Musée Marmottan-Monet
The Musée Marmottan-Monet is a small but wonderful museum in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, which houses the world's largest collection of works by Claude Monet.
Further Reading
Merce Cunningham in words and images. The pace of modern culture. Karl Ove Knausgaard profiles Anselm Kiefer. Ant colonies. The long road to fairer algorithms. Marie NDiaye. How big law makes big money. Why fossil fuel produces subsidies matter. The decline of Hong Kong. And more.
Brancusi at BOZAR
As Brancusi once said, "if one has reproduced nature realistically it is not creation. An artist must create." The Brancusi retrospective in Brussels shows that he himself was an artist in the true sense of the word.
Further Reading
A time to fast. Why the laws of physics are inevitable. Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure. Scale-free networks well done. What’s next for social priming? Roberto Saviano. Liu Cixin. Prehistoric art. Best of 2019. And more.
Cixin Liu: The Three-Body Problem
I don’t usually read science fiction novels, but after reading rave reviews I picked up a copy of Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem. It is indeed a marvelous novel and after finishing the first volume I also ordered the second and third volume of the trilogy, which I found even better.
The Best Books of 2019
The best books I read this year in various categories, from best aesthetics and philosophy of art to best science fiction, best poetry and most disappointing.
Further Reading
Martin Scorsese on why Marvel movies aren’t cinema. Deep sleep. An interview with Nabokov. Who needs literature? The world in a song. Aesthetic judgment is autocorrelated. Insect decline. Religion and global psychological variation. AI. Generating new ideas. Moles. Dogs. Fairies. And more.
Rembrandt-Velázquez: Dutch and Spanish Masters at the Rijksmuseum
The exhibition Rembrandt-Velázquez: Dutch & Spanish Masters at the Rijksmuseum is a real joy, pairing up paintings by Dutch and Spanish masters of the 17th century.
Rijksmuseum
When visiting a large museum like the Rijksmuseum it is good to have a strategy so as not to drown in the abundance of works on display. On this visit I skipped the ground floor and the top floor and the 18th century wing. I also decided to pay special attention to Still Lifes and Landscapes.
Further Reading
Cormac McCarthy’s tips on how to write a great scientific paper. Photos of mathematicians’ blackboards. Category Theory. Footnotes to Plato. Curation as creation. Language, AI and the brain. Natural Selection. An octopus changing colour while sleeping. The tragedy of Kashmir. And more.
Thierry Mugler Couturissime
Couturissime is a long overdue tribute to the work of fashion designer Thierry Mugler. It was a joy to see many of his most famous creations.
Joost Swarte Overal/Everywhere
The exhibition Joost Swarte Overal/Everywhere at the Kunsthal Rotterdam presents a selection from the work Swarte has produced over the past fifty years: from his first ventures into comics to his recent work for The New Yorker and an album celebrating the artists of De Stijl.