May 2011
86 posts
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Ai Weiwei: the dissident artist →
He filled Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall with sunflower seeds and campaigned against corruption. Then last month China’s most provocative artist disappeared. Hari Kunzru on Ai Weiwei.
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Whose Slow Food? →
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The Gallery: Data Visualization of a Timeline of... →
‘from about 1750-1840, rose water was the primary flavoring for cakes and other confections in the United State. While today we associate it with Middle Eastern cuisine, for English colonists it was used as a cheap alternative to vanilla. Vanilla was only grown in Mexico because its pollination was very closely linked to a certain species of Mexican bee. In 1841, a twelve year old...
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Ladyfood →
In the past fortnight or so I’ve read a range of articles calling for an end to…cupcakes. Yes, this most mini member of the cake family seems to be facing a kind of culinary doom. But why?
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Shelf conscious →
‘Are you pedantic when it comes to arranging your books? Do you sit them on your shelf in order of height, colour or age? By genre? In the order you bought them? Do you place novels side by side only if you think the characters in them would get along in real life?’
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Charlotte Rampling: 'I know my power' →
‘If you were to create an installation that captured the essence of Charlotte Rampling, it would almost certainly involve a stuffed lion and a king-sized bed. And you’d probably place them not in a room, but by a bar, on a beach, at the French Riviera. In this way you’d convey the imperious gloss, the fearsome sensuality, the hint of the ridiculous in Rampling’s...
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Bob and Roberta Smith: 'It's important to... →
The artist famous for his sign paintings (and having two names) talks graffiti, recycling and feminism ahead of his Women Should be in Charge event at London’s ICA on Friday 20 May.
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Judge withdraws over Philip Roth's Booker win →
‘Dismissing the Pulitzer prize-winning author, Callil said that “he goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It’s as though he’s sitting on your face and you can’t breathe”.’
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Notes from Madras →
On curry, curry powder, and imperial cuisine.
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Radio free Benghazi – the war of words →
Four young men have started up Libya’s first English language radio station. The broadcasts are an extraordinary symbol of revolution.
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Detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei allowed visit... →
Ai Weiwei’s sister Gao Ge said police took Ai’s wife Lu Qing to meet him at an undisclosed location.
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Ai Weiwei misses opening of London exhibition of... →
Twelve 363kg (800lb) bronze animal heads have gone on display in the historic courtyard of Somerset House in London, the first contemporary sculpture to be featured there. The artist responsible, Ai Weiwei, was the missing element, his wellbeing and whereabouts still unknown after he was detained by Chinese authorities on 3 April.
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16 October 1861: The consequences of crinoline →
A craze for crinolines swept Britain during the 1850’s and 1860’s, despite stories such as these throughout the media of the day.
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Amartya Sen on why Tagore matters →
‘Tagore’s was always a subversive project, “not so much…a critique of the western Enlightenment and humanism” as an attempt to “snatch them away from their expected location and give them another source and lineage, in India and its antiquity,” a project that does for literature what Sen has lately tried to do for deliberative democracy.’
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Ai Weiwei at the Lisson Gallery, London – review →
‘Ai’s work looks utterly contemporary while looking into the past.’
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Writers at their typewriters →
Since Mark Twain became the first author to submit a typed manuscript with Life on the Mississippi in 1883, authors have been devoted to their machines.
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Austin Osman Spare: The man art history left... →
Elephant and Castle’s answer to Aubrey Beardsley and Salvador Dalí, Spare was an enfant terrible in Edwardian art circles but his stock plummeted and he faded into obscurity. Here, we take a look at some of his finest works.
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Anish Kapoor: close the world’s museums for a day →
Anish Kapoor has marked the unveiling of his monumental new sculpture in Paris by urging the art community to take more drastic action in the bid to free Ai Weiwei.
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“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”
– Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
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Where is Ai Weiwei? →
‘It is…37 days since Ai Weiwei disappeared, arrested by the Chinese police on 3 April in Beijing as he was about to board a scheduled flight for Hong Kong. He has not been seen or heard from since. He has not had access to a lawyer (Ai’s own lawyer disappeared for five days following the artist’s arrest), and despite persistent enquiries his family do not know where he...
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Leonardo in London: Da Vinci comes to the National... →
Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, at the National Gallery from 9 November 2011, will be the most complete display of Leonardo’s rare surviving paintings ever held.
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Cannes 2011 →
‘Pedro Almodóvar tries horror, Sean Penn tries goth – and Mel Gibson tries glove puppetry.’
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New leaves for old recipes →
‘There has always been a tendency in the food world to look backwards for inspiration.. The antiquarian cookery book dealer’s best customer is often the chef looking for a forgotten text from which the odd idea can be plundered. However, would-be looters beware; this trend is becoming more mainstream as publishers with illustrious histories in reissues are joined by others keen to...
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A life in writing: Jennifer Egan →
‘I really wanted to write a chapter in epic verse, because I thought epic verse and PowerPoint in one novel, come on. Irresistible!’
