KENT MONKMAN – Indigenous Cree artist. With a friend, I visited the Royal Ontario Museum or ROM and its exhibition of Kent Monkman paintings – kitsch, trans, bi-sex, indigenous mythologies, worship of constellations and of our mother the Earth, denunciations of colonialism, parodies of the Western Tradition of heroic painting, hyperbolic denunciations of the residential …
Some friends asked me about Federico Fellini‘s 1963 film 8 1/2. Fellini often used Marcello Mastroianni as his alter ego, and this film is about Fellini/Marcello having a crisis of creativity – as I remember it – and so Fellini/Marcello goes to a spa, and while at the spa, his fantasy and imagination take flight …
I recently gave a talk – on Secret Agents – young men and women – sent into Nazi-occupied France during WW-2 It’s a fascinating story, with some extraordinary characters – see thumbnail sketches below the link. With Nahlah Ayed (former foreign correspondent and host of CBC’s IDEAS) and Norm Christie (historian, battlefield guide, publisher, founder …
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Extinction Book 1 Girl with the Golden Eyes is being offered – to US residents and Amazon and Goodreads customers only, alas – free, 100 Kindle copies, in a promotional lottery which is called a Goodreads Giveaway. I just thought I’d let you know! It’s one of my favorites – of my own books – …
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ANDREA MANTEGNA’S HOUSE IN MANTUA: Andrea Mantegna, the court painter to the Gonzagas of Mantua, had a talent for conjuring magical spaces out of square boxes – his “bridal chamber” – or camera picta – in Mantua’s Ducal Palace, with its trompe-l’œil oculus, is one example, creating as it does a complex sense of space, …
While writing the novel “Son of Two Fathers” – (2019 House of Anansi Press) – set in the Renaissance between 1536 and 1543, I plunged into the life of Isabella d’Este, ruler of Mantua, a brilliant, talented, highly cultured woman, an effective ruler, a promoter of women’s education, and one of the great patrons of …
A few small insights from my recent visit to Sicily. Unlimited migration or immigration is not necessarily a delightful thing. In Palermo, sub-Saharan Africans were camped out next to people’s homes, and in public parks and public squares, cooking their food, washing, defecating, etc. Improvised tents. Quite a lot of this. Little hygiene, little or …