At a time when half of all book purchases in the U.S. are made on Amazon — and many of those on mobile — the first job of a book cover, after gesturing at the content inside, is to look great in miniature. That means that where fine details once thrived, splashyprints have taken over, grounding text that’s sturdy enough to be deciphered on screens ranging from medium to miniscule. – New York Magazine
Archives for January 2019
Are We In A Post-Truth Era? That’s An Absurd And Ahistorical Suggestion
The history of ideas, in fact, suggests the opposite… The assumption that the last 50 years or so have marked some unprecedented break with a previous age of truth reflects both an inattention to history and an attitude that might be labeled “pessimistic narcissism,” since it yet again focuses attention on the generation that came of age in the 1960s and ’70s. — The Nation
So The Artist Has Misbehaved. Do S/He And The Work Now Have To Disappear?
Lionel Shriver: “For reasons that escape me, artists’ misbehavior now contaminates the fruits of their labors, like the sins of the father being visited upon the sons. So it’s not enough to punish transgressors merely by cutting off the source of their livelihoods, turning them into social outcasts, and truncating their professional futures. You have to destroy their pasts. Having discovered the worst about your fallen idols, you’re duty-bound to demolish the best about them as well.” – Harper’s
TV Is Exploding Right Now – And No End In Sight
“I haven’t seen a dumbing down of anything – at least not yet. Looking at new projects, you have to think about who is writing it and who is going to be involved. But I see the rising competition as a positive thing. It’s good for actors but I think television as a whole has been enriched.” – The Guardian
One Of The Biggest Technological Breakthroughs Of The Past 50 Years? Weather Forecasting
“A modern five-day forecast is as accurate as a one-day forecast was in 1980,” says a new paper, published last week in the journal Science. “Useful forecasts now reach nine to 10 days into the future.” – The Atlantic
Hollywood Needs Saving. This Year’s Sundance Has Some Ideas About That
In 2019, Sundance is arguably more mainstream than ever. Many options at the festival this year are the kinds of projects major studios used to make all of the time—crowd-pleasing comedies, true-story adaptations, and teen romances. With Hollywood now consumed by brand management, major franchises, and mega-budgeted blockbusters, independent producers have become the caretakers of the midsize movie. – The Atlantic
How An Out-Of-Work Ballerina In The Great Depression Became One Of America’s Most Famous Women
The young lady née Helen Gould Beck found herself stranded in Chicago when the ballet company she was touring with collapsed, and the only job she could get was as a stripper at a nightclub in the Loop. She ended up as a star attraction at the 1939 World’s Fair, known for her fan dance and her “bubble dance” with a 65-inch balloon (and nothing else) — an act she toured with for years afterward as Sally Rand. — The Oregonian
Bang on a Can composer Julia Wolfe ignites the New York Philharmonic
The new Julia Wolfe multi-media oratorio Fire in my mouth commemorates the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in a spirit that can make critics cringe preemptively. How many socially responsible pieces have implored us to weep, pray and feel guilty to what amounts to a pathos-laden film score? Instead, this piece was a breakthrough, something perfectly in step with 2019, with smartly-channeled passion that carries the promise of speaking to listeners well beyond our time. — David Patrick Stearns
Monet In Series — A Love Story
How Good is the Hood? Dartmouth’s Expanded Art Museum Reopens
After a much delayed $50-million renovation and expansion, Dartmouth College’s 65,000-object Hood Museum of Art at last reopened on Jan. 26 with six new art galleries, three new study galleries and three classrooms equipped with “the latest object-study technology.” — Lee Rosenbaum
9 Deformed Sonnets for My Old Friend
The artist Norman Ogue Mustill was an extreme dissenter. Nothing pleased him more than reaming out the human race. His collages stopped you dead with their vicious satire.. But Mustill is little known, his work unseen, his praise unsung. — Jan Herman
How Indie Films Went Mainstream
What was new here was that formerly fringe filmmakers were now getting big crossover deals and gushy reviews, redefining indie cinema in the public consciousness. This began a snowball effect with other newer and younger would-be writers and directors. Sundance and Cannes 1989 were the first major “Yes We Can!” moments for those who had had studio and network gates slammed in their faces in the past or who’d never had the confidence or connections to go that far in the first place. – The American Conservative
Organ Pipes And Pizza Pies (Yes, This Was A Thing, And It Still Is In A Few Places)
“Believe it or not, this used to be a fairly common dining experience, offered by more than 100 such establishments in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.” There are still three left in the U.S., and CityLab visits the one in Mesa, Arizona, which has a Wurlitzer bigger than the organ at Radio City Music Hall. — CityLab
An Argument: Why Cultural Appropriation Is A Good Idea
Graham Daseler: “The good news is that cultural appropriation is here to stay, no matter how many angry Twitter mobs come to kill it. Critics of the practice can’t even state their grievances without stealing the artifacts of at least half a dozen cultures. The expression itself is a prime example. The word “culture” comes to us by way of French, while “appropriate,” meaning “to take,” was plundered from Latin by Middle English. This, if nothing else, demonstrates how futile it is to try to stop the tsunami of culture or to build fences around it. There is nothing more human—or, one might equally argue, humane—than the desire to copy, emulate, and learn from people who are different from ourselves. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” – The American Conservative
Why Michael Chabon Loves Forewords And Prefaces
“Some forewords are transitive: acts of seduction that are at the same time documents of earlier seductions. … Other forewords are parasitical; like cuckoos’ eggs laid in crows’ nests they hatch and flourish at the expense of their hosts. … As for prefaces (and afterwords), these may be explanatory, apologetic, triumphal, tendentious, rueful, score-settling, spiteful, bibliographic, theoretical (as is the case with Chandler’s), or gently embarrassed (as is the case with Cheever’s) but the best of them — like Cheever’s — are also what I would call restorative.” — The Paris Review
Leonardo Fingerprint Discovered On A Drawing
The sheet with the thumbprint is entitled The Cardiovascular System and Principal Organs of a Woman (around 1509-10). Although fingerprints have been found on other Leonardo drawings, the one on the medical sheet as “the most convincing candidate for an authentic Leonardo fingerprint” among the Queen’s 550 or so Leonardos. – The Art Newspaper
Why Joel Grey Decided To Direct Yiddish ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ Without Speaking A Word Of Yiddish
“I was having lunch in a restaurant above the theatre at the Museum of Jewish Heritage and I saw the Statue of Liberty in the harbor, and I thought, O.K., there’s a Yiddish word I do know — beshert [destiny]. And I said yes, I’m going to do this. … I listened to a couple of the songs from the recording of the Yiddish version that was done more than 50 years ago in Israel, and I liked the sound of it. It seemed to me to be exactly right.” — Playbill
Chicago Journalist Jim DeRogaitis Tried For Years To Get The World To Listen About R Kelly. Why Was He Ignored?
Mr. DeRogatis veers from expletive-laden indignation to choked-back tears when describing the effects of Mr. Kelly’s alleged behavior with what he estimates to be at least 48 women. But he has a special frustration with the rest of the news media, which, he says, failed to follow The Sun-Times’s investigative lead, and for years made light of the charges or ignored them altogether. – The New York Times
At Age 98, This Artist Is Getting Her Big Break
She was friends with Frida Kahlo and Isamu Noguchi, posed for Man Ray, and married Mexican surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, yet she made her own work for decades without promoting it. But she was a standout of last summer’s “Made in L.A.” at the Hammer; this year she has huge shows at Hauser & Wirth and the Serpentine Gallery; for her 100th birthday in 2020, she’ll get a retrospective in Mexico City that will later tour the U.S. Meet Luchita Hurtado. — T — The New York Times Style Magazine
‘Born 30 Years Too Early And 100 Years Too Late’: Edward Gorey, Granddaddy Of Kiddie Gothic
“[Consider] the debt owed him by the graphic-novel author Neil Gaiman, the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, the filmmaker Tim Burton, and any other fantasist who loiters in the dark gardens of childhood. ‘When I was first writing A Series of Unfortunate Events,’ remembers Daniel Handler, the author of the Lemony Snicket series, ‘I was wandering around everywhere saying, ‘I am a complete rip-off of Edward Gorey,’ and everyone said, ‘Who’s that?’ Now everyone says, ‘That’s right; you are a complete rip-off of Edward Gorey!”” — The Atlantic
Frida Kahlo Wasn’t Just An Artist, She Was A Brilliant Self-Marketer
“The painter meticulously crafted her own image on a par with Cleopatra. If she were alive today, she’d probably be teaching a branding class at Harvard. Now it’s America’s turn to see how, and, more important, why she did it.” — The New York Times
The Three Mexican Filmmakers Who Are Conquering The Oscars
“Roma, Alfonso Cuarón’s intimate masterpiece, has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards, … [and its] achievements belong to a generation of filmmakers unlike any other in the history of the art form. If Cuarón wins again, the Mexican trio of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro, and Cuarón will take home their fifth Oscar in the past six years in the Best Director … Few countries can claim to have produced a cohesive group of collaborators with the level of success three Mexican auteurs have enjoyed for more than two decades.” — Slate
If New York City Wants To Landmark The Strand Bookstore (Against Its Owner’s Wishes), Just What Will That Protect?
“The Landmarks Preservation Commission exists to safeguard ‘the buildings and places that represent New York City’s cultural, social, economic, political and architectural history.’ But this is not the same thing as safeguarding the city’s cultural, social, economic and political heritage. The emphasis is on buildings and places, not what takes place inside them.” — The New York Times
A Native American Tribe Revives Its Culture With The Help Of Old Wax-Cylinder Recordings
“In 1890, just months before the murder of some hundred and fifty Lakota Indians at Wounded Knee, a mustachioed anthropologist named Jesse Walter Fewkes dragged a state-of-the-art Edison phonograph to Passamaquoddy country [in northeastern Maine]. This was during the height of ‘salvage anthropology,’ an attempt to document the many tribes that were being massacred into extinction.” Those recordings have now been digitized and returned to the Passamaquoddy, and they’re being slowly deciphered and used to teach younger tribe members their people’s traditions. — The New Yorker
Wexford Opera Festival Changes 2019 Program ‘For Financial Reasons’
The fall festival on the Irish coast, known for presenting rarities, has removed Weber’s Der Freischütz from its schedule, replacing it with Vivaldi’s Dorilla in Tempe. The Weber opera, which is on the fringes of the mainstream standard repertory, requires 12 soloists, a chorus, and a relatively large orchestra; the Vivaldi requires 6 soloists and a much smaller pit band. — Irish Times