Scepticism about common-sense things has been on the agenda of philosophers for centuries, but only as a plaything confined to the study. It does not spill into everyday life. So, what on earth do people mean when they say we are living in a “post-truth” world? – New Statesman
Countries File Claims Against UK Museums For Return Of Artifacts
A series of high-profile restitution claims have been received by institutions including the British Museum and the Natural History Museum in recent months. They include a call from the government of Gibraltar for the return of Neanderthal remains, including the first adult skull to be discovered by scientists, and a request from Chile for the repatriation of the remains of a now extinct giant ground sloth. – The Guardian
At Home With Jasper Johns
“He has been one of the primary architects of the contemporary art world, and has also opted out of its social trappings entirely. For decades, he has divided his time between quiet towns along the East Coast and a remote retreat designed by Philip Johnson in St. Martin. Now, he rarely leaves Connecticut. The curator John Elderfield has called him ‘the hermit of Sharon.'” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine
MacDowell Colony Gets A New Director
Philip Himberg is joining the 112-year-old MacDowell Colony from the Sundance Institute, where he served as the artistic director of Sundance’s theater program for the past 23 years. He will be based at the organization’s New York office and will work closely with David Macy, MacDowell’s resident director at the organization’s facility in Peterborough, N.H. – The New York Times
Here’s A Good Primer On The Challenges (And Accomplishments So Far) Of Artificial Intelligence
In his masterpiece, “The Lady of Shalott”, Alfred Tennyson describes a character from the Arthurian legend who is cursed to remain in a tower, looking at the world only through a mirror, and weaving the “mirror’s magic sights” into her web. AI today is, it seems, in its Lady of Shalott stage, trying to weave four-dimensional reality into a two-dimensional web by looking into the dim, distorting, and often deceptive mirror of data. – 3 Quarks Daily
Salvaging Alan Jay Lerner’s Biggest Flop, A Musical ‘Lolita’
Think that’s a ghastly idea for a Broadway show? So did audiences in 1971, when try-out audiences in Philadelphia and Boston hated Lolita, My Love so much that the Broadway run was called off. But the producers of an upcoming staged reading in New York, with a revised book and a new framing device, aim to find out if audiences are finally ready for the show (with the changes, at least). – The New York Times
The Salvador Mundi Has Disappeared. Where Is It?
Where the Salvator Mundi is now, no one is quite sure. Locked away in a store room in the Abu Dhabi Louvre, perhaps? Or being pored over in a laboratory somewhere by scientists and art experts determined to prove it is authentic? Or even hanging on the wall in a grand salon in a Saudi Palace, a reminder of a moment of madness. Many art lovers are left wondering if it will ever be seen again. – The Daily Mail (UK)
W.H. Auden Hated His Anti-Fascist Poems
“‘Spain’ and ‘September 1, 1939’ would be variously revised and amended before Auden finally excised them altogether from his corpus, the first because he saw it as the endorsement of a wicked philosophy, the second because it saw it as sententious nonsense.” – The Daily Beast
After Series Of Flops, Amazon Re-Orients Its Filmmaking Product Line
Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke: “What we struggled with, I think, was putting too much focus on a narrow prestige lane. I don’t think we had diverse-enough points of view in the storytelling.” So, in addition to the “prestige lane,” the company will add “lanes” in erotic thrillers, horror titles, and (later) young-adult movies. – The New York Times
French Court Throws Out Suit To Block Release Of Film About Sexual Abuse By Priest
François Ozon’s By the Grace of God, which just won the jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival, is based on the case of Father Bernard Preynat, who went to court to delay the release of the film until after his trial. A judge has rejected that bid. – The Hollywood Reporter
Australian Dance Awards For 2019 Cancelled
Ausdance National, the country’s advocate organization for the art form, has been presenting the honors annually since 1997. This year, in response to deep cuts in government funding throughout the arts, Ausdance has called off the awards and will focus its efforts on advocacy for dance as a whole. – Dance Australia
Fakes Everywhere – It’s Just About Impossible Now To Figure Out What’s Real
Fakery is gushing in from everywhere and we’re drowning in it. “Deepfake” videos mash up one person’s body with someone else’s face. Easy-to-use software can generate audio or video of a person saying things they never actually uttered. Even easier? Fake clicks, fake social media followers, fake statistics, fake reviews. A gaggle of bots can create the impression that there’s a lot of interest in a topic, to sway public opinion or to drive purchases. It is even a breeze to create a fake newspaper online. – Wired
“Telegraph” Gaffe: Louvre Affirms Its Hope to Display the Elusive Leonardo “Salvator Mundi”
Seemingly the go-to journalist for scholars seeking to debunk the painting’s attribution to Leonardo da Vinci, Darya Alberge wrote about “an apparent snub from the Louvre in Paris, which is understood to have cancelled plans to display Salvator Mundi in its major Leonardo exhibition.” But a passage, tacked on at the end of her article, seems to contradict that statement. – Lee Rosenbaum
Portrait of a good bad guy
Edward G. Robinson was Hollywood’s first major art collector, and in 1939 he and his (first) wife and son had a family portrait done in pastels by Edouard Vuillard. La famille d’Edward G. Robinson “passed to his former wife” (i.e., in the divorce settlement) and seemed to have disappeared, but Terry has tracked it down. – Terry Teachout
The “Most Bananas Artistic Undertaking Of This Century”?
Rachel Donadio: “To DAU’s producers and editors, and some of its celebrity-artist guests, the project has become a vibrant creative and intellectual community, even a way of life. To anyone outside it, the project can seem unwelcoming. I’ve spent many long hours visiting DAU since it opened here on January 24, and I’ve found the films at turns maddening, boring, and pornographic. I’ve never encountered a project whose monumental, megalomaniacal ambitions are so dramatically at odds with the uneven final product. Although maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s all a big metaphor for the Soviet Union.” – The Atlantic
The Former Dancer Who Brought The Joy (And Big Success) Back To Gymnastics
“I know what it’s like to have to go through puberty in a leotard,” said Kondos Field, a former professional ballerina who had little experience in gymnastics instruction when she joined the UCLA program nearly four decades ago. “I know what it’s like to have disordered eating. I know what it’s like to have to go out there by yourself.” – The New York Times
How A Teenager’s Lecture On The US Constitution Made It To Broadway
“Much as Hamilton gave America’s founding a progressive cool factor and became the quintessential Obama-era musical, [Heidi Schreck’s] What the Constitution Means to Me captures the mood of a time when institutional protections feel shockingly vulnerable and the country is getting an unwelcome crash course in constitutional arcana. (How many Americans knew about the emoluments clause before November, 2016?)” – The New Yorker
Joan Acocella: How New York City Ballet Was Brought Down To Earth (An Epic And Chilling Account)
“People trying to assess Peter Martins’s career should keep in mind that, in the history of ballet, he had what was probably the worst case, ever, of big shoes to fill. Balanchine was an artist on the order of Bach or Tolstoy, in the sense that he had a long career, an enormous range, and a kind of poetic force that made people, when they saw his ballets, think about their lives differently, more seriously. If, at the end of time, anyone ever congratulates us on being the human race, he will be one of the prime exhibits. By contrast, Peter Martins, however beautifully he danced, was, at best, a middling choreographer, until, in the late eighties, perhaps under the strain of being compared with Balanchine night after night, he became something worse, a very pissed-off person.” – The New Yorker