Recent stories of note:
“Land of Dopes & Tories”
Piers Brendon, Literary Review
Arthur Christopher Benson was the master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, from 1915 to 1925 and is known for penning the lyrics of “Land of Hope and Glory,” as well as for light, belletristic essays aimed toward, in his words, “a feminine tea-party kind of an audience.” Still, he aspired to something greater—an aspiration that, as Piers Brendon writes in Literary Review, Benson has posthumously achieved with two recently published volumes of his diaries (whittled down to one-twelfth of their complete length at over four million words). Benson is “mordant, sardonic, malicious and funny” about everyone—the royal family, the Church of England, politicians, other writers—and, per Brendon, it makes for a diary that is “one of the best of the kind.”
“What Is Public Art For?”
David Lewis Schaefer, Law & Liberty
Amid the shouting LED billboards and crush of pedestrians in Times Square, a new artwork has recently taken perch. Though the bronze sculpture—of a casually dressed, anonymous woman, hands on her hips—is twelve feet tall, it is rather unassuming. That’s part of its problem, writes David Lewis Schaefer in Law & Liberty. The artist, Thomas J. Price, has claimed he intends to critique monumental sculpture by rendering an everyday subject in its idiom. “But one of the proper functions of great statues,” Schaefer says, “is surely to encourage us to make the effort” to live up to their subjects’ example. If public art ought to inspire the public, Price’s unspectacular Grounded in the Stars has sorely missed its mark.
“Researchers Replicate Ancient Egyptian Blue Pigment”
Angelica Villa, ARTnews
Egyptian blue enchants—not just because the electric hue was invented five thousand years ago, but also because the recipe has been forgotten since the Renaissance. That is, until now. Researchers from Washington State University have resurrected the pigment, recreating it as faithfully as possible using the methods and materials that would have been available in ancient Egypt. Some are atwitter about the pigment’s possible applications in forensic technology—authentic Egyptian blue reflects infrared light—but those more interested in its aesthetic dimension can visit the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, where the recreated samples are on view through the summer.
