Latest news with #BirthofVenus
Tatler Asia
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Tatler Asia
Gaurav Gupta reveals BTS photos and inspiration behind Aishwarya Rai's stunning Cannes ensemble
Above Aishwarya Rai Bachchan x Gaurav Gupta couture (Photo: courtesy of Gaurav Gupta Couture) Offering fashion enthusiasts a look at unexpected details, Gupta highlighted the Banarasi brocade cape, which was handwoven in Varanasi, India. Embroidered into the back of the cape was a deeply personal Sanskrit shloka (verse) from the Bhagavad Gita . The shloka reads: 'कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते र्ा फलेषु कदाचन।' which means, 'You have a right to perform your actions, but not to the fruits of those actions'. Gupta emphasised this was 'not just decoration — it's intention'. He added that the cape grounds the look in heritage, creating an exciting contrast with the gown's galactic form. Also read: The visionary designs of Gaurav Gupta Above Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's look in this custom Gaurav Gupta creation is being hailed as a fashion comeback by many (Photo: courtesy of Gaurav Gupta Couture) Comparing this look to her previous viral Birth of Venus moment at Cannes in 2022—which was part of the Gaurav Gupta couture collection from that year—Gupta drew a clear distinction. While the 2022 look was 'cinematic — dramatic, fluid and full of movement, this year's creation is the opposite, it's intentionally quiet'. He hopes this ensemble will lead people to see Rai 'in a new light — not just as a beauty icon, but as a monument', describing it as 'the kind of look that speaks softly, but stays with you'. The ensemble has been widely celebrated as a major Cannes comeback moment for Rai, who delivered elegance without excess, like a queen.
New York Times
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In Milan, an Artist's Surreal ‘Playhouse' Filled With Weeping Statues
When the Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli was in his early 20s, he lived in the back room of an office in an 18th-century building in the middle of Milan. It belonged to the lighting brand Flos, and Piero Gandini, then the company's owner, 'was a patron of mine in the 15th-century sense, in that he was literally paying for my bed,' the artist says. Nearly 20 years later, when he came across an apartment for rent in the same building, he immediately took it. 'It was the greatest gift. I already knew how the space worked,' says Vezzoli, now 53. 'The fewer things you have to worry about, the more you can dedicate to your [art].' He now also uses a unit on the floor below as his studio and gallery. 'If the same slice became free on another floor,' he says. 'I'd get it just for the sake of it.' Vezzoli's apartment and studio are his 'playhouse,' as he puts it — populated by his own cast of artistic muses and celebrity idols. His 1,600-square-foot home has glossy, amber-toned parquet floors and is dimly lit. And the few lamps there look like biomorphic sculptures; among them is FontanaArte's egg-shaped Uovo model from 1972, which sits atop a 1939 Meret Oppenheim table with spindly, bird-shaped legs. In the living room, cream-colored venetian blinds block the persistent glow from nearby billboards. 'I know what a great view is, and I know I can't afford it,' Vezzoli says, 'but I can build my own little universe inside my place.' Since the late 1990s, Vezzoli has been known for making films, embroideries and performance works that deftly satirize pop culture and art history. In his 2009 faux advertisement 'Greed, a New Fragrance by Francesco Vezzoli,' he cast the actresses Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams as two ingénues who brawl over a perfume bottle. For his 2024 exhibition at Venice's Museo Correr, he reimagined Classical paintings with embroidered details and renderings of Hollywood actors: His version of Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus,' for example, stars a strutting Richard Gere. In Vezzoli's home, a surprising range of cultural references and figures similarly collide. He calls his living room the 'Ladies' Room' because the walls are adorned with several archival images of formidable women, including Barbara Bush, Betty Ford and his own mother, all embellished with Vezzoli's signature needlework tears. His life-size bronze statue of Sofia Loren, cast in 2011 and modeled after the Metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico's robed muses, presides over the center of the room. In the adjoining dining area, surrounding a round, black lacquered table and dramatically high-backed wooden chairs by the Scottish Art Nouveau architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh are collages from Vezzoli's 'Olga Forever' series, featuring Pablo Picasso's first wife, the Russian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova, weeping tears that morph into Cubist figures. 'I would hate for people to say this is an expensive apartment,' he says. 'I would love for people to say it's special because Francesco has created his own weird narrative.' In addition to Vezzoli's own art, both his apartment and studio are full of vintage Memphis Group pieces; he's been infatuated with the design collective's furniture and iconography since his early teens. 'I was very precocious,' he says. 'I was a Fiorucci kid, a Studio 54 kid, a Memphis kid: all of these things I [was too young to experience] but was desperate to grasp.' At 14, he competed on an Italian quiz show — he ended up winning the episode — and wore a Memphis tie for the occasion. After graduating from university in the mid-90s, he moved to Milan, where he was introduced to Memphis's founder, Ettore Sottsass, at a dinner party. The designer soon became a mentor, and Vezzoli recently curated an exhibition on Sottsass and one of his most prolific collectors, the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, at the Almine Rech gallery in Monte Carlo. Among Vezzoli's Memphis acquisitions are ceramic Yantra vases by Sottsass, inspired by Hindu diagrams; a blocky wood-and-laminate Palm Spring table; and a V-shaped club chair. There's also a 1970 Studio 65 sofa modeled after the actress Mae West's lips and a 1990 Masanori Umeda armchair that looks like a blooming flower. Vezzoli's most surprising finds, however, are his most understated. Over the past five years, he's accumulated roughly 200 vases by the Italian designer and sculptor Giovanni Gariboldi, who began working for the porcelain company Richard Ginori in the 1930s under the mentorship of the brand's artistic director at the time, the renowned architect Gio Ponti. In Italy, until the second half of the 20th century, 'the bourgeoisie would give these kinds of vases as wedding gifts,' he says. 'I like the fact that few people know Gariboldi's work, because I'm likely the biggest collector.' Vezzoli has color-blocked the vases on shelves throughout his space: shades of teal in the living room; red in the studio's hallway; and white in the bedroom. He's as much a collector as he is a director, each carefully sourced piece furthering the plot of his own surreal story.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Heard about The Ghan, Australia's famous train? Try The Indian Pacific instead
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). Three hours: that's how long it takes Shelita Buffet to get ready. There are false eyelashes to glue and cheekbones to contour; there's a neon-bright wig to preen and a sequined pink leotard to tug on — and then there's the generous application of glitter to beard. Looking this good takes time. The first honeyed rays of dawn have only just begun to wash into the mining town of Broken Hill and Shelita is standing on the station platform in a pair of blocky white heels, watching as I step off the train. I'd boarded in Sydney the day before, leaving behind the skyscrapers and the Opera House's monumental clutch of alabaster shells to make tracks on a journey of continental proportions, rattling east to west across the bottom of Australia aboard the Indian Pacific. It's a journey of 2,704 miles in all from Sydney to Perth, roughly equivalent to travelling from London to Moscow and halfway back over the course of three days. Around the midway point we'll pass through the Nullarbor Plain — a landscape so arid it was once described by Victorian explorer Edward John Eyre as 'the sort of place one gets into in bad dreams'. Broken Hill is one of the stops en route, a remote town 300 miles northeast of Adelaide — in what undoubtedly qualifies as the middle of nowhere. Many might assume that this outback outpost may not be the most progressive place, given the traditional reputation that back-of-beyond country towns generally have. But drag queens like Shelita have long reigned here. At least, they have since the 1990s, when original royalty Mitzi, Bernadette and Felicia first rolled in on their clapped-out bus, en route through the outback to perform in Alice Springs. Shelita is a local and tells me she remembers when the cult classic Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert came out. She was seven, and many of her parents' friends appeared in it as extras. 'At that time, I had no idea what a drag queen even was,' she says, as we embark on a tour of the town. 'It wasn't until my teenage years that I realised what the movie was about.' Silver was discovered nearby in 1885, and many of the road names in Broken Hill now take their inspiration from the elements: there's Cobalt Street, Crystal Lane, Sulphide Street. As we reach Argent Street's broad avenue, the only sign of life this early in the morning comes from a tree dotted with squawking, white tufts — cockatoos. We pause opposite The Palace Hotel, where an ornate balcony wraps around the second of its three floors in a melange of heritage iron lacework worthy of an Old West saloon. Built originally as a 'coffee palace' in 1889 for the then-princely sum of £12,190, to provide a teetotal alternative to the alcohol-fuelled hotels, it's now known for its collection of maximalist 1980s-era murals that featured heavily in the film — among them an unconvincing reproduction of Botticelli's Birth of Venus. 'It's an iconic building as the home of Priscilla,' Shelita says, placing one manicured hand on her hip, as we take it in from the shade of a shop's domed veranda, the sun now beginning to heat the dry air. At the town's peak in 1915, around 35,000 people lived in Broken Hill. Today, it's a rather sleepier place: old train carriages gently decay in station yards; a lone man in overalls thumbs a newspaper on a terrace; at the end of a broad, straight boulevard, a slag heap from ongoing mining looms ever taller. Back in the day, trains like the Silver City Comet were a lifeline through the surrounding wilderness to Sydney to the east. It went by another moniker: the Rattler, named for its party trick of rattling tea out of cups as it traversed the uneven terrain. I'm travelling in comparatively more comfort. Back at the station, I leave Shelita and climb on board the Indian Pacific in time for a late breakfast. As the train heaves off from Broken Hill, an orchestra of squeaks, rattles and creaks starts up, the soundtrack of the carriages that strain to follow the same path they have for the past 50 years. I head to the Queen Adelaide dining car, which appears likewise much as it always has, time capsule-like in its undying commitment to all things retro: the browns and golds, the white tablecloths, the gilded ceiling panels and etched glass booth dividers framed by faux-Grecian columns. Breakfast today is a mix of both refined and unrefined Australian dining: creamy scrambled eggs with hot smoked trout, and a side of toast with Vegemite. Slowly, freight carriages and pylons pass beyond the windows to reveal a broad, flat plain of blue-green saltbush, broken up by dry creeks and gaping maws of that characteristic red earth. Every so often, a kangaroo raises its smooth head to watch our locomotive interloper, or an emu sprints on gangly legs in the direction of the great, flat horizon. Out here in the Australian bush, the only measure of time's passing comes from the steady arc of the sun. Clouds waft overhead, the dust settles as the breeze softens, and the world seems to hold its breath. Traversing the breadth of Australia by train is a considerable feat of engineering. Back in the 20th century, around the time of the Rattler, the beginnings of a cross-country railway did exist, but it was missing a central belt between Kalgoorlie and Port Augusta, spanning almost 1,243 miles. Western Australia was instead reached via treacherous sea voyages across the Great Australian Bight. Why this was deemed preferable is unsurprising — consider the technology, the sheer grit and determination, required to cross the breadth of a continent generally characterised by the inhospitality of its landscape. With the gold fields of Western Australia too isolated in a newly federated country, the first tracks of what would become the Trans-Australian Railway were laid in 1912 — using picks, shovels, carthorses and camels. Five years, 2.5 million hardwood sleepers and 140,000 tonnes of rail later, it was done. In 1969, the route was rebuilt and extended from Sydney to Perth, making it possible to ride a train 62 hours between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean for the first time. And the first passenger train to make the full crossing? The Indian Pacific. That evening, I crank open the blinds in my cabin to better watch the stars, so bright and clear in the inky darkness that they're more like beacons than pinpricks. Some time during the night, we cross into the Nullarbor, the place from John Edward Eyre's nightmares. It's here that the Indian Pacific quietens, its familiar clanking rhythms fading to a low, continual rumble. Where the route to Broken Hill had been thunderous, rattling skeletons as much as it once did teacups, the passage west feels calm and straight, almost like we've left all trace of land behind and set sail on the calmest lake. At some far-flung point in history, this vast expanse of limestone bedrock was an ancient seabed, which rose from the waves over the millennia at this near-southernmost edge of the world. There are few trees on the Nullarbor because the soil is a calcium-rich loam, derived mainly from unfathomable quantities of seashells. The following morning, the magic of the Nullarbor unfolds beyond the window. I watch, transfixed, from my narrow bunk — it's monotonous yet somehow utterly entertaining. Only sporadic, low-lying pockets of stunted eucalypts, saltbush and wild acacia break up the great expanse of perfectly flat, Lucozade-red earth, which unfurls in seemingly limitless quantities in every direction, beyond every window. Few places on Earth are so featureless, few horizons so unbroken for so long. It's a view that tugs at your feet and suggests you take a long walk. But set off here, and trouble surely follows; daytime temperatures can reach 50C, the plains go on for around 124,000 sq miles, and there's a reason why its Aboriginal name is 'Oondiri', or 'the waterless'. Australia is the sixth-largest country in the world, about 30 times the size of the UK, and on this mighty plateau you finally gauge a sense of its mammoth scale. This, the longest straight stretch of train track in the world, is even identifiable from space. Edward John Eyre was the first European to cross the Nullarbor on foot in 1840-41. He walked in the footsteps of three Aboriginal guides, eating kangaroos and sucking water from the roots of gumtrees to survive. Partway across they also ate their horses, and not long after that two of the guides mutinied — the year-long crossing only succeeding thanks to supplies donated from a passing French whaling vessel. Our crossing will take just over a day, with the contemporary luxuries of live music, air conditioning and an open bar — although in the Queen Adelaide dining car, kangaroo is still on the menu. In the lounge car, the train's equivalent of a living room one carriage along from the restaurant, proximity fosters conversation and friendships forge easily. Sitting on one of the pink banquettes facing each other across the narrow aisle, a tall man wearing a backwards cap offers the passenger next to him a crisp. 'Don't mind if I do!', says a passing septuagenarian, flashing a grin as he takes one. It's after lunchtime, and the carriage's usual soundtrack of light jazz and clinking wine glasses is punctuated with shouts of 'Indiana!' and 'North Dakota!' as a group makes a game of trying to name the 50 US states from memory. By evening, they'll switch to telling ghost stories. On the Nullarbor, the art of doing nothing becomes an Olympic sport. For there's virtually nothing here — its name is from the Latin nullus arbor, meaning 'no trees'. The Groundhog Day nature of the landscape means the world narrows to just 27 carriages. At first, it makes you feel nervous — what will you do? — but then your thoughts slow and you remember you like reading. You strike up conversations with strangers in the hallway, barely wide enough for one, grinning sheepishly and scuttling into your cabin like a crab evading the tide whenever another passenger needs to pass. Or you lie back on your bunk and watch all that nothing roll by. There's a screech as the train slows, red earth still rolling beyond one bank of windows, a grove of eucalypts now visible through the other. Once it stops, we step out into the dust one by one, our boots crunching on a fine layer of terracotta scree. It could be Mars — not least for its sense of utmost remoteness. We're still on the Nullarbor, as we have been for more than 24 hours now, around 620 miles from Adelaide but still some 1,000 from Perth. To my right, beyond the locomotive, the tracks plough on before surrendering to the horizon. Ahead, a jumble of low-lying houses is just visible through the trees. The township of Cook was established in 1917 as a service centre for the transcontinental railway, with a school, hospital, general store and golf course. Around 300 people lived here at its height, with the weekly 'Tea and Sugar' train supplying the families with sheep, groceries, haircuts — even a present-wielding Santa at Christmas. But by 1997, when the Australian National Railway was sold, it was decided that the town was only needed as a watering and refuelling station — and, almost overnight, it all closed. Cook became a near-ghost town. There are now no permanent residents, though a handful of railway workers endure. I walk towards the houses, the train's riveted stainless-steel carriages an incongruous procession of silver bullets in an otherwise elemental landscape. I pass a signpost pointing to Sydney, Perth and Souvenirs — though the word 'Souvenirs' has been scratched out. A flaccid windsock briefly stirs as a breeze whispers across the plain. Electricity wires undulate overhead; the only sound, beyond the low rumble of our refuelling train and the crunching of my boots, is the lonely call of a little black-and-white bird perched on one of the pylons. Ahead, town caretaker Brady Bennett is leaning against a low fence in a fluorescent orange jacket, attempting to flatten his cowlicked silver hair with such fervour that I wonder when he last had a visitor. 'G'day!' he calls over to me with a thick Australian accent, his eyes concealed behind dark glasses, his skin blushing pink from the sun. 'I'm Brady, like the Bunch.' He tells me he used to work in mining but now cleans the train drivers' quarters, usually remaining here for three weeks — sometimes up to six — before getting a week off. I ask him if it ever gets boring at the heart of the Nullarbor. 'Waking up every morning like this? How's that boring?' he says, his tone incredulous. 'I like the quiet — when I knock off, I go back to my house to have a couple of tinnies and listen to my records, do a bit of gardening.' He points to his house on the end of the row, where spiky succulents emerge from the gravel. On a rusted barrel, he's lined up a row of toy cars with the precision of a drill sergeant. 'I live in Adelaide, but I hate city life really. The traffic jams, everything else. Here there's no traffic, no roundabouts, no crime,' he says. 'I've got a couple of friends here. You sort of keep to yourself but sometimes you might go and have a drink or two with 'em, sometimes we'll have a fire out front and have a yarn. It really is the simple life.' He pauses thoughtfully, before adding: 'But if I want a hamburger, it's 140Ks that way.' He points back the way I've come along the tracks. Brady directs me along the path to the remnants of the school, past a decaying basketball court, the hoops' nets a tangle of forlorn strings. When I find it, decades spent beneath the Nullarbor sun have begun to erase all evidence: windowpanes peel, machinery rusts orange and an outbuilding classroom slowly turns to splinters, the bleached dingo painted on one side now a ghostly apparition in a field of desert flowers. The next morning on the train, I wake to something I've not properly seen for days, and Brady hasn't seen for weeks: water. So much of it that it froths and churns in the sunrise's amber light, threatening to spill over the rocky banks and surge into the forested hills that rise steeply on either side. The view through the windows is jarringly bucolic, the red earth of the Nullarbor traded overnight via scenic sleight of hand for green, endless green. The Avon River washes far below and runs parallel to the train tracks; in the far distance, trees dot emerald hummocks like broccoli florets. After a few hours, the Avon meets the Swan, the mighty watercourse that begins north east of Perth and coils right through the heart of the Western Australian capital before washing out to sea. As we approach the city, humanity appears in greater and greater concentrations: coffee-drinking suburbanites drive to work; people cycle between low bungalows; and workers tend to rows of manicured grapevines. And then I see them: skyscrapers emerging from the haze on the distant blue horizon. Over three days, we've crossed the breadth of Australia from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, from Sydney to this westernmost terminus, via a landscape so empty that ours were the only footprints for thousands of miles. And now, with a jolt, we're about to rejoin society. Published in the April 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
The Guardian
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The week in classical: Arias Reimagined; Rhythm of the Seasons; Out of the Deep; Turandot
Hair streaked with blue, face bubble-gum pink, eyes highlighted in yellow, Andy Warhol paid homage to Botticelli's Birth of Venus with joyful freedom, creating a vivid dialogue between Italian Renaissance high art and American mass culture. His reworking loosely exemplifies a growing trend for musicians to try something similar: a Handel aria sung into a microphone, with pulsating keyboard accompaniment, turns into a yet more impassioned soul song. The same composer's instrumental Concerto Grosso, Op 6 No 10 is reinvented as a vocal piece – with AI Handelbot-generated lyrics (Bfjjfid Ooooh eeeee aahhhh iiii ghdjjrr) for those who want to trill along. Three events last week presented versions of this kind of baroque-update experiment. Two were at Stone Nest, the ex-Welsh chapel, ex-nightclub on London's Shaftesbury Avenue: Arias Reimagined, part of the London Handel festival, with the independent record label nonclassical; and Rhythm of the Seasons, presented by the venue's resident group, Figure, which included an interpretation of Vivaldi's Four Seasons on percussion. In Arias Reimagined, the mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean, a singer of rich and fearless versatility, switched freely between arias from Handel's Theodora and pop from the past 35 years, including Britney Spears and Cocteau Twins. The common thread was emotional intensity and the keyboard exuberance and invention of harpsichordist Xiaowen Shang. A second set featured Akkordeon Baroque, a duo inspired by accordionists playing baroque counterpoint in Berlin's U-Bahn stations. The radical singer-composer Loré Lixenberg and accordionist Lore Amenabar Larrañaga, who brings dignity and melancholy to every phrase she plays, worked aural spells with Handel, JS Bach and John Cage (sound by Isa Ferri). The night ended in even more remote territory, with the multiple talents of Bianca Scout (music, movement, electronics, voice and more) and her small ensemble, performing short, spooky mini-dramas with titles such as 'We are the lost ideas dancing back from death'. I admit to bafflement, but nothing new there. To say Vivaldi's Four Seasons played on percussion was straightforward in comparison would not be true. The dazzling soloist, James Larter, credited with making the arrangement with director Frederick Waxman, has stripped the score back to its bones, variously building it again with tuned percussion – vibraphone, marimba – and an array of drums, bongos, gongs, triangles, woodblocks, castanets, chopsticks and, as a ratchety addition, a güiro. Vivaldi's solos were redistributed between a five-strong string group, an almost ghostly harpsichord – Waxman used the lute stop, as well as, occasionally, his sleeve to dampen the sound – all crowned by the wild, leaping virtuosity of Larter himself. Every one of Vivaldi's familiar imitations, from barking dog to birdsong to drunken dance, sounded different, newly exposed, each vertebra tapped and rattled yet lovingly authentic. Figure's next event at Stone Nest is Lamentations on 10 April: Easter music by Couperin (Leçons de ténèbres) with readings by Radio 3's Donald Macleod. Also in Lenten mood, Vache Baroque's Out of the Deep, at Smith Square Hall, combined penitential music by Wilbye, Purcell, JS Bach and Zelenka with readings, astutely delivered by actor Malcolm Sinclair, from Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, written during his imprisonment in Reading jail. This shapeshifting group of young musicians was founded during the pandemic. Their mission embraces children's shows, opera, all kinds of outreach, working with some of the best rising star talents – here, countertenor Alexander Chance and tenor Guy Cutting – to achieve the highest standard of historically informed performance. Brahms's chorale prelude for organ, Herzlich tut mich verlangen, arranged for voices by Vache's director, Jonathan Darbourne, was a reminder of music's fluidity in honouring the past: back, in this case, to a secular song via a Lutheran hymn via JS Bach (and, eventually, forward to Paul Simon). The brief farewell, 'In pace' by John Sheppard, ended an exceptional evening. Easy to forget, Puccini also drew on a predominantly baroque form – that of Italian commedia dell'arte – for his last opera, Turandot. Archetype and myth are clothed in some of his most harmonically daring music, unfinished at the time of his death in 1924. The Royal Opera's classic 1984 staging, by Andrei Șerban with designs by Sally Jacobs, has returned for its 16th revival (director Jack Furness), cranked back into life with apparent ease, strongly cast throughout, the spectacle ageless, magnificent as well as savage. Porcelain-white masks, crimson banners, suspended tableaux enthral, as does the choral and orchestral panoply so vital to this opera. There were scrappy moments, but Rafael Payare conducts this spirited revival with such impetuous enthusiasm no one should mind. Character development is hardly the point. The Arabian-Italian story tells of a murderous princess and a self-regarding hero, each trying to outdo the other with their merciless riddles. Only the tragic former slave girl Liù (Anna Princeva) has much chance for nuance. The American-Canadian soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, an international Puccini star and a world-leading Turandot, has a gritty, reedy resonance and can soar above an orchestra at full tilt. As Calaf, the South Korean tenor SeokJong Baek tends towards the generic in terms of acting, but his sustained, gleaming top notes are matchless, exciting and only slightly longer than Puccini intended. And yes, his Nessun Dorma is as good as anyone's, over in a few minutes but worth the wait. See Turandot live in cinemas on Tuesday, or repeated from next Sunday. Star ratings (out of five) Arias Reimagined ★★★★ Rhythm of the Seasons ★★★★ Out of the Deep ★★★★ Turandot ★★★★ Turandot is at the Royal Opera House, London, until 19 April, and live in cinemas on 1 April, with encores from 6 April
