Arts & life articles
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Life and Life Only
A good memoir should be more than an autobiography and less than a confessional but contain elements of both. As a reader, I am less interested in being overwhelmed with family trauma and pathos except when it informs the greater tale being told. Quite often, it is the memoirs that feature an excess of pathos More
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An Unbuilt Life: A Too Polite Drama About Art Looting
Considering D.C. is a city with both a vibrant theater scene and lots of museums, art galleries, murals, and working artists, it is not surprising that there is overlap in […]
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Beauty, filth, violence and death: why still life art is more subversive than you think
Once dismissed as a lesser art form, the still life has been reinvented as a radical form of expression, as a thrilling new show makes clearStill life is the lowest form of art. So declared the French Academy when it established its Hierarchy of Genres in the 17th century. Historical scenes and portraiture were the noblest genres, whereas landscapes and still lifes were considered lowly. According to the art institute, biblical frescoes required a higher level of mastery; an inanimate fruit...