In a TLS review of several books on ancient perception, material, and architecture Peter Thonemann notes the dominance of circular architecture in “prehistoric” Europe, and asks whether this form carried some kind of symbolic weight. He cites an Athenian example: “The best-known . . . . Continue Reading »
Paul Barker’s review Carscapes: The Motor Car, Architecture, and Landscape in England in the TLS highlights the effect on the automobile on architecture and urban design. The authors “quote the historian Jack Simmons, in 1947, seeing his adoptive city, Leicester, stripped of its past in . . . . Continue Reading »
Once upon a time, “the arts” did not exist. Of course, from the beginning people painted figures, shaped rock and wood into statues, played or sang melodies, added decorative flourishes to their homes. But for much of human history, these activities were not thought to be in a separate . . . . Continue Reading »
From the Renaissance to the early twentieth century, “almost all painting had obeyed a convention: that of one-point perspective,” says Robert Hughes ( The Shock of the New , 16-7). Renaissance perspective has come to seem natural, just the way we actually see, but Hughes points out . . . . Continue Reading »
In a review of a surrealism exhibit at the LA County Museum of Art, Sanford Schwartz comments on the dilution in the meaning of the word “surreal”: “Surrealism has entered the language as a synonym for almost anything that seems odd, uncanny, or freaky. For some, the very word . . . . Continue Reading »
Martha Bayles’s expertise, which besides her punchy prose is the main attraction of her Hole In Our Soul , extends beyond the p’s and q’s of American popular music, but also covers the impact various theories of modernism and art had upon the music’s development. She is . . . . Continue Reading »
The December 20 edition of the NYRB has some arresting photos of bronze statues in a London Royal Academy exhibit, made all the more impressive by the reviewer Andrew Butterfield’s description of the process of bronze sculpture: “Bronze is very different from most materials of . . . . Continue Reading »
Following the lead of John Paul II’s theology of the body, I offer some reflections on artistic depictions of the human body at http://www.firstthings.com/ this morning. . . . . Continue Reading »
Donatello’s innovation in depicting David, Kenneth Clark informs us ( The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form , 54), captures the spirit of Renaissance: He transforms “the king of Israel into a young Greek god.” Both adjectives are critical: young and Greek: In the middle ages “the . . . . Continue Reading »
Hyde ( The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property , 50-51) distinguishes between “work” and “labor.” The first is what we do by the hour. Labor has its own pace, and there is no timetable or tool to make it work more efficiency: “Writing a poem, developing a . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
