Arts news

• The Most-Anticipated New Opera Of The Year Faces Backlash

  29-11-2017 22:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The piece has "taken many aback with some startlingly negative reviews as well as bending-over-backward attempts to find some value in a work by a team that has given us operatic masterpieces in the past. Without question, the most highly anticipated new opera of the year — a year in which John Adams turned 70 and Peter Sellars, 60 — “Girls” has also been presented as the first opera of Trump times. The populist spirit of the 49ers, the lack of regard for the environment
  
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• Canada Wonders: Can You Really "Decolonize" A Country?

  29-11-2017 22:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "It was singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie who, early in 2017 at outset of the Canada 150 hoopla that offended many Indigenous people, counselled everyone to "Keep calm and decolonize." But what exactly does that mean? After centuries of contact, can you really tease apart the threads of settler and Indigenous culture?"
  
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• R. M. Fischer at Southard Reid, London

  29-11-2017 21:37 via artnews.com
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• The Digital World Isn't Subverting Democracy, It's Helping It (Really?)

  29-11-2017 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Digital technologies are changing politics as we know it, but not because of some inherent or immutable characteristic that stands apart from the world in which they were created. Instead, these technologies have helped an underlying condition, namely growing discontent at marketisation – the privatising of ever more goods, services and social interactions, and the ideologies that justify that process – to find meaningful expression in the formal political arena."
  
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• Guggenheim Museum to Collaborate With Rem Koolhaas on ‘Nonurban Areas’ Initiative

  29-11-2017 21:10 via artnews.com
  A rotunda exhibition will showcase the initiative's work in 2019. Read More
  The post Guggenheim Museum to Collaborate With Rem Koolhaas on ‘Nonurban Areas’ Initiative appeared first on ARTnews.
  
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• Holland Cotter: Louvre Abu Dhabi's Rewrite Of Art History

  29-11-2017 21:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "The Louvre Abu Dhabi is banking on the theory that pointing out links among a wide variety of cultures will make all art feel more approachable to the global audience it hopes to attract. Once viewers gain the habit of spotting connections, they may come to accept that all cultures are equally valuable and personally relevant. That, at least, seems to be the thinking, and it makes sense."
  
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• Do We Have Time For Utopias? How About Dystopias?

  29-11-2017 20:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "It is a tough job to reclaim the idea of utopia for the twenty-first century and deploy it in the battle against the neoliberal agenda. But – if we were to want to do such a thing – these are books that could help us. If there is an alternative to a neoliberal future, the imaginative effort required by utopian thinking is a necessary step to achieving that alternative."
  
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• How Restaurant Menus Manipulate Customers

  29-11-2017 20:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "There is now an entire industry known as 'menu engineering', dedicated to designing menus that convey certain messages to customers, encouraging them to spend more and make them want to come back for a second helping." Reporter Richard Gray ferrets out a few tricks of the trade.
  
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• What Allan Bloom Saw In Rejection Of Elites

  29-11-2017 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Underneath a nonjudgmental relativism, Bloom saw a creeping nihilism: believing that all judgments of value had equal weight, the students ended up not believing or aspiring to much of anything at all. As a result, they no longer aspired to learn the truth, but rather to be “open-minded.” Incapable of treating moral questions and culture as anything other than matters of personal preference, they couldn’t be bothered to take seriously the task of self-reinvention that their ed
  
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• Rose Wylie review – childlike bursts of freedom and joy

  29-11-2017 19:12
  Serpentine, LondonWith her colourful dollops and scrawled captions, the late-blooming painter channels the liberation of childhood to point a way forward for British artThis is how Rose Wylie paints the sun. She does a big yellow circle. Then she adds straight yellow lines around it. Underneath she does a couple of palm trees that are brown sticks with dollops of green on top. On the sea, she adds an outline of a ship with black smoke puffing out of it.
  The teacher gave her a gold star and pinne
  
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• The Art Of The Fake: Forgers Are The Art World's Folk (Anti-)Heroes

  29-11-2017 19:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Noah Charney: "There is an element of illusionism to a good forger's craft, but also a mischievous Loki quality to them, a sense that they are 'more prankster than gangster,' and that it is okay to admire them, even cheer for them against the authorities. The tabloid media, in particular, likes to dress up art forgers as working class heroes who are 'sticking it' to the elites, showing the emperors that they wear no clothes."
  
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• The Internet As We've Known It Is Dying

  29-11-2017 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "A vibrant network doesn’t die all at once. It takes time and neglect; it grows weaker by the day, but imperceptibly, so that one day we are living in a digital world controlled by giants and we come to regard the whole thing as normal. It’s not normal. It wasn’t always this way. The internet doesn’t have to be a corporate playground. That’s just the path we’ve chosen."
  
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• James Cohan Gallery Now Represents Kathy Butterly and Grace Weaver

  29-11-2017 18:05 via artnews.com
  Both artists will have shows at the gallery in September 2018. Read More
  The post James Cohan Gallery Now Represents Kathy Butterly and Grace Weaver appeared first on ARTnews.
  
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• Why Are So Many Adaptations Of 'Swan Lake' So Dark?

  29-11-2017 18:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Black Swan isn't even the half of it. John Neumeier's version features Mad King Ludwig; James Kudelka's includes gang rape; Michael Keegan-Dolan's centers on abuse by Irish priests. There's even another film coming out about a ballerina in the lead role losing her sanity. David Jays talks to dancemakers about the darkness they find at the heart of the story.
  
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• Founders of New York Gallery Sargent’s Daughters Split as Partner Opens Space North of Chelsea

  29-11-2017 17:51 via artnews.com
  The new gallery will open in January with a show of work by Jennifer Rubell.Read More
  The post Founders of New York Gallery Sargent’s Daughters Split as Partner Opens Space North of Chelsea appeared first on ARTnews.
  
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• How Might The Republicans' Tax Plan Impact The Arts?

  29-11-2017 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Under the current rules, taxpayers can subtract the year’s charitable gifts from their income, reducing the amount of earnings that are subject to tax. President Trump’s proposal for a higher 'standard deduction', adopted by both the House and Senate bills, could mean that many taxpayers who currently deduct charitable gifts will no longer be able to do so, which could reduce the tax incentive for donating art and money to museums. While museum donors probably will not stop giving a
  
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• Enough Already With The Wildly Overrated George Orwell

  29-11-2017 17:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Ben Judah: "There is a simplicity and a clarity to Orwell's prose. It flows nicely. But there is also nothing special about it other than the fact it has been canonised as the ultimate in English authorial excellence. This is still very much a surprise to me, because there is just so much wrong with it."
  
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• Listen To This Year's Grawemeyer Award Winner, Bent Sørensen's 'L'Isola Della Città'

  29-11-2017 16:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Written for the Danish ensemble Trio con Brio and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, which gave its premiere last year, L'Isola della Città ('The Island in the City') unfolds over nearly half an hour in five continuous movements. Stealthy and subtle, its central threesome of soloists - piano, violin and cello, as in Beethoven's Triple Concerto - finds oases of calm amid flares of intensity from the orchestra."
  
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• Daniel Day-Lewis Finally Explains (Sort Of) Why He's Quitting Acting

  29-11-2017 16:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "I haven't figured it out. But it's settled on me, and it's just there. ... All my life, I've mouthed off about how I should stop acting, and I don't know why it was different this time, but the impulse to quit took root in me, and that became a compulsion. It was something I had to do."
  
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• Front Porches - New Houses Are Getting Them, And People Are Using Them Again

  29-11-2017 15:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "In the 20th century, porches couldn't compete with TV and air conditioning. Now this classic feature of American homes is staging a comeback as something more stylish and image-conscious than ever before."
  
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• Stop Making Sense: At Performa, William Kentridge Recited a Dadaist Sound Poem

  29-11-2017 15:30 via artnews.com
  The South African artist spoke about his recent performance of a 1932 work by Kurt Schwitters. Read More
  The post Stop Making Sense: At Performa, William Kentridge Recited a Dadaist Sound Poem appeared first on ARTnews.
  
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• TV Comedies Were Taking On Sexual Harassment Months Before 'The Weinstein Effect'

  29-11-2017 15:17 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Just as Louis C.K. used his stand-up specials and FX show, Louie, to recast his own sexual misconduct as transgressive comedy, his peers - multi-hyphenate TV stars like [Aziz] Ansari, Tig Notaro and Lena Dunham - have used their own platforms to mine the experience of working with guys like him, and dig into issues like how to act on intractable rumors, the social discomfort of taking a stand, and the problem with well-meaning male allies."
  
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• Big Foundations Stepping Up To Protect Arts Orgs From San Francisco Real Estate Market

  29-11-2017 15:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Think the Bay Area's arts ecosystem is in trouble now? Imagine what it would be like without the Rainin and Hewlett foundations."
  
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• Morning Links: 27 Club Edition

  29-11-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  Here's what we're reading this morning. Read More
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• #GrammysNotSoWhite: Pool Of Major Nominees May Be Most Diverse Ever

  29-11-2017 14:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "This year's increased number of artists of color and women may be a response to the current political climate in which many in those groups feel both threatened and moved to speak out. It most certainly reflects the academy's attempt to address criticism that it is out of touch with notable artists and trends shaping pop music." (For a complete list of nominees, click here.)
  
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• The Louvre Was the ‘Most Instagrammed Museum’ in 2017

  29-11-2017 14:43 via artnews.com
  The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art also ranked highly. Read More
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• Jill Barklem obituary

  29-11-2017 14:39
  Creator of the Brambly Hedge children’s booksJill Barklem, who has died of pneumonia aged 66, was the creator of the Brambly Hedge children’s titles, a richly imagined and beautifully illustrated series of stories that are a fine example of the pastoral tradition in children’s books. Inspired by her observations of the countryside around Epping in Essex, where she grew up, Jill created the series on the underground as she commuted to her degree course at St Martin’s Schoo
  
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• Classical Grammy Nominees Are *Not* The Usual Suspects

  29-11-2017 14:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Two of the five opera nominees are by Alban Berg, and the closest thing to a warhorse is The Pearl Fishers. (Unless Wozzeck counts.) All of the nominated orchestras are American, but none are from the old "Big Five." Three nominations went to the South Dakota Chorale. There's one likely shoo-in, though: the late Dmitri Hvorostovsky, for Sviridov's Russia Cast Adrift. (For a complete list of nominees, click here and scroll way down for classical.)
  
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• Nick Wadley obituary

  29-11-2017 14:21
  
  My husband, Nick Wadley, who has died aged 82, was an art historian and artist or, as he would prefer to say when he was asked what he did, he wrote and drew.Nick was born in Elstree, Hertfordshire, the youngest of four children of Kitty, an administrator at the Bank of England, and Wilfred Wadley, an accountant for the RAF. He went to Reed’s school, in Cobham, Surrey, and graduated in fine art at Kingston School of Art and in art history at the Courtauld Institute in London. Continue read
  
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• No Classic Rock (Not Even The Beatles): It's Glenn Gould Vs. Unknown Somalis In Best Historical Album Grammy Race

  29-11-2017 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The 50th anniversary edition of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band didn't make the cut, though the endlessly re-released Gould Goldberg Variations did. (This version includes every single take the pianist did.) The Goldbergs are up against a 25-disc set of Leonard Bernstein conducting Leonard Bernstein, excerpts from an archive of old Somali music that was buried in the desert during the long civil war, 1970's Afro-pop and jazz from what's now Burkina Faso, and songs by a zither-playing gospe
  
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• The Guggenheim Bilbao, 20 Years On

  29-11-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Despite a slight dip in attendance after the 2008 financial crisis, the museum has welcomed more than 20 million visitors - two-thirds of them from abroad - since it opened on 19 October 1997. In a city of around 350,000 people, the original feasibility study calculated that 400,000 visitors a year were needed to justify the initial expense (estimated at $228m by the economist Beatriz Plaza) and ongoing subsidy (currently around €9m a year)."
  
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• Philly's Oldest Alternative Art Space Is Selling Its Building

  29-11-2017 13:44 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "'We are going to switch from being building-based to being project-based,' [Painted Bride] executive director Laurel Raczka said Monday. ... The organization is not having any particularly stressful financial problems at this time, Raczka said. Rather, the decision to free itself from the building is driven by a desire to serve the city's younger artists and audiences in a way that makes sense."
  
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• The Strange Case Of The Arab Whodunnit: Noir Fiction Sees A Revival In The Mideast

  29-11-2017 13:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Away from caliphate building and sectarianism, a neo-noir revolution has been creeping across the Middle East, allowing artists and writers to act as ombudsmen in the current political climate. Jonathan [Guyer] meets the writers who are latching onto the adventure, despair and paranoia prevalent in genre fiction to tell stories that transcend the present." (audio)
  
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• Dance Works Showing Bare Breasts Defunded By Israel's Culture Ministry

  29-11-2017 13:22 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "The Culture Ministry and the Jerusalem municipality will not support three performances in Jerusalem International Dance Week, which begins Tuesday, because they feature partial nudity." (The performances are not being cancelled.)
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.28.17

  29-11-2017 10:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  Education and Engagement
  Education and engagement are increasingly being paired in job titles and descriptions. There is some sense to that, but the differences – with respect to fundamental focus – are significant. ... read more
  AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-11-28Machine-Made Art
  For as long as there have been machines, I suppose, the question has been asked: Can Machines Make Art?  ... It's an interesting question, but there is a supplementary que
  
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• Albert Watson's celebrity portraits – in pictures

  29-11-2017 08:00
  Scottish photographer Albert Watson began taking pictures of celebrities in 1973, when he famously shot Alfred Hitchcock holding a dead goose for Harper’s Bazaar. He now has more than 100 Vogue covers to his credit and continues to work at the age of 75. Many of his best-known photographs are collected in Albert Watson: Kaos, a new deluxe, limited-edition anthology published by Taschen. They’re also being exhibited at the Taschen Gallery in Los Angeles to 1 December Continue reading.
  
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• "Hamilton" Breaks Broadway Box Office Records Over Thanksgiving

  29-11-2017 00:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  With many tourists in the city, schools on break and star power lifting the tide, audiences turned out en masse. “Hamilton” grossed a whopping $3.4 million in a regular eight-performance week, breaking its own record set this January. With the show sold out nonstop, the average ticket price hit $321.13, reflecting a premium pricing model that producers have started to employ across the industry.
  
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