Category Archives: Arts & Literature
Ashmolean Museum Views: The ‘Tang Dynasty Camel’
The object that inspired this animation, a ceramic camel dating back to the Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907), helps us to tell the story of Paul Jacobsthal, a Jewish professor of Archaeology at the University of Marburg in the 1930s, who was forced to leave Germany.
CAMEL TOMB FIGURE
A spiritual object intended to protect the dead from evil
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford | EA2012.189
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – July 3, 2023
The Divine Comedy of Roman Emperors’ Last Words
In the end, godlike aspirations often met with all too human final moments.
By Mary Beard
One of the funniest works of Roman literature to survive—and the only one that has ever made me laugh out loud—is a skit, written by the philosopher Seneca, about the Emperor Claudius’ adventures on his way to Mt. Olympus after his death. Titled “Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii” (“The ‘Pumpkinification’ of the Deified Claudius”), it recounts how the Roman Senate declared that the dead Emperor was now a god, complete with his own temple, priests, and official rites of worship. The deification of emperors was fairly standard practice at the time, and the spoof claimed to lift the lid on what really happened during the process.
How Plastics Are Poisoning Us
They both release and attract toxic chemicals, and appear everywhere from human placentas to chasms thirty-six thousand feet beneath the sea. Will we ever be rid of them?
The New York Times Book Review — June 25, 2023
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JUNE 25, 2023: The Reading Crisis by @aoscott; ‘Little Monsters’ by @adriennebrodeur; ‘The Art Thief’ by @MikeFinkel and more…
Everyone Likes Reading. Why Are We So Afraid of It?
Book bans, chatbots, pedagogical warfare: What it means to read has become a minefield.
By A.O. Scott
Everyone loves reading. In principle, anyway. Nobody is against it, right? Surely, in the midst of our many quarrels, we can agree that people should learn to read, should learn to enjoy it and should do a lot of it. But bubbling underneath this bland, upbeat consensus is a simmer of individual anxiety and collective panic. We are in the throes of a reading crisis.
Family Politics as a Predictor of Mayhem on a Bigger Scale
In her new novel, “Little Monsters,” Adrienne Brodeur takes readers on a stressful march toward a patriarch’s 70th birthday party.
By MARY POLS
Adrienne Brodeur’s “Little Monsters” is cleverly calculated to push all the buttons for a wide swath of women. Like her 2019 memoir “Wild Game,” which examined the role Brodeur played in her mother’s long affair with a family friend, “Little Monsters” is a tale of dysfunction and buried secrets, set in and around moneyed Cape Cod.
Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’
We talk to Nancy Ireson at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia about the exhibition William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision. Edmondson was the first African American artist to have a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the 1930s, but has rarely been shown in museums on the US East Coast since.
And this episode’s Work of the Week marks the 75th anniversary of the arrival in the UK of the Empire Windrush, a boat carrying passengers from the Caribbean. Zinzi Minott, the choreographer and artist, has made a film called Fi Dem about the Windrush on this anniversary every year since 2017. She tells us about the latest iteration, which is at the heart of a new exhibition at Queercircle in London.
The National Portrait Gallery is open now. Yevonde: Life and Colour, until 15 October.
William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, 25 June-10 September.
Zinzi Minott’s Fi Dem VI is part of her exhibition Many Mikl Mek Ah Mukl, Queercircle, London, until 27 August.
Profiles: Native American Pottery Artist Thomas Tenorio Of Santa Fe, NM
Video timeline: 0:00 Intro 0:23 Andrea Fisher Fine Pottery 1:16 Santa Fe’s Artists 1:33 Thomas Tenorio’s Traditional Pottery 4:22 Outro
In this video, learn about Thomas’s journey as a traditional Native American potter and how art has become a way of life for him. Also, see Andrea Fisher’s traditional pottery shop and learn more about Santa Fe’s vibrant art scene. Watch the video to learn more about the artists and how the art of the area is closely tied to the local indigenous communities.
#TravelandLeisure #Travel #SantaFe #Art #Pottery #TraditionalArt
Culture: Country Life Magazine – June 21, 2023
Country Life Magazine – June 21, 2023 issue:
From field to dinner-party fork
Feeding friends with food grown in your own garden is a delight, finds Natasha Goodfellow.
Why treasure is a universal word
London’s new Treasure House Fair deserves to be a triumph, believes Huon Mallalieu.
Skye Gyngell’s favourite painting
The culinary director chooses a graphic work full of energy.
Ode to June
Jamie Blackett swelters on the farm, where greenfinches fly and the meadow shimmers.
Native breeds
Kate Green falls for the teddy-bear Greyface Dartmoor sheep.
Life, the universe and everything
Does cave art hold the answer, asks Robin Hanbury-Tenison.
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – June 23, 2023
Times Literary Supplement (June 23, 2023): Twenty-two TLS writers’ choices for best Summer 2023 Books, Anna Della Subin on Mary Magdalene; Kojo Koram on global capitalism; Zachary Leader on Joyce and Léon and illustrating Victorian classics
Preview: London Review Of Books — June 29, 2023
Noël Coward’s Third Act; Fassbinder and His Friends; Marx’s Literary Style by Ludovico Silva, and more…
Be like the Silkworm
Marx’s Literary Style
by Ludovico Silva, translated by Paco Brito Núñez.
Working on Capital in the British Museum, plagued by creditors and carbuncles, Karl Marx complained not only that nobody had ever written so much about money and had so little of it, but that ‘this economic crap’ was keeping him from writing his big book on Balzac. His work is studded with allusions to Homer, Sophocles, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe and scores of other authors, though he was less enthralled by ‘Elizabeth’s arse-kissing poet’ Edmund Spenser, an advocate of state terror in Ireland.
Can I speak freely?
Amia Srinivasan
Most of us would find it horrible to be told that we aren’t worth engaging with, that our views are socially unacceptable or merely a function of demography. But that it is painful to be on the receiving end of such remarks doesn’t mean that one’s own rights to ‘free speech’ are thereby imperilled; it might simply be a reminder that speech can wound.
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – June 26, 2023
What Can We Do About Pandemic-Related Learning Loss?
Remote school was devastating for many students. In Richmond, Virginia, a plan to switch to a year-round calendar brought promise and pushback.
Boomers Daily 