sábado, 31 de octubre de 2020

SIR SEAN CONNERY: ACTOR DIES AGED 90


 Sir Sean Connery has died at the age of 90, his family has said.

The Scottish actor was best known for his portrayal of James Bond, being the first to bring the role to the big screen and appearing in seven of the spy thrillers.

Sir Sean died peacefully in his sleep, while in the Bahamas, having been "unwell for some time", his son said.

His acting career spanned five decades and he won an Oscar in 1988 for his role in The Untouchables.

Sir Sean's other films included The Hunt for Red October, Highlander, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Rock.

Obituary: Sir Sean Connery

Sir Sean Connery's career in pictures

Jason Connery said his father "had many of his family who could be in the Bahamas around him" when he died overnight in Nassau.

He said: "We are all working at understanding this huge event as it only happened so recently, even though my dad has been unwell for some time.

"A sad day for all who knew and loved my dad and a sad loss for all people around the world who enjoyed the wonderful gift he had as an actor."

'The original Bond'

Sir Sean, from Fountainbridge in Edinburgh, first played James Bond in Dr No in 1962 and went on to appear in five other official films - and the unofficial Never Say Never Again in 1983.

He was largely regarded as being the best actor to have played 007 in the long-running franchise, often being named as such in polls.

He was knighted by the Queen at Holyrood Palace in 2000. In August, he celebrated his 90th birthday.

Bond producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said they were "devastated by the news".

They said: "He was and shall always be remembered as the original James Bond whose indelible entrance into cinema history began when he announced those unforgettable words 'the name's Bond... James Bond'.

"He revolutionised the world with his gritty and witty portrayal of the sexy and charismatic secret agent. He is undoubtedly largely responsible for the success of the film series and we shall be forever grateful to him."

Sir Sean was a long-time supporter of Scottish independence, saying in interviews in the run-up to the 2014 referendum that he might return from his Bahamas home to live in Scotland if it voted to break away from the rest of the UK.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: "I was heartbroken to learn this morning of the passing of Sir Sean Connery. Our nation today mourns one of her best loved sons.

"Sean was born into a working class Edinburgh family and through talent and sheer hard work, became an international film icon and one of the world's most accomplished actors. Sean will be remembered best as James Bond - the classic 007 - but his roles were many and varied.



"He was a global legend but, first and foremost, a patriotic and proud Scot - his towering presence at the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 showed his love for the country of his birth. Sean was a lifelong advocate of an independent Scotland and those of us who share that belief owe him a great debt of gratitude."

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54761824


TOP 10 SEAN CONNERY PERFORMANCES



viernes, 30 de octubre de 2020

AND WHAT IS JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT’S RECORD ON ARTS FUNDING?

 Coney Barrett’s goal to build a “Kingdom of God” as a Supreme Court justice has threatened many livelihoods. How will her policies fare the arts?

Brian Frye


Newly confirmed Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett in 2018 (photograph by Rachel Malehorn via Wikimedia Commons)

Sometimes it’s hard to turn lemons into lemonade. For better or worse, Amy Coney Barrett has replaced Justice Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, and the left is depressed. Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were bad enough. Barrett cements a conservative majority likely to last for decades. The lamp of the Warren Court has gone out some time ago, and we shall not see it lit again in our lifetime. But perhaps we can still ask how Justice Barrett will affect the arts. After all, artists and the arts sector have peculiar interests, and political changes often have unpredictable effects. 

Unfortunately, it’s hard to know how Barrett will affect much of anything. As a law professor, she wrote almost exclusively about abstract questions of constitutional law. And as a judge, she wrote narrow decisions, and avoided expressing personal opinions.

Of course, she had no choice. If you want to get nominated for the Supreme Court, you better not be controversial. So, no one knows for sure how she will rule on any particular issues, by design. Many people are pretty confident she is a vote against abortion rights, but even there, it’s unclear whether she will actually vote to reverse Roe v. Wade, or just narrow it even further, like her predecessors.

One thing we know for sure is that Barrett considers herself a textualist. In other words, she tries to interpret statutes in light of their text alone, rather than what they were intended to accomplish. Textualists argue that the public is entitled to rely on what a statute actually says, rather than what legislators wanted. After all, different legislators may have wanted different things, and the text of the statute they enacted reflects the compromises they made.

While many legal scholars argue that textualism is impossible, because language only has meaning in context, it still dominates the judiciary. As Justice Kagan famously observed in her 2015 Scalia Lecture at Harvard Law School, “We are all textualists, now.” In any case, textualism can produce both conservative and liberal results, depending on the circumstances and application. Sometimes, it means denying a plaintiff their day in court, as in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007), where the Court held that the literal language of the statute precluded a sex discrimination claim. But other times, it extends protection to a previously unrecognized group, as in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), where the Court held that protections against sex discrimination apply to transgender people. Hopefully, Barrett’s version of textualism is generous to the disadvantaged.

While it’s impossible to know for sure how Barrett will vote in particular cases, she is almost certain to affect the Court’s copyright jurisprudence, if only because she is unlikely to be as pro-copyright as Ginsburg. Obviously, copyright is an area of law especially salient to artists, because they are generally copyright owners. Copyright protects original works of authorship as soon as they are created, and vests in the author. Artists can use copyright to control the reproduction of their works, and many artists sell commercial reproductions.

Ginsburg was notoriously friendly to copyright owners. Among other things, she wrote the Court’s opinion in Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003), upholding Congress’s decision to retroactively extend the copyright term by 20 years, and in Golan v. Holder (2012), holding that Congress can remove works from the public domain. She also dissented in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2013), arguing that publishers should be able to prohibit the importation of used books, and in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc. (2019), arguing that copyright should protect annotations to state legal codes.


Nina Paley, from the Mimi & Eunice series, “Incentivized Creation” (2011) cartoon (image courtesy Nina Paley via Wikimedia Commons)

Anyway, it’s tempting to assume that more copyright is good for artists and less copyright is bad. But it isn’t so simple. Sure, many artists rely on copyright to generate revenue, but many others use copyrighted works to create their art. After all, art has always been all about copying. Artists learn by copying and copy in order to create something new. Collage, pop art, appropriation art, you name it, all technically infringing. Or rather, as Picasso observed, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Even better if he “stole” the line, Pablo Picasso was always an asshole. It’s part of his appeal.

If Barrett means a subtle relaxation of copyright protection, it might actually be good for artists. As scholars such as Amy Adler have observed, art doesn’t really need copyright anyway. Most artists sell unique objects, not reproductions. And the ones who sell reproductions still have a market for “authentic” copies. While few artists would have chosen Barrett, maybe there’s a silver lining on copyright? It’s the best I can do.

https://hyperallergic.com/597958/what-is-justice-amy-coney-barretts-record-on-arts-funding/?utm_campaign=Daily&utm_content=20201030&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Hyperallergic%20Newsletter

CON EL ROTO 30 OCT 2020

https://elpais.com/opinion/2020-10-29/el-roto.html

WITH LUCY WORSLEY WHO LEADS INVESTIGATION INTO ROYAL PALACES’ LINKS TO SLAVERY

 By Press Association 2020

The chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces has launched a review into the residences’ historical links to the slave trade.



Lucy Worsley, TV historian and chief curator of the charity which looks after properties such as Kensington Palace, the Tower of London and Hampton Court, has told The Times an investigation into the royal palaces’ slavery links was “long overdue” and the charity had a duty to make any connections public.

It comes after the National Trust released a report highlighting links to slavery and colonialism in 93 of the properties it manages.

The report detailed how properties, including Winston Churchill’s home Chartwell, were connected to plantation owners, people who gained their wealth from the slave trade and people involved in colonial expansion and administration.

Ms Worsley told the paper she wished her organisation had acted sooner in commencing its own investigation, adding the National Trust was “ahead of the game”.

“We’ve been thinking really hard and planning all sorts of changes,” she said.

“The time has come. We’re behind. We haven’t done well enough.”

According to Ms Worsley, all properties used by the Stuart dynasty were “going to have an element of money derived from slavery” within them.

The Stuarts played a key role in the slave trade when King Charles II granted a charter to the Royal African Company, of which his brother King James II was a member.

The company held a monopoly on the trade until 1698 and did not cease dealing in slaves until 1731.

Kensington Palace and Hampton Palace are among properties with connections to King William III, who was a part owner of the company.

Ms Worsley said there was a “challenging” side of British history which the country “is good at sidelining in favour of supporting the tourist industry”.

She added: “It is always great to push people a bit into an uncomfortable and darker direction, because then you can see the historical causes of things like social injustice.”

https://www.the-gazette.co.uk/news/national-news/18828074.lucy-worsley-leads-investigation-royal-palaces-links-slavery/

ROBERT BADINTER APPELLE À DÉFENDRE "LA RÉPUBLIQUE" FACE AUX "CHAMPIONS DE LA MORT"

ATTENTAT À LA BASILIQUE À NICE. 

IMPRESCINDIBLE ROBERT BADINTER

 "Nous sommes pour la vie", s'écrie l'ancien garde des Sceaux qui salue en Samuel Paty un "héros de la liberté". "Qu'il soit salué, qu'on se taise, qu'on rende hommage, que l'on ne se déchire pas autour de projets de loi, la question en cet instant n'est pas là", appelle Robert Badinte


Dans un entretien à France Inter mercredi 21 octobre, l'ancien garde des Sceaux Robert Badinter a appelé à défendre et à "veiller sur la République" face aux "champions de la mort", après l'assassinat du professeur Samuel Paty vendredi dernier à Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines).

VIDEO: https://dai.ly/x7wyct5

Ce qu'il faut se répéter, c'est ce trésor dont nous avons hérité, qui s'appelle la République, avec ses garanties, avec sa liberté, avec son droit à l'expression pour chacun, qui nous a été légué après des siècles de combat, il faut veiller dessus et ne pas s'agiter en demandant des lois, des lois, toujours des lois.

Robert Badinter, ex-garde des Sceaux

à France Inter

Robert Badinter a tenu à "saluer la mémoire" de Samuel Paty, "un homme qui, à sa manière, est un héros tranquille". "Dans le corps enseignant aujourd'hui, il y a ainsi des femmes et des hommes qui s'exposent, et qui s'exposent pour nous, pour la République, qui tiennent bon (...) Je tiens à dire que c'est un héros de la liberté, un héros anonyme, un héros comme il y en a tant. Mais qu'il soit salué, qu'on se taise, qu'on rende hommage, que l'on ne se déchire pas autour de projets de loi, la question en cet instant n'est pas là", a poursuivi l'ex-président du Conseil constitutionnel.

S'agissant de l'assaillant de 18 ans qui a assassiné le professeur, Robert Badinter, connu pour avoir obtenu l'abolition de la peine de mort en 1981, s'est interrogé : "Qui l'a élevé ? Quels sont les mauvais maîtres qu'il s'était donné ? C'est là où gît la première responsabilité. Lui est mort après un acte d'une barbarie atroce. Mais qu'est-ce qui peut conduire un adolescent vers un tel acte ? Et qu'il considère que c'est un devoir divin ? Là, vous êtes dans une forme d'aliénation complète".

La responsabilité doit être étendue à ceux qui sont, d'une certaine manière, les co-auteurs intellectuels, les complices de cet acte.

Robert Badinter

Sept personnes, dont deux mineurs, doivent être présentées à un juge antiterroriste mercredi. Parmi elles figure le parent d'élève qui avait appelé sur les réseaux sociaux à la mobilisation contre Samuel Paty, après son cours sur la liberté d'expression. Mais aussi le militant islamiste Abdelhakim Sefrioui, qui avait accompagné ce parent d'élève dans sa mobilisation.

"Comment est-ce que ça s'allume, ça se propage, ça se répand jusqu'à la mort ? Parce que ce sont des doctrines de mort. Et c'est peut-être en cela la menace la plus vive ou le défi le plus cruel lancé à notre civilisation : ce sont des champions de la mort. Et nous, nous le refusons. Nous sommes pour la vie", a souligné Robert Badinter.

https://www.francetvinfo.fr/faits-divers/terrorisme/enseignant-decapite-dans-les-yvelines/video-assassinat-de-samuel-paty-robert-badinter-appelle-a-defendre-la-republique-face-aux-champions-de-la-mort_4150241.html#xtor=EPR-502-[newslettervideo]-20201022-[video5]

lunes, 26 de octubre de 2020

MIGUEL HERNÁNDEZ | "MEMORIA, DOS PROCESOS CONTRA UN POETA" (EPISODIO 1) | MIEDO

 


Esta no es una serie de reportajes sobre la vida de Miguel Hernández, aunque se habla de ella. Tampoco es una serie sobre la obra del poeta, aunque se habla de ella. Esta es una serie sobre la memoria, que cuenta los dos procesos sumarísimos que el franquismo, recién terminada la guerra, abrió contra Miguel Hernández, al que condenaron a muerte pese a que luego le conmutaran la pena. Murió igualmente poco después, en la treintena, enfermo y sometido a la dureza y la precariedad de la cárcel.

Puedes ver estos y otros más vídeos en: http://cadenaser.com/tag/videos/a/

 

Después del amor

No pudimos ser. La tierra
no pudo tanto. No somos
cuanto se propuso el sol
en un anhelo remoto.
Un pie se acerca a lo claro.
En lo oscuro insiste el otro.
Porque el amor no es perpetuo
en nadie, ni en mí tampoco.
El odio aguarda su instante
dentro del carbón más hondo.
Rojo es el odio y nutrido.

El amor, pálido y solo.

Cansado de odiar, te amo.
Cansado de amar, te odio.

........................................................

AND SHOULD WE BE DISPLAYING THE DEAD BODIES OF PRESERVED ANCESTORS?

 


The bodies of ancient “mummies” made the news again this month, when Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism opened one of the recently unearthed 59 wooden coffins.

Christina Riggs


Ancient Egypt gallery, British Museum, London, England, (August 2017) (photo by Gary Todd via Flickr)

The bodies of the ancient Egyptian dead — “mummies” — made the news again this month, when Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism opened one of a reported 59 wooden coffins recently found at Saqqara, near Cairo, to reveal the intricately wrapped beings inside. With the world’s press and several ambassadors gathered around we witnessed a replay of the coffin openings and mummy unveilings that have titillated audiences for two centuries now. It wasn’t the first time ancient burial rites have been reversed in the interests of modern politics, science, and tourism, and it won’t be the last.

Elsewhere in the news, the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University took a step that had long been debated among its staff, by obscuring a vitrine containing human skulls and tsantsas, the latter colloquially known as “shrunken heads.” Created by the Shuar and Achuar people from the Peruvian and Ecuadorian rainforest, tsantsas allowed fighters to control the spirit of a dead male enemy. Like Egyptian mummies, they became a focus of colonial-era collecting, often involving practices that were exploitative or downright illegal at the time.

The tsantsas at the Pitt Rivers Museum had for decades and all at once been the most visited, reviled, and beloved of the museum’s eclectic ethnographic displays. Over the glass, the museum has erected signage with questions for visitors to contemplate: “How would you feel if the remains of your family members were taken and put on public display?” reads one. “How would you feel walking into the Museum and seeing, without warning, the skull of a grandparent looking back at you from the displays?” is another.

The motivation behind these questions is well intended, but with their emotional punch they veer towards oversimplification. On the one hand, they encourage visitors, mainly of European descent, to think themselves into perspectives that have been voiced for many years by descendants of the diverse peoples represented in anthropology museums. On the other, they imply that ideas about death and the dead are universal, that all bodies are equal, and that the values of Oxford museumgoers outweigh the values of living descendants or, for that matter, of those people in the past who were responsible for making tsantsas or embalming ancient Egyptians.

The hitch lies in the phrase “human remains,” found in the email address to which Pitt Rivers Museum visitors are invited to send their responses. This catch-all term emerged more than two decades ago as a leveling device in archaeological and museological practice. Under its umbrella are human tissue samples in any form: hair and skin; decorated skulls and other skeletal remains; and whole bodies or body parts, which might be preserved in alcohol or by dehydration. All of these may well be human remains for the purpose of museum categorization, but they are “human” and “remains” in very different and culturally specific ways.

Since the late 18th century, European thought has tended to assume that a human body comprises a single, bounded individual whose identity is unbroken between its living and dead states. Grandma is grandma, whether she is in a rocking chair or a coffin. But there are as many ways to be alive as there are to be dead. The tsantsas were integral to a belief system whereby an enemy’s preserved head had protective, magical, and life-giving powers, for instance. The process of making a tsantsa gave it those powers, operating across any strict split between human and divine.

The treatment of the Egyptian bodies known as mummies also confounds any assumption that human remains are always and only human. In the media, museums, and much of its own literature, Egyptology promotes the idea that all ancient Egyptians were embalmed in order to preserve the individual’s physical form so that its soul could recognize it. Not only does this reduce a complex set of practices to supernatural hide-and-seek, but it also ignores copious evidence about why and how some (definitely not all) bodies mattered in Egyptian belief systems.


Coffin and Mummy of the Estate Manager Khnumhotep, Middle Kingdom, (ca. 1981–1802 BCE) painted wood (Ficus sycomorus), human remains, linen, mummification material, painted and gilded cartonnage, ebony, obsidian, travertine (Egyptian alabaster), length: 82 5/16 inches; height: 32 inches; width: 21 5/16 inches; Rogers Fund, 1912 (photo via and courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Rather than constituting a stark difference between being dead and alive, human or divine, practices like speaking or writing to deceased ancestors, seeing them in dreams, and caring for their tombs and statues, all point to the rich social existence these entities had within their communities. Whereas museum displays of Egyptian bodies focus on interventions on the corpse, what mattered more in ancient practice were acts like anointing the body, wrapping it in linen, and sealing it away in layers of shrouds and in coffins. No one else was ever meant to see the embalmed or even the wrapped-up corpse, yet visitors today expect CT scans, X-rays, bare flesh, or some combination of the three.

One impetus for changes to the Pitt Rivers Museum’s tsantsas display has been the active involvement of the communities in which they originated. In defense of their own practices, Egyptologists in European and North American museums often point to high-profile events like the coffin opening at Saqqara to claim that contemporary Egyptians have no problem with the display of ancient bodies or medicalized research on them. After all, the Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Dr Khaled el-Anany, was everywhere to be seen at the “cracking open” of the coffins, as was Dr Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt. Only the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled a planned military parade to move several royal bodies from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in the Fustat neighborhood of Cairo.


Mummy Mask of Khonsu; Period: New Kingdom, Ramesside (ca. 1279–1213 BCE) painted wood and cartonnage; 18.7/8 inches; funds from various donors, 1886 (photo via and courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The timing of both events is telling: the parade would have taken place around the July 23rd Revolution Day holiday, while the coffin openings were timed for the October 6th celebration of Armed Forces Day. Look for similar media stories around January 25th, National Police Day, which will also distract from any attempts to remember the 2011 revolution that forced Hosni Mubarak from power. When Western Egyptologists tweet enthusiastic approval for coffin crackings, or their own mummy research projects, it’s worth remembering that archaeology has always been a political endeavor, and that ministries represent government, not public, opinion.

Rather than pass the buck, or the body, more museums need to do what the Pitt Rivers Museum has implemented with the tsantsas case. There’s no perfect way to go about it, but it’s a start. To display or not to display the dead in museums is an urgent question, not for whatever result it might yield — but for the harder questions it invites us to ask about the past, the present, and the bodies caught between them.

https://hyperallergic.com/595456/should-we-be-displaying-the-dead-bodies-of-preserved-ancestors/?utm_campaign=Daily&utm_content=20201021&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Hyperallergic%20Newsletter

THE CECILY BROWN’S NEW PAINTINGS ARE BEAUTIFULLY SINISTER VISIONS OF BRITISH HISTORY

 Allyssia Alleyne


Portrait of Cecily Brown in her studio, 2019. Photo by Tom Lindboe. Courtesy of Blenheim Art Foundation.

Britain’s stately homes have meant a lot of things to Cecily Brown. As a child growing up in suburban Surrey, in the southeast of England, they meant boredom—mandatory school trips and last-resort entertainment on rainy days. The gardens were nice. As a young artist waitressing for a catering company, they meant extravagant weddings and a paycheck.

And now, as one of Britain’s most revered living artists, collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Pompidou in Paris, and the Tate in her native London, they mean work once more: In September, the painter (and eternal auction favorite) opened an exhibition at Blenheim Palace, the Baroque birthplace of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, current home of the 12th Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Following the likes of Jenny Holzer, Ai Weiwei, and Maurizio Cattelan (the last of whom installed an 18-karat gold toilet that was famously stolen from the site in 2019), Brown is the first British artist to participate in the palace’s contemporary art program since it launched in 2014. But whereas most artists before her showed existing works, Brown decided to adopt Blenheim as her muse, producing new site-specific paintings to exhibit in its halls.

“It just seemed so ripe a moment to respond to Blenheim itself,” she said over the phone from her studio in New York, where she’s lived and worked since 1994. “I was kind of intimidated by the idea of showing paintings there because I've never really liked the idea of showing my work with Old Masters, but just the combination of things made me think it would be super exciting.”

Taking inspiration from the palace’s history and the family’s collection of artworks and artifacts, Brown offers a kaleidoscopic interpretation of England and its histories. With her expressionistic melding of the abstract and the figurative, she conjures animals, soldiers, and pastures in oil and gouache. Look long enough, and whole scenes emerge from her layers of vivid color. There’s beauty, but there’s something sinister to it, too. (Brown’s new work is also featured in a solo show at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York this fall, opening October 15th.)

Among the antique furniture, tapestries, porcelain, and Old Masters of Blenheim, Brown inserts bloody scenes of hunting spaniels in verdant woodlands and armorial banners turned psychedelic on linen. The 4th Duke and Duchess are painted and overpainted out of their own family portrait by Joshua Reynolds. The Triumph of Death (2019), a colossal painting standing at almost 18 feet, sees fur-clad elites swilling champagne, oblivious to the destruction that surrounds them. In the sardonically titled There’ll always be an England (2019), the tattered remains of Saint George’s Cross blow through the chaotic suggestion of a battlefield.

“This is reconciling my fantasy of England. There’s a combination of Downton Abbey and my own memories that are mixed with some punk,” Brown explained. “[I’m] thinking harder about what the reality of Britain’s actually been like through my life.”

At this point, Brown has yet to see the exhibition herself, and hasn’t been to Blenheim since last September. Due to COVID-related travel restrictions, she’s been unable to travel, and supervised the installation remotely over daily video calls.

The exhibition comes nearly two years after Michael Frahm, the director of the Blenheim Art Foundation, first approached Brown about showing at the palace, floored by her critically acclaimed 2018 retrospective at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. (Anders Kold, who curated the Danish exhibition, consulted on this one.) Initially, she recalled, Fraham had wanted to replicate the Louisiana exhibition wholesale.

“At first I was excited at the idea, but I realized straightaway I didn’t want to do that. If I am going to do a show somewhere like Blenheim, I really want to do something very specific, because here’s a chance to really think about what being English means,” she said. “[At Blenheim,] one’s inevitably oppressed by the weight of history and class and colonialism, and more and more aware of the very selective history that’s presented,” she added, pointing to the glorification of war and Churchill.

Indeed, five months after its original opening date (Blenheim postponed the exhibition due to coronavirus), the show feels especially urgent, as activists are increasingly urging institutions to reconsider the use of symbols that glorify unchecked privilege and oppression. In recent months, a monument to Churchill in London’s Parliament’s Square has been repeatedlydefaced with graffiti branding him a racist, and just days before the exhibition’s opening, the U.K. government faced backlash for exempting grouse shooting (a largely upper-class pursuit) from newly enacted social distancing restrictions.

Through that lens, stately homes are controversial spaces. Part-time residences and full-time tourist attractions (Historic Houses estimates they generate some £1 billion for the U.K. economy), they’re testaments to privilege, generational wealth, and the nation’s unforgiving class system.

But when the show was conceived, Brown had different concerns. Pre-pandemic, Brexit was the issue making headlines, as the government negotiated its way out of the European Union—a move that had split the country into warring ideological factions, and forced her to question her own relationship with Britain. Though she admits she doesn’t keep up with the British newspapers, she found “sickening” stories of poverty and social disparity increasingly difficult to ignore. That her adopted home was in the middle of an explosive Trump presidency only added to her feelings of ambivalence toward home.

“I can’t really talk about England because it’s been so long since I lived there, but America is a disaster, an embarrassment,” she said. “When America is in this dreadful state, you’re just sort of questioning everything: Why do we live where we live? Is there an alternative? I suppose I’d always in the back of my mind thought, ‘Well, I could always move back to England,’ but then with Brexit, why would you want to do that?”

A vitrine in Blenheim’s Great Hall, filled with sketches, watercolors, and paint-covered print-outs that informed Brown’s new works, demonstrates both a nuanced reflection on the nation’s past and her own upbringing. (“I have this sort of idyllic version of my childhood in the green and pleasant lands, and yet, it was actually a pretty dreadful time in lots of ways, politically,” she was quick to note.) Stills from The Beatles’s animated Yellow Submarine film sit with Victorian fairy paintings by Richard Dadd (“There’s nothing more trippy than Richard Dadd”); illustrations from children’s authors Racey Helps and Marilyn Nickson, who share her fondness for woodland creatures; and photos of objects found in the palace, snapped on her phone during a site visit. There are hunt scenes by the 17th-century Flemish painter Frans Snydersand images of Daffy Duck, bill blown askew by Elmer Fudd. Walking through the exhibition, then, becomes a game of spotting the references and drawing connections.


Borrowing from the house’s largely subdued color palette, and riffing on the familiar themes has meant that Brown’s paintings (and one tasteful handwoven rug, her first textile work) seem surprisingly at home among the works on show.

“I was looking at one of the paintings in one of the installation shots of the Hunt after Frans Snyders (2019), surrounded by Old Masters on the wall. This guy looks like he’s sort of gesturing towards it, and another is looking down [on it]. There’s a kind of conversation going on,” she observed.

“I wanted to make sure not to just do paintings that looked like they could have [fit in] there in that they look like they’re from the past,” Brown said. She hopes her works will bring the site into conversation with the present. “Sometimes contemporary work might sort of do something jarring that actually helps make other things look more alive, too.”

For all of its faults, Brown retains an indelible fondness for the fantasy of England that shines through. Until now, she’s travelled back home to visit her “enormous” family at least twice a year, and has become ravenous in her consumption of imported British culture.

“I always get teased by my husband because I want to watch anything English. One has a sort of longing. You know the green is greener on TV, [but] anything with a British accent I’m like, ‘Let's watch this!’” she said with a laugh, pointing to her love of Downton Abbey. “Your standards gradually lower over the years, so you’re watching any shit.”

“It’d be incredibly hard for a middle-class girl from Surrey to end up in a stately home… But then I think art belongs with other art, so while I might not belong there as a person, my work can.”

There’s one particularly special, blink-and-you-miss-it details to look out for. In the Green Drawing Room, a framed childhood photo of Brown on horseback has been inconspicuously added to a display of the current Duke’s family photos, a subtle infiltration among the grandeur.

Allyssia Alleyne

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-cecily-browns-new-paintings-beautifully-sinister-visions-british-history?utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru-21897184&utm_campaign=ms&utm_content=

ET ATLANTIC CROSSING, LA SÉRIE QUI BOUSCULE LA FAMILLE ROYALE DE NORVÈGE

 

Les critiques la présentent comme le nouveau The Crown. Tout juste sortie en Norvège, la série Atlantic Crossing raconte les tendres liens qui auraient unis la princesse héritière Märtha, mère de l’actuel roi Harald V, et le président des États-Unis Franklin D. Roosevelt, entre 1940 et 1945. Fiction ou révélation?

"Help my country." Debout dans le Bureau ovale, face au 32e président des États-Unis, la princesse héritière Märtha implore l’aide militaire de l’Amérique. À 6.000 kilomètres de là, l’envahisseur nazi a déjà mis la main sur la Norvège. Et c’est en toute hâte que Märtha et ses enfants, d’abord réfugiés en Finlande, ont dû traverser l’Atlantique, accueillis chaleureusement par Franklin D. Roosevelt, figure amicale, sinon paternelle, que la princesse connaît depuis qu’elle a visité le pays de l’Oncle Sam, en 1939

Atlantic Crossing raconte, en huit épisodes, l’histoire de cet exil et les efforts déployés par Märtha de Norvège pour faire entrer les États-Unis dans le conflit. Un engagement que mèneront d’autres princesses et souveraines européennes à la même époque, telle la grande-duchesse Charlotte de Luxembourg ou encore la reine Wilhelmine des Pays-Bas, toutes deux invitées à s’exprimer devant le Congrès américain. À la différence que Märtha n’aurait pas laissé indifférent Franklin D. Roosevelt... au point de succomber?

Par Thomas Pernette

https://www.pointdevue.fr/familles-royales/couronnes-du-monde/atlantic-crossing-la-serie-qui-bouscule-la-famille-royale-de?xtor=EPR-1-[]-[20201026]&utm_source=nlpdv&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20201026

domingo, 25 de octubre de 2020

EXPOSITION, ANTICORPS. PALAIS DE TOKYO

 L’expérience du confinement et l’adoption de la distanciation physique et sociale, à l’échelle mondiale, nous font reconsidérer l’hermétisme de nos corps. Avions-nous oublié à quel point nous sommes poreux-ses ?

L’exposition Anticorps, conçue par l’équipe curatoriale du Palais de Tokyo, propose de donner la parole à la scène artistique française et internationale autour de 20 artistes qui, avec des oeuvres récentes et nouvelles, prennent le pouls de notre capacité à faire corps ensemble et à repenser notre façon d’habiter le monde.

La vulnérabilité de nos enveloppes corporelles fait surgir autour de nos foyers, de nos cercles sociaux, de nos pays, encore davantage de frontières, de barrières, hérissées d’inquiétudes et de suspicions. Cette situation accroît des inégalités déjà présentes, en termes de privilège de classe et d’exposition aux risques. Mais dans l’écartement qui s’est renforcé entre public et privé, nous réalisons finalement que tout nous touche de manière plus exacerbée, et nous incite à redéfinir nos liens comme nos proximités.

« Pourquoi nos corps devraient-ils s’arrêter à la frontière de la peau ? », demandait Donna Haraway1. Anticorps s’offre comme une exposition qui tente de penser à travers les peaux, en s’attachant à développer plusieurs registres de l’affectivité, de la présence et de l’haptique, cette exploration du sens du toucher sans que celui-ci soit physiquement activé. La « mise à distance » pousse à une volonté renouvelée de contact.

Les artistes réuni·e·s au sein d’Anticorps font état de caresses, de murmures, de souffles et de menaces qui questionnent nos réactions et transactions émotionnelles, nos rapports sociaux. Si l’exposition ne fait pas de la crise sanitaire actuelle un sujet, les oeuvres, ainsi que les relations tissées entre elles, permettent de questionner la distance et le toucher, considérant ces deux termes comme intrinsèquement politiques et poétiques.



La polysémie du titre de l’exposition est dès lors manifeste : il s’agit à la fois d’accepter les nouvelles normes imposées de l’être-ensemble (distance) tout en ouvrant la perspective d’un autre érotisme social (toucher). Il parait nécessaire, comme le préconisait Susan Sontag2, de remplacer les métaphores militaires souvent attachées au fonctionnement de nos systèmes immunitaires par un autre lexique, et de nous préoccuper davantage d’hospitalité. Anticorps invite à parcourir le Palais de Tokyo à la fois comme un foyer (in vitro) et comme un réseau mouvant (in vivo). Cela permet de réfléchir autrement aux communautés éphémères que le Palais de Tokyo peut créer et rassembler, et tout particulièrement aux relations suggérées entre les publics et les oeuvres.

https://www.palaisdetokyo.com/fr/evenement/anticorps