Latest news with #JoséMaríaVelasco
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Culture Agenda: The best things to do, hear, see or watch in Europe this week
Monday, monday - always a bit of a slog. The good news is, April is bringing sunshine and eclectic events to help hurry us out of hibernation. Alongside this week's suggestions, we also recommend checking out the Mauritshuis museum's showcase of 60 charismatic takes on Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Earring', and Centre Pompidou's celebration of Black artists in Paris. Following the sad news of Val Kilmer's passing, there's never been a better time to watch (or re-watch) some of his classics - put Kiss Kiss Bang Bang at the top spot. Speaking of cinema, keep in mind that this Thursday is the announcement of this year's Cannes Film Festival line-up... And it's already looking mighty promising. Keep your eyes peeled for our full coverage. Until next time, have a great week. José María Velasco: A View of Mexico Where: National Gallery (London, UK) When: Until 17 August 2025 To see a José María Velasco painting is to fall in love with Mexico, every brushstroke an encapsulation of the country's natural beauty and evolving state. The 19th-century polymath was renowned for his landscape works, combining fascinations in geology, archaeology and botany (to name a few) alongside commentary on creeping industrialisation. What resulted were deeply personal, intellectually textured and elegantly detailed studies of a place few had truly ever seen before, caught in periods of both gentle and dramatic transformation. Coinciding with the 200th anniversary of Mexico and the UK establishing diplomatic relations, this is also the first exhibition to be dedicated to a historical Latin American artist at the National Gallery. Inner child Where: Opera Gallery (London, UK) When: Until 5 May 2025 Openness on social media alongside a gradual shattering of stigmas around mental health have led to increased discourse on the concept of the inner child, a way for people to reconnect with and process early experiences and their ripple effect. It was an idea born from Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung's 'child archetype', who would have been 150 this year. The subject is explored in-depth at Opera Gallery's latest exhibition by two artists: Yayoi Kusama and the late Niki de Saint Phalle. A total of 41 artworks depict the playful, eclectic whimsy of childhood while sometimes subverting it, capturing the ways in which returning to our childlike selves opens up a renewed worldview that's both liberating and conflicting, tangled fragments resurfacing. A merging of creativity and psychology, it's a vibrant visual reminder of how art can help us to find and heal ourselves. War Child's Secret 7" 2025 exhibition Where: NOW Gallery (London, UK) When: 11 April – 1 June 2025 For their 2025 exhibition, the charity organisation War Child will display 700 specially designed record sleeves to be auctioned on 1 June 2025. Contributors include The Cure, Gregory Porter, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Jessie Ware, in collaboration with artists Yinka Ilori, Sir Paul Smith and Antony Gormley. It's the ultimate record sale for those looking to add something completely one-off to their collection while donating to a good cause. There's also an element of surprise: buyers only find out which artist designed their album cover after the auction ends. For those simply looking to admire, the exhibition includes a dedicated listening space where visitors can tune in to all seven records included, as well as the entire Secret 7" archive. Milan Design Week View this post on Instagram A post shared by milan design week 2025 (@ Where: Milan, Italy When: 7 - 13 April 2025 The world's biggest design festival somehow feels even bigger this year, featuring everything from striking modular lights by designer Michael Anastassiades, an installation by filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, and a collection of exquisite urns by acclaimed architects and designers like David Chipperfield and Audrey Large. While the main event is focused around the Salone del Mobile furniture fair, there are a plethora of diverse events happening all around the city, including plays, talks, and even an exhibition where visitors can live and sleep in the gallery - good to know, we'll undoubtedly need a nap after exploring everything here. Barcelona Beer Festival Where: Barcelona, Spain When: 11 April - 13 April 2025 Beautiful Barcelona and bountiful beer? Need we convince you more?! An idea brewed up by four friends in 2012, the BBF has become the largest craft beer event in Spain. More than 100 breweries from all over the world take part in this yeasty haze of tastings, workshops, talks and good old fashioned communal spirit fuelled by a shared love of sipping something refreshing in the heady glow of Spring. Did we mention that there are also over 600 craft beers on tap (including limited-edition brews)? Cheers to that - and drink responsibly, of course! Drop Where: European cinemas When: 11 April 2025 Ever been sitting on a train when someone airdrops you a meme of a cat wearing sunglasses, leaving you feeling deeply unsettled but also ever so slightly amused? Just us? Ok. Well, imagine that scenario BUT you're on a first date and the airdrops become increasingly sinister, asking you to murder the man you're with else they'll kill your son and sister. Ain't nothing amusing about that. This is the basis for Christopher Landon's latest horror film, Drop. It stars Meghann Fahy as Violet, a widow enjoying a fancy date with Henry (Brandon Sklenar) when the mysterious and nerve shredding events mentioned above start to unfold. A good reminder to switch off your phone when watching - and avoid dating? Death of a Unicorn Where: European cinemas When: Out now Don't mess with unicorns - especially ones with girthsome horns. This latest release from A24 stars Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega as a father and daughter trying to repair their rocky relationship when they accidentally crash into and kill a unicorn. This leads to the revelation that it has mystical abilities to cure cancer - something Rudd's boss (Richard E. Grant in full Saltburn mode) is excited to exploit, leading to gruesome consequences when the creatures retaliate. Out critic David Mouriquand wrote: "From the premise alone, there's plenty to love about Death Of A Unicorn. Caricatures of pharma arseholes getting bloodily impaled while a fractured father-daughter dynamic gets healed in the process. It sounds like something Roger Corman would have saluted." Then he liked it less... Read the full review here. The Last of Us Where: HBO When: 13 April 2025 After two long years, the wait is finally over baby girls. We last saw Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) during that explosive finale that had the rebel Fireflies militia dropping like, well, (fire)flies. Based on the seminal post-apocalyptic franchise by Naughty Dog, it takes place in a world ravaged by a mutated fungus called Cordyceps that transforms people into rabid zombies, with Ellie's character harbouring a rare immunity. Four years on from the events of season 1, we're now following Ellie on a revenge mission alongside her girlfriend Dina (Shannon Woodward). Expect more high tension, heartbreak and screaming 'holy shiitake' at the screen (we hope the book of puns returns too). Bon Iver: SABLE, fABLE When: 11 April 2025 Bon Iver has always captured transitions; the pause between thoughts, between moments, between who we were and who we're becoming. It feels like perfect timing, then, that we get this new album at the advent of spring, as softer realisations blossom from the chilly ruminations of winter. Recorded in Justin Vernon's hometown of Wisconsin at the tail end of the COVID pandemic, 'SABLE, fABLE' completes last year's EP release, which we called 'an achingly lovely confrontation of anxiety and change.' Through his trademark repetitions, reverberations and layered harmonies, Vernon soothed the restless emotions of a generation - and from the album's already released tracks, like 'If Only I Could Wait', it's clear we're about to be collectively healed once again.
The Guardian
26-03-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
José María Velasco review – proudly dull Mexican was wasted in wonderland
José María Velasco's 1894 painting Rocks is the size and format of a grand portrait but, instead of a socialite in taffeta or tails, it portrays a huge reddish-brown rock formation. It isn't even a very special outcrop, rather the kind of shapeless mass you might encounter on any mountain walk. That's the point. Velasco is a scientific artist who worked at a time when the Americas were a wonderland of discovery. He identified a new species of salamander that lives in a lake near Mexico City, only one of the many finds, living and fossilised, uncovered in his era across the New World. In 1902, the first Tyrannosaurus rex fossil was excavated in Montana; in 1909, very early life forms were found preserved in Canada's Burgess Shale. Most important of all, back in the 1830s, Charles Darwin found the first evidence for evolution in the rainforests and rocks of Brazil and Peru. So behind the ordinariness of Velasco's rocks is the discovery that Earth's fabric is made by continuous processes over many millions of years – not by sudden biblical catastrophes. These stones contain a secret, he says, and it's worth knowing. The people in Rocks on the Hill of Atzacoalco, painted in 1874, look as if they're seeking out such knowledge. They walk steadily up a path, the women in long skirts and a man in a white suit, with a parasol against the sun. But these little figures are dwarfed by the rocks looming over them, embedded with white crystal, stark as bones in the rusty-red rock. Velasco is more interested in the rocks than the people. Can't you see, the painting asks, how marvellous these ancient formations are? The paintings glow with the sense of a continent growing in time and space through scientific discovery. In two spectacular panoramic views of the Valley of Mexico, he paints snowcapped volcanoes floating above an almost nondescript populated plain, all squeezed into a single panorama, assimilable in a single sweeping gaze. Trained in several sciences before he opted for art, Velasco applies an objective eye to a world poised between antiquity and change. His fascination with nature doesn't stop him recording Mexico's industrialisation with equal curiosity. A goatherd tends his flock next to a new factory, its shiny metal pipes rendered with the same relish as the light green foliage in which the goatherd moves. Another painting is called The Textile Mill of La Carolina, Puebla, but this objectively depicted, low, white industrial structure is overlooked by a volcano. Velasco's volcanoes are satisfyingly cone-shaped, like scientific toys. Just add baking powder and vinegar. He's a subtle and pellucid colourist, bringing out blue-green hues in leaves, lingering on an emerald-coloured cactus and the azure of desert skies. His nature studies are truly lifelike. A painting of thick, velvety mafaffa leaves is both natural history and a passionate response to greenness. Yet if a landscape is brown or desert-yellow, he shows it. His 1878 painting The Baths of King Nezahualcoyotl is a determinedly unromantic view of ancient remains: Velasco insists archaeology is seeing the magic in broken fragments, not Indiana Jones adventures. He shows hard-to-decipher chunks of masonry and a flight of ancient steps in his precise depiction of this pre-Columbian site. It feels mean and even redundant to say Velasco is a bit dull. This admirable artist is, after all, proudly that. He cools the temperature with every smooth brushstroke, resisting the sublime effects that many other 19th-century landscape artists in the Americas laid on with a shovel. Not for him the romantic excesses of the US's Hudson River artist Frederic Church, who painted the volcano Cotopaxi erupting in Ecuador in a heavy metal concerto of fire. Geological structures are not there to awe us, says Velasco. They contain the scientific story of Earth. He is boring, though. The devil has all the best tunes and Mexico's visual history is replete with them. The Aztec empire on the eve of its Spanish conquest practised human sacrifice, made art with skulls, feathers, turquoise and jade, worshipped dangerous and disturbing gods. In Mexico's modern art such traditions have been enthusiastically embraced, from José Guadalupe Posada's carnivalesque skeleton prints to Frida Kahlo's personal mythology of pain. The National Gallery itself seems a little unsure about Velasco's appeal, stressing in the catalogue and wall chronology that he taught Kahlo's husband, Diego Rivera. It boasts this is 'the first ever exhibition dedicated to a historical Latin American artist at the National Gallery'. But so what? Mexico's art, from its chunky Mesoamerican monsters to its modern surrealisms, doesn't lack attention. Right outside the National Gallery, you can see Teresa Margolles's recreation of an Aztec skull tower on the fourth plinth. Velasco's work is different from such art simply because his eye is more European, academic and rationalist. This is a Mexico tamed. José María Velasco: A View of Mexico is at the National Gallery, London, 29 March to 17 August
