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Francis Bacon is one of Britain’s greatest twentieth century artists – a painter who captured and exposed the darker, stranger sides of life. He is the subject of a new biography, Revelations, by Annalyn Swan and Mark Stevens. Swan tells Andrew Marr how Bacon often fashioned his own autobiography, revelling in story-telling while immersed in the Soho nightlife.
Francis Bacon never hid his homosexuality, even at a time when it was illegal in Britain. The celebrated script writer Russell T Davies is well-known for his depiction of the gay scene in Manchester with his 1990s series, Queer as Folk. He now turns his attention to what happened in the decades of the HIV/ AIDs crisis in the Channel 4 series, It’s A Sin.
The composer Mark-Anthony Turnage took inspiration from a Francis Bacon’s triptych in his work Three Screaming Popes, combining expressionist complexity with English lyricism. 2020 was planned as a celebratory year for Turnage’s 60th birthday with several premieres scheduled. All were cancelled due to Covid-19. The composer discusses these works and what is inspiring him in the new year.
Producer: Katy Hickman Photograph: ‘Self-Portrait, 1975’ © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS 2021
Francis Bacon is one of Britain’s greatest twentieth century artists – a painter who captured and exposed the darker, stranger sides of life. He is the subject of a new biography, Revelations, by Annalyn Swan and Mark Stevens. Swan tells Andrew Marr how Bacon often fashioned his own autobiography, revelling in story-telling while immersed in the Soho nightlife.
Francis Bacon never hid his homosexuality, even at a time when it was illegal in Britain. The celebrated script writer Russell T Davies is well-known for his depiction of the gay scene in Manchester with his 1990s series, Queer as Folk. He now turns his attention to what happened in the decades of the HIV/ AIDs crisis in the Channel 4 series, It’s A Sin.
The composer Mark-Anthony Turnage took inspiration from a Francis Bacon’s triptych in his work Three Screaming Popes, combining expressionist complexity with English lyricism. 2020 was planned as a celebratory year for Turnage’s 60th birthday with several premieres scheduled. All were cancelled due to Covid-19. The composer discusses these works and what is inspiring him in the new year.
Producer: Katy Hickman Photograph: ‘Self-Portrait, 1975’ © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS 2021
Twenty-eight years after Francis Fukuyama declared the “end of history” and pronounced Western-style liberalism as the culmination of a Hegelian narrative of progress, pundits and academics of all stripes find themselves struggling to explain the failed prediction that China’s increased activity in international markets would inevitably lead to increasing political and social liberalization in that country.
With his ground-breaking book, Network Origins of the Global Economy: East vs. West in a Complex Systems Perspective, out from Cambridge University Press in 2020, Hilton L. Root takes a road less-traveled in contemporary economics and brings the analytical tools of systems theory to bear on this perplexing question, believing that a study of network structure might be able to shed more light than the traditional tools of economic analysis. This clearly argued and eminently readable book accounts for much of the current state of affairs by tracing the contrasting historical evolution of Europe as a Small World Network constituted by the dense connectivity of dynastic marriages between the continent’s royal houses, and China as a Hub and Spoke Network with communications flowing outward through the branches of its vast and robustly structured bureaucracy from a primary central node. Other networked social factors under consideration are the development of Europe’s blend of Germanic custom and Roman law, and China’s tradition of the ideal Confucian gentleman and its deep commitment to merit rather than birthright as the condition for ascending the ranks of administrative power structures. Emerging from this thoughtful and well-researched study is a compelling explanatory narrative of Europe’s ongoing capacity to adapt to rapid change and China’s pattern of long stretches of stability, sudden collapse, and subsequent resurrection of largely unchanged network structure. This adventurous scholarly work simultaneously opens new theoretical doors for economists and provides systems scholars with access to new dimensions of application.
Tom Scholte is a Professor of Directing and Acting in the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of British Columbia located on the unceded, ancestral, and traditional territory of the Musqueam people.
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The news to know for Monday, January 18th, 2021!
What to know about:
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Head to www.theNewsWorthy.com or see sources below to read more about any of the stories mentioned today.
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Sources:
Martin Luther King Jr. Day: MLK Day, USA Today, NY Times, CNN
National Guard Members Vetted: AP, Newsweek
Members of Congress Investigated: NY Times, Politico, WaPo
State Capitals Mostly Quiet: AP, Reuters, USA Today
Biden’s First 10 Days: NPR, Politico, WSJ
2nd COVID Strain Growing: NBC News, NY Times, WSJ, CDC
Smartwatches May Help Detect Virus: CBS News, 9to5 Mac, Stanford Study, Mount Sinai Study
Virgin’s Rocket Reaches Orbit: The Verge, AP, Axios, Virgin Orbit
NRA Declares Bankruptcy: FOX Business, CBS News, USA Today
Dating Apps Banning Rioters: WaPo, Cnet, The Verge
Wikipedia Turned 20: MarketWatch, Al Jazeera, Axios
Bills Fans Donate to Lamar Jackson Charity: USA Today, SI, ESPN
Money Monday: How Americans Plan to Spend Stimulus Money: Morning Consult, Forbes, CNN
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Introducing "Amarica's Constitution;" Electoral pitfalls in the Constitution and the election of 2020 - Part I.
It didn't feel smooth, but believe it or not, many things didn't go wrong that might have in the recent election. For example, what happens if a candidate dies on or about Election Day? Akhil and Andy discuss how issues of election timing, the electoral college, the Greeley Precedent, presidential succession, the 12th and 25th Amendments, and partisan politics make for a witches' brew that is denying Professor Amar his beauty sleep.
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By Matvei Yankelevich
After collecting data for more than twelve years the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) announced it may have detected new kinds of gravitational waves caused by colliding supermassive black holes. Professor Chiara Mingarelli of the University of Connecticut tells Roland Pease why this is such an exciting discovery.
Supermassive black holes are at the heart of galaxies and they are the engines of quasars, the brightest light sources in the heavens that can be seen across the expanse of the Universe. A team including Professor Xiaohui Fan of the University of Arizona has identified the oldest quasar in the universe.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus looks much like bat coronaviruses, but the mostly likely route into humans involved some other infected animal. Roland talks to Dr Dalan Bailey of The Pirbright Institute about how he has been looking for possible intermediaries.
A new study that looks into the genetics of twins and their families in Iceland shows that identical twins aren’t really identical. Kari Stefansson of the Icelandic genome company, DeCode, explains that the differences can appear when the twins are at the embryonic stage.
And , When it comes to speed, humans have got nothing on cheetahs - or greyhounds, kangaroos or zebras for that matter. It’s over long distances we really come into our own: when running for hours or even days, our body structure and excellent sweating skills make us able to outpace much faster mammals.
But what are the limits of human endurance? Can we run ever further and faster, and what’s the best diet to fuel such ambitions?
This week’s questions come from two CrowdScience listeners in Japan who already know a fair bit about stamina, having run several marathons and long-distance triathlons between them. We head to Greece, legendary birthplace of the marathon, to witness an even more arduous challenge: hundreds of athletes following in the footsteps of the ancient Greek messenger Pheidippides, to run an astonishing 246km across the country. The ever-so-slightly less fit CrowdScience team do our best to keep up, and try to discover the secrets of these runners’ incredible endurance.
(Image: Representative illustration of the Earth embedded in space-time which is deformed by the background gravitational waves and its effects on radio signals coming from observed pulsars. Credit: Tonia Klein / NANOGrav)