photographs from the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts. New scholarship on the artist presented in this collaboration demonstrates that even Tissot’s most ebullient society paintings reveal rich and complex commentary on topics such as nineteenth-century society, religion, fashion, and politics, rendering him an artist worthy of reexamination in the twenty-first century.

https://legionofhonor.famsf.org/exhibitions/james-tissot-fashion-faith

Top Museum Exhibits: “STRANGE LIGHT: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF CLARENCE JOHN LAUGHLIN” At High Museum Of Art, Atlanta

From the High.org website:

The Bat 1940 by CLARENCE JOHN LAUGHLINDubbed “The Father of American Surrealism,” Clarence John Laughlin (American, 1905-1985) was the most important Southern photographer of his time and a singular figure within the burgeoning American school of photography. Known primarily for his atmospheric depictions of decaying antebellum architecture that proliferated his hometown of New Orleans, Laughlin approached photography with a romantic, experimental eye that diverged heavily from his peers who championed realism and social documentary.

High Museum Of Art Atlanta

On view through November 10, 2019

Water Witch 1939 Clarence John LaughlinThe exhibition surveys Laughlin’s signature bodies of work made between 1935 and 1965, emphasizing his inventiveness, artistic influences, and deep connection to the written word. The High began collecting Laughlin’s work in 1974 and Strange Light: The Photography of Clarence John Laughlin is the first major presentation of Laughlin’s photographs by the High Museum following a landmark acquisition of his work in 2015.

The more than one hundred works in this exhibition attest to Laughlin’s innovative approach and prescience for the future of the photographic medium. From allegorical social commentary, to expertly constructed narratives, to bizarre material experimentation, Laughlin’s effort to access a higher artistic potential for photography is evident throughout his career. His desire to push the limits of photographic possibility paved the way for generations of artists and the growth of the medium into a tool of magical potential.

https://high.org/exhibition/strange-light-the-photography-of-clarence-john-laughlin/

New Historical Fiction: “To Calais, In Ordinary Time” By James Meek Is “Inventive And Original”

From a Canongate.co.uk online release:

to-calais-in-ordinary-time-hardback-cover-9781786896742.600x0“Fans of intelligent historical fiction will be enthralled by a story so original and so fully imagined. Meek shows the era as alien, which it is, and doesn’t falsify it by assimilating it to ours. But his characters are recognisably warm and human”
HILARY MANTEL

“An inventive and original novel that captures the distant past and pins it to the page”
The Times, Book Of The Month

Three journeys. One road.

England, 1348. A gentlewoman flees an odious arranged marriage, a Scots proctor sets out for Avignon and a young ploughman in search of freedom is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais.

Coming in their direction from across the Channel is the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the population of Northern Europe. As the journey unfolds, overshadowed by the archers’ past misdeeds and clerical warnings of the imminent end of the world, the wayfarers must confront the nature of their loves and desires.

https://canongate.co.uk/books/2764-to-calais-in-ordinary-time/

Top Museum Exhibits: “Buried by Vesuvius – Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri” At Getty Villa

From a Wall Street Journal article:

Getty Villa Buried by Vesuvius - Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri…the Getty Villa, despite some anomalies and insertions, is considered a strong likeness, which makes it a powerful locale for “Buried by Vesuvius: Treasures From the Villa dei Papiri,” the first major exhibition of works discovered in the Roman residence. The show includes Weber’s 1758 architectural map—used to build the Getty Villa—along with some of the approximately 90 sculptures pulled from the site, showing athletes, philosophers, rulers, poets and mythological figures. The exhibition also displays findings from the recent excavations.

The idea was half-mad: building a museum to look like an ancient Roman villa that was buried under 75 feet of debris when Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79 and had never really been seen since. But J. Paul Getty made his immense fortune by bringing ancient subterranean material (i.e. oil) to the surface, so he must have felt similar excitement in exhuming this villa, in concept if not reality. It opened as the home for his eponymous museum in 1974; now called the Getty Villa, and located in Los Angeles, it holds the institution’s Classical collections.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/buried-by-vesuvius-treasures-from-the-villa-dei-papiri-review-a-homecoming-of-sorts-11566941174

Top New Books: “The Truffle Underground” By Ryan Jacobs Is Captivating

From a LitHub.com online article:

The Truffle Underground by Ryan Jacobs cover“Asking even seasoned chefs and truffle-industry insiders to describe what the fungus tastes or smells like,” Jacobs writes, “is a bit like asking a priest why he believes in God.” Readers not familiar with the pungent, one-of-a-kind flavor will come away even more intrigued. Those of us whose most frequent encounter with the fabled fungus is through truffle oil will also be disappointed. As Jacobs discovers, nearly all truffle butter and truffle oil sold in America is manufactured using chemicals rather than the real thing.

Part culinary exploration, part history, and part true crime, reporter Ryan Jacobs takes readers to France, Italy, and the Pacific Northwest in The Truffle Underground. “Even without criminal interference, the truffle’s journey from spore to plate is so fraught with biological uncertainty, economic competition, and logistical headaches that a single shaving could be understood as a testament to the wonder of human civilization.” Truffles are often referred to as diamonds, and the violent crime Jacobs’s chronicles reinforces that comparison.

The Truffle Underground by Ryan Jacobs chapter 1

To read more click on the following link: https://lithub.com/5-audiobooks-to-help-with-those-end-of-summer-blues/

Creative Artists: Fabian Oefner Slices Vintage Cameras, “Reassembles Images Into New Compositions” (2019)

From website FabianOefner.com:

Studio Oefner - CutUp 2019 SculptureCutUp is closely linked to Oefner`s  process of destruction and reassembly, that he previously used to create two-dimensional works like the Disintegrating or the Explosion Collage photographs. Rather than seeing destruction as something negative, the artist uses this process to break objects and images down into smaller pieces and reassembles them into new compositions, enhanced in both form, meaning and function from the original pieces.

Oefner deliberately selected still and video cameras to slice apart. This is an allusion to his earlier photographic work, where the image made with the camera is the “art” and the camera itself is merely a tool. For this series, the tool is transformed into a piece of art. It is at the same time a deconstruction of the technology of image capturing, revealing the beauty underneath the surface of these objects.

The series currently consists of 6 sculptures and will be expanded into many more in the future.

To read more click on following link: https://fabianoefner.com/cutup/#ms-365