Tag Archives: Arts & Literature
Essays, Poetry & Fiction: Deep Wild Journal 2023
Deep Wild Journal 2023 – Writing from the Backcountry: On skis and snowshoes, by boot and boat, in open water or at the ends of ropes, by night or day, in all four seasons, in searing sun or drenching rain…the adventurer-writers whose work is featured in Deep Wild 2023 take us to all extremes.
Others come to us from a quiet place in the backcountry with their insights, observations, discoveries. Also featured in Deep Wild 2023 is full-color artwork by Tucson watercolorist Kat Manton-Jones and a portfolio of pen-and-ink drawings from the Colorado Plateau by Margaret Pettis.
Deep Wild 2023: Foreword and Contents
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Nov 13, 2023
Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” Complex
Does the director of “Alien,” “Blade Runner,” and “Gladiator” see himself in the hero of his epic new film?
On the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte was full of catastrophic confidence. His seventy-three thousand troops were camped on a ridge near a tavern called La Belle Alliance. His nemesis, the Duke of Wellington, occupied a slope across the fields, with a mere sixty-seven thousand troops. Over breakfast, Napoleon predicted, “If my orders are well executed, we will sleep in Brussels this evening.” When his chief of staff offered a word of caution, Napoleon snapped, “Wellington is a bad general and the English are bad troops. The whole affair will not be more serious than swallowing one’s breakfast.”
How Can Determinists Believe in Free Will?
Some people think that we can’t be held responsible for what we do, given that our actions are the inevitable consequence of the laws of nature. They’re only half right.
Eclipsed in his Era, Bayard Rustin Gets to Shine in Ours
The civil-rights mastermind was sidelined by his own movement. Now he’s back in the spotlight. What can we learn from his strategies of resistance?
By Adam Gopnik
Reinventing the Dinosaur“
Life on Our Planet,” a new Netflix nature documentary, renews our fascination with our most feared and loved precursors.
Art Exhibits: ‘A Foreigner Called Picasso’ (Gagosian)
A FOREIGNER CALLED PICASSO
November 10, 2023–February 10, 2024
Gagosian is pleased to present A Foreigner Called Picasso at its West 21st Street gallery in New York. The exhibition is curated by the eminent writer, biographer, and historian Annie Cohen-Solal together with art historian Vérane Tasseau. It is organized in association with the Musée national Picasso–Paris and the Palais de la Porte Dorée–Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris.
Spanning the entirety of Pablo Picasso’s career in France from 1900 through 1973, the exhibition will feature loans of important works from private and public collections in the United States and Europe. It includes early self-portraits lent by the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as well as Cubist and Surrealist masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel. The iconic sculpture Head of Fernande (1909) will be displayed, as will Man with a Lamb (1943)—Picasso’s forceful response to the aesthetics of Arno Breker (Adolf Hitler’s favorite artist), who exhibited in occupied Paris.
The New York Times Book Review – November 5, 2023
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (November 5, 2023): This week’s issue features music memoirs and biographies crammed into a single season including Madonna, Tupac Shakur, Sly Stone, Britney Spears, Thurston Moore, Jeff Tweedy and — soon — Barbra Streisand…
The Muchness of Madonna
Mary Gabriel’s biography is as thorough as its subject is disciplined. But in relentlessly defending the superstar, where’s the party?
MADONNA: A Rebel Life, by Mary Gabriel
“I want to be alone,” Greta Garbo’s dancer character famously said in “Grand Hotel,” a quote permanently and only semi-accurately attached to the actress after she retreated from public life. Garbo was first on the list of Golden Agers in one of Madonna’s biggest hits, “Vogue,” but the pop star has long seemed to embody this maxim’s very opposite. She wants to be surrounded, as if with Dolby sound.
Rock ’n’ Soul: The Amazing Story of Sly & the Family Stone
At the age of 80, Sly Stone has finally produced his memoir, and it gives a strong sense of this giant’s voice and sensibility.
‘By Alan Light
THANK YOU (FALETTINME BE MICE ELF AGIN): A Memoir, by Sly Stone with Ben Greenman
It is difficult to convey just how astoundingly unlikely it is that this book exists. Sly Stone is one of pop music’s truest geniuses and greatest mysteries, who essentially disappeared four decades ago in a cloud of drugs and legal problems after recording several albums’ worth of incomparable, visionary songs. Fleeting, baffling, blink-and-you-miss-him appearances at his 1993 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction and a 2006 Grammy tribute only served as reminders that he was still alive and still not well.
Art Tours: Michelangelo’s ‘Secret Room’ In Florence
The tiny space accessible via the New Sacristy in the Museum of the Medici Chapels contains charcoal drawings attributed to Buonarroti and will be open on an experimental basis to small groups of visitors until March 30, 2024.
Previews: Country Life Magazine – Nov 1, 2023
Country Life Magazine – November 1, 2023: The new issue features the rural delights of Durslade Farm to the heart of Mayfair; The secret garden in Regent’s Park in London; Norman Foster, the architect who helped shape the capital; the historic American bars that offer a taste of the US on this side of the pond, and more…
London Life
- Emma Love welcomes the rural delights of Durslade Farm to the heart of Mayfair
- The secret garden in Regent’s Park, seasonal suggestions and Matthew Williamson’s London
- Carla Passino meets Norman Foster, the architect who helped shape the capital
- Robert Crossan visits the historic American bars that offer a taste of the US on this side of the pond
Nick Trend’s favourite painting
The art historian picks a steely-eyed painting that signalled the invention of the self-portrait
At Canaan’s Edge
Carla Carlisle ponders the story of the Promised Land and hopes that common sense prevails
A local revival
The future is bright for Lytham Hall after locals stepped in to save the house at the heart of the Lancashire estate, as John Martin Robinson discovers
A nightingale sang…
Tiffany Daneff visits a garden in Kent planted for wildlife and surrounded by new woodland
Native breeds
Kate Green admires the hardy Lincoln Red, a low-input rare breed that produces quality beef
Stranger things
From horn dancing to burning barrels and cheese rolling, Harry Pearson delves into weird and wonderful British folk festivals
You’re a dark horse
The black horse is a symbol of strength and courage. Celia Brayfield gallops through the history of the fabled steed
Kitchen garden cook
Melanie Johnson savours the turnip’s sweet and nutty flavour, perfect with scallops
Travel
- Jo Rodgers follows in the foot-steps of the Durrells in Corfu
- Welcoming, home-from-home villas
- Pamela Goodman pedals off the beaten cycle path
Speak like a Georgian
Know your ‘fubbs’ from your ‘fizzle’ — Matthew Dennison investigates 18th-century slang
Books: Literary Review Magazine – November 2023
Literary Review – November 2023: The new issue features Sex, Satire & Revolution; The Race to the Future: The Adventure that Accelerated the Twentieth Century; Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago – The Britannias: An Island Quest; and more…
And It’s Go, Go, Go!
The Race to the Future: The Adventure that Accelerated the Twentieth Century
By Kassia St Clair
Cost, not a lack of courage, ensured that the entry field for the 1907 Peking to Paris car race was small. A massive two-thousand-franc deposit (equivalent to a professor’s annual salary) kept all but five of the aspiring contestants out of the race. That exclusion, as Kassia St Clair demonstrates in her captivating history of one of the most challenging endurance trials in the history of motoring, was precisely what the organisers intended.
Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago
The Britannias: An Island Quest
By Alice Albinia
In July 2023 Orkney Islands Council voted to explore alternative governmental arrangements for the archipelago. One option proposed by the council leader was for it to become a self-governing territory of Norway, the kingdom which lost control of Orkney to Scotland in 1468. The episode – in reality, a smart political stunt in a row over the Scottish government’s transport policy – attracted extraordinary international attention. In the UK press, it was treated with an uneven mixture of constitutional soul-searching and patronising amusement at the Passport to Pimlico-styleantics of the Orcadians.
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Nov 6, 2023
Why Maui Burned
Lahaina’s wildfire was the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century. Now the community is grappling with the botched response as it tries to rebuild.
At 4 p.m. on August 8th, Shaun Saribay’s family begged him to get in their car and leave the town of Lahaina, on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The wind was howling, and large clouds of smoke were approaching from the dry hills above the neighborhood. But Saribay—a tattooist, a contractor, and a landlord, who goes by the nickname Buge—told his family that he was staying to guard their house, which had been in the family for generations. “This thing just gonna pass that way, downwind,” Saribay said. At 4:05 p.m., one of his daughters texted from the car, “Daddy please be safe.”
In the Cities of Killing
The Hamas massacre, the assaults on Gaza, and what comes after.
The only way to tell this story is to try to tell it truthfully and to know that you will fail.
On the evening of Wednesday, October 18th, with the entire Middle East in a state of mourning and outrage, I took a taxi to the information offices of the Israel Defense Forces, a heavily guarded compound in northwest Tel Aviv. Like many reporters, I’d accepted an invitation to see video evidence of the worst massacre of Jews in generations, certainly in the history of Israel—Hamas’s rampage through Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Kibbutz Be’eri, and other communities near the Gaza Strip, extending to an outdoor electronic-music festival, Nova. At last count, the attack throughout what Israelis call Otef Aza—“the Gaza envelope”—had claimed some fourteen hundred lives; thousands were wounded, and around two hundred and twenty people had been kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. Hamas gave the operation a name, the Al-Aqsa Flood.
Books: World Literature Today – November 2023
Boomers Daily 