Arts news

• Sotheby’s sales down 31% this year amid overall auction market slowdown

  07-08-2016 23:00
  
  Sothebys president and CEO Tad Smith described a drop of 31% in overall sales volume and described an art market facing many difficulties during the auction houses second quarter earnings call on Monday morning.
  There are a number of geo-political, macroeconomic, commodity pricing and financial market uncertainties that leave the art market with a paradox, Smith said. On the one hand, collectors are still buying top quality works of art in well-curated sales. On the other hand, consignors who h
  
  Read more

• Ron Arad's 360-degree installation at the Roundhouse

  07-08-2016 23:00
  Internationally renowned artist, architect and designer Ron Arad is all over London this summer. He has a solo show at Ben Brown Fine Arts; has created a new work, Spyre, for the Royal Academy of Arts' courtyard; and he has just revealed his public commission Thought of Train of Thought at St Pancras International station.
  Arad's 360-degree installation, Curtain Call, has returned to the Roundhouse as part of the venue's 50th anniversary celebrations. The floor-to-ceiling work, made of 5,600 sil
  
  Read more

• MIT mushrooms pop up in São Paulo

  07-08-2016 23:00
  
  The 32nd So Paulo Biennale, due to open on 10 September (until 10 December), will play host to an installation of objects created by an unusual designer: the vegetative fungus mycelium. Students and professors at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) grew the fungusstudied as an alternative to plasticto create objects that aim to consider the role of cross-species technologies and our interaction with them, explains Laura Knott, the consulting
  
  Read more

• That Time Atlanta Got All Dressed Up To Host The Olympics. Then The New Yorker Made Fun…

  07-08-2016 20:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Imagine then the shock and disappointment when the July 22, 1996 issue of The New Yorker arrived at our house. The cover illustration featured a farmer in overalls with a pig under one arm and the other arm holding a torch. Roosters were at his feet as he stood ready to light the cauldron beneath a display of the Olympic rings. Across his chest a banner read, “Howdy.”
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• The Last Journalists Left Turn Out The Lights On Fleet Street

  07-08-2016 20:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “I was standing by the window once a few years ago, and a tour bus had stopped outside. I heard the guide tell the passengers that Fleet Street no longer had any journalists working here. I stuck my head out and shouted: ‘We are still here’.”
  
  Read more

• This Art Museum Was Supposed To Open In Early 2016, But It Sure Didn’t

  07-08-2016 19:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The historic building remains in a bare-bones state, its parking lot devoid of construction vehicles, as stakeholders await a revised design plan for what the Ringling College of Art and Design, which absorbed the SMOA organization a decade ago, is calling its ‘South Campus Complex.'”
  
  Read more

• Why Are British Audiences Eating Up An American Comedy About An Entitled, Self-Flagellating Asshole?

  07-08-2016 19:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “I feel like out of every kind of performance I’m involved in, theater is still the best way to communicate a story to a group of people. I think there is so much value in putting myself through the very difficult experiences of the character eight times a week because I think it communicates — on a macro-level, the human condition, and on a micro-level, third-generation malaise, self-loathing, the fear of immigrants usurping positions of power from hegemonic cultures like mine
  
  Read more

• Is Virtual Reality The New Music Video?

  07-08-2016 19:27 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “If you can put yourself inside of a music experience, when you’re 100% covered with the artist’s music and another artist’s interpretation of the music, we thought those two worlds colliding is great way to achieve something remarkable. I want to explore that as an art form, and create the next generation moments that is something everyone will talk about.”
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• What Hollywood Can’t Touch

  07-08-2016 19:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Thinking about [Kiarostami’s] films while watching an American film leads to a sobering realization: all the things that Kiarostami could not show in his films became the only things Hollywood filmmakers chose to show in theirs. What he showed in his films were the things abandoned by Hollywood: conversation, friendship, understanding, compassion, and empathy.”
  
  Read more

• When The Cast Of ‘Fun Home’ Went To Orlando After The Pulse Shooting

  07-08-2016 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “In murky, frightening times like these, that is the most essential thing theater offers an audience: a brief community, connecting us to one another in larger, lasting ways.”
  
  Read more

• The First (Rock) Gateway Song For Children Was ‘Yellow Submarine’

  07-08-2016 17:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “I love that my son loves the Beatles, and I am optimistic that this will lead him down a path not unlike my own upbringing immersed in music.”
  
  Read more

• How’s Thomas Adès’ Opera Adaptation Of A Buñuel Movie Going?

  07-08-2016 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The acting, with certain exceptions, is quite restrained. With an opera, one’s doing in a way the opposite and bringing out the latent psychological and emotional meaning. The music underlines the power of the feeling. In some ways, I found that operatic subjects, whether it’s a source that you use or a real-life thing, are subjects that seem to invite a further dimension that in a way would bring them to some kind of new stature.
  
  Read more

• When Humans Can Control Each Others’ Brains Remotely, What Will Happen?

  07-08-2016 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “These systems are potentially more precise and less invasive than existing techniques for altering brain activity such as deep brain stimulation. With so much progress on a variety of fronts, some form of human mind control – and the treatments and benefits it confers – should be here before long.”
  
  Read more

• Why Was A Key Art Deco Part Of Banksy’s Dismaland Destroyed?

  07-08-2016 16:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Built in 1937, the concrete structure was the ‘last fragment’ of the derelict seaside lido used for the street artist’s ‘Bemusement Park’ exhibit last year. Conservationists said they had been told the fountain, in Weston-super-Mare, would be spared from destruction.”
  
  Read more

• Seeing A Bunch Of Tennessee Williams’ Flops Reveals A Lot About The USA’s Greatest Playwright

  07-08-2016 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Although skeptical about religion and its repressive demands, Williams maintained an open mind when it came to spirituality, believing that sex could lead one to God perhaps even more directly than sublimation and sacrifice.”
  
  Read more

• What Does London Sound Like? Ask The Sound Hunters

  07-08-2016 15:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “I mean, could you imagine if you could hear the sounds of 18th-century London today? … Even if it was just the sound of people spitting in the street, coughing — and a lot of people were sick back then, so it probably would be — it’d be fascinating.”
  
  Read more

• The Evidence Is Mounting: Rembrandt Used Optics For His Self-Portraits

  07-08-2016 15:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “A number of these smaller self-portraits are etched onto copper, a surface upon which projections can be seen extremely clearly. Two early painted self-portraits are also made on copper — an unusual choice of surface for a painting, but perhaps telling of an artist working from a projection.”
  
  Read more

• Harry Titcombe obituary

  07-08-2016 15:29
  
  Wildlife artist and illustrator known for his vibrant depictions of birdsHarry Titcombe, who has died aged 82, was a wildlife artist and illustrator who had a special affection for birds. Much of his output was for the Central Office of Information, the government’s marketing and public information agency from 1946 until 2011, though he also did much work for publishers of reference works in the 1970s and 80s.Born and bred in Romford, Essex, Harry lived there for most of his life, close to
  
  Read more

• The Politics Of Europe’s New, Hot Superstar Writers

  07-08-2016 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “A new generation of young European writers is reinventing political literature—and people are listening. Some of the brightest new voices on the continent are making their names through overtly political books, showing that literature, even books of poetry, can still play a significant role in shaping public discourse.”
  
  Read more

• The Drama Of The Reclusive Artist

  07-08-2016 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Think of Harper Lee or Frank Ocean. “How could someone with such an astute understanding of the world apparently want so little to do with it? How could someone craft so perfect a piece of art, only to shy away from the acclaim it produced?”
  
  Read more

• The Jazz Clarinetist Who Acted As New Orleans’ Musical Ambassador To The World

  07-08-2016 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Unlike other musicians whose lives were marked by marital strife, substance abuse and run-ins with the law, Mr. Fountain lived a blissful existence with Beverly Lang Fountain, his wife of 64 years, and a sizable number of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”
  
  Read more

• Why Does Canada Hate Canadians?

  07-08-2016 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “If Canadian curators cannot aspire to eventually manage the museums where they work, or Canadian stage directors need never consider running Canada’s festivals, they will not give their institutions the best of themselves. They will either slump into the self-fulfilling prophecy of lower expectations or they will go abroad.”
  
  Read more

• This Greek Statue Of Zeus Was Lost In The Fifth Century, So – What The Heck – Let’s Just 3D-Print Another One

  07-08-2016 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “It took two days to 3D print Zeus’s body and 20 hours to print his legs.”
  
  Read more

• The Librarian Who Changed Children’s Literature (And Children, And Libraries) Forever

  07-08-2016 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Her end-of-year lists were sacred anointments of the chosen titles; she was reputed to be able to make or break a book, much as the New York Times’ theater critic was said to determine the fate of a new play.”
  
  Read more

• When Ballet Springs Up In Soweto

  07-08-2016 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Traditionally, ballet here was for the white and wealthy. Black South Africans were excluded, leaving a legacy of disinterest. Ballet teacher Muli Mokgele is among those trying to change that.”
  
  Read more

• Nasa's secret art studio: how to make rocket science beautiful

  07-08-2016 14:00
  
  The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which takes on Nasa’s most ambitious missions, runs a studio where a mix of design and engineering creates stunning resultsIf you’ve marveled at space news recently, there’s a good chance it’s thanks to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This arm of Nasa is responsible for the most ambitious of missions, like sending robots to Mars and, most recently, the Juno spacecraft to Jupiter. But the JPL has another under-the-radar mission: uniting two un
  
  Read more

• Director Ava DuVernay Hits A Milestone For Film – And Yeah, It Matters

  07-08-2016 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “DuVernay’s career has been one marked by firsts: first black woman to win Sundance’s best director prize; first black female director nominated for a Golden Globe; first black female director with a film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. So it’s not surprising that she would be the first to break the budget barrier.”
  
  Read more

• So, Where Are The Native Peoples Of The U.S. In ‘Hamilton’?

  07-08-2016 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The thing is, Natives were a huge point of discussion, contention, concern, admiration, emulation, disgust, and more during this time period. Native representational democracies were also large part of the conversation in trying to build the new system of government.”
  
  Read more

• Grandmaster Flash: ‘Hip-hop’s message was simple: we matter’

  07-08-2016 11:00
  
  Ahead of Baz Luhrmann’s TV dramatisation of rap’s roots, The Get Down, we turn back the clock to 1970s New York, when the youth of the neglected South Bronx sowed the seeds of a musical revolutionHistory remembers the South Bronx in the 1970s as an urban catastrophe; the ground zero of a city in crisis. Unemployment and poverty were sky-high, as was crime, overwhelming police precincts and fire stations that were squeezed by austerity. Whole blocks were reduced to ghost towns as cyni
  
  Read more

• Facing the World; Inspiring Impressionism – here’s looking at me

  07-08-2016 09:00
  
  Scottish National Portrait Gallery; Scottish National Gallery, EdinburghFrom Rembrandt to Munch to Ai Weiwei on Instagram, the self-portrait proves irresistible. And Daubigny, anyone?There is a wry and unexpectedly beautiful photograph by Helen Chadwick that shows her hands gently cradling a human brain. It is titled Self-Portrait. This cannot be the artist’s own brain, of course, this disembodied object with its intricate, walnut-like folds; but are we our brains in any case? Here she is,
  
  Read more

• Arthouse in Tuscany for creative types

  07-08-2016 08:00
  
  Villa Lena is part rural retreat, part creative workshop – with an ambience like something out of a Bertolucci filmIn the gardens of a 19th-century Tuscan villa, a group of artists are mingling with visitors over glasses of prosecco as the sun sets. There’s a languid, dreamy feel about it all – like a scene from Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty – as we head to dine al fresco at communal tables overlooking the rolling countryside.The ethereal voice of Canadian folk-psych
  
  Read more

• Art from the gut: the scientifically inspired work of Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva

  07-08-2016 08:00
  
  Aesthetic meets gastric in the surprising and beautiful sculptures of artist Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva, finds Kit BuchanThe highly respected Macedonian artist Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva will show a selection of her recent work at the Djanogly gallery in Nottingham later this month, demonstrating her unusual and ambitious installations in a grand, three-part exhibition. Hadzi-Vasileva specialises in mixed-media “interventions” in public buildings and spaces and the new exhibition, Making Beaut
  
  Read more

• James Ostrer’s foodie hell

  07-08-2016 07:00
  
  The artist’s nightmarish creations are made from raw meat and sugarWe often talk of chefs whose food is their art. For James Ostrer, however, his art is food. When he unveiled his latest portrait at a genteel Hong Kong art fair in March, eyeballs bulged.The artist’s rendition of Donald Trump – the centrepiece of his latest exhibition – plays with food to disturbing effect, with fish as flesh, a pig’s snout, sheep eyes and a half-eaten jam and cream croissant as the
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUKnews on Twitter!