“In my experience, the art world has a disdain for theater. When I present my work to theater people, they call it performance art. When I present it to the art world, they call it theater.”
The Million-Dollar Bet On New Novelists
“Heavy bidding for first timers is ratcheting up the size of some advances, agents say, since the competition offers some reassurance that other houses see big potential in a book as well.”
Jazz Great Cassandra Wilson Refuses To Leave Hotel Room For Concert, Keeping 2,500 People Waiting For Almost 90 Minutes
“Almost half the 2,500-strong audience at [London’s] Royal Festival Hall had walked out by the time [the singer], 59, was finally coaxed into taking the stage by fellow band members on Sunday.
When Helga Fooled Us All: Robert Hughes On The Media Frenzy Around Andrew Wyeth’s ‘Secret’ Paintings
“The lanes and back roads, diners and gas stations and Kmarts of rural Pennsylvania were crawling with intrepid reporters, festooned in tape recorders and videocams, looking for Helga. Whether Wyeth was obsessed with her or not, the media certainly were. The quest for Helga began to take on the epic proportions of the search for Patty Hearst, or even the Lindbergh baby.”
How Humans Went From Hissing Like Geese To Flipping The Bird
“No one is turning over a chicken – so why do we call it flipping the bird? ”
Bad Sex In Fiction Award 2015: Behold The Contenders
“Her mouth was intensely ovoid, an almond mouth, of citrus crescents. And under that sling, her breasts were like young fawns, sheep frolicking in hyssop – Psalms were about to pour out of me.”
Glyndebourne Appoints A New General Director
Currently the deputy artistic director of Theater an der Wien in Vienna, Sebastian Schwarz will take up his role in May 2016, becoming the the seventh general director in the opera company’s 81-year history.
Hollywood Reporter: No Actresses Of Color Are Getting Oscar Buzz This Year
As we prepared for this cover, we discovered precisely ZERO actresses of color in the Oscar conversation — at least in the weeks in early September when the roundtables are put together, weeks before the actual ceremony takes place and months before the nominations are announced January 14.
How Awkward Is That When A Major Magazine ‘Splains Why Its Cove Has No Actresses Of Color?
“It’s definitely a sign that things have gotten weird when a major publication is aware of its own lack of imagination, indulges it anyway because it’s the easiest thing to do, and then tries to quell the criticism before anyone has had a chance to see the result.”
Paris’s Cultural Institutions Slowly Bounce Back After Attacks
“This week, the places that make Paris one of the world’s great cultural capitals have been slowly coming back to life, and directors are hoping that residents and visitors alike will return. They say that they are more convinced than ever that culture is a form of resistance to terrorism.”
Merce Cunningham Gets A Museum Retrospective
“The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago are to hold an extensive two-city exhibition, ‘Merce Cunningham: Common Time,’ opening in February 2017.” There will be Cunningham sets by the likes of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, film and video installations by Charles Atlas and Nam June Paik, Cunningham music by John Cage and Morton Feldman – and, of course, dance, performed by both international companies and a group of former dancers with Merce’s own company.
Is Virtual Reality The Next Frontier Of Journalism?
“I reach up and shakily remove the Samsung Gear VR headset. As though emerging from a vivid nightmare, I am abruptly back in Manhattan, blinking against the bright summer light streaming into an airy third-floor apartment, where I’m seated on the edge of a chaise lounge. “
National Book Award Winners 2015: Ta-Nehisi Coates Extends His Winning Streak, Adam Johnson Pulls An Upset
Coates adds the nonfiction award for Between the World and Me to the Kirkus Prize he won last month and the MacArthur “genius” Fellowship he received in September. Johnson’s short story collection Fortune Smiles edged out the presumed frontrunners, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life and Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies. (includes full list of winners and nominees)
The Talented, Thorny, Hard-Working, Mean-Spirited, Bigoted, Brilliant Patricia Highsmith
The author of Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt (republished as Carol), The Talented Mr. Ripley, and 19 other novels, “Highsmith is almost impossible to shoehorn into any category – political, literary, or psychological. … “
28 People On The Lesbian-Culture Artifacts That Changed Their Lives
Alison Bechdel, Christine Vachon, Lea DeLaria, Carrie Brownstein, and others name books, movies, songs, paintings, photographs, and underwear ads (yes) that made all the difference.
Verbing Nouns And Nouning Adjectives And Adjectiving Verbs: The English Language’s Fountain Of Awesome Is –
– antimeria, “a rhetorical device that repurposes a word as a different part of speech than usual. In exposing that word’s ability to be understood across grammatical categories, antimeria … does more than surprise or joke or streamline (or sow surprise or crack a joke or render prose more streamlined). Antimeria unlocks a word’s essence. Thing is, a lot of people hate antimeria.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.18.15
Another Rough Night: Sotheby’s Underperforming Sale of Alfred Taubman’s American Art
With a total of $13.04 million (including the buyer’s premium), the auction at Sotheby’s tonight of 31 works from A. Alfred Taubman’s American art collection (eight of which failed to sell) will be of little help in reducing the formidable $95-million gap … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-11-18
Lookback: the death of a president
From 2003: I was a small-town second-grader on November 22, 1963. My teacher, Jackie Grant, told the class that the president had been shot and killed, and then we all went home. For me, home was a block away from the classroom door, but my mother still drove to the school to pick me up, … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-11-17
Snapshot: Martha Argerich plays Liszt
Martha Argerich plays Liszt’s Sixth Hungarian Rhapsody on TV in 1966. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-11-18
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Surprise: TV Industry Posts A Good Quarter Amid The Doom And Gloom
“Domestic TV ad sales and MVPD video subscriber rates were, generally speaking, better than forecast. More surprisingly, the positive signs in these arenas were driven by companies most considered to be dinosaurs of the digital age: broadcast networks and Big Cable operators.”
A “Project Runway” For Choreographers
With acclaimed music video choreographer — and “SYTYCD” alum — Brian Friedman as its mentor and Vine star Liza Koshy as its host, the series pits 10 choreographers against each other in themed challenges and hopes to do for that industry what “Project Runway” did for fashion designers.
Balancing Act – Are The National Book Awards Really About The Very Best Books?
While it presents itself to the general public as being a competition purely about literary merit, every writer, editor and publisher knows that NBA juries also have to consider matters like popularity and accessibility in anointing a tome as the One Book That Ruled Them All.
English National Opera Still On Funding Probation
The organisation found ENO had made “good progress” in in improving its operation, but has “further work to do” to ensure future sustainability.
Is There Such A Thing As “American” Art Anymore?
“Many curators of American museums say they’re moving away from traditional definitions: In the past, the label has been more actively used to decide who does and doesn’t belong in the country’s cultural history. But art reflects identity, and the U.S. national identity has only grown more pluralized in recent decades, thanks to immigration and globalization.”
The Uffizi Museum’s First Non-Italian Director Has Big Plans
Eike Schmidt is one of seven non-Italians appointed to direct the country’s state museums as part of a sweeping reform that seeks to bring the institutions in line with their more business-minded peers in the US and the UK.
Broadway’s “Lion King” Creates A Virtual Reality Version That Gives Viewers Control
The Disney stage blockbuster on Wednesday released 360-degree footage of its opening song “Circle of Life” that lets users look left, right, up, backstage and at the audience, even when sitting on a couch.
Twyla Tharp On Performing In The Wake Of Atrocity
“Ultimately we go on with no mention of this obscene parallel reality abroad. But our pre-curtain announcement, ‘Turn off cellphones as a courtesy to your fellow audience members,’ seems poignant to me as I think about courtesy, as I think about gatherings, and as I realize that performance cannot take place without the right to assemble.”