Reviews and News:
In 2013, José Manuel Barroso, then president of the European Commission, launched a project called “New Narrative for Europe.” The goal was to create a stronger sense of European identity by calling on artists, writers, scientists, and students to reaffirm “the values of human dignity and democracy.” It was a complete failure. What happened?
When ISIS moves into the neighborhood, a family must decide what to do with Hamlet—bury it, or burn it.
Guggenheim removes art featuring live reptiles and videos of dogs on treadmills after it received “explicit and repeated threats of violence.”
The rise of Alexander Calder: “Calder’s figure sculptures had already gained him a reputation as a troubadour of the giddy high spirits of the Roaring Twenties on both sides of the Atlantic. But no one could have foreseen the breakthrough of the Galerie Percier show. Suddenly, Calder was now being embraced as a prophet of the increasingly austere mood of the early 1930s—of a world descending into the Depression and political crises on the left and the right. Working as an abstract artist, Calder was reaching for a contemplative, almost quietistic mood. What had changed? In the years 1930 and 1931 Calder had made two life-changing decisions: He became a married man and an abstract artist. These were the foundations on which he would build for the rest of his life.”
The treasures of Teotihuacan revealed: “In 2003, a tunnel was discovered beneath the Feathered Serpent pyramid in the ruins of Teotihuacan, the ancient city in Mexico. Undisturbed for 1,800 years, the sealed-off passage was found to contain thousands of extraordinary treasures lying exactly where they had first been placed as ritual offerings to the gods. Items unearthed included greenstone crocodile teeth, crystals shaped into eyes, and sculptures of jaguars ready to pounce. Even more remarkable was a miniature mountainous landscape, 17 metres underground, with tiny pools of liquid mercury representing lakes. The walls of the tunnel were found to have been carefully impregnated with powdered pyrite, or fool’s gold, to give the effect in firelight of standing under a galaxy of stars.”
Graph: Flutes and the origin of music around the world.
Essay of the Day:
In Lapham’s Quarterly, Alison Kinney writes about Richard Wagner’s biggest 19th-century fan: Ludwig II, king of Bavaria. Shortly after a performance of Tristan und Isolde, he began work on a castle that he called “a worthy temple for the divine friend who has brought salvation and true blessing to the world”:
“Ludwig’s family, the House of Wittelsbach, had ruled Bavaria since 1180. They claimed affiliation with the medieval knights of Schwangau and the legendary swan knight Lohengrin, whose image graced the murals of Ludwig’s childhood summer palace, Hohenschwangau. During his adolescence, Ludwig devoured the libretto of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin, in which the beautiful, pure knight appears in a magical swan boat, rescues and marries a damsel in distress, and is forced to renounce all earthly obligation and desire so that he may return to the service of the Holy Grail. At the age of fifteen, Ludwig was granted his earnest desire to hear Wagner’s opera. Shortly afterward, he also heard Wagner’s Tannhäuser, where the title poet’s allegiance to the subterranean realm of desire, Venusberg, sunders him from God and all fit company. A member of Ludwig’s father’s cabinet chronicled that the opera had an “almost demoniacal” effect on the prince: ‘At the passage when Tannhäuser reenters the Venusberg, Ludwig body was thrown into such convulsions that I was afraid he might have an epileptic seizure.’ Ludwig was hooked for life.
“Opera fans have their own special ways of abandoning themselves to the objects of their affection. They have been known to hitch themselves to a diva’s carriage and pull it triumphantly through the streets, shower roses onto the stage, sprinkle the ashes of dearly departed fellow fans into orchestra pits. Ludwig’s style was supported by a monarch’s power and magnificence; one of his first acts following his coronation was to summon Wagner to court. ‘I burn with ardor to behold the creator of the words and music of Lohengrin,’ he wrote, sending a ruby ring and a signed photograph of himself as gifts. The king soon funded the premiere of Tristan und Isolde, Wagner’s masterpiece of love, death, and transcendence, which had been composed six years prior and condemned as unstageable. In the days before the premiere, Ludwig suffered from tremors and nervous anticipation; he wept at the dress rehearsal. His mash note to Wagner declared, ‘You are the world’s miracle; what am I without you?…My love for you, I need not repeat it, will endure forever!’ In need of a way to vent his emotions, he pardoned all the participants of the 1848 revolutions that had forced his grandfather Ludwig I to abdicate the Bavarian throne.
“In the deepest throes of opera fandom, Ludwig began to build castles as tributes, shrines, refuges, and monuments to his great passion. He envisioned Neuschwanstein during his first year on the throne and began its planning.”
Photo: Kalsoy Island
Poem: George Green, “Rinaldo and Armida”
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