Free Republic

Has Ithaca gone to the dogs? A new memoir calls the Upstate New York city the “most depressing college town in America.” Isabel Klee, a New Jersey native, has risen to social media fame through documenting her work rehabilitating medically complex and severely neglected rescue dogs — and showing their transformation from timid, shut-down animals into happy, thriving pets. Klee’s new memoir, “Dogs, Boys and Other Things I’ve Cried About,” chronicles her coming-of-age years after high school and her early experiences living in New York City, but it also includes a blunt look back at her short-lived college experience in...

As the sixth class in this mini-art appreciation set of lectures, it’s time to consider Dada and Surrealism. The roots for this movement of art fantasy goes back to Henri Rousseau and de Chirico in the late 19th and first decades of the 20th century. These unusual, dream-like settings provoke our imagination more than the emotion of Expressionism and the intellectual structure of Cubism. Henri Rousseau Sleeping Gypsy and de Chirico Mystery and Melancholy of a Street Note in the street images, how the long shadows create a mysterious, imminent mood, and that the “girl” is only a shadow of...

BERN, Switzerland - When Paul Klee applied for Swiss nationality after fleeing Nazi Germany, his request was refused because it was feared that if his art should "take root in Switzerland, it would insult real art and cause good taste to deteriorate." Sixty-six years later, the work of the painter _ now considered one of the greatest modern artists _ has found a permanent home in Bern, the Swiss capital that finally accepted him. The Zentrum Paul Klee, which opens Monday, will house over 4,000 pieces of Klee's creations _ one of the world's largest collections from a single artist....