Weekend Reading List: The Secret of the Sacred Feminine; The Secret Life of Tomatoes
What the frieze editors have been reading this week
What the frieze editors have been reading this week
- ‘In Welsh medieval legend, Cerridwen was an enchantress, her name derived from the Celtic word cerru, meaning cauldron; she embodied the transformative power of magic.’ Chloe Arridjis, for frieze, on Leonora Carrington and the secret of the sacred feminine
- ‘The power of a term like Anthropocene, it’s importance, has a very problematic quality.’ At Edge Effects, Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing discuss the ‘plantationocene’
- ‘I think one of the reasons I’m attracted to limbo or inbetween spaces, or even pretentiousness, is that I don’t think I’ve ever fitted into a particular category.’ Writer Dan Fox speaks with Michael Barron about limbo as a necessary state of artistic life, for Bomb
- ‘A document left behind in Aleppo presents a spreadsheet of punishments for various offences. Blasphemy was punishable by a death sentence, as was homosexual sex (both parties). Drinking wine would incur eighty lashes.’ Tom Stevenson reads 15,000 pages of Islamic State files, for the London Review of Books
- ‘For nearly a century, an oak in a German forest has helped lonely people find love — including the mailman who delivers its letters.’ For The Atlantic, Jeff Maysh on the tree with matchmaking powers
- War of the Worlds: for the New Yorker, Jiayang Fan profiles Liu Cixin, the leading sci-fi writer who is taking stock of China’s global rise
- ‘I wanted Kevin to be in my life forever, in that unbuilt house, and part of me thought he would be.’ For frieze, Andrew Durbin pays tribute to the poet Kevin Killian, who passed away last week
- Are your tinned tomatoes picked by slave labour? At the Guardian, Tobias Jones and Ayo Awokoya unveil the torrid conditions facing migrant agricultural labourers
- ‘The spectacle of expert analysts and thought leaders parsing the actions of a man with no expertise and no capacity for analysis is the purest acid satire.’ At the New Republic, David Roth attempts to make sense of Donald Trump’s petulant reign
- Following Father’s Day in the UK, we revisit Tom Junod’s 1996 article for GQ, ‘My Father's Fashion Tips’, in which he pays tribute to his dad’s impeccable style, but also of the secrets (and underwear rules) of a lost generation
- ‘I was so overwhelmed by the day-to-day reality of motherhood that I found it hard to imagine a future in which I could once again focus on myself and my career.’ At the Dublin Review, Dominique Cleary writes some notes on motherhood
- She made her name attacking Wall Street. Now she’s bringing her plans to fight outsized wealth to the 2020 Presidential race. At the New Yorker, Sheelah Kolhatkar asks: Can Elizabeth Warren win it all?
- ‘I used to be embarrassed by my lack of drive, until I realised that the strange moral value we place on overwork is sapping our lives of joy.’ Megan Nolan on why ambition is overrated, for the New Statesman
- ‘Late photographs show her smiling broadly in the unapologetic clutter of her studio, wearing immense reflective sunglasses that Elton John might have rejected as oversized and garish, her voluminous blonde frizz flying in every direction.’ At frieze, Gilda Williams pays tribute to the late painter Joyce Pensato
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