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Lee Siegel wonders at the perverse success of a certain children's book meant for adults ... read more »
I only became fully aware of Cy Twombly recently. I say “fully aware” because as a college student in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I used to wander the halls of the famed art museum every so often, and there, in the corner of one of the collections, is an entire room dedicated to his Iliad-inspired work “Fifty Days at Iliam” (1978). So I recognised the name—and recalled being perplexed by his work as a younger, less-sophisticated observer.
In the years since then I have taken up painting, which has influenced the way I look at art. I find myself seeking out artists whose work inclines towards chaos, such as Rothko, Gorky, Kline, Rauschenberg—in other words, those associated with Abstract Expressionism. It was Twombly, who began as one of their contemporaries and then veered off, who opened my eyes to the elasticity of labelling in fine art.
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“It is a phoenix that rose out of the ashes of Grosvenor House,” says Geoffrey Munn, managing director of Wartski, a London jeweller. He is talking about the Masterpiece fair, which has just finished its second year alongside the river Thames. When Grosvenor, the grande dame of London’s annual art and antiques fairs, shut down in 2009, Masterpiece was one of two new fairs to have emerged, along with Brian and Anna Haughton’s Art Antiques London, which took place in Kensington Gardens in early June. After maiden voyages last year, both improved in 2011.
Art Antiques London is pitched to mid-range collectors with an emphasis on exceptional ceramics. Masterpiece is a bigger and glitzier bird, which aims to exhibit the best of the best. A visitor to this more ambitious fair, which closed on July 5th, could have taken home some 18th-century scenic wallpaper (at Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz); a sleekly sensual, modern white sofa (Ciancimino); a series of four Commedia dell’Arte paintings by Giandomenico Tiepolo (Dickinson); a sapphire blue Rolls-Royce (pictured); or a Spitfire plane. The stands are generously proportioned, the colours soothingly neutral and the aisles thickly carpeted. For the peckish, there were outposts of the fashionable Le Caprice and Harry’s Bar.
Anne-Sophie Mutter’s career as a violinist has been governed by the guru-pupil principle. In 1976, as a teenager, she was taken under the wing of Herbert von Karajan; in 1997, she created her own foundation, which nurtures brilliant young string players from all over the world.
The best of the current bunch will be at the Verbier Festival (July 27th) as Mutters Virtuosi, playing both on their own and with Mutter herself. She also gives a Prom at the Albert Hall, London, on September 6th, and in the winter she will have her own mini-season at the Barbican, joining the LSO to perform works including one written for her by Sofia Gubaidulina and another by the man she calls her “in-house composer”, André Previn. Which is a sweet way of saying that she was until recently the fifth Mrs Previn. Before that she had been married to a lawyer (who died of cancer) much older than herself: journalists have long feasted like vultures on her dramatic private life. Hence her hatred of press intrusiveness and her rigid control of her own publicity. But that control is constitutional, and underpins her commanding authority on stage. Her artistry, whether in Mozart and Beethoven or in the music of the contemporary composers she champions, is perfection incarnate: this youthful 48-year-old seems to live in a permanent golden age.
Verbier Festival Switzerland, July 15th to 31st.
During a particularly dark week for British journalism, Arianna Huffington launches a local outpost of her controversial newspaper ... read more »
Once grand, the city's single-screen cinemas are being edged out by nearby multiplexes. Charukesi Ramadurai considers the grim fate of a former institution ... read more »
Many of us have harboured a dream, deluded or otherwise, to write a book, a bestseller. These same people may then be familiar with the faint sound of a ticking time bomb when whiling away decent writing time at forgettable parties.
Ernest Hemingway once said writing was like bleeding, which means that it either comes naturally or painfully. Or both. A fellow journalist once told me that if you are not writing every day, then you are an amateur. I don't talk to him much anymore.
I do write every day, but not about the characters born in my imagination, who have accidentally killed a tramp or crashed a car, only to disappear into oblivion. I write about companies who decry regulation and calculate potential losses. I admit I used to blame these corporations for the fact that I hadn't published a novel yet.
But I recently dropped the grudge. There is a tried and tested way to stop the dilly-dallying. It does not involve buying more books about writing or seeking more matter-of-fact advice about what does and does not make a real writer. It involves reading your work to people who share your ambitions—or delusions. And the more they read your work, the more they help you to see that the characters you once thought would set readers on fire are in fact boring. What they need is more detail, more background, more consistency or perhaps a foil. read more »
Why do models stand as they do? Isabel Lloyd ponders the ins and outs of posing, and Royal Ballet dancers show how it could be done... read more »
Coffee shops are ubiquitous in Europe and America. But where is the really good coffee? Our undercover expert spills the beans ... read more »
“Let's go watch the Cubs lose!” said the driver last Friday, as the crowded subway car made its way to Chicago’s Wrigley Field for the first of a three-game series between the great cross-town rivals, the Cubs and the White Sox. Half the car groaned; the other half cheered.
This kind of banter is the lingua franca of Chicago summers. Like all sports rivalries, it has a civic function; it gives people something to talk about, a channel for feelings that might otherwise go unexpressed, and a sort of shorthand for where they stand. The cultural dimensions of Sox and Cubs fandom are slightly opaque and probably exaggerated, but it seems to be that the Sox, with their Yankees-esque pinstripes and 2005 World Series rings, are grittier. The Cubs have a more cuddly face and the longest losing streak in baseball, having not won the World Series for over a century. Cursed (according to lore) or simply doomed, they happen to be the most lovable losers left in baseball.