Paul de Man wasn’t just a professor at Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and Yale. He wasn’t just a Nazi collaborator in Belgium during the war. He was, it turns out, an embezzler, fraudster, deadbeat dad, and bigamist.
Archives for March 18, 2014
Artists Who Quit L.A. MoCA’s Board Come Back
“The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles announced Tuesday that three of the four artists who resigned from the museum’s board in July 2012 over concerns about the direction of the institution will rejoin it.”
Opera Australia’s Gleefully Controversial Chief
Since becoming the national company’s artistic director in 2009, Lyndon Terracini “has honed his talent for generating headlines, Twitter storms and Facebook furores. He has made contentious declarations about everything from obese opera singers doing love scenes (‘It’s obscene’); to ‘the sense of patrician entitlement’ of some opera insiders; to the ‘prehistoric’ union quota that limits the number of overseas singers who can perform with OA.”
Shirley Temple As Dancer
Joan Acocella: “Since Shirley Temple died, a month ago, I’ve read tributes to her adorableness and her courage and her success. … But I haven’t seen much about Temple as a dancer. She was a pretty good one, and a pioneer.”
Why People Are Gullible And Fall For Fake News Stories
“Most of us – though unfortunately not all of us – are now aware that Onion articles aren’t real, but the proliferation of online parody and fake news has created an environment where many people are simply accepting fake news as fact. … So why do people believe this crap?” One new study suggests an explanation.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.18.14
The Death of Music Journalism, and SXSW
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-03-18
Futurisms: Can Italian Futurism Be Saved?
AJBlog: Artopia | Published 2014-03-18
The New Stolen-Art Tracker Opens Its Doors
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-03-18
Taylor’s Treasure Trove
AJBlog: Dancebeat | Published 2014-03-18
Supportin’ Skorton: Cornell’s Sad Loss is Smithsonian’s Big Gain (with video)
AJBlog: CultureGrrl | Published 2014-03-18
Here’s What’s Really Wrong At The Metropolitan Opera
“In a single season, the company requires more in donations towards annual operating expenses than the New York Philharmonic, BAM, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The New York City Ballet, and Lincoln Center Theater combined! Or, to put it another other way, the Met’s fundraising obligation of $161 million is more money than the National Endowment for the Arts disperses in a single year.”
Website Aims To Become “I-Tunes Of Art”
“The online store has licences to sell prints of more than 60,000 images by 1,500 artists including Andy Warhol and Picasso as well as an eclectic array of images including vintage Vogue shoots, classic Hammer film posters and Penguin bookcovers.”
Sydney Biennale In Disarray
“The month-long exhibition of contemporary art, set to open on Friday, has been marred by a controversy that led to the dumping of a major sponsor, Transfield, and the resignation of the chairman of the Biennale board.”
Is It Time To Think About Building Floating Cities?
Whereas some coastal cities will double down on sea defences, others are beginning to explore a solution that welcomes approaching tides. What if our cities themselves were to take to the seas?””
The Tiny Group Of People Who Drive Art Market Prices
“The report found that 8% of the art auctioned worldwide in 2013 accounted for 82% of the money spent. In the United States, the ratio was even more skewed: 7.5% of the works auctioned raked in 91.2% of the bucks.”
After Brief Stability, Global Music Sales Resume Their Downwards Plunge
“The Digital Music Report published by industry body IFPI shows that a 0.3 per cent growth in the piracy-decimated industry has been reversed, with total revenues falling from $16.5 to $15 billion in 2013. Total recorded music sales have shrunk by 45 per cent since 2000.”
Seven Years Ago Viacom Sued YouTube For $1 Billion. Here’s How They Settled Today
“Google and Viacom today jointly announced the resolution of the Viacom vs. YouTube copyright litigation. This settlement reflects the growing collaborative dialogue between our two companies on important opportunities, and we look forward to working more closely together.”
America’s TV Networks Are Busy Reinventing How They Do Business
“People are consuming content much differently, and that requires the networks to think about how they’re getting audiences to these shows. When you see the leading broadcaster in the business, CBS, doing things outside of their normal wheelhouse, you know that all rules are up for grabs right now.”
Why Did Spanish Art Flourish Under The Franco Regime?
“Even though the Spanish authorities in the Forties had declared that art should be a ‘luminous glow’ as opposed to ‘subversive chaos under the name of Still Life’, modern creative impulses none the less found vibrant expression under this regime.”
Martin Amis: Money Has Defeated England’s Class Structure
“Money has won. It had always won in America but now it’s won in England too. So if you put your son’s name down for Eton it’s because you can afford to do that, it’s not because it’s any class-granted right. I have no nostalgia for the class society but I have no very great enthusiasm about the money society.”
Paris Opera Ballet Wins Jerome Robbins Award
“Robbins, who died in 1998, enjoyed a close relationship with the Paris Opera Ballet, which he often described as his second family and which has 14 of his ballets in its repertory.”
Are Readers Of E-Book Better Than Those Who Read Paper?
“According to the survey, 48 percent of UK adults who use e-readers say the technology gets them to read more. In addition to that, 41 percent of respondents reported that being able to look up words they don’t know makes reading easier, and over half say that being able to change the size and appearance of text helps as well.”
Lifestyle Over Analysis – What’s Wrong With Today’s Music Criticism
“Without smart, independent critics who know their stuff, everything collapses into hype, public relations, and the almighty dollar. We have already seen where that leads us—take a look at the trendline of recording sales, if you have any doubts.”
Philadelphia Aims to Restore Six-Day-a-Week Library Service
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial disaster, the city was forced to cut 20% from the Free Library system’s budget, and all the branches ended Saturday operations. Mayor Michael Nutter’s next budget aims to restore Saturday hours to all 39 branches.
Memphis Symphony Saved For At Least This Season
“The Memphis Symphony Orchestra will finish its current season after all. Two $100,000 donations and a series of benefit concerts have helped narrow a $400,000 shortfall from the fall.”
America’s Creepy, Surveillance-Endorsing Love of ‘NCIS’
Gregg Easterbrook: “The shows depict a world in which terrorists planning mass slaughter are under every bed, in which viewers root for the good-looking, wisecracking agents to smash down doors without warrants; in which super-advanced electronic surveillance is used exclusively to protect the public. In the NCIS version of reality, we’ll all die unless powerful government agencies treat the United States Constitution like a big joke.
The Limits of Brain-Fitness Programs
“It seems that playing computer games designed to work your powers of perception, memory and attention can lead to significant and lasting improvement in one’s ability to play those very games. But the benefits don’t transfer. You may perform the relevant tasks like a 20-year-old, but you’ll still have the mind of a 60-year-old.”
Dancing About Cardiology? Yup.
Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects’ 4Chambers “is a kind of hybrid of a dance piece and a science project, with videos about the heart – including the choreographer Ismael Houston-Jones describing his own heart attack” – and a sequence depicting cardiac arrest and CPR (which can be quite a violent process). (audio)
How ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ Lines Up With the Ukraine Crisis
Yuliya Komska (whose father created an enormous stained-glass window for the Grand Hotel Lviv) gives the rundown on why Wes Anderson’s film is so timely – and suggests that the movie could be an antidote to the “Ukraine fatigue” sure to set in soon in the West.
Teju Cole Tweets a 4,000-Word Essay
“On March 13, author Teju Cole published ‘A Piece Of The Wall’ entirely on Twitter, a first-of-its-kind essay on Arizona and immigration comprised of approximately 250 tweets that were tweeted out over the span of seven hours.” In a Q-&-A, Cole explains what he was up to and how he pulled it off.
America’s First Professional Songwriter, Stephen Foster (We’re Still Under His Shadow)
“Historians now credit him with having pretty much invented the American pop song in its purest form: the bastard stepchild of the parlor song and the minstrel song, of the European and African strains of American music.” (And that child is very much a bastard – ever heard the second verse of “Oh, Susannah”? Yikes.)
The Archdiocese of New York Gets Into Downtown Theater
This spring in Manhattan’s Noho neighborhood, the Catholic archdiocese will open a two-theater, four-studio complex named after Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Says the Sheen Center’s director, “We had been thinking that we wanted a place to showcase Christian humanism – the true, the good and the beautiful.”
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Last of the Beats, to Publish His Travel Journals
The poet, publisher, and co-founder of the legendary City Lights bookstore, “at 94 one of the last living links to the Beat generation, has sold his travel journals to Liveright Publishing, a division of W.W. Norton, which plans to publish them in September 2015.”
Pat Oliphant, Still Drawing Sharp Political Satire at Age 78
“For nearly 60 years, Mr. Oliphant has been skewering politicians, statesmen and other hapless souls in cartoons that have won him virtually every award in his field, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1967 while he was still in his early 30s – and sometimes condemnation in equal measure.”