“Many within Hollywood, like Albert Lewin, director of The Moon and Sixpence, were keen to work with the famed surrealist, yet these offers of collaboration rarely came to much. ‘Man Ray was very firm,’ [curator Max] Teicher says. ‘If he was going to do a film, he was going to do everything: the lighting, the set design, everything. They [Hollywood insiders] looked at him like he was crazy, because that’s not how Hollywood worked.”
How The Great German And Austrian Orchestras Became Tools Of Propaganda
“The alchemy of the transformation began with a gradual relinquishment of autonomy, especially stark in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic, nationalized into a state-owned company in January 1934 under Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda, began to perform in the old Philharmonie on Bernburger Straße under an immense swastika. It was now expected to render service to “the German cause.” (Even Goebbels did not speak of “Nazi music” but of “German music.”) Goebbels, who began to call it “my orchestra,” increased its subsidies and its musicians’ salaries and personally signed letters of exemption from military service for its members.”
Just What, Exactly, Is “Popular” Music?
Of the countless terms for categories of music, the least useful phrase I know is “popular music.” It provides no information about the music itself: no suggestion of how it sounds or what mood it might conjure, no indication of the traditions it grows from or defies, and no hint of whether it could be good for dancing, for solitary listening, or for anything else.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves And What They Reveal (Whether We Want To Admit It Or Not)
“We tell stories that make us seem adventurous, or funny, or strong” – or virtuous or stoic or oppressed. “We tell stories that make our lives seem interesting. And we tell these stories not only to others, but also to ourselves. … If we reflect on the stories we tell about ourselves, both to others and to ourselves, we may well find out things about who we are that complicate the view we would prefer to be identified with. Why might this matter? Here is one reason.”
Dancing To The Oldies – A Choreographed Run Through The Met Museum
Dance has become a popular acquisition of museums in recent years. Immersive, participatory, and often silly, “The Museum Workout” could be seen as a cheeky response to the trend. But the work also tackles serious questions that dance artists have long been asking about the relationship between artists and audiences and about what constitutes dance.
Theastre Gates On Re-Visioning The Art Of Art
“It is a time-honored role for artist as designator, to point at the stuff of the physical world and revision it as art, harkening back to the readymade. But Gates’s decision to ‘bump off from art’ and live ‘in the sphere of dirt, the dirty, the stuff that we think is in the ground’ was revelatory, leading to invitations to Davos and a TED Talk, where he talked about how he revived a neighborhood with imagination and hard graft.”
Despite Everything They’ve Tried, ‘Hamilton’ Tickets In London Still Got Snapped Up By Scalpers
The producers went to a lot of trouble to institute a paperless system that would keep tickets off the price-gouging resale market. That worked for (literally) less than two hours.
The Ideas We Aren’t Hearing – Africa? India?
“Non-European thought is often underrepresented in philosophy. The rich histories of India, China, the Islamic world, and Africa are often seen as footnotes and side ventures to the thinkers of Europe. While European thought is of great use, the influence of African ideas on Freud, the influence of Maoism on many French philosophers, and the refinement of Greek ideas by Islamic thinkers cannot be denied.”
The Books That Have Experimented With What A Book Is
Irma Boom has been undertaking “a quixotic, endless undertaking of creating a library of what she called ‘only the books that are experimental.’ Above her studio here, the recently opened library is made up almost entirely of books from the 1600s and 1700s, and the 1960s and ’70s.
People Are Extremely Loyal To Groups That Haze Newcomers – Why?
“Why do unpleasant hazing practices manage to remain so appealing that individuals are willing to risk legal punishment, injury and even death to keep the practices alive?” Anthropologist Christopher Kavanagh looks to the phenomena of cognitive dissonance, social glue and “costly signals” for explanations.
Presidential Libraries As Political Monuments
“The collections are of value to historians, but can self-aggrandizing presentations even be considered drafts of history? They are really ante-historical. Or anti-historical. They resemble the self-tributes that royalty once erected. Former presidents create monuments celebrating their own excellence, and the results are managed in perpetuity by the National Archives.”
‘Fun Home’ Book/Lyrics Writer Lisa Kron Wins $100,000 Kleban Prize
Kron, who took home two Tony Awards for Fun Home, received the 2017 Kleban for “most promising musical theater librettist”; the prize for “most promising musical theater lyricist” went to 36-year-old Daniel Zaitchik (Picnic at Hanging Rock).
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.16.17
Art Is As Art Does
A recent dinner conversation with friends rolled around to the question: “What is art?” A long conversation ensued. Someone offered up Wikipedia’s definition … This group of arts administrators was unsatisfied. … read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2017-01-16
Monday Recommendation: John Coltrane
John Coltrane, Live At Birdland (Impulse)
On this observance of Martin Luther King’s birthday, we recommend an album that John Coltrane made at the height of the 1960s civil rights movement … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-01-16
Bankrupt Big Apple Circus For Sale
“The circus said its debts amounted to $8.3 million, against assets of $3.8 million, in its Chapter 11 filing. The Big Apple Circus began in 1977 and at its height staged more than 300 shows per year.”
After 146 Years Ringling Brothers Circus To Fold Its Tents
“Ringling Bros. ticket sales have been declining, but following the transition of the elephants off the road, we saw an even more dramatic drop. This, coupled with high operating costs, made the circus an unsustainable business for the company.”
Toronto Symphony Launches National Project To Make A Case For Canadian Composers
“The list of partners includes virtually every major and many minor orchestras, with commissioned composers including Andrew Balfour, Chan Ka Nin, Kevin Lau, Nicole Lizée and John Rea among others. The orchestras themselves have been invited to choose the composers with whom they would like to work, with the TSO agreeing to perform the full complement of fanfares.”
The Eiffel Tower To Get A €300 Million Refurbishment Over 15 Years
“The landmark, which receives more paying tourists—around seven million a year—than any other monument in the world, was built as the centerpiece of the 1889 Universal Exposition. The planned refurbishment is intended to bolster the French capital’s bids to host another World’s Fair in 2025 and, before that, the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic games, according to a statement from the mayor’s office.”
Six Female Artists At The Top Of The Auction Charts
Auction prices are a terrible way of judging the value of an artist. But they do tell you something about the demand for their work. Male artists command higher prices generally, but these six women are rising in the auction market.
Teaching Science Through Dance
This is the way way partner artists (have to) talk when they’re working in elementary schools: “Dance offers a fun way to learn science. Young students want to move around. Dance will represent what things mean in weather science and complement our core curriculum.”
What – And To Whom – Zaha Hadid Left Behind
The architect, who died suddenly last March, left money to relatives and her architecture firm’s partner, who has stoked controversy by speaking against public housing and art schools and advocating for building in Hyde Park. He’s also one of four partners in charge of the 60-million-pound trust that is her architecture firm.
How Did President Obama Survive The White House? Books. He Says
The man who wrote two books that helped propel him to the presidency has his favorites. “The writings of Lincoln, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, Mr. Obama found, were ‘particularly helpful’ when ‘what you wanted was a sense of solidarity,’ adding ‘during very difficult moments, this job can be very isolating.'”
Montaigne Was The Inventor Of Liberalism. But What Do We Really Know About Him?
“What do I know?” was Montaigne’s beloved motto, meaning: What do I really know? And what do we really know about him now? We may vaguely know that he was the first essayist, that he retreated from the world into a tower on the family estate to think and reflect, and that he wrote about cannibals (for them) and about cruelty (against it). He was considered by Claude Lévi-Strauss, no less, to be the first social scientist, and a pioneer of relativism—he thought that those cannibals were just as virtuous as the Europeans they offended, that customs vary equably from place to place.