How Oscar Wilde Painted Over “Dorian Gray” Oscar Wilde was not a man who lived in fear, but early reviews of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” must have given him pause. The story, telling of a man who never ages while his portrait turns decrepit, appeared in the July, 1890, issue of Lippincott’s, a Philadelphia magazine with English distribution. The Daily Chronicle of London called the tale “unclean,” “poisonous,” and “heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction.” The St. The furor was unsurprising: no work of mainstream English-language fiction had come so close to spelling out homosexual desire. Wilde died in 1900, in a run-down Paris hotel, at the age of forty-six. The Wilde Bookshop closed in 2009, a casualty not only of the decline of the bookselling business but also of the partial triumph of Rodwell’s mission. “To the world I seem, by intention on my part, a dilettante and dandy merely—it is not wise to show one’s heart to the world,” Wilde once wrote.
Kaga-artgallery - A Swedish brownshirt jailed for plotting the theft of the Auschwitz entrance sign. An interesting way to become famous: A Polish judge has jailed a Swedish man for two years and eight months for plotting the theft of the "Arbeit macht frei" Auschwitz entrance sign. Anders Hoegstroem, a former neo-Nazi leader, admitted theft under a plea bargain last month and will be moved to Sweden to serve his sentence. The infamous sign was stolen in December last year and recovered in three pieces three days later. The judge in Krakow also jailed two Poles for up to two-and-a-half years. One of the pair, named as Andrzej S, apologised in court for the offence, Polish media report. The 5m (16ft) wrought-iron slogan which translates as "Work sets you free" is a potent symbol of many of the Nazi-era atrocities. The sign has since been repaired although it now hangs in the Auschwitz museum and has been replaced by a replica at the entrance to the former death camp. Three other Poles were given prison terms earlier this year for the theft which was thought to have been ordered by another Swede still at large.
Edouard Levéâs ‘Suicide’ and Edouard Levéâs Suicide It would be an interesting experiment to sit someone down in a chair and present them with a copy of Edouard Levé’s Suicide from which front and back covers, promotional blurb, author bio, translator’s afterword and other such paratextual trimmings had all been removed. Such a reader, blinkered against the novel’s context, might well find it a strange and unnerving and hypnotic read, but it would, in an important sense, be a very different experience to the one that awaits every other person who picks up Levé’s final work. Ten days after he submitted the manuscript of Suicide to his editor at the age of 42, the author killed himself. And this fact, which is presented to us on the back cover (and also, naturally enough, in everything that has since been written about the book), isn’t something we can choose not to take with us into the fiction. During his life, Levé was best known in his native France as an artist and conceptual photographer. What became of her?
Arabic calligraphy The Arabic alphabet ARABIC is written from right to left. There are 18 distinct letter shapes, which vary slightly depending on whether they are connected to another letter before or after them. There are no "capital" letters. The full alphabet of 28 letters is created by placing various combinations of dots above or below some of these shapes. (An animated version of the alphabet shows the correct way to move the pen). The three long vowels are included in written words but the three short vowels are normally omitted – though they can be indicated by marks above and below other letters. Although the Arabic alphabet as we know it today appears highly distinctive, it is actually related to the Latin, Greek, Phoenician, Aramaic, Nabatian alphabets. The numerals used in most parts of the world – 1, 2, 3, etc – were originally Arabic, though many Arab countries use Hindi numerals. Decorative writing – calligraphy – is one of the highest art forms of the Arab world. Styles of calligraphy
Questions Without Answers for John Baldessari John Baldessari, Portrait: (Self) #1 as Control + 11 Alterations by Retouching and Airbrushing, 1974. A major exhibition devoted to the mercurial conceptual work of John Baldessari is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Here, on the occasion of that retrospective, the master painter David Salle puts some probing questions to Baldessari, his friend and former teacher. I have always felt a deeply humanistic undertone in your work, despite its use of irony and obliqueness. But I am hard pressed to account for why I feel it and sometimes think it's because I have known you for a long time. Where do you think it resides? Is a Conceptual artist different from any other kind of artist? A lot of ink has been spilled about art as the new religion, with the museum as its church. Here's a fan question: How did you come up with the idea of singing LeWitt? What’s the one thing an artist must never do? How important is intention in art? Are you nostalgic about anything?
The Bell Jar at 40 by Emily Gould In March 1970, the poet Ted Hughes found himself in a tricky real estate situation. There was a charming seaside house he wanted to buy, in Devonshire, but the necessary funds weren’t at hand. Of course he could have sold one of his two other homes, but one was the home he had shared with his now deceased ex-wife Sylvia Plath, another was a solid investment, and so on. In the end, he wrote to Sylvia Plath’s mother, Aurelia, asking for her blessing to sell one of his other assets: her daughter’s first and only novel, written a year before her suicide in 1963, for which Hughes suspected there might now be a market in the United States. The Bell Jar had been published in the UK under a pseudonym, to middling reviews, in 1963. It’s always interesting when a very strange book is also an enduringly popular book. As much as it was initially underappreciated by the British press, The Bell Jar was overpraised on its American publication. I accuseTed Hughes Their anger was understandable.
Amazing sculptures that look like they are in motion At first glance these objects look like they are in motion, almost like every object is falling down, especially the “strawberry blanket”. In reality they are actually natural materials, like feathers, fruits and flowers, attached to nylon threads. Sculptor Claire Morgan from Belfast is the creator of this magnificent art work. She has among other things achieved a first class degree in Sculpture from Northumbria University. Since graduating she has pursued a career solely as a visual artist. She has exhibited internationally, with solo shows, residencies and commissions across the UK, as well as group exhibitions in Europe. Other art that can trick your eyes are this tree branch that grows through glass jars.