The iconic status of Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1 isn’t just because it marks “the peak of Whistler’s radical method of modulating tones of single colors.” It’s because, like Mona Lisa, The Scream, and American Gothic, “Whistler’s Mother” is “the distillation of a meaning instantly recognized and forever inexhaustible. In this case, it’s the mysteries of motherhood. Everybody has a mother, and something close to half of everybody becomes one.”
Archives for August 2015
Dangerous Satire? Americans Know Nothing Of Dangerous Satire
“America simply never had a Werner Finck, and we certainly don’t have a Bassem Youssef, even though we’d like to think we do. It is far safer and easier to canonize Chaplin’s ballet performance [in The Great Dictator] while forgetting the unsafe, uneasy provocations of Finck [and Youssef]. Americans tolerate bullshit even when we know – we know – it’s bullshit. At the best of times, there is something luxurious about this.”
Cancelled Play About Radicalisation Of British Muslim Girls Gets Lots Of Offers For Stagings
“The playwright behind Homegrown, the controversial play exploring radicalisation and jihadi brides that was shut down less than a fortnight before its opening, … has been approached by numerous figures and organisations offering to put the play back on and discussions are currently underway.”
The Red-Baiting Of Lena Horne – And How She Overcame It
“Over the course of her long life, Lena Horne became a star of film, music, television, and stage, as well as a formidable force for civil rights. … Yet there was a brief period in the early 1950s when Horne’s career seemed to be over. … She continued to perform at nightclubs, but nobody in the TV or film industries would hire her.”
Can You Picture Josephine Baker As A Senior Citizen?
From the Guardian archives, a visit with the toast of 1920s Paris – and decorated veteran of the French Resistance – in France they year before she died.
Stop Calling It ‘The Bechdel Test,’ Says Alison Bechdel
After all, as she’s been saying for years, she wasn’t the one who came up with the idea. She simply put it in a comic strip, where it was eventually noticed.
Ten London Museums Do A Virtual Collection Swap Via Instagram
“Using the hashtag #museuminstaswap, each participating institution will share photos of its partner museum throughout the week, highlighting works that resonate with their own collections.”
All The Stephen Colbert Stuff That Didn’t Make It Into The Time Cover Story
On why he had to leave The Colbert Report: “I still enjoyed it, but to model behavior, you have to consume that behavior on a regular basis. It became very hard to watch punditry of any kind, of whatever political stripe. … To change that expectation from an audience, or to change that need for me to be steeped in cable news and punditry, I had to actually leave. I had to change.” (includes plenty of video clips)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.27.15
Slim Gaillard (Oroony)
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-08-27
Raphael’s no Angel, but it’s not because he’s Jewish
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2015-08-27
So you want to see a show?
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-08-27
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Stephen King: Does Being A Prolific Writer Make You A Bad Writer?
No one in his or her right mind would argue that quantity guarantees quality, but to suggest that quantity never produces quality strikes me as snobbish, inane and demonstrably untrue.
A Major New Dance School Rises In Los Angeles
The Kaufman school, which started classes this week, is unusual in embedding a conservatory-style bachelor of fine arts program within a private research university of some academic rigor. It’s also distinctive in curricular focus; its motto — “the New Movement” — connotes revolution, and Jody Gates speaks of “reimagining dance education for the 21st century.”
Israel Protests Plans By Daniel Barenboim To Perform In Iran
“News of the proposed concert drew an angry reaction from Israel’s minister of culture and sport, Miri Regev, who denounced it this week on her Facebook page and said that she would that she would write German officials and urge them to cancel the concert.”
Do Neuroticism And Creativity Go Hand In Hand?
Think of it this way: Reacting to an ambiguous remark from your boss by coming up with crazy, unrealistic scenarios in which you are likely to get fired is, in a very real sense, creative.
Lost Generation: Middle-Aged Classical Musicians
“This is the art-form that reveres the aged master, but it’s no less enamoured of youth. The problem is that between charmed youth and revered old age comes the ‘awkward age’. To be musically talented and middle-aged is nowadays deemed worthy of no more than polite attention. Whereas to be musically talented and young is to be treated as a veritable god.”
Judge Orders $10 Million Of “50 Shades” Royalties To Be Set Aside For Defrauded Woman
“A jury decided in February that Jennifer Pedroza had been conned when the rights were sold to Random House. It found that Amanda Hayward, who signed the deal on behalf of their firm The Writers Coffee Shop, tricked Ms Pedroza into signing a restructuring contract that cut her out of royalties rights.”
Stories From The Front Lines: Women Tell Their Stories Of Abuse In The Music Industry
“Various tropes are repeated over and over again, like a riff you’ve heard too many times before: an aspiring bassist being told by a music teacher that bass is for boys, or a teenager being asked by her dubious male classmates to recite a band’s entire discography in order to prove her fan cred. The narrative gets even more disturbing and specific when you start charting the testimonials of women who pursued careers as musicians, sound engineers, executives, and journalists.”
Is “Teach For America” An Idea Whose Time Has Passed?
“As TFA’s applicant pool shrinks and recruitment dips, its critics are claiming that alumni horror stories and ideological critiques of the organization are finally starting to take their toll. TFA, on the other hand, maintains that ongoing economic recovery is impacting their recruitment by driving top-tier applicants away from teaching.”
Cultural Appropriation – A Weapon Of Mass Destruction?
“I worry that if we reach a place where a charge of cultural appropriation becomes a trump card, instantly condemning a work of art, a fashion line or a fitness craze, we won’t delve deeper on the important questions raised by cultural exchange.”
‘Born To Run’ At 40: Bruce Springsteen And The Fading Of The American Dream
“Lost amid popular memories of kitsch – of waterbeds and pet rocks, mood rings and self-help books – is the story of a more complicated decade. The enduring sway of Born to Run isn’t just thanks to the music, which stands up strongly, four decades later. It stems also from the unique time and place in which Americans first came to know Bruce Springsteen.”
When A Snuff Film Becomes Unavoidable: Social Media And The Virginia TV Shootings
This is why Twitter and Facebook shouldn’t make video play automatically.
Thieves Dressed As Tourists Steal Rodin From Museum In Broad Daylight
Two men walked into the Rodin Room at the Ny Carlsberg Glypoteket museum in Copenhagen, walked right up to The Man with the Broken Nose, put it in a bag, and left – apparently unnoticed by guards and other museum-goers.
Duke Freshmen Refuse To Read ‘Fun Home’ Because It’s ‘Pornographic’
Said one of the scandalized young fellas, “the nature of Fun Home means that content that I might have consented to read in print now violates my conscience due to its pornographic nature.” Explained another, “I would [also] not have read the book if the pictures were of heterosexual intercourse.”
‘Fun Home’ Is Not Porn, And The Duke Refuseniks Know It
“He wants us to believe, in other words, that he was turned off by a handful of panels in a comic with thousands of them. Grasso’s vague word choice [in his larger argument] suggests that he knows how ridiculous this objection really is.”
How Jonathan Franzen Became America’s Leading Public Moralist
“Do you love Jonathan Franzen? Does America? Does the world? These questions sound ridiculous, but they’re the ones Franzen has been posing over the past two decades, as he has, against long odds, made himself the kind of public figure about whom they aren’t entirely ridiculous or even unusual.”
A 17th-Century Female Artist You’ve Never Heard Of (No, We Don’t Mean Artemisia)
Like Artemisia Gentileschi, Josefa de Óbidos (1630–1684) was the daughter of a respected painter. But she developed a successful career in her own right, painting both sacred and secular subjects, in Counter-Reformation-era Portugal.