The famed nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burkhardt, author of the seminal The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy first published in 1860, enjoined true scholars to remain at their desks rather than “congregate at conferences to sniff…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
The glaciers were bigger then. I gained renewed appreciation for their scale two weeks ago when making the long climb by bicycle out of one of the holes they dug as they withdrew northward during…
Put a lacquered frame around something and hang it on the wall and that thing instantly becomes Art. Or a critique of Art. Or a critique of a critique of Art. Or just plain fun.…
For at least as long as people have talked about the weather, they have made music about it—from rain dances to pastoral symphonies, from the Paleolithic to Prince. Never mind that the ongoing destruction—and directly…
Seated on psychedelic Rings of Saturn beneath an arena night sky strewn with planets, stars and galaxies, and herself kitted out in glittering silver wig with matching boots, gown, and guitar, Katy Perry hovered forty…
Legion are the books on jazz that wave the banner of “revolution” above the chapter devoted to bebop, the improvised American music of swerving light and impossible speed, incandescent optimism and brooding melancholy that transformed…
The one thing you can say about the all-too-familiar genre of posthumous documentary in which dozens of admirers bear dutiful witness to the deceased’s unrecognized artistic achievements, is that at least the departed are spared…
Many have had a go at explaining the madness of Hamlet, not least generations of high school and college students faced with faking their way through that perennial exam essay question: Is the prince’s insanity…