<![CDATA[EL PAÍS]]>https://english.elpais.comTue, 26 May 2026 16:39:49 +0000en1hourly1<![CDATA[Sara Flores, the Peruvian Indigenous artist bringing Amazonian traditions into contemporary art]]>https://english.elpais.com/eps/2026-04-09/sara-flores-the-peruvian-indigenous-artist-bringing-amazonian-traditions-into-contemporary-art.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/eps/2026-04-09/sara-flores-the-peruvian-indigenous-artist-bringing-amazonian-traditions-into-contemporary-art.htmlThu, 09 Apr 2026 14:03:26 +0000Everywhere you look in Pucallpa, in the Peruvian Amazon, there are geometric patterns that resemble fractals or expanding labyrinths. They are on the walls of houses, on shop signs, on posts and pillars, in the city center, and also on the roads. These are the kené, the ancestral designs of the Shipibo-Conibo people, who live along the Ucayali River, a tributary of the Amazon.

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]]>Musuk Nolte<![CDATA[Insult or adaptation? Why films still struggle to adapt novels]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-03-11/insult-or-adaptation-why-films-still-struggle-to-adapt-novels.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-03-11/insult-or-adaptation-why-films-still-struggle-to-adapt-novels.htmlWed, 11 Mar 2026 16:51:47 +0000Luis Buñuel used to say that, when it comes to adapting a book for the screen, it’s better to choose a bad novel, given the creative burden that comes with respecting great literature. He applied this principle himself with Belle de Jour, Joseph Kessel’s bestseller about a bourgeois woman who turns to prostitution to fulfill her sexual fantasies. Buñuel considered it little more than a spicy melodrama, but he transformed into a cinematic masterpiece. More debatable was what he later did with Tristana, where he pushed into the background the psychological depth and yearning for freedom of Galdós’s heroine: the film was superb, but the book offered possibilities that remained unexplored.

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]]>Matt Cardy<![CDATA[From millions of dollars to under a grand: The dramatic fall of the NFT ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-03-10/from-millions-of-dollars-to-under-a-grand-the-dramatic-fall-of-the-nft.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-03-10/from-millions-of-dollars-to-under-a-grand-the-dramatic-fall-of-the-nft.htmlTue, 10 Mar 2026 20:41:39 +0000In January 2022, Justin Bieber bought a digital image of a bored monkey. He paid $1.3 million for it. The ape was No. 3001 of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT series, which at the time was taking investors by storm at similarly extravagant prices. A few months passed, and Bieber doubled down, adding to his collection another e-monkey from the same series. This time, it was No. 3850, for which he paid $440,000. Evidently, prices had already dropped substantially. But the plunge didn’t stop there: by the next year, and after the general plummet of the crypto market, both holdings had lost approximately 90% of their value, and were optimistically priced at around $120,000 for the pair.

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]]><![CDATA[The extravagant promotions of ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Wicked’: ‘We are reaching a point between the sublime and ridiculous’ ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-02-20/the-extravagant-promotions-of-wuthering-heights-and-wicked-we-are-reaching-a-point-between-the-sublime-and-ridiculous.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-02-20/the-extravagant-promotions-of-wuthering-heights-and-wicked-we-are-reaching-a-point-between-the-sublime-and-ridiculous.htmlFri, 20 Feb 2026 17:36:09 +0000The boundaries between fact and fiction are becoming increasingly blurred. And nowhere more so than in the film industry. The recent promotional tour for Wicked: For Good became a show in itself almost from the get-go. Basically, it was promoted in a tsunami of memes, viral videos and digital press articles that revolved around the relationship between protagonists Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.

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]]>Karwai Tang<![CDATA[Is Heathcliff a narcissist, a madman, a proto-Marxist? The enduring enigma of the ‘Wuthering Heights’ hero]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-02-12/is-heathcliff-a-narcissist-a-madman-a-proto-marxist-the-enduring-enigma-of-the-wuthering-heights-hero.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-02-12/is-heathcliff-a-narcissist-a-madman-a-proto-marxist-the-enduring-enigma-of-the-wuthering-heights-hero.htmlThu, 12 Feb 2026 14:53:24 +0000The devoted lover. The toxic narcissist. The sex symbol. The chaste beloved. The perverted necrophile. The Other. The one who lives among us. The proto‑Marxist rebel. The idealistic lunatic. The unscrupulous psychopath. The victim of the powerful. Or perhaps their ultimate executioner.

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]]>JLPPA / Bestimage<![CDATA[From fishermen’s garb to status symbol: the evolution of the sweater]]>https://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2026-01-07/from-fishermens-garb-to-status-symbol-the-evolution-of-the-sweater.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2026-01-07/from-fishermens-garb-to-status-symbol-the-evolution-of-the-sweater.htmlWed, 07 Jan 2026 20:28:37 +0000Judging from what we saw during the recent holidays, the once-ubiquitous ugly Christmas sweater trend has subsided somewhat. The Bridget Jones cinematic saga played an important role in spreading the look worldwide, but it has proven to be, thankfully, short-lived. What was once sold as the umpteenth ironic interpretation of an everyday object may now be read as an example of the absurd lengths to which the uncritical embrace of market dynamics can extend. In contrast, the tracksuit, once the epitome of working-class chav aesthetic, has taken centerstage after the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, though it is worth noting that his country’s politicians often sport athletic wear during their moments of triumph and in the midst of electoral campaigns (a style employed even by opposition leader María Corina Machado).

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]]>Tony Vaccaro<![CDATA[Colorful, expensive, and easy to understand: What’s red chip art and why is it so successful?]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-10-09/colorful-expensive-and-easy-to-understand-what-red-chip-art-is-and-why-its-so-successful.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-10-09/colorful-expensive-and-easy-to-understand-what-red-chip-art-is-and-why-its-so-successful.htmlThu, 09 Oct 2025 11:42:38 +0000As everything changes in this world, so does the profile of art collectors. The classic picture of the mature magnate bidding for a Rothko at a London auction room is giving way to that of young individuals in their early thirties who invest from their mobile phones, share online stories of their favorite art stands from the Frieze Seoul fair, and buy and sell digital art with the joy of someone who accepts that everything in this life is transitory, so that leaving a legacy is not a priority. The “society of the spectacle” predicted by the philosopher Guy Debord is now functioning at full capacity, while social media and their algorithms impose new customs on us. And new customs require new terms to designate them. For the art market, this change implies the transition from the era of the blue chip to the era of the red chip.

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]]>Eamonn M. McCormack<![CDATA[‘Aberrant and repulsive images’ against fascism: 50 years since Pasolini’s scandalous masterpiece, ‘Salò’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-08-21/aberrant-and-repulsive-images-against-fascism-50-years-since-pasolinis-scandalous-masterpiece-salo.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-08-21/aberrant-and-repulsive-images-against-fascism-50-years-since-pasolinis-scandalous-masterpiece-salo.htmlThu, 21 Aug 2025 14:24:06 +0000Watching Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom today is as extreme and at times unbearable an experience as it was 50 years ago, when it marked its troubled premiere. Its scenes of forced sex, bodily sadism, coprophagy, humiliation, and mutilation, filmed in magnificent settings and with exquisitely beautiful formal apparatus, generate the same horror, the same moral repugnance. But above all, the field in which the film extends its relevance with greatest authority is the political, which is the what most interested its director. What Salò enunciates — a study of the violence that underlies the exercise of power in capitalist societies — has not lost one iota of its potency and validity. Perhaps that message was the veiled motive behind the initial attacks on the movie by extremist groups, while a furious rush to ban its screening — including a prison sentence for its producer — was unleashed in the courts: there were no longer any means to enforce the court’s conviction against Pasolini, the director, since he had been murdered shortly before the film’s release. A death that is still considered, incidentally, one of the most high-profile cases in Italy’s recent history, and which for many is linked to the prophetic message of Salò itself.

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]]><![CDATA[‘Horrible, horrible, horrible’: The Gérard Depardieu box office hit that still sparks outrage 50 years later]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-05-14/horrible-horrible-horrible-the-gerard-depardieu-box-office-hit-that-still-sparks-outrage-50-years-later.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-05-14/horrible-horrible-horrible-the-gerard-depardieu-box-office-hit-that-still-sparks-outrage-50-years-later.htmlWed, 14 May 2025 15:25:00 +0000France is perhaps the only Western country where a manifesto like the 2018 one would be conceivable, in which 100 women of culture, including Catherine Millet and Catherine Deneuve, backed the “freedom to bother,” criticizing the #MeToo movement and equating the liberation of speech it promoted with a puritanical and refractory “witch hunt” on sexual freedom.

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]]>Sunset Boulevard<![CDATA[40 million lives later: The dangers of erasing AIDS from the works of art it inspired ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-02-22/40-million-lives-later-the-dangers-of-erasing-aids-from-the-works-of-art-it-inspired.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-02-22/40-million-lives-later-the-dangers-of-erasing-aids-from-the-works-of-art-it-inspired.htmlSat, 22 Feb 2025 04:35:00 +0000Since the personal is political, this article — which is about political issues — will begin with the personal.

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]]>Thomas McGovern<![CDATA[Paul Pfeiffer, artist: ‘Gender-wise, Baby Jesus is quite fluid, super androgynous’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-12-29/paul-pfeiffer-artist-gender-wise-baby-jesus-is-quite-fluid-super-androgynous.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-12-29/paul-pfeiffer-artist-gender-wise-baby-jesus-is-quite-fluid-super-androgynous.htmlSun, 29 Dec 2024 04:30:00 +0000As a young boy, Paul Pfeiffer (Honolulu, 58 years old) watched from backstage as his parents performed as musicians at a Protestant church in the Philippines. It shaped his practice as an artist. “Seeing the preparation, all of the work that goes into preparing — I grew up surrounded by the mechanics of production,” he recalls. Perhaps this why his exhibition that opened November 30 at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom (runs though March 16, 2025) after its debut at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, takes on the form of a complex backstage, leading up to a final apotheosis. The show is a journey from the small-format videos of his early days as an artist to large-scale installations of overwhelming image and sound, all in the service of a reflection on identity and power dynamics. “My parents were less concerned with theology. They were more concerned with the sensory practices,” he explains amid the exhibition’s installation process, a week away from opening. “I’m looking for ways to both reproduce immersive experience while simultaneously calling attention to how plastic your emotions are and how they can be fabricated.”

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]]>Oier Rey<![CDATA[No abs, no big biceps, no square jawline: Will the age of the ‘normal’ man ever return? ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-11-30/no-abs-no-big-biceps-no-square-jawline-will-the-age-of-the-normal-man-ever-return.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-11-30/no-abs-no-big-biceps-no-square-jawline-will-the-age-of-the-normal-man-ever-return.htmlSat, 30 Nov 2024 04:05:00 +0000You can’t please everybody, even when it comes to sex symbols. And judging by social media reaction, the public is predictably split on the choice of actor and director John Kraskinski as the sexiest man of 2024 by People magazine. Critics of the decision are divided between those disappointed by the umpteenth white man in the sultry spot — another vote for the universal aspiration of whiteness — and those who question whether a 45-year-old dude with big ears who is developing a double chin was really the best choice the magazine could have made, given the existence of more canonical candidates like Glen Powell, the currently ubiquitous Paul Mescal, and Jonathan Bailey.

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]]>Getty Images / Pepa Ortiz (Collage) <![CDATA[Grandiose luxury and 1,400 dead workers: The palace that wanted to be bigger than the Vatican]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-11-19/grandiose-luxury-and-1400-dead-workers-the-palace-that-wanted-to-be-bigger-than-the-vatican.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-11-19/grandiose-luxury-and-1400-dead-workers-the-palace-that-wanted-to-be-bigger-than-the-vatican.htmlTue, 19 Nov 2024 13:49:59 +0000“Kill them! But kill them all, so that there is no one left to blame me.” This is the phrase uttered by a king, Charles IX of France who, faced with the possibility of a revolt of unforeseeable consequences, decided to take drastic measures. To commit a crime that would clean up the crime itself. Although it seems, on the other hand, that the phrase is apocryphal. In any event, the film director Patrice Chéreau and his screenwriter, Danièle Thomson, kept it for the script of Queen Margot (1994), a cinematic masterpiece that has just turned 30 years old, and which today seems more relevant than ever. The film is an auteur blockbuster, a bloody and romantic epic. To make it, the best actors, the best technical and artistic professionals and the best locations were used. Among these was the National Palace of Mafra, in Portugal, whose history runs parallel to that of the movie itself. Two stories of splendor and also of desolation.

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]]>DEA / S. VANNINI<![CDATA[‘Tourists also want an authentic city, not a theme park’: The redevelopment plan that seeks to give La Rambla back to Barcelona residents]]>https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-09-21/tourists-also-want-an-authentic-city-not-a-theme-park-the-redevelopment-plan-that-seeks-to-give-la-rambla-back-to-barcelona-residents.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/international/2024-09-21/tourists-also-want-an-authentic-city-not-a-theme-park-the-redevelopment-plan-that-seeks-to-give-la-rambla-back-to-barcelona-residents.htmlSat, 21 Sep 2024 04:05:00 +0000Whatever happens to La Rambla happens to all of Barcelona. Both the city’s greatness and its misery are concentrated within its three-quarter mile length. What was originally a narrow stream is today, to the unprejudiced eye, a beautiful boulevard dotted with landmark buildings. However, Barcelona residents tend to see it only as an obligatory boundary between the Raval and Gòtic neighborhoods. Only tourists make use of its original function as a promenade that links the central Plaça Catalunya with the old port. “Locals walk along it transversally, and tourists longitudinally,” summarizes the architect Lola Domènec, a member of the cross-disciplinary Km-ZERO team that won the competition for the transformation of La Rambla in 2017. A task that is now finally being resumed and is expected to be completed in 2027.

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]]><![CDATA[From Brando to ‘The Bear’: How a simple white T-shirt has shaped masculinity for 100 years]]>https://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2024-08-04/from-brando-to-the-bear-how-a-simple-white-t-shirt-has-shaped-masculinity-for-100-years.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2024-08-04/from-brando-to-the-bear-how-a-simple-white-t-shirt-has-shaped-masculinity-for-100-years.htmlSun, 04 Aug 2024 04:05:00 +0000When it came to turning a very young Marlon Brando into the brutal Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’s 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire, costume designer Lucinda Ballard was inspired by the sweaty, dirty, ditch-digging workers who toiled under the city sun. Only she downsized the outfit: she dressed Brando in a skintight T-shirt and squeezed him into jeans that showed off his buttocks and thighs like a second skin. The actor was understandably thrilled with what he saw in the mirror. He had before him a sexy, hyperbolically masculine image that would outshine Jessica Tandy, the actress who played the lead character, Blanche DuBois. Four years later, in the film version directed by Elia Kazan — where Tandy was replaced by Vivien Leigh — such tightness was considered immodest, so Brando’s jeans were replaced by baggy trousers. The T-shirt, however, was kept to emphasize the character’s voracious sexuality.

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]]>Archive Photos<![CDATA[‘Slutty Bermudas’: The menswear that has turned thighs into erotic capital ]]>https://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2024-06-23/slutty-bermudas-the-menswear-that-has-turned-thighs-into-erotic-capital.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2024-06-23/slutty-bermudas-the-menswear-that-has-turned-thighs-into-erotic-capital.htmlSun, 23 Jun 2024 04:17:10 +0000It’s quite possible that your feeds have recently been overtaken by images of actor Paul Mescal dressed in a pair of very short striped shorts that could be mistaken for underwear, paired with a shirt and loafers more appropriate for one’s first dinner with future in-laws. The Irish actor has long been deserving of the title of short-shorts champion, but this latest appearance, which took place at a Gucci fashion show, has raised such a stir that it leaves no room for alternate hypothesis: as men’s magazines warned starting a few weeks ago, short-shorts or “slutty shorts” are an unavoidable reality.

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]]>Getty Images / Pepa Ortiz (Collage) <![CDATA[100 years of Marcello Mastroianni, the star who never wanted to be a heartthrob ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-05-18/100-years-of-marcello-mastroianni-the-star-who-never-wanted-to-be-a-heartthrob.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-05-18/100-years-of-marcello-mastroianni-the-star-who-never-wanted-to-be-a-heartthrob.htmlSat, 18 May 2024 03:40:00 +0000The iconic Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996) recalled that, when he was offered the chance to star in La Dolce Vita (1960), he asked the director — Federico Fellini — to see the script. What he got was a folder containing a pornographic drawing. Any heartthrob worthy of the label would have reacted with a complicit gesture, or perhaps with another even more ridiculous joke. But Mastroianni turned red to the ears and could barely hide his embarrassment as he asked: “Very interesting, where do I sign?” That film would turn out to be Mastroianni’s great blessing… and his small condemnation.

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]]>Universal History Archive<![CDATA[Villa Necchi, the mansion that survived Mussolini and conquered Hollywood]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-04-27/villa-necchi-the-mansion-that-survived-mussolini-and-conquered-hollywood.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-04-27/villa-necchi-the-mansion-that-survived-mussolini-and-conquered-hollywood.htmlSat, 27 Apr 2024 03:49:39 +0000British actress Tilda Swinton said that, while she and director Luca Guadagnino were immersed in the pre-production stage of the Italian romantic drama film I Am Love (2009), they were looking for a house that was “part-palace, part-museum and part-prison.” They wanted a palace, because that was the ideal habitat for the haute bourgeoisie that starred in the film. They wanted a museum, because the members of the family were presented as objects, arranged in displays outside of time and space. And the structure also had to be a prison, because the passions that were trapped there were going to overflow, as occurs during a riot, threatening to alter the strict social order that repressed them.

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]]><![CDATA[Adam Pendleton: ‘Nina Simone allows us to think of my country’s culture as a complex and inclusive place, rather than a simple and exclusionary one’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-04-09/adam-pendleton-nina-simone-allows-us-to-think-of-my-countrys-culture-as-a-complex-and-inclusive-place-rather-than-a-simple-and-exclusionary-one.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-04-09/adam-pendleton-nina-simone-allows-us-to-think-of-my-countrys-culture-as-a-complex-and-inclusive-place-rather-than-a-simple-and-exclusionary-one.htmlTue, 09 Apr 2024 17:05:03 +0000“I don’t usually think about what’s trendy,” says Adam Pendleton. The 40-year-old from Richmond in the U.S. is not an easy artist, in any sense. He staunchly extols practices as demanding as conceptual and abstraction in the face of the current boom in figurative painting, led by some of the most successful African-American artists in the market, with Kehinde Wiley or Kara Walker among the finest exponents. Perhaps in that same orbit he would obtain more lucrative results, but that is not what interests him. “I just don’t think of my work in those terms,” he says in the spacious showroom of the Madrid headquarters of the Pedro Cera gallery, where he is staging an exhibition together with his compatriot, sculptor Arlene Sechet (Adam Pendleton X Arlene Sechet, through April 13).

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]]>Matthew Septimus<![CDATA[Andrés Serrano, on his polemic work ‘Piss Christ’: ‘I’m still a soldier of God’ ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-04-06/andre-serrano-on-his-polemic-work-piss-christ-im-still-a-soldier-of-god.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-04-06/andre-serrano-on-his-polemic-work-piss-christ-im-still-a-soldier-of-god.htmlSat, 06 Apr 2024 22:13:00 +0000Few recent works of art have aroused such fierce hostility as Piss Christ, a 1987 photograph depicting Jesus within a container full of urine. Its creator, U.S. photograph Andrés Serrano (New York, 73 years old), served as scapegoat for two Republican senators, Al D’Amato and Jesse Helms, who used the work in their attacks on public art funding in the heat of the late 1980s culture wars — a moment that is in many ways echoed by today’s discourse. The work itself has been the object of violence on several occasions. Serrano was recently in Barcelona to participate in a public conversation at the Museu de l’Art Probit (Museum of Prohibited Art), which was founded by collector and audiovisual magnate Tatxo Benet and has a copy of Piss Christ in its permanent collection. The photographer remembers how, at the time of the piece’s debut, he did not understand the amount of hatred stirred up by what is now his most well-known work: “When I created it, I was an unknown, so I was shocked that politicians were so offended, that they came after me on a personal level. Even so, I wasn’t bothered by their reaction. I have always thought that my work is open to interpretation. If I have provoked someone into thinking and feeling, that alone makes me happy.”

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]]>Ferrán Castrillo<![CDATA[Alexander Liberman, the ‘silver fox’ who spent 12 years chasing Picasso, Chagall and Matisse]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-03-05/alexander-liberman-the-silver-fox-who-spent-12-years-chasing-picasso-chagall-and-matisse.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-03-05/alexander-liberman-the-silver-fox-who-spent-12-years-chasing-picasso-chagall-and-matisse.htmlTue, 05 Mar 2024 23:04:00 +0000This year, EL PAÍS’s exhibition space at the International Contemporary Art Fair in Spain (March 6-10 at the IFEMA center in Madrid) is dedicated to the relationship between Mallorcan painter Miquel Barceló and Spanish-French photographer Jean Marie del Moral. Over the past four decades, Del Moral has documented, in images, the life and creative trajectory of Barceló — one of Spain’s most renowned contemporary painters — with special attention focused on the artist’s creative process. Since first meeting Joan Miró in the artist’s studio in Barcelona, Jean Marie del Moral has gone on to accumulate a vast body of work featuring images of artists in their studios: from Antonio Saura to Julian Schnabel, to Miguel Ángel Campano and Antoni Tàpies.

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]]><![CDATA[From the murder of John Lennon to rejecting Antonio Banderas: How the Dakota became more famous than its inhabitants]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-02-27/from-the-murder-of-john-lennon-to-rejecting-antonio-banderas-how-the-dakota-became-more-famous-than-its-inhabitants.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-02-27/from-the-murder-of-john-lennon-to-rejecting-antonio-banderas-how-the-dakota-became-more-famous-than-its-inhabitants.htmlWed, 28 Feb 2024 12:43:55 +0000In Ira Levin’s novel Rosemary’s Baby, about a young woman who may be pregnant with Satan’s child, when the protagonist Rosemary tells a friend that she intends to move into an apartment in the Bramford building, her friend is aghast. She tells Rosemary a gruesome anecdote that includes episodes of murder, cannibalism, and witchcraft. If Rosemary is determined to be seduced by the nineteenth-century splendor of Manhattan, her friend comes to tell her, there are less foolish options. “Better go to the Dakota,” she suggests. Rosemary doesn’t follow the advice, and that’s where her problems begin.

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]]><![CDATA[‘They preferred me naked and silent’: ‘Emmanuelle,’ the erotic milestone that makes people uncomfortable 50 years later]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-27/they-preferred-me-naked-and-silent-emmanuelle-the-erotic-milestone-that-makes-people-uncomfortable-50-years-later.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-27/they-preferred-me-naked-and-silent-emmanuelle-the-erotic-milestone-that-makes-people-uncomfortable-50-years-later.htmlSat, 27 Jan 2024 14:26:29 +0000An effective starting point to delve into Emmanuelle (Just Jaeckin, 1974) is, without a doubt, its ubiquitous poster, which presents leading actress Sylvia Kristel sitting on a rattan chair, semi-nude, decorated with a string of pearls. Not only because it includes almost all the elements of the film – even if the scene never actually appears on screen – but also because each of these components is a clue to its paradoxical nature. Upon a second look, any interpretation you might reach is confronted with its opposition – just as happens with the film.

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]]>RAPH GATTI<![CDATA[‘Architecture porn’: When the most obscene thing in a movie is a palace]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-09/architecture-porn-when-the-most-obscene-thing-in-a-movie-is-a-palace.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-09/architecture-porn-when-the-most-obscene-thing-in-a-movie-is-a-palace.htmlTue, 09 Jan 2024 16:01:14 +0000Try entering the hashtag #houseporn in your go-to social media. What you will get is not pornography, or not what is conventionally understood as such, but a succession of images of houses from different periods and styles, which appeal to both the eye and the greed of the viewer. A similar principle has been followed in Saltburn, the recent film by Emerald Fennell, which has caused a lot of talk for its nudity and calculatedly bizarre sex scenes, but also for the real estate that gives the movie its title. Saltburn mansion is actually Drayton House, in the English county of Northampstonshire.

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]]><![CDATA[‘We all went crazy for her’: ‘One Deadly Summer,’ the tragic movie that made Isabelle Adjani a legend]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-09-10/we-all-went-crazy-for-her-one-deadly-summer-the-tragic-movie-that-made-isabelle-adjani-a-legend.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-09-10/we-all-went-crazy-for-her-one-deadly-summer-the-tragic-movie-that-made-isabelle-adjani-a-legend.htmlSun, 10 Sep 2023 22:11:52 +0000The summer afternoon is already sweltering, but she sends the temperatures soaring as she arrives at the village dance. She wears a skimpy pink dress that clings to her body and blends in with her skin, so it looks like she is wearing only her own very dense sweat, giving her a slippery, baby-like or amphibious appearance. She is a very beautiful creature who radiates insolent sexuality. At first, he just looks at her like a deer in the headlights. But when she approaches him, he asks her to dance. She retorts: “What did you want us to do, climb a tree?” She wipes her hands on her pink dress, and they slow dance to the music. He can’t believe his luck; he also doesn’t know that she has begun her revenge that way.

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]]>FILMS PRODUCTIONS (ALBUM)<![CDATA[Dan Rosen, the comedian who mocks celebrities’ homes: ‘The closest they’ve ever been to a museum is the Met Gala’ ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-30/dan-rosen-the-comedian-who-mocks-celebrities-homes-the-closest-theyve-ever-been-to-a-museum-is-the-met-gala.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-30/dan-rosen-the-comedian-who-mocks-celebrities-homes-the-closest-theyve-ever-been-to-a-museum-is-the-met-gala.htmlSun, 30 Jul 2023 16:30:00 +0000The lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic reinforced the fact that the gap that separates the economically privileged classes from the rest of the population is really an abyss. The very cult of fame that sustains many of our social rituals reached a crisis point as videos in which Hollywood and music stars urged their followers not to leave their limited dwellings from palatial residences surrounded by gardens. Arnold Schwarzenegger advised people to “stay at home as much as possible” while demonstrating that he could fit a pony and a donkey in his kitchen and had plenty of room for other animals in his stable. Ellen DeGeneres complained that her dining table was not big enough to hold a 4,000-piece puzzle; she did so in front of a glass window overlooking lush tropical greenery.

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]]>Cesión de Dan Rosen <![CDATA[Why are men in skirts still stigmatized: A journey to the origins of a misogynistic prejudice]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-09/why-are-men-in-skirts-still-stigmatized-a-journey-to-the-origins-of-a-misogynistic-prejudice.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-09/why-are-men-in-skirts-still-stigmatized-a-journey-to-the-origins-of-a-misogynistic-prejudice.htmlSun, 09 Jul 2023 22:12:00 +0000A few days ago, at a lunch celebrating the inauguration of an art exhibition, a diner expressed his surprise at finding out that a newly appointed male director of an important Spanish museum often appears in public wearing a skirt. Perhaps interpreting his companions’ muted responses as incredulity, he took out his phone and showed a series of photos in which the director in question appeared in a skirt, an image that anyone who knows him has seen many times. “It bothers me, because it’s not normal,” the offended party explained. The situation reminded me of the recent case of several soccer players photographed at a wedding with designer bags hanging from their shoulders, which incited furious homophobic comments on social media.

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]]><![CDATA[From Marilyn to Barbie: The rise and fall of Hollywood’s ‘dumb’ blonde ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-10-02/from-marilyn-to-barbie-the-rise-and-fall-of-hollywoods-dumb-blonde.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-10-02/from-marilyn-to-barbie-the-rise-and-fall-of-hollywoods-dumb-blonde.htmlSun, 02 Oct 2022 02:06:11 +0000For decades, the film industry has been perpetuating the misogynist cliché of the dumb blonde, a trope that emerged during conservative times. The post-#MeToo world seems uninclined to return to those days, except from a critical perspective that matches contemporary sensibilities. Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, which stars actress Ana de Armas, does just that. The film premieres on Netflix this week following its screening at the Venice Film Festival.

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]]><![CDATA[Prince vs Andy Warhol: The lawsuit that could redefine appropriation in the art world]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-04-25/prince-vs-andy-warhol-the-lawsuit-that-could-redefine-appropriation-in-the-art-world.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-04-25/prince-vs-andy-warhol-the-lawsuit-that-could-redefine-appropriation-in-the-art-world.htmlMon, 25 Apr 2022 21:14:18 +0000Pop art king Andy Warhol once said that art is anything you can get away with, an ethos that has come to define the use of ready-made materials in contemporary art, including the appropriation of works by other artists. An upcoming trial in his home country, the United States, will decide whether you can keep getting away with it after your death.

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]]><![CDATA[From Gwyneth Paltrow to Jack Nicholson: How Hollywood stars have fallen in love with the art world]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-02-17/from-gwyneth-paltrow-to-jack-nicholson-how-hollywood-stars-have-fallen-in-love-with-the-art-world.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-02-17/from-gwyneth-paltrow-to-jack-nicholson-how-hollywood-stars-have-fallen-in-love-with-the-art-world.htmlThu, 17 Feb 2022 12:19:58 +0000Edward G. Robinson, the Hollywood actor known for his gangster roles, was in real life an avid art collector. He began by purchasing reproductions of artists such as Van Gogh and Matisse, and later went on to amass a fabulous collection that included genuine works from the aforementioned painters, and became one of the first collectors of Frida Kahlo’s art. In the 1950s, he was forced to sell up due to the financial obligations of his divorce.

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]]><![CDATA[The surprising case of Catalina de Erauso: The first trans portrait in history finds its voice 400 years later]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-03-16/the-case-of-catalina-de-erauso-the-first-trans-portrait-in-history-finds-its-voice-400-years-later.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-03-16/the-case-of-catalina-de-erauso-the-first-trans-portrait-in-history-finds-its-voice-400-years-later.htmlWed, 16 Mar 2022 02:41:07 +0000Catalina de Erauso is a difficult historical figure to define. On the one hand, she is a Spanish conqueror who massacred indigenous people, and on the other, she is a transgender icon who defied gender norms at a time when the concept of transgender did not exist in the public consciousness.

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