Arts news

• ByteDance Sues US Government Over TikTok Ban

  07-05-2024 23:32 via wsj.com
  ByteDance has said it can’t and won’t sell its U.S. operations by the deadline, leaving litigation as its best hope to maintain its U.S. market. The lawsuit accuses the government of trampling on TikTok’s First Amendment rights—as well as the free-speech rights of millions of Americans. – The Wall Street Journal
  
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• Reaching For Historical Parallels: Why Thucydides Still Resonates

  07-05-2024 23:00 via aeon.co
  
  Thucydides knew that we did not have full control of the analogies that shape our deliberations, especially in public life. Our analogical vocabulary is woven directly into the cultural fabric, a product of the contingencies that shape collective memory. – Aeon
  
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• The British Museum’s Blockbuster Wars

  07-05-2024 22:32 via newyorker.com
  
  In the past year or so, the British Museum has been wrestling—often in public, and often to its considerable embarrassment—with what might be characterized as the twin legacies of Townley and Elgin. – The New Yorker
  
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• Does The World Really Need Literary Criticism?

  07-05-2024 22:01 via publicbooks.org
  
  If we look at the longer history of the study of literature… it’s only at the very end of the 20th century that we got something that is professional, that can be called criticism, that has to do specifically with the judgment of literary works. – Public Books
  
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• Goodbye to gallery audio guides at last | Brief letters

  07-05-2024 18:02
  
  Castle Howard exhibition | John Cleese and racism | Hidden cost of coffee in Italy | Fair toilet provisionThree cheers for Sir Tony Cragg (‘They look sad’: Tony Cragg scraps audio guides for Castle Howard exhibition, 2 May). For years I have waited patiently at exhibitions behind someone with headphones listening to three minutes of talk about a picture, usually followed by three seconds looking at that picture. Paintings are visual art, to be looked at. Background information and go
  
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• Standing stones, urban hellscapes and male nudes: Derek Jarman’s glorious Super 8 short films

  07-05-2024 16:42
  
  The easy freedom of this medium allowed the artist to range over subjects as diverse as tarot, male nudes at Fire Island and a friend’s flat – and offer clues to his more public feature filmsThirty years after his death in February 1994, it is perhaps unexpected that Derek Jarman – multi-faceted artist, activist, film-maker, socialiser – is probably now most widely known as a gardener. The patch of beautifully arranged salt-resistant vegetation he built around a windswept
  
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• Canaletto masterpiece returns to Wales 80 years after it was hidden in slate mine

  07-05-2024 13:44
  
  The Stonemason’s Yard, moved for safekeeping during WW2, is going on display at National Library of WalesDuring the second world war, the painting was transported 250 miles from central London to north Wales to be hidden in a slate mine, tucked away from the perils of Nazi invasion and Luftwaffe bombings.Eighty years on, there has been a sort of homecoming for Canaletto’s masterpiece, The Stonemason’s Yard, as it returns to form the centrepiece of a show opening this week at th
  
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• Blood, blood, everywhere: how Frank Lebon turned a gory obsession into lyrical photographs

  07-05-2024 12:56
  
  The cult artist became so fixated with blood tests that he ended up teaching a doctor how to do them. He saw this as a sign and it infused One Blood, a project drawing on intimate moments from his lifeFrank Lebon is fascinated by blood. It’s the connecting theme that flows through his first art book, One Blood, a photographic project that takes us through the Covid-19 pandemic, a type 1 diabetes diagnosis, and love, family and friendship.“I’m always collecting some sort of imag
  
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• Guernica-style battle of Orgreave painting stars in miners’ strikes exhibition

  07-05-2024 07:00
  
  Bob Olley’s unsettling vision of clash between miners and police is part of 40th anniversary show in Bishop AucklandBob Olley was there 40 years ago at the “battle of Orgreave”. “I saw the violence,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought I was in a foreign country when I saw what the police did. It is hard to believe it happened in this country.”The brutality he and others witnessed on 18 June 1984 as striking miners met 6,000 police officers on horses o
  
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• Painting of vulva by French artist Gustave Courbet sprayed with ‘MeToo’ graffiti

  07-05-2024 05:18
  
  French-Luxembourgish performance artist Deborah de Robertis says she organised the stunt, after which two people were arrestedTwo women have sprayed the words “MeToo” on a 19th-century painting of a woman’s vulva by French artist Gustave Courbet in a stunt by a performance artist, a museum and the artist said.“The Origin of the World”, a nude painted from 1866, was protected by a “glass pane” and the police were on site to assess the damage, the Centre P
  
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• Painting of vagina by French artist Gustave Courbet sprayed with ‘MeToo’ graffiti

  07-05-2024 05:18
  
  French-Luxembourgish performance artist Deborah de Robertis says she organised the stunt, after which two people were arrestedTwo women have sprayed the words “MeToo” on a 19th-century painting of a woman’s vagina by French artist Gustave Courbet in a stunt by a performance artist, a museum and the artist said.“The Origin of the World”, a nude painted from 1866, was protected by a “glass pane” and the police were on site to assess the damage, the Centre
  
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