Arts news

• The Best View In Rotterdam Is From The Roof. So The City Is Building A Grand Staircase To Get You Up There

  15-04-2016 23:12 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Today, Rotterdam is a hub for landmark buildings and experimental construction, with new projects including MVRDV’s market hall and the OMA-designed De Rotterdam. The Stairs will be built next to another of these new additions – the railway station by Benthem Crouwel, MVSA and West 8.”
  
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• Barbarians at the gate: Irish biennial finds inspiration in Easter Rising

  15-04-2016 23:00
  
  Eva International: Ireland’s Biennial opened this weekend in Limerick, Ireland, taking as its theme the “postcolonial condition” to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising. As Koyo Kouoh, the biennial’s Cameroonian-born guest curator, pointed out at the press conference on Thursday, we do not often think of European countries as having been colonised, but Ireland was under “800 years of occupation”.
  There is work by 57 artists from 23 differe
  
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• Post-Kobborg Collapse At Romania’s National Ballet: Two Productions And Gala Are Cancelled, Four More In Jeopardy

  15-04-2016 22:38 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  With Johan Kobborg chased out of the artistic directorship of the ballet at the Bucharest National Opera and star Alina Cojocaru leading a rebellion among the dancers, upcoming runs of Giselle and La Fille mal gardée have been called off, along with a major gala on April 28. Rights holders to four more upcoming productions are threatening to withdraw permission for performances, saying that they consented only to a company led by Kobborg. (in Romanian)
  
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• Romanian Prime Minister And Culture Minister Say They’ll Intervene In Kobborg Crisis At National Ballet

  15-04-2016 22:37 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Responding on Facebook to an open letter from Alina Cojocaru, prime minister Dacian Cioloş said he hopes that “the ensuing dialogue of today (which will continue in coming days) with Culture Minister Vlad Alexandrescu will find a solution to the situation at the [Bucharest National] Opera.” Alexandrescu, also writing on Facebook, said, “The Ministry of Culture wishes to continue working with Johan Kobborg and Alina Cojocaru … [and] is currently looking for solutions
  
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• Marketing Has Become Virtual Word Salad

  15-04-2016 22:36 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  We all know by now that advertising is no longer “advertising.” It’s “content.” But it’s not just “content.” It’s “organic” content. Or “authentic” content. Or “holistic” content — which is apparently different than “integrated” content. Or “optimized” content. Or “bespoke” content. (You think I’m making that up?) And of course, “viral” content &md
  
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• ‘Well-Edited Memorials of Wanderlust’: A Brief History of British Conceptual Art

  15-04-2016 22:29 via artnews.com
  In honor of Tate Modern’s survey of British Conceptual art, “Conceptual Art in Britain 1964–1979,” which opened earlier this week, below are excerpts of reviews from the ARTnews archives. All of the artists discussed are included in show, which runs … Read More
  
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• A Transformative Plan For An 80-Story Wood Skyscraper In London

  15-04-2016 22:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The use of timber could transform the way we build in this city,” said PLP partner Kevin Flanagan. “Timber buildings have the potential architecturally to create a more pleasing, relaxed, sociable and creative urban experience”
  
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• Why Are Movies Based On Words And Not On Images?

  15-04-2016 21:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “For 8,000 years we’ve had lyric poetry, for 400 years we’ve had the novel, theatre hands its meaning down in text. Let’s find a medium whose total, sole responsibility is the world as seen as a form of visual intelligence. Surely, surely, surely the cinema should be that phenomenon.”
  
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• Ajay Kurian at White Flag Projects, St. Louis

  15-04-2016 21:04 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
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• Ajay Kurian at White Flag Projects, Saint Louis

  15-04-2016 21:04 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
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• Malick Sidibé, Malian Photographer Who Shot a Changing Africa, Dies at 80

  15-04-2016 20:43 via artnews.com
  Malick Sidibé, one of the most important African photographers ever, whose black-and-white photographs of Malian youth depict a country’s values changing in response to political independence, died yesterday, of causes that, as of this writing, are still unclear. He was … Read More
  
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• Only for the rich: Islamic art is overshadowed by morally questionable Gulf labour conditions

  15-04-2016 20:37
  
  God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth: Light in Islamic Art and Culture is a glossy, profusely illustrated volume resulting from a Palermo symposium with contributions by well-known scholars. The Gulf: High Culture/Hard Labor is a cheaply produced paperback by lesser-known artists and social commentators. What connects two such disparate publications?Light is an enduring topic in Islamic science and art history, much of the discussion stemming from a well-known topos in the Sura of
  
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• Only for the rich: how Islamic art is overshadowed by morally questionable Gulf labour conditions

  15-04-2016 20:37
  
  God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth: Light in Islamic Art and Culture is a glossy, profusely illustrated volume resulting from a Palermo symposium with contributions by well-known scholars. The Gulf: High Culture/Hard Labor is a cheaply produced paperback by lesser-known artists and social commentators. What connects two such disparate publications?Light is an enduring topic in Islamic science and art history, much of the discussion stemming from a well-known topos in the Sura of
  
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• Miami City Ballet, Reborn

  15-04-2016 20:19 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “MCB is also one of the most diverse companies in the United States without us trying to be. One thing is saying I believe in diversity and I’m going to seek it out and another thing is saying it is who we are. When you look at the roster of MCB, half of them are from Latin America, the other half is from the US and we have a few from Europe.”
  
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• Abu Dhabi’s Culture Explosion: What Money Can Buy

  15-04-2016 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “It remains to be seen whether Saadiyat Island can become a true international cultural hub or nothing more than a costly mirage.”
  
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• Advertising Company Starts Recording Label For Street Musicians

  15-04-2016 19:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Passersby can film a short video of a street musician they like and post it to the Sound of Change website with the hashtag #soundofchange, including a geotag and the musician’s contact information in the description. Hungry Boys monitors the most popular musicians on the site and connects them with recording opportunities at nearby studios, the output of which is distributed through channels like iTunes and Google Play.”
  
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• Gang of New York: Printed Matter Revisits the Colab Group in a New Book

  15-04-2016 19:16 via artnews.com
  “We were a gang of young artists who had nothing to lose, and as a result we had the power to accomplish anything that we could think of.” This the gadabout artist and writer Walter Robinson declares in his introduction … Read More
  
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• WME-IMG Partners With Frieze

  15-04-2016 18:44 via artnews.com
  The entertainment agency WME-IMG announced today that, as part of a partnership plan, it is investing in Frieze, which runs fairs in New York and London. The size of the deal and the percentage stake WME-ING is getting in Frieze have not been revealed.As … Read More
  
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• Inside The Structural Biases Of Race On Broadway

  15-04-2016 18:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Given the relative paucity of minority stories, why would an investor be drawn to them? Why risk $100,000 on an unknown black writer when you could put it into the next David Mamet/Al Pacino collaboration?”
  
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• William Wegman: the 'dog artist' who still leads the pack

  15-04-2016 18:01
  
  Famous for his works featuring his Weimaraners, the artist has two new shows dedicated to his postcard paintings – and they’re just as delightfully drollYou can always fudge whether a painting or a sculpture is successful. With a joke you can’t: no laugh, no achievement. So the work of William Wegman, one of America’s most sympathetic artistic polymaths, has its own proof of accomplishment – the smile on your face.A painter and an early pioneer of video art, Wegman
  
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• 19th-Century Storm Chasers And The First-Ever Photos Of Tornadoes

  15-04-2016 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “In the 19th century, when photography was developing into a mass medium, a few intrepid early adopters pointed their glass plate cameras at one of the most intimidating natural forces on Earth.”
  
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• Caravaggio contested and the future of pants – the week in art

  15-04-2016 17:55
  
  The British Museum explores Sicily’s gorgeous heritage, east London bids farewell to an anarchic venue and the V&A strips to its smalls – all in your weekly art dispatchSicily: Culture and Conquest
  The island of Sicily has been a prize fought over by all the cultures of the Mediterranean world since ancient times. This exhibition tells how Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans conquered and reconquered Sicily. In spite of enmity and war, their arts merged and
  
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• Caravaggio contested and bacon-smelling boxers – the week in art

  15-04-2016 17:55
  
  The British Museum explores Sicily’s gorgeous heritage, east London bids farewell to an anarchic venue and the V&A strips to its smalls – all in your weekly art dispatchSicily: Culture and Conquest
  The island of Sicily has been a prize fought over by all the cultures of the Mediterranean world since ancient times. This exhibition tells how Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans conquered and reconquered Sicily. In spite of enmity and war, their arts merged and
  
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• Malick Sidibé, photographer of Bamako's 1960s youth culture, dies aged 80

  15-04-2016 17:32
  
  The Malian photographer Malick Sidibé died yesterday, 14 April, at the age of 80. Sidibé’s Paris gallery, Magnin-A, confirmed the news.Born in 1935 in Soloba, Mali, Sidibé witnessed the cultural ferment of the capital, Bamako, after the country achieved independence in 1960. “Malick Sidibé is both a witness and an actor in the changes of an African youth divided between tradition and the emergence of a fashion, a music and a lifestyle inspired by the mode
  
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• Infrastructure For The Artistic Entrepreneur

  15-04-2016 17:26 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Creative Capital has a solidly 21st-century philosophy based on balance, sustainability, validation, and customization. It’s a school of funding-thinking, like a movement: Creative Capitalism.”
  
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• Your Next Binge-Watch Should Be Wagner’s ‘Ring’ Cycle

  15-04-2016 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Anne Midgette: “Indeed, with its giants and dwarves and dragons and battles and love duets, it bears marked resemblances to a lot of today’s most popular screen sagas: the political shenanigans of House of Cards, the epic flavor of Game of Thrones, the fairy-tale elements of Lord of the Rings. … (And by the way, where do you think the idea for The Lord of the Rings came from, anyway?)
  
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• Trolling Subway Riders With Fake Book Covers

  15-04-2016 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Scott Rogowsky has been getting video of the reactions of New Yorkers to such book titles as Definitely Not Porn | So What Are You Looking At? Mind Your Own Business; Human Taxidermy: A Beginner’s Guide; Slut-Shaming Your Baby; and 1,000 Places to See Before You’re Executed by ISIS.
  
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• Janet Hodgson obituary

  15-04-2016 16:34
  
  Artist who undertook complex explorations of time, history and languageJanet Hodgson, who has died aged 56 of cancer, explored ideas of time, history, archaeology and language through sculpture, film, public art – accessible to all, usually outdoors – and installations. Curiosity and close investigation gave rise to complex ideas that left questions open. As the magazine British Archaeology noted in connection with a number of projects focusing on Stonehenge in 2008, her installation
  
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• How Did The Ancients Make Bronze Casts Of Marble Statues? This Animation Will Show You

  15-04-2016 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Lost-wax casting, a sculpting technique dating to the Chalcolithic period, is an elaborate process. Its many steps include spruing, slurrying, burnout, and metal chasing – terms lost on your average sculpture 101 student. Why go to all the trouble? The process allows for the creation of exact, hollow (and therefore lightweight) metal copies of existing marble sculptures, which weigh a ton and are otherwise difficult to reproduce.”
  
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• The Original Gentrification Story: Adam Gopnik On The Place Des Vosges In Paris

  15-04-2016 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “History tells us that it is the Cinderella – or, as the French would say, the Cendrillon – of the world’s great squares. It was born to encourage manufacturing, quickly turned into a region for real estate speculation, then given its permanent, completely irrelevant title in one of the most cynical ‘naming opportunities’ ever conceived before the modern football stadium.”
  
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• Hauser & Wirth Adds Jack Whitten to Its Roster, Plans Show for Spring 2017

  15-04-2016 16:00 via artnews.com
  Following a five-decade retrospective of Jack Whitten’s work that traveled around the United States over the past year and a half, Hauser & Wirth will now represent the New York–based painter, who is known for what he terms “conceptual abstractions.” Whitten had … Read More
  
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• Africanizing Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’

  15-04-2016 15:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Both stories share the premise of a human body undergoing a change so abrupt and so drastic that the old body is unrecognizable in the new one. But there is a key difference. The Metamorphosis tells the story of a man named Gregor Samsa who wakes up one non-descript morning and finds he is a human-size bug. But in Blackass, Furo Wariboko wakes up and finds he has been transformed into a white man while his buttocks remain black.”
  
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• Mario Vargas Llosa Is Now Officially A Living Legend (The Library Of Congress Has Decreed It)

  15-04-2016 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The Peruvian writer was a leading candidate for his country’s presidency in 1990, is the last survivor of a literary movement that re-energized the novel in our time and is probably the only winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature to compare the joys of writing, in his 2010 Nobel lecture, to ‘making love to the woman you love, for days, weeks, months, without stopping.'”
  
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• Live Q&A: How can the creative industries encourage climate action?

  15-04-2016 15:24
  
  Next week the Paris Agreement will be signed, how can the arts engage the public to ensure it holds governments accountable? Join an expert panel to discuss on Thursday 21 April, 3-5pm BSTSponsored by Connect4ClimateAt a historic ceremony on 22 April, more than 130 countries will formally commit to the Paris climate agreement to keep global warming below 2C.But in order for policymakers to take decisive steps, the general public in countries around the world need to be fully behind taking action
  
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• ‘Our National Antidote’ – An Old Friend Tries To Make Sense Of Harper Lee

  15-04-2016 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Nelle Harper Lee scoffed at her National Treasure status. … [She] was more like the National Antidote – probably she would have preferred emetic, or gag reflex, something that expressed her unwillingness to humor the Chamber of Commerce or our contemporary age of ubiquity and oversaturation.”
  
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• The New Tate Modern: More Galleries, More Performance, More Women

  15-04-2016 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The new Tate Modern will open on 17 June with around 60% more gallery space provided by its 11-floor Switch House extension. In the basement, floor 0, will be The Tanks, the world’s first museum spaces dedicated to live art.” Says new director Frances Morris, “There is a commitment now to show the real history of art and the contribution made by many women who have been overlooked for many reasons.”
  
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• Morning Links: Edward Snowden’s Techno Song Edition

  15-04-2016 14:54 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the world Read More
  
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• Please Stop The Arts Cuts!, England’s Arts Funding Body Begs Local Governments

  15-04-2016 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Arts Council England chair Peter Bazalgette has made a plea for local authorities to ‘keep the faith’ and continue funding the arts to avoid losing ‘irreplaceable’ organisations.”
  
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• New name for the Musée du quai Branly in Paris?

  15-04-2016 14:39
  
  The Musée du quai Branly in Paris, the ethnographic museum located in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, could soon have a different name. The museum’s director, Stéphane Martin, has submitted a request to the French culture and higher education ministries asking that the institution be called Musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac after the former president who founded the museum.
  “The new name could be in use by 20 June for the opening of the exhibition Jacque
  
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• A trigger warning on art? A daft idea – but a back-handed compliment | Jonathan Jones

  15-04-2016 14:39
  
  Stephen Fry was wrong to criticise the use of trigger warnings. Great works of art, like those of Caravaggio, can be frightening, grotesque and extremeTrigger warnings are a modern folktale, surely? The idea that a generation of students are demanding – in between marching against statues and banning Germaine Greer – to be warned about violent, sexual or otherwise threatening content in great works of art has, to someone who has not been on campus for years, a fictional quality.When
  
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• ‘If Only It Hadn’t Taken Him So Long’ – Anne Midgette On Levine’s Retirement From The Met

  15-04-2016 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “It wasn’t just the illnesses, but the constant alternation between concealment and an excess of revelation that kept so much attention focused on them and away from the music.”
  
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• ‘A Conceptual Shock’ – Alex Ross On The End Of The Levine Era At The Met

  15-04-2016 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “All the same, the news comes as a conceptual shock, because no one under the age of fifty – myself included – can remember a time when Levine wasn’t the frizzy-haired man on the Met podium. He was always there, eyes alight, sweat on his brow, hands caressing the air.”
  
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• Five of the best… new art shows

  15-04-2016 14:00
  
  Fox Talbot: Dawn Of The Photograph | Conceptual Art In Britain 1964–1979 | In The Age Of Giorgione | Botticelli And Treasures From The Hamilton CollectionContinue reading...
  
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• Boring Architecture Is Literally Unhealthy For Us

  15-04-2016 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “A growing body of research in cognitive science illuminates the physical and mental toll bland cityscapes exact on residents. Generally, these researchers argue that humans are healthier when they live among variety – a cacophony of bars, bodegas, and independent shops – or work in well-designed, unique spaces, rather than unattractive, generic ones.”
  
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• The Truth About The Dancers In Madonna’s ‘Truth Or Dare’

  15-04-2016 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “‘I look petrified,’ Salim Gauwloos says in the film as he watches the old footage of himself play on a computer screen. ‘I can’t wait to get offstage.'” And he had reason to be.
  
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• Fabian Barnes, 56, Founder/Director Of Dance Institute Of Washington

  15-04-2016 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The Dance Institute of Washington is reeling from the unexpected death Friday of [Barnes], the hard-driving and big-hearted former Dance Theatre of Harlem soloist who devoted his life to training underprivileged children in classical ballet.”
  
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• Move over, chatbots: meet the artbots

  15-04-2016 11:18
  
  From TwoHeadlines to Shiv Integer, artists are subverting Silicon Valley’s tools to artistic endsAt Facebook’s F8 conference in Silicon Valley, David Marcus, the company’s head of messaging, proudly demonstrated its new suite of chatbots. Users can now get in a conversation with the likes of CNN, H&M, and HP, and ask for help shopping, or the latest headlines.The chatbots aren’t very good, but that doesn’t mean Facebook isn’t proud of them anyway: “I
  
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• Revamped Kunstmuseum Basel to reveal lesser-known Jackson Pollock

  15-04-2016 11:00
  
  The Kunstmuseum Basel, which reopens on Sunday, 17 April, after a year-long renovation, is planning an unorthodox blockbuster this autumn: an exhibition of figurative works by Jackson Pollock. The show is a rare major European presentation of Pollock’s work; the last two were at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) in London in 1999 and at Tate Liverpool last year. Loans of the American Abstract Expressionist’s work are “very difficult to negotiate”, says the museum&rsquo
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.14.16

  15-04-2016 09:43 via feedproxy.google.com
  LP Alert: Shipp-Bisio & Guaraldi
  Matthew Shipp, Michael Bisio, Live In Seattle (Arena Music). Vinyl is becoming the preferred medium of listeners to a variety of genres, particularly of young people who counter the traditional youthful notion that anything from … read more
  AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-04-14So you want to see a show?
  Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews
  
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• James Levine To Retire From Met Opera At End Of This Season

  15-04-2016 01:40 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The announcement about Mr. Levine, 72, capped a difficult year in which he struggled to hold on to his position amid a variety of health problems, including Parkinson’s disease.”
  
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