Arts news

• Creative Privilege: Cultural Appropriation Is Just Fine

  12-05-2017 23:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The argument goes that "there’s a vast sea of images, ideas, stories and experiences out there and imaginative voyagers should be encouraged to pluck from it whatever flotsam they please. Beyond the very limited applications of copyrights and trademarks, there are no rules to say they are wrong, just lots of contexts in which those assumptions start to look really dubious. Why? Because they may elbow out people who haven’t had enough time or space to make their own mark."
  
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• Report: Here Are The Cities That Spend The Most On Culture Worldwide

  12-05-2017 23:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  It suggests that a high proportion of national culture budgets is spent on capital cities because they have large ‘sunk investments’ that create a revenue and capital legacy. By contrast, in cities in China, which have less ‘legacy’ cultural infrastructure in which to invest, “it appears that Chinese cities are placing a greater priority on investing in newer and more commercial cultural forms”.
  
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• Why Gustavo Dudamel Has Angered Venezuelans

  12-05-2017 22:27 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "The idea that art and politics don’t mix, and that silence is therefore perfectly acceptable, is prevalent in Europe and North America, leading to more indulgence towards Dudamel. But this view is based on a profound misunderstanding of the conductor and the program behind him. El Sistema and politics have been mixed since the arrival of Hugo Chávez in power in 1999, and Dudamel’s career and program have been heartily supported by the Bolivarian Revolution. The idea that sile
  
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• Arcmanoro Niles at Long Gallery Harlem, New York

  12-05-2017 22:23 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday. Read More
  
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• Michael Zwack, Painter Initially Associated with the Pictures Generation, Dies at 67

  12-05-2017 22:17 via artnews.com
  Michael Zwack, a New York–based painter whose spiritually and emotionally engaged work was initially associated with the Pictures Generation, died on May 5. The cause was lung cancer. The artist was 67 years old.Zwack’s paintings often appeared alongside works by Robert … Read More
  
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• A Return To Complexity? Signs That Today's Audiences May Want More

  12-05-2017 21:52 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Young people’s brains aren’t experiencing a backward evolution. Their ability to articulate points of rhythm, melody and the flow of words in musical genres they have made or developed themselves prove that, as human beings, our urge for musical expression and facility lies deep. Young people are not afraid of things that need to be worked through. Complexity, curiosity and adventure is the new counter-culture."
  
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• Britain's Labour Party Promises "Culture For All" Policy

  12-05-2017 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The manifesto identifies the creative industries as “the envy of the world, a source of national pride, a driver of inward investment and tourism and a symbol of the kind of country we are now and aspire to be in the future”. As Britain prepares to leave the EU, it states that Labour will “put our world-class creative sector at the heart of our negotiations and future industrial strategy”.
  
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• How Europe's Refugee Crisis Is Playing Out On German Stages

  12-05-2017 21:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Germany has a long history of political theater. But the influx of refugees since 2015 – what some have called the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our era – has created new challenges for depicting crisis on stage, from striking the right balance between political activism and artistic creation, to figuring out the best way to reflect events as they unfold. The result has been a German theater scene that has doubled as a platform for political action – one that blurs the l
  
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• American Pop Culture's South Asia Awakening

  12-05-2017 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "In the past few years, entertainers of south Asian origin have gone from being a minor footnote in American popular culture to a headline event. You can see a snapshot of this new America in a picture British-Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed tweeted this month at the Met Gala, the annual gathering of pop-culture royalty."
  
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• Behold: The Oldest Artwork in the Venice Biennale

  12-05-2017 20:24 via artnews.com
  It’s safe to assume that the artwork picture here (please excuse the reflection lines) is the oldest artwork in the Venice Biennale. It’s a Neolithic mother goddess figure, presumed to be a fertility goddess, and it dates to around 5,000 … Read More
  
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• Caravaggio, Virtuoso of Compassion

  12-05-2017 20:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Caravaggio? The hot-tempered, violent Caravaggio?? Yes, writes, Ingrid D. Rowland. Comparing his work with that of several of his disciples and contemporaries, she finds that what really sets Caravaggio apart is the compassion he shows in the way he depicts the characters in his paintings.
  
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• What Happened To The $650 Million Johnny Depp Earned?

  12-05-2017 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  An explosive legal battle between one of Hollywood's best-paid actors and the business managers he fired has laid bare tumultuous finances, outrageous spending and troubling behavior on Disney's new 'Pirates' movie in a case that could even change how the industry does business.
  
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• ‘The Limit of the Perfect Question’: Raqs Media Collective’s Shanghai Biennial

  12-05-2017 19:06 via artnews.com
  Power Station of Art, ShanghaiNovember 11, 2016 - March 12, 2017 Read More
  
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• We'd Have No Concept Of 'News' Without Our Particular Ideas About Time

  12-05-2017 19:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "While we frequently wring our hands about the fact that news is in 'crisis', we rarely discuss what news actually is. Much like history, news is fundamentally a way of imposing order on the messy totality of what's going on around us. The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'news' as 'newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events'. Or, in [historian Robert] Darnton's words, news is 'stories about what happened'. What we consider to be news is therefore inti
  
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• Meet The Critic Who Trashed "Sergeant Pepper" when It Came Out

  12-05-2017 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  This may be as a good a time as any to offer Richard Goldstein’s confession. It isn’t anything he has tried to hide, and, in fact, he mentioned it briefly in his 2015 memoir, “Another Little Piece of My Heart.” But the revelation may be startling to Beatles fans, who have devoted their lives to interpreting every lyric, recording flourish and photograph presented by their band. The stereo Goldstein used for his review was broken. Repeat. The guy who slammed “Sgt. Pe
  
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• Why Audiences Love Southern Gothic

  12-05-2017 18:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  From Faulkner's fiction to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil to True Blood to S-Town, readers, viewers and listeners devour the stuff. Why? As Kat Eschner explains, it's not (just) for the grotesquerie.
  
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• ARTSTAQ Wants to Transform the Art Market into a Stock Market

  12-05-2017 18:00 via artnews.com
  Launched in 2015, ARTSTAQ bills itself as a sort of NASDAQ stock exchange for art. By applying the principle of a standardized index measure to artists and their work, the London- and Prague-based startup offers an online marketplace that aims to “provide … Read More
  
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• Steve Schick: What It Takes To Make Music

  12-05-2017 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "In order to make music, I need three healthy relationships: with the materials of my art, with the world around me, and with the people with whom I share it. These are the building blocks of what I think of as an externally facing artistic practice. The goal of an externally facing practice is to become as complete a human being as possible, in whose life music plays a central and defining role. On the other hand, the goal of an internally facing practice — the default stance of much acad
  
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• Deep in the Catacombs of the Palazzo Ducale, Douglas Gordon Premieres a Video of a Floating Dolphin Toy

  12-05-2017 17:28 via artnews.com
  The Palazzo Ducale has within it the sprawling Doge’s Palace, the place of living for the leaders of the Republic of Venice, and opulent government chambers such as the Chamber of the Great Council, one of the biggest rooms in … Read More
  
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• Which Collectors Are Actually Buying Work from the Massive Damien Hirst Show in Venice?

  12-05-2017 17:15 via artnews.com
  On Thursday night, after water flooded the center of the Piazza San Marco, and those climbing out of water taxis in evening-wear slipped on plastic booties to protect thousand-dollar shoes, Damien Hirst walked out alone on the dock at the Gritti Palace. The tide was … Read More
  
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• What Happens In Poetry Lovers' Brains When They Hear Some Really Good Poems

  12-05-2017 17:06 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Neuroscientists, doing what neuroscientists do, hooked up a group of poetry fans to a bunch of scanners and meters - including the "goosecam," which looks for goosebumps - and had them listen to classic verse. All of them reported experiencing chills.
  
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• Lowriders tells one Chicano story but art has the power to tell many more

  12-05-2017 16:41
  
  A new film shines a light on a Mexican American community rarely represented while a number of exhibitions offer up a much more varied pictureAt a time when Chicano culture is particularly vulnerable to both systemic and personal racism, visual culture can play a key role in spreading important stories. But now might be the most important time to give those stories nuance – to make sure that they reflect the diversity of a community that often gets suffocated with generalizations and racis
  
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• 271,586 A.D., 271,587 A.D., 271,588 A.D.: On Kawara’s ‘One Million Years’ in Venice

  12-05-2017 16:33 via artnews.com
  This afternoon, I was wandering around a quiet section of the Dorsoduro neighborhood in Venice, not quite sure of where I was supposed to be going and listening hard for two people reading numbers. But all I could hear was … Read More
  
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• How Reading Herman Melville Can Help Make Sense Of The Trump Era

  12-05-2017 16:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Ariel Dorfman, the erstwhile Chilean exile who wrote the play and film Death and the Maiden to illustrate the aftermath of the Pinochet dictatorship, turns not to Moby-Dick but rather to three of Melville's novellas.
  
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• When Poetry Could Get You Killed: Osip Mandelstam Under Stalin

  12-05-2017 15:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Nadezhda Mandelstam ... [wrote] about the many instances when, confronted with the desperation of their situation, they had asked each other if this was the moment when they, too, could no longer bear to go forward."
  
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• Ben Brantley And Jesse Green Debate The Entire Broadway Season

  12-05-2017 15:17 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Jesse uses the phrase "morally bankrupt" to describe one of the season's top new musicals. Ben says, "Bette was Beyoncé for the old folks." They (not quite) completely disagree on Come From Away, and they both think the season's best new musical wasn't on Broadway at all.
  
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• From the Archives: Philip Guston on Piero della Francesca, in 1965

  12-05-2017 15:15 via artnews.com
  With a Philip Guston show currently on view at Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia, we turn back to the May 1965 issue of ARTnews, in which Guston himself mused on the work of the 15th-century Italian painter Piero della Francesca. Noting della … Read More
  
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• Now Even World-Famous Art Installations Like The Rain Room Have Chinese Knock-Offs

  12-05-2017 15:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Ever since Random International's wildly popular Rain Room was shown at a Shanghai museum in 2015, unauthorized copies have been spreading across China (there were two of them in the city before the museum show even closed), and now there are agencies where you can rent a one. Shanghai now has a permanent one at what seems to be an art-installation theme park - it also has knock-offs of Yayoi Kusama's Dot Obsession and Infinity Rooms and a Van Gogh Starry Night hall of mirrors.
  
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• Morning Links: Conceptualist Love Triangle Edition

  12-05-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  Here's what we're reading this morning. Read More
  
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• A New Riff On 'Pictures At An Exhibition' (The Piano Version) From George Crumb

  12-05-2017 14:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  New-music nerds of a certain age will remember Crumb's haunting García Lorca song cycle Ancient Voices of Children or his anti-Vietnam War piece for "electric string quartet," Black Angels. They may have been weird, but they were cool. Now the grand old man of the American avant-garde at age 87, Crumb is still composing away - most recently, Metamorphoses Book I, a cycle of piano works based on his favorite paintings. Avant-garde diva Margaret Leng Tan gave the premiere in D.C. on May 7,
  
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• A New Riff On 'Pictures At An Exhibition' (The Orchestra Version) From Dirk Brossé

  12-05-2017 14:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The Belgian composer-conductor, music director of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, decided to write his own, all-new take on the concept of the Mussorgsky-Ravel favorite. (Unlike George Crumb, Brossé didn't come up with a new title.) So he took a special tour of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and ultimately chose seven paintings from the collection - from Thomas Eakins's The Gross Clinic to Man Ray's Fair Weather - as his inspirations. Peter Dobrin met with Brossé to talk abo
  
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• How Can Performing Arts Organizations Engage Gen Y And Millennials? Here Are A Few Ideas

  12-05-2017 14:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  There's definitely hope for doing so, argues Olivia Carr: "Both [groups are] united in that they find value in experiences rather than material possessions. Live entertainment is a commodity that the latest long-form TV series cannot compete with, and is something that young people will continue to seek out." First, though, she has a warning: "More than other generations, young people are hyper-aware of being sold to, and quickly zone out in the face of one-way sales messages."
  
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• Nations must co-ordinate efforts to protect heritage in the Middle East, says expert

  12-05-2017 14:25
  
  Multinational collaborations are vital in the battle to preserve cultural heritage in conflict zones, says Zaki Aslan, the director of the ICCROM-ATHAR Regional Conservation Centre in Sharjah, ahead of a talk in London on 16 May aimed at raising awareness about the plight of cultural heritage in the Middle East and examining strategies to protect the historic buildings and monuments in the region as the crisis rolls into its sixth year. 
   
  Collaboration is key, he says. Duplicating ef
  
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• Should Dancers Have To Pay A Fee To Audition?

  12-05-2017 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "In other industries, paying a future employer for an interview would be considered unethical. Yet in dance, it is common practice. Many companies offer the explanation that it is expensive to hold open calls and in exchange for that fee, they are providing a class. Now, cash-strapped dancers and even some company leaders find themselves questioning this norm." Candice Thompson looks at the two sides of the debate.
  
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• Anne Imhof, Huey Copeland Win 2017 Absolut Art Awards

  12-05-2017 14:00 via artnews.com
  The Absolut Art Awards for 2017 have been announced, and the winners are Anne Imhof for art work, and Huey Copeland for art writing. Each will receive a cash prize of €20,000, along with a budget for a new project: €100,000 … Read More
  
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• A Woman Takes Over From A Man In New York City Ballet's First Gender-Neutral Role - How's It Working Out?

  12-05-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Justin Peck selected his old friend (and company star) Robert Fairchild to dance the lead in the premiere run of his The Times Are Racing. But he conceived it as a unisex part, and he chose Ashly Isaacs to take over from Fairchild for the current season. Alastair Macaulay reports on how she looks in the role. (Very good.)
  
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• Record-Breaking Year At Box Office For British Theatres: £1.12 Billion

  12-05-2017 13:44 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The all-time highs in revenue happened at regional theatres as well as in London in 2016 - despite the fact that companies were suffering from huge cuts in funding from local governments.
  
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• Ancient Egyptian Princess's Tomb Discovered Near Cairo

  12-05-2017 13:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Archaeologists found the burial chamber in the necropolis at Dahshur, about 20 miles south of the capital. The tomb evidently holds a daughter of the 13th Dynasty pharaoh Ameny Qemau, who rules roughly 3,800 years ago.
  
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• Alice Neel’s Benjamin: light mood, dark truth

  12-05-2017 13:00
  
  By the time she painted this portrait, Neel was part of New York’s in-crowd, but she spent years charting social exclusion in Spanish HarlemThe great US portraitist Alice Neel’s Benjamin depicts her landlord’s son. Its mood, as light as a helium balloon floating away on a summer’s day, was hard won. Continue reading...
  
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• Pink Floyd, Jane Austen and virtual reality – the week in art

  12-05-2017 12:42
  
  The V&A’s blockbuster Pink Floyd show opens, along with Mat Collishaw’s recreation of an 1839 photography exhibition – all in your weekly dispatchPink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains
  From psychedelic odysseys to melancholy musings on the rock star’s fate, the relics of Pink Floyd’s epic story are laid out.
  • V&A, London, 13 May–1 October Continue reading...
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 05.11.17

  12-05-2017 11:09 via feedproxy.google.com
  Next Week’s Bellwether Auctions: Guarantees, Investor Pleas, Uncertainties
  Ahead of next week’s major Impressionist, modern and contemporary art auctions, both Sotheby’s and Christie’s are assuring possibly skittish buyers that there are “signs of strengthening”  in the market ... read more
  AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-05-11Catching Up With You
  From time to time, Rifftides asks readers to send information about the music they turn on, and vice versa
  
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• Activism is top of Venice Biennale’s agenda

  12-05-2017 11:08
  The Los Angeles-based artist, Mark Bradford, who is the toast of the Venice Biennale for his US pavilion, delivered on Thursday (11 May) a masterclass in making the art world part of the real world. He said that if you want to work with people facing real hardship, you really have to listen to their needs and "be prepared to write the checks for what they want, with the stress on the word "they". Puncturing pretensions, he criticised those seeking a photo-op at others expense. Bradford was spea
  
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• Alec Baldwin and Julianne Moore Address Refugee Crises in Candice Breitz’s Piece in South Africa’s Pavilion

  12-05-2017 10:39 via artnews.com
  Forced migration is a central theme in many shows at this year’s Venice Biennale, from the Tunisian pavilion, which is offering universal passports to anyone who wants one, to Mexico’s pavilion, where Carlos Amorales is screening a video of a puppet show … Read More
  
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• Pink Floyd, Bruce Conner and Anthony Caro: this week’s best UK exhibitions

  12-05-2017 10:30
  
  Celebrate the cultural legacy of the prog rock titans, discover the genesis of film as art and enjoy the later works of a much-lauded sculptorThe story of the psychedelic 1960s group that evolved into a wealthy business has a fable-like quality that Pink Floyd recognised themselves. They told the story of what they saw as big-time rock’s corruption and potential for alienation in songs such as Wish You Were Here and Comfortably Numb. These melancholy musings were given spectacular visual s
  
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• Tagging along: your best art on the theme of spray paint

  12-05-2017 10:21
  
  For last month’s readers’ art assignment Anthony Plant, director of the Sidney Nolan Trust, invited you to share your art on the theme of spray paint. Here are some of his favourites, with captions by the artists themselves Continue reading...
  
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• Samdani Art Foundation Unveils Plans for First Permanent Space

  12-05-2017 09:45 via artnews.com
  At a dinner in Venice on Thursday night, the Samdani Art Foundation, established by the Bangladeshi collectors Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani, unveiled plans for a permanent space. Srihatta–Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park will be located in Sylhet, a rural … Read More
  
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• On San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Rauschenberg, Pistoletto, McCarthy, and More Await

  12-05-2017 09:38 via artnews.com
  In a little park on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, which is just a short boat ride from the main drag of Venice, Pae White has conjured a beguiling wall of glass, made with somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 bricks, that … Read More
  
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• On San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Rauschenberg, Pisteletto, McCarthy, and More Await

  12-05-2017 09:38 via artnews.com
  In a little park on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, which is just a short boat ride from the main drag of Venice, Pae White has conjured a beguiling wall of glass, made with somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 bricks, that … Read More
  
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