Stanley Meisler
was
a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles
Times based in Nairobi covering Sub-Saharan Africa from 1967 to 1973; in
Mexico City covering Latin America from 1973 to 1976; in Madrid covering
Spain and Portugal from 1976 to 1978; in Toronto covering Canada and Latin
America from 1978 to 1983; in Paris covering France, Spain and Portugal from 1983 to
1988; in New York City covering the United Nations from 1991 to 1996;
and was a foreign affairs writer in Washington DC from 1988 to 1998. Meisler
continues to contribute occasionally to the Los Angeles Times.
Back out in the world, Afghanistan's hidden treasures... WASHINGTON DC - Ancient
artifacts secretly kept in a bank vault in the war-torn country, safe from
marauding militia, looters and the Taliban, are now on a museum tour for all the
world to see. In an act that provoked worldwide outrage, the fundamentalist
Taliban rulers of Afghanistan in March 2001 destroyed the monumental statues of
Buddha that had been carved into the rock cliffs of Bamiyan 1,600 years ago. The
shocking destruction was not an isolated event. As part of the same campaign,
the Taliban sent hordes of militants into the Kabul Museum to smash every
statue, no matter how small, that depicted a human figure or any other
creature... But the museum did not die. Unknown to outsiders, museum director
Omara Khan Massoudi and his assistants had packed the finest treasures of the
museum during the 1980s and placed them in the vaults of the Central Bank in the
presidential palace. "What kept them safe," says Hiebert, "was the code of
silence"... ART June 15, 2008
Landscapes are the draw at National Gallery WASHINGTON DC - For much of
the 19th century, scores of French painters, laden with knapsacks and portable
easels, trekked through the Forest of Fontainebleau to capture the shifting
wonders of nature with their brushes right on the spot. Some came for weekends;
some stayed for a lifetime. Pioneers of the new art called photography, laden
with even more equipment, made the pilgrimage as well. So did the young
Impressionists. Together they all raised the art of landscape to new heights in
France. A generous sampling of this work is on display in an exhibition at the
National Gallery of Art that celebrates a place rather than a painter. Called
"In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographers From Corot to
Monet," the show closes June 8 and goes on to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston
in July. The place celebrated is a forest that was once the hunting grounds for
the royal chateau in the town of Fontainebleau... ART April 20, 2008
2007
'Condoleezza Rice: An American Life,' by Elisabeth Bumiller A talented, ambitious woman whose judgment is clouded by intense loyalty...In late August 2005, Condoleezza Rice stepped into a Broadway theater to see
the musical "Spamalot." At the end, when the lights came on, some in the
audience noticed the secretary of State. Evidently angry about both the war in
Iraq and the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, they stood up
and booed. A careful, well-documented new biography, "Condoleezza Rice: An
American Life," will not dissipate such anger. Elisabeth Bumiller, who covered
the White House for the New York Times during most of George W. Bush's
presidency, has labored to present an evenhanded look at Rice. She shows some
sympathy for her subject and even more understanding. But, in the end, this is a
portrait of a talented, ambitious woman who has allowed intense loyalty to cloud
her judgment and good sense... BOOK REVIEW December 11, 2007
Condoleezza Rice: An American Life by Elisabeth Bumiller (Random House)
J.M.W. Turner's sprawling landscape WASHINGTON DC - In a
Washington exhibition, the British painter's wide-ranging influence is seen
through the swirls and mists of his search for the sublime... A dramatic
exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1966 set the way many
Americans still look at the works of the British painter Joseph Mallord William
Turner. By then, Turner had been dead for more than a century -- hardly a
conventional subject for a temple of Modern art. But, by concentrating on his
later paintings, filled with swirls of color and light and mists and fire and
storm, the museum hailed Turner as a godfather of French Impressionism and, even
more important, a precursor of American Abstract Expressionism. The show
prompted abstract painter Mark Rothko to joke, "That guy Turner learned a lot
from me!" Now, another major exhibition, at the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, is trying to put Turner in better perspective... ART November 18, 2007
Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries WASHINGTON DC - Smithsonian exhibition explores a world trader's legacy...
In the 1400s, decades before the voyages of Christopher Columbus, sailors from
little Portugal braved the oceans to map the world, carry back spices and other
treasures, spread Christianity and set down an empire that would extend in the
next two centuries from Africa to India to China to Brazil. The impact was
enormous. Europe was inundated with images and objects from the outside world.
And, from then on, the rest of the world would never escape the influence of
Europe... ART August 12, 2007
'Sargent and Venice': an artist's true passion revealed VENICE, ITALY - John Singer Sargent put portraits aside to capture the
workings of an ethereal city... John Singer Sargent was the most popular
portrait painter of his day, but the tedium of the work often oppressed him. In
letters to friends, he liked to mock his lucrative success in what he called "paughtraits."
He found it a nuisance "to entertain the sitter and to look happy when one feels
wretched." When he took time off from the portraits, he would say, "No more
mugs!" Accompanied by friends and family, and armed with oils and watercolors,
he would leave his London studio every year for a long vacation, usually to the
Alps in the summer and then south to Venice in the fall... ART July 8, 2007
A legacy of Modernism's breakaway style 'Designing a New World: 1914-1939' shows how a movement moved a century
function forward... When portions of "Ulysses" first appeared in a literary
magazine from 1918 to 1920, its Irish author, James Joyce, wanted the world to
know that he had created a new kind of novel, resembling nothing that came
before. When Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" premiered in Paris in 1913, the
Russian composer's music was so dissonant, new and shocking that the audience
rioted. Other artists such as the painter Pablo Picasso, architect Le Corbusier,
designer Marcel Breuer and filmmaker Fritz Lang wanted to do the same: break
completely with the past and re-create their form of art, taking it to new and
different heights... ART April 8, 2007
2006
Artwork for the masses borne of revolution An exhibition highlights the golden age of Mexican printmaking... In
the wake of a long revolution against dictatorship, Mexican artists vowed in the
1920s to create works that would instruct and enrich the masses. They even
signed a manifesto proclaiming, "We repudiate so-called easel painting and every
kind of art favored by ultra-intellectual circles." Out of this mood came the
great murals of modern Mexico, especially the monumental works of Diego Rivera,
José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. But the mood also spawned a
lesser-known burst of creativity — an enormous production of prints for 30
years. Unlike paintings that would likely be savored by rich families in their
homes, the multiples of these woodcuts, linoleum cuts and lithographs could
reach many people... ART October 29, 2006
Countrymen, get reacquainted George Washington the man, the myths and even the teeth make up the new
Mount Vernon experience... The private organization that runs Mount Vernon,
the home of George Washington, will soon open an opulent and dramatic visitors
complex that will try to fill a need spawned by the growing ignorance of
Americans about their own history. There was a time when most visitors came to
the 18th century estate and lovely grounds in northern Virginia already full of
facts and insights into the life and times of the first president of the United
States. But this is no longer so — a lack of knowledge that first attracted
notice in the 1990s... ART October 22, 2006
Not just a Jew in a French jail Historians are hailing accused 19th-century spy Alfred Dreyfus as a hero,
not a simple victim of anti-Semitism... In 1899, a broken Alfred Dreyfus
accepted a presidential pardon — and its implication that he had committed
treason against France. It was a matter of life or death, for Dreyfus feared
that he would not survive the notorious penal colony on Devil's Island, where he
had been sent after a military court convicted him of betraying his country.
Those who believed that he was innocent and had called for his exoneration were
deeply disappointed. "We were prepared to die for Dreyfus," said poet Charles
Péguy, "but Dreyfus was not." His decision to accept a pardon is one of the
cornerstones of a long-standing French perception that Dreyfus is the model of a
submissive victim. But on the eve of the 100th anniversary of his exoneration in
1906 and the official end of the tumultuous affair that convulsed France for a
dozen years, that view may be changing. Indeed, some historians see Dreyfus the
patriot, not Dreyfus the victim... OPINION July 9, 2006
Processing Dada's Merit WASHINGTON - The movement of "very calculated nonsense" that
influenced contemporary art gets a striking exhibition... It is hard to take
seriously a group of grown men and women who submit a store-bought urinal to an
art show, declaim meaningless sounds as poetry, stage mock trials of novelists
they dislike, wear a string with two empty tin cans as a bra, provide an ax for
dissatisfied art connoisseurs, call their movement Dada, and then proclaim
proudly, "Dada means nothing"... ART April 9, 2006
