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Rebecca Liu
Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

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There are only girls on the internet

Book Review

August 2022

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2022

I remember the first time I saw it, like a freshly alert hare alarmed by movement in the distant grasslands. It was 2013. Model...

Book Review

September 2020

Pankaj Mishra’s ‘Bland Fanatics’

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

September 2020

The Anglo-American commentariat is full of lofty egos. Pankaj Mishra has developed a reputation as their great deflater. ‘Watch...

Since the Stone Age, people have been concerned with the problem of how to represent life   Cave paintings at Lascaux show charging bison with multiple legs that appear to gallop in flickering firelight Protruding lumps of rock add three-dimensionality to animal forms The overlapping ‘Crossed Bison’ demonstrate an understanding of perspective Perhaps even more amazingly, archaeologists now believe they have discovered Paleolithic thaumatropes — bone discs with cleverly matched illustrations on either side that can be spun on threads of animal tendon to give the illusion of movement While all lifeforms, including plants, put a great deal of energy and ingenuity into avoiding death, humans are unique in our endless fascination with the production of ‘lifelike’ images From galloping charcoal stags to leaping bronze satyrs, through Renaissance chiaroscuro right up to digital 3D, we appear to have an unquenchable thirst for artificial portrayals of aliveness, and to value very highly the labours and inventiveness of those who are able to capture it convincingly While the numerous artistic revolutions of the twentieth century might have thrown this persistent human passion into question, it clearly isn’t a craving we are simply free to drop   ‘Crossed Bison’, Lascaux (c 15,300 BC) Ron Mueck makes ‘realistic’ sculptures At first this may seem to refer to the fact that his naturalistically-proportioned figures are awash with signs of both life and mortality: wrinkles, liver spots, excess fat, mottled skin and brushable hair But it’s clear on looking at Mueck’s work that it’s neither the acutely observed surface phenomena, nor the impeccably formed underlying mass, that make his sculptures so persuasively lifelike  As he says, ‘I’m just trying to make them ordinary I don’t want people to see the wrinkles, just the person’ Rather than being wowed by his extraordinary technique, we might instead forget all about it in favour of imagining the thoughts and feelings of the figure being depicted In opposition to the modernist passion for truth to materials, Mueck invites us to forget that these objects are made of fibreglass and

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

Jia Tolentino’s ‘Trick Mirror’

Book Review

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2019

Talk about the fates of young professional women today and you will often alight on two themes: the anxieties that come with living in...

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Art

Issue No. 3

Dead Unicorns: Apocalyptic Anxiety in Canadian Art

Vanessa Nicholas

Art

Issue No. 3

David Altmejd’s installation for the Canada Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale was a complex labyrinth of ferns, nests...

poetry

January 2015

dear angélica

Angélica Freitas

TR. Hilary Kaplan

poetry

January 2015

dear angélica   dear angélica I can’t make it I got stuck in the elevator between the ninth and...

fiction

March 2011

In the Field

Jesse Loncraine

fiction

March 2011

There were flickers of red in the water, a tint the colour of blood. He stood in the river,...

 

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