Tag Archives: Reviews

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (October 20, 2023): This week: it’s the second year of Paris +, the event that has taken over from Fiac as the leading French art fair. How is Art Basel’s French flagship faring amid geopolitical turmoil and economic uncertainty, and is Paris still on the rise as a cultural hub?

We speak to Georgina Adam, an editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper, and Kabir Jhala, our deputy art market editor, who are in Paris, to find out. The largest ever exhibition of the work of the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto opened last week at the Hayward Gallery in London, before travelling to Beijing and Sydney next year. We talk to its co-curator Thomas Sutton.

And this episode’s Work of the Week is La femme-cheval or the Horse-Woman, a painting made in 1918 by the French artist Marie Laurencin. She is the subject of a major survey, called Sapphic Paris, opening this week at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia in the US. Cindy Kang, who co-curated the exhibition, tells us more about this landmark work in Laurencin’s life.

Paris +, 20-22 October.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine, Hayward Gallery, London, until 7 January 2023; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 23 March-23 June 2024; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, 2 August-27 October 2024.

Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, US, 22 October-21 January.

The New York Times Magazine – Oct 22, 2023

Image

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (October 22, 2023): The latest issue features In Search of Kamala Harris; Longer Commutes, Shorter Lives: The Costs of Not Investing in America and The Botched Hunt for the Gilgo Beach Killer….

In Search of Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris stands with her arms crossed.

After nearly three years, the vice president is still struggling to make the case for herself — and feels she shouldn’t have to.

By Astead W. Herndon

All the conditions seemed right for a chance to reset the narrative.

At the Munich Security Conference in February, amid rising international angst about Russia’s war in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris led a delegation of Americans, including around 50 lawmakers from both parties. She spent her first day in Germany in seclusion, preparing for the next 48 hours: meetings with European leaders the first day and a keynote speech the next in the ornate ballroom of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. When she emerged, head high and shoulders back, Harris exuded what her staff members have argued is a particular comfort with her role on the international stage. There, they say, she is respected.

Longer Commutes, Shorter Lives: The Costs of Not Investing in America

An illustration of various historical photographs depicting technologies in a collage.

For decades, spending on the future put the nation ahead of all others. What would it take to revive that spirit?

By David Leonhardt

Every morning in 21st-century America, thousands of people wake up and prepare to take a cross-country trip. Some are traveling for business. Others are visiting family or going on vacations. Whether they are leaving from New York or Los Angeles, Atlanta or Seattle, their trips have a lot in common.

Opinion & Politics: Reason Magazine – December 2023

Image

REASON MAGAZINE (DECEMBER 2023) – The latest issue features The Endangered Species Act at 50 – Why have so few species been taken off the endangered species list?; Dobbs and the abortion debate is reshaping American Politics; Will Russia ever be free?, and more…

The Endangered Species Act at 50

An illustration of animals among green leaves | Illustration: Joanna Andreasson

Why have so few species been taken off the endangered species list?

The Abundance Agenda Promises Everything to Everyone All at Once

Illustration of two statues | Illustration: Joanna Andreasson; Source images: BWFolsom/iStock, Creative Market

Some progressives want to remove bureaucratic obstacles to growth—in the service of Democrats and big government.

CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI

Dobbs Is Reshaping American Politics

Pro-life and pro-choice protesters yelling at a protest | Alex Wong/Getty

A wave of ballot measures reminds us most Americans are moderate on abortion.

ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN

Will Russia Ever Be Free?

An illustration of a bust sculpture of Vladimir Putin dissected | Illustration: antipolygon-youtube/Unsplash

Promise and peril in post-Putin Russia

CATHY YOUNG

Research Preview: Science Magazine – Oct 20, 2023

Image

Science Magazine – October 20, 2023: The new issue features Copious Cicadas – Mass emergence alters food webs; A giant European telescope rises as U.S. rivals await rescue; Probe of Alzheimer’s studies finds ‘egregious misconduct’, and more…

A giant European telescope rises as U.S. rivals await rescue

ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) under construction at sunrise in the Chilean Atacama Desert.
In August, the Sun rose behind the Extremely Large Telescope, under construction in Chile.

Past the halfway point, Extremely Large Telescope prepares to receive first mirrors

A web of steel girders is rising from the flattened summit of Cerro Armazones, 3000 meters above sea level in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The dome it will support will be vast—with a footprint as big as a soccer field and almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty— and unexpectedly nimble: It will smoothly rotate on rails as a giant telescope inside tracks stars through the night.

Probe of Alzheimer’s studies finds ‘egregious misconduct’

Co-developer of biotech’s drug couldn’t supply original data

U.S. hands out $7 billion for hydrogen hubs

Gas could replace fossil fuels and fight climate change—if it is made cleanly

Reviews: The 2024 Pebble Flow Electric RV Trailer

CNET (October 19, 2023) – The Pebble Flow electric trailer boosts towing efficiency, parks itself with remote robotics and can even power your house in an emergency thanks to its big battery and electric motors.

Video timeline: 00:00 Pebble Flow RV 00:10 Development of the Pebble Flow 00:48 Dual Electric Motors 01:36 App-controlled Remote Parking 02:02 45 Kilowatt-hour Battery 02:31 Magic Hitch 03:10 Instant Camp Feature

Previews: History Today Magazine – November 2023

Image

HISTORY TODAY MAGAZINE (NOVEMBER 2023) – This issue features The murder John F. Kennedy 60 years on, the dirty secrets of medieval monks, what the Nazis learnt from the Beer Hall Putsch, Christianity’s bloody history in Japan, and deaf expression in Renaissance art.

What Killed Kennedy?

John F. Kennedy in the presidential limousine before his assassination on 22 November 1963. Kennedy’s wife Jacqueline sits next to him; Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie, are in front. World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo.

Was it the mob? A coup? Cuban dissidents? War hawks? 60 years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the theories are still debated. Do any of them hold up?

The Beer Hall Putsch: What Hitler Learnt

Adolf Hitler in Landsberg Prison following the Beer Hall Putsch, 1924. Shawshots/Alamy Stock Photo.

In the aftermath of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, Hitler was in prison and the Nazi Party banned. But its failure taught him valuable lessons.

The Flies, Fleas and Rotting Flesh of Medieval Monks

Jakob von Wart taking his bath, from the Codex Manesse, Switzerland, c.1305-40. The Protected Art Archive/Alamy Stock Photo

Repulsive revelations of bodily infestations were viewed by some in medieval Europe as proof of sanctity. But for most, parasites were just plain disgusting.

‘Confinement’ by Jessica Cox review

A nursing mother in ‘The Third Class Carriage’ by Honoré Daumier, c. 1862-64. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Jessica Cox looks at the engine of the Victorian population boom: motherhood.

Previews: The Economist Magazine – Oct 21, 2023

Image

The Economist Magazine (October 21, 2023): The latest issue features ‘Where will this end?’ – Only America can pull the Middle East back from the brink; Are American CEO’s overpaid?; The holes in export controls; Argentina’s radical option, and more….

The stakes could hardly be higher in the Israel-Gaza conflict

Only America can pull the Middle East back from the brink

America’s Republicans cannot agree on a speaker. Good

How the GOP could yet, inadvertently, further the national interest

Poland shows that populists can be beaten

A victory for the rule of law in the heart of Europe


Research Preview: Nature Magazine – Oct 19, 2023

Image

nature Magazine – October 19, 2023: The latest issue features how humans develop in the very early stages when a newly formed embryo is implanted in the wall of the uterus, largely because of the physical and ethical challenges that are presented by studying early human embryos. 

Carl Sagan’s audacious search for life on Earth has lessons for science today

The test 30 years ago of what remote sensing could tell us about our own planet shows the value of looking with unbiased eyes at what we think we already know.

Runes on Viking stones speak to an ancient queen’s power

Analysis of carved inscriptions more than 1,000 years old suggests the prominence of the Viking queen Thyra.

‘Incredible’ asteroid sample ferried to Earth is rich in the building blocks of life

Samples of asteroid Bennu delivered by the OSIRIS-REx mission contain carbon, water and other ingredients from the primordial Solar System.

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – October 20, 2023

Image

The Guardian Weekly (October 20, 2023) The new issue features escalating events in Israel and Gaza that continue to cause deep distress and alarm, with several thousand people known to be dead or wounded on either side of the border. US president Joe Biden was expected to visit Israel this week, amid growing expectations of a ground invasion of Gaza and fears of a wider regional escalation.

Also, a primer on the historical background to events by Chris McGreal, while on the opinion pages the Israeli author and historian Yuval Noah Harari and Guardian US columnist Naomi Klein provide thoughtful and grounded perspectives.

There was sadness for many Aboriginal Australians after a move to recognise Indigenous people in the country’s constitution was rejected in a referendum, as Sarah Collard and Elias Visontay report. Also from Oceania, Henry Cooke examines what aspects of Jacinda Ardern’s political legacy might survive after New Zealand elected a new conservative government.

From Egypt to Hong Kong, the 2010s were a decade when mass protest movements looked set to change the world. But in most cases, the hope embodied by many massive street demonstrations was soon crushed by authoritarian regimes. Vincent Bevins asks organisers and others who were there where it all went wrong.

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Oct 20, 2023

Image

Times Literary Supplement (October20, 2023): The new issue features ‘Rocket Man’ – North Korea’s dictator is no joke; A snapshot of Teju Cole; Daniel Dennett’s evolution; Monet’s muses; John le Carré undercover, and more…