“It became clear they were doing an exhibition on Surrealism…,” writes Eric Idle in his book. “Pretentious nonsense. We’re nothing to do with Dalí or Duchamp… Python has always been about comedy. That is the art.” – The Art Newspaper
The Tart, Testy ‘Vinegar Valentines’ Of The 19th Century
In the Victorian Era, if you wanted to break up with someone around Valentine’s Day, or if you simply wanted to let that special someone know how much you detest them, there were cards available at the stationer’s to suit your purpose. – Atlas Obscura
Why Was Zhang Yimou’s Latest Film Pulled From The Berlin Film Festival?
“The phrase ‘technical reasons’ is both a euphemism and a reality for Chinese filmmakers, none of whom can ever be said to have completed their movie until regulators sign off on every detail. … In the case of One Second, it is possible that the subject matter, rooted in Mao Zedong’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, was the problem.” – Variety
Why We Keep Falling For Lying Memoirs
“While [Dan] Mallory’s story seems remarkable — a con man using a sob story to sashay his way to literary power — it’s actually extremely common. … The reason these frauds happen is because of the publishing industry’s and the audience’s hunger for authentic voices, particularly voices of suffering. Apologies to Barthes, but the author didn’t die; she became the text.” – The Outline
How Did The Shed Raise Nearly Half A Billion Dollars For A Building That Has Never Been Done Before?
The takeaway? Raising money in an arts philanthropy climate focused on issues like equity and access is not a zero-sum game. You can build a modern and expensive new building and roll out programming aligned with the pressing issues of the day. – Inside Philanthropy
What Language Do They Speak In The Balkans? The Birth, Life, And Death Of Serbo-Croatian
“Imagine a situation in which an American defendant hires a British lawyer for a trial in an American courtroom. The accused then demands that a British interpreter be found. British-American legal interpreters are hard to find, so the demand could delay the case for years, … despite the fact that, obviously, a British lawyer is perfectly capable of being understood in an American courtroom. This actually happens on a regular basis in the countries that once made up Yugoslavia.” – Atlas Obscura
The Waltons Aren’t The Only Big Arts Philanthropists In Arkansas
“Consider recent gifts from the Little Rock-based Windgate Foundation. Roughly two years after committing $40 million to the University of Arkansas to create the Windgate Art and Design District in Fayetteville, the foundation announced a $20 million gift to the University of Central Arkansas … [to]support the Windgate Center for Fine and Performing Arts.” – Inside Philanthropy
Strike Is Over At Vancouver Art Gallery
“On Monday evening, the union CUPE Local 15 said it had reached an agreement with the museum in its ongoing negotiations over elements of a prior contract, which representatives said expired in June 2017.” – ARTnews
How The Red Carpet Became Such A Thing
Although the red carpet has been a part of Hollywood premières since the silent era and a part of the Academy Awards since the early sixties, it became a beast unto itself in large part because of Joan Rivers, who began hosting her barbed red-carpet specials in the nineties, with her daughter, Melissa. The “Joan Rivers effect” made the whole enterprise funnier and—for the starlets on display—scarier. Soon the red carpet became its own cottage industry, with the E! network employing such dubious innovations as the “Glam Cam 360” and picking outfits apart on “Fashion Police.” – The New Yorker
That Old Saw ‘Eskimos Have 50 Words For Snow’? Every Word Of It Is Wrong
Aaron Bady goes through they saying itself and its history to explain why. (For one thing, in Inuit languages, “they can have as many words as they want for almost anything.”) In fact, “what’s been the most interesting discovery is that all the wrong answers are at least as interesting and useful as the so-called right ones.” – Popula
Why Bodice-Rippers Have Become Big Business
It’s not simply that romance novels are “bubble gum for the mind” — there’s plenty of that available in just about every medium and style around. In fact, romance novels appeal largely to a particular demographic, and that’s for a particular reason. – JSTOR Daily
How Music Gives You The Chills
“Neuroscientists have some ideas of about where these [physical responses] come from — essentially neurological reactions to being pleasantly surprised … Music’s ability to trigger moods, emotions, and memories make it a tool that could help treat patients struggling with anxiety or depression, especially when these conditions are related to other physical ailments, and even types of dementia.” – Quartz
‘Melancholia: The Diamond’ – Lars Von Trier Wants To Recreate All His Films As Gemstones (With Virtual Reality Attached)
Yes, seriously: the Danish director “intend[s] to turn all 13 of the films he’s made so far into diamonds and to present them at art institutions across the globe. … A museum visitor is invited to wear a virtual reality helmet and step inside an enlarged rendition of the same double diamond, and to stand for a moment inside its silent, glittering core.” – The New York Times
Dance Meets Urbanism — Could Choreographers Help Create Better Cities?
“Ellie Cosgrave, a lecturer in urban innovation at University College London, is collaborating with Theatrum Mundi to look at how choreographic methods could improve urban engineering. Choreographers and engineers have some key things in common, she says: they both design materials and experiences through time and space.” – The Guardian
How Saudi Arabia Is Trying To Change Its Image Through Culture Festivals
The weekends revolve around the concerts, held on Fridays. There are sometimes other notable events, like hot-air balloon rides. Mr. Bocelli performed on the same weekend as a well-known horse race that drew royalty from around the Gulf region. – The New York Times
Why Scientists Are Rethinking The Whole Idea Of Animal Consciousness
This idea that animals are conscious was long unpopular in the West, but it has lately found favor among scientists who study animal cognition. And not just the obvious cases—primates, dogs, elephants, whales, and others. Scientists are now finding evidence of an inner life in alien-seeming creatures that evolved on ever-more-distant limbs of life’s tree. – The Atlantic
Kahlo: It’s Fridalandia in Brooklyn
I enjoyed seeing the Brooklyn Museum’s Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving, but the exhibit was about her, not about her art. (That was its goal, and it succeeded at its goal.) The balance between her life and her art is, as ever, askew. — Judith H. Dobrzynski
Dancing Community
It wasn’t the usual impersonal voice reminding those of us sitting in the Joyce Theater to please turn off our cellphones, Instead, we who were waiting to see Camille A. Brown and Dancers perform her ink heard a muted, but excited babble and a voice that I took to be Brown’s. — Deborah Jowitt
Accessibility and its discontents
When I started blogging a decade and a half ago, I took for granted that it would be essential to draw a bright line between the things I talked about on line and the things I kept to myself. Many of my millennial friends, by contrast, seem not to draw that distinction. — Terry Teachout
A Two-Piano Encounter
A welcome surprise: I had no idea that veteran pianist Fred Hersch and the relatively new piano star Sullivan Fortner had worked together. — Doug Ramsey
The Boston Symphony Orchestra Wins Its Third Grammy In Four Years
It’s a Shostakovich three-peat for the orchestra and its conductor, Andris Nelsons. Nelsons: “I don’t even know what to say. … I’m very happy, and honored, but mostly I’m proud of the Boston Symphony for very deeply playing and understanding these great symphonies.” – The Boston Globe
Ben Hecht Hated Hollywood. He Also Helped Create Two Of Its Most Important Genres
“The best screenwriter in Hollywood was contemptuous of movies as an art form (‘an outhouse on the Parnassus,’ Hecht declared), and had little trust in the wisdom of studio bosses and producers (‘nitwits on a par with the lower run of politicians I had known’).” Nevertheless, Jean-Luc Godard said in 1968, “he invented eighty per cent of what is used in Hollywood movies today.” — The New Yorker
The Mad Scientist Of Vocal Ensembles, Roomful Of Teeth
“Roomful of Teeth is a kind of lab experiment for the human voice. Its eight singers cover a five-octave range, from grunting lows to dog-whistle highs. Three have perfect pitch, all have classical training, and [director Brad] Wells has brought in a succession of experts to teach them a bewildering range of other techniques: alpine yodeling, Bulgarian belting, Persian Tahrir, and Inuit and Tuvan throat singing, among others. Because the group writes or commissions almost all of its pieces, it can create vocal effects that most singers would never attempt.” — The New Yorker
The Bizarre Deceptions Of A Writer Who Seemed To Have It All
Nobody has accused Dan Mallory of breaking the law, or of lying under oath, but his behavior has struck many as calculated and extreme. The former colleague said that Mallory was “clever and careful” in his “ruthless” deceptions: “If there was something that he wanted and there was a way he could position himself to get it, he would. If there was a story to tell that would help him, he would tell it.” This doesn’t look like poetic license, ordinary cockiness, or Nabokovian game-playing; nor is it behavior associated with bipolar II disorder. – The New Yorker