Arts news

• Poll: 78 Percent Of UK Theatre Workers Say They Have Been Unpaid After A Job

  31-01-2017 23:23 via feedproxy.google.com
  The poll, hosted on The Stage website, asked whether readers had ever been left unpaid by an employer, after performer Jonathan Ansell stormed a stage in protest against a producer who he claims has failed to pay him money owed.
  
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• How Very Difficult Video Games Produce Feelings Of Euphoria

  31-01-2017 23:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  “People like hard games because they do not placate them with explicit rewards for trivial actions." For the experience to be meaningful, the challenge cannot be illusory.
  
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• Is It Time To Abandon The Concept Of "Normal"?

  31-01-2017 22:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  "In any parlance, the specific meaning of ‘normal’ has important consequences, especially if it is given a privileged position in the world. Anything that veers – from having green eyes or hearing voices to living with hydrocephalus – would be abnormal in one sense or another: uncommon, rare, atypical, potentially inadequate, suboptimal or deficient in some way – and in need of being brought back to some norm. Yet, it could be controversial, or just p
  
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• Stuck Between a Rock and a Ruscha: On Pierre Bismuth’s Quixotic Quest for a Lost-Lost Work by the Storied Californian

  31-01-2017 22:10 via artnews.com
  Detective Michael Scott, formerly of the Los Angeles Police Department, had solved over 130 homicides and worked 11 years as a private investigator before Brussels–based artist Pierre Bismuth hired him to find a missing sculpture.Near the start of Bismuth’s new … Read More
  
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• Stuck Between a Rock and a Ruscha: On Pierre Bismuth’s Quixotic Quest for a Lost-Long Work by the Storied Californian

  31-01-2017 22:10 via artnews.com
  Detective Michael Scott, formerly of the Los Angeles Police Department, had solved over 130 homicides and worked 11 years as a private investigator before Brussels–based artist Pierre Bismuth hired him to find a missing sculpture.Near the start of Bismuth’s new … Read More
  
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• There's A Long History Of Protest Songs. But Is Anyone Listening Any More?

  31-01-2017 22:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  Voices are being heard, of course. Songwriters would be hard-pressed to resist the actions and rhetoric of the Trump presidency. But what rabble is being roused? Are the modern protest singers preaching to choirs? A nation is divided, and many of the protest songs are not of the unifying “this land is your land” kind.
  
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• Zona Maco heats up Mexico City

  31-01-2017 22:00
  
  Zona Maco, Mexico Citys flagship fair for Modern and contemporary art, returns to the Centro Banamex convention centre for its 14th edition from 8 to 12 February. In all, 127 exhibitors from 24 countries will participate, with an additional 34 showing in Zona Maco Diseo, organised by curator Cecilia Len de la Barra. Local comers with an international profile include OMR, House of Gaga, Proyectos Monclova and Arrniz, but the accompanying evening programme of openings on 7 Februaryin the district
  
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• Twisted sculptures mark new phase for Tim Noble and Sue Webster

  31-01-2017 22:00
  
  Tim Noble and Sue Websters giant twisted bronze sculptures, which go on show at Blain Southern this week (Tim Noble and Sue Webster: Sticks with Dicks and Slits, 3 February-25 March), mark a completely new departure for the artist duo. But, as they revealed to your correspondent during a sneaky pre-PV preview, these three-metre-high self-portraits had a ten-year gestation, which began not in their natural habitat of gritty East London but against a rather more idyllic Caribbean backdrop. We got
  
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• Straight from the horse’s mouth

  31-01-2017 22:00
  Bill Powers, the owner of the Half Gallery, led a rapt tour of theatregoers through the Genieve Figgis show at Lincoln Centers Gallery Met on 17 January, just before a performance of the theatres current opera, Romeo and Juliet. All of Figgiss grim oil and acrylic paintings in the show are inspired by Shakespeares play, and Powers regaled the crowd with stories of the artists trip to Verona, to research the paintings. Anything with kissing, making outthat sold out before the show opened, he said
  
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• Special report on Asia

  31-01-2017 22:00
  
  The continents art shines on a bigger stage
  
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• Local collections should be nationalised to halt sell-offs

  31-01-2017 22:00
  
  If hospitals in Leeds in the north of England were given less effective cancer drugs than those in Bristol in the south west, would we accept it? If schoolchildren in Sheffield were allowed only half the textbooks than those in Canterbury, would we tolerate it?
  For our most important public services we expect as close to a level playing field as local circumstances allow. But when it comes to museums we take anything we can get. The growing disparity between cultural services in Hull (excellent
  
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• Jean-Paul Barbier-Mueller, museum founder and collector who opposed the return of artefacts to their countries of origin

  31-01-2017 22:00
  
  Jean-Paul Barbier-Mueller, the Swiss collector and founder of the Muse Barbier-Mueller in Geneva, died on 22 December, aged 86. Barbier-Mueller started collecting when he was a boy. Silex and stones at first, and later Etruscan lamps, Tanagra statuettes and Cycladic heads. His insatiable curiosity about culture in all its manifestations was arguably the defining characteristic of his life. His passing signals the disappearance of one of the last representatives of the generation that included R
  
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• In memoriam, February 2017

  31-01-2017 22:00
  John Berger, the British Marxist art critic and the author of the influential book and television series, Ways of Seeing, died on 2 January, aged 90. After stints at the Chelsea and Central Schools of Art, Berger began his career as a painter and exhibited his works in several London galleries. In 1972, the BBC broadcast his TV series, Ways of Seeing, that established him in the public eye as an art critic. He went on to write novels, sociological investigations and film scripts, as well as art-
  
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• Charles Saatchi launches commercial gallery in Chelsea headquarters

  31-01-2017 22:00
  The British collector and dealer Charles Saatchi has been buying and selling art for more than 30 years, and now his Chelsea gallery is launching a commercial space called Salon. The new venue, situated inside Saatchi Gallerys headquarters off the Kings Road, will host selling exhibitions organised in collaboration with blue-chip galleries and artists estates.
  Lvy-Gorvy gallery is inaugurating the space with an exhibition of works  from the 1950s and 1960s by the Japanese Gutai artist Tsuy
  
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• Behind the scenes of Poland’s €100m art deal

  31-01-2017 22:00
  
  The Polish government clinched one of the biggest art deals of the year in a great rush at the end of December. For the bargain price of 100m, it bought the Czartoryski Collection, a prized group of 86,000 objects and a library of 250,000 books and manuscripts, along with several buildings in Krakow, including the historic buildings that house the Czartoryski Museum. The undisputed star of the collection is Leonardo da Vincis Lady with an Ermine (around 1489-90), one of only 15 oil paintings at
  
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• Martin Durazo at Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston

  31-01-2017 21:50 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday. Read More
  
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• No further jail time for Glarifa Rosales for her role in $80m Knoedler forgery scandal

  31-01-2017 21:32
  
  Glafira Rosales, the Long Island art dealer who played a key role in the $80m forgery scandal that brought down the Knoedler gallery, was sentenced on Tuesday, 31 January by a federal judge in New York to the 82 days she spent in prison after her May 2013 arrest, nine months of house detention and three years of supervised release.  I am not putting you back in jail, she told the defendant.In September 2013, Rosales pleaded guilty to conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and filing fals
  
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• No further jail time for Glafira Rosales for her role in $80m Knoedler forgery scandal

  31-01-2017 21:32
  
  Glafira Rosales, the Long Island art dealer who played a key role in the $80m forgery scandal that brought down the Knoedler gallery, was sentenced on Tuesday, 31 January by a federal judge in New York to the 82 days she spent in prison after her May 2013 arrest, nine months of house detention and three years of supervised release.  I am not putting you back in jail, she told the defendant.In September 2013, Rosales pleaded guilty to conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and filing fals
  
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• Increasingly, Creative People Are Turning To Analog Over Digital

  31-01-2017 21:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The virtues of digital turn out to be the vices as well. Having all the music on earth at your instant disposal turns out to be almost the same as having none; Spotify’s playlists show people picking the same tunes over and over. Digital life’s too self-absorbed—either we evolve quickly away from the social primates we have always been or else we will quietly suffer from the solipsism inherent in staring at ourselves reflected in a screen. It’s too jumpy; concentration,
  
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• Some Lessons We Learned Bringing New Work To Small Theatres

  31-01-2017 21:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  Small venues are often encouraged to ‘buddy up’ with larger venues to develop their skills, expertise and knowledge. This can lead to an erosion of confidence, implying that small venues are somehow inferior and need help or advice. Small venues operate differently from larger ones, in that they manage their resources extremely well and develop a close understanding of and relationships with their audiences in ways that larger-scale organisations sometimes find difficult to achieve.
  
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• For First Time In A Decade, UK Museum Attendance Falls

  31-01-2017 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The 2.8% decline is almost all attributable to a fall in visitors from overseas, despite an increase in tourists visiting the UK. Overseas visitors now account for 47% of all visitors to the sponsored museums, while a like-for-like comparison shows they accounted for 49% the previous year. Visits by people from the UK continue to show marginal growth, roughly mirroring population trends."
  
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• You're Hearing Things: How People Perceive Voices In Random Noise

  31-01-2017 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  You may not know the term, but you're familiar with "visual pareidolia" - it's when you see an animal in a Rorschach blot or the Virgin Mary in a slice of toast. It happens with sounds, too - as when some parents heard in a Fisher-Price doll's giggles and coos the sentence "Islam is the light." Philip Jaekl explains how it happens.
  
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• Trial testimony reveals how one man walked off with five masterpieces worth €180m from a Paris museum

  31-01-2017 19:53
  
  Extraordinary testimony, heard by a packed court in a trial that started in the French capital on Monday, highlighted the lack of security at the Muse d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2010, when five masterpieces were stolen and probably destroyed. Three men have been charged in the case: the professional burglar, Vran Tjomic, nicknamed the Spider, the antiques dealer Jean-Michel Corvez and the watchmaking expert Yonathan Birn.
  The court was told that Corvez had a Saudi buyer that was keen
  
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• Trial testimony reveals how one man walked off with five masterpieces worth €108m from a Paris museum

  31-01-2017 19:53
  
  Extraordinary testimony, heard by a packed court in a trial that started in the French capital on Monday, highlighted the lack of security at the Muse d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2010, when five masterpieces were stolen and probably destroyed. Three men have been charged in the case: the professional burglar, Vran Tjomic, nicknamed the Spider, the antiques dealer Jean-Michel Corvez and the watchmaking expert Yonathan Birn.
  The court was told that Corvez had a Saudi buyer that was keen
  
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• MoMA Appoints Kate Lewis Chief Conservator

  31-01-2017 19:36 via artnews.com
  The Museum of Modern Art in New York announced today that Kate Lewis has been appointed the chief conservator of its David Booth Conservation Center and Department. She succeeds James Coddington, who retired last December.Lewis joined MoMA in 2013 as … Read More
  
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• What It's Like To Join The Chicago Symphony

  31-01-2017 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Nathan Cole: As I put in my first set of numbers, my stand partner made a sound, a kind of groan cut short. I looked over, the point of my pencil still on the page. “Did you want my markings on the bottom instead?” “We don’t mark fingerings here,” he said." “Here, you mean at this spot?” “I mean in this orchestra.” His face softened, and he added, “Sorry, you’re probably used to seeing them, right?” I was indeed used to seei
  
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• A 25-Year Search For The Secrets Of Gaga

  31-01-2017 19:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The film director Tomer Heymann entered - or barged - into the life of the Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin 25 years ago, first as his waiter at a cafe and then as the boyfriend of one of his dancers."
  
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• Kill The National Endowment For The Arts? Here's What That Would Mean

  31-01-2017 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "What would the elimination of the NEA mean for the arts in the US? In terms of actual direct support, very little. Many foundations, other funding bodies, and individuals dole out more for the arts each year than the arts endowment: for example, New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs 2016 budget was $165 million, with additional funds dedicated for capital projects; philanthropist David Geffen’s $100 million gift to New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2016 outstripped t
  
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• How To Act Drunk: A Tutorial (From An Actor Who Knows)

  31-01-2017 18:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  Richard Roxburgh, currently starring on Broadway with Cate Blanchett in The Present: "In terms of the study of alcohol and its effects, I probably have an unfair advantage in that I am, A, Australian, and, B, an actor. I've had probably an unhealthy overexposure to the shenanigans of booze over time."
  
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• The Pompidou At 40: Here's The Impact It's Had

  31-01-2017 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Rem Koolhaus: "The Centre Pompidou was maybe the last moment that a museum competition won with that degree of abstraction, radicality and that degree of newness. It was more a hypothesis than a project and I think museum competitions since then have moved as far as possible away from that. The very model of a museum that the Pompidou offered has been avoided as much as possible by subsequent museum competitions, juries, clients and realisations."
  
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• I Was An Extra In A North Korean Propaganda Film

  31-01-2017 17:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  "In 2013, Australian documentarian Anna Broinowski was granted a rare chance to research North Korea's cloaked and powerful propaganda film industry. ... [This excerpt] from her book Aim High in Creation! chronicles the bizarre final days of Broinowski's North Korean film production boot camp, when she was unexpectedly cast as an 'evil American wife' in a film about the 1968 capture of the U.S. spy ship, the Pueblo."
  
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• London’s Lisson Gallery, champion of conceptual art, turns 50

  31-01-2017 17:00
  
  New works by Daniel Buren, Allora & Calzadilla and Carmen Herrera will go on show at Lisson Gallery in London later this year to mark the 50th anniversary of the veteran dealership, which has long championed minimal and conceptual artists such as Donald Judd and Dan Graham. While the gallerys founder Nicholas Logsdail seemed to plough a lonely furrow in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the movements he supported soon became the lingua franca of contemporary art, says Ossian Ward, the ga
  
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• Jacob Epstein: the immigrant bringing morals to the Oval Office | Jonathan Jones

  31-01-2017 16:53
  
  The bust of Churchill that sits across from Donald Trump’s desk is created by an immigrant, who reminds us of both the glory of humanity and the evil of fascismHours before Donald Trump announced his draconian executive order banning citizens of seven Muslim countries from entering the United States, he posed with an immigrant in the Oval Office. Or at least, a work by that immigrant’s hand. Jacob Epstein’s bust of Winston Churchill has become a bizarre political football (alth
  
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• Behold The Awesome Power Of The People's Liberation Army's Rooster Dance

  31-01-2017 16:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  A little gift for the Year of the Rooster. (video)
  
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• Brad Troemel, 'The Troll Of Internet Art'

  31-01-2017 16:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  "[His] view of art could not be less romantic. He once described to me the 'formula' for a gallery show: 'You have a series of wall works that are meant to sell, and the stuff on the floor that's meant to make things look difficult.'"
  
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• Venice’s Grand Gallerie dell’Accademia Will Stage a Guston Show During the Biennale

  31-01-2017 16:00 via artnews.com
  Every two years, when the Venice Biennale opens, the museums, galleries, and foundations of La Serenissima compete for attention, aiming to mount their finest shows. Today the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia—that trove of Old Master painting, rich with Canaletto, Mantegna, Titian, and … Read More
  
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• Philip Guston gets first Venice museum show

  31-01-2017 15:54
  
  The Gallerie dellAccademia in Venice, best known as a treasure house of Italian Renaissance masters such as Mantegna, Titian and Tintoretto, will this summer present the work of Philip Guston, the Modern painter they inspired. Opening on 10 May, in time for the 57th Venice Biennale, Philip Guston and the Poets (until 3 September) will bring together 75 paintings and drawings ranging from Gustons beginnings as a teenage muralist in 1930 to his death in 1980.The exhibition, organised by the indep
  
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• Antiques dealer jailed for stealing painting from Chester Cathedral

  31-01-2017 15:49
  
  Latvian Vasilijs Apilats, 61, sentenced to nine months for stealing painting worth about £2,000 in August 2014A Latvian antiques dealer who stole a 19th-century religious painting from a cathedral because he was besotted with the artwork has been jailed for nine months.
  The Raising Of Lazarus was torn from its easel on the altar in the chapel of Saint Anselm in Chester Cathedral, a quiet corner intended for prayer and reflection. In its place a cheap Christmas tree decoration of an angel w
  
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• As Top-Selling Living Artists Age, Galleries And Auction Houses Are Scrapping Over Them

  31-01-2017 15:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Chuck Close and other artists used to sit around bars like the Cedar Tavern and Max's Kansas City and talk about art. 'I have more conversations today over what we're going to do to protect our spouses, our children, our work,' Mr. Close said."
  
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• The Arts-Are-Good-For-The-Economy Arguments Have Failed - They've Even Helped Kill The NEA, Argues Arts Exec

  31-01-2017 15:18 via feedproxy.google.com
  Matt Burriesci, executive director of the Providence Athenaeum: "If we'd like to discuss metrics, deliverables and results, then we must ask how our interests have fared by employing this economic strategy. ... Where, exactly, are the results? They are not to be found in the opinions of our policymakers"
  
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• Before Spending All That Time And Money On A New London Concert Hall, Let's Think It Through Properly

  31-01-2017 15:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  Jodi Myers considers some potential unintended consequences of going through with Sir Simon's enormous pet project.
  
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• Canada's Last Record Store Chain Goes Bust

  31-01-2017 14:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The move comes after HMV could no longer make payments on its crippling debt to the tune of $39 million. The chain was profitable up until 2013, but after a significant decline in sales it has not made a single payment on the debt since November 2014."
  
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• Morning Links: X-Rated Chinese Antiquities Edition

  31-01-2017 14:36 via artnews.com
  Here’s what we’re reading this morning. Read More
  
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• Worried That We Could 'Normalize' Unacceptable Situations? You're Not Wrong

  31-01-2017 14:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  Two cognitive researchers explain how people's conceptions of what's average or typical and what's ideal bleed into each other and change what gets considered "normal."
  
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• Joachim Koester review – cowboys and indolence add up to pure bafflement

  31-01-2017 14:21
  
  Camden Arts Centre, London
  You might not find meaning in the jerky gunslingers and praying mantises of this Danish video artist – but there’s plenty of scope for a napSome heavy shit is going down in the old barn. A bunch of ornery gunslingers are stuck in there. I don’t figure they like each other much. Jerking around, hunching their shoulders, swivelling on their heels, swaggering and feinting as if it’s about to turn nasty. You can peek through the gaps in the rough ol
  
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• India's Biggest Book Festival Warily Makes Room For The Hindu Radicals It Used To Conider Pariahs

  31-01-2017 14:17 via feedproxy.google.com
  The RSS (for Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) is a Hindu nationalist group compared by some to the Tea Party and by others to the Ku Klux Klan. The Jaipur Literature Festival is a swanky, high-minded gathering that would consider the RSS both morally repugnant and vulgar. Until this year, that is.
  
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• Jaipur Literature Festival's Normalizing Of Hindu Radicals Just Shows That The Mask Is Off

  31-01-2017 14:16 via feedproxy.google.com
  Novelist Siddhartha Deb calls out the event and (especially) its sponsors: "One of India's largest entertainment companies, Zee is best known for a news channel that serves as the media bludgeon of the Hindu right, its favorite term of abuse, usually flashing in extremely large font, being 'Deshdrohi,' or 'Nation-hater.'"
  
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• UK Bank Backs Down On Closing Russia Today Network's Accounts

  31-01-2017 14:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  Back in October, NatWest announced that it would no longer provide services to RT, the Russian-government-sponsored news channel. Russian officials promptly cried "Censorship!" and threatened to retaliate against the BBC's operations in Russia. Now NatWest (which is owned largely by the British government) has announced a settlement.
  
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• Do Ho Suh creates memorial to his lost New York home and studio

  31-01-2017 12:02
  
  The South Korean artist Do Ho Suh, whose solo exhibition at Victoria Miro gallery in London opens tomorrow (Passage/s, 1 February-18 March), has created a unique memorial to his former apartment and studio in Chelsea in New Yorkwhich he occupied for almost 20 yearsby rubbing every surface of the spaces with coloured pencils and pastels on to white paper. Suh has catalogued every sheet and aims to reconstruct the New York interior in the next few years. The plan is for visitors to enter the
  
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• I threw away $100m of Picasso and Matisse art, says dealer in Paris theft trial

  31-01-2017 04:53
  
  Co-defendant in ‘Spider-Man’ trial says he destroyed five paintings stolen in 2010 from Museum of Modern ArtA co-defendant in one of the world’s biggest art heists has told a court he destroyed and threw away five art masterpieces worth more than $100m that were stolen by a thief nicknamed “the Spider-Man”.Yonathan Birn was among three people who went on trial in the case on Monday. The five paintings stolen in 2010 from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris – a P
  
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