“Imagine a scene, set in the future, where a child in Burning Man-style punk clothing is standing in front of a yurt powered by solar panels. … Welcome to solarpunk, a new genre within science fiction that is a reaction against the perceived pessimism of present-day sci-fi and hopes to bring optimistic stories about the future with the aim of encouraging people to change the present.”
The Condescension Of Calling Something Out
When is the last time you heard someone say outright that someone else is watching wrong? These days, to call out wrongness or falseness or badness is to risk being accused of condescension. The desire to make such accusations is taken as a mark of unacknowledged privilege. It’s understood as likely to hurt someone’s feelings. People prefer to play it safe. They hesitate to make such critical judgments.
Pacifica Radio Gets $2 Million Loan, Dodges Bankruptcy
Last fall, a judge ruled that the Pacifica Foundation was in default for $1.8 million in unpaid fees for New York station WBAI’s use of transmitters on top of the Empire State Building. Scrambling to keep the creditors from seizing Pacifica’s assets, the foundation has essentially mortgaged the building of its Los Angeles station.
Jack Whitten, Abstract Painter And Sculptor Discovered Late In Life, Dead At 78
“As with many painters whose style matured during the late 1960s and early ’70s, Whitten’s career wasn’t widely recognized until the past few years. But today, when Whitten’s visually seductive paintings appear in major museum shows, it has become difficult to imagine a history of abstract painting without his work.”
Cellist Pulls Out Of New Concerto Premiere With Three Days’ Notice, And L.A. Phil Comes Up With Daring Solution
“There are said to be only three [other] cellists on the planet who have played [Bernd Alois] Zimmermann’s incredibly demanding concerto, all in Europe. I’m not sure any other orchestra would have dared, or even could have dared, to go on. But management turned to three local musicians with exceptional new music chops – L.A. Phil associate cellist Ben Hong, Calder Quartet cellist Eric Byers and Lyris Quartet cellist Timothy Loo – to divide the solo part. They got their scores Wednesday morning. Rehearsals were Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.” And, writes Mark Swed, they were “utterly convincing.
The Guy Who Helps Hollywood Celebrities Resemble Professional Ballet Dancers
Kurt Froman trained Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman for Black Swan, and more recently he’s been training Jennifer Lawrence for the upcoming Red Sparrow. “One of the biggest things, I think, for a non-dancer is just understanding dancers hold their arms from their backs. … When I was working with Jen, as well as with Mila and Natalie, getting them used to holding their backs that way and understanding that their arms are an extension of their backs, that’s the first thing that I need to instill in them and I have to remind them of that the entire time.”
Did This One Dance Change History?
Well, Netflix might have exaggerated a little bit in the second season of The Crown. “Well, that’s nice. … It’s a lot of bulls**t.”
How Sundance Is Recovering From Harvey Weinstein
Very well, partly because of Amazon and Netflix. “This is no longer Mr. Weinstein’s freewheeling festival, the one he blasted into the public consciousness with eye-popping deals to bring male-gaze entries like Sex, Lies and Videotape and Reservoir Dogs to theaters. Sundance is now a prime showcase for women — films directed, produced and written by women; films with female protagonists; special events focused on female empowerment. And most of the distribution deals involve TV sets.”
Why The Art-Selfie App Caught The Internet By Storm
“What’s great about the art selfie craze is that it efficiently harnesses other, less blatant, but still very zeitgeisty tributaries to the culture: irony in the face of high art; camera-conscious vanity; the obsession with statistical measurement (each match is given a percentage rating); online flirtation (if Google says you look like a Titian, you’re texting your love interest with the news, I guarantee it — and it’s safer than sexting); digital excavation (the Internet’s startling ability to unearth hidden treasures); and, of course, the naughty thrill — truly, a hallmark of our time — of signing over some crucial piece of your identity to a corporate behemoth, purely on trust, and for the most frivolous of reasons.”
Peter Mayle, Whose ‘Year In Provence’ Drastically Changed How Britons Vacation, Has Died At 78
The book also opened Provence up to the world – but first to Britain. “Mayle’s relaxed amusement with the French villagers appealed to traditional British frustrations at dealing with their neighbours, and more important, it linked into what the writer George Mikes once described as the English love of enduring hardship: the lavender-scented pleasures of Provence came only at the cost of adapting to life among the locals.”
Germany Invades The United States
In board games, anyway. That’s right: Board games are back, baby, especially Eurogames. “Most Eurogames are designed such that scoring comes at the end of the game, after some defined milestone or turn limit, so that every player can enjoy the experience of being a contender until the final moments. If this sounds somewhat Euro-socialistic, that’s because it is.”
Some New Zealanders Can’t Deal With Shakespeare In Maori Language
The fairies in the latest production of Midsummer Night’s Dream speak Te Reo, one of New Zealand’s official languages, for about 20 percent of the production. “Online reviews left about the Pop-up Globe performance said the move was ‘disrespectful’ and ‘bastardising’ Shakespeare and confusing for audiences. Other theatre goers have made their equally damning views direct to the venue’s management.”
The Power – And Importance – Of Fragonard And His Merry Band
Were his “fantasy portraits” actually a group of random people that he dressed in theatrical costumes? Are the dynamic canvases painted from memory instead of from life? “Fragonard’s drawing is a Rosetta stone whose implications are still to be fully interpreted and absorbed, despite the pioneering scholarship of several of the authors who have previously published on the series.”
A Tacoma Artist Gets Love From The Art Establishment, But Loving It Back Isn’t His Goal
Christopher Jordan says, “The whole idea is using public art and social media to connect the black diaspora. … I see my work as supporting communities of color that have been disconnected — to have opportunities to engage, collaborate and share.”
Top AJBlogs Posts From The Weekend Of 01.21.18
Exalting Bruckner at Carnegie Hall
Bruckner’s symphonies are communal rites of spiritual passage. For maximum impact, they require a proper hall and appropriate congregants. In New York City, Lincoln Center’s Geffen Hall – formerly Fisher Hall, and Philharmonic Hall before … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered QuestionPublished 2018-01-19
What Makes a Body Seem New?
The Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process series presents two works by Jodi Melnick on January 14th and 15th. Jodi Melnick in One of Sixty-Five Thousand Gestures, choreographed by Trisha Brown and Melnick. Photo: Robert Altman … read more
AJBlog: DancebeatPublished 2018-01-19
Judaica as “Curiosities”: Are Jewish Museum’s Reinstalled Collection Galleries Good for the Jews?
I had misgivings from the start about Claudia Gould‘s appointment to the directorship of the Jewish Museum, New York. Her personal and professional backgrounds seemed more suited to directing a contemporary art museum than an … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2018-01-19
Luciana Jury at WOMEX—Now THAT’s interpretation!
Luciana Jury was one of the day case acts at WOMEX 2017, and she started her solo show off-mic, entering from the audience area and walking and singing to the stage. This was the … read more
AJBlog: OtherWorldlyPublished 2018-01-19
Ken Burns, Collector, Gets An Exhibition
There’s nothing like a celebrity, even a person behind the camera instead of in front of it, to attract attention–sometimes even deservedly so. I think that is the case for an exhibition opening Friday, Jan. … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear ArtsPublished 2018-01-18
Women in jazz journalism on gender issues, in NYC MLK weekend
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. weekend ’18 was a big one for jazz in NYC with the first Jazz Congress at Jazz at Lincoln Center, a glorious Winter Jazz Fest, artists showcases at the conference … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond JazzPublished 2018-01-18
Surely The Academy Will Finally Give Netflix Some Oscars Love
It’s really time, with Dee Rees’ Mudbound and a string of longlisted Oscar documentaries. “Netflix’s rival Amazon has previously cracked the Oscar race by playing nice with an old-fashioned cinema-first release for prestige hopefuls such as Manchester by the Sea. How Mudbound performs this week may tell us just how swiftly the goldrush game is about to change.”
In Children’s Books, It’s Not Only The Heroes Who Are Mostly Male
In the top 100 children’s books in the UK in 2017, “the lead characters were 50% more likely to be male than female, and male villains were eight times more likely to appear compared to female villains.”