Reviews and News:
The official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama were revealed yesterday. I like the former president’s—trendy, sure, yet tasteful and accomplished. It is certainly better than Chuck Close’s 9ft by 7ft painting of Bill Clinton’s head. Complaints that Michelle Obama’s portrait didn’t look exactly like her are a little silly. The painting is all about the dress and its politics—a choice that the former First Lady may come to regret. Who wants to be remembered for supporting Planned Parenthood?
The Duluth School District will pull both To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from its curriculum next year because they contain racial slurs.
Midge Goldberg reviews Catherine Chandler’s latest collection of poems, The Frangible Hour.
Flannery O’Connor and modern Catholic thought. She read Jacques Maritain and François Mauriac and was indebted to Léon Bloy.
David Frum argues in The Atlantic that Tina Brown was an underrated editor who sacrificed her own writing to develop others: “‘You can teach people structure,’ Brown observes early in her diary-memoir, ‘and how to write a lead. But you can’t teach them how to notice the right things.’ Brown is a writer who notices and notices and notices.”
What book prize$ are a££ about.
Jack Kerouac, “more spiritual than beatnik”?
Essay of the Day:
In The Fortnightly Review, Anthony Costello and Emma Storr take a closer look at Vincent van Gogh’s relationship with his doctor Paul Gachet:
“One of the most striking aspects of the ‘Portrait of Doctor Gachet’ is the resemblance of the subject with the artist. Paul Gachet’s aquiline nose, pointed face, his yellow hair tinged with red, the heavy moustache with the beginnings of a goatee, the slumped body posture and melancholic expression could be Vincent van Gogh. It is as if the close and intense relationship they shared in the three months leading up to Van Gogh’s death and the wavy, expressionist paintbrush technique allowed the two to merge into one.
“Gachet’s and Van Gogh’s relationship was borne out of medical need and the intercession of mutual friends. Van Gogh’s brother, Theo, had become increasingly concerned about Vincent’s mental health following the former’s voluntary admission to Saint Paul asylum near Saint Rémy-de-Provence in May 1889. Dr. Paul Gachet moved in literary and medical circles and had gained a reputation for a sympathetic understanding of the maladies affecting artists. It was Pissarro who recommended to Theo that his brother travel north to Auvers-sur-Oise in May 1890 and be treated and cared for by Dr. Gachet.
“A close and complex friendship developed over the three months of their acquaintance that culminated in them living in close proximity and often together in Gachet’s house. It was a home that doubled as a studio for Gachet. He was an amateur painter, engraver, art collector and the owner of a printing press where both Cezanne and Van Gogh produced their first etchings. Gachet and Van Gogh both completed portraits of each other, Van Gogh also painting two portraits of Gachet’s daughter, Marguerite, and one of the doctor’s homeopathic garden. They developed an intense friendship involving mutual respect and a vested interest in each other’s fields of medicine and art.”
Photo: Emmental
Poem: Timothy Murphy, “Seven Good Fridays Later”
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