It’s a new month and time for the February LWD Art Appreciation selections. This year we are reading classics, exploring a variety of types of art, architecture and design, listening to opera and watching some the all-time best films.
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ART APPRECIATION
February 2025
Classic Literature
Invisible Man
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this deeply compelling novel and epic milestone of American literature, a nameless narrator tells his story from the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
He describes growing up in a Black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of “the Brotherhood,” before retreating amid violence and confusion.
Originally published in 1952 as the first novel by a then unknown author, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, James Joyce, and Dostoevsky.
Art/Architecture/Design
In a fleeting fourteen year period, sandwiched between two world wars, Germany’s Bauhaus school of art and design changed the face of modernity. With utopian ideals for the future, the school developed a pioneering fusion of fine art, craftsmanship, and technology to be applied across painting, sculpture, design, architecture, film, photography, textiles, ceramics, theatre, and installation.As much an intense personal community as a publicly minded collective, the Bauhaus was first founded by Walter Gropius (1883–1969), and counted Josef and Anni Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Gunta Stölzl, Marianne Brandt and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe among its members. Between its three successive locations in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, the school fostered charismatic and creative exchange between teachers and students, all varied in their artistic styles and preferences, but united in their idealism and their interest in a “total” work of art across different practices and media.This book celebrates the adventurous innovation of the Bauhaus movement, both as a trailblazer in the development of modernism, and as a paradigm of art education, where an all-encompassing freedom of creative expression and cutting-edge ideas led to functional and beautiful creations.
Opera
Spotify Playlist:
Classic Film
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Stanley Kramer’s landmark study of racial prejudice stars the ace comic duo of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as perplexed parents. When Joanna (Katharine Houghton) returns home with her new fiancé John Prentice (Sidney Poitier), a distinguished black doctor, her mother accepts her daughter’s decision, but her father is shocked by the prospect of the interracial union. With the doctor’s parents equally dismayed, both families must meet to explore the limits of their intolerance.
If you have any favorites to recommend for future Art Appreciation posts feel free to share in the comments!
LINK TO PREVIOUS ART APPRECIATION POSTS…
You can find links to all of the LWD Art Appreciation posts here:
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