2025-08-20
8 分钟Hello, Mike Bird here, co-host of Money Talks,
our weekly podcast on markets, the economy and business.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've chosen an article from the latest edition of The Economist,
which we very much hope you'll enjoy.
Two figures share a table, but not much companionship, and a Parisian café.
The man looks distracted, a pipe gripped in his mouth.
The woman, eyes down, shoulders slumped, nurses a glass of moss-green absinthe.
The painting, unveiled by Edgar Degas in 1876,
boasts several titles, l'absinthe in a café and others.
It also divides opinion.
One viewer, appalled by the woman's loose morning shoes and the thought of her soiled petticoats,
saw the painting as a cautionary tale against idleness and low vice.
He then changed his mind.
The picture is merely a work of art, he later said, and has nothing to do with drink or sociology.
took a more concise approach.
It recruited people to log their emotional responses to thousands of paintings in a digital archive.
These annotators could choose one of eight feelings, each illustrated by an emoji.
Based on this exercise and a later, bigger project called Artelingo, complex works of art,
like Degas' 1876 masterpiece, can be succinctly summarised in a handful of numbers.