Arts & Culture: The New Criterion — Dec 2023
Tag Archives: Arts & Literature
The Arts: Brick Literary Journal – Autumn 2023
BRICK LITERARY JOURNAL (AUTUMN 2023)
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson goes to the breathing lands
- Paul Holdengräber and Merve Emre visit Mrs. Dalloway
- Douglas Kearney rescues the earth from the world
- Jessica Moore on the smarginatura of motherhood
- Jan Zwicky approaches Wittgenstein’s silence
- Tina Campt defines Black gravity
Preview: London Review Of Books – Nov 16, 2023
Bad Blood – ‘We’ve messed up, boys’
‘In the UK between 1970 and 1991, about 1250 people with bleeding disorders were infected with HIV (and many of them with Hepatitis C, too); by the time the Infected Blood Inquiry began, about three-quarters had died, the majority of them from HIV-related causes.
By Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
The Poison Line: A True Story of Death, Deception and Infected Blood
by Cara McGoogan.
Death in the Blood: The Inside Story of the NHS Infected Blood Scandal
by Caroline Wheeler.
Elizabeth Taylor’s Magic
‘Nearly eighty years after she first starred in a film, Taylor is famous for two things: her intense screen beauty and her many marriages (eight of them, two to Richard Burton). But at least as central to her life were her close and enduring friendships with men.’
By Bee Wilson
Previews: Country Life Magazine – Nov 8, 2023
Country Life Magazine – November 8, 2023: The latest issue features The King’s milestone celebration, Amie Elizabeth White reveals 75 fascinating things you may not know about Charles III; Exclusive access to St James’s Palace in London; the British passion for country-house portraits; the astonishing hidden gardens of bohemian Tangier in Morocco and more….
We can be rural heroes
Julie Harding meets a model, a comedian, a farmer, a hedge-layer and a former retail boss, all united in their praise for The King’s Royal Countryside Fund
A nursery palace
Simon Thurley chronicles the remarkable story of the modern home of the Court, as Country Life is afforded exclusive access to St James’s Palace in London
Elegy in a country churchyard
War memorials on British soil are a poignant means of ‘bringing home’ those who fell in foreign fields, reveals Andrew Green
A right royal ruff
The regal King Charles spaniel once won favour with the nobility — and owners are still falling for this loving and loyal breed, as Katy Birchall discovers
Martha Lytton Cobbold’s favourite painting
The Historic Houses president chooses a captivating work that proved to be an inspiration for her love of art and structure
Native breeds
Sheep are an instrinsic feature of the Welsh landscape — Kate Green introduces the breeds that populate the principality
Home is where the art is
Michael Prodger investigates the British passion for country-house portraits, a craze that started back in the 16th century and shows little sign of abating
Interiors
Arabella Youens marvels at the transformation of an Edwardian sitting room, as Giles Kime revels in the luxury of a daybed
Tangerine dreams
Kirsty Fergusson explores the astonishing hidden gardens of bohemian Tangier in Morocco
It’s only natural
Turning woodland finds into art is a labour of love for Jane Bevan, discovers Natasha Goodfellow
Still standing after all these years
A 188-year-old avenue of beech trees forms a guard of honour for Fiona Reynolds in Dorset
Turbot-charged
Nothing less than perfection will do for Tom Parker Bowles as he savours the most regal of fish
A bundle of energy
Could hydrogen-powered cars be the future? Jane Wheatley motors to Wales to investigate
The good stuff
Hetty Lintell seeks a bit of fluff from some feathery confections
Dare to be square
Mary Miers meets the talented craftspeople reinventing the ancient art of mosaic making
And much more
Art Collection Tours: ‘Living The Avant-Garde’
Living the Avant-Garde: The Triton Collection Foundation New York
On View in New York through 14 November
Wassily Kandinsky – Entwurf zu Komposition IV
National Geographic: One Week With Photographer Taylor Pendleton In Peru
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.
Boomers Daily 