Arts news

• Photographers: The Ankara Gallery Assassination Pictures Show Why The World Needs Professional Photographers

  21-12-2016 23:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The point is, there really is no substitute for a professional photojournalist with years of training and field time. In an era when news is increasingly catered toward one's specific taste, the facts can be elusive. But a good photojournalist can get us closer to the truth. It’s their job."
  
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• Fifty Years Ago The Met Opera Performed Its First Season At Lincoln Center. Here's What It Sounded Like

  21-12-2016 23:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  The Met’s general manager, Rudolf Bing, had put together a particularly glittering programme for the company’s first season in its new home, and to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening, this set brings together recordings of 10 of the operas that were part of it.
  
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• Stolen masterpiece paintings returned to Italy from Ukraine

  21-12-2016 22:53
  
  Italian culture minister travels to Kiev to retrieve works by Rubens, Tintoretto and Mantegna taken from Verona art museumSeventeen masterpieces valued at €17m (£14.3m) have been returned to Italy from Ukraine after being stolen by armed robbers from a Verona art museum last year.Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini, who travelled to Kiev to retrieve the paintings – which included works by Rubens, Tintoretto and Mantegna – said the possibility of ever recovering the
  
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• Lin-Manuel Miranda Named AP Entertainer Of The Year

  21-12-2016 22:27 via feedproxy.google.com
  The "Hamilton" writer-composer had a great year, winning a Pulitzer and several Tonys, a Golden Globe nomination, won the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, wrote music for a top movie, and inspired a best-selling book, a best-selling album of "Hamilton" covers and a popular PBS documentary.
  
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• Learn the “Secret” Techniques of Heifetz, Milstein, Horowitz, Gould and others...

  21-12-2016 22:24 via feedproxy.google.com
  Author David Jacobson interweaves his student experiences at the Curtis Institute of Music with his quest to uncover the “secrets” of the greatest musicians. Can talent be explained? His conclusion: the methods and musical approaches of these masters are fundamentally the same, yet often fundamentally different from what is taught by contemporary music teaching systems (such as those of Ivan Galamian and Shinichi Suzuki) for string playing, orchestral instruments, piano and voice.&ld
  
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• Meet The Writers Who Have Sold Not Just Millions Of Books, But Hundreds Of Millions

  21-12-2016 22:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  There are best-selling authors, and then there are mega-best-selling authors — writers who have sold 100 million copies or more. Writers like Ken Follett, Nora Roberts, James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer. And there may be more of them now than ever.
  
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• US exhibition shines light on Qur’ans as collector's objects

  21-12-2016 22:00
  
  It was a major boon for a collector to own a Quran by a celebrated calligrapher or copied at a holy site, such as the prayer room of the Prophets Mosque in Medina, or written in lampblack from the oil lamps at the Sleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul. By acquiring, reading and reciting from Qurans, the blessings they carry are bestowed on to their new owners. Fortunately for todays scholars and conservators, early custodians were keen to add to the texts genealogy by inscribing their names and relevan
  
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• A medieval sensibility

  21-12-2016 22:00
  Jesus to me is honey in the mouth, music in the ear, a song in the heart, the saint Bernard of Clairvaux said in one of his Sermons on the Song of Songs (1135). This snippet of insight into the importance of the senses for Medieval thought, both sacred and secular, is quoted in the loan exhibition A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe (until 8 January 2017) at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, which explores the way late medieval art evoked all five senses.
  
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• Claim: 2016 Was The Best Year Ever For TV

  21-12-2016 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  TV evolved in form and content in 2016, pushing the boundaries of both what is considered an episode of television and whose stories are seen as worth telling.
  
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• The Power Of Awe

  21-12-2016 20:55 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Psychologists have described awe as the experience of encountering something so vast—in size, skill, beauty, intensity, etc.—that we struggle to comprehend it. A waterfall might inspire awe; so could childbirth, or a scene of devastation."
  
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• Taiwan Biennial 2016 at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

  21-12-2016 20:37 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
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• Emoji Are Bi - That's Bi-Directional, Says Linguist

  21-12-2016 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Emoji are bidirectional: Not only can they express actions, but they can also directly represent spatial relationships. Emoji are a special case for her discipline - linguists disagree about whether they're even words, and society’s use of them is maturing before their collective eyes."
  
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• Da Silvano, a Legendary New York Art World Hangout, Has Closed

  21-12-2016 20:16 via artnews.com
  After 41 years of serving artists, dealers, and collectors quality northern Italian fare, Da Silvano closed after last night’s service. A restaurant perched on Sixth Avenue just above the streak of galleries that once ran through SoHo, Da Silvano became … Read More
  
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• How Much Public Art Does Los Angeles Have? No One Knew Until Now

  21-12-2016 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Launched in 2015, an intrepid team of researchers, registrars and art sleuths embarked upon the uninspiringly titled Civic Art Baseline Inventory. But the scope of the project is exciting, as the team tirelessly searches the county's unassuming institutions and public spaces, spreading out over hundreds of L.A. County sites in 88 municipalities across 4,000 square miles, looking for inspiring art that has been commissioned or donated over the 166-year history of Los Angeles."
  
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• Why Are Strad Violins Unique? New Scientific Study Suggests It's The Wood

  21-12-2016 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  A new study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that answers may lie in the wood: Mineral treatments, followed by centuries of aging and transformation from playing, might give these instruments unique tonal qualities.
  
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• Even The Idea Of 'Home' Isn't What It Used To Be - And TV Is Reflecting That

  21-12-2016 19:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  "As technology continues to muddy the boundary between home and work, it's dragging TV along with it. Flavorwire TV Editor Lara Zarum discusses how 'the erosion of the concept of a stable home is a reality that spans generations as well as borders.'"
  
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• Disney Breaks Worldwide Box Office Record, Topping $7 Billion For The Year

  21-12-2016 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  With almost two weeks of the year left, the momentum generated by the most famous sci-fi franchise in the world and the popularity of the studio’s animated film Moana ($282m and counting) is likely to push Disney’s overall takings closer to $8bn.
  
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• What A Decade's Worth Of Viral Videos Has Taught The Band OK Go About The Internet

  21-12-2016 18:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  Damian Kulash, OK Go's frontman: "[After 'A Million Ways' went viral], we were like, 'if we can do this by accident, we should do it on purpose.' And that's when we did the treadmill dance at my sister's house in Florida. But even that video, we thought that was a gift to those same nerdy fans, the three or four hundred thousand people who wanted to see us dancing in the back yard."
  
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• Saltz: Pictures Of The Assassination Of The Russian Ambassador In Turkey As Mesmerizing Art Piece

  21-12-2016 17:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  "What makes these pictures so different from all of the other pictures of death that we see? The poses are almost classical, frozen, or rehearsed as if from theater, ballet, painting, or mannequin display. If I told you these were fake, you might believe me."
  
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• Lemony Snicket Creates A Poetry Prize

  21-12-2016 17:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  It seems that when the author of A Series of Unfortunate Events - né Daniel Handler - was on location in Vancouver for the shooting of Netflix's upcoming Series series, he never spent his per diem. So he's come up with a use for that money.
  
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• Tanya Leighton Gallery Now Represents Sam Anderson

  21-12-2016 16:54 via artnews.com
  Tanya Leighton Gallery in Berlin announced today that it now represents Sam Anderson, a New York–based sculptor whose work could be seen earlier this year at Rowhouse Project in Baltimore.Anderson has recently become known for her epoxy clay sculptures of improbably … Read More
  
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• Rare painting to return to Netherlands after centuries in England

  21-12-2016 16:33
  
  British government grants export licence for work by Jean-Étienne Liotard, bought by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum for £4.4mA picture of a tranquil young Dutchwoman pouring her morning cup of coffee is returning to the Netherlands for the first time since it was painted in the country in 1756. A Dutch Girl at Breakfast, by the 18th-century Swiss artist Jean-Étienne Liotard, has been acquired by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam after spending centuries in an English collection. Re
  
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• Liotard painting returns to Netherlands after centuries in England

  21-12-2016 16:33
  
  British government grants export licence for work by Jean-Étienne Liotard, bought by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum for £4.4mA picture of a tranquil young Dutchwoman pouring her morning cup of coffee is returning to the Netherlands after spending centuries in an English collection.A Dutch Girl at Breakfast, painted by the Swiss artist Jean-Étienne Liotard in 1756, has been acquired by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Related: Jean-Etienne Liotard review – a joyous time mach
  
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• Charles Busch Recalls The First Time He Performed In Drag

  21-12-2016 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  "I had always tried onstage to eliminate any effeminate mannerisms, and consequently, came across as lively as the animatronic Abe Lincoln at Disneyland. Playing a female role gave me a freedom of expression I had never known."
  
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• London church to be reunited with stolen 16th-century carving

  21-12-2016 16:25
  
  St Katharine Cree church delighted at return of decades-lost work, part of a monument to a famous ElizabethanA historic church in the City of London is to be reunited with a magnificent 16th-century carving that was stolen from it decades ago.St Katharine Cree church in Leadenhall Street is a survivor of both the Great Fire of 1666 and the second world war blitz, while the 80cm-high alabaster carving was part of a monument to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a prominent figure in the reign of Elizabet
  
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• Stallone refused Trump's arts job – but who will take this poisoned chalice?

  21-12-2016 16:14
  
  The actor and part-time painter was right to decline a role as chief of the National Endowment of the Arts. Whoever takes it will be tainted by a hellish reignSylvester Stallone is not as dumb as he looks. Of course he isn’t – he’s made a career of it. Stallone may be famous for playing action heroes and musclebound fighters, but in real life Rocky loves to draw and paint. He has even exhibited at major museums in Russia and France. He may not be a great painter, but he does pl
  
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• Pope Francis appoints Vatican Museums' first female director

  21-12-2016 16:09
  
  Pope Francis has formally appointed the Vatican Museums first female director, the art historian Barbara Jatta. The longstanding head of the Vatican Apostolic Librarys prints and drawings collection (Gabinetto delle Stampe) will take up the position on 1 January. After serving a six-month handover period as deputy director, she replaces the 77-year-old former Italian culture minister Antonio Paolucci, who has led the vast museums complex since 2007.
   
  Born in Rome, Jatta worked as conserva
  
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• What New York's Big Museums Have To Fear In The Age Of Trump

  21-12-2016 15:53 via feedproxy.google.com
  "A Trump presidency is anxiety-inducing not because of any direct financial impact, but because of its potential impact on the world economy, and therefore on New York philanthropy and tourism. Perhaps more significantly, a culture war between scapegoated elite liberal and humanities institutions and a populist presidency seems likely. This climate may in turn affect both their overall appeal to the narrowing band of philanthropists and put at risk the fiscal privileges they enjoy under section
  
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• A Few of Our Favorite Art Books of 2016

  21-12-2016 15:35 via artnews.com
  Books, books, books, books—what’s not to love? There are worse ways to bide your time, and few better ways to make your time worth more than biding. For some favorites from this year—big and small, art-related and not necessarily—read on. — … Read More
  
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• The Woman Conductor Who's Made Herself A Hong Kong Institution

  21-12-2016 15:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Over 15 years, Yip Wing-sie has transformed the Hong Kong Sinfonietta from a barely professional part-time orchestra to a full-time, full-pay, adventurous ensemble.
  
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• Here Is the Full List of Artists Participating in the Inaugural Honolulu Biennial

  21-12-2016 15:30 via artnews.com
  Today, the Honolulu Biennial Foundation announced the full list of artists participating in “Middle of Now | Here,” the inaugural Honolulu Biennial, which will run from March 8 through May 8 in the capital of Hawaii. The 30 artists, from … Read More
  
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• Judge Throws Out Gender Discrimination Suit Against Artist Robert Motherwell's Foundation

  21-12-2016 15:16 via feedproxy.google.com
  Joan Banach was Motherwell's personal assistant for the last decade of his life (he died in 1991) and was employed by his Dedalus Foundation until 2008. That year she was fired and accused of stealing artworks of his; she responded by filing a suit claiming she was dismissed because she was a woman.
  
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• Guard At Musée d'Orsay Tells Noisy Students To 'Shut Their Mouths', And All Paris Argues About It

  21-12-2016 15:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  The students in question come from a "education priority zone," and their teacher complained (on Facebook, of course) that middle-class white students could make noise without getting yelled at.
  
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• Morning Links: Senator Harry Reid Edition

  21-12-2016 15:00 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the world Read More
  
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• Chief Of Vienna State Opera To Be Replaced By Recording Exec

  21-12-2016 14:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Bogdan Roscic, 52, will take up the post in 2020, moving from Sony's classical music unit which he has headed since 2009. Before then he worked at Decca Music Group and an Austrian pop music station, but has never been director of an opera house before. He will replace Frenchman Dominic Meyer, whose tenure, which started in 2010, has been marked by clashes with star conductors Franz Welser-Möst and Bertrand de Billy."
  
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• It Took Ethan Stiefel A 9,000-Mile Motorcycle Trip To Figure Out His New Ballet

  21-12-2016 14:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "He'd set off on the cross-country journey soon after getting the call from Julie Kent, the Washington Ballet’s newly arrived artistic director, who offered him his first big commission as a choreographer."
  
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• Conviction Of Picasso's Electrician For Stealing Art Upheld By Court

  21-12-2016 14:16 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The court of appeal in Aix-en-Provence upheld the suspended two-year prison sentence of Pierre Le Guennec, 77, Picasso's electrician, [and his wife, Danielle,] who hid 271 works stolen from the artist for over four decades."
  
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• Why Courbet's The Origin of the World is so popular—and it's not what you think

  21-12-2016 14:02
  
  Gustave Courbets The Origin of the World (1866) a painting of a womans lower groin (bas-ventre), as the writer Edmond de Goncourt coyly described it in June 1889, is as beautiful as it is brazen. Courbets model is portrayed only by her vulva, her thighs parted so as to reveal vaginal lips, offset by black pubic hair, a white sheet, and the pink flesh of her lower breasts. As the title confirms, Courbet pays homage to the origin of life and the world as we know it, but in the process he stages a
  
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• Why Courbet's Origin of the World is so popular—and it's not what you think

  21-12-2016 14:02
  
  Gustave Courbets The Origin of the World (1866) a painting of a womans lower groin (bas-ventre), as the writer Edmond de Goncourt coyly described it in June 1889, is as beautiful as it is brazen. Courbets model is portrayed only by her vulva, her thighs parted so as to reveal vaginal lips, offset by black pubic hair, a white sheet, and the pink flesh of her lower breasts. As the title confirms, Courbet pays homage to the origin of life and the world as we know it, but in the process he stages a
  
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• Picasso's Granddaughter Tells Us Something Gross That We Did Not Need To Know

  21-12-2016 14:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  Well, we think it's gross, anyway. It's about a certain material he liked to use ...
  
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• Les Ballets Trockadero - There's Some Serious Technique Supporting All That Camp Brio

  21-12-2016 13:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Today, every one of the company's 16 dancers is a proficient technician who can dance on point, a demanding (and painful) aspect of ballet training that men can usually happily ignore, since conventionally it is only women who dance impractically on the tips of their toes."
  
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• Dick Latessa, 87, Broadway Veteran Who Won His First Tony At 74

  21-12-2016 13:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The Ohio native made his Broadway debut in the 1968 musical The Education of HYMAN KAPLA*N and enjoyed a 50-year acting career, appearing most recently on Broadway in the 2012 comedy The Lyons, playing an elderly man who refuses to die. ... [He] won the 2003 Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for playing Harvey Fierstein's onstage husband in the original cast of Hairspray."
  
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• Two mosque lamps stolen from Egypt's national collection returned to Cairo

  21-12-2016 12:10
  
  Two valuable Medieval mosque lamps that were stolen from the Egyptian national collection and put up for sale in the Gulf have been returned to the country from the United Arab Emirates.   
  The Art Newspaper first reported the suspected thefts in 2014, after photographs of several lamps, one appearing to carry an Egyptian museum label, were circulated among collectors in London, the Gulf and Istanbul. 
  One Gulf collector had paid 500,000 for one of the lamps while an Abu Dha
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 12.20.16

  21-12-2016 11:08 via feedproxy.google.com
  Art For Christmas and Chanukkah
  Are still shopping for gifts this holiday season? An email from Winterthur this morning reminded me that I’ve been meaning to suggest giving the gift of art – or art books, even for children or grown-up kids. ... read more
  AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-12-20Monday Recommendation: Redman’s And Mehldau’s “Nearness”
  Joshua Redman And Brad Mehldau, Nearness (Nonesuch) ... read more
  AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-12-19
  &nb
  
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• How the artist Robert Rauschenberg got his goat

  21-12-2016 11:00
  
  When the US artist and animal lover Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) saw a stuffed Angora goat in the window of a junk shop near his New York studio in 1955, he knew he had to have it. The shopkeeper wanted $35 for it, Rauschenberg paid $15 on account and, when Calvin Tomkinss biography of the artist was published in 1980, he had yet to return to pay off the balance. The animal is a key component of his work Monogram (1955-59): a goat, standing on a painting, with a painted face and a rubber tyr
  
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• Picasso thought shit was great for painting

  21-12-2016 09:31
  
  I would like to deliver a family secretMy grandfather used a cotton with excrement produced by his daughter Maya (my mother), then aged three, to make an apple in a Still Life, dated 1938. According to him, excrement from an infant breast-fed by its mother had a unique texture and ochre colour.
  Picasso had already told Andr Breton in 1933 that he wanted to use real, dried excrement for one of his still life paintings, specifically those inimitable turds that he happened to notice in the country
  
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• Serbian political party slams decision to build Andy Warhol monument in Belgrade

  21-12-2016 09:01
  
  One of Serbias leading political parties has denounced a decision to build a monument to Andy Warhol in the capital of Belgrade, describing Pop art as a fad. Other places that have honoured the US artist with statues include New York, which is home to Rob Pruitts silver sculpture, and Mikov in Slovakia, where Warhols family has its roots.Uros Jankovic, the vice president of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), issued a statement on 19 December calling on Belgrade city officials to recognise th
  
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• What Good Are The Arts? A Review Of All The Studies That Try To Measure It

  21-12-2016 05:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  It seems like almost every week there's another study about the benefits of the arts. It's a long-running trope that feeds the need of arts people to justify the worth of the arts. The arts make us better people, help build communities, make us smarter, more empathetic, reduce stress, help our memories, promote learning skills, help the economy...  The most famous of these studies is probably the Mozart Effect, which suggested that listening to Mozart stimulated the brain and made us smarte
  
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