Tag Archives: Arts & Literature

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Reviews

Art Exhibitions: ‘Manabu Ikeda – Flowers From The Wreckage’ (Canada, 2023)

Leave a comment
art in whistler

Manabu Ikeda:
Flowers from the Wreckage

June 24 – October 9, 2023

Audain Art Museum, Whistler, British Columbia, Canada (July 22, 2023) – Manabu Ikeda: Flowers from the Wreckage features Ikeda’s meticulously detailed pen-and-ink drawings that are filled with astonishing images.

This Japanese artist seeks inspiration from his surroundings to bring attention and awe to viewers, as a way of sending warnings about the painful reality of environmental disasters. Central to his practice are metaphors of grief and the undeniable aspects of life that are often beyond society’s control, including the fundamental forces of Mother Nature. Ikeda’s drawings also reveal human resilience and the ability to rise above devastating situations when it appears impossible.

Curated by Kiriko Watanabe, the Audain Art Museum’s Gail & Stephen A. Jarislowsky Curator, this is Ikeda’s first solo retrospective in North America showcasing over sixty works from national and international collections. Flowers from the Wreckage includes Foretoken (2008), Meltdown (2013) and Rebirth (2013-16), a selection of Ikeda’s large-scale drawings that relate to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake; the most devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power disaster in the country’s recorded history.

Manabu Ikeda: Flowers from the Wreckage will be on display in the AAM’s Tom and Teresa Gautreau Galleries from June 24 to October 9, 2023. A full colour exhibition catalogue featuring essays by Kiriko Watanabe and comments by Manabu Ikeda will be available for purchase in the Museum Shop.

Manabu Ikeda, “Territory,” 2004
Manabu Ikeda, “Territory,” 2004

pen and acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board, 17″ x 23″ (Takahashi Ryutaro Collection, courtesy the Audain Art Museum, Whistler, B.C.)

Manabu Ikeda Studio Gallery

A studio has been set up in the Museum’s architecturally stunning Upper Galleries, where visitors have the opportunity to observe the process of Ikeda drawing his latest work and interact with him during open studio hours.

Manabu will be in studio on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, from 3:00pm to 4:30pm until August 30. Museum guests are encouraged to come and witness the Artist’s incredible talent and learn more about his techniques. The studio will be open for viewing Thursday through Monday until September 4.

Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review — July 23, 2023

Leave a comment

Image

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JULY 23, 2023:

Colson Whitehead on ‘Crook Manifesto’ and Harlem in the ’70s

The Pulitzer-winning novelist discusses the sequel to his 2021 crime story “Harlem Shuffle.”

Roald Dahl Museum Calls Author’s Racism ‘Undeniable and Indelible’

A museum in England devoted to the best-selling children’s author, who died in 1990, condemned his antisemitic views.

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Preview: London Review Of Books — July 27, 2023

Leave a comment

Image

London Review of Books (LRB) – July 27, 2023 issue:

The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy and the Wild Life of an American Commune by Alexander Stille

James Lasdun

Poem: ‘A False Awakening’

John Burnside

Attack Warning Red! How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War by Julie McDowall

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

Deborah Friedell

Short Cuts: Radiant Ambiguity

James Butler

Arts & Literature, Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – July 24, 2023

Leave a comment

Image

The New Yorker – July 24, 2023 issue: Emily Nussbaum on the Nashville underground, Benjamin Wallace-Wells on Gretchen Whitmer, Anthony Lane on “Mission: Impossible,” and more.

Country Music’s Culture Wars and the Remaking of Nashville

A man in a cowboy had stands amid a group of women in cowgirl hats at NashVegas.

Tennessee’s government has turned hard red, but a new set of outlaw songwriters is challenging Music City’s conservative ways—and ruling bro-country sound.

By Emily Nussbaum

On March 20th, at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, a block from the honky-tonks of Lower Broadway, Hayley Williams, the lead singer of the pop-punk band Paramore, strummed a country-music rhythm on her guitar. A drag queen in a ketchup-red wig and gold lamé boots bounded onstage. The two began singing in harmony, rehearsing a twangy, raucous cover of Deana Carter’s playful 1995 feminist anthem “Did I Shave My Legs for This?”—a twist on a Nashville classic, remade for the moment.

How Gretchen Whitmer Made Michigan a Democratic Stronghold

Gretchen Whitmer photographed by Paola Kudacki.

The Governor’s strategy for revitalizing her state has two parts: to grow, Michigan needs young people; to draw young people, it needs to have the social policies they want.

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review — July 16, 2023

Leave a comment

Image

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JULY 16, 2023: This week, Jeff Goodell’s “The Heat Will Kill You First,” feels particularly apt. “This is a propulsive book, one to be raced through; the planet is burning,” writes our critic Jennifer Szalai. But maybe you don’t want to think more than you already do about impending doom. We’ve got you covered: The issue brims with diversions — a charming novel about a reality TV show set on Mars,  fiction about complicated families and a slew of good memoirs, including ones from a senior intelligence official, the war reporter Jane Ferguson and the actor Elliot Page.

Extreme Heat Is Here to Stay. Why Are We Not More Afraid?

This illustration depicts a large, bright purple iris, its petals on fire. Behind the flaming flower, we see a bright yellow, desert-like landsape, with low orange mesas and, above them, a sky that shifts from yellow to bright red — as if the sky itself is on fire.

In “The Heat Will Kill You First,” Jeff Goodell documents the lethal effects of rising temperatures and argues that we need to take hot weather a lot more seriously.

What Does It Even Mean to Be Real?

In Deborah Willis’s novel “Girlfriend on Mars,” a young woman enters a reality-TV contest to leave the planet, and her marijuana-farming boyfriend, behind.

GIRLFRIEND ON MARS, by Deborah Willis

Sometimes, a girlfriend needs space. Sometimes, she goes to space. That’s the — OK, obvious — premise of “Girlfriend on Mars,” a novel by the Canadian writer Deborah Willis, who knows what we’ve wished for from books all along, which is that they were TV instead.

Arts & Literature, Culture, Homes, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Previews: Country Life Magazine – July 12, 2023

Leave a comment

Country Life Magazine – July 12, 2023 issue: A look at the birds everyone should see once in their life, why poets make the best naturalists, plus tartan, trout and Alan Titchmarsh.

The perfect 10

From peregrine falcon to puffin and starling to skylark, Stephen Moss selects 10 birds that we simply must see in our lifetimes

Rebels and romantics with a cause

Tartan is one of Scotland’s most recognisable exports—follow the thread from Highland dress to punk fashion with Mary Miers

To the end of Wales

Fiona Reynolds explores the crashing breakers and jagged coastline of the Llŷn Peninsula

For succour and relief

Roger Bowdler visits the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London SW3, a monument to the extraordinary talents of Sir Christopher Wren

First, catch your trout

There is no finer riverside feast than freshly caught brown trout. Tom Parker Bowles is hooked

We will not plunder music of his dower

Mark Cocker says John Clare’s lyrical works resonate today more than ever—230 years after the peasant poet’s birth

Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Interviews, Museums, Reviews, Videos

Interview: British Fashion Designer Sir Paul Smith On His ‘Picasso Celebration’

Video Leave a comment

Christie’s (July 10, 2023) – Iconic British fashion designer Sir Paul Smith, in his legendary chock-full studio, talks about bringing out “Picasso’s playful side” in a stylish new exhibition at the Musée National Picasso-Paris: Picasso Celebration: The Collection in a New Light.

Sir Paul Smith, guest artistic director at the Musée National Picasso-Paris. Photo © Paul Smith. Artwork © Succession PicassoDACS, London 2023
Sir Paul Smith, guest artistic director at the Musée National Picasso-Paris.

It is fifty years since Pablo Picasso died, on 8 April 1973 at Notre-Dame-de-Vie, his home in Mougins. The body of work that he left behind had a profound impact on the entire 20th century.


For this anniversary year, the Musée National Picasso-Paris has invited the British designer Sir Paul Smith, known for his work with colour, tailoring and unexpected details, to lead the artistic direction of an exceptional exhibition showcasing the museum’s collection.

Affiche Expositon Picasso Célébration
Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review — July 9, 2023

Leave a comment

Image

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JULY 9, 2023: In Too Deep – Laura Trethewey’s “The Deepest Map” plumbs the new world of oceanic exploration, and its dangers; “Fancy Bear Goes Phishing”; Lorrie Moore’s New Novel; Read your way through L.A., and more…

In Too Deep

Laura Trethewey’s “The Deepest Map” explores the new world of oceanic exploration — and its dangers.

By Simon Winchester

In the past days, the world has been riveted by the story of the Titan submersible, which we now know imploded some 1,600 feet from the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all aboard. Beyond the human tragedy — and the macabre fact that James Cameron’s blockbuster is trending online — comes an opportunity for serious reflection.

From ‘Front-Page Girls’ to Newsroom Leaders

“Undaunted,” Brooke Kroeger’s new history of women in journalism, tracks the victories, setbacks and pathbreaking careers that have marked the decades-long fight for gender parity in the field.

This black-and-white photo shows 13 men and one woman in business attire seated around a long oval conference table in a corporate boardroom. On the table are several ashtrays, a couple of folded newspapers and, in front of each person, a sheet of paper. In addition, two men stand behind the seated group, on opposite sides of the table and in front of a wall decorated with a world map.
The New York Times editorial council, photographed in 1951.

By Jane Kamensky

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Anne O’Hare McCormick. I hadn’t, and as the director of Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, which holds peerless collections documenting pioneers in print journalism, I could have, and definitely should have. Brooke Kroeger’s compendious and lively “Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism” introduced me to her.

If We Are What We Eat, We Don’t Know Who We Are

In “Ultra-Processed People,” Chris van Tulleken takes a close look at the franken-snacks that barely resemble what they’re imitating.

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Reviews, Videos

Museum Reviews: Cézanne And Van Gogh’s Influence On The Rise Of Modern Art

Video Leave a comment

The National Gallery (July 6, 2023) – The exhibition, ‘After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art’, celebrates the achievements of three giants of the era: Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin and follows the influences they had on younger generations of French artists, on their peers and on wider circles of artists across Europe in Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels and Vienna.

Explore a period of great upheaval when artists broke with established tradition and laid the foundations for the art of the 20th and the 21st centuries.

Arts & Literature, Culture, Homes, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Culture: Country Life Magazine – July 5, 2023

Leave a comment

Image

Country Life Magazine – July 5, 2023 issue: The seashore as artistic inspiration, from Constable’s wild skies to Gormley’s lonely figures; Puffins -the parrots of the sea; A history of mermaids, and more…

A shore thing – Michael Prodger examines the seashore as artistic inspiration, from Constable’s wild skies to Gormley’s lonely figures

Meet the parrots of the sea – The colourful puffin inspires amused adoration in everyone, but the big-beaked birds have a tough side, finds Ian Morton

Tripping the light fintastic – Sinister sirens who lure sailors to their deaths or beautiful beings who drag men from watery graves? Carla Passino combs history for mention of mermaids