Martin Cid's Blog: Martin Cid Magazine, page 178

‘Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War’ – A 9-episode docuseries on Netflix about the Cold War and the current military conflict

Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War is a docuseries directed by Brian Knappenberger.

In this instance, we must discuss History and politics, as Netflix has released a nine-episode docuseries on the Cold War, which followed the Second World War. This time period was defined by the detonation of nuclear bombs in Japan, leading to the start of the Cold War, where both sides recognized that the use of nuclear technology could lead to extinction in the event of another conflict. The invasion of Ukraine, as stated in “Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War,” is considered a consequence of this ongoing period, affecting all aspects of society, not just the military.

This extensive documentary aims to explain the events of this time period, its significance, and why it continues to impact the world today. While this topic may be beyond the scope of this magazine, we will touch upon the Netflix documentary that has just been released.

About the documentary:

“Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War” is a historical documentary that takes a stance in favor of the Western side, specifically the United States and Europe, with interviews from well-known figures such as Zelenski and others. The documentary primarily delves into the transition from Gorbachev to Putin, with Yeltsin in between, and why Ukraine plays a crucial role in the formation of Putin’s new Russian Empire, and why the West must oppose it. All of these events trace back to the Cold War and various propaganda campaigns, which continue to influence the world today, with the looming threat of a nuclear bomb.

“Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War” is an incredibly interesting documentary that explains what occurred during this time period and how it has led us to the current state of affairs. It is composed of archival footage and interviews, covering topics such as propaganda, armed conflicts, politics, and the bomb that defined it all.

The rest of the events are beyond our scope, and we would prefer not to comment on them. The documentary is now available on Netflix.

Where to Watch “Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War”

Netflix

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Taking Venice – Documentary by Amei Wallach

NEW YORK – A new documentary film, Taking Venice, uncovers the true story behind rumors that the 1964 Venice Biennale was rigged – by the U.S. Government and a team of highly placed insiders – so that their chosen artist, Robert Rauschenberg, could win the grand prize. Directed by Amei Wallach, Taking Venice, a Zeitgeist Films release in association with Kino Lorber, will begin its national release on May 17, 2024, at IFC Center in New York City and on May 24, 2024, at Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles.
 
With the pacing of a caper, the film weaves a tale of suspense, intrigue, down and dirty politics, and conspiracy theories against the backdrop of glamorous parties, passionate debates about art, and, of course, the art itself. American Pop art was about to explode on the international scene with a dynamic exhibition that was bound to be questioned.
 
Taking Venice unfolds at the height of the Cold War when the U.S. government was determined to fight Communism with culture. The Venice Biennale, the world’s most influential art exhibition, became a proving ground. Alice Denney, a Washington insider and a friend of the Kennedys, recommended Alan Solomon, an ambitious curator making waves with trailblazing art, to organize the U.S. entry. Together with Leo Castelli, the powerful New York art dealer, they embarked on a daring plan to make Robert Rauschenberg the winner of the Grand Prize. Although he had the potential to dazzle, Robert Rauschenberg was yet to be taken seriously by the art establishment in the early 1960s. His groundbreaking work known as “combines” merged painting and sculpture with found objects and pop culture images in new ways that had not been seen before. Deftly pulling off maneuvers that could have been written by Hollywood, the American team left the international press crying foul and Rauschenberg questioning the politics of the nationalism that sent him there.
 
Taking Venice received critical acclaim in 2023 at the Rome International Film Festival, Sao Paulo International Film Festival, DOC NYC, and Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. Venues in 2024 include the Sun and Stars International Film Festival in West Palm Beach, Boulder International Film Festival, and Sonoma International Film Festival.
 
Taking Venice explores the impact in Europe of a tumultuous cultural shift that fixed the art world’s gaze on contemporary American art with New York as its epicenter. On screen, The New Yorker writer and author Calvin Tomkins, who covered the 1964 Biennale, Alice Denney, who helped engineer the U.S. shenanigans, and the artist Christo recall the audacious events. And, in a rare and intimate interview, Jasper Johns recounts his relationship with Robert Rauschenberg in art and life. Through a rich trove of archival footage and interviews with leading artists, curators, and critics filmed in New York, London, and at the Venice Biennale, Wallach embeds the art in world events.
 
“This film tells the story of the 1964 Venice Biennale at a time when State Department officials and a team of unlikely co-conspirators were joined in their conviction that American democracy was worth the fight. They were determined to harness the audacity of American art to promote what was best about democracy,” said Amei Wallach, Taking Venice’s director. “There are moments in the film that sting with what we have lost and moments that encapsulate what we have gained. The stakes are even higher now than they were at the scandal-drenched Biennale, as artists everywhere try to create a way forward. My goal is to make films about art that leap out of the art world and into a reckoning with what’s relevant in our lives though the stories that they tell.”
 
Wallach met Rauschenberg on a number of occasions in New York and at his studio in Captiva, Florida, beginning in the late 1970s, through her work as a journalist for Newsday, Smithsonian magazine, and The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.
 
Taking Venice illustrates how Rauschenberg’s seminal art developed, explores the art scene that produced it, chronicles its enduring influence on artists today, and looks at art by other legendary American artists who showed in Venice that year: among them James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, and John Chamberlain.
 
Featured interviews with artists include Mark Bradford, who represented the U.S. in Venice in 2017; the leading Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto; Carolee Schneeman, who received a lifetime achievement award in Venice; and Shirin Neshat. Christine Macel, the director of the 2017 Venice Biennale; Robert Storr, director of the 2007 Biennale; Pulitzer Prize winning cultural historian Louis Menand; and the art historian Irving Sandler also offer perspectives on the history of the Biennale as well as related world events. The film ends in 2022, the year that artist Simone Leigh, the first Black woman to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale, transformed the American Pavilion to critical acclaim.
 
Background on Rauschenberg and the Venice Biennale
Rauschenberg encountered rancor, accusations, and name-calling at the 1964 Biennale. There was a last-minute addition of an American to the jury, not to mention the hurried transport by barge of Rauschenberg’s massive paintings from an exhibition at the former American Consulate on the Grand Canal to the official Biennale site. The convenient timing – the night before the jury’s decision – of a triumphant Merce Cunningham Dance Company performance with lighting, sets, and costumes by Rauschenberg, and music by John Cage, was seen as a ploy to boost the artist’s visibility. This added to the suspicion that Americans were once again guilty of uncouth antics on yet another playing field: the international art world. The accusation that a new breed of American art dealers, Leo Castelli and his ex-wife, Ileana Sonnabend, was conspiring in New York and Paris to manipulate the art market further developed into a toxic anti-American expansionism brew in this tense moment at the height of the Cold War.
 
About Robert Rauschenberg
Challenging painterly traditions, Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) worked in an extraordinary range of subjects and styles, often using non-traditional materials and techniques. He trailblazed the embrace of technology and has been called a forerunner of every postwar movement since Abstract Expressionism. Playing a game-changing role, he created what he called “combines” out of such materials as a goat, a tire, a stuffed eagle found on the street, or a bed quilt. “Painting relates to both art and life. I act in the gap between them,” he famously said. In a spirit of collaboration across the arts, Rauschenberg would sometimes make a painting on stage or a sculpture out of whatever he could find wherever he was. He’d dance in roller skates wearing a parachute. Rauschenberg’s lifelong commitment to collaboration further underscored his unique and expansive approach. Calvin Tomkins among many others has called Rauschenberg “one of the most inventive and influential artists of his generation.”
 
About Amei Wallach, Director and Producer
Director Amei Wallach’s 2008 film Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine, 2008, with the late Marion Cajori, is still in wide international circulation as is her 2013 film Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here. Wallach is an award-winning art critic, journalist, and curator. Her articles have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Nation, Smithsonian, New York magazine, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Architectural Digest, Art in America, and ARTnews. She was chief art critic for New York Newsday and on-air arts commentator for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. She has written or contributed to a dozen books. She is available for interviews.

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Niki de Saint Phalle: Tableaux Éclatés | Salon 94, New York

New York – This April, Salon 94 is proud to present our second solo exhibition of French- American artist Niki de Saint Phalle, with five works of her late career Tableaux Éclatés, the series first exhibited in her retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris in 1993.

The dynamic Tableaux Éclatés (“exploding paintings”) are vibrant, mechanized pictures depicting landscapes upon which animals and still lives, as well as her trademark Nanas, dance across beaches, deserts, and seas. Each painting’s composition is animated through an intricate motorized armature activated through a photo sensor: when the artwork recognizes a viewer, internal motors trigger motion of the work’s disparate elements or illuminate the scene with brilliant electric bulbs.

Performing in the Tableaux Éclatés are her iconic 1960s Nanas, emancipated women whose shapely bodies and colorful regalia profess a playful, assertive, and feminist affirmation in opposition to the passive odalisques common throughout Western art. Other Tableau Éclatés are rife with art historical symbols: the skull and flowers in I Woke up Last Night (1994) recall vanitas paintings of European Old Masters which picture the fleeting pleasures of earthly life–though Saint Phalle’s interpretation is novel for its remixing of the still life as moving in perpetuity.

Following the death of her husband, Swiss artist Jean Tinguely in 1991, and with her own ailments, Saint Phalle also searches for answers about life after death across religions and was taken by the story of the Hindu deity Ganesh, who lived after decapitation and came to represent rebirth in the face of hardship. The spiral–a recurring theme in the artist’s life and perhaps the oldest known symbol of life’s cycles of birth and death–finds eternal rotation in the belly of La Déesse Noire (1993) whose womb is a golden treasure and borrows its form from the tiniest strands of DNA to the immensity of galaxies, as well as the coils of her friend Alexander Calder, and of course the motors of Jean Tinguely.

Saint Phalle’s return to the United States and its diverse landscapes also find form in these works. She visited and depicted the deserts of California and Arizona, using those locales to set fantastical scenes populated by creatures both real and imagined. In The Treasure of the Borrego Desert (1994), whales, dolphins, and Nanas swim in a vast blue ocean as a luminous sun rises and sets continuously. The central mountain peak and foregrounded marine life rearrange in ways both playful and menacing. This depiction of the fragile harmony of wildlife and humanity points to the artist’s growing awareness of environmental destruction and the vulnerability of all life. She also made a series of prints with this imagery that will be on view in the exhibition. Indeed, Saint Phalle’s move to La Jolla, California in 1993 came as a result of the artist’s struggle with a debilitating respiratory illness–the Pacific’s ocean air revived her, and she maintained an active practice for the next nine years. In The Treasure of the Borrego Desert, the mountain splits to reveal one of the original Nanas from Saint Phalle’s childhood in New York, The Statue of Liberty: the prototypical symbol of freedom embodied in the figure of a woman.

Shortly after a stay in New York in 1991, and shrouded in mourning, she wrote:

I needed to be alone with my grief…The East River became the RIVER STYX. Sometimes I imagined each boat carrying Jean’s mortal body in a golden coffin taking him to his new mysterious life. I thought also of all the close young friends who have died over the last few years of AIDS. Being in the city, my city, I started to think about the life around me. The vibrant city life, visually exploding, rushing, energies bursting. Other thoughts took hold of me. How the world was fragmenting into racism, religious -isms and hates. Out of this dark journey came light. I had a vision of a painting exploding, then coming together — REJOINED.

— Niki de Saint Phalle and Pontus Hultén, Tableaux éclatés, Paris: La Difference, 1994

Inspired by Tinguely’s own practice of kinetic Méta-reliefs, Saint Phalle took up dynamic movement in her own work. She invented new strategies of animating two-dimensional relief paintings, as she did previously when she aimed her rifle at canvases in her Tirs (“shooting paintings”) of the early 1960s. She again found a way to go beyond the limits of the medium, making the framework burst and fragment and come back together again through the introduction of unexpected movement: to be rejoined. The Tirs saw the artist’s spectacular creation of a painting by shooting a gun at the canvas, creating composition by exploding containers of concealed paint in happenings which evolved in

their performative nature. Forty years later with the Tableaux Éclatés she revisits performance, this time in the work, allowing Saint Phalle to delightfully reveal dynamic, complicated narratives while metaphorically coming to terms with the immense loss of her partner.

This exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Niki Charitable Art Foundation.

Concurrently, a retrospective of the artist’s work, Rebellion and Joy, is on view at the Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri from April 27 – July 21, 2024. That exhibition is organized with the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMAC), Nice, France which holds one of the largest public collections of Niki de Saint Phalle’s work in the world.

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Ry Rocklen at Wilding Cran Gallery

Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to present Shelf Life, an exhibition of recent works by multi-media artist and sculptor Ry Rocklen.

Through ceramic, modular assemblage, and installation, Shelf Life uncovers the aesthetic sincerity held within the debris of everyday life. The exhibition features a series of wall-mounted mosaics, inspired by the delicate patterns on squares of household paper products. The assembled ceramics, slip cast from squares of bath tissue, paper towels, and napkins, lock into place with surgical masks and shop towels to create a surface peppered with porcelain pantry foods, leftovers, and other disposables.

While much of Rocklen’s past work plays with the role of scale in our interpretations of an object’s form and function, the series of wall works mark a departure in their adherence to pattern, repetition, size equivalencies, and set color palette. Within Absorption Panel (First Slice), the muted tones and low relief emphasize the formal surface of the sculpture. In contrast to the disposable nature of his subjects, Rocklen’s careful preservations serve to highlight the presence of aesthetic care and intention imbued within each embellishment.

Throughout the gallery, oversized aluminum casts of ritz, goldfish, saltines, cheez-its, and club crackers lie scattered across the floor, as though plucked from the surfaces of the absorption panels. By approaching the same objects from different angles, Rocklen presents a visual iconography which celebrates mass produced products as objects of veneration and value.

Alongside the selection of absorption panels and oversized pantry items, Shelf Life includes two freestanding industrial food storage shelves holding various life-size ceramic figures. Drawing upon his personal collection of ceramic heads, sourced from thrift shops, Rocklen has created torsos and legs to accompany his found objects. Each element of the human body rests on a different shelf, as though awaiting assembly, mirroring the modularity of the wall works. These ceramics impart a sense of harmony in marrying the found object, the readymade, and the handmade, pointing to a sense of freedom in re-presenting and re-interpreting the notion of a“shelf life” as an extension, rather than an expiration.

To put something on a shelf is to save it for later, to set it aside until it can be assembled, employed, consumed, forgotten, or simply discarded. From paper products and canned goods to COVID tests and thrift shop finds, Shelf Life serves as an homage to the quiet dignity of the disposable, the unwanted, or the generally disregarded. By transforming overlooked artistries into ceramic, Ry Rocklen grants each of his objects second lives, immortalizing not only their design, but his personal, even devotional relationship to them.

In conjunction with the exhibition of Shelf Life at Wilding Cran Gallery, Ry Rocklen will be presenting a concurrent series of ceramic works inspired by abandoned desert homesteads near Joshua Tree, CA. Held at neighboring Night Gallery, the exhibition of Sand Box Living will open on March 16, 2024 and run until April 20, 2024.

Ry Rocklen (b. 1978) is an American sculptor and installation artist known for rendering the aesthetic value and historic significance of found objects. Through the use of ceramic as a primary index of time and devotion, Rocklen grants his subjects second lives as revered sculptural objects, uncovering the overlooked artistries of everyday life.

Rocklen studied at CalArts, Santa Clarita, CA,1996 – 1998, received his BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, CA (2001), and his MFA from the University of Southern California, CA (2006). Rocklen’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions of Rocklen’s work have been presented at Team Gallery, New York, NY; Feuer/Mesler, New York, NY; Honor Fraser, Los Angeles, CA; Lazy Eye Gallery, Yucca Valley, CA; Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA (2014); and the Visual Arts Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX (2010). Rocklen has also been included in several major survey exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2008); Made in LA, Hammer Museum (2012); Murmurs: Recent Contemporary Acquisitions, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2013); Sculpture from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2016); CURRENT:LA FOOD, Public Art Triennial, Los Angeles, CA (2019); That Was Then…This Was Now, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY (2008); Red Eye, The Rubell Collection, Miami, FL (2006); and the Athens Biennale 2009 HEAVEN, Athens, Greece (2009). His work belongs to public and private collections including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Mohn Family Foundation, Santa Monica, CA; Thomas J. Watson Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY; Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, West Palm Beach, FL, and the Rubell Museum, Miami, FL.

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Young Royals: Third and final season of the Swedish series on Netflix

Young Royals is a Swedish series starring Edvin Ryding and Omar Rudberg. It is a series created by Lars Beckung, Lisa Ambjörn and Camilla Holter.

The most successful Swedish series returns to Netflix for its third season, telling the story of a young member of the royal family who suddenly finds himself in line for the Swedish crown.

In the midst of it all, Wilhelm meets Simon Eriksson, a boy who changes his life.

As we saw in the second season, the release of an “intimate video” changed everything. In this third year of high school, the perspectives of the young characters have shifted and they must face a completely new situation while being recognized on the streets.

“Young Royals” is a series that blends real drama with high school cinematography, but without the comedic touch.

The characters are treated with respect and the story combines modern and traditional elements, which seems to have resonated with the younger audience.

About the series

The third season consists of 6 episodes and we will have to wait until next Monday to see its finale, which will also mark the end of the series. Along with the finale, a special episode will air with the entire cast to get to know them better.

Edvin Ryding plays the young Wilhelm of Sweden. This role has opened doors for him (we recently saw him in “The Abyss“, another Netflix production). He has certainly portrayed the character well, along with his co-star Omar Rudberg, who has a more popular but complicated role. “Young Royals” is a series made for these two main actors, as well as other supporting characters, including Malte Gårdinger.

It is a well-made series in the European style, focusing more on the story than the aesthetics and allowing the actors to be the main protagonists of this tale of youth, full of emotions and complications.

In this season, the series delves into the crisis and explores maturity even further. With fewer juvenile scenes than the previous two seasons, the series seems to have adapted to its youth audience and will end its third and final season by winning over its grateful viewers.

We can only wonder if, like “Bridgerton”, the series will have spin-offs – only time will tell. The fans will surely appreciate it.

In the meantime, let’s enjoy these first five episodes of the finale, where we still have yet to discover the ending.

Enjoy!

Where to Watch “Young Royals”

Netflix

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Lindsay Lohan

Lindsay Lohan, a name that resonates with both fame and controversy, has captured the public’s attention over the years. From her early success as a child actress to her tumultuous personal life, Lohan’s journey has been filled with ups and downs.

Lindsay Dee Lohan was born on July 2, 1986, in New York City, USA. From a young age, she showed a natural talent for performing, and her parents, Michael and Dina Lohan, recognized her potential. Lindsay’s career in the entertainment industry began at the tender age of three when she signed with Ford Models. Her adorable looks and undeniable charm quickly caught the attention of industry professionals, and soon she was appearing in commercials and print advertisements.

Lohan’s breakthrough came in 1998 when she landed the dual role of Hallie Parker and Annie James in the Disney film, “The Parent Trap.” The movie was a resounding success, and Lindsay’s talent and charisma shone through, garnering critical acclaim. This role propelled her into the spotlight and opened doors to numerous opportunities.

Lohan’s next major project was the 2003 teen comedy, “Freaky Friday,” where she portrayed a rebellious teenager who switches bodies with her mother, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. The film was a box office hit and further solidified Lindsay’s reputation as a talented young actress. She proved her versatility once again with the 2004 film, “Mean Girls,” a high school comedy that became a cultural phenomenon and a classic of its genre.

As Lindsay Lohan’s star continued to rise, so did the challenges and temptations that came with fame. In the mid-2000s, she began to make headlines for her partying lifestyle and encounters with the law. Lohan’s struggles with substance abuse and legal issues started to overshadow her professional achievements.

Her battle with addiction led to multiple stints in rehabilitation centers, affecting her career and public image. Despite these setbacks, Lindsay continued to work on various projects, but the negative press surrounding her personal life often overshadowed her work.

Lohan’s legal troubles peaked in 2007 when she faced multiple arrests and DUI charges. These incidents had a significant impact on her career, leading to a decline in the number of film offers she received. However, Lindsay’s determination to turn her life around was evident, and she made several attempts to make a comeback.

In 2010, Lohan starred in the independent film “The Canyons,” which received mixed reviews but showcased her acting skills. She also made a guest appearance on the hit TV show “Two Broke Girls” in 2014. Despite these efforts, a full-fledged comeback remained elusive for the troubled star.

Lindsay Lohan’s personal life has been the subject of intense media scrutiny. Her relationships with high-profile figures, such as Samantha Ronson and Wilmer Valderrama, garnered significant attention. The ups and downs of these relationships often played out in the public eye, adding to the drama surrounding Lohan’s life.

Apart from her acting career, Lindsay Lohan has ventured into various entrepreneurial pursuits. She launched a line of leggings called 6126 in 2008 and later expanded into the fashion and beauty industry. Lohan has also been involved in philanthropic endeavors, supporting causes such as children’s charities and disaster relief efforts.

Despite her personal struggles, Lindsay Lohan remains a cultural icon, partly due to the fascination with her tumultuous life and the nostalgia associated with her early career. Her journey has become a cautionary tale, highlighting the pressures and pitfalls of fame from a young age. Lohan’s story serves as a reminder that success and fame do not guarantee happiness or stability.

Lindsay Lohan’s journey in the entertainment industry has been a rollercoaster ride, filled with both triumphs and challenges. From her early success as a child actress to her struggle with addiction and legal troubles, Lohan’s story is a testament to the pressures faced by those in the public eye. Despite the obstacles she has faced, Lindsay’s talent and resilience continue to shine through. As she embarks on a new chapter in her career, we eagerly await what the future holds for this iconic figure.

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To Kill a Tiger (2022) – Documentary on Netflix: A terrible truth about justice, drama and intolerance in India

To Kill a Tiger is a documentary written and directed by Nisha Pahuja.

This documentary sheds light on the issue of intolerance and injustice in a serious crime: rape. However, “To Kill a Tiger” is not just a story about the crime, but also a story about a man who goes above and beyond to seek justice in the city, facing numerous obstacles from authorities and citizens alike. The name of the victim is kept confidential in the documentary. This film, with a Canadian passport, aims to expose an event and tell a tragic and regrettable story. It presents authentic testimonies without any artistic distractions or confusion for the viewers, using interviews and reenactments. There is no room for artistic elements in this documentary.

There is no room for artistic embellishments or music to amplify emotions.

The reality of the situation is tragic enough, and director Nisha Pahuja presents it as such.

Where to Watch “To Kill a Tiger”

Netflix

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Emily Cheng: OPENING of THE EGG | Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong

Hanart TZ Gallery is honoured to present “Opening of the Egg”, a solo exhibition by Emily Cheng. In conjunction with the highlight display at our Art Basel Hong Kong (Booth 3D16), over 30 pieces of her work will be on view.

The opening reception, in the presence of the artist, will take place on Saturday, March 16, 2024, from 2 to 6pm, at Hanart TZ Gallery.

Responding to the energy and emotional nuances of Emily’s paintings, Composer-performer Kung Chi-Shing will perform his soundscape with violin, flute and electronics at the opening reception.

Emily Cheng 成瑞嫻 (b.1953) Saturn Venus Mars, 2023 Flashe on Canvas 211 x 178 cm (Studio View)
Image courtesy of the artist and Hanart TZ Gallery 圖片由藝術家及漢雅軒提供

It happened that I opened the Egg and that the God left the Egg.

From “Liber Novus”  , Carl Jung

In alchemy the Egg stands for the Chaos apprehended by artifex, the prima materia containing the captive world-soul. Out of the Egg will rise the Phoenix, the liberated soul, which is identical with the Anthropos who was imprisoned in the embrace of Nature.

From “Psychology and Alchemy”  , Carl Jung

Emily Cheng’s art is a portrait gallery of the Soul in its multifarious manifestations. Each painting is a separate incarnation, inheriting a memory cultivated by its own special cross-pollination of cultural traditions. The richness of imageries her art delivers is itself a feast for the eye, and the pleasure they stir in art lovers direct them to other moments of delight, as they recognize figurative details from the global world of art.

Since the mid 1980s Emily Cheng has studied and accumulated imageries for her personal language, drawing from every tradition she encounters. Her eye is always directed to both their sensual pleasure, and to the aura they impart to the spaces they originally occupy. Her labour that went into reinventing these images, either into icons of their own, or combined to form pictorial worlds that echo with spiritual art of the past, has grown to such a distinguished corpus that it offers a personal reinterpretation of the lineage of spiritual painting. In an age when visual images dominate our everyday experience, Emily Cheng’s art continues to make painting convincing through her exploration of imageries that evoke deep historical memories that stir the Soul.

Chang Tsong-Zung

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Queen of Tears (2024): A new romantic series on Netflix for the most sensitive viewers

Queen of Tears is a Korean series starring Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Ji-won. It is directed by Jang Young-woo and Kim Hee-won.

If you are looking for a romantic series with one episode per week, here is “Queen of Tears”, a series that premieres today on Netflix and promises lots of romance and emotion.

Plot

She, a wealthy woman from a family that owns one of the largest business enterprises in Korea (called Queens); he, just an employee. They got married out of love and now live a life of luxury. However, something is missing in their perfect marriage, which, three years later, feels the weight of distance.
How will they solve it? Neither of them is comfortable, but due to circumstances, one of them goes through something that will change everything.

Queen of TearsAbout the series

“Queen of Tears” is a television series that mixes many characters revolving around the complicated lives of these two people who, lost in the corporate system, have grown apart. It is well-made and well-written, but it is treated as a traditional TV series and aimed at a very traditional audience. There is not much complexity in the characters, who revolve around business relationships while their marriage crumbles and their families do not do much to fix it.

Meanwhile, the supporting characters live their stories around a large corporate firm, with more or less sentimental stories that also have a touch of comedy. Netflix has only aired one episode so far, but the series makes its intentions very clear: it is a series for viewers who enjoy heartwarming and emotional stories. While there is a hint of comedy, the sentimental aspect prevails above all else.

The production is well done, with good costumes and various locations. This series has a budget from TVN, a highly successful South Korean television channel, and is now available on Netflix for the rest of the world.

It is a very TV-like series for those viewers who do not want to complicate their lives with aesthetic proposals or forced scripts in a story that focuses more on emotions than the script. The two actors, who are both big stars, perform perfectly in their roles, which don’t require much from an acting standpoint.

Enjoy it!

Where to Watch “Queen of Tears”

Netflix

The Cast Kim Soo-hyun Park Sung-hoonKim Ji-wonKwak Dong-yeon

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Kim Soo-hyun

Kim Soo Hyun (Hangul: 김수현, born February 16, 1988) is currently one of the most highly paid actors in South Korea. He has been awarded four Baeksang Arts Awards, two Grand Bell Awards, and one Blue Dragon Film Award. He has also been featured on Forbes Korea Power Celebrity 40 list in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2021. In 2014, he was named Gallup Korea’s Television Actor of the Year and was recognized by Forbes in their 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2016.

Kim’s mother encouraged him to take acting classes to help him overcome his introverted nature during his school years. After performing in a few theatrical productions, he made his television debut in 2007 with the family comedy Kimchi Cheese Smile. He has since solidified his position in the industry with notable roles in popular dramas such as Dream High (2011), Moon Embracing the Sun (2012), as well as blockbuster films like The Thieves (2012) and Secretly, Greatly (2013). His portrayal of King Lee Hwon in Moon Embracing the Sun earned him the Baeksang Arts Award for Best Actor in the Television category. He became a leading Hallyu star with his success in the fantasy romantic-comedy My Love from the Star (2013) and the variety-drama The Producers (2015), which earned him three Daesangs (Grand Prizes).

After his role in the film Real (2017), he enlisted in the military to fulfill his mandatory service. In January 2020, Kim joined the newly established entertainment agency Gold Medalist, where he is one of the two senior actors alongside Seo Yea-ji. He made a triumphant return to acting with the romantic drama It’s Okay to Not Be Okay (2020) and is set to star in the upcoming thriller One Ordinary Day (2021).

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