Last year, fans of modernist Irish literature and impressionist art saw a must-own volume go under the hammer at Bonhams. “In 1935 the French artist, Henri Matisse, was commissioned to illustrate an edition of Ulysses for subscribers to the Limited Edition Club in America,” announced Artlyst. “Each of the 1,000 copies was signed by Matisse and […]
It has long been thought that the so-called “Golden Ratio” described in Euclid’sElements has “implications for numerous natural phenomena… from the leaf and seed arrangements of plants” and “from the arts to the stock market.” So writes astrophysicist Mario Livio, head of the science division for the institute that oversees the Hubble Telescope. And yet, […]
A new illustrated edition of Finnegans Wake, as imagined by artist John Vernon Lord for the Folio Society, matches James Joyce’s extravagant word games with elaborately collaged pictures, shedding a brilliant new light on Irish literature’s ‘book of the dark’. Here, Lord explains the thinking behind the images. Frontispiece The frontispiece illustration doesn’t apply to […]
James Joyce died 75 years ago this week, leaving a lifetime of books beloved by many… and Ulysses, heralded as both the best novel in the English language and the hardest to read. So what do you do if you get stuck? When James Joyce finished writing Ulysses, he was so exhausted that he didn’t […]