Nottinghamshire, Brain Surgery, Feet, Ingres, Fire
A Walk To Bog End With My Dad
Tom Cox | 2nd March 2016
"Our old landlady called these fields 'Nottinghamshire’s green lung'. Anyone who’s spent time in the villages surrounding Southwell or East Bridgford might view that as pushing it slightly, but it is not wholly inaccurate, if you ignore the cars that yobs would steal and set fire to every weekend, and the fact that our next-door neighbours once got tied to chairs by armed robbers and beaten with baseball bats" (3,200 words)
“I Had Never Seen Anything As Beautiful”
Karl Ove Knausgaard | Telegraph | 10th March 2016
Not for the squeamish. Knausgaard watches brain surgeon Henry Marsh operate on a conscious patient in Tirana. "First we will touch your brain with a little electric instrument that I brought from London, and when we touch the movement area, we’ll make you move. That way we’ll know where the movement area is. And if, when we are removing the tumour, you start to feel a little weak, then we’ll know that it’s time to stop" (6,000 words)
I Don’t Want To Touch My New Relatives’ Feet
Billi | The Ladies' Finger | 13th March 2016
Letter to an Indian agony aunt: "I don’t like touching people’s feet, but as a married woman, I’m often expected to do this at functions and large family gatherings. How can I let people know that I don’t want to do it?" The aunt advises caution: "You have to risk discovering your partner may not feel able to stand up to his family or agree with you on this one, and be willing to fight that battle alone" (1,020 words)
A Closer Look At Ingres
Martin Oldham | Apollo | 12th March 2016
La Grande Odalisque is "the first great nude in the modern tradition" — an "image about the pleasure of looking, not burdened with narrative or moral content". The "astonishing virtuosity" of Ingres’s technique gives his portraiture the "familiar qualities of modern advertising photographs" — flawless skin, smooth surfaces, soft lighting. He achieves the "heightened reality" which we associate now with digital enhancement (1,040 words)
On Fire
Jonathan Griffin | n+1 | 10th March 2016
Throughout art history, "artists’ studios are always burning down". Among the instances of combustion considered here: the accidental blaze at Arshile Gorky's Connecticut barn in 1946 which hastened Gorky's suicide; the inferno at Alfred Leslie's New York City studio in 1966 which killed 12 firefighters when the building collapsed; and John Baldessari's deliberate incineration of all his works at a California crematorium in 1970 (1,540 words)
Video of the day: Art Basel Miami
What to expect: Action-packed tour of the Miami art fair, with a touch of Will Smith (3'34")
Thought for the day
Errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous
David Hume