“Today, choreography once considered sacred and only transferred person-to-person is now self-taught, edited and remixed in bedrooms and basements, across the U.S. and beyond. No aspect of the dance industry, however commercial or ‘purely artistic,’ remains untouched by the explosion of video around the internet over the past decade. It’s made a profound impact on everything from how students learn to what audiences want, when choreographers succeed and which artists win support from donors, funders and presenters.”
Chinese Observer: Is America Going Through Its Own Cultural Revolution? (There Are Signs)
“Virtually all types of institutions, be it political, educational, or business, are exhausting their internal energy in dealing with contentious, and seemingly irreconcilable, differences in basic identities and values — what it means to be American. In such an environment, identity trumps reason, ideology overwhelms politics, and moral convictions replace intellectual discourse.”
Biographer And Estate Go To War Over Richard Avedon Bio
The feud has cast a pall over what was billed as an intimate and revelatory tell-all. Ms. Stevens drew on her own conversations with Avedon over the decades, and interviewed many of his prominent friends and collaborators, including Calvin Klein, David Remnick, Twyla Tharp, Donatella Versace, Jann Wenner and Isabella Rossellini. Some of Ms. Stevens’s revelations about Avedon’s personal life are so juicy that they leaked to the gossip pages in advance of the book’s release on Nov. 21.
The Man Who Literally Built Dubai’s Art Market
A profile of real estate developer Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal, a member of one of Dubai’s leading business families, who turned a desolate warehouse district into the art gallery capital of the Emirates.
Five Lawsuits That Could Change The Art World In 2018
The cases cover everything from copyright (Graham v. [Richard] Prince et al.) to restitution of looted work (Von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum) to accessions and bequests (the Berkshire Museum suits) to freedom of speech (Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission – yes, the “gay wedding cake” case could affect the art world).
How Physicists Think About Conciousness (It’s A Physical Thing)
“The physicist’s worldview usually contains some aspect of physicalism (asserting the only “real” things are physical things, governed by physical laws), reductionism (asserting all observable phenomena are explicable in terms of their microscopic parts), and positivism or operationalism (asserting that the only meaningful concepts are empirically testable). And in recent generations more than any others, it seems, this web of attitudes permeates the zeitgeist. It is our inheritance from the success of 20th-century physics. This inheritance alters the way we frame questions about the mind and consciousness.”
How Futurists In 1968 Envisioned 2018
“Much of [the book] Toward the Year 2018 might as well be science fiction today. With fourteen contributors, ranging from the weapons theorist Herman Kahn to the I.B.M. automation director Charles DeCarlo, penning essays on everything from ‘Space’ to ‘Behavioral Technologies,’ it’s not hard to find wild misses. … But for every amusingly wrong prediction, there’s one unnervingly close to the mark.”
Four Refrains About Classical Music That I Do Not Want To Hear In 2018
Music advocate and Kennedy Center trombonist Doug Rosenthal: “You didn’t ask for it, but here are things I’d love to never hear this upcoming year. Admittedly, I write this post wearing my Grumpy Pants. But I’m also donning my Optimism Cardigan. So join me for another list. Because hey, anything to distract you from that champagne headache, am I right?”
Some Airlines Are Eliminating Seatback Screens
“Formally called in-flight entertainment, the screens, and the preselected media on them, go a long way toward keeping passengers happy and distracted. The longer the flight, the more useful the seatback entertainment becomes. But those entertainment systems are expensive to install. They can cost $10,000 per seat … They also add bulk and weight to seats and quickly become technologically obsolete.” (Other airlines, however, are doubling down on them.)
Facing Allegations Of Abuse, Peter Martins Resigns From New York City Ballet
“After accusations of sexual harassment and physical and verbal abuse” – and following an arrest (his second) for drunk driving on Thursday – “Peter Martins, the powerful leader of New York City Ballet who shaped the company for more than three decades, has decided to retire.”
New Poetry Awards Funded By Art-World Superstars
“Each award was endowed by visual artists like Ellsworth Kelly and his partner, Jack Shear, as well as the foundations of Cy Twombly and Roy Lichtenstein.” The first round of winners are Lisa Robertson, Anne Boyer, and Fred Moten.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.01.18
Fade to gray
Both of us had a feeling that we might not be coming back to Florida this January, and sure enough, the doctors told us a couple of months ago that the time had come at last for Mrs. T to hang up her traveling shoes and start waiting for the Big Call. This is, lest any of you forget, very good news. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2018-01-01
Wishing You A Perfect 2018
Over the years, the Duke Ellington Orchestra’s head arrangement of “Auld Lang Syne” took on new colors and quirky solo turns each time the band played it, as they invariably did in … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-01-01
When People Claim They’re Defending Against A ‘War On Christmas’, What Exactly Is It They’re Fighting For?
Adam Gopnik: “Christmas has always been a happily mixed-up holiday for mixed-up people and confused cultures. It is, at its roots, the very model of a pagan-secular-synthetic festival as much as it is a religious one – just the kind, in fact, that the imaginary anti-Christmas forces are supposed to favor.”
The Killer-Nanny Novel That Slayed All France And Won The Prix Goncourt
“Chanson Douce, [Leïla Slimani’s] second novel, sold six hundred thousand copies in its first year of publication, making Slimani, who lives in Paris, the most-read author in France in 2016. Elle put her on the cover, in red lipstick and a jumpsuit: ‘leïla slimani superstar.’ Politicians of varying persuasions clambered to reheat themselves in her glow. … Emmanuel Macron, now France’s President, reportedly invited her to be his minister of culture. ‘I love my freedom too much,’ she told me when I asked about it.”
A Homeless Symphony
“There are about fifty-eight thousand homeless people in Los Angeles County. To walk through the streets of Skid Row to the Midnight Mission is to feel shame for the state of the city and the state of the country. Block after block, the sidewalks are crammed with tents, boxes, broken furniture, and shopping carts full of possessions. To enter the mission, you have to step over people in sleeping bags. It is, however, a different experience to visit the Midnight Mission with Vijay Gupta, an L.A. Phil violinist, who, in 2011, founded Street Symphony. He greets both residents and staff with smiles, handshakes, banter, and an explosive laugh.”