Arts news

• How To Tell Whether Research is Trustworthy

  01-12-2023 19:29 via theatlantic.com
  Lately, however, the social-science world has become mired in controversy. Researchers themselves have started to note that many famous experiments have been debunked—such as, indeed, the Stanford prison experiment—or simply can’t be replicated. – The Atlantic
  
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• The arts are heading into a doom loop | Letters

  01-12-2023 19:05
  
  Alan Davey thinks less money, less certainty in funding, and hostility to ideas leads to less risk taking and new work. Susan Jones sets out how Labour should take actionCharlotte Higgins outlines a profound truth in her stirring and timely call to save the arts (Culture is not trivial, it’s about who we are. That’s why Labour needs a plan to save the arts, 26 November). After 13 years of being a punchbag in culture wars or a punchline in sneers at the elite, cultural life and what i
  
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• John Byrne obituary

  01-12-2023 18:13
  
  Playwright and artist who wrote the BBC series Tutti Frutti and Your Cheatin’ Heart, and plays including The Slab BoysThe work of the Scottish painter and playwright John Byrne, who has died aged 83, was all of a piece. His characters and caricatures, on stage or canvas, all stemmed from a sly, literate sense of humour, a close acquaintance with popular culture, and a fierce political independence.Byrne himself entered that realm of popular culture with two acclaimed drama series on televi
  
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• Volcanic prints, Mapplethorpe’s mates and Puerto Rico’s Palestinians – the week in art

  01-12-2023 15:54
  
  The history of 500 years of print from Picasso to Emin, Robert Mapplethorpe’s portraits of his famous friends, and the Palestinian diaspora in Puerto Rico – all in your weekly dispatchThe Printmaker’s Art: Rembrandt to Rego
  Five hundred years of woodcuts, etchings and linocuts with artists including Picasso and Tracey Emin.
  • National, Edinburgh, 2 December to 25 February Continue reading...
  
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• Sunak says retaining Parthenon marbles is matter of law as he denies ‘hissy fit’

  01-12-2023 14:00
  
  PM reaffirms stance after George Osborne suggests snub to Greek counterpart was result of ‘petulance’UK politics live – latest updatesRishi Sunak has denied having a “hissy fit” over the Parthenon marbles row and has said they cannot be returned to Greece “as a matter of law”.The prime minister this week accused his Greek counterpart of using a trip to London to “grandstand” over the issue of the ancient Greek sculptures. Continue reading...
  
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• Renowned Scottish playwright and artist John Byrne dies aged 83

  01-12-2023 13:37
  
  Byrne described as ‘one of the most inventive and versatile of all Scotland’s modern artists’The renowned artist and playwright John Byrne, whose parallel careers spanned the acclaimed BBC television series Tutti Frutti, the Slab Boys theatre trilogy and an album cover for the Beatles, has died at the age of 83.He died peacefully on Thursday with his wife, Jeanine, by his side, the Fine Art Society announced in a statement on Friday morning, describing Byrne as “one of th
  
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• John Byrne: the maverick Scottish playwright and artist was a master observer

  01-12-2023 12:08
  
  Byrne, who has died aged 83, used his life as a constant source of inspiration for exuberant plays and paintingsIf John Byrne had been known only for The Slab Boys, he would be considered one of Scotland’s great cultural figures. But Byrne, who died on Thursday aged 83, was responsible for so much more than the trilogy of plays that helped put Robbie Coltrane on the map. He created the TV series Tutti Frutti, also starring Coltrane, and was a celebrated artist, screenwriter, illustrator an
  
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• ‘Our tapestries open ears’: the South African women stitching monumental tales of love and loss

  01-12-2023 11:00
  
  A collective based in Eastern Cape has tackled funerals, colonialism and HIV in massive fabric artworks. Their latest piece is a heartfelt cry against climate breakdownStanding at the foot of the giant hanging tapestry, Veronica Betani recalls the bitter period that is depicted in its colourful threads: mourning women watching over orphaned children, a hospital room filled with gaunt bodies, a burial.“This is the funeral of Mama Susan Paliso’s son,” she sighs, staring at the wo
  
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• Is Rishi Sunak using the Parthenon marbles as a distraction? Perhaps – but so are the Greeks | Marina Prentoulis

  01-12-2023 11:00
  
  For both the UK prime minister and Kyriakos Mitostakis, this row is actually about nationalist politics. The sculptures are just a facadeFor Britain, renewed demands by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece’s prime minister, to relinquish the Parthenon marbles brings the country face to face with its colonial past. For Greece, repatriating the sculptures, which have been housed in the British Museum since 1817, is a matter of national identity.For the past 200 years, Greeks have leaned heavily on th
  
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• Nan Goldin named art world’s most influential figure

  01-12-2023 06:00
  
  Photographer and campaigner against Sackler family tops ArtReview Power 100 listNan Goldin, the pioneering photographer and campaigner against the billionaires who fuelled the US opioid epidemic, has topped an annual ranking of the contemporary art world’s most influential people and organisations.Goldin, 70, took the number one spot on the ArtReview Power 100 list. This year, for the first time, the top 10 is made up entirely of artists who use their work and platforms to intervene in the
  
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• Emily Kam Kngwarray: stunning retrospective brings perspective – and agency – to an Australian great

  01-12-2023 00:38
  
  The National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition contextualises the artist away from the western market, bringing us ‘the old lady’ through the prism of her country, her culture and her communityA western story is invariably grafted on to Australia’s most prominent Indigenous visual artists – a reductive paradigm through which they can be more easily understood, interpreted and written about. And as a practitioner celebrated at the vanguard of the 1970s and 80s centra
  
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