Nature Magazine – December 6, 2023:The latest issue cover features Internal Clocks – Blood proteins reveal age of human organs to help track health and disease…
The massive buried structures at Gunung Padang in Indonesia would be much older than Egypt’s great pyramids — if they’re even human constructions at all.
Ancient humans painted scenes in Indonesian caves more than 45,000 years ago, but their art is disappearing rapidly. Researchers are trying to discover what’s causing the damage and how to stop it — before the murals are gone forever.
Wall Street Journal (December 6, 2023) – To help counter China, the U.S. military is racing to develop a fleet of next-generation drones. For the Pentagon, it’s not just a matter of gaining the technological edge.
Video timeline: 0:00 Autonomous systems 0:40 The need for next-generation drones 1:49 Scaling up 4:07 Keeping up with China
It’s a race against the clock, as Beijing has militarized islands in the South China Sea, and President Xi Jinping has ordered his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Some experts are skeptical the U.S. military can work fast enough to meet its goals.
Literary Review – December 6, 2023: The latest issue, December 2023/January 2024, features the Christmas Double Issue; Architecture & Us; To Catch a Book Thief; Could We Move to Mars?; Milosz goes West; Ballard unplugged; To Brideshead Born and Maharajahs behaving badly…
‘Unruly schoolboys,’ Lord Curzon called them, but then again, he had a penchant for understatement. John Zubrzycki’s new book on India’s last princely rulers is, in fact, Lord of the Flies meets The 120 Days of Sodom. Had Zubrzycki repurposed his material for a novel, he would no doubt have had some stern reviewer scribbling ‘too on the nose’ or ‘uninspired orientalist caricature’ in the margins. Yet the rulers of India’s 562 princely states were for real, and the Raj, resolute on ruling with a light touch, much preferred coexisting with them to conquering them outright.
In a late poem about a friend’s death, Czesław Miłosz writes of the long passage between youth and age as one of learning ‘how to bear what is borne by others’. It could be a summary of his own poetic witness. Eva Hoffman’s moving and eloquent essay traces the ways in which that simultaneously guilty, compassionate and fastidious response characterises Miłosz’s work from its earliest days. Bearing what is borne by others is, for Miłosz, close to the heart of the poetic task, but it is also fraught with risk.
Country Life Magazine – December 6, 2023: The latest issue features ‘George Harrison’s Garden’ – Friar Park rescued by the former Beatle; Folklore of the Rowan ‘Wizard’s’ tree; the best and worst gifts in classic literature and Travel – From the Caribbean to Concorde….
George Harrison’s garden: All things must pass
Charles Quest-Ritson visits Friar Park in Oxfordshire and marvels at the topiary garden rescued by former Beatle George Harrison
Native breeds
Kate Green meets the distinctive and much-loved Belted Galloway
Never knowingly undersold
Country Life advertisements in 1923 capture Britain’s evolution, as Melanie Bryan discovers
Neptune’s wooden angels
Harry Pearson takes to the high seas to chart the fascinating history of the figureheads that keep ships safe in stormy weather
A kind of tree magic
The rowan tree is a symbol of safety across the world — Aeneas Dennison delves into the folklore of the wizard’s tree
Native breeds
Kate Green meets the distinctive and much-loved Belted Galloway
Never knowingly undersold
Country Life advertisements in 1923 capture Britain’s evolution, as Melanie Bryan discovers
Neptune’s wooden angels
Harry Pearson takes to the high seas to chart the fascinating history of the figureheads that keep ships safe in stormy weather
And that’s an unwrap
From cursed jewels to diamond-encrusted tortoises, Felicity Day reads up on the best and worst gifts in classic literature
Travel
Lady Glenconner’s Mustique memories and much more, plus Rosie Paterson uncovers the real Barbados and Pamela Goodman goes supersonic
Melanie Vandenbrouck’s favourite painting
The gallery curator loses herself in an expressive, exuberant work
The life of a naturalist
Carla Carlisle reflects on the legacy of the Irish poet Seamus Heaney — ‘a truly good man’
Taking account of the past
Steven Brindle is full of praise for the refurbishment of Chartered Accountants’ Hall, an architectural jewel in the City of London
Not so jolly old Saint Nicholas
Ian Morton examines how Father Christmas was transformed from a sozzled figure riding a goat into the jolly fellow we know and love
Interiors
Pheasants, leopards, parrots and reindeer are all welcome at Melanie Johnson’s festive table
The good stuff
Editor Mark Hedges picks his favourite luxuries of 2023
London Life
The capital’s Christmas lights dazzle Emma Love (page 83), Gilly Hopper shares her must-see seasonal suggestions (page 86), Carla Passino views London in a new light with Sir John Soane (page 92) and Emma Hughes hails the survivors of the restaurant scene (page 98)
Travel
From the Caribbean to Concorde
A case of mistaken identity
Ian Morton looks at the merits of ground elder and ground ivy, an unloved and misnamed duo
VernissageTV (December 6, 2023) – The 18th edition of Design Miami/, curated by Curatorial Director, Maria Cristina Didero. This year’s program explores the theme of The Golden Age: Looking to the Future, celebrating a tomorrow of our own creation.
The Golden Age is a metaphorical concept shared across cultures through time and space, whether applied to utopian futures or idealized histories.
Often invoked as an imaginary, past time of prosperity, The Golden Age also epitomizes hope for the future, lighting the path towards our highest aspirations. As the curatorial theme for the 18th edition of Design Miami, The Golden Age: Looking to the Future will celebrate a tomorrow of our own creation.
In a time when human beings are challenged in unprecedented ways, The Golden Age could become a source of inspiration to imagine and shape a brighter future for human beings and our planet.
The Globalist Podcast (December 6, 2023) – As fighting in Gaza rages on, we examine Vladimir Putin’s trip to Saudi Arabia and the UAE to discuss the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Also, Austria pushes to speed up EU accession talks with the Western Balkan and the latest theatre news.
Times Literary Supplement (December 8, 2023): The latest issue features ‘In her shoes’ – Powell and Pressburger’s ballet classic; Seamus Heaney and the price of fame; Modern warfare; The Tory endgame and Walter Kempowski’s youth under Hitler, and more…
Amid some of the war’s heaviest bombing, Israeli forces battled Hamas deep into the city of Khan Younis, with few signs that Israel was heeding Biden administration calls to show more restraint.
Legislation to send military aid to Ukraine and Israel was on the brink of collapse, after a briefing devolved into a screaming match one day before a critical test vote in the Senate.
How Nations Are Losing a Global Race to Tackle A.I.’s Harms
Alarmed by the power of artificial intelligence, Europe, the United States and others are trying to respond — but the technology is evolving more rapidly than their policies.
Desperate Families Search for Affordable Home Care
Facing a severe shortage of aides and high costs, people trying to keep aging loved ones at home often cobble together a patchwork of family and friends to help.
Paris Review Winter 2023 — The new issue features Louise Glück on the Art of Poetry – “You want a poem to register in every mind the way it did in yours. Then you discover this never happens.”; Yu Hua on the Art of Fiction: “If I’d taken another two or three years to start writing, I’d still be a dentist.”; Prose by Ananda Devi, Fiona McFarlane, and Sean Thor Conroe and more…
Artforum Magazine (December 5, 2023) – The latest issue features Fifteen Artists reflect on 2023, “Manet/Degas” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, The Top Museum Exhibitions of 2023, The top ten art exhibitions of 2023, and more…
“MANET/DEGAS,” the fall blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, begins with an unabashed, double-barreled bang: Édouard Manet’s last great self-portrait, paired up alongside one of Edgar Degas’s first. The juxtaposition provides a thrilling object lesson in the stolid compare-and-contrast curatorial methodology that defines the exhibition, but if it’s meant to show the two artists on an equal footing, it doesn’t stage a fair fight. Forty-six years old when he executed Portrait of the Artist (Manet with a Palette), ca. 1878–79, Manet is at the height of his painterly power, looking backward and forward at once.
Lauren Halsey, the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I), 2022, glass-fiber reinforced concrete. Installation view, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2023. Photo: Hyla Skopitz.
To take stock of the past year, Artforum asked an international group of artists to select a single exhibition or event that most memorably caught their attention in 2023.
KENTURAH DAVIS Lauren Halsey (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) Emerging onto the Met’s rooftop, I’m greeted by sphinxes with faces carved in the likeness of the artist’s loved ones. These figures surround and protect a large architectural monument, its surfaces engraved with coded inscriptions that pay homage to the people and energy of South Central Los Angeles. The structure forgoes the exuberant color I’ve come to expect in Halsey’s work, making me think about the ways Egyptian art and architecture have changed over time—once colorfully embellished, and now animated purely by shadows. In this way, Halsey’s sanctuary suggests that it’s been standing there for millennia, transformed by the sun and communing with the cosmos.
Annette Frick, Ein Augenblick im Niemandsland (A Moment in No Man’s Land), 2010, twenty-one gelatin silver prints, each 15 3⁄4 × 11 3⁄4″.
VAGINAL DAVIS Annette Frick (MARTa Herford, Germany) You can easily get royally preggers if you stand too close to the hairy eyeball of Annette Frick. For more than forty years, the Berlin-based photographer-filmmaker and consummate artiste has been known mainly for her captivating chronicles of underground queer scenes. At her retrospectacle “A Moment in No Man’s Land,” was enchanted by her sensual large-format self-portraits and stunning nude cycle “Aus dem Wasser” (Out of the Water), 2007–2008, referring to mythological figures such as Ondine and Lilith. I had never seen her architecture-portrait hybrids and was mesmerized, wondering just what else she has hidden in her voluptuous archive.
Saâdane Afif, The King Coal Laments, 2023, coal sculptures by miners, UV prints on aluminum, wood, aluminum trusses. Installation view, Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin. Photo: Andrea Rossetti.
ANRI SALA Saâdane Afif (Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin) It’s difficult to express the poetry and poignancy of Saâdane Afif’s exhibition “The Coalman,” part of the artist’s larger endeavor to give form to a heptahedron. Here, the artist installs his personal collection of coal sculptures handcrafted by miners in their spare time alongside Is it possible that you have no coal left?, 2023, a facsimile of a letter from French composer Claude Debussy to his coal merchant, penned during the particularly severe winter of 1916–17. The repurposed missive serves as a coda to the exhibition as a whole, posing a question that resonates in manifold ways in the present (perhaps even applying to a shortage of new forms).
Ken Kiff, Man and Blue Mask, ca. 1975, oil on panel, 31 7⁄8 × 24″.
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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