“One might expect TV to say about work what The Office says: that what you are obliged to do all day is pointless. … Although associated with the freedom to mute, surf, and binge-watch, TV pays attention not only to what we do when we’re on the clock, it also asks philosophical questions about work and the meaning of life, urging us to demand more meaning (whatever that might be) from what we do for a living.”
Archives for September 2015
Notes Toward A Theory Of Hair: Siri Hustvedt Reflects On The Cultural Meaning Of Coiffure
“All mammals have hair. … We are the only mammals who braid, knot, powder, pile up, oil, spray, tease, perm, color, curl, straighten, augment, shave off, and clip our hair.” Not to mention using it as a signifier of gender, religion, and/or cultural politics.
Walter Benjamin’s Legacy, 75 Years On
“For devotees of Critical Theory, he is now seen as one of the founding fathers … having helpfully transcended mere wittering about paintings, books and Mickey Mouse by also sketching a philosophy of history. … And, almost as a hobby, he is the inspirational linkman between the 19th-century flâneur and today’s psychogeographers.”
Sara Mearns Of New York City Ballet On Being ‘In The Prime Of Her Career’ (She’s 29)
“A ballerina’s career is so short and it’s kind of hard for me to think that these are going to be the best years of my career and after that it’s just going to suck. You know? I don’t want to think about it like that.”
How Origami Is Informing Structural Engineering
“A sheet of paper can bend, twist, and tear easily. But folded several times, it becomes stiff and can support objects many times its weight. That’s the basic idea behind ‘origami engineering,’ an emerging technique in structural engineering that’s based on a centuries-old Japanese art form.”
Did Shakespeare Intend Hamlet To Be Fat?
“One does look for a Hamlet that is lean and pensive or, failing that, an action hero like Mel Gibson or Keanu Reeves, who both played the role in the 1990s. … But what if our mental image of Hamlet is wrong? What if the grieving, vengeful prince is actually fat? Just because you’ve never considered the possibility doesn’t mean that Shakespeare scholars haven’t argued about it.”
Music Director? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Music Director, Says Vienna State Opera
Says the company’s director, Dominique Meyer: “No, during my second term there will be no music director” to succeed Franz Welser-Möst. (in German; Google-translated version here)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.28.15
Sudden Departure: Max Anderson Precipitously Leaves Dallas Museum Directorship
This is not how amicable resignations usually happen: The Dallas Museum of Art today announced that its director of less than four years, Maxwell Anderson, “has stepped down as director of the DMA … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-09-28
A Good Show Spoiled
With the weather in New York still fine – and warmish – on Saturday, I ventured up to the New York Botanical Garden for FRIDA: Art, Garden, Life, one of the Garden’s hybrid exhibitions that combines plants and paintings … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-09-27
Not the fast car
How do you dance a midlife crisis? Hofesh Shechter is one of Britain’s most popular choreographers – someone who tugs non-dance fans into the theatre, drawn by the meaty savour of whomping percussion and … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2015-09-28
Bud Powell At 91
Here it is nearly the close of Bud Powell’s birthday and I’ve had my nose too close to the grindstone to take note of it. He would have been 91 today. If I had to … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-09-27
Shostakovich and S & M in the Provinces: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Stalin walked out of a performance of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, saying the music was a muddle. This shows only that he … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2015-09-28
Unpacking your piano
My colleagues and I taught a seminar on writing for piano last Friday. Referencing a wide range of thinking going all the way back to Cristofori, we focused mainly on innovations of High Modernism to … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2015-09-28
Darkest Depths of the Soul?
The inconceivable advocacy of a large percentage of Americans for Donald Trump to be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2016 began to make a little more sense upon reading the New York Times critic’s ode to political correctness in his September 25th review of the Metropolitan Opera’s seasonal premiere of Puccini’s Turandot. … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuth Published 2015-09-28
Enough seen
Mrs. T and I are in Pittsburgh to see a play. Our last visit here took place four years ago, when we flew out to catch a rare revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s House and Garden, … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-09-28
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An Art Garden In The Heavily Polluted Gowanus Canal
“The floating island was to be filled with multiple tubes. In a poetic twist, the tubes were to be made of the same culvert pipe used to dump pollution and sewage into the canal.”
Kara Walker Takes Her Art About The U.S. To London
“There is this mountain that I grew up in the shadow of, kind of literally. The mountain was claimed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1915 as their spiritual birthplace and the carving was proposed in 1916. It was finally completed in 1972. So we came down to photograph it, and this show arose out of that.”
How Can A Movie About A Laundry Worker In 1914 Feel So Sadly Relevant Today?
“It all felt a little too retro. The thing is, while these men may well have the best of intentions, the history of the left, and of revolution, is littered with broken promises made to women.”
Opera Turned Inside Out
” Lost in Thought is an opera, but its plot is simpler than The Marriage of Figaro. The card reads: ‘Sit. Walk. Sit. Eat. Wash up. Sit Rest. Waking up. Sit. Play. Walk. Chant. Sit. Breaking the silence.’ It is suggested we meditate in the next four hours on what it is to sit, what it is to walk, what it is to eat.”
The Collaboration Fad Is Hurting Introverts
“Just last week the University of Chicago library announced that in response to ‘increased demand,’ librarians are working with architects to transform a presumably quiet reading room into a ‘vibrant laboratory of interactive learning.’ One writer on Top Hat, a popular online resource for educators, argued in a post last month that ‘cooperative learning strategies harness the greatest part of human evolutionary behavior: sociality.'”
How Does A Canadian Artist Sketching Cartoons About The Brontë Sisters Become So Popular?
“A cartoonist and quasi-historian who launched her comic strip Hark! A Vagrant in 2007 while still working at the museum, Beaton has harnessed the power of Tumblr and Facebook and Twitter to become a ubiquitous presence online, where her sketchy, clever, perfectly imperfect strips are often copied, spoofed, remixed and memed by others.”
A Broadway Actor Stands Up For A Kid Who Disrupted A Performance
“He said in the Facebook post that he believed shows that have special performances for autistic audiences should be commended for their efforts and that he hoped the woman would see his post.”
Banned Books Week Is No Longer Necessary
“Once upon a time, if your local library and bookstores didn’t carry a book, it would have been very difficult to procure it elsewhere. But of course we’re now living in an era of unprecedented access to reading material. If your local library declines to carry what you want to read these days, there has been no time in history where it’s easier for you to read it anyway.”
NYT Contributors Panic About ‘Water Cooler Conversation’ Being Destroyed By Too Much TV
“The diversity of offerings while catering to a diversity of tastes has also produced a splintering of experiences. I’m finding that even people who seem very much like me are watching different shows than I do. This leaves us little to talk about aside from work and politics.”
Shakespeare’s Dad Was Rich, Not Poor, And His Shady Dealings Helped Fund His Son’s Theatrical Aspirations
Waaaaait, what? “It was also wool, not the theatre, that prompted William to leave Stratford-upon-Avon for London in 1585, where he could act as the family’s business representative.”
The ‘Stonewall’ Movie With The ‘Straight-Acting’ Lead Completely Tanked
“The drama has a 9% positive rating, with many critics lambasting its attempt to depict a pivotal moment in American history. Vanity Fair critic Richard Lawson called the film ‘terribly offensive, and offensively terrible.'”
Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Arts Center Turns 10
“With such an exceptional, international career, you’d think the sign in front of his arts center would have ‘Baryshnikov’ in lights, but actually you can barely see it. ‘Misha didn’t want this place to be called the Baryshnikov Arts Center,’ says Georgiana Pickett the center’s executive director. ‘He wanted it to be more global, and some wise people told him, “That’s not a good idea. Let’s put your name on it.”‘”
The Tale Of A Documentary Maker Growing More Bold After Her Oscar Win
“Poitras and the documentary-world veterans Charlotte Cook and A.J. Schnack have created Field of Vision, a company that will commission short-form documentaries and make them available for free streaming on its website.”
Banksy’s Dismaland Is Over
“Tourism bosses said the dark attraction brought more than 150,000 paying visitors and £20m to the seaside town. Once dismantled, all the fixtures will be sent to the Calais refugee camp ‘to build shelters,’ its website says.”
Walter Benjamin, Children’s Radio Broadcaster
“Something quintessentially Benjaminian happens in that uncanny encounter of radio and child: the hint of an unsettling remainder in the everyday, in the dislocation of sent message and received meaning, in the figure of the child who knows something his parents do not.”
L.A.’s Intense Reactions To The New Petersen Automotive Museum
“The new design, reported KPF’s website, ‘transforms the Petersen building into one of the most significant and unforgettable structures in Los Angeles.’ They got that right. Anyone who has been by the intersection of Fairfax and Wilshire in recent months will tell you that it’s the sort of thing you just can’t unsee.”
Babies Need To See, And Hear, A Lot Of Art As Early As Possible
“When I tell people that I make shows for babies, and that the youngest audience member for Replay’s work was just four days old, they often look incredulous. The look is swiftly followed by a lot of questions: ‘How does that work?’ ‘What’s the point?’ And, most of all, ‘But they’re not going to remember!’ Here’s the thing. They are.”