Jacques Louis David: Radical Draftsman
The Passages of Walter Benjamin - Judith Weschler (2014)
“In 1933, Walter Benjamin, one of the most brilliant literary and cultural critics of his time, fled Berlin when the Nazis took over and headed for Paris. There he sat, at the Bibliothèque nationale, working in poverty and relative obscurity on his most important project, ‘The Arcades Project.’ With the backdrop of totalitarianism spreading across the European continent, Benjamin explored the origins of modernity. Praising the poet Charles Baudelaire and employing his emblematic characters especially the flâneur and the rag picker, Benjamin wanted to counter the ‘false semblance of totality.’ This enormous incomplete study is both a collection of sources for a radical history of 19th century Paris and the basis for an allegorical critique of European fascism in the 1930s. ...”
2015 September: In praise of dirty, sexy cities: the urban world according to Walter Benjamin, 2020 September: On Benjamin’s Public (Oeuvre), 2020 November: When Waking Begins, 2021 May: Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (1969)
Russian Tech Industry Faces ‘Brain Drain’ as Workers Flee
Zvartnots International Airport in Yerevan, Armenia. The country has become a landing spot for tech workers leaving Russia.
“In early March, days after Russia invaded Ukraine and began cracking down on dissent at home, Konstantin Siniushin, a venture capitalist in Riga, Latvia, helped charter two planes out of Russia to help people flee. Both planes departed from Moscow, carrying tech workers from the Russian capital as well as St. Petersburg, Perm, Ekaterinburg and other cities. Together, the planes moved about 300 software developers, entrepreneurs and other technology specialists out of the country, including 30 Russian workers from start-ups backed by Mr. Siniushin. The planes flew south past the Black Sea to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, where thousands of other Russian tech workers fled in the weeks after the invasion. ...”
The Intercept_: Russian TV Is Filled With Images of Bucha’s Dead, Stamped With the Word “Fake” (Video)
Protesters in Krakow, Poland, staged a silent demonstration against the mass killing of Ukrainian civilians by the Russian army on April 9.
Key to a Kingdom: Ronda’s Secret Water Mine
From the southwest, Ronda's limestone ramparts are split by the Tajo, or gorge, spanned since 1793 by the picturesque "New Bridge." ...
“Approaching the region of the Serranía de Ronda, just inland from the Mediterranean’s Costa del Sol, one passes through mountains and rugged surroundings that have challenged settlers, merchants, travelers and invaders for thousands of years. Over the last ridges, a broad valley opens, circled around by hills and hazy massifs. Near its center, set like a jewel in this natural crown, a small tableland rises some 200 sheer meters above the fields: Ronda, spectacularly cleft by its famous Tajo, a narrow, nearly vertical gorge cut over five million years ago by the river Guadalevín, a name that comes from the Arabic wadi al-laban (valley of milk), after the prosperity its waters brought to the grazing lands below. ...”
How Lucinda Williams Wore Her Pain On Her Sleeve With ‘World Without Tears’
“They say time heals all wounds, but that maxim has never applied to Lucinda Williams. On her seventh studio album, 2003’s World Without Tears, Williams brings her unique mix of heartache, carnal desire, and strong-willed resolve, and lays it out for all to witness. ... Not that she’s ever shied away from dark subjects. Williams is a blues singer, after all – that’s reflected in the structure and impassioned delivery of her songs. But one thing is clear: she was mad as hell when she recorded World Without Tears, and she was not going to take it anymore. Nobody’s martyr Williams has made a career wearing her pain on her sleeve, but she’s nobody’s martyr. ...”
2008 January: Lucinda Williams, 2010 May: Lucinda Williams - 1, 2011 March: Blessed, 2011 November: Austin, Texas, 1989, 2012 May: World Without Tears, 2012 October: Honky Tonk Women: The Changing Role of Women, 2013 January: "Can`t Let Go", "Pineola", "Changed the Locks", 2013 June: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, 2013 August: Essence (2001), 2015 November: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert, 2016 February: The Ghosts of Highway 20 (2016), 2017 February: "Passionate Kisses" (1988)
No More ‘Have a Nice Day’: Lviv Learns to Live With War
Central Lviv on Saturday.
“LVIV, Ukraine — When war came to Ukraine in February, Helen Polishchuk made some adjustments in the six-story bar she manages in central Lviv.The Mad Bars House in Lviv’s historic central square stayed open, but served coffee and hot food instead of alcoholic drinks. They turned off the rock music. And as displaced Ukrainians began pouring into the city from places devastated by Russian attacks hundreds of miles away, she had instructions for the wait staff. ... Now, instead of tourists, there are displaced Ukrainians fleeing the war-torn east of the country. ...”
A zoomed-in view of Edgar Degas' Ukrainian Dancers, previously known as Russian Dancers.
Are These the Most Distant Galaxies Yet Seen?
HD1, the candidate for the most distant galaxy discovered to date, appears as the red object in the center of the zoom-in image.
“Astronomers may have found the most distant galaxies ever seen. In two papers posted to the arXiv preprint server, Yuichi Harikane (University of Tokyo) and an international team report the detection of two sources that appear to blaze at us from a mere 330 million years after the Big Bang. In astronomers’ lingo, that corresponds to a redshift of 13. The studies have been submitted for publication but are not yet peer-reviewed. Observers have previously found a handful of galaxies in the universe’s first few hundred million years. ...”
This timeline shows how the discoveries of these two candidate early galaxies fit in with the history of the universe.
Made To Measure
“Crammed’s legendary Composers’ Series is reactivated in 2021, with the release of new albums, and remastered vinyl reissues of several classics. Inaugurated in 1984, Crammed's MADE TO MEASURE composers’ series set out to chart a map of some of the most interesting instrumental music of the era. Thirty-five albums came out during the series’ first decade, harbouring a great variety of inventive musical adventures which often weaved aspects of neoclassical/chamber music, ambient, electronica, minimalism, experimental avant-rock, soundscape creation & more. ...”
2014 November: Aksak Maboul, 2017 July: Made to Measure, Vol. 1 (1984), 2018 February: Before And After Bandits: Marc Hollander Of Aksak Maboul & Crammed Discs, 2020 March: Tout a une fin / Blaue Bleistift (2020), 2020 August: Aksak Maboul – Figures (2020), 2020 September: From Aksak Maboul to Crammed Discs, Marc Hollander Envisions a Musical Melting Pot
Bucha’s Month of Terror
We visited Bucha, documented dozens of killings of civilians, interviewed scores of witnesses and followed local investigators to uncover the scale of Russian atrocities.
“BUCHA, Ukraine — A mother killed by a sniper while walking with her family to fetch a thermos of tea. A woman held as a sex slave, naked except for a fur coat and locked in a potato cellar before being executed. Two sisters dead in their home, their bodies left slumped on the floor for weeks. Bucha is a landscape of horrors. From the first day of the war, Feb. 24, civilians bore the brunt of the Russian assault on Bucha, a few miles west of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Russian special forces approaching on foot through the woods shot at cars on the road, and a column of armored vehicles fired on and killed a woman in her garden as they drove into the suburb. But those early cruelties paled in comparison to what came after. ...”
Local residents pass by a destroyed church, which served as a military base for Russian soldiers, on Sunday in Lukashivka, Ukraine.
Jules Bastien-Lepage
At Harvest Time (1880)
“Jules Bastien-Lepage was a French painter noted for his sentimental genre painting of rural life. Despite growing up during the era of Impressionism, his style of plein air painting was closer to the naturalism of the Realism art movement than the light-oriented art of Claude Monet (1840-1926). Ironically, a number of Impressionist painters - in Scotland, Holland, America and Australia - preferred to adopt his style of naturalist realist painting rather than Impressionism proper. The French realist writer Emile Zola, who described Bastien-Lepage as ‘the grandson of Courbet and of Millet’, later charactized his painting as: ‘Impressionism corrected, sweetened and adapted to suit the taste of the masses.’ ...”
2020 January: A Cultural History of the Potato as Earth Apple
Haymaking (1877)
A midcentury printmaker celebrates machine age New York City
Allen Street, 1929
“As the machine age took hold in the United States in the early 20th century, some artists took a darker view of the mechanization of urban society—seeing isolation and alienation amid skyscrapers, automobiles, and steel bridges. Painter and printmaker Louis Lozowick, however, found something to celebrate. Lozowick isn’t a household name, but his backstory will sound familiar. Born in Ukraine in 1892, he immigrated to New York City in the early 1900s, according to Artnet. ...”
In Mariupol’s Drama Theater, a Cry for ‘Mama!’ That Offered Brief Relief
“LVIV, Ukraine — ... Ms. [Viktoria] Dubovitskaya, interviewed last month at a shelter in Lviv, in western Ukraine, said she and her two young children were among the many civilians sheltering in Mariupol’s Drama Theater on March 16 when it was devastated by a Russian airstrike. A wall fell onto her 2-year-old daughter, Nastya, and in those horrific first moments, Ms. Dubovitskaya recalled, she did not know if the girl had survived.Finally, she heard it: “Mama!” Nastya screamed. A mattress that had been propped up against the wall fell against her daughter, cushioning the blows. Under the shattered masonry, Nastya was alive, but the place where they had taken refuge for 11 days, along with hundreds of others, was destroyed. ...”
The Intercept_ - Zelenskyy Is Absolutely Right: The U.N. Must Be Reformed. But It Never Will Be. (Video)
Crates of art from Russian museums that were seized by Finnish customs officials. Officials later decided the art, which had been on loan to institutions in the West, was not subject to sanctions.
2022 Winter Music Preview ~ Ambient and Drone
“We absolutely love this time of year at A Closer Listen. As we survey the musical landscape, we see over 200 new releases on the near horizon and our hearts are filled with hope. Artists continue to be inspired, labels continue to release albums, and we have the privilege of previewing a healthy selection of new music. This might turn out to be a pretty good year after all. Over a quarter of our winter announcements are found in the fields of ambient and drone ~ perfect sounds to accompany snowed-in evenings with candlelight and friends, or perhaps a good book. ...”
Virginia bluebells
“Mertensia virginica (common names Virginia bluebells, Virginia cowslip, lungwort oysterleaf, Roanoke bells) is a spring ephemeral plant with bell-shaped sky-blue flowers, native to eastern North America. Virginia bluebells have rounded and gray-green leaves, borne on stems up to 24 in (60 cm) tall. They are petiolate at the bottom of the flower stem and sessile at the top. Flowerbuds are pink. Flowers have five petals fused into a tube, five stamens, and a central pistil (carpel). They are borne in mid-spring in nodding spiral-shaped cymes at the end of arched stems. Flowers are usually blue, but white or pink flowers occur rarely. ...”
‘The City Lives’: With Russian Forces Gone, Kyiv Starts to Revive
Residents returned and businesses opened their doors after a month of Russian artillery attacks on Ukraine’s capital subsided.
“KYIV, Ukraine — On Feb. 25, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kolya Rybytva gathered his grandmother and younger sister and left Kyiv ‘quickly and without unnecessary sentiments,’ he said, heading west. His parents and brother stayed behind to help in the war effort. ... At the time, Mr. Rybytva, 24, understood that he might never return. But two weeks ago, he did, re-entering Kyiv, the capital, just as Ukrainian forces were starting to push Russian troops out of the suburbs and, eventually, into a full retreat. After a month of artillery attacks that ravaged buildings and had Kyiv residents seeking shelter in the subway stations, a sense of relative calm is being restored. ...”
GRID - GlobalUkraine mystery: Why have so many Russian generals been killed?
Smithsonian: The 20th-Century History Behind Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine (March 4, 2022), Nazi collaborator monuments in Ukraine (Jan. 2021)
The debate over how to remember Ukraine's World War II history, as well as its implications for Ukrainian nationalism and independence, is key to understanding the current conflict.
Union vs. Hertha: why is the Berlin derby such a special fixture?
“Hertha Berlin and Union Berlin will meet three times in 2021/22 and when they do, the eyes of the world will fall on the German capital for a fixture that brings together football, politics and history in a once divided city. Union won the first top-flight meeting of the sides in November of 2019/20, when substitute Sebastian Polter got the only goal from the penalty spot late on, while Hertha romped to a 4-0 victory in the return on Matchday 27. The Old Lady got the better of things in the first encounter of last season, winning 3-1 at home, while the return at the Stadion an der Alten Försterei ended 1-1. …”
Berlin was a divided between the Allied powers after WWII and Checkpoint Charlie was one of the few access points between the East and West.
Six Definitive Songs: The ultimate beginner's guide to Husker Du
“It’s a tale as old as time: Upstate New Yorker
pretends to be a Manhattanite as he arrives in the cold, dank eternal
winter of Minnesota for college. He meets a record store clerk with a
mohawk and reputation for selling weed, and they bond over a love of
punk rock. They enlist the only other punk rock-loving clerk to start a
band. ... The origins of Husker Du, the legendary St. Paul
punk-turned-alternative rock trio consisting of guitarist Bob Mould,
drummer Grant Hart, and bassist Greg Norton, are modest. ...”
He Is a Child of War’: Giving Birth Amid Chaos in Ukraine
An estimated 265,000 Ukrainian women were pregnant when the war broke out, according to the United Nations Population Fund.
“KYIV, Ukraine — Before the war, Alina Shynkar’s gynecologist advised her to avoid stress during her pregnancy, suggesting she spend time ‘just watching cartoons and being silly.’ It was simple enough advice, but not so easy to follow after air-raid sirens wailed, artillery booms rattled windows and vicious street fighting broke out a few miles away from her maternity hospital. Then, keeping calm for her baby became Ms. Shynkar’s quiet, personal battle in the Ukraine war. She checked into Maternity Hospital No. 5 in the capital, Kyiv, before the war began in late February for bed rest because of a risk of preterm labor, only to witness the hospital unravel into a chaotic, panicked state weeks later. ...”
Silence: Lectures and Writings – John Cage (1961)
“This collection of essays and presentations by noted composer and musical innovator John Cage attempts to capture on paper both the intellectual and stylistic creativity with which he approached his work. In both the themes of the collection and the internal arrangement of the individual pieces, the author explores the nature of music, music’s relationship to sound, and the value of incorporating randomness into what had previously been an ordered, carefully considered art form. ...”
Allan Molho on Keeping the Memory of Robert Janz Alive
“In late fall, the fiercely independent and inventive multimedia artist Robert Janz died at the age of 88. Since moving to Tribeca several decades ago, he had transformed his neighboring streets into an unconventional open air gallery. Intent on enriching our awareness and appreciation of the ephemeral with his artworks and poems, he quietly raged against consumerism, greed, egotism and human defilement of the environment. Earlier this year, photographer and artist Allan Molho graced Duane Street — just several steps from where Robert Janz had lived — with the installation pictured above in his honor. What follows is an interview with Allan, along with photos of Robert Janz‘s work that Allan Molho had captured. ...”
Document the War Crimes in Ukraine
“The apocalyptic images of bodies sprawled in the mud among twisted tanks, charred walls and splintered trees in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities speak to the brutality of the war that Vladimir Putin started. The knowledge that more such horrors, many more, will be revealed as Russian troops retreat cries out for a reckoning. President Biden called for a war crime trial, and President Emmanuel Macron of France declared there were ‘clear’ indications of war crimes. Human Rights Watch reported documented cases of rape and summary executions. Ukrainian and international investigators have already begun collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses. It is imperative that this work be done promptly and scrupulously. ...”
Carl Stone – Mom's (1992)
“‘Carl Stone was one of the first contemporary composers to take a serious look at sampling technology, and Mom’s is his masterpiece’: So begins the All Music Guide review for Carl Stone’s great 1991 album, Mom’s. (Look for the link to the review in the comments.) To be more specific, the title track is a jubilant, kinetic symphony of ecstatic international samples, with brief bits of sounds from perhaps Mali, Haiti, Korea, and Poland cut into slivers and sculpted into a piece for contemporary dance. It’s like several hours of travel shows in 11 minutes. Listen.”
BIG EARS - Listen: Carl Stone’s Great Album, Mom’s (Video)
2010 August: Carl Stone, 2012 September: Carl Stone' DARDA performance Super Deluxe Tokyo, 2013 December: Tetsu Inoue and Carl Stone - pict.soul (2001), 2016 August: Electronic Music from the Seventies and Eighties (2016)
Men Are Dogs: Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen on Titian’s Poesie for Philip II
Titian, Diana and Callisto, 1556–59
“Few faces to meet the public spotlight in recent years have more to tell about the mental mechanisms of male shame, impunity, and self-absolution than that of the furry brown-and-white-spotted Spanish pointer staring out of Titian’s Diana and Callisto, 1556–59. This dog has been a bad dog, as he seems to know. (I say “he” since, according to the visual logic of gender organizing the suite of pictures of which Diana and Callisto forms one-sixth, Titian’s ‘big dog’ simply can’t be a bitch.) ...”
“Titian: Women, Myth & Power,” 2021–22, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.
Siege of Mariupol
"The Siege of Mariupol is an ongoing military engagement between Russia and Ukraine which began on 24 February 2022, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, as part of the Eastern Ukraine offensive. The city of Mariupol is located in the Donetsk Oblast in Ukraine, and is claimed by the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk People's Republic. The Red Cross described the situation as "apocalyptic", and Ukrainian authorities have accused Russia of engineering a major humanitarian crisis in the city, with city officials reporting that over 5,000 civilians have been killed, as of 28 March. ...”
Created Space: A Case for John Ashbery's Chelsea Apartment
Chelsea: Ashbery's domestic environment is an organic, mutable living-quarters-cum-laboratory. Office.
“In 1891, after nearly thirteen years of construction and seemingly endless modifications, Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church’s 250-acre Persian-fantasy estate, Olana, was finally completed. ... Much like Olana, poet John Ashbery’s domestic environments—consisting of his house in Hudson, New York, and his apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City—are stand-alone works of art conceived and composed with the same level of conscious artistry that informs his poetry. For Ashbery, the domestic urge, the operation of homebuilding, operates in tandem with the work that is conventionally recognized as his creative output. ...”
Chelsea: The glass is a permeable membrane, the site of a truce between the flux of life outside and the controlled experience within. Living room.
The Upsetter: The Life & Music Of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry (2009)
“Dub fans rejoice, a documentary about the legendary Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry is available to watch online. The Upsetter: The Life & Music Of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry is one of the instalments of the Roots & Revolution: Reggae On Film series, dedicated to tracking the genre’s worldwide impact.Originally Released back in 2009, the film is narrated by Benicio del Toro and stars Perry himself alongside a cast of famous faces, including Paul McCartney, whose post-Beatles band, Wings, worked in Perry’s Black Ark studio in the 1970s. The documentary arrives six months after the death of the reggae pioneer in August 2021. ...”
2021 September: Lee “Scratch” Perry, 2022 February: Battle Of Armagideon (1986)
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