Just look at me
A June Newton retrospective sheds light on the career of this gifted photographer
By Brent Gregston
The light fantastic
Kristin Baker fills larger-than-life works with exploding shards of light and color
Between the pyramids (145 meters) and the Eiffel Tower (325 meters), mankind’s highest structures were Gothic cathedrals. The tallest were built in France, as cities like Amiens, Chartres, Paris and Rouen sought to outdo each other.
The cathedral of Beauvais, dedicated to St. Peter, was the world record holder. It took the prize with a vault of 48 meters and, eventually, a 152-meter tower. But one of the most daring feats in the history of architecture turned out to be a stone house of cards. Part of the vault collapsed and had to be resurrected. The tower, completed in 1567, came tumbling down six years later.
The Palais de Tokyo in Paris has reopened to the public with a vast triennial exhibition of contemporary art and the ambition to be an “anti-museum.” More than an art space, the new Palais is a vortex dug deep into the haut heart of right bank Paris. Without warning, it funnels the visitor deep underground all the way to Avenue President Wilson on the river Seine. Inside it is unplastered and unpainted, half concrete cathedral, half construction site.
“I want paint to work as flesh,” said Lucian Freud, grandson of Sigmund. His fleshy masterpieces made him the world’s most famous portrait artist.
Reuters/Ali Jarekji
The plays may have been more scandalous than the author’s sex life, but visitors still plant sexy kisses on his grave.
TOPICS: FICTION, LGBT, LOVE AND SEX, SEX, THEATER, LIFE NEWS
Oscar Wilde, the 20th century’s most famous sexual dissident, has been dead 100 years to the day. From his deathbed in a seedy Paris hotel, he has seeped into our collective consciousness and become a contemporary celebrity almost as popular as Lady Di. More than just a gay martyr, Wilde was a subversive Superman willing to hazard everything. His lectures were camp performance art and his plays celebrated decadence, gender swapping and the “cult of the clitoris.” He seems to have been the First Modern Man to emerge from the moralizing slime of the Victorian age.