International Art: Apollo Magazine – December 2024
Category Archives: Arts & Literature
Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Dec. 2, 2024
The Fundamental Problem with R.F.K., Jr.,’s Nomination to H.H.S.
Kennedy has many bad ideas. Yet the irony of our political moment is that his more reasonable positions are the ones that could sink his candidacy. By Dhruv Khullar
How Old Age Was Reborn
“The Golden Girls” reframed senior life as being about socializing and sex. But did the cultural narrative of advanced age as continued youth twist the dial too far? By Daniel Immerwahr
How to Make Fuel (or Booze) from Thin Air
Air Company, a startup that has used water and carbon dioxide to make vodka and to power automobiles, taste-tests its product and discusses getting Elon Musk’s business. By Adam Iscoe
Art Profiles: The Genius Of Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
DW History and Culture (November 21, 2024): Discover the trailblazing spirit of Auguste Renoir, one of the founders of impressionism, whose canvases shattered centuries of artistic convention. In “Renoir – Portrait of Changing Times,” we see how Renoir took inspiration from the past, while transforming Parisian life undergoing societal change into timeless masterpieces.
Renoir’s impressionistic strokes capture the pulse of 1870s Paris, a city reeling from war and revolutionary change, whilst incorporating Rococo references. This documentary explores the genesis of Renoir’s vision, which melds tradition with the avant-garde. As his son later wrote, “Renoir loved fairy tales.
The everyday was like a fairy tale to him”. Like the fairytale world of Rococo Painting, Renoir’s impressionist works do not depict reality but create an alluring and beautiful fiction that still captures the imagination today.
Country Life Magazine – November 20, 2024 Preview
Country Life Magazine (November 20, 2024): The latest issue features Winston Churchill – The wit and wisdom of the great man…
‘Let us go forward together’
As we approach the 150th anniversary of Sir Winston Churchill’s birthday, Amie Elizabeth White and Octavia Pollock pay homage to the great man, in his own words.
Entertaining His Majesty
In the second of two articles, John Goodall charts the 1560s and 1620s expansion of Apethorpe Palace in Northamptonshire
Landscape of ‘seamless sameness’
England’s heather moorland and its glorious purple swathe is a wonder of the Western world, suggest John Lewis-Stempel
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Do you know a Yonerywander from a Vinvertuperator? Engage your inner Edward Lear as Daniel McKay welcomes you into his wacky world of whimwondery
Wibble wobble, wibble wobble, jelly made of paint
Food, glorious food is fuelling the creativity of modern still-life artists discovers Catriona Gray
Sex, lies and sewing machines
The sewing machine rose to be an emblem of domesticity, but its invention is a story of Saints and Singers. Matthew Dennison follows the thread
Interiors
Raze to the ground or renovate? Has the open-plan layout had its day? Cart shed or garage? Giles Kime considers some key architectural conundrums
Wisley reinvented
John Hoyland is captivated by the spectacular transformation of Piet Oudolf’s double borders at the RHS garden in Surrey
Some like it hot
If you like your chili ‘hotter than the hinges of hell’, Tom Parker Bowles has just the dish for you (and there’s not a bean in sight)
Wooden walls restored
John Goodall lauds a decade-long project to rescue a unique painted church at Ursi, Romania
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Nov. 22, 2024
Times Literary Supplement (November 20, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Uncommon Reader’ – Virginia Woolf in literary tradition..
What we want from her books
Virginia Woolf as reader, writer and literary inspiration By Sophie Oliver
A star is torn
The unravelling of Vivien Leigh’s marriage amid her mental health breakdown By Vanessa Curtis
Ignorant armies
History as an ideological battleground By Niall Ferguson
Bergson’s boom and bust
How the world’s most famous thinker fell out of fashion By Mark Sinclair
Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Nov. 18, 2024
Javier Mariscal’s “Desk with a View”
Sudden glimpses of urban artistry. By Françoise MoulyArt by Javier Mariscal
Why N.S.A. Rules Say No to Smartphones, No to Texting, Yes to Podcasts
The agency, known for listening, is getting into the (extremely vetted) talking game, with “No Such Podcast.”
Art: Picasso’s ‘Masterful Contradictions’ (1925)
Sotheby’s (November 17, 2024):In late September of 1925, Pablo Picasso, his wife Olga and their young son Paolo returned to Paris from their annual summer holiday in the South of France.
The summers were beginning to blend together for Picasso, who was tiring of the swell set he and Olga socialized with. The home they returned to at 23 rue la Boetie was a changed one. After lengthy negotiations, Picasso had acquired an additional floor of the building to be used as his studio.
He set about immediately modifying the space: removing doors from their hinges, bringing in his copious art supplies (and a limited amount of furniture) and stripping back most of the existing wallpaper. After years of jostling with his elegant and socially aspirational wife for space in their apartment on the floor below he relished a place to colonize as his own.
The New York Times Book Review – November 17, 2024
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (November 17, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Who’s Johnny?’…
‘Carson the Magnific: Where’s Johnny? The Biography of a TV Host Whose Life Was a Closed Book.
Johnny Carson dominated late-night television for decades, but closely guarded his privacy. Bill Zehme’s biography, “Carson the Magnificent,” tries to break through.ent,’ by Bill Zehme
Combined Print & E-Book Fiction – Best Sellers
Rankings on weekly lists reflect sales for the week ending November 2, 2024.
Artists: Why Rembrandt Paintings Are So Prized
DW Documentary (November 15, 2024): The 17th century was the zenith of painting, in the Netherlands. In no other era were artists so productive. Never before had so many painters tried to make a living from their art. Demand was huge.
People from all walks of life began to enthusiastically collect paintings. New genres were born. And both the art market and the profession of art dealer emerged. Exceptional artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Vermeer and Frans Hals created masterpieces that still inspire us today.
One reason for the cultural heyday and its glut of paintings was an enormous surplus of capital, generated by speculative money transactions and trade, which was also based on the exploitation of the colonies and the ideal conditions that shipping found in the Netherlands. The film traces a period in which art, too, became an economic factor. In a way, the 17th century can be seen as the origin of our current art system.
After all, this was when auction houses were first established, leading to emergence of professional art dealers and wealthy collectors. Art was democratized. This documentary film explores an era when business and art entered into a marriage for the first time. How did such an artistic flourishing come about? What art-historical innovations do we owe to this period? And what significance does it have for our view of art and our approach to art today?
Arts & Culture: The New Criterion -December 2024
Boomers Daily 