Arts news

• Chloe Zhao Wins Director’s Guild Honor, Cementing Her Status As Presumptive Oscar Favorite

  11-04-2021 21:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Zhao, director of Nomadland, is the first woman of color and only the second woman ever to win the DGA award. Though director David Fincher didn’t win for Mank, he had a great line: “Directing … is a bit like trying to paint a watercolor from four blocks away through a telescope, over a walkie-talkie, and 85 people are holding the brush.” – The New York Times
  
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• New Guidelines Suggest Actors Set Nudity Boundaries Before Filming

  11-04-2021 21:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  To keep actors safe – and, of course, to cover their own liability – some productions are now employing intimacy coordinators. But contracts can go farther, and the #TimesUp group has suggested that “a so-called ‘nudity rider’ or ‘simulated sex waiver’ should be in place before filming begins.” – BBC
  
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• Statues Are Living The High Life In Boris Johnson’s Britain

  11-04-2021 20:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Lucky statues! “Without themselves needing to organise, these historically neglected members of the inanimate community have within the last few months secured privileges, protections and high-level advocacy that, in addition to their existing plinth status, falls only narrowly short of full suffrage – and even that cannot confidently be ruled out.” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• So You Want To Be In The Movies

  11-04-2021 20:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  The easiest part of being an extra, ahem, a background artist, is that you just have to be there. “Being an extra requires no experience, no acting talent and no talking.” – Los Angeles Times
  
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• A Monument To Jefferson Davis In The Hands Of Anti-Racist Activists Becomes A Toilet

  11-04-2021 19:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  The monument, stolen (or “liberated,” if you prefer) from a cemetery in Alabama, will now be returned to its former owners, United Daughters of the Confederacy. “‘Everything about the South is painfully polite, even the racism, that is, until it’s not. We don’t have the luxury of being polite,’ the activists said in a statement. ‘We aren’t doing this for parades, to dress up and relive the glory days.'” – Hyperallergic
  
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• This One Key Trick Predicts Blockbuster Success

  11-04-2021 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Despite what every podcast host says (is forced to say?) and what your author friends tell you, it’s not five-star reviews. Those are literally a dime a dozen. This is a different appeal, according to a study, and it explains why people crying about books on TikTok can juice those books’ sales. – Fast Company
  
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• A New Path Forward For Museums

  11-04-2021 18:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Art museums sometimes have difficulties responding to the current moment, by design. A new show in Louisville might change some of that. “Conventional encyclopedic museums like the Speed, the largest and oldest art museum in Kentucky, are glacial machines. Their major exhibitions are usually years in the planning. Borrowing objects from other museums can be a red tape tangle.” A new show about Breonna Taylor’s life changes the equations. “It speeds up exhibition producti
  
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• Anne Beatts, Who Broke Into National Lampoon And Saturday Night Live Before Getting Her Own Sitcom, 74

  11-04-2021 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Beatts helped shape the early days of Saturday Night Live. “‘It was pretty much any adjective you want to throw at it,’ she told the Orange County Register in 2013. ‘It was exciting, stimulating and fabulous. It was also horrible, boring and exhausting.'” – Washington Post
  
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• Frieze Los Angeles Writes Off 2021, Makes Plans For 2022

  11-04-2021 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  The art fest was planned for February, then July, and at locations all over the city (supposedly to promote social distancing). But as July get closer, organizers decided to move it once again – to an online-only location, and to try a 2022 restart in real life. Pandemic uncertainty strikes again. – Los Angeles Times
  
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• Where The World Of Comedy Throws Obstacles, These Women Have Forged Their Own Paths

  11-04-2021 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  It’s not easy for a woman in comedy, and that’s doubly true for a Black woman. Ask Ziwe (who now has a series on Netflix). “You really have to create for yourself and create in that vacuum because you’re not going to get the instant gratification and validation.” – Variety
  
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• We’re Living In A Golden Age For Documentaries, But They Have To Drop Their Cheesy Re-enactments

  11-04-2021 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  The rush of documentaries – they are cheaper to make, and especially if they’re true crime, there’s a willing and eager audience – has some aesthetic issues. “Cornball fuzzy re-creations lack credibility. … It doesn’t have to be like this. Plenty of recent shows and movies have made compelling artistic choices that enliven the storytelling.” – The New York Times
  
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• Taylor Swift, Reclaiming Her Music With A New, Re-Recorded Release Of An Early Album

  11-04-2021 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  The business side of music can be vicious for its musicians, and when a label owned by a man you loathe gets to profit off your music? Well. “The debut this week of the now 31-year-old Swift’s full rerecording of that album she made at 18, under the title Fearless (Taylor’s Version), is a reminder of how inextricably blurred the creative and the commercial always are in pop music. Rerecording the albums is a business strategy that, by its self-consciously meta-narrat
  
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• Rachel Whiteread: ‘I wanted to make the opposite of what I had always been making’

  11-04-2021 16:00
  
  The artist has taken a radical new direction, turning her back on casts and creating sculptures from scavenged material. She explains how a bipolar diagnosis has changed her workRachel Whiteread, Internal Objects review – five starsWhen I last spoke to Rachel Whiteread, I declared loftily that she would always make casts, that she’d never do anything else. Because that’s what she’d been doing for more than 30 years; that was her language. She began by casting the void und
  
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• Rachel Whiteread: ‘I have a clarity I never had before’

  11-04-2021 16:00
  
  The artist has taken a radical new direction, turning her back on casts and creating sculptures from scavenged material. She explains how a bipolar diagnosis has changed her workWhen I last spoke to Rachel Whiteread, I declared loftily that she would always make casts, that she’d never do anything else. Because that’s what she’d been doing for more than 30 years; that was her language. She began by casting the void under a chair, then she cast the gap under a bed. She cast tiny
  
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• A New Cache Of Money For Strapped Venues – If Only The Website Would Work

  11-04-2021 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  The Small Business Association opened a grant portal for arts venues closed down by the pandemic – and, after a few hours of deep misery for every arts venue trying to apply, took it all offline, indefinitely. “Anyone who tried to log on to apply for grants when the portal first opened was met with different error messages at each step. The SBA clarified in a tweet that they did not accept any applications or distribute any funding.” – NPR
  
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• The Show Wynonna Earp Came At A Dark Time For Queer Women On TV, And It Bucked A Bad Trend

  11-04-2021 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  In 2016, 25 queer women characters on TV died on scripted TV and streaming shows. But Wynonna Earp promised to be different. With the choices the writers’ room and showrunner made, viewers saw “an acknowledgement of — and a direct rebuke to — a hurtful trope.” They rewarded the producer with trust and increased interest. – Los Angeles Times
  
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• The Inevitability Of Fake Art

  11-04-2021 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  It’s every art dealer’s nightmare, but if a fake is a beautiful painting, what’s our problem with it? We care about authorship is why – but humans didn’t always care. “What mattered before the Renaissance was the meaning of an image, not the ineffable singularity of the image-maker’s touch.” – Hyperallergic
  
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• Actor Riz Ahmed Says He’s At His Best When He’s Overwhelmed

  11-04-2021 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Ahmed, whose performance in The Sound of Metal has been nominated for countless awards this season, doesn’t prefer the easy life. When he was a kid, he says, “I wanted to perform in some way, but I didn’t think it was viable. Teachers told me I should be a barrister, because I was always arguing with them.” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• Ethel Gabriel, Who Ran Parts Of RCA Victor For 40 Years, Has Died At 99

  11-04-2021 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Gabriel began working at RCA when she was a student at Temple University, testing records for manufacturing imperfections. And she didn’t leave. “Gabriel often said that she had produced some 2,500 records. [Documentary researcher April] Tucker said officials at Sony, which now holds RCA’s archives, had told her that the number may actually be higher, since contributions were not always credited.” – The New York Times
  
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• The Big Winners From Night One Of The BAFTAs

  11-04-2021 13:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Ma Rainey, Mank, and others win on the first night of the British Academy Film and Television Arts awards, when mostly the crafts are recognized. – Variety
  
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• Mystery over origins of Howard Hodgkin’s Indian art collection could see it lost to UK

  11-04-2021 09:15
  
  Ashmolean in Oxford turned down chance to buy exquisite paintings and drawings, which may now go to New YorkIndian paintings and drawings had been his lifelong passion and, before his death in 2017, the artist Sir Howard Hodgkin hoped that his collection would be acquired by the Ashmolean in Oxford – only for the museum to reject his offer amid concerns that some of the works should never have left India.Now Britain’s loss could be America’s gain. Trustees of the Metropolitan M
  
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