Roundup: Pop Culture & the Arts ... Movies, Documentaries and Museum Exhibits

TS Eliot’s snort of rejection for Animal Farm

IT must rate as the literary snub of the 20th century. T S Eliot, one of Britain’s greatest poets, rejected George Orwell’s Animal Farm for publication on the grounds of its unconvincing Trotskyite politics. Eliot, a former director of Faber and Faber, the publisher, wrote his rejection in a highly critical letter in 1944, one of many private papers made available for the first time by his widow Valerie for a BBC documentary. When Orwell submitted his novel, an allego

Celebrations Mark 90 Years of Bauhaus

Bauhaus might be turning 90, but for enthusiasts of the German design movement, the art, furniture and architecture it inspired still looks fresh and young. The school was founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, who wanted to create something bold and forward-thinking in the wake of World War I, which he described as a "catastrophe of world history." Gropius was 35 when he applied to the city of Weimar to establish an academy there. By the time he received his permit,

To Fans, Queensboro Bridge Is a Steel Swan, Not an ‘Ugly Duckling’

This is about history, and not just because Monday is the 100th anniversary of the day the first cars officially crossed the Queensboro Bridge. This is about family history, the kind of history some might prefer to forget and certainly not speak about. Somewhere on the East Side lives an 83-year-old woman who can look out her window at the Queensboro Bridge. This is the history part: The bridge outside her window — a 3,724-foot span of stone and steel and fanciful finials between th

Restorers 'wiped away' precious details from rare William Shakespeare portraits

When the only known portrait of William Shakespeare was unveiled earlier this month, it was hailed by academics and fans alike as taking us a step closer to the true likeness of the great playwright. Experts believed the newly discovered painting, called the Cobbe portrait, which was painted when the writer was still alive, and another version called the Folger portrait had both been altered after Shakespeare's death. But it has emerged that art conservators who joined

Artist Angered by Scrapping of Communist Solidarity Snog

When Moscow-based artist Dimitri Vrubel visited Berlin this week to attend the opening of a new exhibition at the Foreign Ministry called "Born in the USSR," he got quite a shock when he took a stroll along the East Side Gallery, often dubbed "the world's largest open-air museum." It was here, in 1990, that he painted an image on the 1316-meter stretch of the remaining Berlin Wall that fast became iconic. But the clinch between comrades Erich Honec

A Telescope to the Past as Galileo Visits U.S.

Only two of the dozens of telescopes Galileo built survive. Neither have ever been out of Florence since Galileo’s time. That is, until this week, when Giorgio Strano, curator at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science there, escorted this humble tube to the Franklin Institute. Scholars do not know when Galileo built this particular telescope, or what he saw with it, but it still has its original optics. A brief audience with the telescope — under the stern gaze of Dr. St

Paintings Attributed to Hitler to Be Sold in UK

Among the 13 pieces to be sold on April 23 at the Mullock's auction house in Shropshire, England, is a self-portrait painted by Hitler when he was a young struggling artist living in Vienna. The watercolor shows Hitler sitting pensively on a stone bridge, wearing a brown suit. His face lacks a nose and mouth, as well as the trademark square moustache. Two years ago, 21 paintings attributed to Hitler were sold for 118,000 pounds ($170,000), or more than twice the pre-sal

Re-Collecting George Grosz's Art

A rear apartment building in Berlin's Wilmersdorf neighborhood; a studio on the top floor; a journey to the past: Art historian Ralph Jentsch holds photos that are more than 90 years old. "Unbelievable," he says. The radiator is still the same, and so is the door. "This is the way it looked when George Grosz painted in this room." It was in this studio where Grosz, the great expressionist, Dadaist and social critic, created the art that made him world-famous -- p

Will the real Bill Clinton stand up in Peter Morgan's new film?

The funny thing about the news that Peter Morgan's next project will be Clinton/Blair is the realisation that it will be the first time a character called "Bill Clinton" has appeared on film. Funny because moviegoers and TV viewers will be forgiven for feeling they have seen Clinton on celluloid a thousand times before. And in a way they have. Jack Stanton – John Travolta's girl-chasing, hoarse-voiced, charismatic southern governor seeking the presidency in Primary Colors

Is this 600-year-old terracotta bust Leonardo Da Vinci's lost masterpiece?

A 600-year-old terracotta bust discovered beneath a pile of rubbish in an Italian palazzo may be by Leonardo Da Vinci, art historians said today. Experts believe the work, showing a sorrowful-looking man, is St Jerome because of its exquisite craftsmanship, expressive power and realism is by Da Vinci. Initially the bust, found in the Palazzo Chigi Saracini in Siena was thought to be by Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488), who worked at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici in n

Yale U. Defends Its Ownership of Famous Painting by Van Gogh

In 1888, Vincent van Gogh spent three nights painting an image of the café downstairs from his lodgings in Arles, France. In a letter to his brother Theo, he called the painting “one of the ugliest I have done … I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green.” On Monday, Yale University filed a federal lawsuit to establish its title to the painting, “The Night Café,” which was donated to the university in 1960 as part of the estate of Stephen C.

'Great Escape' PoWs remember comrades... and boo 'silly' Steve McQueen

It was film night in Stalag Luft III and the dwindling band of surviving PoWs was marking the 65th anniversary of the daring breakout by watching The Great Escape. Even though this is Hollywood’s celebration of their story and ensured their enduring fame, it wasn’t the Nazis they booed — it was Steve McQueen and his motorbike. “We were not impressed when that film came out,” said Reginald Cleaver, 86, a flight engineer who had been shot down over the Netherlands and who helped to m

Top Gun Heroes 'Based On Brit Flying Aces' says Historian

The 1986 film told the story of Maverick, Iceman and Goose, a group of macho and unmistakably American trainee fighter pilots. Set at the Miramar airbase in California, it was, in every sense, a patriotic feel-good film. But according to a new book by military historian Rowland White, the instructors who taught the pilots in real life were from Scotland. "I was very surprised to discover the British influence," White told Sky News Online.

Mark Twain rises again

The centenary of his death takes place next year but he is in the news again with the publication of a "new" short story, The Undertaker's Tale in The Strand magazine. This in turn heralds a new whole new collection of fiction and non-fiction, Who is Mark Twain?, to be published next month. Thirteen years ago, Twain made the headlines (and a special feature in the New Yorker) when a new "comprehensive" edition of Huckleberry Finn was published, inc

John Keane's Intelligent Design: More Paintings about War and Religion, Flowers Gallery, London

Photographs of the painter John Keane show him as unsmiling and intense. Some of his self-portraits - which include one of him walking naked through a Central American village, carrying a bloody heart - have the same feel. One half of his new exhibition, Intelligent Design, is in this spirit. The other half, though, is more playful - a dazzling series of visual conjuring tricks. Taken as a whole, it represents a departure for an artist whose career so far has been about chronicling the great pol

Vatican plots battle with Dan Brown over Da Vinci Code sequel

It was described as a “phantasmagorical cocktail of inventions”, a “masonic plot” and a “pot pourri of lies”. Now a nervous Vatican is braced for the sequel to The Da Vinci Code and the return of its nemesis, Dan Brown. Angels & Demonsis the latest Brown thriller to be turned into a film, and already the Catholic Church is agonising over how best to respond: to urge the faithful to boycott the film, or to ignore it? The Vatican and the Italian Catholic Church condemned The Da V

First, Frost/Nixon. Now, Lewinsky/Clinton?

Frost/Nixon playwright Peter Morgan has turned his attention to another POTUS. This summer he will be making his directorial debut with his own screenplay Special Relationship, telling the story of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. British playwright Peter Morgan has written a third script —in this case a screenplay— to complete his “Tony Blair trilogy” that began with the TV movie The Deal. The second installment was the Oscar-winner The Queen. And now there is —drumroll please— Sp

British Museum's Medieval Europe Gallery: a golden compass to a dark age

The first thing you see as you walk into the magnificent new medieval gallery at the British Museum is a vast hoard of gold coins. Displayed in a deep, haphazard pile glinting in the spotlights, they are so striking that you have to fight the urge to sink your hands in and feel the sensation of ancient gold running through your fingers. The coins, 1,273 of them, are from the Fishpool hoard, discovered along with various items of jewellery in 1966 during building works in the village

British Museum finds relics of 39 saints after 100 years

The new medieval gallery at the British Museum is full of beautiful images of saints in ivory, stone, gold and wood - but invisible to visitors, it also holds the bones of 39 real saints, whose discovery came as a shock to their curator. The relics, packed in tiny bundles of cloth including one scrap of fabric over 1,000 years old, were found when a 12th-century German portable altar was opened for the first time since it came into the British Museum collection in 1902.

Picasso's 'Guernica' returns to London

A full-size replica of Pablo Picasso's anti-war painting, Guernica, was unveiled in London yesterday. The tapestry version on display at the Whitechapel Art Gallery has hung for 24 years just outside the UN Security Council chamber in New York. Picasso completed his original in 1937 in protest at the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War. It was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery two years later. In the 1950s, the Spanis