It may not be easy to determine when man left prehistory behind. For the sake of argument, this house will posit that man began to… Read More »The Age of the Idols

When Hugo Pratt’s magic pen brought Venetian sailor Corto Maltese to life in 1967, the world was on the brink of epochal upheavals. By the… Read More »Corto Maltese turns fifty in an entirely different world

  It’s actually a short movie. And it was one of the little gems of the seventh edition of the Short Film Festival that Ca’… Read More »“Those Awful Hats”: A 1909, relevant movie

  “In Italy, the state is weak and the family is strong, so it’s logical that, when it comes to preserving their histories, fashion houses—often… Read More »A key to understanding Italian fashion

  Zachary Turpin, of the University of Houston, just rediscovered a novel by Walt Whitman that was long thought lost. The Life and Adventures of… Read More »Why the rediscovered novel by Walt Whitman matters  

An exhibtion of Ippolito Caffi’s seascapes and cityscapes, the vedute – as this subgenre is known in Italian – has just closed at the Correr… Read More »The art of Caffi and what he makes us wonder about

As the Architecture Biennale at Venice draws to an end, the final events verse on the fleeting nature of exhibitions and, generally, all things that… Read More »A World of Fragile Parts

  No character is possibly more charming—and, up to a point, trite—than the eccentric Englishman who embarks on extraordinary adventures. Adam Lowe is one such… Read More »Factum Arte, a Noah’s Ark for Art in an Endangered World

The Nobel Committee is not alien to shocking audiences, especially with its choices for the Literature Prize. This time, however, it rocked. Quite literally. Bob… Read More »The Nobel Prize of Literature Now Really Rocks: Bob Dylan

History records a “Jerusalem fever” that gripped the world between 1000 and 1400. Millenarian expectations of a second coming of Christ, the violence of Islam… Read More »Jerusalem Fever Grips New York