This blog is not really about absinthe. But because the drink was a favorite of a number of (mainly French) artists and visionaries of the Symbolist movement, it seemed a fitting emblem for an art blog.
Supposedly these old masters would down the brew, get visited by a green fairy or …

Science and art have long been at each other’s throats. Scientists declare that all life can be reduced to its fundamentals and, in so doing, be understood; while artists are adamant that the only way to approach an understanding of life is to analyze it creatively through the lens of an artistic medium rather than a microscope.

In his first book, Proust was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer argues compellingly for an ultimate truce between the two sides of this debate. His method is simple; with the subject of neuroscience as a battleground, he one-ups science over and over using a variety of artists and their own innovative discoveries…

Burton has lived easily one of the most fascinating lives ever–several times during the reading of this biography you’ll stop and wonder if this is all just fiction. No life could ever be this full, you’ll think…

The book opens with Burton’s early life in various locations around Europe. Following this is a chronicle of his time as a young soldier in India and growth into one of the leading Orientalists of his time.

Two of Burton’s main adventures are dealt with at length. The first, his pilgrimage to Mecca

If you like Kafka’s fiction, it is essential to read a good biography of the man to understand the impossible-to-miss parallels of his stories and his life. Kafka’s fictional works, particularly “The Trial” and “Metamorphosis” ARE autobiographies and Murray drives this point home.

Oct 20 1854

The “Infant Shakespeare”, the Parisian prodigy, the wizard of verbal Symbolist imagery, L’enfant terrible of the 19th century poetic establishment, yes, Arthur Rimbaud was born this day in 1854.