Continuously reappearing throughout the French version of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Le Mépris [Contempt], Georges Delerue’s melody Thème de Camille is the epitome of contained tragedy. Composed for a string orchestra, it has a regular, continuous motif traversed by arpeggios in counterpoint. This combination creates an immensely pleasurable (and sad)...
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On arriving in Japan in 1933, the German architect Bruno Taut (1880–1938) declared: “When modern architecture first came into being around the 1920s, it was the simple and entirely free Japanese living room, with its large windows, wall cupboards, and the purity of its design that provided the strongest impetus...
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There are occasions in which the multifaceted shape of time becomes obvious. Occasions in which the concentration of similar initiatives, aimed at similar audiences and presenting similar outcomes, attest to the different moments in which organizations, individuals, and their mentalities are situated: how, despite coexisting simultaneously, collective mindsets aren’t contemporary...
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Art fair reviews serve for many as a guide on what to see (and what to avoid); for some as a memorandum on trends, institutions, and artists to follow; and for a few as the starting point for a wish list, supporting acquisition and investment decisions. These texts frequently respond...
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Eighteen years have passed since Hal Foster’s critical remarks on the position of the artist as ethnographer.(1) That text, together with Catherine David’s 1997 Documenta X, and its questioning of the anthropological foundations of Western culture, became two groundbreaking events, which heralded a tightening of the artistic and anthropological inquiries...
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Milan, a city that cultivates its world-famous reputation as the capital of fashion and design, is currently taking big steps to relaunch its identity as a center for artistic production, and miart, its two-year-old upstart art fair, has been playing an essential role in this reinvention. With its access-controlled, rational...
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