David Patrick Stearns: “Only a minute or two long, but repeated 840 times, Vexations is alternately called minimalist, Dada-ist, or Outsider Art when it resurfaces every few years. … [Igor] Levit’s late May performance, streamed from Berlin, is perhaps the highest-profile outing for this ghostly wisp of a piece that was posthumously discovered among the composer’s personal effects. Considering that [it] could easily have been dismissed as some discarded sketch, Vexations has achieved a degree of cultural clout that is, to say the least, highly unexpected.” – WQXR (New York City)
Kevin Rafferty, Co-Director Of ‘The Atomic Cafe’, Dead At 73
Along with his brother Pierce and colleague Jayne Loader, “[he] gathered archival material that had been created to ease Americans into the nuclear age and turned it into The Atomic Cafe, an acclaimed, darkly comic documentary film released in 1982.” Also notable among his six directing credits are Blood in the Face (1991, about far-right groups such as the Ku Klux Klan), The Last Cigarette (about the worldwide marketing of American tobacco products), and Harvard Beats Yale 29-29. – The New York Times
New Yorker Cartoonist Henry Martin Dead At 94
“[He] brought a wry, genial sense of humor to nearly 700 cartoons published in The New Yorker over 35 years. They were set in conference rooms and homes, on desert islands and roadsides, at Heaven’s gate and in maternity wards.” – The New York Times
ArtPrize 2020 Is Cancelled As Entire Staff Is Furloughed
What’s more, says artistic director Kevin Buist, “It’s not clear if there will be an event in 2021, and if there is, it’s not clear who will run it.” The largest contemporary art exhibition in the U.S., which takes place over three weeks in 160 spaces in Grand Rapids, Mich. and features two $200,000 grand prizes (one given by a jury, the other by public vote), ArtPrize typically draws about half a million visitors. – Artnet
Rodin Museum In Paris Will Sell Bronze Casts To See Itself Through COVID Crisis
“A measure of relief may come from a century-old system set up by Rodin himself allowing the museum to sell up to 12 replicas of select sculptures every year. The bronzes are cast in special workshops in a process overseen by the museum and bought by art galleries, private collectors or other museums. Rodin’s priceless originals are mainly carved out of marble.” – Yahoo! (AP)
An Academic War On Free Speech?
There are four problematic recent norms in academia: first, an academic career depends on personal and political matters; second, compliance is rewarded over scepticism; third, academic complaints are increasingly anti-intellectual; and fourth, logic and evidence are subordinated to feelings, even in the hardest of hard sciences. – The Critic
40 Years Ago The Walkman Changed How We Listen To Music
Up to this point, music was primarily a shared experience: families huddling around furniture-sized Philcos; teens blasting tunes from automobiles or sock-hopping to transistor radios; the bar-room juke; break-dancers popping and locking to the sonic backdrop of a boom box. After the Walkman, music could be silence to all but the listener, cocooned within a personal soundscape, which spooled on analog cassette tape. The effect was shocking even to its creators. – The New Yorker
A Long List Of Cultural Leaders And Artists Sign Letter Supporting Open Debate
“The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.” – Harper’s
What I Learned Zooming Opera
This is what I saw with the livestreams: our traditional modes of live performance are not a good fit for the new world we find ourselves in. Rather, as we continue to create live performance in the months ahead, we must seek new modes of performance that actively engage with the technologies we’re using. – Howlround
How Will The Art Market Realign? It Is
With wealthy collectors no longer travelling, most art business is now conducted online. Art dealers are typically reporting a 70% drop in sales, according to a recent survey conducted by The Art Newspaper and Pownall. Up to a third of galleries are expected to fold, with smaller ones particularly vulnerable. The shift to online auctions has seen an equally dramatic slump in secondary market revenues at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips. – The Art Newspaper
What To Do With Problematic Books? Read Them
The great reckoning now sweeping across pop culture has been working through the stacks of literature for far longer. The effects of time are twofold: Most books have fallen into dust, along with the racist values they imbibed. And those few texts that survive have been subjected to rigorous — and ongoing — debate. – Washington Post
Stradivari’s Hometown Became A COVID Hotspot, And Its Instrument-Makers Are Still Suffering
“COVID-19 has caused more than 1,000 deaths and 6,600 confirmed cases of infection in the province of Cremona … and it is now putting a strain on its economy. In particular, it is threatening the violin-making craftsmanship that has been the historical engine of Cremona’s industry and made its botteghe (Italian for ‘workshops’) famous throughout the world, turning the city into a microcosmic reflection of how the pandemic is jeopardizing the culture and arts sector globally.” – BBC
Britain’s Theatre World Banded Together And Got The Government To Provide Lockdown Rescue Money. Why Can’t American Theater Do The Same?
Jesse Green: “For months I’ve been waiting for industry groups to galvanize themselves into meaningful action, as they did in Britain — and as Black theater artists have proved can be done here, too. … But the American theater’s biggest failure is the one that renders it helpless in an existential crisis like this. In allowing itself to be cast as just another industry — a role it does not even play very well — it has disowned its true identity as a public entitlement. Will anyone make that argument now?” – The New York Times
What To Do With The Theatres And Concert Halls Now Sitting Empty? Use Them As Classrooms
Justin Davidson makes the case that New York City’s overburdened, underinvested-in school buildings simply can’t fit students in at a COVID-safe distance, but the currently-dark performance venues (and sports arenas and deserted malls, for that matter) can. – New York Magazine
Atwood, Marsalis, Steinem, Rushdie, Bill T. Jones Among 153 Signing Letter Warning Of ‘Intolerant Climate’ (Yup, There’s A Backlash)
“The letter, which was published by Harper’s Magazine and will also appear in several leading international publications, surfaces a debate that has been going on privately in newsrooms, universities and publishing houses that have been navigating demands for diversity and inclusion, while also asking which demands — and the social media dynamics that propel them — go too far. And on social media, the reaction was swift, with some heaping ridicule on the letter’s signatories … for thin-skinnedness, privilege and, as one person put it, fear of loss of ‘relevance.'” – The New York Times
Here’s The Full ‘Letter On Justice And Open Debate’
“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. … The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.” – Harper’s
Big Three Movie Theater Chains Sue New Jersey For Right To Reopen
“In the lawsuit led by the National Association of Theatre Owners of New Jersey, naming Gov. Philip Murphy and New Jersey’s health commissioner, …, the plaintiffs” — which include AMC, Cinemark, and Regal — “argue that because churches and retailers have been allowed to open in the state, the movie theaters should be permitted to reopen as well.” – NPR
Artists’ Retreat MacDowell Colony Drops ‘Colony’ From Its Name (Because Colonial Oppression)
“MacDowell Board Chair Nell Painter … acknowledged that the word ‘colony’ can mean a country or given location under the control of an outside power or, as would apply to MacDowell, a community of like-minded people. But she said both definitions carry a sense of exclusion and hierarchy, and that … ‘in the language we speak today, colony is a word tied to occupation and oppression.'” – AP
Terry Pratchett’s Last Unpublished Stories Will Finally See Print
“The final collection of early stories from the late Terry Pratchett, written while the Discworld creator was a young reporter, will be published in September. The tales in The Time-travelling Caveman, many of them never released in book form before, range from a steam-powered rocket’s flight to Mars to a Welsh shepherd’s discovery of the resting place of King Arthur.” – The Guardian
Toronto Symphony Cancels 2020/21 Season
But the orchestra says it will look for ways to perform in smaller ensembles. TSO musicians will also continue to perform virtual concerts. Since the start of the pandemic, musicians and guest artists have appeared in more than 100 virtual concerts and events, which have been viewed more than two million times, according to the TSO statement. – CBC
Canada’s Cineplex Movie Theatre Chain Sues Over Aborted Takeover
On June 12, the U.K.-based cinema giant had called off its planned $2.1 billion takeover of Cineplex, which would have created one of the world’s largest cinema companies with more than 11,200 screens globally. Cineplex, as a once friendly takeover attempt has hit the rocks, claimed that Cineworld “breached its contractual obligations and its duty of good faith and honesty.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Why Humor Has Eluded Philosophers
Humour can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind. – Aeon
Pompeo Says US Is Considering Ban On TikTok
TikTok — which is owned by Beijing-based startup ByteDance — has been repeatedly criticized by US politicians who accused the short-form video app of being a threat to national security because of its ties to China. They allege that the company could be compelled to “support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.” – CNN
Quibi Was Going To Reinvent Video. But Is Anyone Watching?
Quibi, the brainchild of Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former Disney studio head and DreamWorks co-founder, had promised to reinvent television by streaming high-quality content in ten-minute-or-less chunks to “the TV in your pocket.” – New York Magazine
La Scala Reopens For First Time Since COVID Lockdown
For now, it’s a small-scale relaunch: only 600 audience members in a roughly 2,000-seat house (so social distancing can be maintained) and chamber music rather than full-fledged opera. There will be a total of four programs in July before the traditional summer break; in September, the company will perform Verdi’s Requiem in Milan’s Duomo and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in the theater. – France 24