Arts news

• Art Basel to Partner with Buenos Aires for its Cities Initiative

  08-09-2016 23:40 via artnews.com
  Last March, Art Basel announced its Art Basel Cities initiative, which was conceived as an attempt to expand the fair’s reach by working with metropolitan hubs on “high-profile cultural events with international reach.” Today the fair announced the first partner in … Read More
  
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• ‘Grind’ at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles

  08-09-2016 23:04 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
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• Acclaimed Tenor Johan Botha, 51

  08-09-2016 23:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The tenor Johan Botha, who performed for more than two decades at the world’s major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House in London and the Vienna State Opera, died Thursday morning in Vienna.
  
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• The artist who was tied to the sun

  08-09-2016 23:00
  
  Like many leading French artists before the Revolution, the sculptor Franois Girardon spent most of his career in the service of the French kings. However, as the title of this magnificent and beautifully illustrated new monograph suggests, Girardons own fortunes were exceptionally closely tied to those of his monarch, Louis XIV. The two men even died within three hours of each other, on 1 September 1715, both then suffering posthumous declines in their reputation.While Germain Brice could write
  
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• The art schools Fidel Castro built—and then neglected

  08-09-2016 23:00
  
  John Darlington, executive director of World Monuments Fund BritainPicture this. It is 1961 and Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are in the bar after playing a round of golf at Havanas elite Country Club. Inspired by the beauty of the place, their conversation turns to its future. What to do with it? Over the next hour, an idea crystallises: the grounds of the club should become something that is symbolic of the power of the revolution, bringing education to the people. It would house
  
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• Shanghai exhibition lifts lid on artists’ studios

  08-09-2016 23:00
  At Qiao Space in Shanghai, an exhibition titled Studio aims to peel back the curtain to show the workspaces of 12 of Chinas leading contemporary artists. All the participating artists are ones I like and have been following continuously, says the collector Qiao Zhibing, who owns the gallery and organised the show. Studio is the third project at Qiao Space, which has hosted projects by the Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal and the Chinese video artist Cheng Ran since its opening in September 2015.Visi
  
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• Magritte’s missing piece

  08-09-2016 23:00
  
  No-one knows why the Belgian Surrealist Ren Magritte decided to cut up and paint over his work La pose enchante (the enchanted pose, 1927), but the mystery of its scattered whereabouts is one step closer to being solved. The Norwich Castle Museum in the county of Norfolk, in eastern England, announced that a piece of the painting, which was divided in four, has been found under a work in their collection by Magritte, La condition humaine (The human condition, 1935). The conservator Alice Tavare
  
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• Loosely hanging appendages: on Rachel Harrison's Perth Amboy at MoMA

  08-09-2016 23:00
  
  Rachel Harrison is the kind of artist who imagines that anythingliterally anythingshe touches is made significant. Her sculptures, which she produces with the regularity of one who has no capacity to pause for reflection, are made from all kinds of things because no thing is immune to her charm. One work, for example, is assembled from wood and cement and chicken wire and a video monitor with sewing pins, lottery tickets and a can of lemonade. It is called Tiger Woods (2006). Another is made in
  
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• Hayward Gallery mixes it up with 3D video and holograms in new pop-up show

  08-09-2016 23:00
  While the Hayward Gallerys exhibitions have come to a standstill as the London institution undergoes a two-year makeover, its only major off-site project starts with a bang across the river. The Infinite Mix: Contemporary Sound and Image, which opens today (until 4 December), is a group show of ten video works with a particular emphasis on the soundtracks.
  Among the works on show is Cyprien Gaillards 3D film and audio installation Nightlife (2015); OPERA (QM.15) (2016), a holographic projection
  
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• Georgiana Houghton’s spiritualism, Dorothea Tanning’s flowers, Blackpool neon and black dandyism, light-up this week’s exhibition roundup

  08-09-2016 23:00
  
  Dorothea Tanning: Flower Paintings, Alison Jacques Gallery (until 1 October)In June 1997, at the age of 86, Dorothea Tanning started what was to be her final series of 12 flower paintings, which she made over the next 12 months. Six of these fantastical, hybrid blooms that Tanning described as a foray into imaginary botany remained with the artist until her death in 2012. They have now been brought together at Alison Jacques Gallery, along with the preliminary pencil sketches that she considere
  
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• Eddie Peake is so happy in SoHo

  08-09-2016 23:00
  
  Jeffrey Deitch marked his return to the New York scene over the weekend of 9 September with three nights of Eddie Peakes performance Head at the dealers Wooster Street gallery in SoHo. Peake had staged a similarly eccentric performance, Endymion, in the same spacewhich had been taken over by the Swiss Institute during Deitchs sojourn to the West Coastfor Performa. I am so so so happy with how it went, Peake told us. Without a doubt I think it is among the strongest performance works Ive ev
  
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• Aged to perfection: Joan Semmel’s new work on the older female body

  08-09-2016 23:00
  
  This week, the Alexander Gray Associates gallery in New York opened an exhibition of new works by the octogenarian artist Joan Semmel that depict the ageing female body to present a confrontational perspective on images that we dont often see in popular culture and art history, said the gallery director, Alexander Gray. Joan Semmel: New Work (until 15 October) includes 16 paintings and works on paper that Semmel created over the past year using herself as the only model, a decision that was mad
  
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• A New Design For Performing Arts Center At Ground Zero (And Barbra Streisand In Charge)

  08-09-2016 22:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Now, just before the 15th anniversary of the attacks, plans for the complex, to be called the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center, are taking new shape. The New York architecture firm REX, selected after a more elaborate plan by Frank Gehry was shelved, has released its conceptual design. Its proposal contains three small theaters that can be combined in various configurations to produce and stage theater, dance, music, opera and experimental works, and can
  
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• Duchamp’s Bottle Rack goes on the market 100 years after the term ‘readymade’ was coined

  08-09-2016 22:00
  
  One hundred years ago, Marcel Duchamp coined the term readymade, referring to his Porte-bouteilles or Bottle Rack (first conceived in 1914)a metal tower with prongs often used in France to dry wine bottles.
  Now, the Austrian dealer Thaddaeus Ropac is to sell a unique version of the sculpture, created in 1959, on behalf of the Rauschenberg Foundation in New York. It will be at the heart of an exhibition opening on 20 October (until 14 January 2017) at Ropacs Paris gallery to mark the centenary o
  
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• Art Basel Cities to launch cultural programming in Buenos Aires

  08-09-2016 22:00
  Buenos Aires has been selected as the first partner for the new Art Basel Cities programme, the fairs organisation announced today.
  The multi-year initiative, set to launch in late 2017, aims to expand Art Basels engagement in the art world from staging art fairs to working with cities to develop cultural events with international resonance, according to the release, essentially serving as consultants to help organise the kinds of events and projects that are found in Basel, Miami Beach and Hon
  
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• Six candidates who could be up for the top job at Tate galleries

  08-09-2016 21:10
  
  As Sir Nicholas Serota announces his departure, who will take over at one of the world’s most respected arts organisations?Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern Continue reading...
  
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• The Glass Harmonica – An Instrument For Our Time?

  08-09-2016 21:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  It’s an unusual and quiet sound indeed, as anyone who has ever moved a finger around the ridge of a glass knows. But it’s apparently a sound that appeals to modern ears and composers.
  
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• Lin-Manuel Miranda And Coping With Sudden Mega-Fame

  08-09-2016 20:36 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Toward the end of my run in the Broadway company, you know, it got a little scary outside the theater. I was negotiating secret exits the last month of the run. It was unsafe for me to do the stage door. It wasn’t that good fans turned bad or anything like that. It’s just that when people feel like time is finite to see someone, the urgency is what makes it scary. You know, ‘We have to get that selfie now.’ ‘We have to get this autograph right now,’ as
  
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• Stuck Inside the MGM: Bob Dylan Creates Iron Archway for New Casino

  08-09-2016 20:34 via artnews.com
  At age 75, Bob Dylan continues to confuse and delight. The New York Times reports that the musician’s most recent project is Portal, a 26-by-15-foot iron archway, created for the MGM National Harbor casino, which opens this year in Prince … Read More
  
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• Stuck Inside of the MGM: Bob Dylan Creates Iron Archway for New Casino

  08-09-2016 20:34 via artnews.com
  At age 75, Bob Dylan continues to confuse and delight. The New York Times reports that the musician’s most recent project is Portal, a 26-by-15-foot iron archway, created for the MGM National Harbor casino, which opens this year in Prince … Read More
  
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• Even At 75, Curious George Is Still Great, Says Michael Dirda

  08-09-2016 20:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “It’s really little wonder that these boisterous yet gently soothing books endure. Consider, for instance, the over-the-top masterpiece of the series, Curious George Gets a Medal. It begins quietly when the little monkey receives a letter. He puts it aside and – like Chekhov’s gun – that letter remains in the background for many pages, nearly forgotten, until it reappears at a dramatic turning point. Before that, though, George …”
  
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• Data – The American Creative Divide: It’s Between North And South

  08-09-2016 19:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Those data reveal a somewhat surprising pattern: America’s Great Creative Divide isn’t between the coasts and the center, but rather between North and South. Take a look.”
  
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• Reason Won’t Make Life Meaningful, Argues Neuroscientist

  08-09-2016 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Robert A. Burton: “Any philosophical approach to values and purpose must acknowledge this fundamental neurological reality: a visceral sense of meaning in one’s life is an involuntary mental state that, like joy or disgust, is independent from and resistant to the best of arguments. If philosophy is to guide us to a better life, it must somehow bridge this gap between feeling and thought.”
  
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• Paris's Slick art fair slips away ahead of 11th edition, citing France’s economic situation

  08-09-2016 19:00
  
  The 11th edition of the Slick Art Fair in Paris will not take place. Initially scheduled to run 19 to 23 October, on the banks of the Seine near the Pont Alexandre III, it has been added to the list of Fiac satellites that have been cancelled in recent months. Its co-founders Johan Tamer Morael and Aude de Bourbon Parme cited the current economic situation in France as a reason for the decision.Launched in 2006, the Slick fair focused on emerging artists. At the start of this year, it named Jul
  
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• Paris Slick art fair slips away ahead of 11th edition, citing France’s economic situation

  08-09-2016 19:00
  
  The 11th edition of the Slick Art Fair in Paris will not take place. Initially scheduled to run 19 to 23 October, on the banks of the Seine near the Pont Alexandre III, it has been added to the list of Fiac satellites that have been cancelled in recent months. Its co-founders Johan Tamer Morael and Aude de Bourbon Parme cited the current economic situation in France as a reason for the decision.Launched in 2006, the Slick fair focused on emerging artists. At the start of this year, it named Jul
  
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• Fanchon Fröhlich obituary

  08-09-2016 18:57
  
  The life of my friend Fanchon Fröhlich, who has died aged 88, was dedicated to both art and science.Fanchon (nee Aungst) was born in Waterloo, Iowa, in the US, the only child of Joseph Aungst, an estate agent, and his wife, Helen. She studied philosophy of science at the University of Chicago under Rudolf Carnap. Then, on the way to Oxford to study linguistic philosophy at Somerville College, she arrived in Liverpool by boat in 1949, and at a meeting of the local German circle was introduce
  
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• What Explains The Long-Term Decline In Reading Literature?

  08-09-2016 18:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Since the share of American adults with a bachelor’s degree or more has nearly doubled since 1982, you might expect to see a concomitant rise in literary reading. But that hasn’t happened. Indeed, previous research by the NEA has found that drops in the literary reading rate have happened across the board, among all ages, races and educational levels.”
  
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• Rare Duchamp Up for Sale at Rauschenberg Foundation Show in Paris

  08-09-2016 18:25 via artnews.com
  The New York Times reports today that one of the five unique versions of Marcel Duchamp’s Porte-bouteilles (Bottle Rack, or Bottle Dryer)–the first of the artist’s influential pure readymade works–will be available for sale next month at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac … Read More
  
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• Three Big Fall Movies Address Racism – But Don’t Call Them ‘Black Films’

  08-09-2016 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The Birth of a Nation, Hidden Figures and Loving are three films with the same theme (racism), the same ambitions (Oscar glory) and the same pathway into theaters (big studio labels). … A closer look at [them] reveals drastically different artistic statements and cinematic approaches.”
  
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• I’m A Professor. I Write Romance Fiction. I Can’t Tell Anyone. (They’d Make Fun Of Me)

  08-09-2016 17:25 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “I write bodice-rippers. Paperback romance novels that seek to titillate and entertain (both me and the reader). I create what is commonly referred to as pulp fiction. I was very lucky to have a mentor from the start, a friend far more established in their academic career who also has a sideline in crime novels. They advised me in no uncertain terms to keep the two absolutely separate. I should not breathe a word about my novel-writing until I had a permanent position. This is the advice t
  
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• Did Shakespeare Really Invent All Those Phrases The OED Says He Did? Nope

  08-09-2016 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Shakespeare did not coin phrases such as ‘it’s Greek to me’ and ‘a wild goose chase’, according to an Australian academic. In an article for the University of Melbourne, Dr David McInnis, a Shakespeare lecturer at the institution, accuses the Oxford English Dictionary of ‘bias’ over its citation of Shakespeare as the originator of hundreds of words in English.”
  
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• Is FringeNYC’s Contract For Subsidiary Rights Fair?

  08-09-2016 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Most fringe festivals, because they don’t actually produce the plays they present, don’t demand a cut of revenue from subsequent productions. But the New York International Fringe Festival requires a 2% cut of subsidiary rights revenue from any production anywhere on Earth for the next seven years. Howard Sherman gets both FringeNYC and the Dramatists Guild to explain their opposing positions on the issue, and then gives a verdict.
  
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• Peace and love: Martin Roth’s hippie past revealed

  08-09-2016 16:26
  
  Martin Roth, who announced his resignation this week as director of the Victoria and Albert Museum just before opening the exhibition on the revolutionary late 1960s, was once a hippie himselfcomplete with bongo drums. We can exclusively publish a photo of him aged 15, at a 1970 jam session in the Black Forest, not far from his familys home in Stuttgart. Saying that Ive not changed all that much in 45 years, Roth now looks back at some of the ideals of that psychedelic era which he believes are
  
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• Nicholas Serota: art's modern champion

  08-09-2016 16:13
  
  For three decades, Serota has led Tate with ambition, charm and grit – opening world-class spaces, battling cuts and insisting culture is everyone’s right. That bodes well for his new employer Arts Council England – and for galleries across the countryThere is an anecdote that Sir Nicholas Serota told in a lecture he gave in November 2000, almost exactly six months after the triumphant opening, in the gargantuan chambers of the Bankside power station in London, of Tate Modern.
  
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• Ibid Gallery to Relocate to 13,000-Square-Foot Complex in Downtown Los Angeles

  08-09-2016 16:12 via artnews.com
  Two years after opening a project space in Los Angeles, Ibid Gallery now has a permanent home in that city’s Boyle Heights neighborhood, a massive complex that includes three separate exhibition spaces. The inaugural programming will feature shows by David … Read More
  
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• Master’s Program In Critical Theory Canceled By College Six Days Before Classes Start

  08-09-2016 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Six days before the start of the fall semester at Pacific Northwest College of Art [in Portland], a group of Master’s candidates and professors received an email from the dean of students informing them that their program was suspended and they would not be teaching or studying as planned.”
  
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• Nacho Duato Out, Sasha Waltz In At Staatsballett Berlin

  08-09-2016 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Nacho Duato is on the move again. After two years as artistic director of Staatsballett Berlin, Duato has announced that he will be handing his post over to a co-directing team of choreographer Sasha Waltz and Johannes Öhman, who is currently artistic director at Royal Swedish Ballet.”
  
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• ‘I Think Being at the Top of the Pyramid is Overrated’: A Talk With Sean Landers

  08-09-2016 15:30 via artnews.com
  Bill Powers: You’re working on a new portrait of Marcel Duchamp?Sean Landers: Duchamp has been an important figure for me, particularly in 2000 when I did my entire solo show using Picasso’s readymade imagery. Picasso symbolizes virtuosic painting skill and … Read More
  
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• David Berliner Named President and Chief Operating Officer of Brooklyn Museum

  08-09-2016 15:28 via artnews.com
  After a turbulent summer that included staff buyouts, protests, a brief loss of air conditioning, and the election of a new board chair, the Brooklyn Museum announced today that it has named David Berliner president and chief operating officer of … Read More
  
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• Philadelphia Orchestra Musicians Call First Contract Offer ‘Regressive’

  08-09-2016 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra are negotiating to regain their place as among the highest-paid members of U.S. orchestras, while management has offered minimal raises in talks over a new contract.”
  
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• Tate Director Nicholas Serota to Leave Post Next Year

  08-09-2016 15:00 via artnews.com
  Tate announced today that its director, Nicholas Serota, plans to leave the institution sometime next year, after 28 years at the helm of the museum network. The announcement brings to an end one of the most illustrious museum careers of … Read More
  
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• Lucerne Festival Remakes Itself Under New Leaders

  08-09-2016 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Behind the scenes, the Lucerne Festival, an increasingly important part of the classical music ecosystem, [has been] forced to reinvent itself. Within the past couple of years, the festival has lost not one, but both of its guiding artistic lights: [Claudio] Abbado died in 2014 at 80, and [Pierre] Boulez this year at 90.”
  
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• Morning Links: Animals Making Art Edition

  08-09-2016 14:54 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the art world Read More
  
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• Nicholas Serota Will Leave As Director Of Tate Galleries, Will Become Chair Of Arts Council England

  08-09-2016 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Nicholas Serota is stepping down as director of the Tate after 28 years in charge to be the next chairman of Arts Council England. The timing of the move next February, … months after the opening of a new wing of Tate Modern (Switch House) will come as a surprise to many although there has been speculation … that such a move was on the cards.”
  
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• Who Could Fill Nicholas Serota’s Shoes At The Tate? Here Are A Few Possibilities

  08-09-2016 14:44 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “He doesn’t want the next incumbent to think he or she has an easy ride: there is work to be done. He might be leaving, but he’s setting the agenda before he goes. And who might that person be to come in and realise Tate’s ‘potential’?” BBC arts editor Will Gompertz names some potential candidates.
  
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• Tate Modern’s New Extension Has A Peeping-Tom Problem

  08-09-2016 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Residents of London’s Neo Bankside luxury apartment complex, next to the Tate Modern, have lately been dismayed to find photographs of their living rooms and bedrooms popping up on strangers’ Instagram feeds.”
  
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• Tenor Johan Botha Dead At 51

  08-09-2016 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Uncommonly versatile, Botha shone in roles ranging from Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio to main figures in works by Verdi, Wagner, and Richard Strauss. … Over a nearly 30-year career, he appeared on most of the world’s top stages including La Scala, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the State Opera in Vienna, where he made his home.”
  
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• Art Handlers And Auctioneers Sentenced For Thefts From Paris’s Leading Auction House; Union Ordered To Disband

  08-09-2016 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “In March, 49 people were put on trial charged with organised theft, conspiracy to commit a crime and handling stolen goods. … Their scam was rumbled following an anonymous tipoff, which led to a police operation that recovered thousands of paintings, sculptures and other objects stolen from auctioneers Hôtel Drouot.”
  
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• Prommers Against Brexit: Some Folks Will Be Bringing The EU Flag To The Last Night Of The Proms

  08-09-2016 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “It includes rousing performances of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Jerusalem’ always accompanied by a sea of Union Jacks, but … The Guardian understands activists will be outside the Royal Albert Hall in force on Saturday handing out thousands of EU flags, which they hope audience members will wave instead of, or even along with, the traditional red, white and blue.”
  
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• Ballerinas, Here Are Some Tips About Partnering From The Guys Doing the Lifting

  08-09-2016 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Communication is key – but there are also some mistakes that your counterpart may not think to mention.” Here are half a dozen of them.
  
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