Art
You can practically feel the cold water of the River Seine on your skin as you look at Claude Monet’s Bathers at La Grenouillère. People are dotted about in the river in the sun, their opaque bodies floating among ethereal shimmers of silver and green. But Monet plays a trick on you. He uses a French academic painting method popular in the 17th century to set up his easel against the day, looking at the light from the shade: thus the water nearest us under sheltering trees is darker, the air itself seemingly chilled. Just by looking at the painting, letting your eyes move from the sunny distance to the shady foreground, without realising why, you are yourself cooled down. Jonathan Jones
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Stage
Over three hours, Amy Rosa’s body slowly cooled on a bed of ice. The performance artist lay under the stained-glass windows of the University of Glasgow’s chapel in a see-through casket filled with balls of ice that gradually melted beneath her. Only her hand stayed at body temperature as we followed her written instructions: “Hold one of my hands. Warm them if you can.” We were invited to whisper her a story as we did so. There Is a Silence happened over one afternoon and never again. Responding to Rosa’s experience of chronic fatigue, it was a glacial reminder to consider our own vulnerability in a world of hot, exhausting chaos. By creating a gentle, cooling space to think about hard things, she invited us to pause, reflect and carve out individual spaces of rest. Kate Wyver
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Music
When the mercury reaches a certain level, responsibility fades away. Deadlines become malleable; even sheer language seems useless and meaningless. Jessica, by Diplo’s dancehall-EDM trio Major Lazer and Vampire Weekend singer Ezra Koenig, is the sound of logic, reason, even basic mental function, melting away under the heat of midsummer sun. It turns “keeping cool” into an attitude and a lifestyle. Over a hazy reggae beat, Koenig sets the scene in a blasé deadpan: “My bathing suit’s drying on the Porsche ... My mother is crying upstairs ... It’s bad man ...” By the time the first verse is over, he is already speaking in pseudo-gibberish, flicking lazily between English, Spanish and German, flaunting all grammatical convention with the kind of flagrance that could make an English teacher burst a blood vessel. Jessica proffers an aspirational mood: when the weather’s hot, just go with the flow. Shaad D’Souza
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Book
There is little that can cool the mind as effectively as the breezy prose in Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). There is beautiful, easy delight in his languorous descriptions of drifting along on the slow, cold waters of the Thames. There is vicarious pleasure in sharing “refreshing beverages” with the three title characters. There is joy in Jerome’s evocation of the idyllic riverside landscape and of sitting back to drink “deep, calm gladness from the sweet, restful scene.” For every such passage of purple prose there are also at least double the number of rich and restoring belly laughs. There are few books so good natured, so funny and so easy to settle into. Yes, there is the occasional threat that one of the three men may ruin the calm by playing his banjo. It is also to be lamented that the dog Montmorency “comes off a poor second” in his fights with the boat’s tea kettle. But still, this book makes you feel lighter and happier. Sam Jordison
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Film
The beaches and promenades of Cannes are warm and sensuous but never oppressive in the gentle and perspicacious French coming-of-age story An Easy Girl. Naïma is the 16-year-old daughter of a local cleaner with a wide-open summer; excitement arrives when her glamorous older cousin Sofia comes to stay. Sofia introduces Naïma to the world of yachts, jewels, champagne, and the adult men who hold the keys to them. In a stroke of meta-casting, Sofia is played by the Algerian model Zahia Dehar, who in 2009 was the underaged escort caught up in a sex scandal involving members of the French national football team. Her debut major film role here breaks necessary ground by giving her a voice. Rebecca Liu
