Arts news

• 2016 Was The Year That Book Sales Turned A Corner

  30-12-2016 23:54 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The notion that owning a bookstore is akin to an act of altruism has become a little outdated. In fact, 2016 offered encouraging evidence that after years of dire news stories about the literary industry selling books has once again become sensible business. To be fair, the past year was less a book boom than a hold-steady."
  
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• Is Experience Neurological? So What's Real?

  30-12-2016 23:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Neuro­scientists can correlate activity in the brain with specific kinds of experience, but they cannot say this activity is the experience. In fact, the neural activity relating to one experience often seems nearly indistinguishable from the neural activity relating to another quite different experience. So we remain unsure where or how consciousness happens. All the same, the internalist model remains dominant and continues to be taught in textbooks and broadcast to a wider public in TV d
  
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• New Year honours list: arise Sir Mark Rylance

  30-12-2016 23:30
  
  Oscar-winning actor is knighted while Patricia Routledge and Kinks singer Ray Davies are among artists honouredMark Rylance has been awarded a knighthood, capping a year in which the veteran Shakespearean actor won an Oscar and two Baftas, as talent from across the performing arts was recognised in the New Year honours.It is the first honour for the actor who played Thomas Cromwell in the BBC’s Wolf Hall and won an Oscar for his portrayal of Rudolph Abel in Bridge of Spies. Continue readin
  
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• Reconsidering JS Bach And His Relationship With God

  30-12-2016 22:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Many of us grew up with an Enlightenment Bach, a nondenominational divinity of mathematical radiance. Glenn Gould’s commentary on the “Goldberg Variations” spoke of a “fundamental coordinating intelligence.” One German scholar went so far as to question the sincerity of Bach’s religious convictions. But the historically informed performance movement, in trying to replicate the conditions in which Bach’s works were first played, helped to restore awarenes
  
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• Year Ahead 2017

  30-12-2016 22:00
  Your essential guide to the must-see shows, biennials and museum openings around the world
  
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• Critics, Writers, Bookstores Push Back Against Simon & Schuster For Signing White Nationalist To Big Contract

  30-12-2016 21:59 via feedproxy.google.com
  Many in the publishing world reacted with outrage over the S&S signing. "Soon, however, pushback against the publisher transitioned from simple outrage to calls for organized resistance. One literary journal announced a boycott on coverage in 2017." Authors announced they'd leave S&S and others were contemplating boycotts.
  
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• What Are The Most Important Books Of The Last 20 Years (The Experts Don't Agree)

  30-12-2016 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "I reached out to some of my favorite contemporary writers and asked them to name the most important books published over the last two decades. To my surprise, there wasn’t a lot of overlap in their respective choices: only 14 titles were chosen by more than one author."
  
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• Joyce's 'Portrait Of The Artist' At 100: Colm Tóibín On The Book's Ongoing Relevance

  30-12-2016 21:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  "When I read the hellfire sermon in A Portrait, I had heard some of those very words, even though I was born 40 years after the book came out. The Christmas dinner scene, with the bitter argument about Parnell between Stephen's father and his aunt, could easily have come from many Irish tables in the 1970s and '80s ... Since corporal punishment in schools continued until as recently as the early '80s, anyone who had the misfortune to be educated by priests or Christian Brothers (or indeed nuns)
  
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• America's Reading Crisis - Something Has To Change

  30-12-2016 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Whether it takes phonics, whole-language learning, all-singing, all-dancing teachers, or the gradual introduction of criminal penalties for illiteracy, something has to change. A national reading push would be the moonshot that makes all others possible. How many more studies will it take? We know that readers vote more and volunteer more, and that reading literature deepens empathy. And — as finally, categorically demonstrated in a landmark Yale study last year — that readers live
  
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• How Adam Driver, Of All Unlikely Personalities, Became A Movie Star

  30-12-2016 20:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  "If you, in 2012, watched Adam Driver on Girls - an unhinged, distasteful walking id, as magnetic as he was bizarre - and said to yourself, 'This guy is going to be the cast's biggest star,' you should probably start betting on horses. ... Especially considering that the only thing more obvious than Driver's gifts might be his presumed limitations - that topographic map of a face, that woodwind voice - the actor's ascent raises the question of how exactly he became Hollywood's go-to young actor
  
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• Daniel Kramer: How A Great Big Artistic Flop Prepared Me To Lead English National Opera

  30-12-2016 19:52 via feedproxy.google.com
  “I would say aged 37 I went through a complete midlife crisis. There’s this thing with an artist, you have to be very careful your self worth is not bound with your work. You’re not a bad person if you get one star. I started to meditate and I’m very proud of that and I started to work with a different community of people, and I started to work in service and sat with people in a hospice who were dying of cancer, I worked with Zen Bhuddist monks, I started to teach more.&
  
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• Flash Fiction: The State Of The Super-Short Story

  30-12-2016 19:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  David Galef, who wrote the book on flash fiction, and Len Kuntz, one of the form's most singular practitioners, have a dialogue about where a genre that can range from a few hundred words to a single sentence is headed.
  
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• How Our Sense Of Time Became Defined By Economics

  30-12-2016 18:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Time’s unknowable perils contributed to the flourishing of economic thought. But then something interesting happened. The creature became the creator: The economy re-invented time. Or, to put things less obliquely, the age of exploration and the industrial revolution completely changed the way people measure time, understand time, and feel and talk about time."
  
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• Can You Make A Dance About Race And Politics That's Also Truly Good Art? This Man Can

  30-12-2016 18:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The ideal, of course, is a piece in which the artistic qualities - in dance, those would be shape, tempo, rhythm, attack, etc. - are such as to elicit a feeling that you recognize as being on the side of justice. But you never know whether that's really justice or just your wish for a piece you admire to share your politics." Joan Acocella writes that choreographer Kyle Abraham manages to transcend the dilemma.
  
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• How An Artist In 1915 Pointed The Way To Today's Robots

  30-12-2016 17:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  "By mixing moving bodies with mechanically repeating geometries, Oskar Schlemmer pointed us at today’s world of work, where automation is everywhere in the transcendent projects of globalizing neo-liberalism. Yet the smooth, cute, and joyous mood of Schlemmer’s robotic sensibility conveys something that at least temporarily alleviates the feeling that we are living in an epoch of click-bait robotics fueled by predatory virtual capital, where memes and farcical fragments of vanity cul
  
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• So What's 'Hamlet' Really About, Anyway? And How Do You Pitch That To An Audience?

  30-12-2016 17:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Judging by the way several theatres have answered the question in recent and upcoming promotional copy, this is far from a settled matter." Hailey Bachrach looks at that marketing copy and the approaches it takes.
  
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• How The Grinch Got Sued (Recounted In Seussian Verse)

  30-12-2016 16:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Matthew Lombardo's one-woman show Who's Holiday - about the heroic dastardly deeds of the Grinch's wife - got cancelled last month when Dr. Seuss Enterprises grinched about copyright infringement. Now Lombardo is fighting back, in Federal court. (And yes, Robin Pogrebin tells the tale with rhyming couplets in dactylic tetrameter.)
  
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• That Pink Pigment Anish Kapoor Isn't Allowed To Buy? He Got His Hands On It Anyway

  30-12-2016 16:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  His middle finger in particular. Kapoor strikes back on Instagram at the artist who dissed him with the pinkest-pink ban.
  
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• How Art Auctioneers Get Buyers Riled Up Enough To Pay Tens Of Millions For One Painting

  30-12-2016 15:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  "With such astonishing sums of money being tossed around, one might assume that art buyers are making cool, levelheaded decisions, especially when they're in a room full of people they know and are trying to impress. This is often not the case. To the contrary, scientists see mounting evidence of 'auction psychology'." Here's how it works.
  
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• Morning Links: Tinder Edition

  30-12-2016 15:22 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the world Read More
  
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• The Showbiz Folk We Lost In 2016

  30-12-2016 15:16 via feedproxy.google.com
  Playbill helps us bid farewell to David Bowie and Brian Bedford, Patti Duke and Patrice Munsel, Edward Albee and Zsa Zsa Gabor, and all too many more.
  
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• Daniel Barenboim's New YouTube Channel Has Terrific Intros To Classical Music

  30-12-2016 15:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The playing is beautiful, of course - Mr. Barenboim is one of the greatest pianists of his generation - but it's the talk that matters. It turns out that in addition to being a great pianist, Mr. Barenboim also has a knack for getting straight to the point."
  
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• How Music Streaming Is Changing The Ways Artists Think About Their Music

  30-12-2016 15:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  It's a cliche of course that tools define the art. The recording industry is declaring 2016 the year that streaming became the primary way people are getting their music. But it's not just that streaming is a vehicle. It's changing the ways artists are thinking about their projects.
  Streaming music services such as Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal are shifting not just how music is consumed, but increasingly how it is funded, created and marketed. The talk of the industry is increasingly about pla
  
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• Ultra-rare Jane Austen £5 note found in Christmas card in Scottish Borders

  30-12-2016 14:52
  
  Thought to be worth tens of thousands of pounds, second of only four notes with micro portrait of novelist is discovered It is the fiver that could earn you tens of thousands of pounds: one of four Jane Austen £5 notes has been found in a Christmas card in the Scottish Borders.The ultra-rare notes, engraved with a tiny portrait of the novelist, were released secretly around the UK earlier this month.Continue reading...
  
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• Benjamin Millepied Says Paris Opera Ballet Has A Racism Problem

  30-12-2016 14:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  "I heard someone say a black girl in a ballet is a distraction. If there are 25 white girls, everyone will look at the black girl. Everyone must be alike in a company, meaning everyone must be white."
  
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• When Actors' Roles Invade Their Dreams (It Gets Pretty Weird)

  30-12-2016 14:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  "What happens during REM sleep if your daily routine involves assuming a new identity in front of hundreds of strangers for several hours? Even in small doses, does that repeated performance generate emotional muscle memory?" The answer is yes - Sandra Oh, Judith Light, Simon McBurney, and other actors share their examples.
  
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• The Top 15 Art Shows In America In 2016 That Weren't In New York Or L.A.

  30-12-2016 14:17 via feedproxy.google.com
  And only one of them was in D.C. Other major museum/gallery towns are well-represented, though, as are two pretty out-of-the-way spots.
  
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• The Top Dozen Theatre News Stories Of 2016

  30-12-2016 14:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  It wasn't only all-Hamilton-all-the-time, though that certainly leads the list. Among the other big news was the debut of BroadwayCon, the hit show stopped in its tracks by what should have been surprising good news, and the rise of Broadway's next dynamic duo.
  
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• Want Kids To Be Good At Math And Reading? Teach Them Philosophy

  30-12-2016 13:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The nature of truth. Theories of fairness. The essence of bullying. These are big, weighty subjects, and apparently 9- and 10-year-olds just eat them up."
  
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• Violinist Sarah Chang Robbed While Flying To Moscow

  30-12-2016 13:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  She was traveling from Philadelphia to the Russian capital via London when someone took $12,000 worth of money and property from her suitcase.
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 12.29.16

  30-12-2016 12:26 via feedproxy.google.com
  12 Plays of Xmas:  3. Ruined by Lynn Nottage
  I can’t remember how I missed the Pulitzer-winning Ruined when it played in London in 2010. It was at a favourite theatre (the Almeida) and starred favourite actors (Jenny Jules, Lucian Msamati). Maybe I was ... read more
  AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2016-12-29My favorite posts of 2016
  In addition to writing about theater and the other arts for a living, I also blog in this space purely for my pleasure. Here are ten of my favor
  
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• Curtain up: Opera takes centre stage in 2017

  30-12-2016 11:06
  
  Its not over until the fat lady singsat least not in major UK museums and galleries next year when opera goes under the spotlight. The Victoria and Albert Museum is teaming up with the Royal Opera House for its inaugural showOpera: Passion, Power and Politics (30 September-25 February 2018)in the new Sainsbury Gallery, a major exhibition space at the heart of the museums long-awaited, new Exhibition Road building project which is due to open in July. The exhibition will focus on seven opera
  
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• Homelessness: no laughing matter for Hogarth – nor for us

  30-12-2016 11:00
  
  Centuries after William Hogarth created probably the first image of homelessness in British art in 1736’s Four Times of the Day, the image of people sleeping rough is one that is still all too depressingly familiarIn 1736, an impressario called Jonathan Tyers commissioned William Hogarth to paint four scenes to decorate his pleasure park Vauxhall Gardens, where Londoners, some of them posh and some just wearing posh clothes, listened to music, intrigued and seduced each other in the &ldquo
  
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• Beyoncé to Black Mirror; the culture that defines 2016

  30-12-2016 10:00
  
  How better to make sense of this turbulent year than through the art and literature it has produced? Our critics choose the works that sum up the last 12 monthsIf there is one film that holds a political key to understanding 2016, it is Ghostbusters: that funny, good-natured, easygoing female remake of the 1980s original. The movie, and the way it was received and viciously attacked online, told us something vital about the hive mind of the US’s reactionary right. It starred Kristen Wiig,
  
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• Metal and skin: the power of Lucien Freud's etchings – in pictures

  30-12-2016 08:00
  
  As well as his unforgettable portrait paintings, Lucien Freud also created numerous etchings – and they too show humanity as fraught yet beautiful Continue reading...
  
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• Metal and skin: the power of Lucian Freud's etchings – in pictures

  30-12-2016 08:00
  
  As well as his unforgettable portrait paintings, Lucian Freud also created numerous etchings – and they too show humanity as fraught yet beautiful Continue reading...
  
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• The Battle For Creative Cities - Lessons From Oakland's Ghost Ship

  30-12-2016 00:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  We appear to be confronted with two very different sets of criteria regarding what can be considered a “safe space.” One is rooted in alternative populations seeking respite from the omnipresent social factory and its all-pervasive marketplace; the other is based on municipal fire-code regulations intended to prevent the type of tragedies that the Ghost Ship now signifies.
  
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