Tag: 02.22.20

Blake Gopnik’s New Bio Of Warhol: A Case For His Enduring Influence

It is hard now to recapture the shock of 1962 when the iterations of Campbell’s soup went on display at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles (New York wasn’t interested). But the cumulative effect of their pristine forms, their tromp l’oeil construction, their obsessive reiteration (there were 32 prints, one for each flavour), luminous banality and, above all, their thereness, was to blast apart everything that we thought – and think – we know about art. – The Guardian

Rio Carnival Taboo Broken: First Trans Woman To Lead Parade

Camila Prins says she first realized she wanted to be a woman at a Carnival party at age 11, when, like the other boys, she was allowed to dress like a girl as part of the burlesque festivities. Now, in the final minutes of Saturday, she became the first transgender woman to lead the drum section of a top samba school in either of the renowned Carnival parades put in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. – Washington Post (AP)

Is This Pliny The Elder’s Skull?

Over the last few years a pool of Italian biologists, anthropologists and geochemists conducted a series of forensic tests on the skull and accompanying lower mandible, which were unearthed 120 years ago on a shore not far from Pompeii. On Jan. 23 the scientists presented their findings at a conference in the museum. The skull, they concluded, squared with what was known about Pliny at his death, but the jawbone belonged to someone else. – The New York Times

How Did Emily Dickenson Escape?

Here’s why it matters that a new Dickenson series feels so modern, and why it matters that new scholarship refutes the old lies about the poet. “If the ‘real’ person of Dickinson is translated and refracted through a pop-cultural idiom of hip hop and teen genre fiction, so much of the ‘real’ nineteenth century—of women’s domestic labor, of anti-immigrant electoral politics, of anti-black racism, of compulsory heterosexuality—can simply be imported. Because here we are, still living it.” – The Boston Review

Irish Literature Was Born When The Country Didn’t Even Belong To Itself

Indeed, Ireland didn’t even get its own national poet or fiction laureate until 1998 and 2015, respectively. “Laureateships, like prizes and bursaries, recognise a coherent tradition built over time and reinforce a robust faith in the value of Irish literature as a category. Irish literature is now a term with clear meanings and resonances, institutionalised as an aspect of Irish life. … But the apparent certainty with which we now use the term should not blind us to its long birth across centuries of conflict and change.” – The Irish Times

Johni Cerny, Chief Genealogist Who Helped Oprah, Bernie, And Others Find Their Roots On TV, Has Died At 76

Cerny, said Henry Louis Gates Jr., was “the proverbial dean of American genealogical research, … [whose work was] transforming raw data into narratives and metaphors about diversity and our common humanity.” Gates, the Harvard prof who hosts and produces Finding Your Roots on PBS, began working with Cerny in 2006, and their work on personal (and social) histories flowered from there. – The New York Times