Category Archives: Reviews

Artist Profiles: Finnish-American Riitta Klint – “Dreamlike” Drips Of Paint With Pencil On Clay Panels

My paintings on clay panels begin with thin veils of paint that drip, pool and congeal, and like nature, move out of my control, beautifully mysterious. I work intuitively within these initial drips and pools, searching for structure. Each successive stroke of paint or pencil mark continues to build a dreamlike otherworldly place. The mood is one of nature untamed, enchanting and rife with hidden secrets.

Riitta Klint Dragonfly Dreams Triptych Acrylic and Pencil on Claybord

My paintings are my connection to the Earth, its nature and beautiful mysteries. Riitta Klint PaintingsThere is a sadness as I witness the loss of our last wild places. My paintings are an attempt to keep alive those places and offer my audience a sanctuary in which to reflect.

Riitta Klint is from Helsinki, Finland and currently lives in Fort Worth, Texas and maintains a studio in nearby Aledo. Between these two places is a lifetime spent traveling the world thanks to her father’s career with IBM. Living in her native Finland, as well as in Iran, Portugal, Indonesia, Germany, Mexico, and the United States, together with extensive travel in Asia and Europe has shaped her unique vision and palette. Her work offers the viewer a front seat to that journey, and a threshold to cross over into their own imagination.

Klint works primarily in acrylic and pencil on Claybord™, smooth kaolin clay covered panels that offer the ideal surface for her manipulation of color and medium.

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Auto Racing Nostalgia: “Targa Florio” Endurance Race In Sicily (1906 – 1977)

1951 Targa Florio PosterThe Targa Florio was an open road endurance automobile race held in the mountains of Sicily near the island’s capital of Palermo. Founded in 1906, it was the oldest sports car racing event, part of the World Sportscar Championship between 1955 and 1973. While the first races consisted of a whole tour of the island, the track length in the race’s last decades was limited to the 72 kilometres (45 mi) of the Circuito Piccolo delle Madonie, which was lapped 11 times.

After 1973, it was a national sports car event until it was discontinued in 1977 due to safety concerns. It has since been run as a rallying event, and is part of the Italian Rally Championship.

1967 Targa Florio PosterThe race was created in 1906 by the wealthy pioneer race driver and automobile enthusiast, Vincenzo Florio, who had started the Coppa Florio race in BresciaLombardy in 1900. The Targa also claimed to be a worldly event not to be missed. Renowned artists, such as Alexandre Charpentier and Leonardo Bistolfi, were commissioned to design medals. A magazine was initiated, Rapiditas, which aimed to enhance, with graphic and photographic reproductions of the race, the myth of the car and the typical character of modern life, speed.[1]

1973 Targa Florio PosterOne of the toughest competitions in Europe, the first Targa Florio covered 3 laps equalling 277 miles (446 km) through multiple hairpin curves on treacherous mountain roads, at heights where severe changes in climate frequently occurred. Alessandro Cagno won the inaugural 1906 race in nine hours, averaging 30 miles per hour (50 km/h).

By the mid-1920s, the Targa Florio had become one of Europe’s most important races, as neither the 24 Hours of Le Mans nor the Mille Miglia had been established yet. Grand Prix races were still isolated events, not a series like today’s F1.

After winning the race several times, Porsche named the hardtop convertible version of the 911 after the Targa. The name targa means plaque or plate, see targa top.

From Wikipedia

Exercise: “Shelter In Place” Home Circuit Workouts For Older Adults (WSJ)

From a Wall Street Journal article (March 21, 2020):

As we age, our balance declines, says Dani Johnson, a physical therapist with the Mayo Clinic’s Healthy Living Program in Rochester, Minn. Implementing balance exercises as simple as standing on one leg as you brush your teeth can help prevent falls. Getting a daily dose of cardio can boost the immune system.

This at-home circuit routine will get your heart rate up while also challenging strength and balance. Perform the circuit three times. Walk up and down steps or march in place for two to three minutes between sets. To up the effort, she suggests adding dumbbells or improvising with cans or tube socks filled with coins or rice.

Chair squats

Stand in front of a chair with your feet shoulder-width apart. Bend your knees, lowering your hips back, keeping weight in your heels and your chest upright. Start by sitting into the chair and standing back up 10 to 12 times. If this is easy, hover above the chair then return to standing.

 

 

Counter push-ups

Image result for incline push up at home gif animationPlace your hands on the edge of a counter, just beyond shoulder-width apart. Lower into a push-up then press back up. Repeat 10 to 12 times. For more of a challenge, walk your feet farther away from the counter.

Chair triceps dips

Sit upright in a chair with your hands on the armrests, elbows bent at 90 degrees. Straighten your arms, lifting your body off the chair. Hold briefly. Then lower yourself down. Use your legs to balance. Repeat 10 to 12 times.

Calf raises

Begin in a standing position. Rise up onto your toes, hold briefly, then lower back down. Repeat 10 to 12 times. Place one or both hands on a table or chair for more support. For an added challenge, perform on one leg at a time.

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Top Restaurant Videos: Gion Mikaku In Kyoto, Japan’s Best Steakhouse

Gion Mikaku, founded 1929: – 2 different cuts of beef: Tajima beef filet mignon and Kobe beef rump steak with just the right amount of marbling (intra-muscular fat) and no extra-muscular fat – 400g in total. Steak cutting behind a window in their kitchen, friendly, dedicated service, pleasant view, extra hot griddle for proper searing, right timing and handling of the steaks: they certainly know what they are doing – This restaurant meal included garlic rice (between steak and dessert).

Gion Mikaku Kyoto Japan Best Kobe Beef Steakhouse Menu

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Cookbooks: “Les Dîners de Gala” (1973) By Salvador Dalí Reprinted By Taschen

From an Art Daily online article (March 19, 2020):

“I love eating suits of arms, in fact I love all shell fish… food that only a battle to peel makes it vulnerable to the conquest of our palate.”

Les diners de Gala Salvador Dali rerpint by Taschen 2020This reprint features all 136 recipes over 12 chapters, specially illustrated by Dalí, and organized by meal courses, including aphrodisiacs. The illustrations and recipes are accompanied by Dalí’s extravagant musings on subjects such as dinner conversation: “The jaw is our best tool to grasp philosophical knowledge.”

NEW YORK, NY.- “Les diners de Gala is uniquely devoted to the pleasures of taste … If you are a disciple of one of those calorie-counters who turn the joys of eating into a form of punishment, close this book at once; it is too lively, too aggressive, and far too impertinent for you.”—Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí Les dîners de Gala cookbook Taschen book

Read fabulous review in Brain Pickings

Food and surrealism make perfect bedfellows: sex and lobsters, collage and cannibalism, the meeting of a swan and a toothbrush on a pastry case. The opulent dinner parties thrown by Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) and his wife and muse, Gala (1894–1982) were the stuff of legend. Luckily for us, Dalí published a cookbook in 1973, Les diners de Gala, which reveals some of the sensual, imaginative, and exotic elements that made up their notorious gatherings.

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Art Books: “At First Light – Two Centuries Of Maine Artists, Their Homes And Studios” (Rizzoli, Mar 2020)

At First Light Two Centuries of Maine Artists Rizzoli March 2020At First Light chronicles twenty-six extraordinary artists of the last two hundred years who have lived and worked in Maine. Published to coincide with the state’s bicentennial in 2020, the volume considers the significant contributions artists have made to a deeper and more profound understanding of Maine’s history, its land and its peoples. Maine’s unique and breathtaking landscape–from its rugged coastline, quaint harbors, majestic mountains, and verdant forests–continues to have a powerful effect on the artists who are drawn to its shores.

Written and expertly researched by some of the foremost scholars and curators in the field, each chapter focuses on a different artist, featuring the artists’ artworks and anchored by breathtaking contemporary photography of their homes, studios, and surroundings. From picturesque bungalows to grander structures with beautiful vistas, the houses and studios featured are as diverse as the artists who have inhabited them. The artists featured include fan favorites to lesser known yet important figures from the eighteenth century to the present day, working in a range of media from painting to photography to sculpture, including: Jonathan Fisher, Winslow Homer, Frank Weston Benson, Charles Herbert Woodbury, John Marin, Marsden Hartley, Rockwell Kent, N. C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, Jamie Wyeth, Marguerite and William Zorach, Rockwell Kent, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Eliot Porter, Fairfield Porter, Rudy Burckhardt, Yvonne Jacquette, Ashley Bryan, Lois Dodd, Alex Katz, Bernard Langlais, Robert Indiana, David C. Driskell, Molly Neptune Parker, Richard Tuttle, and William Wegman.

About The Author

Anne Collins Goodyear is codirector of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Frank H. Goodyear III is codirector of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Michael K. Komanecky is chief curator at the Farnsworth Art Museum, in Rockland, Maine. Stuart Kestenbaum is the Poet Laureate of Maine. Walter Smalling is a photographer based in Washington, D.C.

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New Environment Books: “Koolhaas. Countryside, A Report” (Taschen, Apr 2020)

The rural, remote, and wild territories we call “countryside”, or the 98% of the earth’s surface not occupied by cities, make up the front line where today’s most powerful forces―climate and ecological devastation, migration, tech, demographic lurches―are playing out. Increasingly under a ‘Cartesian’ regime―gridded, mechanized, and optimized for maximal production―these sites are changing beyond recognition.

Koolhaas Countryside A Report Guggenheim Museum Taschen Books April 2020

Countryside A Report Rem Koolhaas Taschen April 2020In his latest publication, Rem Koolhaas explores the rapid and often hidden transformations underway across the Earth’s vast non-urban areas.Countryside, A Report gathers travelogue essays exploring territories marked by global forces and experimentation at the edge of our consciousness: a test site near Fukushima, where the robots that will maintain Japan’s infrastructure and agriculture are tested; a greenhouse city in the Netherlands that may be the origin for the cosmology of today’s countryside; the rapidly thawing permafrost of Central Siberia, a region wrestling with the possibility of relocation; refugees populating dying villages in the German countryside and intersecting with climate change activists; habituated mountain gorillas confronting humans on ‘their’ territory in Uganda; the American Midwest, where industrial-scale farming operations are coming to grips with regenerative agriculture; and Chinese villages transformed into all-in-one factory, e-commerce stores, and fulfillment centers.

This book is the official companion to the Guggenheim Museum exhibition Countryside, The Future. The exhibition and book mark a new area of investigation for architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas, who launched his career with two city-centric entities: The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (1975) and Delirious New York (1978). It’s designed by Irma Boom, who drew inspiration for the book’s pocket-sized concept, as well as its innovative typography and layout, from her research in the Vatican library.

The book brings together collaborative research by AMO, Koolhaas, and students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; Wageningen University in the Netherlands; and the University of Nairobi. Contributors also include Samir Bantal, Janna Bystrykh, Troy Conrad Therrien, Lenora Ditzler, Clemens Driessen, Alexandra Kharitonova, Keigo Kobayashi, Niklas Maak, Etta Madete, Federico Martelli, Ingo Niermann, Dr. Linda Nkatha Gichuyia, Kayoko Ota, Stephan Petermann, and Anne M. Schneider.

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Podcasts: The “Brilliance” Of Hilary Mantel’s Trilogy On Thomas Cromwell

Monocle on Culture Monocle 24 logoRobert Bound, John Mitchinson and Ted Hodgkinson review the final – and rather hefty – instalment of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy.

Best New Fiction Books: 57-Year Old Author Lily King’s “Writers & Lovers” – On The Road To Happiness

Writers & Lovers Lily King March 2020Writers & Lovers follows Casey―a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist―in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.

Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Euphoria Lily KingLily King returns with another instant New York Times bestseller: an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.

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Lily King is the author of five award-winning novels. Her most recent novel, Writers & Lovers, will be published on March 3rd, 2020. Her 2014 novel Euphoria won the Kirkus Award, The New England Book Award, The Maine Fiction Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Euphoria was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times Book Review. It was included in TIME’s Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014, as well as on Amazon, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, and Salon’s Best Books of 2014.

Lily’s website