Archive for May, 2010
Memorial
May 31st, 2010
It’s Memorial Day in the States, a federal holiday commemorating US men and women who have fallen in military service. Memorial Day was first enacted to honor Union soldiers of the American Civil War and it’s said that the first one was observed by formerly enslaved black people at the Washington Race Course in Charleston, South Carolina. The place had been used as a Confederate prison for captured Union soldiers, and as a mass grave for Union soldiers who died there. After the halt to hostilities, people exhumed bodies and buried them individually, building a fence around the area and an arch for their Union graveyard. In May 1865, people reported that crowds of thousands gathered at the site for sermons, singing, and a picnic on the grounds.
Katz that got the Cream
May 30th, 2010
News from across the pond is that a fresh-painted portrait of Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue, is now on show at London’s National Portrait Gallery. Completed in 2009, it’s by the US artist Alex Katz and shows Wintour from the shoulders up, looking dead-on into our lens. She’s set against a yellow background (a departure for Katz), in a light blue turtle neck and wearing a turquoise necklace. The biggest nota bene is that this picture prized Anna’s signature sunglasses off her nose: the ice-queen-editor is seldom seen without her ocular safeguards set in place, so those painted, purply peepers are an unusual exposure. The decision to paint Anne sans sunglasses came after Katz saw her in The September Issue (the documentary on the making of Vogue’s biggest-ever issue) and noticed she had “lovely eyes”. Wintour visited the artist in his NY studio, where he worked on studies from life for the final painting. It was the first time she’d sat like that, and by all accounts she seems to have settled into the experience: “I couldn’t think of a nicer way to spend the afternoon. We talked for two hours while he worked, and I was pleased to see that he used a lot of color, which I adore.”
Laugh Life Lines
May 29th, 2010
My sister was supposed to be in Washington this weekend, to see us and our new city surroundings. Site-seeing had been set-out (including orangutans ‘crossing’ at the zoo), dinners designed to showcase some of DC’s best dishes, we’d even sorted a night-time segway tour. But it wasn’t to be! as the bloody-mindedness of the British Airways union and their seemingly endless striking activities have grounded a fleet of flights, including hers. Holy heck-balls, were we annoyed. Here’s a picture of us together:
Rubbish Art
May 28th, 2010
Two times a year, artists in the neighborhoods between Dupont Circle and Logan Circle throw open their studios and invite visitors in. The program’s called ‘Mid City Artists’ or ‘MCA’ and is a chance for city-dwellers to see where and how the artistic magic happens, right on their doorstep. I’ve chosen to have a nosey around Chuck Baxter’s studio today, so without further ado, let’s step on inside.
Check out this week’s video blog. And special thanks to Chuck Baxter and the Mid City Artists.
Sexy City
May 27th, 2010
Make sure your Manolo Blahniks are buffed and ready for a run people: the summer’s hottest sequel shimmies into US cinemas today (UK readers, you’re up tomorrow). Sex and the City 2 has been fluffing up frenzied interest since it started shooting scenes last year and now – at long last – our wait is over! Continuing to spin off from the award-winning HBO series (in turn based on the books by Candace Bushnell), this second Sex installment see Samantha get the girls to pack up their Louis Vuitton cases and head off on an all-expenses-paid trip to exotic Abu Dhabi (actually filmed in Morocco). Plot-lines have been hyper protected of course, but some leaks have led to Miranda (dreaming of quitting her job to become a housewife?), Big (will he and Carrie have a baby?) and Aidan (does this old flame burn a hole in Carrie’s marriage?)
Look and Learn
May 26th, 2010
Recent research has been looking into infants’ ability to tell right from wrong. Paul Bloom (professor of psychology at Yale), has been running studies that probe the key question: is it biological evolution or cultural experience that moulds human nature? Using the limited responses that babies can control (looking and grabbing), his lab has learned that babies choose time and again for the ‘good’ or ‘pleasing’ thing.
He detailed one experiment that staged a puppet show for a one year-old in his recent article The Moral Life of Babies. A puppet played ball, interacting with two other puppets. The central and right puppets passed the ball between them, but when the central puppet passed the ball to the left-hand puppet, he ran off with it! As the tot was asked to ‘choose’ between the left and right puppets, he picked up the right (‘good’) one and thwacked the left (‘naughty’) one on the head!
Hitting Headlines
May 25th, 2010
Exit Through the Gift Shop is a documentary directed by graffiti artist Banksy: it catches never-before-seen street-artists on camera and trails one man as he makes millions from art in a matter of months. It’s been a total sensation (not least for the fact that there’s big buzz it’s all a hoax, hand-crafted by Banksy himself): check out a tantalizing taste here.
