Central to the film is a reclamation of the Orpheus myth, a version of which the three young women read aloud together one night. Sophie registers distress at Orpheus’s fatal, selfish incompetence in looking back at Eurydice when he was told not to, and Marianne suggests he may have done it on purpose, preferring to lose the woman and savor, instead, the romance of his grief, making not “the lover’s choice, but the poet’s.” But it’s Héloïse who removes, for once, the fixation on Orpheus, his failings, and his loss. What if, she says to Marianne with an edge of defiance, it was Eurydice herself who chose art over staying together, who rather than leave the underworld with Orpheus, stopped and called out “Turn around,” preferring to remain down there and be preserved in poetry. A kind of freedom and a kind of permanence, rather than, as eighteenth-century marriage looks to be, an unwilling exchange of one for the other. — In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Love is a Work of Art
The Department of Extraordinary Upcycling is celebrating the new year by enjoying these shiny metal birbs created by South-Carolina based artist Matt Wilson using old silverware and pieces of driftwood or old lumber.
To look at spoons and forks in the silverware drawer, you wouldn’t think they were particularly birdlike, but Wilson’s silverware birbs feel so lifelike, it’s as though we’ve been using our silverware wrong all this time until he came along figured out just what to do.
It’s that time again, time for Craftversations, and this month I’m getting festive with Joey Richter! Tune in as we make little pinecone Christmas trees and talk School of Thrones, I Ship It, and Muzzled the Musical. And stay tuned for part two coming Friday!
ETA a source: these are from the book We Go to the Gallery by Miriam Elia, who is now in danger of being possibly sued by Penguin for, as they claim, infringing on the Ladybird brand.
Page 34: ‘“The balloon is worth $58million and if you touch it the security guards will call the police,” says Mummy.’This almost actually happened:Jeff Koons, Serpentine Gallery, 2009.
And that awkward moment when you didn’t realise Penguin had bought Ladybird.
