Edward Hopper’s New York

A lot of things go missing in the paintings of Edward Hopper. Most notably, it’s people. In the first half of the 20th century, he painted New York when it was the largest city in the world, yet his streets are often empty, or haunted by only a few isolated figures. New York was then, as it is now, a diverse city, rich with racial and ethnographic diversity, but that, too, is absent in Hopper’s imagination. Philip Kennicott, WP

Edward Hopper’s New York Through March 5 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

An Academic Is Fired Over a Medieval Painting of the Prophet Muhammad

The dismissal of an instructor at Hamline University on baseless charges of 'Islamophobia' raises concerns about freedom on campus.

[...] Through conflation or confusion, Hamline has privileged an ultraconservative Muslim view on the subject that happens to coincide with the age-old Western cliche that Muslims are banned from viewing images of the prophet. This Muslim traditionalist and American Orientalist “echo chamber” is not just simplistic and counterfactual; it also muzzles all other voices while potentially endangering rare and precious works of Islamic art. Christiane Gruber, New Lines Magazine

una discussione molto interessante sul bigottismo ora in corso in molte università americane. Spesso purtroppo l'ignoranza porta ad appoggiare posizioni retrive.

The Written World and the Unwritten World

 

Can there be much material left in Italo Calvino’s desk drawers? Since the death of the puckish Italian polymath in 1985, no fewer than six collections of his nonfiction have appeared in English, gathered into the autobiographical (The Road to San Giovanni, Hermit in Paris) or the literary-critical (Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Why Read the Classics?).

So with this seventh collection, The Written World and the Unwritten World, covering a scattering of Calvino’s literary writings from 1952 to 1985 and translated by Ann Goldstein, we might expect scraps from the table. Sure enough, there’s some slight stuff here – a page on character names, say – but the surprise is that we get so much of substance. John Self, The Guardian

The Written World and the Unwritten World è pubblicato da Penguin.

2023 in books

The best fiction and nonfiction to look forward to in the new year, from Zadie Smith to Simon Schama, Margaret Atwood to Rory Stewart. Justine Jordan and David Shariatmadari, The Guardian

si ricomincia!