Featured Event
Sep 5-Dec 30 Different Takes on Literary Greatness
Harry Ransom Center for the Humanitites, 21st & Guadalupe
(512) 471-8944, hrc.utexas.edu
UT has opened not just another school year, but two fascinating exhibits that delve into words and images of literary leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. You will want to view, review and be touched by these rare and fascinating exhibitions.
Norman Mailer Takes On America 
Paul Theroux has described the post-World War II literary world as "an age when writers were powerful, priest-like, remote and elusive. They were risk takers and romantics, lovably disreputable, seldom interviewed but often whispered about." It was also an age of literary censorship, the Cold War and McCarthyism, advances in civil rights and social programs, and bitter opposition to the Vietnam War. Drawing on the recently acquired Norman Mailer archive, this exhibition will set the career of this writer turned public figure in this cultural context and trace the central role he has played in training our awareness and understanding of the world as we (think we) know it.
Portraits of Britain's Literary Greats 
Feliks Topolski, painter, caricaturist, illustrator, and muralist, chronicled many of the twentieth-century's most significant people and associated historical events. Combining figurative and abstract elements with layered incandescent color, Topolski's artwork--particularly his portraits--have been described as being rhapsodic, vigorous, volatile, and even explosive. In 1960, the Ransom Center commissioned the artist to paint a portrait series of great living British writers and playwrights which eventually included the likes of W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley and Rebecca West. The Center planned to exhibit the portraits and publish a catalogue, but many of the sitters objected to Topolski's work and the exhibition and publication were never realized--until now. This exhibit displays and discusses all 20 paintings from the original commission, and you'll finally see Topolski's stunning and controversial work. Seen here the artist's view of Edith Sitwell. And one wonders why she wouldn't have been pleased with this perspective!
