Erica Galvin

Ernest Hemingway “made the English language new, changed the rhythms of the way both his own and the next few generations would speak and write and think. The very grammar of a Hemingway sentence dictated, or was dictated by, a certain way of looking at the world, a way of looking but not joining, a way of moving through but not attaching, a kind of romantic individualism distinctly adapted to its time and source.” So writes the late Joan Didion, a writer hardly without influence herself, in a 1998 reflection on the author of such novels as A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and  The Old Man and the Sea. The literary phenomenon that was Hemingway began in earnest, as it were, with The Sun Also Rises. Having been published in 1926, his first full-length novel now stands on the brink of the public domain. So do a variety of other works that launched storied careers: William Faulkner’s first novel Soldiers’ Pay, for instance, or A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, wh...

Remember how it felt to be bundled into tights, socks, jeans, a thick sweater, a snowsuit, mittens, only to realize that you really needed to pee? Back in 1665,  the Little Ice Age  compelled the well-to-do ladies of Delft to turn themselves out with a similar eye toward keeping warm, but their ensembles had a distinct advantage over the  Christmas Story  snowsuit approach. Relieving themselves was as easy as hiking their skirts, petticoats, and voluminous, lace-trimmed chemise. No flies for freezing fingers to fumble with. In fact, no drawers at all. Historical costumer  Pauline Loven , a creator of the  Getting Dressed In…  series, builds this elite outfit from the innermost layer out, above, noting that clothing was an avenue for well-to-do citizens to flaunt their wealth: A long, full, Linen or silk chemise trimmed with lace at the cuff A waist-tied hip pad to bolster several layers of cozy, lined petticoats An elegant silk gown comp...

Snow covered fields. Icy lakes. Frozen windows. Drawn from the Aesthetica archives, these five artists create works full of intrigue and atmosphere – evoking winter’s chill across urban and remote landscapes. Alessio Albi Alessio Albi (b. 1986) uses framing devices – such as frosted car windows – to create cinematic compositions. This image is melancholy and intriguing, depicting one of Albi’s characters peering through icy glass. Delicate snowflakes fragment and splinter; the cold is palpable. It presents an atmosphere reminiscent of crime dramas: muted, foreboding, eerie. It begs the question: what will we find inside? Uwe Langmann Winter is a photographic series by German artist Uwe Langmann (b. 1985) that depicts sweeping topographies blanketed by clean, white expanses of snow. Langmann masterfully captures the land as it is submerged by the supremacy of nature. Sheds, trees, fences and poles protrude from the clean lines of the ground. The images invite viewers to marvel...

Emerging from lockdown, many of us might find that our memories are hazy, the events of the last 20 months blending together as we moved from one room to the next, and back again. For many of us, 2020 is a year that’s hard to remember at all. Beyond human reception to trauma, there’s a tangible reason for this blurring as our brains stop taking notes of our surroundings. As British economist Tim Harford notes: “Our brains seem to record a new place with a particular vividness. Even when a moment has nothing to do with place and everything to do with intellectual or emotional novelty, place still registers. A month of repeating the same routine might seem endless, but will be barely a blip in the memory: the ‘diffs’ are not significant enough for the brain to bother with.” (Financial Times, August 2020). Despite this sense of stagnation, creativity thrives in constraints. California Museum of Photography celebrates this notion with an online exhibition, Art in the Plague Year. In this...

Lovers of Edmund de Waal’s book can get close to that netsuke in a compelling show of objects that endured across a century of violence, discrimination and dispossession. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3qBTUIz via IFTTT

In the 1980s, she used her position as editor in chief of the trade magazine Interiors to advocate for women in media, design and architecture. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3qvFf1z via IFTTT

Without dedicated funding for conservation, many of New York City’s public memorials and artworks are decaying from neglect. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3qvpVC5 via IFTTT

The museums, which are smaller ones, will be closed through Sunday as the Smithsonian routes staff to more-visited outposts. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3FDbHW3 via IFTTT

In exhibitions that were popular until the early 20th century, living people of color were displayed for the enjoyment of white audiences. The bigotry behind those shows lives on. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3EEHRiG via IFTTT

The National Geographic Society announced that Elyn Zimmerman’s massive granite installation will be moved to the campus of American University. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3mHyXe9 via IFTTT

FYI: Between now and January 13 2022, Coursera is offering a $100 discount on its annual subscription plan called “Coursera Plus.”  Normally priced at $399, Coursera Plus ( now available for $299 ) gives you access to 90% of Coursera’s courses, Guided Projects, Specializations, and Professional Certificates, all of which are taught by top instructors from leading universities and companies (e.g. Yale, Duke, Google, Facebook, and more). The $299 annual fee–which translates to 81 cents per day–could be a good investment for anyone interested in learning new subjects and skills in 2022, or earning certificates that can be added to your resume. Just as Netflix’s streaming service gives you access to unlimited movies, Coursera Plus gives you access to unlimited courses and certificates. It’s basically an all-you-can-eat deal. You can try out Coursera Plus for 14 days, and if it doesn’t work for you, you can get your money back. Explore the offer (before January 13, 2022) here . Note...

:) The Jagger Moving Company is a post from: Open Culture . Follow us on Facebook and  Twitter , or get our Daily Email . And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses , Free Online Movies , Free eBooks ,  Free Audio Books , Free Foreign Language Lessons , and MOOCs . from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3pw1jtA via IFTTT

A Coco Chanel ballet slipper, Beethoven’s hair, Andy Warhol’s painted ticket. “Treasures,” at the New York Public Library, showcases delights from its collections. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3qzBJTX via IFTTT

At 64, the famously surly former frontman of the Pogues has slowed down some, but his hunger for an artistic life is still insatiable. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/32CswBQ via IFTTT

Guy de Maupassant ate lunch at the restaurant in the base of the Eiffel Tower nearly every day, that being the only place in Paris where he wouldn’t have to look at the Eiffel Tower. 130 years later, the observation deck of the Tour Montparnasse is known to offer the most beautiful vista on the French capital — thanks precisely to the invisibility of the Tour Montparnasse. Spare a thought, if you will, for that highly conspicuous building, quite possibly the loneliest in Europe. Since its completion in 1973, it has stood as the sole skyscraper in Paris proper, its famous unsightliness having inspired a ban on the construction of buildings over seven stories high in the city center. Paris isn’t alone in its lack of skyscrapers, a condition travelers from Asia and America notice in cities all over the Continent. In the video above , construction-themed Youtube channel The B1M explores the reasons for this relative paucity of tall towers in the capitals of Europe. “When skyscrap...

What is the Omicron Variant? How do vaccines work? And what about monoclonal antibody therapy? On this episode of StarTalk, Neil deGrasse Tyson has a wide-ranging and quite informative conversation with George Yancopoulos , president of Regeneron, the company that created the monoclonal antibody therapy now being used in the fight against COVID-19. And there’s an interesting side note: During the 1970s, Tyson and Yancopoulos were high school classmates together at Bronx Science . They’ve both come a long way, and now they re-unite to explain the science behind the latest phase of the pandemic. Would you like to support the mission of Open Culture? Please consider making a donation to our site . It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us continue providing the best free cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere. Also consider following Open Culture on Facebook  and   Twitter  and  sharing intelligent media with...

A new exhibition from Light Art Space (LAS), a Berlin-based art foundation working at the threshold of art and technology, brings the minimalist spirit of North-American light artist Robert Irwin (b. 1928) to Kraftwerk Berlin, a gallery on the site of a former power station. Still creatively active at 93, Irwin is one of the best-known artists associated with the Light and Space movement, which emerged from the borderlands of minimalism, geometric abstraction, op and land art in the 1960s. The philosophy of Light and Space spread from its base in Southern California to influence art worldwide, with James Turrell (b. 1943),  its best-known international proponent, and contemporary artists such as Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) continuing to work with its legacy. Light and Space was engaged from the start with developments in aerospace technology in the scientific hub of the US West Coast, and utilised the most up-to-date theories and inventions in optics to create new forms of perceptua...

We’re living in times where so much is done to manipulate us. And things last for, what, a news cycle? A few minutes? This [album] is something that’s lasted 50 years. And not only lasted, but grown … I think there’s just a humanness. — Jerry Granelli  As the Christmas season winds down, so too do marketing blitzes and consumerist frenzies that make it hard to see the holiday as anything but a year-end cash grab. But even the most cynical among us might admit to being moved each year by one Christmas classic, no matter our religious beliefs, capitalist sympathies, or lack thereof: that classic, of course, is  The Charlie Brown Christmas Special. The talents of Charles Schulz, producer Lee Mendelson, and the Vince Guaraldi Trio combined to make a show not only bigger than its parts, but even more enduring, perhaps, than the juggernaut of Christmas commerce. The choice of jazz for a primetime children’s Christmas special was inspired and edgy in 1965, though Guaraldi and...

He preserved landmarks in New York through creative zoning, involved communities in decision-making and insisted on aesthetic standards for urban design. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3px7u0D via IFTTT

Quentin Tarantino loves a cat-and-mouse scene, when forces of power and potential violence enter rooms, commandeer them, and play with their hapless victims. Think of Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules taking care of two hapless, out of their depth frat boy dope dealers—all the while helping himself to their Kahuna burger—in Pulp Fiction. Terrifying, hilarious, and electrifying: it has become one of his hallmarks. By the time of 2009’s Inglourious Basterds, he had perfected it so much that he devotes the film’s opening 20 minutes to one suspense-filled meeting between an unctuous Nazi and a French farmer, who is trying to hide a Jewish family under his floorboards. Markus Madlangbayan (aka emotiondesigner) only has two film appreciation essays up on his Youtube site, and it’s a shame he didn’t do more. Here he takes us through Tarantino’s farmhouse scene, shot by shot, examining the director’s camera placement and composition, explaining his reasoning, and demonstrating why Quentin is a mas...

Dirtiness has no description. It is a  feeling. —  music transcriber  George Collier You may be able to read music and play the clarinet, but it’s extremely unlikely you — or anyone — will be able to play along with  Doreen Ketchens ‘ “dirty” solo on “ The House of the Rising Sun ,” above, despite an assist from  Tom Pickles ‘ scrolling transcription. Download the transcription  for free and keep trying. It’s what Ketchens, a world renowned clarinetist and music educator, who has played for four US presidents and busks regularly in the French Quarter, would advise. “You have to practice and be ready to perform at the drop of a hat” she told  The Clarinet ‘s Ben Redwine, when he asked if she had any advice for young musicians hoping to make it professionally. She’s also a strong advocate of listening robustly, not throwing in the towel when someone else gets the job instead of you, and letting your personality come ...

“I am sixty-five years old,” said John Cleese as he began one year’s convocation address at my university, “which is nearly dead.” It got enough of a laugh that I’m not surprised to find, looking it up all these years later, that he seem to have deployed the line many times since. “I’m now incredibly old,” he said last year in a video urging compliance with coronavirus rules . “I’m nearly dead. I am 81 years of age.” Nevertheless, he remains decidedly non-dead (and indeed active on Twitter ) today, though no doubt reality-based enough to accept that he’s no less mortal than his fellow Pythons Graham Chapman and Terry Jones , who’ve preceded him into the afterlife — if indeed there is an afterlife. That very question animates the 80-minute conversation above . Put on by the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies at the 2018 Tom Tom Festival , it places Cleese at the head of a panel of scientists charged with probing one question: is there life after death? Man...

What have you been reading this year? Aesthetica rounds up its most-read online articles of 2021. From emerging artists to the latest book reviews and international art fair coverage, this selection spans the breadth of image-making today. Discover surreal portraits, street photography, visual activism and more. 1 | Mirrored Environments | New Artists “Often, mirrors are used to emphasise minute details but rarely used to look at the big picture,” says photographer Loreal Prystaj. “What if nature looked at itself? What would it see?” To create these images, Prystaj places herself in wild places – physically holding up mirrors to the environment. In doing so, she camouflages parts of the body. Heads and torsos are replaced with tree trunks, grasses and cloud-filled skies, creating the illusion of invisibility. Read the full feature » 2 | Matriarchal Utopia | Book Review Along with being chased and flying, many people have bad dreams in which they find themselves inexplicably, ofte...

Mr. Thiebaud’s rich and luminous depictions of midcentury Americana separated him from the classic Pop Art of the time. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3FA3uBV via IFTTT

The Metropolitan Museum of Art hopes to entice visitors with a show of 150 Disney artifacts and its own objets d’art. But does getting cozy with a behemoth serve the public? from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3z1Di0L via IFTTT

Children are the perfect audience for The Nutcracker.  (Well, children and the grandmothers who can’t wait for the toddler to start sitting still long enough to make the holiday-themed ballet an annual tradition…) Maurice Sendak , the celebrated children’s book author and illustrator, agreed, but found the standard George  Balanchine-choreographed version  so treacly as to be unworthy of children, dubbing it the “most bland and banal of ballets.” The 1983 production he collaborated on with  Pacific Northwest Ballet  artistic directors  Kent Stowell and Francia Russell  did away with the notion that children should be “coddled and sweetened and sugarplummed and kept away from the dark aspects of life when there is no way of doing that.” Tchaikovsky’s famous score  remained in place, but Sendak and Stowell ducked the source material for, well, more source material. As per the New York City Ballet’s website, the Russian Imperial B...

At the Catholic University of America in Washington, conservative students called for a campus ban on further displays of an artwork that depicts Floyd as Jesus. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3HdN56q via IFTTT

Experts criticize the decision to remove this grave site memorial and sell it privately. The family says it’s a way to provide safekeeping. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3Jknr26 via IFTTT

“Family Matters” at the ICP captures the inevitability of families fractured over politics. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/3qqQIzp via IFTTT

Bing Crosby died in October of 1977, but that didn’t stop him from appearing in living rooms all over America for Christmas. He’d already completed the shoot for his final CBS television special Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas, along with such collaborators as Ron Moody, Stanley Baxter, the Trinity Boys Choir, Twiggy, and a young fellow by the name of David Bowie. Of course, Bowie had long since achieved his own dream of fame, at least to the younger generation; it was viewers who’d grown up listening to Crosby who needed an introduction. And they received a memorable one indeed, in the form of the Bowie-Crosby duet “Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy,” previously featured here on Open Culture . This year you can watch Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas in its hourlong entirety , which includes performances of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “Side by Side by Side” (from the late Stephen Sondheim’s Company), a (perhaps embellished) musical delinea...

A number of choreographers have taken  inspiration from the movement of birds . Sadek Waff , creator of thrillingly precise “ murmurations ” such as the one above, is also inspired by street dance — particularly the popping hip hop moves known as  Tutting  and  ToyMan . The nature lover and founder of the dance troupe  Géométrie Variable  uses both to excellent effect, channeling a starling flock’s hive mind with human dancers, whose lower halves remain firmly rooted. It’s all about the hands and arms, punctuated with the occasional neck flex. As he observes on his  Instagram  profile: There is magic everywhere, the key is knowing how to look and listen in silence. Like a cloud of birds forming waves in the sky, each individual has their own identity but also has an irreplaceable place in the whole. To achieve these kaleidoscopic murmurations, Waff’s dancers drill for hours, counting aloud in unison, refining their gestures to the poi...