Arts news

• Want To Sponsor Artwork In The Notre Dame Restoration?

  21-05-2021 23:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  The organization Friends of Notre Dame de Paris is letting the public donate directly to sponsor some of the cathedral’s individual artifacts. To date, 10 artworks have been fully funded, all of them sculptures, at around $10,000 each. – Artnet
  
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• A Film That Takes Us Inside The Met Museum In A Difficult Year

  21-05-2021 23:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The film puts us on remarkably intimate terms with the gargantuan organism that is the Met and the many tasks that keep it running. We wander through back hallways and empty galleries, in and out of conservation labs, privy to recent (unannounced) discoveries beneath the surface of a familiar masterpiece.” – The New York Times
  
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• Dysfunctional DC Arts Commission To Get A New Leader

  21-05-2021 22:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  If approved by the D.C. Council, Reginald Van Lee will lead an 18-member board that critics describe as dysfunctional, toxic and beset by cronyism and white supremacy, according to internal documents and reports and interviews with 14 people associated with the commission. A partner agency of the National Endowment of the Arts, the commission awarded 1,044 grants worth $29.9 million last year; this year’s grant budget is $33 million. – Washington Post
  
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• Do Away With Classics Because They’re Imperialist?

  21-05-2021 21:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  “As the field’s most famous practitioner, and a dedicated anti-racist and feminist, Mary Beard takes a middle position: she believes neither that classics deserves a pedestal nor that it must be destroyed. Recently, in conversation, Beard defended her stance—and spoke about feminist translations, Internet manners, and the fluid properties of the canon.” – The New Yorker
  
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• How The AI That’s Supposed To Revolutionize Dubbing Foreign Films Actually Works

  21-05-2021 20:58 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The technology is related to deepfaking, which uses AI to paste one person’s face onto someone else. … It involves capturing the facial expressions and movements of an actor in a scene as well as someone speaking the same lines in another language. This information is then combined to create a 3D model that merges the actor’s face and head with the lip movements of the dubber.” – Wired
  
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• The Pitfalls Of Public Philosophers

  21-05-2021 20:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  “We urbanites, who dwell in the medium of public political discussion, also live in the element of opinion. Leo Strauss loved to intimate that a few of us could instead live in the element of knowledge, as if he were hanging up a shingle that read ‘Secrets, this way!’ The irony of saying such a thing in public is obvious.” – Aeon
  
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• Meet The Grand Old Man Of Kathakali

  21-05-2021 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  Kalamandalam Gopi, who’s about to turn 84, has been studying and performing the dance-drama form from the Indian state of Kerala for 70 years, taught generations of performers, and set new standards in the genre’s stage makeup, gestures, and use of facial expressions. To celebrate his 80th birthday, he chose to perform one of the most demanding roles in the entire Kathakali repertoire. – The Hindu (India)
  
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• Why Are Telecom Companies So Bad At Media?

  21-05-2021 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Joseph Epstein once wrote that “Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.” He must have been talking about the telecom chief executives. Envy is the driving force behind their explorations — and the reason their efforts repeatedly fail. They are almost always envious of the success of Internet-based companies. They hated Google for making money from advertising. They hated Apple for making money from music. They were envious of Netflix making the big dollars
  
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• The Guardian view on cryptoart: caution is necessary | Editorial

  21-05-2021 19:15
  
  Non-fungible tokens are all the rage in the art market, but the environmental impact is hugeNFTs – non-fungible tokens – are being grandly hyped in the art market. There were headlines globally when a digital artwork by Beeple (real name Mike Winkelmann) was sold by Christie’s in March for $69.3m, along with an NFT – effectively a token proving ownership, which is stored on a blockchain. Blockchains, unalterable and unhackable “digital ledgers” that are also u
  
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• ‘This American Wife’: When Yale Drama Grads Take On The ‘Real Housewives’ Franchise

  21-05-2021 19:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  “This project takes formal cues from lensed images. It’s styled as an episode of Real Housewives run amok, and the team cites French surrealist film, the photography of Man Ray, and the melodramas of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Douglas Sirk as major inspirations.” – The New York Times
  
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• Claim: Virtual Reality Is Where The Internet Was 20 Years Ago

  21-05-2021 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  With VR evolving at its current rate, movie nights or game nights could eventually turn into cyber nights, a new norm for those under 35. Games would no longer need to be marketed towards one group or identity, and would enable a more casual audience to approach virtual worlds without the traditional complexities. For more experienced audiences, this would be a new immersive way to play their favorite franchises. – NASDAQ.com
  
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• Sometimes The Best Way To Preserve Ancient Mosaics Is To Rebury Them

  21-05-2021 18:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  “[Floor mosaics are] an art form that is usually in good condition when first discovered because floors are the first area to be naturally buried over time. But once exposed, mosaics become especially vulnerable to damage by root growth, animals, and humans.” – Hyperallergic
  
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• Gavin Larsen: The Everyday Ballerina

  21-05-2021 17:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  “I danced some fabulous ballets and fabulous roles. And yet there’s hundreds more like me — thousands maybe. We might be exceptional in one way: You reached the top level of your career, and you have these pinnacle moments onstage. But at the end of the day, we’re all a gang. We’re all a crew, we’re all a posse of ballerinas.” – The New York Times
  
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• John Ferguson obituary

  21-05-2021 17:30
  
  As an established heraldic artist both in the UK and abroad, my friend and colleague John Ferguson, who has died aged 96, produced exquisitely fine heraldic artwork for private clients, corporate bodies, civic authorities and international companies for more than 60 years.John was born in Wimbledon, south London, to Norman, a clerk at the Admiralty research laboratory in Teddington, and his wife, Betty (nee Barrett), and went to Raynes Park boys’ school. When at an early age he was told by
  
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• Matthew Barney: Redoubt review – mountains carved in the hunter’s sights

  21-05-2021 17:17
  
  Hayward Gallery, LondonWild animals and menacing women with guns stalk Barney’s grizzled ranger in the artists’ feature-length work that retells Ovid’s mythological tale of Diana and Actaeon
  Matthew Barney’s Redoubt at the Hayward is a bewildering and intriguing litany of objects and fleeting, capricious images. At its heart is a feature-length film whose themes and images are continued and compounded by several monumentally scaled sculptures and a long series of engraved
  
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• Sex Scenes On Screen Aren’t Disappearing. In Fact, They’re Getting Better.

  21-05-2021 17:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Today’s sex scenes are first and foremost fun — as ideally sex itself should be — and emphasize the truthful over the tasteful. In some cases, you’ll see likable, relatable characters revealing perverse predilections. … Other moments make for embarrassing yet endearing waypoints en route to real intimacy. … Other filmmakers bulldoze the boundaries of which bodies the culture industry deems fit to depict.” – The Conversation
  
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• Yorkshire church to install stone carvings celebrating women

  21-05-2021 16:46
  
  Medieval St Mary’s in Beverley to install nine historical figures including Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary SeacoleThey have graced the exterior of one of the most beautiful medieval churches in England for 500 years. But carvings at St Mary’s in Beverley, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, have become unrecognisable fragments, eroded by centuries of weather.Now the crumbling stonework is to be replaced by nine carvings celebrating the achievements of women. Eight are historical figures f
  
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• ‘The French Author Is No Longer Just The White Man Over 50’; The Gallic Literary World Is Finally Diversifying

  21-05-2021 16:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Major publishers have created special collections to promote first-time authors and ethnic minorities while new publishing houses are opening the field to a larger spectrum of writers, styles, and subject matter. … In parallel, writing workshops and graduate degrees in creative writing – once seen as a North American concept – are popping up around the country and acting as gateways to publication for burgeoning writers. Taken together, these efforts are forcing change
  
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• Alix Dobkin, ‘Head Lesbian’ And First Star Of Womyn’s Music, Dead At 80

  21-05-2021 16:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  “In the early 1970s, long before the rise of lesbian or gay-friendly acts such as K.D. Lang, Melissa Etheridge, Ani DiFranco and the Indigo Girls, Ms. Dobkin was writing and recording songs that celebrated lesbian life. … [She made] music history in 1973 when she released Lavender Jane Loves Women, generally considered the first full-length album by, for and about lesbians.” Dobkin went on to spend decades performing on the lesbian coffeehouse-bookstore-music festival circuit
  
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• Chimps in lingerie from a magical master – Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict review

  21-05-2021 16:00
  
  Royal Academy, London
  The Kenyan painter conjures up delirious forest landscapes and surreal scenes of African city life. But there are dangers lurking in this paradise – as well as superb spoofs on European paintingThe holes in Michael Armitage’s paintings are worrying. He paints on lubugo bark cloth, which plainly isn’t as strong as canvas and naturally breaks in places to create these disappearances. It’s a lovely effect, suggesting gaps in history and conscience. But
  
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• A young master of the grotesque and down a rabbit hole at the V&A – the week in art

  21-05-2021 15:59
  
  Michael Armitage’s paintings seriously (and amusingly) impress, Alice’s wonderland continues to inspire, and Matthew Barney unveils his new film – all in your weekly dispatchMichael ArmitageSuperbly rich and subtle paintings that are by turns beautiful, grotesque, tragic and hilarious, by a major young talent who already rivals the masters. See this.
  Royal Academy, London, 22 May-19 September.Continue reading...
  
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• Eight Ways The Protests After George Floyd’s Death Changed American Culture

  21-05-2021 15:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  “From Judas and the Black Messiah to H.E.R.’s ‘I Can’t Breathe,’ from the canceling of podcasts to the toppling of monuments to oppression, from White Fragility to Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist: Thanks to the culture we shared in a year unlike any other, the world looks, for better or worse, at least a little different.” – The New York Times
  
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• Honey, I Found A Guarneri In The Attic

  21-05-2021 15:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  “A violin found in an attic in Italy has been confirmed as a priceless instrument made by Giuseppe Guarneri ‘filius Andreae’ in c.1705. The age of the wood was confirmed using dendrochronology, and the researchers were even able to prove it came from the same tree as the wood in an already-identified violin by the same maker.” – The Strad
  
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• This Is What Banksy Gets For Saying ‘Copyright Is For Losers’

  21-05-2021 14:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  “In a new decision issued by the [European Union] IPO Cancellation Division, a trademark owned by street artist Banksy has been declared invalid. … The attorney who represented the opposing party in the case” — a greeting-card company — “said ‘the real nail in the coffin’ that led to the ruling was ‘the public comments of Banksy and his lawyer’.” – World Trademark Review
  
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• New York’s Drama Book Shop, Saved By ‘Hamilton’, Set To Reopen

  21-05-2021 14:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  “[The] quirky 104-year-old Manhattan specialty store that has long been a haven for aspiring artists as well as a purveyor of scripts, will reopen next month with a new location, a new look, and a new team of starry owners — the Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, as well as the show’s director, Thomas Kail, lead producer, Jeffrey Seller, and the theater owner James L. Nederlander,” who bought the store in 2019 after it lost its lease and closed. – The New York Ti
  
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• ‘I’m broken and my only sin was being a woman’ – Gabrielle Goliath’s survivors

  21-05-2021 13:54
  
  The South African artist’s latest installation asks sexual violence survivors to choose a song to articulate their agonyThe event that shaped Gabrielle Goliath’s life as an artist happened when she was nine years old: a schoolfriend was killed in an act of domestic violence, the details of which have never been clear. “It would have been an accident,” she says, from her home in Johannesburg, 30 years on. “But, you know, when these things happen within a family, no o
  
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• Ramsay art prize: Kate Bohunnis wins $100,000 award for steel and silicon sculpture

  21-05-2021 04:44
  
  South Australian artist awarded the richest prize for Australian artists under 40 with pendulum-inspired Edges of Excess
  South Australian artist Kate Bohunnis has won the $100,000 Ramsay art prize for her hypnotic and unnerving sculpture, Edges of Excess.The biennial award, which is open to Australian-based artists under 40 working in any medium and run by Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), attracted 350 entries for its third outing, culminating in a crop of 24 finalists from around the coun
  
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• The Enduring Influence Of Midori

  21-05-2021 00:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  What might sound like general pep-talk fodder for the averagely scheduled person is actually just pragmatic paraphrase for Midori, whose prodigious musical talent was merely the first movement in a career that has extended into music education, community outreach and arts advocacy. – Washington Post
  
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