Arts news

• Meet the artist behind Jeff Koons’s controversial ballerinas

  09-07-2017 23:00
  When a 45-ft high inflatable sculpture by Jeff Koons first went on display at Rockefeller Center in New York on 12 May, the artists gallery, Gagosian, revealed only that the artist based Seated Ballerina (2017) on a small porcelain figurine. But the maker of the original ceramic piece was quickly revealed online: the Ukrainian artist Oksana Zhnikrup, who created dozens of statuettes for mass production in the Soviet Union.
  After widespread accusations of cultural appropriation and an enquiry by
  
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• Master forger once foiled by The Art Newspaper reveals his secrets

  09-07-2017 23:00
  
  A fake Gauguin spotted by The Art Newspaper was cobbled together in a shed in Bolton, Greater Manchester, by Shaun Greenhalgh, who has just published his memoirs (A Forgers Tale: Confessions of the Bolton Forger, Allen & Unwin). The notorious faker describes his effort as the worst piece of sculpture I have made as an adult. Using a mixture of clay, earth dug up in the nearby Jumbles Country Park and cigarette ash (in an attempt to get the right surface texture), he fired the sculpture of a
  
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• Kansas City's American Jazz Museum Has This Little Problem Of Being Too Identified With 18th And Vine

  09-07-2017 20:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The city's former mayor Emanuel Cleaver, during whose administration the museum was opened, says that the financially troubled museum - in a building owned by the city, with artifacts owned by the city, and with a third of its budget coming from the city - needs the entire city to view it as a point of pride. City Councilor Quentin Lucas: "When you look at the successful museums in Kansas City, those that have broader buy-in from a larger community are the ones that are successful." But how to m
  
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• The Two 'Brown Girls' TV Shows Being Developed Say Something About Two Futures For The United States

  09-07-2017 20:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Americans are preparing for different eventualities. The president is promising a border wall, even as the nation’s biggest networks pour cash into Telemundo and Univision. This year and last, Atlanta and Insecure and Moonlight and Moana moved the spotlight away from white characters and writers, and eyes and hearts and wallets moved, too. ... The nation’s heartbeat holds the quick pulses of those brown girls and black boys, and executives tried to match fare to that pace. Others, f
  
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• In Paris, An Open-Air Concert, With The Musicians Playing From Balconies [VIDEO]

  09-07-2017 19:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Composer Pierre Sauvageot's piece "mixes building noises with classical tones" - and the residents, who also speak various words or phrases as part of the piece.
  
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• Are We In A Time Of 'Post-Horror' Movies?

  09-07-2017 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Never mind the jump cuts; it's time for existential dread (what, the news isn't bringing that on enough, movie-makers?!).
  
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• The Pasadena Playhouse Is In Trouble, But Its New Artistic Director Is Ready To Fight For Its Survival

  09-07-2017 18:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The Playhouse is celebrating its centennial but canceled two large-cast productions last year for plays with far, far fewer people, and had to get board loans for this year after the state of California cut $1 million from its budget (the cuts were restored). Still, new producing artistic director Danny Feldman "isn’t daunted by the challenges, referring to himself as 'bizarre' in that he loves fundraising." Can he succeed?
  
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• There Are Two American Ballet Theaters, Thanks To The Needs Of Filling The Met

  09-07-2017 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Having the 3,800-seat Metropolitan Opera House to dance in is a blessing and a curse for the ballet as it has to balance creativity with getting people in seats. "When dancing elsewhere, its repertory consists more largely of one-act ballets; when at the Met, it has tended to model itself on the old Royal: full-length ballets with impressive scenery and costumes, storytelling and acting."
  
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• Even Famous Actors Have To Deal With A Huge Amount Of Sexism On Set

  09-07-2017 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Zoe Kazan (whose partner of 10 years, Paul Dano, is named in the following quote) says, "There’s no HR department, right? We don’t have a redress. We have our union, but no one ever resorts to that, because you don’t want to get a reputation for being difficult. I’ve told Paul about stuff that has happened on set and it’s almost as if he can’t take it in. It’s too upsetting. And he’s never had to deal with that once."
  
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• 'The ghetto is the gallery': black power and the artists who captured the soul of the struggle

  09-07-2017 17:00
  
  What part did black artists play in America’s civil rights struggle? They reinvented Superman and took a seven-mile artwork through Harlem. As the Tate tackles this tumultuous era with Soul of a Nation, we meet the show’s star attractions
  Can “the soul of a nation” be defined by artists of its most oppressed group? That’s the ambitious goal of Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, about to open at London’s Tate Modern. Through 150 artworks and more
  
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• New Theatre In The UK Is 'Drying Up' As Funding Crises Hit Programs For Playwrights

  09-07-2017 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Screenwriter Olivia Hatreed, president of the Writers' Guild, says, "It always takes a couple of years after the cuts start for people to really feel the impact... You kind of go along and think it's all fine, but really you've already walked off the cliff."
  
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• How Is Wrestling Like Greek Theatre?

  09-07-2017 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  One of the creators of Netflix's new wrestling series, GLOW, says: "You're telling stories on a scale that we're not used to, but that's really exciting — that can cross cultures, can cross languages. From one side, if you're being ungenerous, you can say it's super reductive and then from the other side, you could say it's storytelling at its most potently inclusive and epic."
  
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• Empathy May Be Overrated

  09-07-2017 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  That's right, we need to understand irreducible alterity - a philosophical concept developed by a Holocaust survivor. "What if instead of sameness it were otherness that was the foundation for ethical action? What if being confronted by someone utterly different from you — someone you are opposed to, confused by, scared of, someone you can’t understand — was the urgent signal that there was a life in need of your protection?"
  
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• The 3 Million Dollar Hobby Lobby Illegal Smuggling Case Casts A Pall Over The Museum Of The Bible

  09-07-2017 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Not good, and Biblical scholars are taking note. (Also, wow: "The company never met the dealer, and wired payments to seven different bank accounts. The items arrived in 10 packages at three different Hobby Lobby addresses, labeled only 'ceramic tiles' and 'clay tiles (sample).'")
  
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• The Wage Gap For Actors Of Color Is Real, As The Hawaii Five-0 Mess Shows All Too Clearly

  09-07-2017 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The fact that CBS wasn't paying Asian American cast members anywhere near what white cast members were making is all too normal, the numbers say, including in TV dramas and comedies - and, obviously, cop shows.
  
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• The Bolshoi Has 'Indefinitely Postponed' A High-Profile Ballet About Nuryev, Perhaps Because Of The Director's Outspoken Politics

  09-07-2017 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Just days before the ballet was set to premiere, the Bolshoi shocked the dance world with this move. Its director, Kirill Serebrennikov, "has fallen out of favour with Russia’s cultural authorities in recent years and has denounced increasing censorship of the arts."
  
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• The Internet Killed (Almost) All Of Los Angeles' Seedy Porn Palace Movie Theatres

  09-07-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  L.A. used to have dozens of porn movie theaters. "Now only two remain: the Studs and the Tiki. They sit at opposite ends of Santa Monica Boulevard — the former in West Hollywood, the latter in East Hollywood, framing the city in an unseen porno-magnetic field."
  
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• Thomas Gainsborough sketches newly discovered at Windsor Castle

  09-07-2017 13:33
  
  Some 26 drawings in Royal Collection had been wrongly credited to Sir Edwin Landseer in the 19th centuryMore than two dozen sketches by the 18th-century master Thomas Gainsborough have been discovered at Windsor Castle after going unnoticed in the portfolio of another artist for hundreds of years.
  Some 26 drawings, most of which are landscapes, by the renowned painter were found within an album in the Royal Collection created in the 19th century and credited to Sir Edwin Landseer, one of Queen V
  
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• If Jane Austen Lived Today, She Would Definitely Have A Twitter Feed Critiquing 'The Bachelor'

  09-07-2017 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "It seems that long before reality TV binges and bodice-rippers, women were indulging in entertainment that mixed straightforward pleasure with the appreciation of unintentional camp."
  
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• True Faith; New Order + Liam Gillick: So It Goes review – Factory legacy holds sway

  09-07-2017 10:00
  
  Manchester Art Gallery; Old Granada StudiosJoy Division, New Order and the label that nurtured them have made an indelible mark on the city, now celebrated in inventive and exhilarating art and musicIn St Ann’s Square a busker is in danger of drowning out a piece of sound art called Azan, a specially commissioned installation by Mohammed Fairouz. One of six public bits of listening art spread across the city, it naturally has to compete with the cacophony of city life. But this is amplifie
  
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• ToGather: Susan Hefuna review – all the world's a cage

  09-07-2017 09:00
  
  Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester
  Roomfuls of boxes, cases and drawings aim to ‘catch experience’ in these sometimes haunting musings on migrationOn the morning I visited ToGather, an exhibition of drawings and installations by the German/Egyptian artist Susan Hefuna at the Whitworth in Manchester, the galleries were eerily quiet. For minutes at a time, I was quite alone with the work, something I found to be disappointing at first. After all, as the show’s title suggests, its
  
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• Roth Bar & Grill, Bruton: restaurant review

  09-07-2017 07:00
  
  Hauser & Wirth’s Somerset gallery looks amazing. The bonus is that the cooking is more than a match for the artThere are some restaurants which, given all the other things they have going for them, offer food that’s better than it needs to be. The view from Duck and Waffle on the 40th floor of London’s Heron Tower is so vast, and the sense of floating in a glass box above the quartz and steel city so engrossing, that the wit of Dan Doherty’s cooking merely feels like
  
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• Nelsan Ellis, Star Of 'Trueblood' And More, Has Died At Age 39

  09-07-2017 06:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The actor, beloved for his portrayal of the character Lafayette, died from complications of heart failure, according to his manager. Ellis was talented: "On True Blood, Lafayette was a short order cook at Merlotte's. In the books, he was killed off, but because Ellis made him such an enjoyable character, he survived in the series."
  
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• The most intimate moments in art – portrait painters and their subjects laid bare on film and in exhibition

  09-07-2017 01:04
  
  The National Portrait Gallery’s new show surveys the history of old master portraiture, with some surprising insights into the emotional connection between sitter and artistThe artist and the subject of a portrait form a bond like no other. It may come about by chance, perhaps even covertly, with a quick sketch made in passing, or formally, over a series of arranged sittings. Whatever the occasion, the two are then bound together by the portrait.This summer Stanley Tucci’s latest fil
  
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