“The Twa Sisters,” a ballad about deadly sibling rivalry that was first notated and catalogued in Scotland in 1806; it turns out to have at least 531 variants (with several different denouements) spread throughout Europe and over much of the rest of the world.
Should Taxpayers Even Be Funding The Arts At All? Michael Lind Makes The Case Against
“The NEA Literature Fellowships program, for example, offers $25,000 grants in poetry and prose …Why should writers get $25,000 for ‘travel, and general career advancement’ but not janitors, or home health aides, or car mechanics, all of whom could use the money more than ‘creative writers,’ a group drawn mostly [sic] from the upper middle class and the rich?”
Kafka Wasn’t Just A Tortured Neurotic
“He loved beer and slapstick. He undertook a fitness regime popularized by a Dutch exercise guru. He tried to cheat on his high-school exams. He used his desk as a metaphor for self-parody and waxed lyrical about the Paris metro.”
How Did This Group Shoot A Mindbendingly Great Music Video In Zero Gravity?
“The new video is but the latest reminder that OK Go is a band, yes, but also something more. Ross says the band sees itself a kind of freewheeling creative factory, where catchy songs exist alongside viral videos, and things like collaborations with airlines and experiments like OK Go working to encode its latest album, Hungry Ghosts—from which ‘Upside Down & Inside Out’ is taken—onto strands of DNA.”
The Best (And Possibly Only) Article About Justin Bieber That You’ll Ever Need To Read
“It’s unsettling to share a personal story, or ask a long-winded question, and be met with Justin Bieber’s silent, cool-eyed stare the entire time you’re talking. Justin Bieber makes eye contact like a person who has been told that eye contact is very, very important.”
Germany Has Produced Great Cinema. But It’s Been A While And Germans Are Asking Why
“To be fair, whinging that no German cinema movement has proved as influential or productive as the New German Cinema movement circa 1962-1982ish is bit of a non-starter, as one could argue that no national cinema movement since has proved as influential or productive as the New German Cinema. But if there’s no worthwhile national film culture in Germany, if German films have no future, then why do Berliners seem to go ga-ga for their annual film fete?”
The Perils Of Writing About Sex In Your Fiction
“Should you use exotic euphemisms or anatomical detail? Should it be comical, tender or shocking? And what if your mum reads it? Three generations of writers reveal the pitfalls – and pleasures – of writing about erotic encounters.”
Great Art Should Belong To The World (But Then There Are The Collectors)
“The problem with collecting masterworks of great artists is that the act of ownership is in itself a kind of theft, stealing from the public commons of genius.”
Aaron Sorkin Adapting ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’? Bad Idea
Scott Timberg: “Velocity is Sorkin’s great gift, but this guy’s going to slip into the cadence of small-town Depression-era Alabama? … [And] despite the centrality of Atticus, … the novel’s narrating character is not him but Scout, a woman recalling a story of her girlhood. How many of Sorkin’s best characters have been girls or women?”
Was Facebook’s Free Basics Program In India A Good Deed Or Colonialism Redux?
“It tries to solve a problem it doesn’t understand, but it doesn’t need to understand the problem because it already knows the solution. … When Zuckerberg or Andreessen face criticism, they argue that their critics are being elitist and inhumane – after all, who could be against helping India develop? The rhetoric is rich with the White Man’s Burden.”
Two Artists Who Marry Science, Environment And Art
“The problem is that science is by nature a non-emotional process,” Felix says. “You have to be dispassionate. The data has to speak for itself. But that’s not what humans are like. Emotion is what drives us. And emotion is the raw material that artists use.”
How People Learn To Become Resilient
“One of the central elements of resilience … is perception: Do you conceptualize an event as traumatic, or as an opportunity to learn and grow? ‘Events are not traumatic until we experience them as traumatic.’ … The experience [of trauma] isn’t inherent in the event; it resides in the event’s psychological construal.”
How Do you Build A Critical Life As Part Of A Creative Life?
“He honors the heights but gladly descends from them, all the while wondering anxiously whether something a little less sublime, a more easeful ideal of the engagement with art, does not shrivel him into a fan or a consumer. The anxiety is fully warranted..”
Ailing Seattle Bookstore Turns To Fans For Help (And They Do)
“Every time some mystery shop closes, people felt like they lost their shop and they wished their shop had said something. So we just decided to be the shop that asks for help.”
France’s Culture Minister Replaced – Mid-Debate – In Surprise Cabinet Reshuffle
“Audrey Azoulay, currently President François Hollande’s cultural advisor, is to replace Fleur Pellerin as France’s minister of culture. … Pellerin learned that she was no longer the minister of culture and communication in the middle of a senate debate over her proposed ‘creation, architecture and heritage’ law.”
Roberto Alagna Learns New Role In Two Weeks, Saves The Met’s Bacon
“Jonas Kaufmann, one of the biggest stars in opera, had just withdrawn from a coming new production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. Would Mr. Alagna step in? ‘My first thought was to say no,’ [he said]. … And he would have just 16 days to nail it before opening night, which arrives this Friday.”
The Connection Between New Arts Organizations And Neighborhood Diversity
Richard Florida looks at a new study of New York City neighborhoods and organizations founded between 2000 and 2010: “Two thirds of new nonprofit arts organizations are located in neighborhoods with moderate to high levels of racial and income diversity.”
Like Misty Copeland’s Degas Photos? There Are Hard Truths Behind Them
Sebastian Smee: “It always makes me deeply uneasy to see [people] take to Edgar Degas’s ballet pictures as if they were some sort of grand affirmation of their art. They’re really not. … These poor girls were commonly known as ‘les petits rats,’ the little rats, and Degas, who also called them his ‘little monkey girls,’ was precisely interested in this sordid aspect.”
Lincoln Center Hall Of Fame Names First Inductees
“There is no hall yet, but Lincoln Center’s nascent performing arts hall of fame now has the fame part down. It announced Thursday that its first class of inductees would include Louis Armstrong, Plácido Domingo, Yo-Yo Ma, Audra McDonald, Leontyne Price and Harold Prince.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.11.16
Four rules of money
Budgets and balance sheets and audited financials have a tendency to simultaneously over-simplify and over-complicate organizational life. The way they appear on a page suggests a linear, logical, orderly aggregation of resources in clean compartments, … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2016-02-11
Making art the focus
I’m sure we’d all say that, if we’re musicians, or producing musical performances, that art is the focus. The music is what matters. Everything else – marketing, how the ushers behave, how we dress, … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-02-11
The uninvited critics
In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I take a closer look a theatrical controversy in Los Angeles that made national headlines. Here’s an excerpt. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-02-11
For Fun: Nicole Johänntgen
The German saxophonist Nicole Johänntgen is one of Europe’s busiest musicians, traveling frequently from her home in Switzerland to play with a cross-section of the continent’s jazz artists. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-02-11
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SoundCloud (Used By Podcasters And Musicians) May Be Forced To Close
The report makes it clear that while the company had “adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the forseeable future,” SoundCloud was heavily reliant on “further capital investment” to continue operating in 2015.
Leslie Bassett, 93, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composer
“A master orchestrator who could coax a vast range of tonal colors from the bits of wood and brass for which he composed, Mr. Bassett wrote works for symphony orchestra, chamber and choral ensembles, solo instruments and voice.” He spent 40 years on the faculty at the University of Michigan.
America’s Orchestra Mid-Life Crisis – A Reinvention More About Repositioning The Deck Furniture?
“The main thrust of orchestral initiatives in the 21st century — in which the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is a national leader — remains not finding new ways to approach the art, but rather new ways to perpetuate the existing tradition — that is, finding new audiences for the same thing.”
Paris’s Grand Palais To Close For Renovations – What Will The Art World Do?
“The Grand Palais in Paris will have to close for at least two years to undergo major renovations, … raising fears about the fate of key culture events held at the site such as major exhibitions, the Monumenta contemporary art commission and Fiac Modern and contemporary art fair.”
TV (Unlike The Movies) Has Figured Out That Diversity Is Smart Business
“TV audiences for everything are smaller now, which means networks aren’t programming each show for an imagined audience of tens of millions of white people. On top of that, there are younger viewers for whom diversity — racial, religious, sexual — is their world. That audience wants authenticity; advertisers want that audience.”