This bronze figure of Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) appeared in 2023 on New York City’s 5th Avenue, near Central Park on a low wall in the garden of the Payne Whitney Mansion, which houses the Villa Albertine, the cultural center of the French Embassy. This statue is based on the beloved character from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1943 novella, which is one of the most translated and best-selling books in the world, though I have never read it. Continue reading The Little Prince Bronze Statue on 5th Avenue→
Meret Oppenheim drew broadly on stories from the past, including Greco-Roman and medieval sources. She reimagined these narratives and the fates of their female protagonists in ways that reflected her views on the role of women in society. In Daphne and Apollo (1943), she reinterpreted the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne, in which the wood nymph would rather hunt than become the god’s lover. Unable to escape him, she turns into a laurel tree. In Oppenheim’s version, the artist subjects Apollo, too, to a vegetal transformation, depicting him as a potato-like form, surrounded by flies.
Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Ivan Albright painted this lurid work for the 1945 movie adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Wilde’s tale, Dorian Gary commissions a portrait of himself as an attractive young man, and later trades his soul for an ever-youthful appearance. As the still-handsome Gray leads an increasingly dissolute and evil life, his painted representation rots and decays, revealing the extent of his moral corruption. Albright’s renown as a painter of the macabre made him the ideal choice to paint the horrific image of Gray for the film. Although the movie was shot in black and white, director Albert Lewin filmed the painted portrait in color to emphasize Gray’s shocking transformation.
George Harrison, my favorite Beatle, would have been 70 years old today, having been born on February 25th, 1943. If you haven’t yet seen the Martin Scorcese directed Harrison Biopic Living In The Material World, you should check it out.
The late Janis Joplin was born on this day, January 19th, in 1943. Today she would have been 70 years old. She is still the best female vocalist ever, in my opinion.
