Cultura

Lesley-Ann Jones, a veteran music journalist seasoned in many battles, had already published four canonical biographies of Freddie Mercury between 1997 and 2021. But when in the midst of the pandemic she received an email from a certain ‘B.’ claiming to possess the personal diaries of the Queen frontman, she had no choice but to rewrite the story to add previously unknown elements: Sexual abuse during his boarding school years, a religious faith maintained until the end, the unbreakable bond with Mary Austin, and above all, the existence of an unknown daughter, B., the same woman who sent her the email.

When the Clay Mathematics Institute announced in 2000 that it would give one million dollars to anyone who solved a major mathematical problem from a list of seven, the matter captured the interest of people who wouldn’t even dare to tackle a first-degree equation. Knowing that there still exist…

“These things only happen once in a lifetime.” The Barcelona antique dealer Artur Ramon still remembers that day in 2018 when he attended an auction in Madrid, something usual in his work. And a painting caught his attention: an oil on canvas with a religious theme measuring just 51.5 x 38.5 cm by Francisco Bayeu, court painter to Charles III and Charles IV and one of the most influential artists in Madrid in the last third of the 18th century. He was not the only one surprised by the work. Another antique dealer felt the same infatuation. “A competitor of mine from Madrid came in, and I noticed how he tried to hide it after seeing the painting.” They decided to acquire it jointly. A diplomatic solution between gentlemen.

The Venice Film Festival had started wrapped in a strong controversy: only one woman was competing as a solo director for the Golden Lion. A strikingly low number, barely softened by the presence of a second filmmaker in a co-directed film and, moreover, a documentary. While the quantity was certainly scarce, the quality was not: Kvinde Ukendt (Woman Unknown), directed by the Dane May el-Toukhy, won the Golden Lion at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, while its lead, Mathilde Arcel, took home the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. A film in which women are the absolute protagonists, starting with the very title: Woman Unknown, “unknown woman.”

“After her passing, I still can’t fully calm down. Yayoi Kusama left so many works of art and memories… I feel that she is here, now. She shared her entire life with us through her work. We saw her passion for art, her determination to achieve ambitious goals, her fighting spirit and bravery, her loneliness and anxiety. And her sense of humor. Above all, she shared her eternal love and soul. A single dot represented billions of love and life. And the world today is full of hundreds of dots.” The words of Takako Fujibayashi, from Yayoi Kusama’s studio, receive a great round of applause. It is the press presentation of an exhibition that was going to celebrate Kusama’s long and exceptional life at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. And now, after the artist’s dissolution into the cosmos on August 14 at the age of 97, it celebrates a visionary, a pioneer, of minimalism, radical performance, immersive installations.

I can’t lie to you: I had high hopes that a substantial change would occur in us after the eclipse, as I suspect that only a force outside our dynamics could change us as a society. But nothing happened; only the old prophecy was fulfilled…

“It is a scam, we do not charge for promoting books,” says Adrián Díaz, founder of Ciervo Blanco, a non-profit association that organizes book clubs. This was his response to my question about the email I received, signed by “Tatiana. Director and Super Organizer. Ciervo Blanco Literary Gathering. Madrid, Spain,” in which she offered her services for 195 euros. “The real Tatiana works with us,” Díaz comments, “but she is not the one who wrote to you, I suppose her name is not Tatiana, she has also used my name and those of other people in the association, she takes them from Meetup and our website, I think she is in India, although of course I don’t know if it is a woman or a man, or several people.”

Literature, yes, but also diets, clothing, toothaches, money, dream interpretation, past and future encounters… For several years, from the sixties until her death, Mercè Rodoreda (Barcelona, 1908-Girona, 1983) wrote letters to some of the friends she had met while working at the Comissariat de Propaganda de la Generalitat during the war, now collected in Cartes a les amigues retrobades. From Republican Catalonia to Romanyà (Sidillà), edited by Anna Maria Saludes Amat and Araceli Bruch Pla.

The first solo exhibition of Salvador Dalí took place in 1925 at the Galerías Dalmau, the historic gallery on Passeig de Gràcia (previously it had been on Carrer del Pi and Portaferrissa) that was a beacon of the avant-garde and promoter of new artists. Dalí was one of them. He was 21 years old and showed works such as Girl at the Window, the portrait of his sister Anna Maria from behind, contemplating the seascape of Cadaqués, now at the Reina Sofía in Madrid. He repeated the following year. A century later, he returns to the stage where he first met success face to face with Dalí Boulevard Cibernético, an immersive experience that from next week will have a permanent space in Casa Amatller.

On July 23, 1962, Josep M. Castellet sent Camilo José Cela a brief letter in which he indicated that the work the Catalan critic was going to publish a few months later was about to be finalized: “I would appreciate it if you could let me know, by return mail, the corrections you pointed out to me in Formentor regarding the work I did on your work for Revista Hispánica Moderna. I haven’t asked you before because, as Susana Redondo de Feldman told me, the original has not yet gone to print and there is plenty of time to make them.”