Arts news

• The Rust Belt Theory Of Really Great Culture

  02-01-2015 22:24 via feedproxy.google.com
  “On the one hand, these cities have a richer cultural legacy than younger but more economically ascendant cities such as Phoenix and Charlotte; meanwhile, their offerings are far more affordable than those in creative-class capitals such as New York and Boston, where theaters and concert halls can fill seats with deep-pocketed local elites and high-spending […]
  
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• $650m sales make Warhol top of the pop artists

  02-01-2015 19:10
  
  “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art,” Andy Warhol once said. By his own measure, the poster boy of pop art was the best artist of last year, topping international sales in 2014. A total of 1,295 works by Warhol fetched $653.2m (£425m) at auction last year, according to Artnet – outselling his nearest rival, Picasso, by over $200m.
  
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• How Data Is Changing Our Relationships With Customers

  02-01-2015 17:53 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Data now feels so central to business success that without an ongoing, data-mediated relationship with their customer base, we may be looking at an environment where data-poor brands will struggle to compete effectively.”
  
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• Doctors Turn To Art To Hone Their Skills

  02-01-2015 17:42 via feedproxy.google.com
  “A number of medical schools have adopted courses to train doctors in observational skills by studying great paintings. Physicians say the practice can help them become more observant, inform them about how society viewed medical conditions in the past, and connect them with the craft of medicine at a time when their profession is increasingly […]
  
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• Warning: UK’s Creative Industries Are In Danger

  02-01-2015 17:37 via feedproxy.google.com
  “We are at an incredibly dangerous moment. We are at a dangerous moment for public funding, a dangerous moment for creative education at schools and universities and we are at a potentially dangerous moment for our commercial companies because if we fail to think long term, if we fail to invest in our public spaces […]
  
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• The Rise And Fall Of Producer Norman Lear

  02-01-2015 17:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  “No species of fame is as fleeting as the sort bestowed by network TV. But Lear fell further, faster, and more fully than most, and it is noteworthy that he has nothing to say about this descent in his newly published autobiography, Even This I Get to Experience,1 in which he is fairly forthcoming about […]
  
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• Morning Links: Surfer Dude Edition

  02-01-2015 17:24 via artnews.com
  Tania Bruguera has been arrested in Cuba for the third time in two days. [The New York Times] Roberta Smith on the bevy of art films that came out this year. [The New York Times] “Puddle, pothole, portal” at SculptureCenter. … Read More
  
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• China’s Movie Box Office Grew 36 Percent In 2014

  02-01-2015 17:23 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Cinemas took in 29.6 billion yuan ($4.77 billion) in ticket sales last year with domestic films accounting for a little more than half the total, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Domestic productions made 16.15 billion yuan, or about 55 percent of the total, as China produced more than 600 movies, Xinhua cited Zhang Hongsen, […]
  
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• Piano Stores Around America Are Closing As Demand Dives

  02-01-2015 17:16 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Some blame computers and others note the high cost of new pianos, but what’s clear is that a long-term decline in sales has accelerated.”
  
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• Museum Contests Value Of Sendak Estate

  02-01-2015 17:11 via feedproxy.google.com
  The value of 800 rare books at the center of a legal dispute between the executors of Maurice Sendak’s will and the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia is estimated at $1.65 million, according to a figure offered by the Sendak estate in probate court filings. But the Rosenbach, which is suing Sendak’s estate, […]
  
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• Are We In The Next Phase In E-Books?

  02-01-2015 17:07 via feedproxy.google.com
  “What is now being proven is that market is not infinitely elastic. Most of the data we see suggest that ebook sales growth has stopped. Ever-growing supply and stable demand is a toxic formula for the prospects of each successive ebook published for that market. My own hunch is that Kindle Unlimited is simply the […]
  
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• What Made Philip Larkin So Great

  02-01-2015 16:55 via feedproxy.google.com
  If Larkin, who died in 1985, woke up today, he would have good reason to scream. The three decades following his death have savaged his reputation. “I have no enemies,” he once joked, “but my friends don’t like me.” Posterity proved the second part of that statement correct.
  
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• Pulp Fiction – How Reading Was Democratized

  02-01-2015 16:52 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Editors at the old hardcover houses looked on paperbacks as a bottom-feeding commercial phenomenon, like the pulp magazines and comic books they were distributed with. Critics ignored them, or attacked them as a lowbrow and politically retrograde diversion. Religious and civic groups campaigned to get them regulated or banned.”
  
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• Why Airlines Have An Interest In Making You Suffer

  02-01-2015 16:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Here’s the thing: in order for fees to work, there needs be something worth paying to avoid. That necessitates, at some level, a strategy that can be described as “calculated misery.” Basic service, without fees, must be sufficiently degraded in order to make people want to pay to escape it. And that’s where the suffering […]
  
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• Could “The Interview” Change The Way We Get Movies?

  02-01-2015 16:25 via feedproxy.google.com
  These dynamics could evolve over time, of course, as viewing habits do; if so, “The Interview” will surely be seen as a watershed moment in the evolution of film distribution.
  
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• A Down Year For Movies In 2014 (In Every Way)

  02-01-2015 16:22 via feedproxy.google.com
  “2014 just wasn’t all that great for movies, and that means creatively, at the box office and for the overall health of the business — three factors that always seem to run in a pack.”
  
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• PJ Harvey to record new album as Somerset House art exhibition

  02-01-2015 13:34
  
  PJ Harvey is set to record her ninth album as part of a public art exhibition at Somerset House.
  
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• Is anybody out there? Share your artworks about outer space

  02-01-2015 11:07
  
  To kick off 2015, we’re aiming high: go beyond planet Earth and send us your artworks inspired by space and, why not, extraterrestrialsThe way we were: readers’ artworks about nostalgia
  Your chance to be exhibited in London and New York
  Killer mice and rainbow wolves: the best of Share Your Art – in picturesWhether it’s in new mindbending films, reruns of old-school classics or in the headlines – exciting or tragic – outer space is omnipresent, and more interesting than ever. Art has
  
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• The way we were: readers' artworks about nostalgia – in pictures

  02-01-2015 11:04
  
  Fancy fairgrounds, flapper dresses and giant snowballs ... Guardian readers share their vivid memories of days gone by
  • Is anybody out there? Share your artworks about space Continue reading...
  
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• The Minnesota Orchestra’s Tumultuous Year: A Look Back

  02-01-2015 10:54 via feedproxy.google.com
  “In recent days at Orchestra Hall, I’ve repeatedly heard the word ‘optimistic’. The Orchestra is playing well, and musicians are clearly happy to be working with music director Osmo Vänskä again. … After two years of being held up as the example of the way not to do things, there is apparently great interest in […]
  
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• Discord Over Paris’s New Concert Hall

  02-01-2015 10:53 via feedproxy.google.com
  Despite the decades of complaints about the French capital lacking a decent venue for symphonic music, there’s a lot of hand-wringing about the soon-to-open Philharmonie de Paris – over everything from its location at the edge of the city to budget overruns and missed deadlines to planned programming.
  
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• The Art Newspaper’s Five Predictions For The 2015 Art Market

  02-01-2015 10:22 via feedproxy.google.com
  Economic chaos! Dealers endangered! Leaderless sale rooms!
  
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• Macedonians Form Human Chain To Protect Modernist Building From Added Baroque Façade

  02-01-2015 10:21 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The protest was part of a series of events starting in 2013 that have attempted to stall this aspect of the creeping Skopje 2014 project, a controversial and costly plan to give the city’s buildings makeover in the neoclassical or baroque style.”
  
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• The 100 Most Influential People In British Theatre For 2015

  02-01-2015 09:53 via feedproxy.google.com
  Topping The Stage 100 for the sixth year running are the co-founders and co-CEOs of Ambassador Theatre Group, Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire. In fact, eight of the top ten slots are held by duos rather than individuals.
  
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• Two Of Paris’s Most Important Theatres Will Go Dark For Two Seasons

  02-01-2015 09:52 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The Théâtre de la Ville and the Théâtre du Châtelet … will close for extensive renovations at the end of the 2016 season, darkening the houses for one and a half to two years. The theaters, which face each other on the Place du Châtelet, next to the Seine in the heart of the city, […]
  
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• Actor Edward Herrmann Dead At 71

  02-01-2015 09:36 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The 6-foot-5 actor schooled in London was a natural to play aristocrats and authority figures” – from Nelson Rockefeller and editor Max Eastman on film to FDR and (much more recently) the grandfather in Gilmore Girls. Those roles were but part of wide-ranging career including everything from a Tony-winning performance in a Bernard Shaw play […]
  
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• Cuban Performance Artist Detained And Released Three Times In Two Days

  02-01-2015 09:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The artist, Tania Bruguera, who was born in Cuba and splits her time between there and New York, had made clear in statements after her initial detention this week that she was determined to see the release of everyone else who had been detained” in a crackdown on opponents of the Castro government this week.
  
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• No More White Politicos In Blackface For Madrid’s Three Kings Day Parade, Demand Activists

  02-01-2015 09:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Tired of seeing white politicians ‘black up’ for a children’s post-Christmas street parade, almost 62,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that Madrid council choose a black man to play the role of Balthazar in the city’s Three Kings cavalcade next week.”
  
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• They’ve Gone Mad For Tango In Tbilisi

  02-01-2015 09:18 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Caminar, cruce, gancho, ocho. The dance steps are not usually associated with the South Caucasus, but thanks to a prolonged period of stability following Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution the country is increasingly connected to the outside world – and starting to enjoy pastimes that come from afar.”
  
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• Ricardo Porro, 89, Visionary Architect Championed, Then Spurned By Fidel Castro

  02-01-2015 09:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  “[He] lived long enough to see his two National Art Schools – begun during a utopian moment in the Cuban revolution, then abandoned as counterrevolutionary – newly embraced around the world as the crown jewels of modern Cuban architecture.”
  
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• Visual arts highlights of 2015: Goya, Marlene Dumas and the utopian Black Square

  02-01-2015 09:00
  
  Adventures of the Black SquareFollowing Tate Modern’s excellent Malevich exhibition last year, this exhibition will explore how the utopian Black Square has provided inspiration for generations of artists. Themes of communication, architectonics and the everyday will be explored by artists from Dan Flavin to Jenny Holzer.Whitechapel Gallery, London,  15 January to 6 April
  
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• In the studio with Giorgio Griffa

  02-01-2015 09:00
  
  Giorgio Griffo was born in Turin in 1936. He moved to this current studio in a large block near the city centre ten years ago, having previously used a room in his flat that was “much bigger and brighter”. It would be hard for it not to be brighter, as the room we are in has no windows, its only illumination an obscured glass door to prevent people peering in. He admits he was so depressed after he moved in that, “I had to draw myself out of sadness”, pointing to a drawing about the a
  
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• In the studio: Giorgio Griffa, artist

  02-01-2015 09:00
  
  Giorgio Griffo was born in Turin in 1936. He moved to this current studio in a large block near the city centre ten years ago, having previously used a room in his flat that was “much bigger and brighter”. It would be hard for it not to be brighter, as the room we are in has no windows, its only illumination an obscured glass door to prevent people peering in. He admits he was so depressed after he moved in that, “I had to draw myself out of sadness”, pointing to a drawing about the a
  
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• Classical and opera highlights of 2015: Bellini, Monteverdi and The Indian Queen

  02-01-2015 09:00
  
  La vida breve/Gianni SchicchiChristopher Alden revives his blistering production of Manuel de Falla’s exuberant one-acter La vida breve starring the French soprano Anne Sophie Dupreis, and presents a new Gianni Schicchi with the whirlwind British baritone Christopher Purves in the title role.Leeds Grand Theatre, in rep 18 to 28 February
  
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• Buddhism, Stoicism, Shmoicism – Do We Really Want To Transcend Suffering?

  02-01-2015 08:43 via feedproxy.google.com
  Todd May: “In their official guise, these doctrines are examples of what I am going to label ‘invulnerabilism.’ They say that we can, and we should, make ourselves immune to the world’s vicissitudes. … Instead, I want to say that most of us, when we really reflect upon our lives, would not want what is […]
  
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• How Do We Arrive At A Science Of Consciousness?

  02-01-2015 08:41 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Philosopher Alva Noë explores ideas in a new book that suggests consciousness and self is best looked at by combining insight from Western science, Indian philosophy and contemplative practices.”
  
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• Mystery Of Mrs. Oscar Wilde’s Death May Be Solved

  02-01-2015 08:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Merlin Holland, grandson of the Irish wit and author of The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere’s Fan, has unearthed medical evidence within private family letters, which has enabled a doctor to determine the likely cause of Constance’s demise.”
  
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• Photography exhibitions that made history

  02-01-2015 08:02
  
  As a new book surveys landmark shows, museums are only starting to catch up with the digital revolution of the medium
  
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• Sony Expands Release Of “The Interview”, In Theaters And Digitally

  02-01-2015 08:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Sony Pictures Entertainment announced Wednesday that it would continue its rollout of The Interview by adding new video-on-demand platforms, pay-per-view services and about 200 more theaters.”
  
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• It Took Four Days For “The Interview” To Become Sony’s All-Time Top-Grossing Digital Release

  02-01-2015 07:54 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The Interview, the Sony Pictures movie that was pulled from theaters after threats from a group of hackers, has earned the studio $15 million in online rentals and purchases in the four days since it was made available last week. It also brought in nearly $3 million from theater screenings.”
  
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• African And Black Writers Need To Liberate Themselves From “Mental Tyranny”, Says Ben Okri

  02-01-2015 07:07 via feedproxy.google.com
  The Nigerian novelist argues that “black and African writers are read for their novels about slavery, colonialism, poverty, civil wars, imprisonment, female circumcision – in short, for subjects that reflect the troubles of Africa and black people as perceived by the rest of the world. They are defined by their subjects. The black and African […]
  
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