Arts news

• Artadia Announces Finalists for Its 2016 San Francisco Awards

  24-08-2016 23:49 via artnews.com
  Artadia San Francisco has released the names of the five finalists for the 2016 San Francisco Artadia Awards. The finalists, Mitzi Pederson, Josh Faught, Simone Bailey, Will Rogan, and Ruth Laskey, were chosen from a pool of 490 applicants living … Read More
  
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• Silvestre Pestana at Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal

  24-08-2016 23:32 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.Today’s show: “Silvestre Pestana: Techno-Form” is on view at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal, through Sunday, September 18. The solo exhibition, the first major survey … Read More
  
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• How bright the sunlight: on Lee Friedlander and the Western landscape

  24-08-2016 23:32
  Lee Friedlander was born in 1934, when photography was less than a hundred years old. He is now over eighty, and if he manages to keep working for another fourteen years, he will have lived for the entire second half of the history of photography up to that point. He used a 35 mm camera for many years, producing tremendously innovative and visually rich pictures of rectangular shape, but then, in the 1970s, when he fell in love with the American West and pounced upon it as a subject, he switched
  
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• What Should We Do With Art Whose Message Hasn’t Endured (Or Is Now Offensive)?

  24-08-2016 23:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “People who denounce the cultural cleansing of ISIS and the Taliban are often just as likely to demand the removal of old-fashioned artwork from their own public spaces. Our Western reasons are far more sensible: We want the removal of murals and paintings that perpetuate dangerous racial or gender stereotypes (noble “natives” leading European explorers, contented cotton pickers in the U.S. South, socialist-realist mothers clasping babies behind their warrior men…). Thes
  
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• Neo Naturists give birth to new recruits at ICA extravaganza

  24-08-2016 23:00
  
  The co-founder Herbert Reads aim for Londons Institute of Contemporary Arts to be an adult play centre was fulfilled with a vengeance last night (24 August). A Neo Naturist performance extravaganza captured every bit of the innocent anarchy of the groups 1980s heyday. A multigenerational troupe of naked participants made their NN debut alongside veterans in a series of elaborate, ritualistic and often hilarious events involving bodies painted as pinstriped bankers and dungareed farmers; sheaves
  
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• Japanese fashion makes waves in Colorado

  24-08-2016 23:00
  
  As part of a budding focus on textile arts, costume and fashion, the Denver Art Museum in Colorado will explore how deconstructionist Japanese designers exploded the Paris fashion world of the 1980s with Shock Wave: Japanese Fashion Design, 1980s-90s, due to open on 11 September (until 28 May 2017). This is Florence Mllers curatorial dbut at the museum since coming on board a year ago to expand its holdings of 20th- and 21st-century fashion. The exhibitionwhich includes around 70 ensembles by d
  
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• Californian artist sues over state’s Confederate flag ban

  24-08-2016 23:00
  
  A Californian artist is suing the West Coast state, claiming that its ban on government agencies selling or displaying items showing the Confederate flag is unconstitutional. Timothy Desmond was not able to show his Civil War painting, which depicts a scene from the 1864 siege of Atlanta and includes several people carrying flags, at the Fresno County Fair last October.
  Governor Jerry Brown made it illegal to sell or display merchandise emblazoned with the Confederate flag in California in Sept
  
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• Stars of the Electric Stage: Matthew Weinstein on Moholy-Nagy at the Guggenheim and ‘Lady Dynamite’

  24-08-2016 22:34 via artnews.com
  The painting Z VIII (1924) by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), is a schematic representation of intersecting transparent planes. It is a dictionary of Bauhaus formalism, and would come off as generic were it not for its decorative colors, colors that predict … Read More
  
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• Pavel Zoubok and George Adams Galleries to Partner in New Chelsea Space

  24-08-2016 21:58 via artnews.com
  Citing the changing nature of the art market and the function of galleries, Pavel Zoubok Gallery and George Adams Gallery announced today that they will be joining forces and inhabiting a ground-floor space at 531 West 26th street in Chelsea.Despite the cohabitation, the two … Read More
  
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• Bad Puppy! The Alt-Right Clique That Tried To Hijack Sci-Fi’s Hugo Awards

  24-08-2016 21:57 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The Hugo awards ceremony “only represents tiny, insular, politically motivated cliques taking turns giving their friends awards,” Larry Coreia, a ringleader of the Puppies, argued in 2015. Because of this supposed conspiracy — for which there continues to be no real evidence — he felt justified in helping organize an actual conspiracy of his tiny, insular, politically motivated clique to flood the ballot with conservatives.
  
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• The Al Qaeda Leader On Trial For Destroying Timbuktu’s Treasures

  24-08-2016 21:06 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “al Mahdi is not on trial for the amputations, beheadings, torture, and rapes associated with the “holy war” waged by al Qaeda, ISIS, and their offshoots. Al Mahdi is on trial for massacring history.”
  
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• Research: Reading Fiction Makes Us More Perceptive

  24-08-2016 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Habitual engagement with others’ minds — even fictional ones” can bolster the sort of awareness that is essential for empathy, write psychologists David Kidd and Emanuele Castano of the New School for Social Research. Their study is published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.
  
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• Death By Bagpipe

  24-08-2016 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Two years after the man’s death, doctors say they have solved the medical mystery. In a report published Monday in the medical journal Thorax, a team of five UHSM researchers coined a new term for the man’s condition. “Bagpipe lung.”
  
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• Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work

  24-08-2016 19:42
  
  Scottish painter faced a lawsuit after he refused to authenticate the 40-year-old piece, signed ‘Pete Doige’, when its owner sought to sell itA 40-year-old landscape painting once valued at $10m and signed “Pete Doige” was not made by the artist Peter Doig, a Chicago federal court ruled on Tuesday. Doig had been sued by a former Canadian corrections officer who claimed the artist was falsely denying that he had made the work.Related: Court to decide authenticity of Peter
  
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• How Washington’s National Mall Became The National Mall

  24-08-2016 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “In the beginning, before Washington had been designated the nation’s capital, much of the Mall was an empty lowland along the Potomac, made yet marshier by the Tiber Creek, which flowed into the river not far from where the Washington Monument stands today.”
  
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• Toward ‘A Unified Theory Of Agnostic Spiritual Life’

  24-08-2016 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Agnosticism is often thought of, incorrectly, as a state of theological indecision. Rather, it is the conviction that it is epistemologically impossible to determine whether or not there is a deity. Agnosticism is an ideology of unknowability … ‘a recognition that we need room for mystery, for the imagination, for things sensed but not proven, intuited but not defined.'”
  
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• The Toothless Old Critics? (Were It Ever Thus)

  24-08-2016 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The decline of intellectual life has been a trope of intellectual life since Socrates, who, Plato tells us, believed writing “will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.” More than 2,000 years later, the terms have shifted, but not the argument.
  
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• Art experts fear serious earthquake damage to historic Italian buildings

  24-08-2016 18:29
  
  Some of the greatest destruction to Italy’s artistic heritage has been in Amatrice, voted one of its most beautiful townsDozens dead after quake in Italy – liveArt experts fear serious damage from Wednesday’s earthquake is inevitable to numerous historic Italian buildings and their contents, across a region where almost every hilltop town and village has beautiful churches and monuments.
  The Dutch classicist David Rijser, an expert on the culture of Abruzzo, said there had been
  
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• Why Vic Reeves is the strangest, most perfect presenter for BBC4’s dada season

  24-08-2016 18:14
  
  The comedy of Reeves and Mortimer is as surreal as art by the original dadaists – so news that Reeves is restaging the artists’ antics in Gaga for Dada is a delightful surprise
  There was a man on stage with a paper bag on his head, waving a stick about. There was a judge who tried people for lunatic “crimes”. There was Mr Wobbly Hand. It was all rather strange, but also terribly funny. This was the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916 where the dada movement began. No, wait
  
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• How A Novelist Made Peace With Criticism: Curtis Sittenfield On Being Reviewee And Reviewer

  24-08-2016 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “I’m aware more than I was before I had books published that any review is a bit arbitrary – it’s not really, say, The New York Times that’s authoritatively weighing in on the quality of a book, though it seems this way to the public. It’s actually one reviewer weighing in (maybe a daily reviewer like you, but maybe a random novelist like me who reviews one or two books a year), and all of us as individuals have quirky, subjective taste.”
  
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• Antiquities Chief: Most Of Antiquities Coming Out Of Syria Are Fakes

  24-08-2016 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “There have been growing questions over the extent of illicit digging and antiquities trafficking in Syria by militant groups including Isis. While 7,000 objects have been seized by authorities in Syria since 2013, the proportion of fakes has risen from 30% to closer to 70%, both inside the country and in neighbouring Lebanon.”
  
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• Centre Pompidou to unveil major donation of 20th-century Russian art

  24-08-2016 17:16
  
  The Centre Pompidou in Paris is due to receive a major donation of over 250 works of Russian art from the second half of the 20th century. The gift has been funded by the foundation of the Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin and donations by private collectors, artists and their heirs.
  Olga Sviblova, the director of Moscows Multimedia Art Museum, and Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov of the Pompidou curated the new collection, which is being unveiled as an exhibition titled Kollektsia! Contemporary art
  
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• Would You Like To Own Truman Capote’s Ashes? Bid Here!

  24-08-2016 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The bidding is up to $2,750 so far, and the cremains themselves come from the estate of one of Johnny Carson’s ex-wives. (We are not making this up.)
  
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• Steve McQueen Named Winner of 2016 British Film Institute Fellowship

  24-08-2016 16:43 via artnews.com
  The British Film Institute announced today that Turner Prize–winning video artist and Academy Award–winning filmmaker Steve McQueen has won this year’s BFI Fellowship. McQueen will now be an honorary BFI member as part of the fellowship, which is awarded annually … Read More
  
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• ‘No Hugging, No Learning’: How ‘Seinfeld’ Really Changed Television

  24-08-2016 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Anti-hero sagas like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Shield, and Californication may not appear to have much in common with a sitcom about four nebbishy New Yorkers. But Seinfeld‘s immense popularity proved to network executives that audiences could get on board with a show that didn’t necessarily end with a lesson and a group hug – and characters that reveled in their flaws instead of working to overcome them.”
  
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• Michelle Obama As Pop-Culture Figure (And Pop-Culture Critic)

  24-08-2016 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “While I am first lady, I wasn’t first lady my whole life. I’m a product of pop culture. I’m a consumer of pop culture, and I know what resonates with people. I know what they’ll get a chuckle out of and what they think is kind of silly. And whenever my team approaches me with ideas and concepts, we’re usually like, ‘Is this really funny? Are people going to understand it?'”
  
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• Where Next For Olympic Athletes? For Some, It Will Be Cirque Du Soleil

  24-08-2016 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “In all, about 40 percent of Cirque’s performers come from artistic, rhythmic and acrobatic gymnastics backgrounds, as well as from trampoline, tumbling, diving and synchronized swimming. At the moment, 21 Olympians – two of them medalists – perform in eight United States-based Cirque du Soleil shows.”
  
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• The Godfather Of Cuban Ballet Dancers In The States

  24-08-2016 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “[Pedro Pablo Peña] came to Miami in 1980 on the Mariel Boatlift.… Over the years, he has gained a reputation for running a safe haven for Cuban dancers when they touch down in America. ‘They are able to continue their career in the United States. I offer to help with everything.’ Peña gives them a spot in his Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami or helps them contract with other companies. He also provides housing and a surrogate family for those with no local
  
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• Goddess Rihanna is divine in Cambridge University show

  24-08-2016 15:12
  
  A new exhibition at the Museum of Classical Archaeology, University of Cambridge, entitled Recasting (5 September-15 October), brings together classic and contemporary works in a variety of media, demonstrating how todays art stars are in dialogue with Greco-Roman art and mythology. The exhibition takes the form of a series of interventions throughout the museums Cast Gallery, the organisers say, with Maggi Hambling, Matthew Darbyshire and Rosie OGrady among the artists looking to antiquit
  
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• Historic Towns Devastated By Italian Earthquake

  24-08-2016 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 has destroyed buildings and homes in the mountains of central Italy, trapping residents in their homes as they were sleeping in the early hours of Wednesday (24 August). At least 38 people have been reported dead. Two towns were hit particularly hard by the tremors.” (photo journal)
  
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• Morning Links: Fake Antiquities Edition

  24-08-2016 14:58 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the art world Read More
  
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• Yannick’s Successor At The Rotterdam Phil Will Be –

  24-08-2016 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  – the youngest person ever to hold the chief conductor position at the orchestra, which has a history of appointing young maestros who go on to major international careers. Lahav Shani, now 27, starts the job in 2018, the Rotterdam Philharmonic’s 100th anniversary year.
  
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• Judge Rules That Peter Doig Didn’t Paint The Painting He Says He Didn’t Paint

  24-08-2016 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Doig, whose paintings sell for millions of dollars, ‘absolutely did not paint the disputed work,’ U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman said, adding that … the evidence shows another man with a similar name, Peter Edward Doige, a now-deceased carpenter who dabbled in painting, was the creator of the painting.”
  
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• I Did Not Draw On Those Egyptian Statues, Fired Met Museum Guard Claims In Lawsuit

  24-08-2016 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “James Smith had been patrolling the halls of the museum’s Egyptian art section for years when a museum technician noticed green marks on a pair of statues in his sector. The museum pinned blame for the 2014 incident on Smith, although video evidence exonerated him, he claims in a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.”
  
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• The New York Times Investigates Beethoven In Nightclubs

  24-08-2016 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The scene: a crowded pub in the London district of Islington. Waitresses nudge through the crowd of about 100 people, carrying trays of hamburgers and cheesy fries, as patrons – East End hipsters, young professionals, students – saunter up to the bar to get more libations. Then one of the evening’s hosts asks for attention and introduces the live entertainment: a violinist, a violist and a cellist.”
  
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• She Was The First Black Woman To Host A TV Talk Show, And You Can’t Watch Any Of It Anymore

  24-08-2016 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Long before Oprah, Della Reese “was the first black woman to host her own syndicated talk show in the United States. This historic fact, though, has been reduced to a footnote in her biography for a simple, maddening reason.”
  
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• Assisi basilica declared safe after fatal earthquake strikes central Italy

  24-08-2016 13:09
  
  The Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi was declared safe today (24 August), after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake shook central Italy. The head restorer Sergio Fusetti surveyed the upper and lower churches at the Unesco World Heritage site for signs of damage in the early hours of the morning, the Italian news agency ANSA reports. The 13th-century monument to Saint Francis, which is decorated with late Medieval frescoes by Cimabue, Giotto, Pietro Lorenzetti and Simone Martini, was partially destroy
  
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• Assisi basilica declared safe after earthquake shakes central Italy

  24-08-2016 13:09
  
  The Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi was declared safe today (24 August), after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake shook central Italy. The head restorer Sergio Fusetti surveyed the upper and lower churches at the Unesco World Heritage site for signs of damage in the early hours of the morning, the Italian news agency ANSA reports. The 13th-century monument to Saint Francis, which is decorated with late Medieval frescoes by Cimabue, Giotto, Pietro Lorenzetti and Simone Martini, was partially destroy
  
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• Earthquake in Myanmar damages at least 100 Buddhist pagodas

  24-08-2016 11:33
  
  A 6.8-magnitude earthquake in Bagan, central Myanmar, has resulted in three confirmed deaths so far and has damaged at least 100 Buddhist pagodas and monasteries built between the 11th- and 13th-centuries, according to the countrys Ministry of Information. Tremors from the earthquake were also felt in Thailand, India and Bangladesh.
  Each year, tourists flock to Bagan to visit some of the estimated 3,000 pagodas there. In 1975, more than half of the pagodas in the area were damaged after a 6.5-m
  
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• BBC Four to air conceptual art season to celebrate 100th anniversary of Dada

  24-08-2016 09:35
  
  With contributions from comedians and writers Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves), Armando Iannucci, Terry Gilliam, and Arthur Smith
  
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• Can they cut it? The artists making collage cool again – in pictures

  24-08-2016 08:00
  
  Matisse isn’t the only artist to have wielded a pair of scissors – Cut That Out showcases 50 designers and studios worldwide who are a true cut above Continue reading...
  
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• Almost 70% of smuggled objects seized in Syria and Lebanon are fakes, antiquities chief says

  24-08-2016 06:16
  Close to three-quarters of the artefacts seized in anti-smuggling operations in Syria and neighbouring Lebanon this year have proved to be fakes, Syrias antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim tells The Art Newspaper. Speaking ahead of his visit to Edinburghs International Cultural Summit this week, the director general for antiquities and museums also gives a relatively optimistic view of restoration work in Palmyra, and shares his pressing concerns over the devastating crisis in Aleppo.
  There ha
  
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• The solar-powered sculpture that could desalinate 1.5 billion gallons of drinking water for California

  24-08-2016 00:02
  
  'The Pipe' is a finalist in the 2016 Land Art Generator Initiative, a competition to combine clean energy production with public art
  
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