“Harvey Weinstein wants less carnage in films. But ‘less’ and ‘more’ aren’t helpful terms when answering questions of how on-screen mayhem influences real-world mayhem.”
Archives for February 4, 2014
Could Robert Frost’s Letters Repair His Reputation?
As information about the poet’s life came out in the years after his death in 1963, his image changed from New England country sage to jealous and cruel egomaniac. Yet one of the editors of Frost’s correspondence says that what we’ll find there is “mostly … a generosity of spirit.”
Announcing the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced With Adversity
Yes, this is real – and Snicket (children’s author Daniel Handler) is funding it himself. Why? “Because librarians have suffered enough.”
Are There Only Four Basic Emotions?
The existing scientific consensus has been that there are six, but a new study based on facial expressions suggests that there are only four, with the remaining two products of the others. Yet some observers, including commenters on this article, question the entire basis of the new research.
Dallas Museum Gets Major Collection of Islamic Art
“The Keir Collection, amassed over decades in Britain by Edmund de Unger, a Hungarian real-estate magnate who died in 2011, will go to Dallas for at least 15 years beginning in May, under an unusual long-term renewable loan that will give the museum the right to lend pieces to other institutions.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.04.14
Pushing Into the Upper Room
Source: Dancebeat | Published on 2014-02-04
Pete Seeger, Llewyn Davis, and Sisyphus
Source: CultureCrash | Published on 2014-02-04
‘Dirt Always Wins’ (Part Three) — The White Goddess
Source: Out There | Published on 2014-02-04
Essential Viewing: Ethan Stiefel’s “Giselle” for Royal New Zealand Ballet
Source: Fresh Pencil | Published on 2014-02-04
Prominent Russian pianist, 48, is found dead on the street near his home
Source: Slipped Disc | Published on 2014-02-04
In This Exhibition, Technology Really Works
Source: Real Clear Arts | Published on 2014-02-04
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Study Refutes Paul Ryan’s Unsubstantiated Claim Against Public Arts Funding
“Rep. Paul Ryan grabbed headlines last year when the House budget committee he chairs released a report claiming NEA grants are a “wealth transfer” from the poor to the rich.” A new study finds that this is not true.
The Chinese Art Market Doesn’t Add Up (Where’s The Money?)
“Money-laundering, tax evasion and the illicit transfer of cultural heritage objects could be factors explaining large discrepancies that have emerged in an analysis of art shipments between China and the US.”
San Francisco Rejects George Lucas’s Plan To Build $700 Million Museum
“Lucas wants a showcase for his collection of popular art, including illustrations by Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish, and he had pledged $700 million to build and endow the museum.”
Love The Artist, Not The Man?
“Whether separating art from artist is right or wrong is a question that provokes too many headaches to answer succinctly—but the ability and proclivity to do so is an inevitability of participating in modern culture.”
Detroit Institute Of Art Gave Raises To Its Execs In The Past Four Years (And This Is Important Because…)
“The DIA’s tax filings indicate salaries and compensation for top executives have climbed 17 percent since 2010. That’s somewhat greater than increases at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, and substantially greater than at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Neither of those institutions is getting rescue money.”
Philip Roth: I’m Done With Fiction
“I did what I did and it’s done. There’s more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date.”
Study: Music Genres Can Influence What You Buy
“Music played on websites can evoke memories and feelings that affect purchases and choices visitors make on the site, suggests a study in the current issue of the Psychology of Music.”
Moby: Why I Left New York (It’s Not Creative)
“I was so accustomed to the city’s absurd cult of money that it took me years to notice I didn’t have any artist friends left in Manhattan, and the artists and musicians I knew were slowly moving farther and farther east, with many parts of Brooklyn even becoming too pricey for aspiring or working artists.”
Charge: There’s A Climate Of Institutionalized Sexism In Classical Music
“Good looks have long helped to compensate for a lack of talent across the entire music industry. But the sexualised marketing of young women, particularly, in classical music has also now become normalised.”
Is Fair Use Broken In The Visual Arts?
“Members of the visual arts communities of practice encounter copyright permissions issues in connection with virtually every aspect of fulfilling their professional responsibilities, ranging from an artist’s creation of work that references popular culture to an art historian’s focus on a contemporary artist, to a teacher’s compilation of curriculum materials, to a museum exhibition and catalogue, to scholarly and art publishing.”
Portugal Selling Major Bank’s Large Miro Collection After Bank Fails
“The state took over the artworks as part of the assets of Portugal’s BPN bank, which was nationalised during the financial crisis in 2008. A court in Portugal earlier rejected an injunction by opposition politicians attempting to block the sale.”
Riccardo Muti On The Ways Of The World
Muti looks more and more these days for ways to connect past and present. He wonders if the current merging and melding of cultures and nationalities will produce a kind of music that “will be relevant to listeners today” while “exploring the many layers of the past, the many kinds of melody, harmony, chanting, rhythms of all of these societies throughout history.”
Picasso Tapestry on the Verge of Eviction – And, Perhaps, Existence
“For more than half a century, it has hung in the hallway of the Four Seasons Restaurant on Park Avenue, an immense work by one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. But Picasso’s curtain is coming down – and that might just destroy it.”
Steven Berkoff on Geffen Playhouse ‘Birthday Party’: I Wasn’t Fired, I Quit
“I don’t want to malign the man [director William Friedkin]. He’s a very fine movie director. At the beginning, he was charming and nice – we got on very well. … The conflict grew, and as I’m provoked, I answered him back.”
Musical About Anti-Gay Violence in Uganda Wins Richard Rodgers Award
The prize will underwrite a production of Witness Uganda, by Matt Gould and Griffin Matthews, at the American Repertory Theater with Diane Paulus as director.
Unpublished Novella by Charlie Chaplin Will Be Released
The 1948 work, called Footlights and thought to be the source of Chaplin’s 1952 film Limelight, was reconstructed from numerous manuscripts in his archives.
Brazilian TV Airs First Primetime Gay Male Kiss
This was a huge deal. “‘Kiss him, Felix,’ urged thousands of viewers of Globo TV’s popular soap Amor à Vida … The campaign for it was partly led by a politician, and it took place online using Facebook and Twitter.”
Iraqi Writer Finds Literary Asylum in English Translation
“Hassan Blasim calculates that after several decades of dictatorship, economic sanctions and war, Iraqis have around 150 million horror stories to tell.”
4,600-Year-Old Step Pyramid Discovered in Egypt
No one yet knows what it was used for, but archaeologists are sure that it’s older than the great pyramids at Giza.