I participated in the venerable In Our Time with Melwyn Bragg in an episode on the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo, alongside Catherine Fletcher from Manchester Metropolitan University and Sarah Vowles of the British Museum. It was a lot of fun and, I hope, an informative discussion. The brodcast was yesterday, but you can download the extended podcast version via BBC Sounds and, eventually, on other podcast platforms.
Archive for the 'history' Category
Art Spiegelmans Maus blev bandlyst i skolesystemet i McMinn County i Tennessee, så vi blev nødt til at diskutere censur men — væsentligere — en af verdens bedste tegneserier. Lyt her og læs mere på Nummer9.
I denne episode af Radio Rackham snakker Frederik, Thomas og jeg med Dennis Meyhoff Brink om religionssatirens europæiske historie. Dennis forsvarede sin PhD om emnet ved IKK på Københavns Universitet i efteråret men har længe markeret sig som uhyre velartikuleret specialist på området. Som det naturligt følger med seriøst historisk arbejde, beriger hans indsigter forståelsen af vor tids debatter om religionskritik, ytringsfrihed, Muhammedtegninger, cancel culture og meget andet. Lyt og læs mere på Nummer9.
I sidste uge måtte vi sige farvel til Kurt Westergaard, manden der tegnede Profeten Muhammed med en bombe i turbanen og dermed var med til på godt og ondt at ændre verdens gang. Thomas, Frederik og jeg diskuterer tegningen, manden og krisen i den seneste episode fra Radio Rackham og jeg synes vi kommer både godt og vidt omkring.
Karikaturkrisen har påvirket os Rackhamitter meget, så det var en episode vi længe har haft i os. Og ligesom de fleste andre danskere, er det stensikkert ikke gjort med det: de tegninger er på sin vis mareridtet, der aldrig går væk. En torn i siden, der aftvinger stillingtagen og sjælekvaler. Læs mere på Nummer9 og lyt her!
The week in review
I’ve been asked a few times about the painting that the National Gallery in London has recently cleaned and put back on display as Titian’s portrait of the physician Girolamo Fracastoro, as mentioned by Vasari in his Life of Titian of 1568. It’s a difficult one. The argument, as presented in an article in last month’s Burlington Magazine, is based partly on plausible provenance, but mostly on the fact that it it carried on the back of its frame a 19th-century note identifying its sitter as Fracastoro.
The painting is clearly Titianesque, but rather dull. As mentioned repeatedly in the press coverage, by far the most attractive area is the lynx fur worn by the sitter — compelling tactile eruption flecking through an otherwise rather bland surface. In any case, it pales in comparison with the other Titians in the same room at the National Gallery. None of this means the attribution is wrong, however: it is apparently quite damaged, which probably accounts in large part for its somewhat unconvincing appearance, and although very consistent, Titian did have bad days.
Another problem is the identification of the sitter. He looks quite different from known portraits of Fracastoro, such as the woodcut on right. The sitter in the painting is clearly slimmer of face and with a thinner, more elegant nose, but he is also clearly older in the woodcut, which might account in part for his fuller, more plump appearance. Plus, we still know very little about the extent to which, and how, painters at this time idealised, rejuvenated, and otherwise altered the appearance of their sitters . It’s an issue, which always makes identification of sitters in Renaissance (and later!) portraits difficult. The nineteenth-century label helps in this case, of course, but is far from proof, even if it repeats an older tradition.
Summing up, I don’t see any reason to disagree outright with the proposal made by the gallery, which largely convinces, but cannot help but feel a little uneasy about it.
Links!
The week in review
I’ve always had a feeling I witnessed the Lunar landing and the now sadly passed Neil Armstrong’s Moon walk live as it happened. So vivid are my memories of my dad opening his box of clippings and laying them out on our large dinner table when I was a kid. His narration of the landing, along with LIFE Magazine photos and news clippings from the summer of 69, was like being there. It probably merged with a contemporaneous rerun of clips on our black and white television to convince me that I was there as it happened. Only some years later did the fact that it had happened six years before I was born dawn on me.
I guess the point here is that the Moon walk is such an extraordinary event, not just for science, but also for our collective imagination, that it continues to reverberate as if it just happened. At the same time, of course, it seems to belong to a different era. The optimism it expressed on our collective behalf seems naive and anachronistic, especially after the Obama administration’s mothballing of the NASA programme two years ago — something Armstrong strongly criticised. The recent launch of the Mars probe Curiosity is exciting, but manned space exploration seems like a chapter past. Sadly, because it seems to me an aspiration with the potential to unite us globally (however fleetingly) in a way few other things have ever done.
See pictures and footage of the Apollo 11 mission at NASA’s website. Read fellow moonwalker Buzz Aldrin’s statement on his friend’s death here. And check out this nice appreciation by Ian Crouch of Armstrong’s way with words. Oh, and he also took one of the most mesmerising, beautiful photographs ever. Rest in Peace.
Links:
Obama in Martha's Vineyard on 18 August 2011. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (used without permission, but hopefully fairly)
The week in review (kind of).
Haven’t done one of these in a while, and this is halfway through the week anyway, so it the timing is all wrong, but I have all these fine links that have been gnawing a hole in my drafts file for a while now that I figured I might as well share before we go into Angoulême mode here. Some are rather old and you might have seen them elsewhere, but if not here’s a chance to check them out.
The Week in Review
So, the US and its allies finally left Iraq. It seems they’ve been there forever. Whether the country will eventually become a better place to live than it was during the terrible decades of war, tyranny and crippling sanctions remains to be seen, though one might at least hope. I suspect that was also what led to the most conspicuous blindside of this week’s celebrity passee, Christopher Hitchens’ career, namely his unswerving support of the 2003 invasion. Besides old-fashioned stubbornness, his stance always seemed to me fueled at least in part by the hope shared by many at that time — even people who largely opposed the war — that it might at least eventually lead to a better life for Iraqis.
Perhaps I’m being too charitable, but it’s a motivation I understand, because I remember seriously entertaining it myself back when the war was brewing, even if it was clear that it would not be fought primarily or even secondarily for that reason, and that our governments were obviously lying to us about their rationale for invasion. Today, after at least 150.000 people have died and several Western democracies (including Denmark) have compromised themselves, all of this may seem moot, of course. Still, our armies leaving Iraq was a necessary step to for things to improve for everyone.
Links!
“Of course London’s riots weren’t a political protest. But the people committing night-time robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. Saqueos are contagious. The Tories are right when they say the rioting is not about the cuts. But it has a great deal to do with what those cuts represent: being cut off. Locked away in a ballooning underclass with the few escape routes previously offered – a union job, a good affordable education – being rapidly sealed off. The cuts are a message. They are saying to whole sectors of society: you are stuck where you are, much like the migrants and refugees we turn away at our increasingly fortressed borders.”
– Naomi Klein
The picks of the week from around the web.
RIP Gil Scott-Heron & Geronimo Pratt.
The picks of the week from around the web.
Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, or rather Geronimo Ji Jaga, passed away in his adopted home in Tanzania yesterday. His death should give us pause to reflect upon a largely forgotten, but no less disgraceful passage in American history. A Vietnam vet and Black Panther, he was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and imprisoned for 27 years on charges fabricated by the FBI. He is one of a large number of black, Latino, and American Indian activists and revolutionaries — some of the most visible “terrorists” of the day — subjected to gross miscarriage of justice at the hands of the government, its COINTELPRO, and other institutions, from the 1960s onward.
Here’s a short primer, from a 1984 episode of 60 Minutes:
His life was both an object lesson in the history of American institutional racism and suppression of dissent, and a rare example of transcending suffering. He never gave up, and when the conviction was finally reversed in 1999, he was unwavering in commitment to his cause without showing any despondency, bitterness, or resentment. This man’s story should be taught in schools.
And let us not forget that there’s still a large number of people in America serving long prison terms on dubious convictions. Mumia Abu-Jamal, on death row for almost 30 years, is but the most famous and visible of them. Whether guilty or not, many of them have not been given the fair trials promised in the Constitution. Why does it seem the book has been closed on them?
The picks of the week from around the web.
Above: Youth Magazine (May 24, 1970), cover drawing by Chiba Tetsuya, design by Yokoo Tadanori. From Holmberg’s article, linked above.
Feed for Posts
Vores kvarter i Information
I dag kan man i Informations bogtillæg læse min anmeldelse af Carlos Giménez’ Vores kvarter (1976), der netop er blevet genudgivet på dansk af forlaget Zoom, med det nyere, på dansk uudgivne materiale, Giménez tilføjede tidligt i nullerne. Det er en stor begivenhed endelig at få disse klassiske tegneserier gjort tilgængelige på dansk, så stor at vi for nylig viede et afsnit af Radio Rackham til det. Nå, men nu kan man også læse mine tanker om serien på skrift, hvis man har abonnement. Hvis ikke, er her et uddrag: