The Guardian
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‘David Hockney caught the look of the modern world’: a tribute to the artist whose work was a feast of visual pleasure
He was subversive and bold, yet also playful and accepting – putting the fun into pop art and finding freedom and fulfilment amid the blue skies and pools of California. David Hockney, who has died aged 88, lived and painted the truth
• David Hockney – a life in pictures
• David Hockney, revolutionary British artist, dies aged 88David Hockney changed the world just by looking at it. His art was a feast of unabashed visual pleasure, one long orgy of the gaze, the delighted lifelong epiphany of someone who cherished flowers in a vase and freeways in the sun and thought endlessly about new ways of making pictures of such passing treasures. It didn’t seem to occur to him that the way he saw was revolutionary – all he cared about was truth. But no one had ever captured the look and feel of the contemporary world with such acceptance before. He has the same simple perfection as the Beatles – just as they caught the sound of the modern world, he caught its look.
The most revealing fact about Hockney is that he loved LA. Where some might see a moronic inferno, he saw freedom and possibility under an unjudging blue sky. Low-lying houses with patio doors glinting vacantly, tall thin palm trees with tiny heads, the white spume of a diver’s splash – Hockney’s California is a vision of paradise. He is the Matisse of pop art, A Bigger Splash the 1960s answer to Matisse’s 1904 manifesto for hedonism, Luxe, Calme et Volupté.
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From Goop to ‘Gwynocide’: why is Gwyneth Paltrow starring in a luxury Israeli real estate ad? | Arwa Mahdawi
Paltrow went viral this week for her commercial for 51 Park – a building just miles from where Palestinians are being killed and displaced
Gwyneth Paltrow has built a wellness empire by encouraging people to put questionable things in their mouths and up their orifices. Over the years the Goop founder has promoted parasite-busting goat milk cleanses, urged women to stick $66 jade eggs into their vaginas, and waxed lyrical about the powerful benefits of rectal ozone therapy.
Now, however, it seems that Paltrow’s brand is pivoting from colon cleansing to ethnic cleansing. The actor and businessperson went viral this week for promoting a luxury real estate development in Israel. Paltrow, who has been nicknamed “Gwynocide”, stars in a new commercial and marketing materials for 51 Park, two 51-story towers in Herzliya, just north of Tel Aviv. (The ad was filmed in New York.) The towers boast a swimming pool, a pilates pool, a wine room and gym, among other luxuries. It’s unclear how much they cost, but similar apartments in the area have gone for millions.
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Joy for Jiménez and Mexico as co-hosts make ideal start | World Cup Daily
Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Barney Ronay, Jeff Rueter and Jonathan Wilson as the World Cup kicks off in Mexico
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A solar-powered rubbish-eating boat? The vessel chomping plastic waste out of the sea
Guided by floating barriers, the Interceptor has already stopped more than 143,000lbs of rubbish from entering the Pacific from one LA river
On an overcast June morning, I step from the rubber-sided Zodiac boat on to a floating barge at the mouth of Ballona Creek, where it meets Santa Monica Bay on the west side of Los Angeles. The first thing I notice? Salty air is the only smell, despite six giant waste bins sitting atop the tennis court-sized barge.
The contraption is actually two barges – a smaller platform sits nestled inside the larger boat. A floating barrier directs rubbish into the device, where a conveyor belt scoops it up. An automated shuttle then distributes the waste into six dumpsters on a separate barge, sending an alert to crews when it is full. Above, solar panels form the ceiling and a conveyor belt runs slowly, dropping bits of plastic and waste into each of the bins. The whole thing can hold about 20,000lbs (9,070kg) of rubbish – the same as one fully loaded lorry.
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20 ways Taylor Swift remade pop culture in her image
Eras. Easter eggs. Masters. Monoculture. It has been 20 years since Swift released her debut single, setting in motion a career so extraordinary, it permanently redefined the concept of pop stardom. Not only did her fight to own her music educate a generation of fans in how the music industry works, she also bent that industry to her will, outwitting the competition and defying norms to reset its terms. This is how she did it
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China has long sought to control women’s bodies. Increasingly, they’re making their own choices
More women are rejecting state pressure over their reproductive choices, amid the devastating legacy of the one-child policy
Ever since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, women’s bodies have been the business of the state. In the 1950s, labour for state-controlled work unitswas organised according to women’s menstrual cycles. Then for decades, there was the one-child policy.
Across vast swathes of the country the policy was enforced with a brutal severity. As well as fines for additional children, women were forced to have abortions and subjected to forced sterilisations.
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David Hockney, revolutionary British artist, dies aged 88
Bradford-born painter, who made his name with sun-kissed visions of California, has died
• ‘David Hockney caught the look of the modern world’
• David Hockney’s life in picturesDavid Hockney, the iconic British painter who cast a revolutionary gaze across 20th-century art, has died aged 88.
He made his name as a pop artist during the swinging 60s and was perhaps best known for his paintings of swimming pools that helped define the Los Angeles aesthetic. Works such as A Bigger Splash and Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) depicted hedonistic scenes of love, lust and loss taking place below the city’s sun-soaked skies.
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Elon Musk on track to become world’s first trillionaire today as SpaceX lists on US stock market – business live
Rolling coverage of SpaceX’s record-breaking initial public offering, after Elon Musk’s company is valued at $1.77tn in share offering
SpaceX’s shares will be supported by a number of “forced buyers”, such as tracker funds.
Richard Hunter,head of markets at interactive investor,explains:
The Nasdaq index has tweaked its rules, which has allowed SpaceX to join the index on a fast-track basis. It remains to be seen whether the company will have a disproportionate effect on the index in terms of weighting, but in any event its inclusion guarantees some additional and significant buying pressure.
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Tears and tributes as crowds gather to mourn death of Thailand’s Princess Bha
Beloved royal, said to have embodied ‘everything good in Thailand’, died in hospital after nearly four years in coma
At King Chulalongkorn Memorial hospital in Bangkok, mourners dressed in black sat side by side, their eyes pink from crying for the woman whose portraits they cradled in their laps.
Some images were framed in gold, others in plastic sleeves, charting the life of Thailand’s Princess Bajrakitiyabha from a rosy-cheeked baby to a young royal in red military dress replete with shining badges and ceremonial sword. Later photos showed her posing with one of the dogs she was out training in 2022 when she became gravely ill with heart problems.
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China arrests US academic at conference for ‘espionage activities’
Arrest of Min Zin, who writes about Myanmar and Chinese foreign policy, comes just month after Trump visit to Beijing
China has arrested a US scholar who writes about Myanmar and Chinese foreign policy on suspicion of spying.
Min Zin was suspected of “engaging in espionage activities that endanger China’s national security,” China’s ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson, Lin Jian, said on Friday.
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