The Moustache Brothers, “active for more than three decades, is renowned in the country for political satire, which still risks a prison sentence for its performers if delivered in Burmese in a public site. Since 2001, the troupe’s members have shared their act from this garage seven nights a week for gatherings of as many as 40 foreigners, who pay the equivalent of $10 each.”
Boredom – We Could Not Live Without It
Andreas Elpidorou draws an analogy with pain: almost none of us enjoy it, but not being able to feel it at all is dangerous.
A Lot Of Art Galleries Lose Money – This Man Says He Can Fix That
“In a slim, Day-Glo orange book that caused a furor when it was published in Germany last year, … a 31-year-old German entrepreneur/professor/art adviser named Magnus Resch … argues that most galleries are undercapitalized and inefficient, and moreover, that with McKinsey-like business strategies … the entire art market could be turned into a profit-generating machine.”
How Can You Be A Middle Class Artist When The Middle Class Is Being Wiped Out?
“How can artists serve the social good, create excellent work, and critique the system when it is the system which is actively eroding the social good and preventing them from accomplishing excellent work? The result is not meaningful creative engagement but a scramble for survival—a blurring of vision and base opportunism.”
Are We Losing Are Ability To Read Deeply?
It can be argued that we are reading more than ever. We read blogs, captions, tweets. Where information used to be exchanged in telephone conversations, now it is communicated through texting. But despite all this reading, there’s a growing concern among educational experts that literacy is declining. “What we are in danger of losing,” says Joseph Tabbi, “is the leisure and educational infrastructure that—alone among cultural institutions—is capable of training young minds of all economic classes across nations in the direction of the literary arts.”
NEA Appoints New Director Of Theatre Program
“Until spring, Greg Reiner was managing director of New York’s Classic Stage Company. He also served for four years as executive director of the Tectonic Theater Project and for seven years as managing director of the Actors’ Gang in Culver City, Calif.”
If You Were Going To Do Something New With The Barnes Art What Could You Do?
“The question naturally arises, then, of what to do in terms of contemporary programming — because the irony, at least in terms of the permanent collection, is that the institution can’t actually do anything. Unlike other large museums, the Barnes cannot rotate objects in and out of active display or organize special shows using these works to bring particular artists or styles to light. Each piece must remain exactly where it is, forever.”
How The Ways We Watch TV Are Changing
“We’re at a media moment where media consumers expect media to find them. They are not going to go to media. They’re not going to go out and find shows in general. Now, it’s to the point where appointment viewing for most people can be narrowed down to a select two or three or four shows that people make sure they always catch.”
What Drives Trophy Hunters Like The Man Who Killed Cecil The Lion?
“The question, then, is why? What motivates Palmer and other trophy hunters, as they’re called, to fly thousands of miles and spend tens of thousands of dollars, all for the sake of killing an animal like Cecil? The answer is complex, but, largely, it can be thought of as a demonstration of power and prestige, says Amy Fitzgerald, a sociologist at the University of Windsor.”
Hollywood Blockbusters Need To Lose The Plot
“What was once a series content to celebrate simple boy-racer pleasures, the seventh Fast & Furious fell prey to a recent tentpole-film affliction: ridiculously over-complicated plotting.”
UK Denies Ai Weiwei Business Visa, Citing His ‘Criminal’ Past
“The dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has accused British authorities of turning their backs on human rights defenders after UK immigration officials rejected his application for a six-month business visa, claiming he had not declared a criminal conviction in his home country.”
Inside The Floating 3-D Head Of Marlon Brando
“One unusual sequence in the documentary Listen to Me Marlon shows a seemingly low-tech digital version of the actor Marlon Brando quoting Macbeth. His head floats in black space and the image looks three-dimensional yet still raw. These visuals were constructed by the filmmakers from a series of scans of Brando’s head that were made around 20 years ago.” (includes video)
New Musical Loses Half Its Cast Amid Delays And Dissension
Five actors and four dancers will be leaving the 19-person cast of Dusty, a new show about the singer Dusty Springfield, by the end of August. The producers of the show, which began performances in an Off-West End theatre in late May, keep postponing the press night.
Motels, Marrakech, And Mouths: From The Travel Journals Of Lawrence Ferlinghetti
“I find a variety store-bar called the Sans-Souci. Inside is a drunk loudmouth of about 50 and a platinum blonde who looks like she’s been thru all the mills and talks tough. The drunk is saying: Well, if you waz ever in a war, you’d see something. She says: I ain’t gettin near no war! I’m not thinkin of wars, I’m thinkin of prisons!”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.30.15
Peter Brant’s Brands: Whither ARTnews and Art in America?
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-07-30
The Whole-Tone Hypothesis
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-07-30
So you want to see a show?
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-07-30
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Behind The Merger Of ArtNews and Art In America
“Whatever happens with the merged magazines, it looks bad. You can read it as another chapter in the sad decline of print. But scrutinizing the tea leaves, you can also see it as another augury that the discourse of art is more and more subordinate to fashion-obsessed celebrity and short-term finance.”
Violette Verdy On What Makes A Great Dancer
A musical dancer helps you to see and feel the music in your own body; a dancer with a superior musicality goes even further, playing against the music, entering into a conversation with it, bending it to her own wishes. This is the kind of dancer Verdy was. Such musicality is innate.
‘I Would Have Jumped Off A Roof For Mao’: Li Cunxin, ‘Mao’s Last Dancer’, From The Cultural Revolution To The 21st-Century West
“Forced into ballet as a child in Mao’s China, Li Cunxin defected to the US and had to work as a stockbroker to support his family back home. But he never quit dancing. As he brings the Queensland Ballet to Britain, he talks about his traumas and triumphs – and shock at seeing people take their privileged lives for granted.”
When Genius Becomes Banal – How We See Greatness
“We have a problem of seeing, just as we often have a problem hearing (or hearing clearly), say, a Beethoven symphony. It’s hard to get back to our first enraptured seeings and hearings, when Van Gogh and Beethoven struck our eyes and ears as nothing had before; and yet equally hard to break through to new seeings, new hearings. So we tend, a little lazily, to acknowledge greatness by default, and move elsewhere, away from the crowds discovering him as we first discovered him.”