Arts news

• The Exploding Market For NFT Art

  16-04-2021 23:27 via feedproxy.google.com
  Most people still do not really understand it, but with the influx of cryptocapital into the NFT art market, all eyes are now glued to the possibilities of NFT art. “This whole mainstream sweep happened sooner than we anticipated,” says Jonathan Perkins, the co-founder of SuperRare, which launched in 2018. In its first year, it averaged about $8,000 a month in sales. By the second year, $100,000 a month. Last month — around the time it announced a series-A investment from the
  
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• Fake News As A Virus

  16-04-2021 23:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  What’s different today is the speed, scope and scale of misinformation, enabled by technology. Online media has given voice to previously marginalised groups, including peddlers of untruth, and has supercharged the tools of deception at their disposal. The transmission of falsehoods now spans a viral cycle in which AI, professional trolls and our own content-sharing activities help to proliferate and amplify misleading claims. These new developments have come on the heels of rising inequa
  
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• Where Dance Is Online

  16-04-2021 22:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  Somehow, despite the continued strain and strife, many dance companies have successfully adapted to the evolving digital stage — reimagining Nutcracker seasons, digitizing never-before-seen archival videos and launching their own streaming services. – Washington Post
  
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• Head Of New York Theatre Workshop To Step Down After 34 Years

  16-04-2021 22:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  James C. Nicola, the artistic director of New York Theater Workshop, announced on Friday that he will step down in June 2022. At that point, he will have spent 34 years — nearly half his life — at the off-Broadway theater, which spawned the once-in-a-lifetime hit musical “Rent” and grew under his leadership into a steady home for provocative fare by the likes of Caryl Churchill, the Five Lesbian Brothers and the director Ivo van Hove. – The New York Times
  
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• Hail Satan shoes: why did the ‘Banksy of the internet’ put blood in 666 Nike Air Max?

  16-04-2021 22:00
  
  The trainer manufacturer soon sued, but has that just increased the appeal of MSCHF’s ‘drops’?By now, you may have heard of the Satan shoes.In March, a “company” called MSCHF injected a drop of its employees’ blood into the soles of 666 pairs of red-and-black Nike Air Max trainers. It added a pentagram-shaped charm to the laces, the words “Luke 10:18” – a reference to the Bible passage, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven&rdquo
  
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• How Cellphones Power Popular Music In Africa

  16-04-2021 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  “While I was doing the recording, it became really apparent that the cellphone was such a prominent actor in that transaction,” says Christopher Kirkley. When he sat down with an artist, children nearby would pull out their cellphones and do the same. Contrary to Western notions, music from the region has been digitised at a high rate because of the use of cellphones. – New Frame
  
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• ‘Navy Twerking’: Why All Australia Is Arguing About A Dance Clip

  16-04-2021 20:58 via feedproxy.google.com
  “A video of dancers twerking in hotpants at [the dedication of a new Australian warship] … went viral when it emerged on Wednesday. But the music video-style choreography — featuring thumps, thrusts and butt shakes — also came under attack. Conservative lawmakers led the chorus of those calling it ‘inappropriate’. Tabloids splashed headlines slamming military standards. But others found offence elsewhere — projecting shame onto the dancers, and labelli
  
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• The Forgotten Land Artist

  16-04-2021 20:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  Nancy Holt was always serious. Her journals show how other artists loved talking through ideas with her. She was very close to Michael Heizer, Richard Serra and Joan Jonas. She exchanged concrete poetry by post with Carl Andre and Sol LeWitt. But when I ask Le Feuvre if the men saw her as a peer, she answers: “Yes, but.” They valued her input . But she wasn’t exhibiting in the same places they were. Similarly, it’s not that critics were dismissive of her work. They just
  
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• Now We Know This Wax Bust Is Definitely Not A Leonardo. How Do We Know? Sperm Whales

  16-04-2021 20:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  Back in 1909, a couple of very prominent German art historians decided, for various reasons, that a wax figurine of the goddess Flora that one of them had picked up at a London antique store simply had to be a genuine Leonardo da Vinci, and announced this with great fanfare. The London Times responded that no, the bust was actually sculpted by one Richard Cockle Lucas in 1860. “In the next two years, more than 730 heated articles were written debating the attribution. There were debates o
  
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• Calculation: San Francisco Says Arts Venues Can Reopen. But Are Audiences Ready To Return?

  16-04-2021 19:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  How rigorously will patrons expect to be protected from the dangers of the COVID-19 virus? Have entertainment habits atrophied during a hiatus of more than a year, or has the shutdown only made the hunger for the arts even keener? – San Francisco Chronicle
  
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• A Dance Critic On How The Pandemic Has Changed Her Work

  16-04-2021 19:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  Deborah Jowitt: “Inevitable distractions occur when filming (or viewing) dances in this climate. Dog walkers may intrude. A pet cat may decide on a star appearance. Are those two dancers barefoot on gravel? Was getting wet necessary or an artistic choice? Watching performers dancing in their apartments encourages thoughts we should probably suppress. Wow, a really tiny space (wonder how much it rents for). Nice wood floor. Check that stove. Wait a second, what was that picture on the wall
  
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• Will NFTs Empower Artists?

  16-04-2021 18:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  As blockchain technology evolves, transaction speed increases, and transaction fees decrease (all of which are slowly, but surely happening) and more content becomes uniquely identifiable using NFTs, the need for central authorities (aka gatekeepers) will diminish and possibly disappear altogether. Why? Because the creator class will be able to do it by themselves. The concept of an open, honest, one-to-one relationship between creator and community isn’t new, but the technology to do it
  
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• How The 1918 Flu Pandemic Changed America’s Public Libraries

  16-04-2021 18:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Public libraries in the United States started to proliferate in the late 1800s and early 1900s, often founded by women’s clubs and other social groups seeking to benefit their communities. Their early focus was on classic literature, which was thought to improve and transform the reader. However, thanks in part to librarianship during the [1918] pandemic, a shift occurred after World War I towards ‘useful information’, … [which] made libraries partners in many pu
  
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• Venice’s Gondola Tradition Is Endangered

  16-04-2021 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  The anthropologist Elisa Bellato has called this an ‘identity crisis’ for the artistic manufacture of the gondola. While the boat made with cheaper materials may be indistinguishable to the untrained eye, its authenticity – not to mention quality and craftsmanship – has been lost. Bellato suggests that this modern gondola is more of a simulacrum than a true specimen, emptied of the values and knowledge accumulated over centuries. – Apollo
  
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• Key Arts Figure In Belarus Freed From Prison After International Campaign

  16-04-2021 17:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Tatsiana Hatsura-Yavorska, the director of the Watch Docs Film Festival in Belarus, has been released from prison and had charges against her dropped following an international outcry from film festivals and human rights organizations. [She] was arrested in Minsk on April 5, allegedly for her role in organizing an underground photo exhibition celebrating Belarusian health workers.” – The Hollywood Reporter
  
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• Through Assassination, Official Harassment, And Right-Wing-Media Smears, A Theatre In A West Bank Refugee Camp Keeps Running

  16-04-2021 16:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  The Freedom Theatre, founded in the Jenin camp in 2006, has as dual missions “to build back Palestinian identity destroyed by years of brutal occupation and tour the often unheard, first-hand experiences of Palestinians to the international community.” Ten years ago, the company’s co-founder and leader, Juliano Mer-Khamis, was murdered just outside the camp. Director Zoe Lafferty, who has worked several times with the company, writes about how tenaciously it has kept at its wo
  
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• Singapore’s First Independent Arts Complex Is Closing, And The Arts Community There Is Worried

  16-04-2021 16:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The Substation was founded as Singapore’s first independent arts centre in 1990 by theatre doyen Kuo Pao Kun. The careers of some of Singapore’s most renowned artists … were launched here. The arts venue has always been at the forefront of efforts to push the official boundaries that limit public expression.” The closure was supposed to be temporary (its building is being renovated) but was declared permanent without warning last month, and the city-state’s
  
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• And all that jazz: innovative album covers from the 1950s on – in pictures

  16-04-2021 16:01
  
  In a new Taschen book Jazz Covers, a range of striking and colourful album artworks showcase a long-running relationship between the worlds of design and jazz music, from Archie Shepp to Duke Ellington Continue reading...
  
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• Wouldn’t It Have Made More Sense For Netflix To Just Buy Sony Pictures Outright?

  16-04-2021 15:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  Last week the video-rental-service-turned-streaming-giant paid an estimated $1 billion for five-year exclusive U.S. rights to Sony’s theatrical releases and right of first refusal for the studio’s direct-to-streaming productions. If Netflix is going to spend that kind of money, shouldn’t it have just bought Sony outright? It’s what many people expected, and all the other major Hollywood studios have been gobbled up by other corporate giants. Josef Adalian explains why a
  
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• Key Missing Link In History Of Alphabet Identified

  16-04-2021 15:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Archaeologists digging in the ancient Canaanite settlement of Lachish have unearthed a 3,500-year-old pottery shard inscribed with what they believe is the oldest text found in Israel that was written using an alphabetic script. Earlier Canaanite texts are known, but they were written using hieroglyphs or cuneiform characters.” – Haaretz (Israel)
  
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• Haunted portraits, a lost church and the mystery of colour – the week in art

  16-04-2021 15:00
  
  Elizabethan portraiture, a digital recreation of a Saxon church, and Damien Hirst – all in your weekly dispatchLove’s Labours Found
  Haunted portraits to spook the imagination - or, as the gallery has it, important new discoveries in Elizabethan and Jacobean portraiture. As commercial galleries open before museums, this is your best bet for a historical show this month.
  • Philip Mould and Co, London from 21 April until 29 May Continue reading...
  
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• French Court Rules Art Galleries Must Remain Closed (Never Mind The Auction Houses)

  16-04-2021 14:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  Gallerists, angry that their competitors at auction houses were allowed to continue operating during France’s ongoing pandemic lockdown, and arguing that online sales don’t work for their business (collectors want to see the art they’re buying in person), sued the French state, the prime minister, and the health minister. France’s Council of State has dismissed the suit, ruling that public health concerns justify keeping the galleries closed. – Artnet
  
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• Gustavo Dudamel Is Paris Opera’s Next Music Director

  16-04-2021 14:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  The world’s oldest opera company (founded in 1669 by Louis XIV) has signed one of the very few living conductors to become a celebrity in popular culture. The 40-year-old Venezuelan, the most famous product of El Sistema, begins a six-year term in his new job on August 1; he will also remain music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for at least five more seasons. – The New York Times
  
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• The Great British Art Tour: smoke tracks in a summer sky and Britain’s fight for survival

  16-04-2021 07:00
  
  With public art collections closed we are bringing the art to you, exploring highlights from across the country in partnership with Art UK. Today’s pick: Paul Nash’s Battle of Britain at the Imperial War Museum LondonPaul Nash’s oil painting, completed in 1941, evokes the intense aerial campaign fought between Britain and Germany the previous summer in the Battle of Britain.Nash described the work as “an attempt to give the sense of an aerial battle in operation over a wi
  
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• New Stats: HipHop, Rap Now Account For 22 Percent Of Listening In UK

  16-04-2021 00:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  When BPI started recording data like this in the 1990s, rap music only counted for 3.6% of the singles market. In 2020, it was 22%. – BBC
  
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