The author’s latest book, “The Wager,” investigates the mysteries surrounding an 18th-century maritime disaster off Cape Horn.
There were multiple moments while reading David Grann’s new book, “The Wager,” about an 18th-century shipwreck, when it occurred to me that the kind of nonfiction narratives The New Yorker writer has become known for share something essential with a sturdy ship.
Catherine Lacey’s new novel follows a polarizing artist through a fractured country.
The narrator of “Biography of X,” the new Catherine Lacey novel, is a journalist named C.M. Lucca who worked for a Village Voice-like newspaper in New York City during the 1980s. C.M. has a cool tone and a lonely intelligence; she’s a solitary spirit.
Police officers from across the country line Fifth Avenue for the funeral of the N.Y.P.D. officer Wilbert D. Mora, 2022.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times
In “Walk the Walk,” Neil Gross profiles three departments around the country experimenting with genuine reform.
The Art Newspaper April 20, 2023: This week features a tour of Tate Modern’s exhibition that brings together the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint and the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian.
We hear about the two artists’ distinctive contributions to abstraction, their shared interest in esoteric belief systems and their deep engagement with the natural world, from one of the show’s curators, Bryony Fer. Our editor, Americas, Ben Sutton visited the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to talk to the Native American artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, as her retrospective opens at the museum.
And this episode’s Work of the Week is a reconstruction of a Roman gateway that has just opened at Richborough Roman Fort in Kent, southern England. Andrew J. Roberts, a properties historian with English Heritage, the charity that looks after the historic site, explains what the gateway tells us about the Romans’ arrival in Britain in 43 CE.Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life, Tate Modern, London, until 3 September.
Additionally: Kunstmuseum den Haag, The Hague, 7 October-25 February 2024Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 13 August; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 15 October -7 January 2024; Seattle Art Museum, 15 February–12 May next year. The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 24 September-15 January 2024; New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut, 18 April 2024-15 September 2024.The Roman gateway and rampart, Richborough Roman Fort and Amphitheatre, Kent, now open.
The New York Review of Books – May 11, 2023 issue: The Art Issue features Fintan O’Toole on the return of the Trump circus, Susan Tallman on why Piranesi still speaks to us, Joshua Leifer on democracy deferred in Israel, Ingrid D. Rowland on recycling antiquity, and Julian Bell on Adam Elsheimer’s oceanic immensity.
Bachir Mahieddine/Institut du Monde Arabe, ParisBaya: The Yellow Curtains, 1947
An exhibition of the Algerian painter’s work liberates it from the political symbolism of late colonialism.
In November 1947 a fifteen-year-old prodigy from colonial Algeria named Baya, described variously as Kabyle, Berber, Muslim, and Arab, exhibited her gouaches and clay sculptures at the Parisian gallery of the art dealer Aimé Maeght. Yves Chataigneau, the French governor of Algeria, and Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Paris Mosque, were the sponsors of the exhibition, and the opening attracted some of the most influential cultural figures of postwar Paris: the writers Albert Camus, François Mauriac, and André Breton; the painters Henri Matisse and Georges Braque; the designer Christian “Bebè” Bérard.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Architectural Fantasy with a Colossal Façade, circa 1743–1745; Morgan Library and Museum, New York
For generations, Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s prints of Roman views defined the popular image of the Eternal City. A profusion of new exhibitions and publications shows why he still speaks to us.
Also in the issue: Jacqueline Rose on C. P. Taylor’s final play, Colin B. Bailey on the Impressionists’ decorations, Wendy Doniger on Bengali tales from the mangrove forests, Christopher Benfey on the Black American potters of the nineteenth century, Jed Perl on high-tech high art, poems by Sasha Debevec-McKenney, Mosab Abu Toha, and Cyrus Console, and much more.
The twelfth film was conceived by artist Bianca Bondi. In her video, she undertook to convey the sense of timelessness and existence beyond time that is the very fabric of the Louvre.
Musée du Louvre (April 20, 2023) – As part of its contemporary programs, the Louvre has invited twenty young creative figures to present their take on the museum in the form of a 3:30 min film.
The “Louvre Looks” initiative brings together creatives under forty – whether they come from the visual arts, poetry, film, experimental music, or fashion. They created new films in the palace itself and thus reconnect with the past of the Louvre – which hosted artist studios even before it became a museum.
These films go live every Thursday on YouTube. Over the course of twenty weeks, you will be given the opportunity to discover many fresh insights into the Louvre.
The tenth film was conceived by painter, performer, and musician Eliza Douglas. She assembled images released by visitors on their Instagram feed to give a polyphonic image of the museum’s lives through its audiences – your Louvre.
Villa Medicis, Rome (April 18, 2023) – The piano nobile of Villa Medici consists of the former rooms of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici with three rooms in a row – the Room of the Elements, the Room of the Muses and the Room of the Lovers of Jupiter – with 16th century frescoes by the Mannerist painter Jacopo Zucchi. These rooms, which are open to the public on guided tours throughout the year, are located next to two private rooms from the same period which complete the complex.
As part of the project Reenchanting Villa Medici, the interior refurbishment of these emblematic spaces of Villa Medici has been entrusted to India Mahdavi, an internationally renowned French architect, designer and scenographer, who will be responsible for the artistic direction of the project in association with craftsmen (more information to come). This transformation is being carried out with respect for the period décor and previous architectural interventions, in order to revisit the premises by adding a touch of colour and modernity. The rooms will be equipped by Maison Tréca, a French manufacturer of high quality bedding.
National Trust (April 18, 2023) – To this day, Virginia Woolf is still known for her novel ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and for her early involvement in the Bloomsbury Group, which was established in the early 1900s in London.
Monk’s House in Sussex was once the place she and her husband Leopold called home, and it’s now being cared for by the National Trust. In this video from the National Trust, you can experience what life was like at Monk’s House first hand. For more than 20 years, Virginia Woolf transformed Monk’s House into a place of beauty, art, creativity and contentment.
Virginia Woolf
From reciting lines in her bathtub to writing books in the tool shed, let this literary pioneer tell you in her own words how she finally found ‘a room of one’s own’. Throughout much of her life, Virginia Woolf experienced bouts of mental illness, and Monk’s House was used as a writing retreat by Virginia and Leopold.
The Sussex landscape captured her imagination, and this came through in much of her writing. She was also engaged in the conservation of the land – a legacy that lives on through the work that National Trust staff and volunteers do to care for this place of history.
Grace Wright’s atmospheric paintings are all-consuming, inviting the viewer into a baroque world of tangled gestures. Markings on the canvas twist and convulse about themselves to build an anarchic structure before unravelling to moments of repose. While Wright’s gestures may be abstract, she views her paintings as representational narratives, evoking the tempestuous rhythm of the natural world, while alluding to 17th-century religious paintings.
Grace Wright, World Receivers, 2023
Deep Symmetry explores a recent evolution of Wright’s practice as a result of her time in Europe in the latter half of 2022. Its title was inspired by the architectural geometries of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, France, and a quote by writer Karl Ove Knausgaard: “Life is irregularity, death is geometry”.
Wright has been long fascinated with the deeper, universal connections that exist beyond our normal comprehension. Marrying alluring, harmonious colour with visceral imagery to monumental standing, Wright’s paintings are a reflection of this deep connectedness; her coiling energetic brush marks echoing the universal ‘rhythmic, cyclical nature’ forms in our world, to emotion and the force of life itself.
The artist discusses artistry, artificial intelligence, and the human experience.
Chatbots and image generators, newly on the rise, have sparked our imaginations—and our fears. As artificial-intelligence machines sharpen their ability to translate written prompts into images that accurately capture both style and substance, some visual artists worry that their specialized skills might be rendered irrelevant.
A new crop of biotech startups want to revolutionize human reproduction.
In 2016, two Japanese reproductive biologists, Katsuhiko Hayashi and Mitinori Saitou, made an announcement in the journal Nature that read like a science-fiction novel. The researchers had taken skin cells from the tip of a mouse’s tail, reprogrammed them into stem cells, and then turned those stem cells into egg cells.
Drug syndicates and other criminal groups bought into the idea that a new kind of phone network couldn’t be infiltrated by cops. They were wrong—big time.
Many criminals have been convicted as a result of encrypted-phone stings—more than four hundred in the U.K. alone.Illustration by Max Löffler
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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