“Away from caliphate building and sectarianism, a neo-noir revolution has been creeping across the Middle East, allowing artists and writers to act as ombudsmen in the current political climate. Jonathan [Guyer] meets the writers who are latching onto the adventure, despair and paranoia prevalent in genre fiction to tell stories that transcend the present.” (audio)
Archives for November 2017
Dance Works Showing Bare Breasts Defunded By Israel’s Culture Ministry
“The Culture Ministry and the Jerusalem municipality will not support three performances in Jerusalem International Dance Week, which begins Tuesday, because they feature partial nudity.” (The performances are not being cancelled.)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.28.17
Education and Engagement
Education and engagement are increasingly being paired in job titles and descriptions. There is some sense to that, but the differences – with respect to fundamental focus – are significant. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-11-28
Machine-Made Art
For as long as there have been machines, I suppose, the question has been asked: Can Machines Make Art? … It’s an interesting question, but there is a supplementary question that I find even more interesting: How Much Do We Care About Machine-Made Art? … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2017-11-28
Dan’s Plans, Redrafted: Revelations in Metropolitan Museum’s FY17 Annual Report
A close look at the financials in the Met’s recently published Annual Report for fiscal 2017 (ended June 30) suggests that it’s premature to add “Turnaround King” to [CEO Kenneth] Weiss’s titles. The realization of the museum’s “Financial Transformation Plan” still has a long, bumpy way to go. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-11-28
“Hamilton” Breaks Broadway Box Office Records Over Thanksgiving
With many tourists in the city, schools on break and star power lifting the tide, audiences turned out en masse. “Hamilton” grossed a whopping $3.4 million in a regular eight-performance week, breaking its own record set this January. With the show sold out nonstop, the average ticket price hit $321.13, reflecting a premium pricing model that producers have started to employ across the industry.
Do Artists Have Political Responsibilities?
Should a writer be socially engaged? Is it a part of our duty? I always return to the poet and teacher Marie Ponsot: “The duty of the writer is to the welfare of the work.” Not to some political party or cause or ideal—which through making our art more useful might somehow rob it of its integrity, its wonderful, vital uselessness—but simply to the work itself.
How One Entrepreneur Is Trying To Make More Affordable Artist Studio Space
“I wanted to make a protected space,” Andrea Woodner offers, “where they don’t have to be completely bare-knuckled about the commercial environment. Here, they can be artists, think about and show their own work, and use the facility as an artist-run project space.”
Is It Females Who Decide What Is Beauty?
“The view has long been that males, in their sexual communication, are saying something important about themselves, and it’s up to the females to figure out what that is, to figure out which males are truly attractive and which are not. I argue the other side of the coin. Females aren’t trying to figure out what males are saying. When they mate with a male, by definition, that male is attractive. So females are the deciders. Over evolutionary time, it seems males are trying out a lot of different courtship traits. A bright orange here, a bright blue there, rub your wings together and make a sound, or jump up and do a dance. They are trying to do these things to tickle females’ preferences. But it’s really the females calling the shots. It’s the female’s brain that sets the bar for what kind of traits are attractive and unattractive.”
SpongeBob, The Broadway Musical? There’s A Lot Riding On This
It has spawned two feature films, with a third on the way, and has generated more than $13 billion in retail merchandise sales. adapting family entertainment to Broadway has brought mixed results, especially when not from Disney. Recent examples include “Matilda” (a hit), “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (a failure) and two outright bombs, “Seussical” and “Shrek the Musical” (though both have ended up with longer lives in high schools). If “SpongeBob” sinks on Broadway, it could damage a carefully cultivated two-decade-old brand.
This Woman Is The Reason There’s A Video Archive Of 4,000 Broadway And Off-Broadway Productions
How Betty Corwin, now 97, corralled and cajoled producers, unions, and librarians to create, and run for 31 years, the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
How Reuters Is Using Artificial Intelligence To Find And Write News
“Once a conversation or rumor is potentially identified as news, an important consideration is its veracity. To determine this, Tracer looks for the source by identifying the earliest tweet in the conversation that mentions the topic and any sites it points to. It then consults a database listing known producers of fake news, such as the National Report, or satirical news sites such as The Onion. Finally, the system writes a headline and summary and distributes the news throughout the Reuters organization.”
Artist Stephen Knapp, Known For His ‘Lightpaintings’, Dead At 70
“[He] used specially treated pieces of glass that he mounted on walls and in metal braces to refract and reflect dazzling beams of color.” As he once told an interviewer, “Instead of using paint to capture light, I’m actually painting with light, taking it a giant step forward.”
How Social Media Make It Difficult To Really Think
“If you’re on social media, you’re being presented with stimuli all the time, stimuli that are demanding a response from you. If that’s the case, how do you navigate that moment? The thesis of the book is that, in reality, we don’t want to master those impulses. We don’t want to, because by responding to those stimuli in an instinctive way, we can signal our belonging. But we ought to resist those stimuli, because the social and personal costs of not resisting those stimuli are enormous.”
Is The Museum Of The Bible Propaganda For The Truth Of Protestant Scripture? Only If You Don’t Look Closely
Sure, Hobby Lobby president Steve Green, the museum’s major funder, is an evangelical activist. Yet, writes Will Saletan, if you pay attention to the wall texts and exhibits, you’ll find that they allow for both ambiguity and ambivalence, not to mention the Bible’s borrowings from other religions.
Why Do Only Ten Percent Of Americans Ever Go To The Theatre? Maybe It’s The Way We Teach It
No other form of literature is taught this way; indeed, no other art form is taught this way. Kids are encouraged to read current, popular fiction in school. Perhaps by the time they reach high school their choices are narrowed, but at least by then they’ve been encouraged to read dozens of contemporary books that they love. Students are assigned novels and poetry by living authors, many of whom are—gasp—not white men. Art class is full of hands-on work where the students create while they study masters both new and old. Even music instructors teach jazz and hip hop alongside classical music.
Fake News In America (This Isn’t The First Time It’s Been This Bad)
Slate resident Interrogator Isaac Chotiner talks to Kevin Young, author of Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, about “what inspired his book idea (it wasn’t Trump), whether con men ever believe their own nonsense, and why people are willing to believe some hoaxes more than others.”
Bad Sex In Fiction Award Judges Say The Sex In Books Has Gotten Better
Says Frank Brinkley of the booby prize’s sponsor, The Literary Review, “Maybe we are having an effect – definitely literary fiction’s changing and the ‘Oh sod it, I’ll put in a sex scene’ attitude that prompted the creation of the award has pretty much fallen by the wayside.”
When These Books Faced Obscenity Trials, What Exactly Was Deemed ‘Obscene’?
Emily Temple: “‘Obscenity,’ after all, is a pretty wide field. It’s obscene, the number of things I’ve called obscene. So what was it? A certain number of bad words? General sexiness? A queasy feeling in the gut by a well-connected reader? I tracked down a few answers for famous books deemed (by some) obscene. Mostly, it’s about bad words – but sometimes it’s also communism!”
This Is The Only Book Ever Banned By The US Supreme Court (And It’s Still Banned Today)
Here’s the story of The Housewife’s Handbook on Selective Promiscuity, the 1960 “sexual autobiography” of “Rey Anthony”, also known as Lillian Maxine Serett.
The Problem With Plays About Campus Sexual Assault: Good Drama Just Isn’t Helpful
Alexis Soloski: “A boy student assaults a girl student. It’s sad, yes. But to quote Shakespeare again, it’s ‘everyday’s news.’ Who wants to write about a victim? It’s depressing. Better to thrill an audience with some he said, she said, right? … We know that sexual assault on college campuses is both epidemic and underreported, in part because women and men who have experienced assault doubt that they will be believed. So is it too much to ask for a play that confirms the truth of an assault? Or suggests that a victim wasn’t somehow asking for it?”
Pentagon Takes Away Gitmo Prisoners’ Rights To Their Own Art
“The military has decided that art made by wartime captives [at Guantanamo Bay] is U.S. government property and has stopped releases of security-screened prisoner art to the public. One attorney says the U.S. military intends to burn cellblock art. The new source of tension in the 41-captive prison is stirring a fundamental question: Who owns art? The state or the artist?”
Rasta Thomas Sues American National Ballet For Firing Him
“[Thomas] signed a contract on July 19 making him artistic director of the nascent American National Ballet, based in Charleston. The news sent a buzz of excitement through the dance community. On Aug. 22, he was fired. … This month, Thomas filed a lawsuit in circuit court alleging breach of contract, fraud, violation of South Carolina’s Payment of Wages Act, wrongful appropriation of Thomas’ name and likeness, and interference with a contract.”
Composer Bent Sørensen Wins $100K Grawemeyer Award
“The prize was given for his triple concerto L’isola della Città (The Island in the City), for violin, cello and piano. The five-movement work (played through continuously) was written for the Danish ensemble Trio Con Brio and The Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and was premiered in Copenhagen in January 2016.” (includes video)
Soprano Carol Neblett, 71
Dubbed “the world’s sexiest soprano” by People magazine in 1975, “Ms. Neblett was a supremely confident and, to many critics, supremely talented singer and actress, known for her charming, often sensual portrayals of comic characters and dramatic heroines.” She made operatic history in 1973 as the first opera singer to appear in full-frontally nude onstage.
Jazz Singer Jon Hendricks, Of Lambert, Hendricks And Ross, Dead At 96
“Once dubbed the ‘poet laureate of jazz,’ Mr. Hendricks expanded the vocabulary of jazz singing as the leading exponent of a style known as vocalese. He wrote witty lyrics for dozens of jazz tunes that otherwise had no words. Moreover, as a vocalist, he performed at breakneck speed, winning the admiration of such jazz giants as pianist Art Tatum and saxophonist Charlie Parker.”
Italian Court Clamps Down On Commercial Use Of Michelangelo’s David
“His are the most famous curves in Florence and adorn everything from aprons to fridge magnets, but images of Michelangelo’s David can now only be used with official authorisation, a court in Italy has ruled.”