Tuesday, February 12, 2002
The first international loan exhibition dedicated to the 17th-century Dutch artist
The first international loan exhibition devoted to Aelbert Cuyp opens tomorrow at the National Gallery in London, after having been displayed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. I am too busy to write much about it really, except that it is well worth seeing if you like 17th-century Dutch art. Aelbert Cuyp takes place at the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing from February 13 to May 12. If you would like to know more before you go, check the National Gallery website or (shameless plug) read my review on Countrylife.co.uk.
posted by Carla Passino at 6:54 PM
Monday, February 11, 2002
Could we really live for 300 years?
Medical advancements could allow us to live for over 300 years, according to The Spectator. In line with the magazine’s conservative views, Duncan Turner worries about the economic and social effects of the change in the world’s demographic balance. Call me selfish but I’d very much like to live for 300 years or more – and sod the demographic balance. Go scientists!
posted by Carla Passino at 9:35 AM
Looking at the roots of a national obsession
I spent most of my weekend in Italy talking about politics. I know it sounds an unusual thing to do, especially on a sunny Saturday at seaside resort, but you simply can’t avoid discussing politics in Italy. Oh, nothing too sophisticated – not your Chomsky-type of outlandish analysis. More down-to-earth matters like: why Italians don’t give a fig about having a Prime Minister who owns 50% of national television channels and a good chunk of the country’s publishing industry. And why former Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema and his centre-left chums lament this conflict of interest when they did fat big nothing to solve it while they were in power. But the question I should really have pondered on is: why do Italians incessantly talk of politics? Italy is a funny country. Fewer people read national newspapers than in Britain, which is roughly the same size as Italy. And there is a widespread belief that politicians ‘are all the same’: either corrupted or corruptible and, in any case, thieves. Yet, any decently educated Italian lives and breathes politics – be it national or international – with an intensity that is hardly matched in, say, Britain. Politics ranks second only to football. I think this is because Italy used to be a highly polarised country where left and right weere political religions rather than allegiances. Indeed, the Communists had a policy of opening a party office for every bell-tower (it was thought that the Church campaigned for the Christian Democrats). The confessional rift was reflected in semantics too: people ‘were’, as opposed to voted, Communists or Christian Democrats. This is changing now, after the leading political players of the past either imploded (like the Christian Democrats) or tried desperately to find a new identity (like the Communists, who became the Democrats of the Left, or the Fascists, who became the National Alliance). The political divide has narrowed (from left and right to centre-left and centre-right) and today’s voters struggle to see the subtle differences between the centre-left and the centre-right’s economic programmes. But old habits resist. Politics, like football, still elicits strong feelings for - or against – a given faction. Fare polemica (‘doing’ polemic) is a national passion: and what can kindle the flame of an argument better than strong feelings? So, again, why does D’Alema lament the conflict of interest when he did fat big nothing to solve it while he was in power?
posted by Carla Passino at 9:33 AM
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