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Read The Art Spiegelman Essay On Comics That He Says Marvel Refused To Print

“I turned the essay in at the end of June, substantially the same as what appears here. A regretful Folio Society editor told me that Marvel Comics (evidently the co-publisher of the book) is trying to now stay “apolitical”, and is not allowing its publications to take a political stance. I was asked to alter or remove the sentence that refers to the Red Skull or the intro could not be published.” – The Guardian

San Francisco Mural Controversy Is An Example Of Public Responsibility For Art

Charles Desmarais: “As important as the Arnautoff murals are, as art and as American history, the issues raised by the attempt to destroy or obscure them are larger than this single controversy. They have to do with what I think of as a kind of cultural duty of care — with the avoidance of negligence or harm to works of art maintained by an organization for the public good. – San Francisco Chronicle

500 Years Later, We’re Still Fascinated By Leonardo (With Good Reason)

“His inventions and scientific theories, as well as his painstaking painting technique, were all of a piece: science and art were not separate modes of thinking. His investigations into geology and botany were not digressions but crucial to understand universal principles that he incorporated in his paintings. Multidisciplinary and boundlessly inquisitive, Leonardo used all that he learned to create sublime art that still captivates.” – Clyde Fitch Report

France’s War To Keep Other Languages Out Of French

“There’s a tendency among some Anglophones to see the official struggle to resist English as somewhat hysterical. That attitude partly reflects the smugness of a people who increasingly expect to see their language everywhere they go—and who are accustomed to English’s ability to shamelessly gobble up terms from other tongues. If you see France’s efforts as a celebration of linguistic biodiversity, however, then the ingenuity employed in French’s defense make more sense.” – CityLab

The Forgotten New York Photographer Finally Getting (Some Of) The Attention He Deserves

Alvin Baltrop only had a few shows while he was alive, one of which was at a gay nightclub. Now that he’s getting more attention, we can see some of the “real” New York of the 1970s and 1980s – the impoverished city that couldn’t rebuild a collapsed West Side highway, the piers where the Whitney Museum now stands, the cruising that happened under those piers, the time between Stonewall and the AIDS crisis. (Oh, and they tell a lot of architectural history, too.) – The Guardian (UK)

The World Seems To Be In Love With Long – Really, Really Long – Audiobooks And Book Theatre

War and Peace? Bring it! Every single word of Silas Marner? Amateurs! What about 72 hours of Sherlock Holmes? Bliss! “‘There is an appetite for the epic that has simply surpassed our expectations,’ says Celia De Wolff, who has produced and directed a marathon adaptation of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, to be broadcast over three days” in Britain. “Event radio like this gives the audience a sense of achievement.” – The Observer (UK)