Category Archives: Arts & Literature

Arts & Literature, Books, Historical, Reviews

Books: Best Historical Crime Fiction Of 2023

August 10, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Literary Hub (August 9, 2023) – MOLLY ODINTZ reviews 20 essential new historical crime novels in an amazing year for historical fiction.

The City Between the Bridges: 1794

Niklas Natt och Dag
Setting: Stockholm, 1794

I adored Niklas Natt och Dag’s brilliantly cynical debut, The Wolf and the Watchman, and The City Between the Bridges is just full of filth and cynicism, the perfect combination for depicting the late 18th century and its terrible iniquities. The watchman of The Wolf and the Watchman returns to solve a new crime, this one the brutal murder of a tenant’s daughter on the eve of her wedding to a seemingly sensitive nobleman. Natt och Dag is particularly adept at savagely ripping the notion of a “civilized age” apart and showing the raw suffering underneath. As a side note, I’ve long believed that historical fiction is only to be trusted when the author is willing to describe bad smells to set the scene, and this book is full of truly disgusting odors.

Hungry Ghosts

Kevin Jared Hosein
Setting: Trinidad, 1940s

Set in the dying colonial era, Kevin Jared Hosein’s searing debut examines race, class, and decolonization through the lens of two families, one white and wealthy, the other Black and disenfranchised, as their lives become ever more entwined after the disappearance of the white family’s patriarch. Like the best historical fiction, Hungry Ghosts is immersed in the ideas and complexities of its’ shifting time period, for a triumph of well-researched storytelling.

At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf

Tara Ison
Setting: WWII France

In one of those amazing life twists that feels as bizarre as it is inspiring, Tara Ison, the writer of the cult hit Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead has crafted one of the best tales of collaboration ever written. In Between the Hour of Dog and Wolf, Tara Ison takes us into the mind of an adolescent Jewish girl being hidden with a French family during WWII. She spends so much time pretending to align with the ideals of the occupiers that she finds herself beginning to agree with them, in what reads as a Jewish version of Lacombe, Lucien. Perhaps it’s not such a twist—both book and film are about the ways we assume new roles when necessary to survival, whether that’s taking a job as a fashion consultant to feed siblings and putting on a batshit fashion show (a la Babysitter) or pretending to be a fascist to to protect from others knowing that you are Jewish. Okay, maybe that last comparison is a bit of a stretch, but still, everyone should read this book and also everyone should should rewatch that movie.

The Shards

Bret Easton Ellis
Setting: Los Angeles, 1981

Bret Easton Ellis is back, this time with a new serial killer novel that brings together all the best aspects of Less Than Zero and American Psycho. It’s 1981, Missing Persons is playing on the stereo, and future writer Bret is doing bumps with his prep-school friends by the poolside, dressed sharply in Ralph Lauren, as a killer makes his way closer and closer to their wealthy enclave. Ellis’ teenage emotional truths collide with violent fictional set-pieces for an epic tale of Southern Californian sins.

Profiles: David Hockney At The Huntington Library

August 9, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Painting of a bare tree, with many small branches, in a green field with a blue sky. — David Hockney, *Tree on Woldgate, 6 March*, 2006

The Huntington Library (August 9, 2023) – A David Hockney in The Huntington’s venerable European art gallery? Yes, visitors can view the large and striking Tree on Woldgate, 6 March (2006), which depicts the serene Yorkshire countryside where the renowned artist grew up.

You can see fields in the distance and, in the center, a leafless tree with branches that twist and turn in an almost snakelike manner. The painting comes from a period in Hockney’s career when he created a series of plein air landscapes around his hometown.

Watercolor self-portrait of David Hockney, paintbrush in hand, looking at the viewer. — David Hockney, *Self-Portrait with Red Braces*, 2003

The painting hangs in conversation with John Constable’s monumental View on the Stour Near Dedham (1822). While the two works were created more than 180 years apart, their inspiration comes from the same source—childhood surroundings—and they both convey a sense of place and nostalgia.

One of the most famous British artists of the 20th century, Hockney emerged as a major contributor to the 1960s pop art movement and has had a multifaced career as a painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. He is perhaps best known for his acrylic paintings of bright swimming pools, split-level homes, and suburban California landscapes.

In 2022, The Huntington acquired its first Hockney works: 17 works on paper that include an artist book, drawings, prints, photocollages, and watercolors. These works display an intimate side of Hockney—like the self-portrait of the artist in red suspenders, bent over a table and peering over his wire-rimmed glasses, paintbrush in hand. His blue eyes, gazing straight at the viewer, create an immediate intimacy.

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Aug 11, 2023

August 9, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Times Literary Supplement (August 11, 2023): – Race today and yesterday – The Black and Asian British experience; Orwell’s political pilgrimage; Germany via Scotland; Adam Mars-Jones trilogy and the Grenfell play…

Arts & Literature, Culture, Homes, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Previews: Country Life Magazine – August 9, 2023

August 8, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Country Life Magazine – August 9, 2023: The art of the shell seeker; High time – the daring life of a steeplejack; Animal architects; grand rentals and Thelwell’s legacy…

The master builders of the British countryside

Exploring labyrinthine tunnels and forest skyscrapers, John Lewis-Stempel gets lost in the world of animal architecture

Grace and favour rooms

Many grand country houses are now welcoming overnight guests. Rosie Paterson checks in

Always reaching for the stars

Ben Lerwill requires a head for heights as he meets steeplejacks working at the top of their game

Art, Art Galleries, Arts & Literature, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Preview: Art In America Magazine – Fall 2023

August 8, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Art in America Magazine (August 8, 2023) – The issue features Fall 2023: Icons – Artists who have made an impact, plus The Ruscha Effect, Cave_bureau, Pippa Garner, Marfa vs. Naoshima, Françoise Gilot, and more.

Meet Suzanne Jackson, Art in America’s Fall 2023 Cover Artist

A wide abstract painting with impressions of bodies and faces. — Suzanne Jackson: *a history drawing-cracked wall*, 2016–19.PHOTO TIMOTHY DOYON/COURTESY ORTUZAR PROJECTS, NEW YORK

Suzanne Jackson, whose work a history drawing-cracked wall (2016–19) features on the cover of the Fall 2023 issue of Art in America in a detail of the larger work shown here in full, told A.i.A. the backstory of her creation from her home in Savannah, Georgia. (Jackson is also the subject of a feature profile in the same issue.)

As told to A.i.A. The “history” in history drawing is the history of making the drawing. Over the three years I was working on it—it’s a big drawing—the whole process just happens from day to day: you’re adding something new, building it, working through composition and how elements come into the spaces in different ways. Each time you come back to work on it, something new has happened in your life.

Arts & Literature, Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – August 14, 2023

August 7, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

People shop at a farmers market in the middle of a city.

The New Yorker – August 14, 2023 issue: The cover features Victoria Tentler-Krylov’s “Peak Season”….

The Protests Inside Iran’s Girls’ Schools

A girl defiantly stands on a classroom chair without a head scarf. — Illustration by Adams Carvalho

From the start, women were at the center of the demonstrations that swept Iran last year. Schoolgirls emerged as an unexpected source of defiant energy.

By Azadeh Moaveni

One morning this past winter, the students at a girls’ high school in Tehran were told that education officials would arrive that week to inspect their classrooms and check compliance with the school’s dress code: specifically, the wearing of the maghnaeh, a hooded veil that became a requirement for schoolgirls in the years after the Iranian Revolution. During lunch, a group of students gathered in the schoolyard. A thirteen-year-old in the seventh grade, whom I’ll call Nina, pressed in to hear what was being said. At the time, mass protests against the government were raging across the country; refusing to wear the veil had become a symbol of the movement. An older girl told the others that it was time for them to join together and make a stand.

How Sudan Archives Became the Violin’s Domme

Sudan Archives photographed by Djeneba Aduayom.

The twenty-nine-year-old musician pursues technical, rather than emotional, manipulation with her instrument. She can coax from it the sounds of an accordion, a drum, or a string orchestra.

By Doreen St. Félix

“Do you listen to Sudan Archives?” Most of the time, but not every time, the response to this question is one of confusion. How can one listen to the archives of a country? Sudan Archives is, in fact, a twenty-nine-year-old musician—a singer, rapper, producer, arranger, lyricist, and violinist. She creates a “fiddle-punk sound,” as she describes it, that blends folk, ambient, soul, house, and whatever other tradition she feels is available for the taking. Sudan (the name that her colleagues, her fans, and, increasingly, her intimates call her) begins composing by striking a riff on one of her five violins, which she uses differently from most other American producers.

What Should You Do with an Oil Fortune?

Leah HuntHendrix photographed by Platon.

The Hunt family owns one of the largest private oil companies in the country. Leah Hunt-Hendrix funds social movements that want to end the use of fossil fuels.

By Andrew Marantz

Let’s say you were born into a legacy that is, you have come to believe, ruining the world. What can you do? You could be paralyzed with guilt. You could run away from your legacy, turn inward, cultivate your garden. If you have a lot of money, you could give it away a bit at a time—enough to assuage your conscience, and your annual tax burden, but not enough to hamper your life style—and only to causes (libraries, museums, one or both political parties) that would not make anyone close to you too uncomfortable. Or you could just give it all away—to a blind trust, to the first person you pass on the sidewalk—which would be admirable: a grand gesture of renunciation in exchange for moral purity. But, if you believe that the world is being ruined by structural causes, you will have done little to challenge those structures.

Arts & Literature, Books, Essays, Magazines, Reviews

Literary Essays: Seamus Perry On ‘Evelyn Waugh’

August 5, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

‘A novelist is condemned to produce a succession of novelties, new names for characters, new incidents for his plots, new scenery,’ reflects the beleaguered hero of The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, Evelyn Waugh’s portrait of the artist as a middle-aged car crash.

London Review of Books (LRB – August 5, 2023) – But really, as Pinfold goes on to say, ‘most men harbour the germs of one or two books only; all else is professional trickery of which the most daemonic of the masters – Dickens and Balzac even – were flagrantly guilty.’ Pinfold is by admission a self-portrait, so Waugh must have expected readers to speculate on how this observation applied to his own career, and whether he was a one or a two-book man himself.

In 1958, a Cambridge don called Frederick J. Stopp produced a study of Waugh – uniquely, Waugh himself gave ‘generous assistance’ – which warmly endorsed the idea that he had basically ‘two books in his armoury’, the first featuring the ‘contrast between sanity and insanity’ and the second ‘sanity venturing out into the surrounding sphere of insanity, and defeating it at its own game’.

Whether this particular dualism had Waugh’s approval is unclear, but either way it doesn’t seem entirely satisfactory since the two alternatives look like variants of the same thing. Less well-disposed readers have thought that Waugh’s books divided on much more rudimentary lines: the good ones, which are funny, and the bad ones, which are pious.

There is the string of brilliant, brittle social comedies in the 1930s, and then there is whatever started happening with the publication in 1945 of Brideshead Revisited. Stopp reported, presumably with his master’s sanction, that ‘Mr Waugh’s reputation among the critics has hardly yet recovered from the blow.’ Brigid Brophy had the best joke: ‘In literary calendars, 1945 is marked as the year Waugh ended.’

The New York Times Book Review – August 6, 2023

August 4, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – August 6, 2023: The issue features Daniel Kraus’s new thriller, “Whalefall,” the story of a teenage diver inadvertently swallowed by an 80-foot whale; the reissue of Claude Anet’s provocative 1920 novel, “Ariane: A Russian Girl”; a biography of the Gilded Age heiress and international spy Marguerite Harrison; a handful of audiobook recommendations; even the biography of a venerable scam.

Swallowed by a Sperm Whale, and Mourning His Father

In Daniel Kraus’s novel “Whalefall,” a teenage diver is gulped down by a 60-ton whale and must try to escape.

By Sarah Lyall

In marine biology, a whale fall is the body of a dead whale that has slowly descended to the bottom of the ocean. Scavengers strip its flesh, crustaceans and other creatures colonize its skeleton and its decaying bones help sustain countless organisms for years to come, part of the delicate balance of the undersea ecosystem.

Talking About Love in the Afternoon, Morning, Evening and Night

This black-and-white still from the 1957 film “Love in the Afternoon” portrays Gary Cooper, in white shirt and tie, leaning against a wall where Audrey Hepburn, in a black hat and dress, gazes back from between his arms. — While Billy Wilder’s 1957 film adaptation portrays Ariane (played by Audrey Hepburn) as a doe-eyed ingénue, Claude Anet’s original character is considerably more enigmatic. Credit…Allied Artists/Getty Images

Reading Claude Anet’s provocative 1920 novel “Ariane: A Russian Girl,” the reader may yearn for a little less conversation.

By Gemma Sieff

It would be nice if we had put to bed, so to speak, witless and reductive double standards about female promiscuity. Have you heard the one that goes, “A key that opens many locks is a master key, yet a lock that is opened by many keys” is … unprintably bad? Me neither — until I saw it on TikTok.

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Previews, Views

Exhibition: ‘Tree & Serpent- Early Buddhist Art In India 200 BCE – 400 BCE’ (The Met)

Video August 4, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (August 3, 2023) – A virtual tour of Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE–400 CE. Featuring more than 140 objects dating from 200 BCE to 400 CE, the exhibition presents a series of evocative and interlocking themes to reveal both the pre-Buddhist origins of figurative sculpture in India and the early narrative traditions that were central to this formative moment in early Indian art.

Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE–400 CE

July 21st–November 13th, 2023

With major loans from a dozen lenders across India, as well as from the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States, it transports visitors into the world of early Buddhist imagery that gave expression to this new religion as it grew from a core set of ethical teachings into one of the world’s great religions. Objects associated with Indo-Roman exchange reveal India’s place in early global trade.

The exhibition showcases objects in various media, including limestone sculptures, gold, silver, bronze, rock crystal, and ivory. Highlights include spectacular sculptures from southern India—newly discovered and never before publicly exhibited masterpieces—that add to the world canon of early Buddhist art. On view: July 21st–November 13th, 2023