“An image to dream” by Victoria Verlichak.
ArtexArte Editions, 48 pgs., $1500.
The painting “Island of the Dead” It is one of the most famous works by Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin and “represents a figure wrapped in white, standing next to a coffin in a rowing boat, approaching a small rocky island dominated by tall cypresses through calm and dark waters”, according to the description of Victoria Verlichak in her book “An image to dream”.
Due to the success of the painting, the painter made five versions between 1880 and 1886. The version found in the Alte Nationalgalerie, on the Museum Island in Berlin, is the one that inspires Victoria Verlichak -cultural journalist and art critic for NOTICIAS- to write “An image to dream about”. The author discovered the work in that museum in 1994 and, since that time, she has kept a postcard stuck with a thumbtack on one of the shelves in her library.
In this short story, Verlichak superimposes various plots based on Böcklin’s painting. The book is the story of the painter born in Basel in 1827, but also the narrative of the birth of the work and the repercussions it had in his time and in the decades after his appearance. For example, hitler had a version of “La isla…” hanging in his office at the Chancellery and Lenin appears in a photograph in front of a reproduction of the painting. Freud and Jung they mention it in their works and poets, filmmakers, musicians and even video game creators, mention it in their creations.
The book is also an x-ray of Berlin and the account of the visits that Verlichak made to the city, from the time when the wall divided it, up to the present day. In this geography, the text acquires the rhythm of a drift that goes from the language to the political situation in Germany and from the tradition of German artists and intellectuals to cultural activity after the fall of the wall. The same drift of the traveler who wanders in an exceptional city, furrowed by the traces and milestones of a painful past.
“The Island of the Dead” is, finally, a reflection on mourning and transcendence. With great subtlety, Verlichak associates the work with the close deaths that have affected her in recent years: that of her parents, her sister, and her husband, the journalist Pepe Eliashev.
Charming and profound, “An Image to Dream” is a memory of its own (the photo by Nicolás Trombetta -courtesy of The Praxis Journal- portrays her behind the postcard on the cover) but also a reflection on the ways in which art replicates and sums up everyone’s lives.
Quentin Tarantino film meditations.
Reservoir Books, 420 pp., $9,999.
In his first non-fiction book, the famous North American director goes through a group of essential films: “Bullit”, “Dirty Harry” and “Taxi Driver” among others and analyzes them in light of his own tradition in cinema. Personal memories, encyclopedic facts, narrative theories, and history are intertwined in this collection of great texts.
1989, A Haunted Country by Silvia Horowitz
Sudestada, 144 pgs., $1990.
The bodies of two sisters found in a bathtub are the beginning of an investigation against the background of the end of the government of Raúl Alfonsín. The story is the resolution of an enigma but also the portrait of an era through its characters. Horowitz is a psychiatrist, has written novels, short stories and poetry and was a finalist for the Clarín award.
The recommended
“Taming the risk” by Marcelo Romeo
Granica, 128 pgs. $3,290.
Marcelo Romeo was the author of such a successful marketing campaign, in 2017, that his experience led to a book, “The Noblex Manager”, which in turn inspired the movie “The Manager”. Today he is a benchmark in his field and a member of the staff of one of the most important companies in the country. A compendium of his experiences in group leadership, project management, understanding new consumer habits and communication in today’s world is summarized in “Taming risk”. A guide for current management, which clearly exposes how to succeed in the main challenges that business management presents.
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Source: Yenny and El Ateneo bookstores.
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