Recent stories of note:
“Descartes Be Damned”
Costica Bradatan, Literary Review
If you studied French, philosophy, meteorology, or math, you’re bound to recognize the name Blaise Pascal—for, despite living only thirty-nine years, he wrote the classic Pensées, invented one of the first mechanical calculators, and has the unit of pressure, the pascal, named after him. A new book by Graham Tomlin presents the polymath as a founding figure of modernity, too. Such a multivalent figure as Pascal is, as Costica Bradatan describes him in Literary Review, “as hard to label as he is easy to misrepresent.”
“‘Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin’ Review: Capturing Seismic Shifts”
Judith H. Dobrzynski, The Wall Street Journal
We hear plenty of talk about expanding the canon or claims that “all art is political.” At the Kimbell Art Museum, both ideas get a bit of backup from the exhibition “Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945,” which presents several remarkable artists all but unheard of in the United States. One standout is Curt Querner, whose 1933 Self Portrait with Stinging Nettle features the artist precisely rendered in a three-quarters view, shooting us a gaze as stinging as the leaves in his hand. Judith Dobrzynski in The Wall Street Journal reminds us that “all art is not political,” but nonetheless visitors “may feel—as I did—a need to see even more of what can happen when art and politics collide.”
“Magna Carta ‘copy’ once sold at Sotheby’s is an original, say UK professors”
Gareth Harris, The Art Newspaper
Under $30 is a pretty good deal for an authentic 1300 Magna Carta. It’s even a pretty good deal for a 1327 copy, “somewhat rubbed and damp-stained,” which is what Harvard Law School’s library thought it was buying in 1946 for $27.50, the equivalent of about $450 today. Two professors in England have discovered, however, that Harvard Law (and the sellers they received it from) had the provenance all wrong. Turns out the library has an original 1300 Magna Carta on its hands, one of now seven known Edward I versions that are extant.
