beauty
Published 16th February 2021
What history s bathing rituals reveal about status, purity and power
Written by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN
In many parts of the world, cleansing one s body has become an individual, daily ritual a quick, steamy shower in the morning or a longer bath to unwind at night. But historically, our bathing habits have been imbued with deeper meanings.
In Ancient Greece, bathhouses were a place for men to wash after sport or swap philosophical discussions (some even contained libraries), while in the Middle Ages, men and women in Europe gave up bathing altogether, for fear it would spread disease. Perfumes and cleansing ointments replaced steam and water, with elaborately adorned bottles and containers linking affluence to health. Fast-forward to the 1960s and 70s, where bathhouses in New York City became safe havens for gay men to relax, socialize and seek pleasure.
Salman Toor, a Painter at Home in Two Worlds
A brilliant debut at the Whitney Museum by the artist born in Pakistan and based in New York refreshes figurative painting by using it as a means to explore identity.
Salman Toor’s “Bar Boy” (2019) is one of three mostly green paintings in the artist’s Whitney Museum debut.Credit.Salman Toor and Luhring Augustine, via Whitney Museum of American Art
Dec. 23, 2020
Salman Toor’s evocative, tenderly executed paintings begin to pluck at your heartstrings almost as soon as you see them. The 15 examples of new and recent work that form “How Will I Know,” the artist’s brilliant New York institutional debut at the Whitney Museum of American Art tell the stories of lanky, slightly rubbery dark-haired young men, gentle souls who wouldn’t hurt a flea. The narrative import zigzags from the personal to the social and political and back.
National Gallery, London
Much has been written about John Constable’s success at the Paris Salon of 1824, but his participation in the next Salon of 1827–8 has received far less attention. This relative neglect is perhaps not so surprising, given that the single painting he exhibited,
The Cornfield 1826 (fig.1), did not repeat his earlier triumph. The same Salon at which Constable met with a critical setback, however, also marked the debut of Paul Huet, the artist usually regarded as his closest French follower. But if critics and artists seem out of step in their attitudes to the English artist in the later 1820s, the real flowering of Huet’s engagement with Constable has often been overlooked, since it came more than a quarter of a century later.
âSalman Toor: How Will I Knowâ Review: A Contemporary Painterâs Poignant Scenes
A Whitney Museum exhibition spotlights the Pakistani-American artist, whose deft depictions of young gay men signal hope for the future of figurative painting.
Salman Toorâs âBar Boyâ (2019) Photo: Salman Toor By Peter Plagens Dec. 19, 2020 7:00 am ET
A good many figurative paintings these days seem to aspire to being cover illustrations for the New Yorker magazine. They have the kind of benign, politely progressive, op-ed flavor that hardly any educated urbanite can resistâa perfect match for the magazineâs covers, which have evolved over the decades from pictures of tweedy, upper-middle-class pleasures to, for lack of a better term, a persistent social conscience.