A vocal opponent of the auteur theory, which gives directors primary credit for the films they make, Nichols treated cinema as a fundamentally collaborative art and never sought to impose a uniform directorial approach on his work, which was unshowy, even self-effacing. “It’s not a filmmaker’s job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way...
"In spite of our efforts to move heaven and earth," the organizers said in a statement, "it has become clear that we simply will not be able to make the festival happen this year. We are so sorry to let you all down." - Rolling Stone
"Berlin first black dancer, Chloé Lopes Gomes, said she has been made to feel different because of her skin colour since she first donned ballet shoes as a child. But after she was again subjected to what she described as 'racism' at Germany's largest dance company, she has launched a fightback that has forced the State Ballet to...
" has announced plans to make a 'far more inclusive' place by reordering its permanent collection to ensure greater representation of works by female and foreign artists. Miguel Falomir, the Prado's director, said 'one of the few positives consequences' of the COVID pandemic had been the time the museum's enforced closure had given staff to re-evaluate its treasures...
" Polo, a financier whose roller-coaster career included a major art fraud scandal that landed him in prison, has recently resurfaced in central Spain, where last month he defied the coronavirus pandemic to inaugurate a museum in the medieval hilltop city of Cuenca that is devoted to his collection. His first art space opened in 2019, in Toledo, a...
The Oscar-winning electronic music legend was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, though he was back to making records by 2017 and the disease had gone into remission. This week, however, Sakamoto announced that he is being treated for rectal cancer. - Pitchfork
"The Musicians' Union (MU) has been lobbying for the creation of a 'musicians' passport' that would last at least two years, cost nothing or very little, encompass all EU member states, prevent any requirement for carnets or other permits, and cover road crew, technicians and other necessary staff to facilitate touring." Britain's culture minister rejected that plan this week...
After the small queer women's publisher Labrisz released a book of fairytales, titled Wonderland Is For Everyone, that includes LGBTQ characters, the right-wing government of Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party ordered Labrisz to affix a sticker saying that the book depicts "behavior inconsistent with traditional gender roles" to every title it publishes to which that statement applies. - Reuters
Alex Ross: "The most valuable recordings of the Beethoven Year—Igor Levit’s survey of the sonatas and the Quatuor Ébène’s cycle of the quartets—bring out those contrarian tones of wit, weirdness, irony, understatement, frenzy, stasis, and bittersweet release. Having created the single most potent persona in the history of music, Beethoven proceeded to engender another, more elusive self, which was...
"With the collapse of live revenues, the issues in how streaming pays (or doesn’t) is being discussed. Ingham calculates that 1% of all artists receive 90% of the revenue from streaming. That’s about 43,000 artists. Of that 1%, many have been significantly impacted by COVID, as their streaming income has not replaced their live income. The other 99%, around...
The earlier order laid out a vision for a garden to "depict historically significant Americans" at a to-be-determined place with a target date for public access of July 4, 2026. The list of those Trump wants to honor is wide-ranging; it includes past politicians, musicians, artists, astronauts, movie stars, philosophers, athletes and other historical figures. Trump's order says the...
Reviewing is not just about giving a thumbs-up or down and handing out generalised star ratings. It’s using experience of the art form to encourage readers to a more engaged understanding. For me, it’s about connecting the best work with the widest possible audience. - The Stage
For years, an aesthetic mode of nothingness has been ascendant — a literally nihilistic attitude visible in all realms of culture, one intent on the destruction of extraneity in all its forms, up to and including noise, decoration, possessions, identities and face-to-face interaction. Over the past decade, American consumers have glamorized the pursuit of expensive nothing in the form...
"The complexity of the question "What qualifies as tokenism and what as representation?" rivals that of Blackness itself. There is often a conflation perhaps because representation is part and parcel of tokenism, making it difficult to discern one from the other, or at what point it shifts. What it looks like for the bystander may not be how it...
The Philadelphia new-music producer Bowerbird has planned a set of seven concerts, each timed for 10:00 or 11:00 pm, that aim to put listeners in that odd space between sleep and wakefulness — thus the series title, Liminal States. Says pianist Marilyn Nonken, who opens the set next Wednesday with Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories, "Everybody is so traumatized and...
