“Demand for older, female artists like Herrera, who was famously 89 when she sold her first artwork and is now a ripe 102, has risen sharply in recent years, the result of a perfect art-world storm. As institutions attempt to revise the art-historical canon, passionate dealers and curators see years of promotion come to fruition, and blue-chip galleries search for new artists to represent among those initially overlooked, prices and institutional recognition for artists such as Carol Rama, Irma Blank, Geta Brătescu, and Herrera have soared.”
Competitive Punning: It’s Not Just A Thing, It’s An Entire Subculture, And This Guy Went Inside It
Joe Berkowitz: “Picture someone practicing for a pun competition. It’s the saddest Rocky training montage of all, isn’t it? In my case, the image entails a man firmly in his midthirties, sitting alone in his bedroom with the door shut, making puns about colors. (‘Is having the blues what made Matthew Perry wrinkle?’) The thought of my dead relatives and pets looking down from another plane of existence as I do this is mortifying.”
In Finland, The Foundation Of Learning Is Music
“Finland has one of the best education systems in the world, where teaching music and learning to play an instrument are the foundation of children’s schooling; it should be the model for us to follow. The principle is that a child is never too young to start a relationship with music; creative play is the key and it should never be a chore; musical exploration will feed into other disciplines; children should be allowed to develop at their own pace and go into music as deeply as they wish. It is fantastically successful, and Finland has produced a stream of extraordinary musicians over the past 30 years – making it surely per capita the most productive country for churning out great classical conductors and soloists.”
The Original Cat Video (It Was Made In 1894)
“Thomas Edison might be best known for the electric lightbulb, but he was also a connoisseur of strange short films.” And one of those odd little movies was Boxing Cats. (includes video)
James Salter: The Final Interview
Alexander Slotnick: “I conducted the following interview with James Salter in the Fall of 2014. It was published in the University of Virginia’s literary journal Meridian several months later, and Jim died shortly thereafter, on June 19th, 2015, at the age of 90. As far as Literary Hub‘s editors and I know, this was Jim’s last interview. It’s republished here in full with thanks to Meridian and Jim’s family.”
‘Fearless Girl’ Wall Street Statue Wins Three Awards – At Advertising Festival
“McCann New York’s Fearless Girl statue, placed on Wall Street for State Street Global Advisors as a symbol of the power of women in business, enjoyed a spectacular first day here at the Cannes Lions festival, sweeping the first three competitions by picking up the Grand Prix in the Glass, PR and Outdoor Lions.”
All-Star Group Of Actors And Playwrights Make Brexit Videos
“Kristin Scott Thomas, Penelope Wilton, Joanna Scanlan and Steffan Rhodri are among the stars performing the monologues” – a series of nine online videos collectively titled Brexit Shorts: Dramas from a Divided Nation – “by writers including Abi Morgan, Meera Syal, Maxine Peake and David Hare.”
Benjamin Millepied: Why Ballet Doesn’t Interest Me Much
“There’s very little ballet that I like. I’m not interested in most of what’s happening in ballet. And so I think that women have been drawn to contemporary dance because it’s a more interesting field where you can see more interesting work. It draws upon more fields of art, there are more diverse influences. I think the problem with ballet, in general, is its insularity and the education that results from that.”
A Smart Conversation About The Differences Between Photos And Painting
“In reality, form is described in the beautiful halftones between light and shadow. Light will bounce off of an object at relative intensity depending on the angle of the planes of an object in relation to the light source. In other words, planes on a surface that face a light source will reflect the most light, and as the form turns away from the light, less light will bounce off of the form. This is true, even for black objects. Work done from photographs will never show this.”
Giant Entertainment Project Announced For Nashville
Under Los Angeles-based AEG‘s plans, the music venue would anchor a mixed-use entertainment district on a four-acre portion of the overall 15-acre former LifeWay Christian Resources campus. AEG’s plans for the land under contract with Nashville Yards’ master-developer Southwest Value Partners also calls for an 850-seat Regal Cinemas theater complex, a 600-700-capacity live entertainment club and a 240-room boutique hotel with other entertainment and up to a dozen food and beverage offerings.
Nietzsche Had Much To Say That Explains Trump, Brexit
Despite Nietzsche’s pointed, if sporadic, political commentary, there’s a debate among scholars about the political relevance of his thought. On the one side are those who think Nietzsche’s concerns were largely apolitical. If you comb through his texts, you don’t find much that speaks directly to traditional political concerns. And when he does touch the political, it’s never in any systematic way; there’s no unified theory. On the other side are those who see in Nietzsche a deeply political thinker. It’s true that much of his writing is about morality and the role of art in society. But if you believe, as I do, that ethics and culture are inseparable from politics, Nietzsche’s ideas are inescapably political.
YouTube Can’t Actually *Ban* White-Supremacist Or ISIS Recruiting Videos – But It Can (And Will) Bury Them
Videos that promote abhorrent ideas or ideology don’t violate YouTube’s terms of service if they don’t actually encourage acts of violence, and blocking content based on the ideas it contains is a slippery slope the company would rather avoid. But that doesn’t mean that it can do nothing …
Leonardo DiCaprio Turns Over His Picasso And Basquiat Paintings To U.S. Gov’t For Massive Malaysian Corruption Case
It’s the same case – the alleged theft of $540 million from 1MDB, the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund – that has the Justice Dept. trying to acquire the rights to such films as Dumb and Dumber To and The Wolf of Wall Street (which starred DiCaprio).
The New BBC Cardiff Singer Of The World Is –
Catriona Morison, a Scottish mezzo who didn’t win any of the semi-final rounds and made it to the final in the wild-card slot. Morison, the first Briton ever to win this competition, also shared the Song Prize (the main prize is for operatic repertoire) with Mongolian baritone Ariunbaatar Ganbaatar.
Forger Arrested For Selling Fake Damien Hirst Prints – For The Third Time
Vincent Lopreto, one of three men arraigned for the counterfeiting scheme on Monday, has already been convicted twice of selling fake “limited edition” prints of Hirst’s dot paintings.
The Kennedy Center May Honor JFK, But It’s LBJ’s View Of The Arts That Prevailed
The upcoming expansion of the D.C. arts center is making an extra point of paying tribute to the president it’s named after. And yet, Philip Kennicott writes, John F. Kennedy was no aesthete himself, and what he valued in the arts isn’t what became national policy after he died.
John Avildsen, 81, Director Of ‘Rocky’ And ‘The Karate Kid’
He made a wide range of other films, from early exploitation flicks like Turn On to Love to the Jack Lemmon vehicle Save the Tiger to the George C. Scott-Marlon Brando thriller The Formula to the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd comedy Neighbors. He was nominated for a second Oscar for, of all things, a short documentary, Traveling Hopefully, about the founder of the ACLU.
Italian Court Reinstates Five Ousted Museum Directors – For Now
“On 15 June, Italy’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, suspended the decision by the Lazio regional administrative tribunal (TAR) that voided the appointments” of museum directors in Modena, Mantua, Naples, Taranto, and Reggio Calabria. “It is the latest twist in a legal saga that threatens the Italian culture ministry’s ongoing reform of the country’s bureaucratic museums sector.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.19.17
On “looky-loos” and the institutions who are desperate for them and desperate for them to behave
Reading [Dave] Hickey’s memoir this past week I was suddenly struck by the way arts organizations have set themselves up for this very situation.. … read more
AJBlog: Jumper Published 2017-06-19
Disinterest, distance, and the artist-manager
One of the core actions of aesthetic/artistic attention is to step back. To make a little space between yourself and the object of your attention, so you can see it as it is, rather than see it as you are. … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2017-06-19
Too Much Contemporary? Too Little What Came Before?
That is a prospect we–American consumers of art exhibitions–face, and it is that subject and its consequences for our culture … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-06-19
Audiencing: Joining the Resistance at Donmar Warehouse?
Last week in London I was able to see the much discussed Donmar Warehouse production of … The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. It’s not hard to see why Brecht’s satirical account of the rise of a clownish American dictator would find its moment now, … read more
AJBlog: We The Audience Published 2017-06-19
AAMD’s Response to Metropolitan Museum’s Renegade Reorganization: “Guidance to Consider”
In last week’s post, I noted that Met President Daniel Weiss‘ designation as his museum’s CEO, with the yet-to-be-named new director as his subordinate, ran contrary to the professional guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors. I also predicted that AAMD’s reaction to the Met’s going rogue would be to ignore it. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-06-19
How Technology Is Changing Composing Movie Music
“The fact that it’s so easy to edit and change both movies and music is something I think has caused some of the creative process to suffer a bit. By doing mock-ups of everything, you’re not allowing for some of the performance creativity that happens, some of the magic that used to happen when you’re out there working with the orchestra.”
New UK Government Downgrades Arts In Culture Ministry Restructuring
It remains unclear what the changes will mean for the arts and culture in wider government policy, such as the upcoming industrial strategy, which cabinet ministers promised to put creative industries “at the heart” of.
How Did Contemporary Art Get To Be Blockbuster Art?
“In this environment, with museum directors under pressure to boost attendance, Holbein loses out to Damien Hirst, Manet to Christian Marclay, Braque to Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Klee to Jeff Koons. Even museums whose collections extend back to the ancients are stressing contemporary art. In the past few years, some museum directors and fundraisers have told me that it has become difficult to find money for exhibitions displaying what some are now calling ‘pre-contemporary art’. Sponsors, be they corporations, foundations or individuals, are simply uninterested. This is, as one art dealer remarked to me, like losing Mozart.”
Flap Over The Public’s “Julius Caesar” Shows We Have Even Bigger Problems
“On one level, the corporate corruption of the arts is obvious. There is inevitably pressure on stage companies to police what political dramas (if any) they will or will not stage. (Seen any plays that question the value of the unfettered free market lately?) But the corruption also takes a subtler, more soul-destroying form, which is being ignored or minimized. For example, mainstream commentators are, as usual, missing the more insidious point of the Julius Caesar fracas, wallowing in the surface issues, content to indulge in silly finger-pointing and self-serving postures of defiance.”
The Most Influential People In Dance Today
Dance Magazine’s got a list…
Instead Of Relegating It To The Sidelines, Put Music At The Very Heart Of Education
Why make sure every child has the opportunity to learn music and to play an instrument? “Learning to read and play music gives you access to a new language, other worlds. It is one of the greatest gifts, along with security and self-belief and simple love, that a child can be given.”