Category: cultural history
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Venice Biennale Art Show 2024 – Part 2
My wife and I spent April 2024 in Venice, mostly to relax, soak up history and culture, and indulge in more than a few happy hours, mostly centered on drinking Aperol Spritzes and eating cicchetti, the ubiquitous, cheap and addictive Venetian appetizers. But in addition, we chose April in part because we could attend the…
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Venice Biennale Art Show 2024 – Part 1
Venice – the one in Italy – alternates two huge fairs, the Architecture Biennale and the Art Biennale, in a tradition that dates all the way back to 1893, when it marked the 25th anniversary of the marriage of King Umberto I of Italy to Margherita of Savoy. In April my wife and I were…
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The remarkable and tragic story of Phillis Wheatley
Book Review: American Women of Achievement: Phillis Wheatley by Merle Richmond, published by Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 1988. (5 out of 5 stars). Imagination! who can sing thy force?Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?Soaring through air to find the bright abode,Th’empyreal palace of the thund’ring God,We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,And leave the…
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Between Knole and Sissinghurst
Book Review: Vita: the Life of V. Sackville-West by Victoria Glendinning, published by Phoenix, London, 1983. (5 out of 5 stars). I really enjoyed this book. Victoria Glendinning is a very skilled and fluent writer, like (I think) a higher percentage of British than US writers. If the author is one of those highly articulate…
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The Mayor of Bank Street
Book Review: Growing Up Bank Street: A Greenwich Village Memoir, by Donna Florio, published by New York University Press, New York 2021. (5 out of 5 stars) This is a wonderful, well-written memoir that any lover of New York City, and specifically Greenwich Village, will enjoy. Donna Florio is an engaging tour guide who’s knowledgeable,…
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A chalk line from the Met
Book Review: Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York by Alexander Nemerov, published by Penguin Books, New York 2021. (4 out of 5 stars) This is an interesting, ambitious and mostly well-written book, which focuses on artist Helen Frankenthaler’s early career in the 1950s, when she burst on the New York scene fresh out…
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Gertrude Stein’s entertaining take on Picasso
Book Review: Picasso by Gertrude Stein, published by B.T. Batsford Ltd., London 1938; reprinted by Dover Publications, New York 1984. (4 out of 5 stars) It’s always fun to read reviews of Gertrude Stein’s books, for example on sites like GoodReads that publish reviews by the common rabble. She provokes a wide variety of reactions,…
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The Rockefeller’s Cultural Philanthropy
Book Review: America’s Medicis: the Rockefellers and Their Astonishing Cultural Legacy (five out of five stars) A very interesting & well-written book. As long as you know what you’re getting into, it should be a very interesting read. It doesn’t cover the Rockefellers’ philanthropy outside of arts & culture, e.g. underwriting the University of Chicago…
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The band of palette-wielding buddies in Montmartre
I really enjoyed this book despite initially having some worries. At first it was behaving like a historical novel, because Roe inserted dialogue that seemed to be invented. How do we know exactly what Picasso said to Fernande on a certain day? That concern faded, however, as the book became better documented without being too…
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Natalie Barney & Gertrude Stein walking their dogs on the Left Bank
Book review: Wild Heart – Natalie Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris, by Suzanne Rodriguez. (5 out of 5 stars) This biography describes Natalie Barney, a wealthy American heiress and sometime writer who lived a carefree – to some extent – lesbian life on the Left Bank of Paris, at times overlapping with more…
Heard and Seen Around Town 