Arts news

• Shirin Neshat dreams big for first solo show in Africa

  16-08-2016 23:50
  
  For a long time, I had this obsession with dreams, the Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat told The Art Newspaper ahead of her first solo show in Africa opening this week at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. Neshat is presenting two new videos there, part of a magic-realism trilogy entitled Dreamers (20 August-14 September 2016). In all the videos, the female protagonist is in-between the boundary of dreams and realitythere are references to reality but nothing really makes sense.The first ins
  
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• Barbara Kasten at Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles

  16-08-2016 23:26 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
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• Swed: How Did America Misjudge A Talent Like Riccardo Chailly?

  16-08-2016 23:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Mark Swed: “These pages have chronicled L.A.’s history of women in classical music for more than a century. We’re on top of that. But our history with Chailly is another matter. We were too quick to write him off.”
  
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• Sink into Elizabeth Price’s horizontal heaven, wince at Maria Lassnig’s body unbearable, goggle at the Neo Naturists’ cheeky nudity—there’s plenty to do in this week’s exhibition roundup

  16-08-2016 23:00
  
  Elizabeth Price: in a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive and You Were Full of Joy, The Whitworth, Manchester (until 31 October)Art historyand indeed human civilisationis littered with images of reclining bodies. Here is yet more proof that artists are often the very best curators. The 2012 Turner Prize winner Elizabeth Price stages what she calls an austere melodrama. It presents the recumbent human form and examines the meanings and significance of the theme of horizontality across media and mille
  
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• Lacma launches interviews series: Artists on Art

  16-08-2016 23:00
  The Los Angele-based photographer Catherine Opie is among those interviewed for Lacmas newly launched Artists on Art video series, in which artists discuss a work from the museums permanent collection. Looking at Thomas Eakinss painting Wrestlers (1899), Opie points to the influence of photography and the portrayal of masculinity in relationship to the figures. Other videos include John Baldesari on Ren Magritte, Alison Saar on Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Judy Fiskin on Lee Friedlander.
  
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• Lacma launches interview series: Artists on Art

  16-08-2016 23:00
  The Los Angeles-based photographer Catherine Opie is among those interviewed for Lacmas newly launched Artists on Art video series, in which artists discuss a work from the museums permanent collection. Looking at Thomas Eakinss painting Wrestlers (1899), Opie points to the influence of photography and the portrayal of masculinity in relationship to the figures. Other videos include John Baldessari on Ren Magritte, Alison Saar on Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Judy Fiskin on Lee Friedlander.
  
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• From the redwood forests, to the Brooklyn commons

  16-08-2016 23:00
  
  More than one tree will grow in Brooklyn with the artist Spencer Finchs new forest installation for the Public Art Fund, Spencer Finch: Lost Man Creek, due to open on 1 October at the MetroTech Commons (until 13 May 2018). The work will be a living 1:1000-scale model of a 790-acre section of the Redwood National Park in California, with around 4,000 young Dawn Redwood trees that are 1 to 4 feet high (rather than the 98 to 380 feet of the spectacular giants in the wild). Finch teamed up with the
  
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• Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Appoints Lauren Haynes Curator of Contemporary Art

  16-08-2016 22:35 via artnews.com
  Today, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, located in Bentonville, Arkansas, announced that Lauren Haynes would be joining the museum as curator of contemporary art.Haynes comes to the Crystal Bridges from the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she has been … Read More
  
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• NBC’s Lagging Olympic Ratings Illustrates Seismic Shift In TV Audience

  16-08-2016 22:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The average audience of 27.8 million viewers through the first 10 nights is down 17% from the 2012 Games in London. With more competition airing live in prime time, NBC counted on the Rio Games’ ratings to be as good or better than London, the most-watched Olympics held outside of the U.S.”
  
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• Can The Arts Help Fix California’s Broken Prison System?

  16-08-2016 21:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “By introducing inmates to everything from dance to drumming to drama, the program’s supporters believe, Arts-in-Corrections can inspire deep and lasting change.”
  
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• The Most Physically Demanding Job In America? Dance

  16-08-2016 21:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Rounding out the top five of the most physically active jobs in American are fitness trainers and aerobics instructors at No. 2, structural iron and steel workers at No. 3, reinforcing iron and rebar workers at No. 4, and forest firefighters at No. 5. Those four occupations look to be the toughest on earth, yet dancers beat them out.”
  
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• How Did This Messy, Illogical, Inconsistent Language Get To Be English?

  16-08-2016 20:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  English is as much of an international language as we have today. But its spelling and syntax and just about everything else about it is inconsistent and capricious. So how did English get to be English?
  
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• Does Comedy Central’s Cancellation Of Larry Wilmore Mean Anything For TV Diversity?

  16-08-2016 20:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “When a move toward progress is made in the entertainment industry, the parties involved often sweat to death under the harsh spotlight that’s put on them. When a gamble is made and it doesn’t work out, executives don’t just start betting more conservatively. They shut down the whole casino.”
  
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• Marie-Helene Bernard’s Big Plans For The St. Louis Symphony

  16-08-2016 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The Symphony saw significant increases in both attendance and ticket revenue during its just-ended 2015-2016 season, with total ticket sales for all performances reaching $6.87 million, up 3.8 percent compared with last season.”
  
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• The Freelance Economy Is Booming (So Why Do We Look Down On Freelancers?)

  16-08-2016 19:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Often referred to patronizingly by media and politicians as the ‘gig economy,’ there’s a perception that workers only remain outside the traditional job market if they’re unskilled, unlucky or unmotivated. Hillary Clinton once said the freelance economy raises ‘hard questions,’ and business magazines treat the trend more like a plague than an evolution. But if innovation and independent spirit are qualities we supposedly value, what’s so wrong wit
  
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• Remember Us?: Around Basel’s Museums During Art Basel

  16-08-2016 19:02 via artnews.com
  On shows at Kunstmuseum and Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart, Kunsthalle Basel, Schaulager, and the Fondation Beyeler Read More
  
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• ‘The Story Is the Art Itself’: Barnes & Noble Chairman Len Riggio on the New Serra and De Maria Works at his Bridgehampton Home

  16-08-2016 18:51 via artnews.com
  Growing up in a suburb of Washington, D.C., there were no quirky independent bookstores in town. D.C. had places like Politics & Prose (where you could always spot someone from the Hill) and Kramerbooks (where you could smoke inside while … Read More
  
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• Is Technology Making Our Culture Generic?

  16-08-2016 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “It’s easy to see how social media shapes our interactions on the internet, through web browsers, feeds, and apps. Yet technology is also shaping the physical world, influencing the places we go and how we behave in areas of our lives that didn’t heretofore seem so digital.”
  
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• Hammer Museum Names Adam Linder Winner of $100,000 Mohn Award

  16-08-2016 18:31 via artnews.com
  Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum announced today the winners of its Mohn Awards, which are given to artists in its “Made in L.A.” biennial. The 2016 winner of the $100,000 prize is something of a surprise: dancer and choreographer Adam Linder. … Read More
  
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• Kusama fever spreads with five-city tour across North America

  16-08-2016 18:18
  
  The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC announced Tuesday, 16 August, that it will send its bonanza exhibition of work by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusamaincluding six of her Infinity Roomson a major tour to four other stops in North America.
  Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, which opens at the Hirshhorn on 23 February 2017, will travel to the Seattle Art Museum (30 June 2017-20 September 2017), the Broad in Los Angeles (October 2017- January 2018), the Art Gallery of Ontario
  
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• A New Opera Company Run By And For Mid-Career Singers

  16-08-2016 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The Victory Hall Opera, in Charlottesville, which will open this month with three performances of a new chamber production of a stripped-down Rosenkavalier, was conceived and set up – and is run – by a group of mid-career singers who found themselves, after some years of high-level professional experience, wondering whether opera might offer them more artistic freedom than they were finding on the standard professional circuit.”
  
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• Lin Manuel Miranda’s New Fight: Ticket Bot Legislation

  16-08-2016 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The issue has been a fairly personal one for Miranda: ticket prices for his hit musical Hamilton soared to outrageous heights during his final weeks as the show’s lead actor. The New York Times reported that scalpers made $15.5 million off of his last 100 performances alone, and the going price for an orchestra seat at his last show was about $15,000.”
  
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• Wait, The God Of The Ancient Hebrews Wasn’t Male?

  16-08-2016 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “In fact, the Hebrew Bible, when read in its original language, offers a highly elastic view of gender. And I do mean highly elastic: In Genesis 3:12, Eve is referred to as ‘he.’ In Genesis 9:21, after the flood, Noah repairs to ‘her’ tent. Genesis 24:16 refers to Rebecca as a ‘young man.’ And Genesis 1:27 refers to Adam as ‘them.’ … Why would the Bible do this? These aren’t typos.” Rabbi Mark Sameth explains his theory.
  
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• Willem Dafoe And Charlotte Rampling Star In Movie For One Viewer At A Time

  16-08-2016 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Sculpt [is] a $1.5m feature film by the 38-year-old French artist Loris Gréaud. It will be shown at LACMA’s Bing Theater, an auditorium that normally seats 600 people, but with an almighty caveat: Gréaud has requested that all of the seats be removed except for one, which will sit in the centre of the space, forlorn and exposed.” (Rampling, by the way, plays Grumpy Bear.)
  
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• A Video Game For When You’ve Had It With ‘SimCity’: A Dystopian Business Simulator

  16-08-2016 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “In The Founder, there is one goal, and that’s to grow your startup and please those investors until there’s nothing left to give. Along the way, you appease preferably low-payed [sic] employees with perks like office kegs and butter coffee, join the lucrative industries of biotech or defense, and run your competition into the ground with sponsored music festivals and ’causewashing campaigns.'”
  
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• What’s Saving Malaysia’s Traditional Puppet Theater From Islamists? ‘Star Wars’

  16-08-2016 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  When it came to power in one Malaysian state back in 1990, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party banned the wayang kulit altogether because so much of its subject matter came from ancient Hindu epics. So a pair of enterprising young men turned to a different mythological epic.
  
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• How Mark Rylance Shaped His Most Famous Shakespearean Role (The Corset Helped)

  16-08-2016 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “When you live with a woman for more than a decade – as Mark Rylance did, on and off, with a certain countess famed for her beauty and her severity – you come to know her well.”
  
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• Minnesota Ballet Salvages What It Can After Lightning Strike

  16-08-2016 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The good news is that $60,000 worth of Minnesota Ballet costumes haven’t been damaged as much as expected. The bad news is that the ballet remains out of a practice studio for the time being and needs a place to more closely examine its hundreds of costumes that were trapped under rubble for three weeks after Duluth’s July 21 windstorm.”
  
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• Morning Links: ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’ Edition

  16-08-2016 14:47 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the art world Read More
  
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• Edinburgh And Adelaide Festivals Plan Not-Quite-Merger

  16-08-2016 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Edinburgh is to team up with one of its main overseas cultural rivals to commission major productions, help develop up-and-coming artists and even share staff in future.”
  
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• PEN America Creates New $50,000 Award For Foreign Authors

  16-08-2016 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The PEN/Nabokov award, supported by the Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation, replaces another award with the same name but a different remit. It will go to a writer born or residing outside the US, either writing in or translated into English to honor ‘an outstanding body of work over a sustained career’. “
  
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• Sculptor To Place 55 Enormous Horses In Front Of Colosseum In Rome (It’s All About Refugees)

  16-08-2016 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Fifty-five monumental statues of horses are to be placed in front of the Colosseum and at Trajan’s Market in Rome next month. The works, by the Mexican artist Gustavo Aceves, are made from a variety of materials including bronze, marble, wood, iron and granite. The horses are shown in fragments; some of them are standing in boats, others are positioned on top of classical columns.”
  
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• De-Queering, And Re-Queering, Sappho

  16-08-2016 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  There’s a centuries-long (millennia-long, really) tradition or scholars and writers trying to remove the small-l lesbianism from the great poetess of Lesbos. Lesbian classicist Ella Haselswerdt looks at those attempts and takes them apart, if not down.
  
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• Athletes At The Ancient Olympics Didn’t Get Medals, They Got Victory Odes

  16-08-2016 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Forget medals, Wheaties boxes, interviews on Good Morning America, or corporate sponsorships: The ancient Greeks celebrated their Olympic champions with poetry.”
  
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• How Did Norway Fight The Nazi Occupation? With Mockery (And Much Of It Wasn’t Even Secret)

  16-08-2016 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  On the 1940 morning when the invasion began, “one of [the] Nazi officers had the misfortune to pass an elderly gray-haired lady on the street, who responded by remarking on his rudeness and smacking his hat off his head with her cane. After he apologized and fled, she chuckled to herself: ‘Well, we’ll each have to fight this war as best we can; that’s the fourth hat I’ve knocked into the mud this morning.'”
  
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• ICA brings Middle Eastern art scene to London

  16-08-2016 12:27
  
  The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (ICA) has partnered with two Middle East-focussed projects in September, bringing a selection of the regions film and underground culture to the city.The Masafat festival will present four days of performances, installations, talks and workshops, by underground artists and musicians working within the context of the Middle East. Opening at the ICA (1-4 September), the festival will then head to Cairo (20-24 September), with the aim of promoting artis
  
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• Prom 39: Johnston/BBCSO/Oramo; Prom 40: Hadelich/Isserlis/Britten Sinfonia/Adès, Royal Albert Hall, review

  16-08-2016 12:12
  
  Two concerts in which contemporary music proved the highlight
  
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• National Trust acquires rare Isaac Oliver miniature for record £2.1m

  16-08-2016 11:40
  
  One of the finest British miniatures, by Isaac Oliver, has been bought by the National Trust. Valued at 5.2m, it has been acquired for 2.1m, because of tax concessions on a sale to a public collection. Even at the lower figure, it is probably a record price for a British miniature.
  Depicting Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, the miniature (around 1610-14) will remain on display at the National Trust-owned Powis Castle, near Welshpool in Wales. The sitter was a poet, philosopher and
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.15.16

  16-08-2016 09:58 via feedproxy.google.com
  When All The Culture Around Us Starts To Look The Same
  One of the biggest comforts of fast food is its familiarity. Generic from location to location, you know not only what the food will be and how it will taste, but that the ritual of the experience will be familiar too. … read more
  AJBlog: diacritical/Douglas McLennan Published 2016-08-15Monday Recommendation: Bill Charlap Trio
  Bill Charlap Trio: Notes From New York (Impulse!) … read more
  AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-08
  
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• Why Are We Fascinated By Really Bad Singing?

  16-08-2016 00:24 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  This is one of the opportunities that “bad” music can permit us: a mini-liberation from the usual bounds of taste. There is only listening, perhaps in an unusually pure form.
  
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