Paul Delvaux was always fascinated by trains, railways and stations. In his earlier post-impressionist work, trains were already the main subject. Trains or stations are often present, hidden or not, in his better known surrealistic work. Train World organizes an exhibition with a large selection of his work in wich trains are the main theme

This monograph investigates the work of the Belgian Surrealist painter Paul Delvaux, a colleague of Rene Magritte's whose best-known works feature odd groupings of female nudes who stare into space, transfixed, while making enigmatic gestures in Surreally mismatched settings--for example while walking down an empty street, reclining in a train station or gathering in a complex of classical buildings. Sometimes these haunting muses wander through space accompanied by a skeletons; other times, they sit silently in long and sombre Puritanical dresses, as if serving out a penance.

Antiquity as inspiration can be revealed in the works of Paul Delvaux as from the beginning of the 1930s and gets more important during World War II, for example with the theme of the tragic city. His interest in antiquity is characterized by antique sculpture and leads the artist to the elaboration of a theatralic human figure. These theatralic and dramatic representations put on mythical figures like Pygmalion, Venus or Penelope as well as sirens, ephebes and hamadryads. Delvaux also evokes a certain secret sacrality of so-called "places of memory" as temples and antique places like the Acropolis, Olympia or Pompeii. Places which Delvaux visited on the occasion of his two journeys to Italy in 1937 and 1939 as well as on his travel through Greece in 1956. Finally, we should not forget a most important aspect of Delvaux's reception of antiquity: that of melancholic withdrawal.

Is shame dead? With personal information made so widely available, an eroding public/private distinction, and a therapeutic turn in public discourse, many seem to think so. People across the political spectrum have criticized these developments and sought to resurrect shame in order to protect privacy and invigorate democratic politics. Democracy and the Death of Shame reads the fear that 'shame is dead' as an expression of anxiety about the social disturbance endemic to democratic politics. Far from an essential supplement to democracy, the recurring call to 'bring back shame' and other civilizing mores is a disciplinary reaction to the work of democratic citizens who extend the meaning of political equality into social realms. Rereadings from the ancient Cynics to the mid-twentieth century challenge the view that shame is dead and show how shame, as a politically charged idea, is disavowed, invoked, and negotiated in moments of democratic struggle.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the national bestselling author of The River and The Dog Stars comes a "carefully composed story about one man’s downward turning life in the American West” (The Boston Globe). After having shot a man in a Santa Fe bar, the famous artist Jim Stegner served his time and has since struggled to manage the dark impulses that sometimes overtake him. Now he lives a quiet life ... until the day that he comes across a hunting guide beating a small horse, and a brutal act of new violence rips his quiet life right open. Pursued by men dead set on retribution, Jim is left with no choice but to return to New Mexico and the high-profile life he left behind, where he’ll reckon with past deeds and the dark shadows in his own heart. Look for Peter Heller's new novel, The Last Ranger, coming soon!