Across the US, artists have responded to the death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests with impactful and urgent work. In New York, artworks have appeared supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, and remembering the deaths of, among others, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and Eric Garner
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Sushant Singh Rajput, Bollywood star, dies aged 34
Tributes for the ‘bright young actor’ flow from colleagues, cricketers and India’s prime minister
Popular Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead at his Mumbai residence on Sunday, police and Indian media reports have said.
Initial reports, citing police sources, said the 34-year-old’s body was found in his apartment in suburban Bandra.
Continue reading...Christie’s withdraws ‘looted’ Greek and Roman treasures
Four antiquities pulled from auction after claims they came from illicit excavations
Christie’s has quietly withdrawn four Greek and Roman antiquities from auction this month amid allegations that they had been looted from illicit excavations.
The items were in the original brochure catalogue but later removed from the online site with no explanation.
Continue reading...Phoebe Bridgers: ‘Aged 12 or 13 I was just like, I’m the next Bob Dylan’
As she prepares to release a second album, the Californian indie rocker reflects on provocative lyrics, recent collaborations and what she now thinks of Ryan Adams
You are a talented young musician whose career has taken off in the past couple of years. Artists you greatly admire want to collaborate with you, declaring themselves “floored” by your music, and excitable comparisons are made to the work of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Now you’re touring the world, jetting off to faraway places that you could only dream about while growing up in west-coast suburbia. But when you get there – to Japan, say – you find yourself strangely unmoved by your surroundings. Worse, you end up longing for the everyday comforts you’ve left behind. You would rather skip the visit to the temple or the ride on the bullet train with your bandmates and sneak home.
This is the predicament in which Phoebe Bridgers finds herself on her new album, Punisher, a collection of beautifully wrought songs that cast a razor-sharp eye on the absurdities of modern life. In Bridgers’s lyrical universe, dreams that appear beguiling from a distance are liable to fall flat in the space of a chorus. “I wanted to see the world,” she sings rousingly on Kyoto. “Then I flew over the ocean/ And I changed my mind.”
Continue reading...Top public school accused of ‘toxic culture of racism’ among pupils
Letter from Westminster alumni demands changes to teaching of black culture
More than 250 former pupils at Westminster School have signed a letter demanding that it combat the “toxic culture of racism within the student body”, promote the teaching of black culture and confront its links with the slave trade.
It is one of the first indications that Britain’s public school system is now coming under pressure to follow the example of many universities and examine how it tackles racial and colonial issues.
Continue reading...Musicians hit hard by festival cancellations in southern Africa
Coronavirus has forced events including AfrikaBurn and Bushfire to cancel, leaving performers without promotional platforms and income
In a region where live music is everything – both for audiences and for performers heavily reliant on live appearances to make a living – the widespread cancellation of festivals across southern Africa has hit the music business hard.
May should have seen the Bushfire festival in Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland), Zakifo and AfrikaBurn in South Africa, and Azgo in Mozambique. Next month would have been Zimfest in Zimbabwe. All have been cancelled – or replaced with online versions – along with dozens of smaller live events that have been growing in recent years, bringing in tourism, showcasing talent and culture, and boosting southern Africa’s music industry.
Continue reading...JK Rowling: UK domestic abuse adviser writes to Sun editor
Interview with author’s first husband unacceptable, says abuse commissioner
The government’s lead adviser on domestic abuse has written to the editor of the Sun to condemn the newspaper’s decision to publish a front page interview with JK Rowling’s first husband, under the headline: “I slapped JK and I’m not sorry.”
In the letter seen by the Guardian, Nicole Jacobs, the independent domestic abuse commissioner, said it was “unacceptable that the Sun has chosen to repeat and magnify the voice of someone who openly admits to violence against a partner”.
Continue reading...‘I loved the weirdness’ – can Laura Marling’s crowdless gig rescue live music?
The singer played ticketed livestreams from an (almost) empty church to brighten up lockdown. We took up a lonely pew to see if it could match the real thing
After three months of shuttered concert venues, hearing Laura Marling’s voice eddy around the Union Chapel in north London is like being dosed with a vitamin I had been leaving out of my diet. It’s almost like hearing live music for the first time; a different kind of beauty than you get on a daily walk or a drive to a castle, something vividly real but constantly evaporating into the air.
Aside from 25 production staff, there’s almost no one else in the venue for this concert, which is being streamed online as one of the first fully realised gigs since the arrival of coronavirus. Backed solely by her acoustic guitar, Marling plays one set for the UK in the evening and a later one for a US audience. She is recorded in crystal clarity and filmed on three cameras, two of them roving around and approaching her, capturing the changing weather across her face.
Continue reading...Spanish archaeologist sentenced for faking Basque finds
‘Third-century’ artefacts with hieroglyphics and Basque words referred to non-existent gods and to René Descartes
A Spanish archaeologist whose staggering discoveries included one of the earliest representations of the crucifixion and proof that the written Basque language was centuries older than previously thought has been found guilty of faking the finds.
The saga began in June 2006 when Eliseo Gil presented artefacts excavated from the Roman town of Veleia, near the Basque city of Vitoria.
Continue reading...Harry Enfield says blacking up as Mandela was ‘so wrong it was right’
On Radio 4’s Today programme, the comedian justified decision to portray former South African president in blackface
Harry Enfield has defended the use of blackface on television in an interview broadcast on Radio 4’s Today programme. In conversation with host Nick Robinson and fellow guest Ava Vidal, the comedian aimed to justify his decision to portray Nelson Mandela, describing it as “so wrong that it was right”.
Enfield, known for playing characters including Loadsamoney and Kevin the Teenager on television, said he had also used makeup to play an Indian soldier in a BBC programme, a decision he also deemed appropriate.
Continue reading...Bird figurine is earliest Chinese artwork ever discovered, say experts
‘Refined’ 2cm carving found in Henan dates to palaeolithic period up to 13,000 years ago
A tiny figurine of a bird, carved from burnt bone and no bigger than a £1 coin, is the earliest Chinese artwork ever discovered, according to an international team of archaeologists.
The carving, less than 2cm in length, has been dated to the palaeolithic period, between 13,800 and 13,000 years ago, which pushes back the earliest known date of east Asian animal sculpture by more than eight millennia.
Continue reading...Toppling Edward Colston’s statue is unlikely to be enough to stop public anger
Few imperial icons, including Churchill, will escape the need to reappraise Britain’s past
The toppling of slaver Edward Colston’s statue has electrified a longer term – and already deeply polarised – debate among British historians and academics, with some celebrating a “moment of history” as others warned of dark consequences for society.
Inaction over figures such as Colston had bred anger that would be felt “all over Britain”, said Andrea Livesey, a historian specialising in the study of slavery and its legacies and who described the events in Bristol as “wholly justified”.
Continue reading...‘The older I get, the less I fear’: meet the Italian Larry David
A decade after his two much-loved comedies about the vicissitudes of ageing, director Gianni Di Gregorio explains why, against his own expectations, he had to make another
In 2000, after a decade of caring for his ailing mother in her large flat in Rome, Gianni Di Gregorio wrote a comedy about a bloke called Gianni who looks after his 93-year-old mother in a large flat in Rome. No one was interested in the story, in which the unemployed bachelor ends up running around after a cohort of old ladies whose spirit and vigour remain undimmed despite various ailments. Everyone thought he was crazy: who would be interested in a funny film about four old women and a middle-aged bloke?
Related: Gianni Di Gregorio: The incidental director
Continue reading...Remains of earliest purpose-built playhouse found in east London
Location of the Red Lion, which predated the Globe, has been subject of debate for years
Archaeologists believe they have found remains of one of the most elusive of all known Elizabethan structures – the earliest purpose-built playhouse in Britain and a prototype for a theatre that staged plays by a young William Shakespeare.
The Red Lion is thought to have been built around 1567 and probably played host to travelling groups of players. Its precise location has been the subject of conjecture and debate for a number of years, but archaeologists are as certain as they can be that they have found its remains at a site in the East End of London where a self-storage facility once stood.
Continue reading...Dalai Lama to release album of mantras and teachings set to music
‘Music has the potential to reach many more people,’ says the Tibetan spiritual leader
The Dalai Lama, whose message of humanity, harmony and peace delivered with a smile has won millions of global followers, is releasing an album of mantras set to music to mark his 85th birthday next month.
The Tibetan spiritual leader’s first foray into the world of recorded music comes five years after he appeared at the Glastonbury music festival, where he warned of the dangers of climate change, and the American star Patti Smith sang Happy Birthday to him on stage.
Continue reading...Catherine Deneuve was Johnny Hallyday’s secret love, book claims
Revelation that celebrated actor was late rocker’s ‘Lady L’ takes France by surprise
More than two years after his death, the French rocker Johnny Hallyday is still causing sparks between the women in his life.
The late star, a notorious womaniser, is at the centre of a love-triangle spat over claims the actor Catherine Deneuve was his lifelong soulmate and a factor in his split with his first wife, the singer Sylvie Vartan.
Continue reading...‘It’s a big turning point’: is this the end of racist monuments in America?
Protests across the country have led to the removal of many statues honouring racist figures – but hundreds still remain
Last week in Richmond, Virginia, protesters scrawled on a monument of the Confederate army commander Robert E Lee as an act of resistance against police brutality and racism. They wrote “Black Lives Matter”, “Blood On Your Hands” and “Stop White Supremacy” in spray paint, often in red.
At night, there was a projection of George Floyd’s face, bearing the words “No Justice, No Peace”.
Continue reading...Bon Appétit editor Adam Rapoport resigns over ‘brown face’ photo
Several prominent staff members had spoken out about the photograph and the company’s internal culture
Adam Rapoport, the editor in chief of a popular US food magazine, Bon Appétit, has announced his resignation after a 2003 photograph of him dressed in “brown face” surfaced on social media.
In a statement posted on Instagram, Rapoport said he was stepping down “to reflect on the work that I need to do as a human being and to allow Bon Appétit to get to a better place”.
Continue reading...How Hollywood has tried, and mostly failed, to tackle police racism
From Birth of a Nation to Watchmen, the big and small screens have tried to wrestle with racial tensions within law enforcement with mixed results
As we’ve all seen, when it comes to American police brutality, the gloves are now off and the masks too. Faced with yet more incontrovertible evidence of brutal and racist policing – both the killing of George Floyd and others, and some forces’ response to the public protests – it has become virtually impossible to maintain the image of American law enforcement officers as straightforward protectors and servers of the people.
Related: George Floyd protests: fired officer to appear in court as calls to defund police sweep US – live
Continue reading...2,500 rare texts from Islamic world to go online for free
National Library of Israel is digitising collection of manuscripts and books dating back to ninth century
More than 2,500 rare manuscripts and books from the Islamic world covering a period of more than a thousand years are to be made freely available online.
The National Library of Israel (NLI) in Jerusalem is digitising its world-class collection of items in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, dating from the ninth to the 20th centuries, including spectacularly beautiful Qur’ans and literary works decorated with gold leaf and lapis lazuli.
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