Arts & Culture
Arts & Culture, Reviews
The Martian, by Andy Weir
Ari Armstrong August 20, 2014
The Martian, by Andy Weir. New York: Crown, 2014. 384 pp. $24 (hardcover). Reviewed by Ari Armstrong Imagine you’re on a mission on Mars. Your space suit, not to mention your body, was punctured by an antenna blown loose by a raging sandstorm. Luckily, although the blow knocked you unconscious,…
Arts & Culture, Reviews
The Rape of the Masters, by Roger Kimball
Daniel Wahl August 20, 2014
The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art, by Roger Kimball. New York: Encounter Books, 2005. 200 pp. $17.95 (paperback). Reviewed by Daniel Wahl Roger Kimball begins The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art by asking why we teach and study art history. “It is…
Arts & Culture, Reviews
The Dictionary of Human Form, by Ted Seth Jacobs
Daniel Wahl August 20, 2014
The Dictionary of Human Form, by Ted Seth Jacobs. Santa Fe: Mariposa Press, 2011. 819 pp. $150. Reviewed by Daniel Wahl Ted Seth Jacobs painted The Open Window—one of the most beautiful paintings of the twentieth century. He taught Jacob Collins and Tony Ryder—two of the realist movement’s most influential…
Arts & Culture
Donna Hassler on the Sculptures of Daniel Chester French
Joseph Kellard August 20, 2014
Joseph Kellard interviews Donna Hassler about the works of Daniel Chester French, the great American artist perhaps best known for his sculpture of Abraham Lincoln housed at the Lincoln Memorial. Ms. Hassler is executive director of Chesterwood, which was French's summer home and studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and which is now a historic site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Arts & Culture
Dianne Durante on Monuments of Manhattan App
Joseph Kellard July 13, 2014
Dianne Durante has released an Android app based on her book Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan. The app, produced by Guides Who Know, features more than three hours of video on the fifty-four sculptures that appear in the book, including Continents by Daniel Chester French, Sherman Monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and the Statue of Liberty.
Arts & Culture
Nureyev Danced Free of Communism and Lived
Robert Begley June 16, 2014
Nureyev’s defection inspired other famous Russian dancers, including Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, also to defect to the West, where they could flourish in their lives and careers. For example, now free, they could dance to the music of Prokofiev and the choreography of Balanchine, both of which were illegal in the Soviet Union.
Arts & Culture
Walter Mitty Learns to Love His Life
Ari Armstrong May 30, 2014
Rather than appreciate the joys and challenges of his work managing film negatives for Life magazine, ask a woman he likes out on a date, go on adventures, or stick up for himself when insulted or mistreated, Mitty frequently “zones out” and vividly imagines himself doing heroic things and going to interesting places.
Arts & Culture
It Really Is About Time
Ari Armstrong May 25, 2014
Imagine if you could relive yesterday. What would say that you did not say? What would you do that you did not do? Now imagine you could relive any day in your past until you made it a perfect day. That is the premise of the 2013 film written and directed by Richard Curtis, About Time.
Arts & Culture
Monuments Men Saved Master Artworks from Grip of Nazis
Ari Armstrong May 23, 2014
The Monuments Men saved such cultural treasures as The Adoration of the Lamb by Jan van Eyck and Madonna of Bruges by Michelangelo. Among many other operations in which the unit was involved, it assisted with the recovery of artworks stored by the Nazis in the Austrian salt mines of Altausee.
Arts & Culture
12 Years a Slave and Those Who Should Endure It
Ari Armstrong May 15, 2014
In its artistry, the film is hauntingly beautiful, with its lush landscapes, intricate costuming, heart wrenching performances, and ponderous direction. In its subject matter—it details the years that free-born Solomon Northup spent in slavery after he was kidnapped and sold into bondage—the film is horrific.