Painting, mathematics, and the work of Piero della Francesca

Not long after his death in October 1492, Piero della Francesca was already better remembered as a mathematician than as a painter. Less than two decades had passed before Pope Julius II was ordering the demolition of his frescoes at the Vatican (along with those of other great painters of the previous century) to make [...]

China finds secret tomb chamber

A mysterious underground chamber has been found inside the Chinese imperial tomb guarded by the famous Terracotta Army, Chinese archaeologists say.
Historical records describing the tomb of Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of China’s Qin dynasty, do not mention the room which is 30 metres (98 feet) deep.
The unopened chamber was found at the site [...]

Free Frida Kahlo!

By John Ross
The battle for the possession of Frida Kahlo’s soul erupted this June 13th on the alabaster esplanade of Mexico’s maximum house of culture, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, a rococo wedding cake of a palace that is slowly sinking into this mega-city’s subsoil. The occasion for the artful free-for-all was a visit by [...]

Arthur Rimbaud

To Music
On the square which is chopped into mean little plots of grass,
The square where all is just so, both the trees and the flowers,
All the wheezy townsfolk whom the heat chokes bring
Each Thursday evening, their envious silliness.
- The military band, in the middle of the gardens,
Swing their shakos in the Waltz of the Fifes:
Round [...]

A Leap Forward, or a Great Sellout?

By DAVID BARBOZA
HOMEGROWN blockbusters were supposed to be China’s answer to Hollywood. And, to some extent, the extravagant budgets and eye-popping special effects of “Curse of the Golden Flower,” “The Promise” and “The Banquet” did their job. For the past two years Chinese films have shattered box-office records here, while outperforming Hollywood imports.
Yet far from [...]

Chopin Nocturne no. 8 op. 27 no. 2

Maurizio Pollini

George Sand

By Thomas Staedeli
George Sand – behind this name hides one of the famoust authoress of the 19th century. She was born as Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin in Paris on 1st July 1804.
On her father’s side she had a titled family tree – her great-great-grandfather was August der Starke (1670-1730) – but George Sand pointed out [...]

Andrew Motion: US is stripping Britain of its literary treasures

Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, has joined leading figures from the arts in warning that future generations face a “black hole” in public collections of contemporary art and literature.
While the world’s billionaires were busy snapping up the work of Britain’s leading artists for record prices earlier this month, the curators of the UK’s museums [...]

Secret architectures

David Mitchell on popular culture, songs, Haruki Murakami and the need to master art in order to become precisely articulate.
Twice Booker-nominated David Mitchell is a difficult writer to pin down. Physically — because he lives between Japan and Ireland. And stylistically — because each of his four novels thus far has been impossible to [...]

Nazik al-Malaika and the search for the self poetry

Nazik al-Malaika, one of the Arab world’s most famous poets, an early exponent of the free verse movement in Arabic, died last Wednesday in Cairo. She was 83.
Renowned Arab poet Nazik al-Malaika was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1923, oldest among her four sisters and two brothers. She got her baccalaureate in 1939. In her [...]