Latest news with #FrenchRomantic
Korea Herald
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
16th Korea Opera Festival to feature classics, originals and family works at Seoul Arts Center
Korea's leading celebration of opera returns this summer with the 16th edition of the Korea Opera Festival, featuring seven new and classic operas running from June 6 to July 13 across all three theaters of the Seoul Arts Center: the Opera House, CJ Towol Theater and Jayu Theater. Organized by the Korea Opera Companies Association, the annual event brings together seven private opera companies to stage a lineup that includes canonical masterpieces, newly created Korean operas and productions tailored for younger audiences, underscoring the festival's commitment to both artistic excellence and broader accessibility. The festival opens with "Carmen," a mainstay of the French Romantic repertoire, presented by Gloria Opera Company and directed by Yang Soo-hwa. Set against the backdrop of Spanish exoticism and filled with iconic arias such as "Habanera" and "Toreador Song," Bizet's "Carmen" will run June 6–8 at the Opera House. From June 13 to 15, Nuova Opera Company will stage Puccini's "La Boheme," which captures the spirit of 19th-century Paris through the bohemian lives and doomed love of young artists. Artistic director Kang Min-woo leads the production. BeSeTo Opera Company, under artistic director Kang Hwa-ja, follows in early July with Mozart's "Don Giovanni" to be performed from July 4–6. The opera buffa fuses comedy and darkness in the story of the legendary libertine whose escapades end in ruin, framed by Mozart's masterful blend of drama and satire. Closing the Opera House schedule is "Dosan," a Korean original by Korea Arts Group that dramatizes the life of independence activist Ahn Chang-ho. Running July 11–13, the opera turns the philosopher's ideals of education and enlightenment into a musical narrative, bridging Korean modern history and operatic form. At CJ Towol Theater, audiences can enjoy Rossini's beloved comedy "The Barber of Seville," presented by Noble Art Opera Company June 20–21. Directed by Shin Sun-seop, the production delivers all the charm, wit,and rapid-fire arias that make the opera a perennial favorite. The Jayu Theater serves as the stage for two family-friendly productions. "Miles and the Three Musketeers," an original work by The Muse Opera Company directed by Lee Jung-eun, plays June 28–29. Through animal characters preparing for a music audition, the opera explores themes of friendship and aspiration in a format suited for all ages. Opera Factory reimagines the classic fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood" as a children's opera, running July 5–6. Directed by Park Kyung-tae, the production uses a child's perspective to reframe familiar narratives and promote engagement with classical music among younger audiences. Launched in 2009, the Korea Opera Festival has grown into a key platform for private opera companies.
Daily Maverick
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
Beyond the lens: The normalisation of horror in Sudanese war imagery
In continuance of the reflection on my career in the media, which I referred to in my last column, I look here at the way that photography, especially 'war photography', brings the sheer horror, cruelty and savage killings to the screens of our computers and smartphones. I look, in this column, at the way that images, or 'the visual', has become political as Rod Stoneman of the University of Galway suggested with his book, Seeing is Believing: The Politics of the Visual. I have been going through pictures of the conflict that has ravaged communities and societies in Sudan since 2023. It brought home to me the way in which the Sudanese conflict has become normalised, how it has dissolved into the background of world affairs. It also brought home how we have come to rely on photographs and photography to get a sense of the horrors of war, and what my old friend James Sey referred to (with reference to a picture I made 40 years ago) as ' forms of sudden death '. To be clear, never mind the self-referencing, I have always been a middling reporter and a below-average photographer. Whatever I may or may not have achieved as a photojournalist was by accident. The slideshow on the website of the Nelson Mandela Foundation carries one or two pictures I made during the 1980s. One aspect of photography (in our age) that cannot be ignored is the way that photography, like journalism — now more 'democratic' because anyone and everyone can do it — has become commodified, twisted and perverted. 'Instagrammable places' And how photography, in particular, has become terribly middle-brow with ' Instagrammable places ', cringy pouting or duck-lip selfies, and much like the 19th century, photography 'made the visual world (and private lives) collectible… in the photographic album' then and through the smartphone, today. One exemplar of this 19th century capture of private lives is the collection of Victor Hugo, the French Romantic author and poet, who, with the collaboration of his wife, Adele, assembled 41 photographs made between 1852 and 1854 and offered the collection as a gift to Mademoisele Euphémie Barbier of the family in whose house Hugo and his family had been hosted during their exile in Jersey between 1851 and 1857. The point, here, is that the physical photo album has disappeared almost completely, and photographs are now 'stored' on smartphones, tablets and computers — a long way from the burgundy morocco-leather binding and gilt embellishments of the Hugo collection of 1854. Journalism, the text and image, has been democratised, as it were. Both have been 'set free', and the thing about freedom is that you can't reel it back in — freedom will run away from what kept it shackled. What has changed in terms of the practicality of photography (when comparing say news or social documentary photography with the Instagrammers) is that for the most part, making pictures starts with a story that is then followed by the image. It's not all happenstance, though it can be… One of my favourite photographers, the late Ara Güler, aka 'Istanbul's Eye', who probably remains the greatest Turkish news and social documentary photographer, explained this in the following way with a reflection on being assigned a task: ' I look for the photograph that is in my mind's eye. The story comes before the photograph. As I know what the end product should be, I say, 'Bull's eye?' when I find it. Of course, I can't say, 'that's absolutely it', so I take several shots to be sure. The shot I'm looking for comes out in the processing.' While I agree with him, in general — I always leave room for irrationalities, and sometimes your 'mind's eye' sees things that you never imagined as part of the assignment — seeing, knowing in your mind what you want, or how you want to capture what is before you, is a lot different from the incessant snapping of Instagrammable scenes or selfies that have no social or any other meaningful purpose. While I may appear to be dismissive of the Instagrammers (I, too, am one of them) it should be clear that democratising everything with social media (journalism and photography), setting everything free, is just that, and it becomes difficult to reel freedom back in. War in photography, images and paintings It is war photography, and images of the conflict in Sudan, that is the main topic of discussion here. I have, admittedly, wasted much too much time on only somewhat related issues. That is the nature of the act of writing… The conflict in Sudan has been raging since 2023. It has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and forced more than 11 million people from their homes. The UN has described it as 'one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history', the Guardian has reported. The closest we can get to the horror, those of us who are sat hundreds or thousands of kilometres away from the violence, is through photographs. As Stoneman explained, 'we cannot avoid the image of cruelty. Pornography and atrocity both lead to degrees of disturbance on the part of the viewer, representations of violence which annul thinking. The focus is always on what can be done to the body of another: how it can be broken and destroyed…. All power inescapably contains violence.' Researchers at Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab examined satellite images (and thermal sensing data) captured from the skies above Darfur in Sudan, and which illustrate the ways in which the conflict in that part of Africa caused mass death and destruction. War is, after all, about killing and breaking things. They wrote in the 28 February 2025 edition of the journal Science that: ' Where a hospital stood just a few weeks ago, there may only be scarred ruins today. A graveyard on the edge of a town has undergone a sudden expansion. Entire villages have been torched.' We always come back, then, to the imagery of war, whether through photography or painting. As with most of the interpretations of war, our reflections depend on our class standing, national pride, or racial prejudices and biases. We make of imagery what we want The outstanding problem to those of us who look at the images of war in Sudan, is that it has become normalised. This normalisation has nothing to do with war in Africa 'because Africans cannot live together in peace'. That glosses over, or conveniently ignores, the carnage of Europe's 100 years' war between 1337 and 1453, the estimated 40 million people killed during World War 1, and the 70-85 million people killed in Europe between 1939 and 1945 (about 3% of the world's population!). We haven't yet factored in the wars that led to the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, or the war between Russia and Ukraine. So, before we conjure images or imaginaries about 'Africans who cannot live together in peace and harmony', we may want to go back to the image, and look at Paul Nash's The Ypres Salient at Night, or any of his other images of the death and destruction of war in Europe, for that matter. Any one of those European wars, and any other war, is viewed through lenses of national identity, class analysis, discomfort, or it is relegated to the past. As one commentator said about the likelihood that Albert Luthuli may have been killed by apartheid agents: 'The man died 58 years ago and if he was murdered the perpetrators are also long dead. We need to concentrate on the living!' This wilful obfuscation reminds us of what Stoneman suggested: that the visuals of war are political. Our responses to the imagery (or who the killers are/were) becomes, then, political. Taking the commentator at his/her word… we are back to the line we draw under things that sit uncomfortably. Which wars or injustices should we remember? When or what is the starting point for 'moving on'? Whose death means more or less? Photographs and images remind us of the cruelty, the savagery and violence and destruction of war. We choose to forget, or ignore wars, or are disinterested in wars (war remains interested in us!), and photographs and paintings, the image, bring wars to our desktops and into our lives. Faced, then, with images of 'war and of waste… (we) turn right over to the TV page' — as the words to the song go. Sheer horror We may not go through the pain and suffering that the people of Sudan experience every second of every day. We can only imagine, when we look at the photographs and imagery, the sheer horror. The images we see of Sudan should make us uncomfortable, but they clearly do not. A lesson about the US war in Vietnam remains with me. The woman who (still) remains the finest thinker on photography and war, the late Susan Sontag, made us think whether anyone's life was worth preserving — as much as the life of a US soldier. Mark Twain reminded us, long before that, that there was an extraordinary cultural chauvinism at work that was both existential and ideological, and in terms of which the lives of 'others' were really meaningless, and not worth saving, or even considering (probably because 'the perpetrators are also long dead. We need to concentrate on the living') if it means we have someone who has to take responsibility. To the families and friends of people who continue to be killed in Sudan, the memories may fade, but the photographs will remain. DM
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Family unknowingly had rare, valuable painting for 150 years
(NEXSTAR) – A painting hanging in a French family's living room turned out to be far more valuable than just another trinket or heirloom. An auctioneer doing inventory on the family property in Touraine discovered it was an original artwork by Eugène Delacroix, a French Romantic painter who died in 1863. The family obtained the oil-on-canvas artwork, titled 'Études de lions couchés' (study of reclining lions), at a sale after Delacroix's death. According to auctioneer who made the discovery, Malo de Lussac, the family wasn't sure that it was a Delacroix. 'Double sunrise' will be visible this weekend: How and where to see it The existence of the painting was 'previously unknown,' auction house Hotel Drouot says. 'This previously unknown and unpublished artwork is all the more exceptional as Delacroix, who is usually renowned for his ink sketches and studies of lions, is rarely known for painted versions,' Hotel Drouot said in a press release. One of the seven lions on the painting is less finished than the rest, appearing as a sketch on the left side. The backside of the painting has palette test marks on the canvas and stretcher. The painting will be presented at auction on Friday. Its estimated value is between 200,000 and 300,000 euros. Eugène Delacroix, born in 1798, is regarded as the leader of the Romantic movement in French painting. His works are far more likely to be found in the Louvre than basements or living rooms. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
26-03-2025
- Science
- New York Times
New A.I. Project Explores Mysteries of Delacroix, Master of Romanticism
Barthélémy Jobert is so engrossed in the 19th century that he takes an expansive view of it: For him it began intellectually in the 1760s and ran into the 1920s. A leading art historian in Paris and former president of what is now Sorbonne University, he is particularly expert in the work of Eugène Delacroix, the French Romantic artist best known for his 1830 painting 'Liberty Leading the People,' a stridently anti-royalist work depicting citizens rising up against a despot. Now, Jobert will be getting a significant boost in his ability to use artificial intelligence and other 21st-century technologies in his yearslong quest to explore Delacroix's art and resolve mysteries about its attribution. This week, Schmidt Sciences, a nonprofit founded by the former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy Schmidt, plans to announce a new grantmaking program that will underwrite Jobert's project, known as Digital Delacroix, with funding thought to be in the high six figures. Jobert aims to digitize and analyze many things Delacroix — his letters and journals, the murals he painted in the second half of his career, even contemporary newspaper accounts of the man and his work — and cross-reference them for scholarly purposes while putting them online for others to explore. The grant from Schmidt will allow him to obtain more computing power and augment his current team of six by hiring a couple of researchers trained in both art history and A.I. — a rare breed, even in France. For Schmidt Sciences, Digital Delacroix is the first of a projected 10 to 15 grant recipients that will receive a total of $10 million to apply A.I. to research in the humanities. Outlays are expected to range from less than $100,000 to as much as $1.5 million. (Schmidt Sciences would not provide an exact figure for its support of Digital Delacroix.) Sorbonne University made a brief announcement of the organization's involvement in February, shortly after an international A.I. summit was held in Paris, but its role has not been detailed until now. For Jobert, it's the culmination of a passion he's had for almost 40 years, ever since he was a young teaching fellow at Harvard. He was standing in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts before Delacroix's 'The Lamentation,' an 1848 canvas that shows mourners surrounding the body of Christ after the crucifixion, when he was struck by a figure in the foreground: John the Baptist, draped in the red cloak that often symbolizes his beheading. 'I cannot explain why,' Jobert said in a video interview, 'but for me, this red cloak is the image of soul.' At this point, Jobert has assembled an informal consortium of French institutions that includes units of the Ministry of Culture and the National Center for Scientific Research as well as a center for the humanities, a center for A.I. and other agencies at Sorbonne University. Work on digitizing the texts is well underway, so Jobert's attention is currently centered on the murals Delacroix painted for the grand buildings occupied by the French Parliament, in rooms that are almost never open to the public. His focus is on the National Assembly — the lower house of Parliament, which occupies the 18th-century Palais Bourbon. 'We have two projects,' he said. 'The first one is to make them accessible on a website' — to enable people to take a virtual tour of the legislature's library, the vast chamber where Delacroix labored for nine years, and to zoom in on anything they want. The second goal is to analyze these murals to settle questions of attribution: What did Delacroix paint himself, and what did he leave to his assistants? 'This is the part in which A.I. is playing the main role,' he said. It's also the part where Schmidt Sciences steps in. 'This question of multiple authorship is a really tricky one,' said Brent Seales, the American computer scientist who heads the organization's humanities-and-A.I. branch. Using A.I. to solve it is hard, he added, 'which is one of the reasons I love it.' Seales has encountered hard problems before. Years ago he and his team at the University of Kentucky invented a process that used A.I., among other technologies, to decipher the contents of carbonized papyrus scrolls excavated from the banks of the Dead Sea and from a Roman villa that was buried in the eruption that destroyed Pompeii. 'As philanthropists, we have the ability to take risks that government and businesses cannot or will not,' Wendy Schmidt said in an email. Bloomberg currently estimates the Schmidts' wealth at $32.5 billion. One reason the attribution effort is expected to be difficult is that it relies on analytical A.I., a branch of the field that's quite distinct from generative A.I., which set off the current frenzy with the release of tools like ChatGPT in 2022. Compared with the breakneck advances generative A.I. has made since, progress in analytical A.I. seems almost tortoise-like. To figure out who painted what, researchers under Jobert's direction have made up-close, high-resolution photographs of the murals and reconstructed the works in digital 3-D using photogrammetry. Technical data on Delacroix and other painters is being provided by a research unit within the Ministry of Culture. All of this will be fed into a computer vision system that will be trained to recognize Delacroix's brushstrokes and those of his studio assistants. 'We think there's a high possibility it will work,' said Xavier Fresquet, deputy director of the Sorbonne Center for Artificial Intelligence. Jobert wants to do the same with the murals in an even grander chamber in the 17th-century Palais du Luxembourg, home of the Senate. But his ultimate goal is far more ambitious than that: a virtual reconstruction, using generative A.I., of the allegorical murals by Delacroix that once adorned the Salon de la Paix in the Hôtel de Ville, the city hall of Paris. Their central element was 'Peace Descends to Earth,' a ceiling panel that depicted, in the words of the 19th-century writer and critic Théophile Gautier, 'the earth weeping, raising her eyes to heaven to plead for an end to her sorrows.' Earth's prayers would go unanswered, in life if not in art. In 1871, eight years after Delacroix's death, his murals went up in flames along with the rest of the building when the revolutionaries of the Paris Commune torched the place as they were being crushed by government forces. What remains in the archives is a single photograph, Delacroix's sketches, some etchings and two watercolors presented to Queen Victoria in 1855 by the Emperor Napoleon III. Nonetheless, Jobert is hopeful that he'll be able to come up with a reasonable facsimile of the Hôtel de Ville murals. 'We won't give you an exact reproduction of the room as it was. That's impossible,' he said. 'But we will give you what it could have been' — and would be still, if peace had indeed descended.
