Новости за 21.05.2016

PG-rated discussion of Francis Bacon’s paintings. “There are two paintings from the Man in Blue 1954 suite in which the faces are poised between the conventionally realistic and the faintly unfocused. In V the posture is listening. He isn’t screaming. His face is recognisable but hard to describe, like a model in wax, just this side of melting. There is no cage of lines. That function is performed by the lines of the table and the sequence of pleated drapes behind the sitter’s head”

Diary notes from the only permanent vet on the tiny mid-Atlantic island of St Helena, whose main job is to look after Jonathan, a giant tortoise believed to be the world’s oldest living land animal. Jonathan was at least 50 when a ship brought him in 1882, making him at least 184 now. Save for the ending of slavery, little fundamental has changed on the island in his lifetime — but a shock is coming. St Helena, the world’s remotest settement after Tristan da Cunha, is about to get an airport