Arts news

• Ageist and body-shaming Trump statue falls short as art and satire

  19-08-2016 23:07
  
  Five effigies of the Republican nominee were installed across the US with satiricial intent that looks more like unfunny revulsion toward bodily differencesWhat has been seen, the saying goes, cannot be unseen, and for Indecline, a self-professed “anarchist art collective”, that was surely the point: On Thursday, the group installed five life-size effigies of Donald Trump, the US Republican presidential candidate, in five cities across the US that left nothing to the imagination. If
  
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• The Internet Is Changing The Ways We Think (But Then, So Did Writing)

  19-08-2016 23:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  For “writing” read “Google” and you have much of the burden of current worries about how use of the internet may be degrading our minds. Writing itself is just as much an external prosthetic technology (“characters which are no part of themselves,” as the Egyptian king complains) as the internet is. Writing is also a tool of extended cognition. The difference is that we have had thousands of years to get used to it. The truth about the question of whether our
  
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• SVA on beat

  19-08-2016 23:00
  
  The School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York kicks off programming at its newly-renovated SVA Chelsea Gallery today (20 August) at full volume with The Beat Goes On, (until 17 September), an interactive show of four listening rooms given over to the artists Elia Alba, Paul D. Miller (alias DJ Spooky), Kevin Beasley and Tameka Norris that explore the fusion of contemporary art and music. Albawhose photography work draws on her experiences in the 1980s New York club scenehas conceived her gallery
  
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• Organic Cultural Spaces Versus The Top-Down Kind

  19-08-2016 22:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “We have many spaces that are organized from the top down, that are well-renovated and secure, and that people don’t use. We call those places the hospitals of culture. What interests us is a new model of collective creativity, not just working away in our own corners but making something together.”
  
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• Scientists: Michelangelo’s “David” Is Suffering From A Balance Problem

  19-08-2016 21:27 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The seed of the problem is a tiny imperfection in the statue’s design. The center of gravity in the base doesn’t align with the center of gravity in the figure itself; when the base is level, in other words, the David’s body is slightly off-balance. There is, as the article nicely puts it, “an eccentricity of the loads.”
  
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• The Artist Behind The Naked Trump Statues (And How He Did It)

  19-08-2016 21:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Monroe was chosen to create the likeness of the “monstrous” presidential candidate because of his experience designing monsters for horror movies and haunted houses, including serving as the director for Eli Roth’s now defunct “Goretorium” in Las Vegas.”
  
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• Trolls Are Killing Our Lives Online

  19-08-2016 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Internet trolls have a manifesto of sorts, which states they are doing it for the “lulz,” or laughs. What trolls do for the lulz ranges from clever pranks to harassment to violent threats. There’s also doxxing–publishing personal data, such as Social Security numbers and bank accounts–and swatting, calling in an emergency to a victim’s house so the SWAT team busts in. When victims do not experience lulz, trolls tell them they have no sense of humor. Tro
  
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• ‘The Myth Of Cultural Authenticity, One Of The More Bizarre Delusions Of Contemporary Life’

  19-08-2016 20:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  C.B. George: “It is a mindset that can mock a rapper who fabricates a criminal background and idolize the authenticity of a convicted felon. Seriously? Me, if I must choose between someone who pretends to have shot people and someone who’s shot people, I go for the fantasist every time. It is a mindset that holds dear an essentialist view of “indigenous culture” even as it disdains the same essentialism in the nationalist intolerance currently blighting the US and much of
  
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• Daniel Barenboim, Fanatic

  19-08-2016 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Barenboim still boils over with plans. He wants to tackle the gulf between a class of musicians who are technically skilled but ignorant of their society, and a wider society that can’t understand classical music. This autumn his Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin begins teaching a degree course in music, coupled with twice-weekly philosophy lessons. He is also looking for a primary school in Germany to follow a programme of music education set by him and the Berlin Staatskapelle.&rdq
  
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• Smacked Back Into Place: Pop Music And Musicians After 9/11

  19-08-2016 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  As the 15th anniversary of the attacks approaches, Scott Timberg talks with scholar Mark Anthony Neal about the taboos that sprung up in the wake of the events (and the ensuing wars) and what happened to the artists who tried to challenge those taboos.
  
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• Who Goes To Choral Concerts? The Survey Says…

  19-08-2016 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Personal relationships fuel the audiences for choral concerts. Among the children and youth choruses surveyed, four in five respondents have a familial or friendship relationship with a young performer. Among adult choruses, about a third of respondents reported having a relationship with a performer.
  
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• ‘She Was an Original’: A Brief History of Women Modernists from New York

  19-08-2016 18:30 via artnews.com
  Lawrence Campbell on Florine Stettheimer, Georgia O'Keeffe in her studio, and more Read More
  
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• Mike Nelson at UBS Building, Presented by Nouveau Musée National de Monaco

  19-08-2016 18:20 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
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• We’ve All Been Misunderstanding Robert Frost’s Most Famous Poem

  19-08-2016 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Even the first person to read “The Road Not Taken” first understood it the way generations of schoolteachers have explained it; Frost himself had to explain (several times) what he meant. Other readers have taken the poem to be a parody of the lofty individualistic sentiments of the interpretation we learned in grade school. David Orr takes apart both those readings, and provides alternative versions of the poem that would actually fit them, to highlight what Frost actually did write
  
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• Art Aids America review – gay artists channel anguish, anger and intimacy

  19-08-2016 17:59
  
  Bronx Museum, New York
  Aids hit America’s artist community hard, and the suffering of the plague years of the 1980s is brought vividly to life in a flawed but vital exhibitionAt first they called it Grid: a “gay-related immunodeficiency”, which started to appear in New York and California in 1982. That year 853 Americans, mostly gay men, died of a syndrome that President Reagan’s spokesman publicly dismissed as a joke. The next year it killed 2,304 people, and then 4,251.
  
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• Funky temples, blood sculptures and piles and piles of guano – the week in art

  19-08-2016 17:55
  
  Discworld drawings, summertime skinnydipping and Willem Dafoe’s experimental film for audiences of one – all in your weekly art dispatchDinh Q Lê – The Colony
  Piles and piles of poo accumulate in the Vietnamese artist’s latest work, but don’t worry, it’s a video piece, which focuses on the historic trade in guano – the fertile faeces of the Peruvian booby birds, which colonise the remote Chincha islands off Peru’s south-west coast. Artangel&r
  
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• Scientists Took MRIs Of People’s Brains While They Watched Movies. Here’s What They Saw

  19-08-2016 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Our results demonstrate that some films can exert considerable control over brain activity and eye movements. However, this was not the case for all types of motion picture sequences, and the level of control over viewers’ brain activity differed as a function of movie content, editing, and directing style.”
  
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• MoMA’s Fascinating ‘Dadaglobe Reconstructed’ Exhibition Demonstrates Dada’s Inability to be Realized

  19-08-2016 17:20 via artnews.com
  Through September 18 Read More
  
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• A Completely Untraditional New Mosque (No Minarets Allowed!)

  19-08-2016 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Instead of the traditional towers, “ninety-six hand-painted gold lanterns encrust the roof of the Australian Islamic Centre in Newport. Fitted into each lantern is a different coloured glass that filters light into the mosque through triangular shaped skylights. As the sun moves through the day, the lanterns illuminate a different colour. In the morning yellow streams in, representing paradise. Through the middle of the day, blues (symbolising sky) and greens (nature) filter in. In the aft
  
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• Three Olympics Story Lines That The Media Should Just Drop Already

  19-08-2016 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Doping scandals, dubious economic benefits of hosting, and nail-biter badminton finishes aside, the Olympics are really the world championships of #content. Small wonder, then, that some media narratives emerging from the games are more tired than Katie Ledecky’s competitors in the pool.”
  
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• Whistleblowing Website Collects Accounts Of ‘Exploitation And Abuse’ At Edinburgh Fringe

  19-08-2016 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Called Fringe Whistleblower, the site states it has become ‘dismayed at the state of the Edinburgh Fringe’ and claims many artists do not get paid. It adds that many venue staff ‘work in very difficult working, and sometimes unlawful, conditions’. It is now calling on people performing and working at the event to share their ‘stories of abuse’, which can be published anonymously on the site.”
  
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• Voodoo Curses, Care Bears, and Willem Dafoe: Loris Gréaud Discusses his Film, ‘Sculpt,’ Scored by The Residents

  19-08-2016 16:00 via artnews.com
  “We will try to talk about everything but the film,” French artist Loris Gréaud told me Monday afternoon, the day before his talk at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with Homer Flynn, who is officially the “spokesman” for … Read More
  
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• Voodoo Curses, Care Bears, and Willem Dafoe: Loris Gréaud Discusses his Film, ‘Sculpt,’ Scored by The Raincoats

  19-08-2016 16:00 via artnews.com
  “We will try to talk about everything but the film,” French artist Loris Gréaud told me Monday afternoon, the day before his talk at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with Homer Flynn, who is officially the “spokesman” for … Read More
  
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• Lost Pre-Columbian Manuscript Discovered Under Another Manuscript (Hooray For Palimpsests!)

  19-08-2016 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Scholars have suspected for decades that the Codex Selden (also called the Codex Anute), a Mixtec document in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, had an earlier document underneath the one visible, but modern hyperspectral imaging technology has now confirmed it.
  
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• One Of London’s Top Dance Critics Gives Up Her Gig

  19-08-2016 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “This is my last column as The Spectator‘s dance spectator. It’s been the deepest pleasure to wander on your behalf around the fertile landscape of dance, but I’m off to Oxford University to do some research. Thank you for bearing with my thoughts and I hope you bought a few tickets as a result.”
  
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• Met Opera Posts Balanced Budget Despite Falling Box Office, But Major Challenges Loom

  19-08-2016 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Despite a record low in paid attendance last season, the Metropolitan Opera is on track to balance its budget for the second year in a row, company officials said. … Below, a breakdown of the opera’s biggest challenges.”
  
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• Morning Links: Nude Donald Trump Statue Edition

  19-08-2016 14:48 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the art world Read More
  
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• Esa-Pekka Salonen Takes Newly-Created Post At Finnish National Opera And Ballet

  19-08-2016 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  For five years beginning next month, Salonen will be the company’s first Artist-in-Association. “[He] will take on responsibilities as a conductor, composer, artistic advisor and ambassador. He will also act as an ambassador for the FNOB in developing new partnerships, and will mentor emerging Finnish conductors.”
  
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• Guerrilla Artists Erect Nude Donald Trump Sculptures In Five Cities

  19-08-2016 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Members of the anarchist collective INDECLINE … unveiled life-size statues of Trump in the nude Thursday morning in public spaces in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Seattle.” (The New York City Parks Dept. removed the statue in Union Square, saying in a statement, “NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small.”)
  
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• Toronto Symphony Brings In Cleveland’s Retired Chief To Steady The Ship

  19-08-2016 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The TSO have announced Gary Hanson, former Executive Director of the Cleveland Orchestra, as the incoming Interim CEO effective September 26, 2016. A native of Toronto and trained as a double bass player, Hanson is a bit of welcome news for the TSO, who have been struggling to regain their stride after a surprisingly salacious year to date.”
  
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• Finally, A Video Game With A Ballet Dancer At Its Center

  19-08-2016 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Michal Staniszewski, director of the studio which created Bound: “The character we had, with her mindset, she has these kind of emotions in her. I realized we should use dancing. … There’s not a single game made with ballet dancers in the past so many years – why is that? How many other ideas haven’t been used?”
  
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• Andy Warhol’s Self-Portrait With Platinum Bouffant Wig

  19-08-2016 14:00
  
  In Self-Portrait With Platinum Bouffant Wig, the king of pop art uses Marilyn Monroe to explore the relationship between identity and celebrity This 1981 Polaroid is like a hall of mirrors, reflecting and distorting pop culture icons. Unmistakable Andy Warhol collides with his best-known subject, Marilyn Monroe. She’s suggested by her most basic tokens – blonde hair and red lips – adapted by countless imitators, including, in a way, Warhol himself with his own signature silvery
  
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• J.K. Rowling Launches Series Of Mini E-Books

  19-08-2016 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The first three titles, to be released on Sept. 6 by her publishing platform Pottermore, will focus on the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The e-books, each about 10,000 words long, will include new material as well as writing previously published on Pottermore.com.”
  
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• Saratoga Performing Arts Center Names New CEO

  19-08-2016 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Elizabeth Sobol, formerly president and CEO of Universal Music Classics and managing director of IMG Artists in North/South America, has been named the new president and CEO of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center … [which] has been the summer home of the New York City Ballet and Philadelphia Orchestra since it opened in 1966.”
  
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• Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery under fire over Crimean loans in blockbuster show

  19-08-2016 12:23
  
  Ukraine is infuriated by an exhibition of works by the Crimean-born 19th-century artist Ivan Aivazovsky that is drawing record crowds to Moscows State Tretyakov Gallery. The countrys ministry of culture is calling for international institutions to boycott the world-famous museum, saying it is displaying art stolen from occupied territory. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.The Aivazovsky exhibition, which opened at the Tretyakov on 29 July (until 20 November), has been attracting up to 5,000 visitor
  
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• UK museums sponsored by BP not in breach of code of ethics, committee says

  19-08-2016 10:56
  
  Following a two-month-long investigation, the Museums Association has found that UK cultural institutions sponsored by the oil giant BP are not in breach of its code of ethics.
  In May, the protest coalition Art Not Oil published a report based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and Tate. The protestors said the papers demonstrated the multiple ways in which BP has interfered in the running of the museums and gallerie
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.18.16

  19-08-2016 10:16 via feedproxy.google.com
  Ystad Followup: Kathrine Windfeld
  The Rifftides wrapup report on the Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival included a brief, enthusiastic comment about a performance by the Kathrine Windfeld Big Band of her piece “Aircraft.” This young Danish composer, arranger and pianist … read more
  AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-08-18MCA-Chicago’s Terrace concerts, acing outdoor presentation
  Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art has aced outdoor music presentations with its Tuesdays
  
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• Ballet Class On A Basketball Court In A Rio Favela

  19-08-2016 01:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “On a hilltop overlooking the sprawling Complexo de Alemão favela, girls fill an old basketball court in Rio de Janeiro. Wearing pink leotards, pink tights and pink shoes, they stand with their hands on their hips as they learn proper passé technique. The girls practice ballet on a basketball court because in their favela, considered one of the most dangerous in the city, there is no other place for them to go.”
  
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• Untitled(the white male visionary has even been known to say i don’t know what i want. i have a great idea. )

  19-08-2016 00:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  i will stay with the coffee for now. i need a tank top.the volunteers,the assistants, the renters, the fundraisers, and the homeless are there. they are the same as they are everyday. they are eager to please and they have hope.  some linger from it and have wasted themselves. they believe in the non profit white male’s visionary’s great idea. i’m not here to save anyone, he said. i’m not here to heal anyone. the white male visionary has even been known to say i don&
  
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• Royal Ontario Museum Removes Chihuly Quote From Show As Inappropriate

  19-08-2016 00:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The museum, by way of explanation, says: “Once the exhibition installation was complete, and the text was seen in context, it became clear that it did not reflect the voice of the museum, nor did it reflect the experience of the work.” The ROM also pointed out that the original quote “was provided as part of the exhibition text,” which had been featured in several other museums before arriving here.
  
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