"I think poetry has a social function but it’s a relatively complicated and subtle one, which is to say, the reason that we have art is, in a sense, to increase human happiness. It does that, essentially, on an individual level. A work of art awakens you. It awakens you to the possibilities of your own potential. It takes...
Experts have felled 59 of the trees at the Villefermoy forest in the Seine-et-Marne region, and a further 26 oaks will be donated by four state-owned forests managed by the National Forestry Office. The massive restoration effort will need 1,000 French oak trees in total. - Artnet
Paul McCartney invented the details of her life as recounted in the famous Beatles song, but he found her name on a gravestone in a village church cemetery on the outskirts of Liverpool that he and John Lennon used to take shortcuts through. Yes, the grave is still there, and we do know a bit of her actual biography....
"Culture has been a potent driver of Chicago for decades, of course, but this still is a unique moment, especially with the new availability of federal money. Hence it’s high time to develop some new cultural spaces and both the private and the public sectors will need to get involved. This change of emphasis, which seems to me inevitable,...
The natural world has always been a key subject of Japanese verse, and there's even an established body of words — kigo — that categorize various phenomena by season and thereby evoke particular emotions. For instance, referring to a typhoon in a poem is supposed to anchor it in the autumn. But Japan, like many other places, is now...
“Gainsborough had a great deal of interest in musicians and likened a picture to a piece of music, once writing: ‘One part of a Picture ought to be like the first part of a Tune; that you can guess what follows, and that makes the second part of the Tune, and so I’ve done.’” - The Guardian
"After seeing yet another situation where a longstanding Yahoo-owned website is shutting down, I'm left to wonder if the problem is that the motivations for maintaining sites built around user-generated content simply do not favor preservation, and never will without outside influence. How can we change that motivation? Today's Tedium, in a follow-up to the post we wrote...
Sony and Netflix also inked a first-look deal for movies made exclusively for streaming, boosting the slate of Netflix originals. Sony said those films will represent increased output on top of its theatrical slate, which was about 25 films in 2019. The deal also gives Netflix first look at licensing movies from Sony’s library. - Indiewire
"These small clubs, called tablaos, have acted as a springboard for generations of flamenco artists in Spain to launch professional careers. … But that intimate setup, designed to pack the audience close to the stage, has left most tablaos unable to reopen even after Spain lifted its most severe pandemic lockdown restrictions last summer. The situation has created an...
I can report that once the rest of us were inside — 25 or so socially distanced in a black box theater that normally seats up to 99 — the evening unfolded exuberantly. It was the first of three live theatrical events I attended over the weekend, the first time in a year my schedule resembled something like the...
"Eleven years after publishing its first collection of the finest up-and-coming authors in Spanish, Granta magazine is releasing a second volume that brings together 25 writers aged under 35 and now at work on four continents. The list includes 11 female writers and 14 male writers from Spain, Nicaragua, Cuba, Colombia, Uruguay, Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Equatorial Guinea, Chile, Puerto...
As lockdowns arrived and spread, many mutual aid networks, mostly small-scale, were put together on the fly to help the many thousands of suddenly unemployed arts workers. Those funds had been planned, and expected, to be temporary measures lasting only a couple of months. But, as the pandemic ran on and shutdowns continued, furloughs became layoffs; even now, as...
Excavating in an area between large temples at Luxor, a team led by famed archaeologist Zahi Hawass found the ruins of an entire working city — administrative offices, residences, a bakery, and so on, all the rooms containing everyday objects — from the reign of Amenhotep III. The discovery is being likened to those of Tutankhamun's tomb and Pompeii....
"Today's ballet teachers and company directors know that they can no longer simply instruct their dancers to lose weight. But that doesn't mean they've relinquished their rigid, narrow vision of what a 'good' ballet body looks like: They simply swathe that ideal in the gauzy, feel-good messaging of today's fitness culture." Or they use the aesthetic ideal of "length"...
"As the government prepared on Thursday to start taking applications for a $16 billion relief fund for music clubs, theaters and other live event businesses, thousands of desperate applicants waited eagerly to submit their paperwork right at noon, when the system was scheduled to open. And then they waited. And waited. … Shortly after 4 p.m., the Small Business...
