Tag Archives: Reviews

New Art History Books: “A Month In Siena” By HISHAM MATAR Is A “Triumph”

From a Penguin Random House release:

A Month In Siena by Hisham Matar 2019Including beautiful full-color reproductions of the artworks, A Month in Siena is about what occurred between Matar, those paintings, and the city. That month would be an extraordinary period in the writer’s life: an exploration of how art can console and disturb in equal measure, as well as an intimate encounter with a city and its inhabitants. This is a gorgeous meditation on how centuries-old art can illuminate our own inner landscape—current relationships, long-lasting love, grief, intimacy, and solitude—and shed further light on the present world around us.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return comes a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and life.

Listen to an excerpt below:


 
After finishing his powerful memoir The Return, Hisham Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists he had admired throughout his life, including Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he’d had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments.

To read more: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/609913/a-month-in-siena-by-hisham-matar/

Automobile Trends: Ford Unveils “Mustang Lithium” High-Performance EV

From a Ford online release:

Ford Mustang LithiumBuilt in collaboration between Ford and Webasto, Mustang Lithium project vehicle generates more than 1000 ft.-lbs. of instant torque and more than 900 horsepower for new levels of performance and technology with its 800-volt Webasto battery system with EVDrive technology.

Best of both worlds, Mustang Lithium accelerates the next generation of performance: unique 6-speed manual shifting, track handling and stunning quarter-mile acceleration with instant electric torque, and zero emissions.

Ford and Webasto today reveal Mustang Lithium, an ultra-high-performance battery electric Mustang fastback prototype. With more than 1,000 ft.-lbs. of torque and more than 900 horsepower instantaneously available, this Mustang amps muscle car performance to a new level and helps gauge the level of interest the next wave of performance customers have in lightning-quick performance that only fully electric powertrains can deliver.

To read more: https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2019/11/05/webasto-ford-team-up-mustang-lithium-battery-electric-mustang-car-sema.html

New Books: “Airline Maps – A CENTURY OF ART AND DESIGN” By MARK OVENDEN and MAXWELL ROBERTS

From a Penguin Random House review:

Airline Maps A Century of Art and Design Mark OvendenIn this gorgeously illustrated collection of airline route maps, Mark Ovenden and Maxwell Roberts look to the skies and transport readers to another time. Hundreds of images span a century of passenger flight, from the rudimentary trajectory of routes to the most intricately detailed birds-eye views of the land to be flown over. Advertisements for the first scheduled commercial passenger flights featured only a few destinations, with stunning views of the countryside and graphics of biplanes. As aviation took off, speed and mileage were trumpeted on bold posters featuring busy routes. Major airlines produced highly stylized illustrations of their global presence, establishing now-classic brands. With trendy and forward-looking designs, cartographers celebrated the coming together of different cultures and made the earth look ever smaller.

Airline Maps A Century of Art and Design Mark Ovenden Book Cover

A nostalgic and celebratory look back at one hundred years of passenger flight, featuring full-color reproductions of route maps and posters from the world’s most iconic airlines, from the author of bestselling cult classic Transit Maps of the World.

To read more: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/600815/airline-maps-by-mark-ovenden-and-maxwell-roberts/

Top New Nature Books: “Turning The Boat For Home” By Richard Mabey

From a Cotswold Life online interview/review:

Turning The Boat For Home Richard Mabey cover“I suppose I started off with a fairly literal view of the world,” he says. “But, quite early on, it became clear to me that there was much more going on than simply the picture I was seeing; that the natural world had an agenda of its own; that it was going to live out life, regardless of how we viewed it and how we used it; and, indeed, regardless of the fancy metaphors that we used.”

Oh my goodness. Where to begin?

I could start with the ‘Praying Beech’ – a tree whose (‘whose’? The human possessive feels simultaneously wrong and yet just right) two branch stubs clasped each other like hands. Once, when the rain fell in an apocalyptic burst, Richard Mabey watched its bark melt in front of his eyes. It was, of course, no stranger to extremes of weather: one summer past, the tree had been split by lightning, bees hunkering down in its newly-created hollows. Sometime later, a storm had toppled it, leaving fungi free to colonise its delicious surfaces: knobbly coral spots; dead man’s fingers rising corpse-like from the tree’s own rot; white porcelain tufts, like Royal Worcester plates awaiting a delicate slice of egg-yellow sponge.

To read more: https://www.cotswoldlife.co.uk/people/interview-with-nature-writer-richard-mabey-1-6357450?utm_medium=email&utm_source=eshot&utm_campaign=newsletterlinknewtemplate

New Collector Books: “Salvador Dalí Tarot Card” Book Set (Taschen)

Dalí’s Tarot Book and Card Set TaschenDalí poses as the Magician, his wife Gala becomes the Empress, and the death of Julius Caesar is reinterpreted as the Ten of Swords in the artist’s  extraordinary custom tarot deck. First published in a 1984 limited edition that has since long sold out, this lush box set brings back all 78 cards, each dazzling in color, along with a companion book on the making-of and practical instructions.

To read more: https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/art/all/44640/facts.dali_tarot.htm

Science & Art: Jackson Pollock’s Drip Painting Style (And Genius) Avoided “Coiling Instability”

From PLOS One Journal online release:

Jackson Pollock Full Fathom Five 1947We conclude that Pollock avoided the appearance of the hydrodynamic instabilities, contrary to what was argued by previous studies. Pollock selected the physical properties of the paint to prevent filament fragmentation before deposition, and applied it while moving his hand sufficiently fast and at certain heights to avoid fluid filaments from coiling into themselves. An understanding of the physical conditions at which these patterns were created is important to further art research and it can be used as a tool in the authentication of paintings.

Jackson Pollock Painting TechniqueConsidered one of the most prominent American painters of the 20th century, the life and work of Jackson Pollock have been the subject of books, movies, and documentaries [13]. His paintings can be broadly categorized as being abstract-expressionist. Although his painting style evolved during his sometimes tormented life, the so-called ‘dripping’ technique is certainly the most widely recognized both by experts and the general public.

Jackson Pollock described the technique himself [4]. In summary, Pollock would lay a canvas horizontally and pour paint on top of it, in a controlled manner. To regulate the flow of paint, he either used an instrument (a stick, knife or a brush), poured it directly from a can and in some instances he also used a syringe. Viscous fluid filaments were produced and laid over the canvas while ‘rhythmically moving’ around it. It is believed that Pollock developed this technique strongly influenced by an experimental painting workshop, organized in New York by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros in 1936 [5]. Interestingly, Siqueiros himself also developed the ‘accidental painting’ technique during this workshop, which was recently analyzed by Zetina et al. [6].

To read more: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223706

New Consumer Websites: “PureMarket” Rates Items For Purity, Efficacy, Accuracy And Nutrition

From a FoodDive online review:

PureMarketPure Market is offering consumers a chance to purchase products that have already been pre-graded in an effort to provide transparency and save time. Although the service just launched, it has reviewed the chemical compositions of several thousand products, with 805 in the food category and another 125 in beverages.

The service rates products in terms of purity, efficacy, accuracy and nutrition. Purity tests the level of contaminants in a product. Efficacy rates how well a product delivers on the promises on its label. Accuracy refers to the contents of the product being consistent with those on the label. Nutrition evaluates the ratio of “good stuff” to “bad stuff,” according to the website.

To read more: https://www.fooddive.com/news/will-consumers-use-a-new-site-grading-food-on-label-accuracy/566391/

New Mental Health Books: “The Great Pretender” By Susannah Cahalan Looks At “Madness” In Society

Psychiatry, as a distinct branch of medicine, has come far in its short life span. (The term psychiatrist is less than 150 years old.) The field has rejected the famously horrific practices of the recent past—the lobotomies, forced sterilizations, human warehousing. Today’s psychiatric practitioners boast a varied arsenal of effective drugs and have largely dropped the unscientific trappings of psychoanalytic psychobabble, the “schizophrenogenic mothers” of yesteryear who had been thought to have somehow triggered insanity in their unwitting offspring. Two decades into the 21st century, psychiatry now views severe mental illnesses as legitimate brain diseases. Despite all these advancements, however, the field still relies solely on self-reported symptoms and observable signs for diagnosis. Though the American Psychiatry Association reassures us that psychiatrists are uniquely qualified to “assess both the mental and physical aspects of psychological problems,” they are, like all of medicine, limited by the tools at hand. There are not, as of this writing, any consistent objective measures that can render a definitive psychiatric diagnosis.

Top New Books: “The Seine – The River That Made Paris” By Elaine Sciolino

From an advance review:

The SeineSciolino’s keen eye and vivid prose bring the river to life as she discovers its origins on a remote plateau of Burgundy, where a pagan goddess healed pilgrims at an ancient temple. She follows the Seine to Le Havre, where it meets the sea.  Braiding memoir, travelogue, and history through the Seine’s winding route, Sciolino offers a love letter to Paris and the river at its heart and invites readers to explore its magic.

In the spring of 1978, as a young journalist in Paris, Elaine Sciolino was seduced by a river. In The Seine, she tells the story of that river through its rich history and lively characters—a bargewoman, a riverbank bookseller, a houseboat dweller, a famous cameraman known for capturing the river’s light. She patrols with river police, rows with a restorer of antique boats, discovers a champagne vineyard, and even dares to swim in the Seine.

To read more: https://elainesciolino.com/the-seine-the-river-that-made-paris

Future Of Housing: “GO Homes” Are Prefabricated, “Highly Insulated, Air-Sealed” & 90% Efficient

Froom a Dwell.com online article:

GO Home by GO Logic Prefab Homes PhotosTo meet Passive House standards, the Cousins River Residence features an airtight building envelope, triple-glazed windows with a u-value of 0.16, a heat recovery ventilation system with 90% efficiency, and a 4.6 kW south-facing photovoltaic array on the garage roof that makes the house nearly net-zero energy.

With their three children grown up and out of the house, Nico and Ellen Walsh were ready to downsize from their old Victorian home to a smaller abode better aligned with their environmentally friendly principles.

The heart of every GO Home is a highly insulated, air-sealed building shell designed to use 90 percent less energy than a conventional new house, even in chilly northern New England. On sites with a favorable southern exposure, adding a modest array of photovoltaic panels yields a zero-energy home.

When the couple spotted Belfast-based design-build firm GO Logic’s LEED Platinum GO Home on the cover of Maine Home and Design Magazine, they instantly fell in love with the modern high-performance design and the possibilities of a nearly net-zero energy house.

To read more: https://www.dwell.com/article/cousins-river-residence-go-logic-opal-eead5541?utm_medium=email&utm_source=postup&utm_campaign=&list=1