“The Canadian composer Claude Vivier should be the great downer of modern music. But so shimmering are Vivier’s drones, so sweetly childlike his invented languages and mystical geographies, so energetic his need to communicate his cravings and insecurities, that the effect is one of warmth rather than dread.”
Archives for October 2017
One Hundred And Fifty Writers Later, This Guy Has Some Carefully Distilled Advice
First of all, writers, you really are not going to clean the house. Don’t do it. Stop it. “If you’re not making the time to write, no other advice can help you.”
From Broke Alt-Rock Guitarist To In-Demand Hollywood Composer
Tyler Bates, who has scored both Guardians of the Galaxy movies and a whole lot more, says, “The thing I love about film is — as nerve-racking as it is because it’s not like they give me a locked picture to score — it’s frenetic and a triathlon, but when you work with geniuses and studios that have massive investments in a property, you know what it’s like to be alive. You are running alongside failure, everyday, all the time.”
Police And Prosecutors Seize An Ancient Limestone Relief At The European Fine Art Fair In Park Slope
Friday around 2 p.m., “cursing could be heard coming from a London dealer’s booth, breaking the quiet, reverential atmosphere. To the consternation of several art dealers looking on, the police and prosecutors seized an ancient limestone bas-relief of a Persian soldier with shield and spear, which once adorned a building in the ruins of Persepolis in Iran, according to a search warrant.”
Charges Of Animal Cruelty For An Art Installation With Live Mice
It’s not just those afraid of mice who are being tortured in this installation, say mouse experts: “There are 70 white mice in individual boxes set like tiles on the floor of a gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. In clear plexiglass cages, designed to be stepped upon, they peer up underfoot in an exhibition exploring phobia.”
Linda Nochlin, The Trailblazing Feminist Art Historian Whose 1971 Essay Changed The Discipline, Has Died At 86
The article “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” – which argued quite clearly against the canon as well as against male-dominated notions of greatness – “would have been enough to secure her place as one of art history’s most important writers, but over the course of her six-decade career, she also made formidable contributions to the study of Realism and Gustav Courbet, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and numerous contemporary artists.”
The Next Thing In Public Transit: Retro Metro Cards With Art By Barbara Kruger
The themes will be similar to anyone who has followed the artist’s work. “‘These issues of power and control and physical damage and death and predation are ages old,’ Ms. Kruger said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. ‘I wish some of these issues would become archaic.'”
The End Of ‘American Idol,’ And The Dream Of Unity It Once Represented
In the context of Kelly Clarkson, the inaugural winner of the show, and her new album – which is both lightly political and aimed at a casual pop listener – we can see the end of whatever unity the country was thought to possess, musically and otherwise, in 2002.
Brooklyn Has A Newish ‘Bone-Breaking Dance Scene’ Inspired By Jamaica [VIDEO]
“When we’re in a dance battle, it’s really like a battle – it’s a way for people to let their emotions out,” says one contestant in the ever-evolving subculture.
Harvey Weinstein’s People Offered Rose McGowan A Million Dollars In Hush Money
The Scream and Charmed actor, now a multimedia artist with an intense following on Twitter, got the offer to sign a nondisclosure agreement mere days before the New Yorker and New York Times articles about Weinstein’s assaults came out. She says she countered with a request for $6 million, partly as “slow torture” for Weinstein, but she quickly withdrew the offer.
The Director Of The Harry Potter Play In London Wants British People Taking To The Streets For Art
John Tiffany “argued that it is a ‘social crime’ to deny children the arts, as this prevents them from reaching their full potential.”
Galleries Transform As Fairs Take Over The Art World
Basically, galleries are becoming more like happenings, or “pop-up restaurants,” just to deal with a world that’s filled with high rents and art fairs. “The idea is to create a model that is more affordable and flexible and allows galleries to come and occupy a space for a designated period of time.”
How Joan Didion Escaped The Writer Publicity Grind (And Sure As Heck Isn’t On Twitter)
Despite two highly autobiographical books and a new movie about her, Didio “isn’t fully a celebrity. She isn’t fully an author, in the modern way of it. To be an author, today, is generally to be required, repeatedly, to acquiesce: to give in to demands of omnipresence, of performative relatability. To live-tweet The Bachelor. To write op-eds in the Times. To accept that being part of the zeitgeist requires that one first accept the terms of geistiness: disembodied, environmental, miasmic. To be an author, today, is in some part to sacrifice oneself.”
Top AJBlogs For The Weekend 10.29.17
Tea for Three? Take a Seat
Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer get together at Saint Mark’s Church. (L to R): Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, and Steve Paxton rehearsing. Photo: Ian Douglas “It is better to have loved and lost … read more
AJBlog: DancebeatPublished 2017-10-28
A Turning of The Tide?
SINCE I turned my book Culture Crash in four years ago, a few things I described have proven me a bit pessimistic. (Visual art may be healthier than I predicted, and music steaming has … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrashPublished 2017-10-27
Three critics in a studio, wrangling
The second episode of Three on the Aisle, the new podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading. In this … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2017-10-27
Almanac: Hermann Hesse on classical music
“We consider classical music to be the epitome and quintessence of our culture, because it is that culture’s clearest, most significant gesture and expression. In this music we possess the heritage of classical antiquity and … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2017-10-27
A Timely Movie About Making Art – In Complete Anonymity – Under Dictatorship
The film’s director, Paula Markovitch: “My parents were artists and they were intelligent at a terrible time. The dictatorship not only persecuted academics, it persecuted anyone intelligent. In that sense they were internal exiles. Exile are those who fled, those who escaped the dictatorship going to other countries. And the internal exiles were those who hid within the same territory.”
A New Theatre In London Is Making Bank As It Steps Away From Government Funding
Ironically, the first show of The Bridge Theatre, a venture from former National Theatre head Nicholas Hytner and his former executive director, Nick Starr, is about Marx.
Theatre Director Who Has Voiced Opposition To Putin’s Policies Put Under House Arrest
The decision is supposedly about fraud involving another theatre and film director, who’s also been placed under house arrest: “Investigators claimed in a statement that Apfelbaum helped Serebrennikov’s dramatic collective, Seventh Studio, obtain 214 million rubles ($3.7 million) in state funding by providing falsified documents.”
The Sexy-Gross History, Involving The French Revolution, Of The Color Puce
Well, pre-Revolution, really: “Puce is a color that’s been around for as long as we’ve been spilling blood and watching it dry, but it didn’t get a name until the summer of 1775 when French dressmaker Rose Bertin made Marie-Antoinette a gown in a color that blurred the lines between brown and maroon with only a hint of pinkish-gray.”
Fay Chiang, A Poet Who Fought Racism And Championed Asian-American Culture, Has Died At 65
Chiang was an educator, an activist, and a poet. “Chiang’s poetry — sometimes serene, sometimes angry and sometimes written in all lowercase letters — reflected her anxieties as a first-generation Chinese-American, her desire to etch Asian culture into American society, her involvement with organizations in Chinatown and on the Lower East Side, and her multiple reckonings with breast cancer over nearly a quarter-century.”
The President And Michael Moore Go At Each Other On Twitter Over A Broadway Show
Moore’s show had a 12-week run and was always scheduled to close, but the president tweeted, “While not at all presidential I must point out that the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close. Sad!”
Alejandro Inarritu Gets Awarded A Rare ‘Special Oscar’ For His Installation Carne Y Arena
Carne y Arena is Iñárritu’s immersive work that places viewers in a six and a half-minute virtual reality walk “alone and barefoot across sand, joined by virtual migrants hoping to reach America, while border guards patrol the area.”
Now That An Accused Harasser Isn’t Running Amazon Studios, It’s Time To Reassess ‘Good Girls Revolt’
One of the actors from the show, which is about workplace sexual harassment (and more): “I know we’re talking about TV, but it was sort of a microcosm of what was going on. … We thought we had it in the bag. There’s no way [Trump’s] going to win. There’s no way we’re getting canceled. That happened, and that happened, and it was like … we’re really operating against some crazy forces right now.”
Telling The The Oral History Of A Community Through Dance In Apartments And Hair Salons
That’s right, a dance of oral history: “‘Sit, Eat, Chew’ also staged performances in a private apartment, a restaurant, a public park, and a museum. The stories — told in Mandarin, Cantonese, English, and through movement — were culled from interviews with senior citizens and local youth. The project, born out of a desire to share oral histories from Manhattan’s Chinatown residents with the public in an engaging way, was funded through a Kickstarter campaign as well as several nonprofit and city and state grants.”
Well, This Is Interesting: Yves Bouvier Sells Off His Geneva-Based Art Storage Company
“Bouvier, who is Swiss, made his reputation as a businessman involved with freeports, the largely tax-free storage depots where wealthy collectors now store so many of their treasures.” But he’s battling in courtrooms across the world, including against a Russian billionaire who claims Bouvier committed fraud.
Wizarding: It’s Not Just For White People, Say These Young London Actors And Activists
The campaign puts Black Londoners into famous movie posters, including Harry Potter. The recast posters will be going up in London’s Brixton neighborhood. “Black kids can be wizards too,” says the young woman playing Hermione in the posters.