Reviews and News:
An “enthralling” account of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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“Stalin’s effect on Soviet society was omnipresent and chilling.” David Mikics reviews Joshua Rubenstein’s The Last Days of Stalin.
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Quadrant – Australia’s conservative monthly – will no longer receive support from the Australia Council for the Arts for its highly regarded poetry section. Meanwhile, liberal magazines continue to receive large grants.
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Matisse in full: “Musée Matisse’s collection documents the artist from his student days to the triumphant maturity of the cut-paper works. There are many happy surprises, including the intensely serious 1918 self-portrait of the artist, palette in hand, seated at his easel in a brown suit, his solemnity countered by a hot-pink floor. There are brilliantly colored Fauvist experiments from 1905; bold flower paintings made in 1912, in Tangier, when rain kept Matisse indoors; a superb 1942 interior, with bars of sunlight slicing across the space; and portraits of Matisse’s grandchildren drawn on the ceiling above his bed, on his 80th birthday, with a stick of charcoal attached to fishing pole…”
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The Library of Congress’s genres.
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Prince Philip’s DNA to be used to identify the last of the Romanovs.
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Essay of the Day:
In The New York Times, Graham Bowley and Doreen Carvajal explain why millions of artworks are being held in storage containers at free ports around the world:
“The drab free port zone near the Geneva city center, a compound of blocky gray and vanilla warehouses surrounded by train tracks, roads and a barbed-wire fence, looks like the kind of place where beauty goes to die. But within its walls, crated or sealed cheek by jowl in cramped storage vaults, are more than a million of some of the most exquisite artworks ever made.
“Treasures from the glory days of ancient Rome. Museum-quality paintings by old masters. An estimated 1,000 works by Picasso.
“As the price of art has skyrocketed, perhaps nothing illustrates the art-as-bullion approach to contemporary collecting habits more than the proliferation of warehouses like this one, where masterpieces are increasingly being tucked away by owners more interested in seeing them appreciate than hanging on walls.
“With their controlled climates, confidential record keeping and enormous potential for tax savings, free ports have become the parking lot of choice for high-net-worth buyers looking to round out investment portfolios with art.
“‘For some collectors, art is being treated as a capital asset in their portfolio,’ said Evan Beard, who advises clients on art and finance at U.S. Trust. ‘They are becoming more financially savvy, and free ports have become a pillar of all of this.'”
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Image of the Day: Flags at Arlington
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Poem: Dan Campion, “A Soldier’s the Solder that Binds”
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