Art

How I Learned To Love Modern Poetry

“Book critics who know nothing about contemporary poetry learn to live with the terror of exposure. We’re like Cold War spies embedded in enemy territory, waiting for a joke we don’t get or some stray cultural reference that exposes us as frauds.” – Washington Post
Tags: Art, Words, 12.04.20

Painting in Brussels hall turns out to be an original by Flemish master Jacob Jordaens

Experts say ‘incredible discovery’ is the earliest known version of the early 17th century artist’s Holy Family worksA painting that hung for decades in a municipal building in Brussels has been authenticated as the work of Flemish master Jacob Jordaens.After analysis including dendrochronology – dating works from the wood panels they are painted on – experts determined that it is the oldest known version of The Holy Family by Jordaens, painted in the early 17th century. Continue reading...
Tags: Art, Europe, Belgium, Brussels, Van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, Jordaens

A Christmas Carol review – Nicholas Hytner delivers an ode to theatre

Bridge theatre, LondonSimon Russell Beale stars in an economical Dickens adaptation that reminds us of the richness of live theatreWhat has made this Victorian tale of child poverty, stalking apparitions and pathological miserliness chime across the ages? GK Chesterton cited the defeat of humbuggery and triumph of happiness. George Orwell wrote of its myth of moral transformation and the “good rich man, handing out guineas”. More recently Jack Thorne spoke of its resonance in our era of austerit...
Tags: Books, Theatre, Culture, George Orwell, Stage, Charles Dickens, Dickens, Jack Thorne, GK Chesterton, Simon Russell Beale, Nicholas Hytner, Bridge theatre, LondonSimon Russell Beale, Simon Russell Beale Patsy Ferran, Eben Figueiredo

Adding Animation for Beginners

There are a wide variety of options available for use on different platforms when it comes to animation. Knowing how to use these animations effectively is the key to avoiding fatal flaws in your presentation. Employing animations incorrectly can overwhelm a presentation. Not utilizing animations at all also has its drawbacks, making the slide deck seem less polished. Over the years we have found some tried and true guidelines we thought we’d share to get you started. Easily Elevate (with...
Tags: Design, Uncategorized, Transition, Animation, Tips, Powerpoint, Slides, Consistency, Presentation, Animations, Speaking, Transitions, Presentation Science, Presentation Design, Google Slides, Timing

Why Producers Are Killing Movie Theatres

“We’re witnessing a transformation of what it means to watch a movie. For over a century, film was at its core a theatrical art form: While it’s true that movies could be watched on TV, the primary cinematic experience was immersive viewing in a theater surrounded by strangers. Now there is a push to make the movie theater merely one platform among others, offering an experience deemed no more meaningful than watching the same feature-length visual narratives on a home entertainment system, a l...
Tags: Art, Media, Audience, 12.04.20

The Mystery of Illinois' Short-Lived Cookie Monster Mural

Forget the monoliths—there’s a new monument perplexing America. An artist was commissioned by a local business owner to create a mural of Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster on the side of his building. There was only one problem: This patron of the arts didn’t actually own the building, and he’s all but disappeared. Read more...
Tags: Art, Science, Cookie Monster, Interview, Sesame Street, America, Artists, Mysteries, Illinois, Murals

Why The Most Interesting British Philosophers Were Born Before WWI

This mix of genius, the dark history of the mid-20th century and wonderful anecdotes and gossip about intellectual life in Oxford and Cambridge make for a good read. There are some fine philosophers around today but the smart money would still bet that the next major biography of a philosopher will be about someone born before the First World War. – The Critic
Tags: Art, Ideas, Oxford, Cambridge, 12.06.20

New AI Can Predict Your Moral Principles

The development team “choose to focus on a theory commonly used by social scientists called Moral foundations theory. It postulates several key categories of morality including care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity.  The aim of the new models is to infer values of those five moral foundations just by looking at their writing, regardless of what they are talking about.” – IEEE Spectrum
Tags: Art, Ideas, 12.04.20

America’s Iconic Hotel Atriums

“We don’t build them much anymore, but Americans invented, perfected and exported this unique building style to the world (where it continues to prosper). Birthed in brash excess, atrium hotels were first seen as too gaudy by the modernist architectural establishment and as too profligate by penny-pinching chain hoteliers. To varying observers, they suggest everything from Disney to dystopia. But in their heyday, these buildings promised — and delivered — a spectacle like no other.” – Bloomberg...
Tags: Art, Disney, America, Visual, 12.06.20

How ‘Citizen Kane’ Got To Be, And Stopped Being, The ‘Greatest Film Ever Made’

“Maybe it’s hard to imagine now, but for many years, Kane‘s dominance wasn’t a matter of personal preference. It was practically a piece of data — like the name of the president, or the location of Florida. Miles and miles of words have been written about why Orson Welles’s masterpiece was so widely acclaimed … [and], of course, about whether it deserves that acclaim — not to mention who, exactly, is responsible for its greatness. But how did Citizen Kane become so firmly established at the top...
Tags: Art, Media, Orson Welles, Kane, Bilge Ebiri, 12.04.20, Florida Miles

It’s Time For Movies To Move On Beyond Theatres

“It’s time for the creative cinema establishment to catch up to the movie audience because when the pandemic is over, cinema in theaters may only survive in art houses that are the equivalent of vinyl for music purists.” – Deadline
Tags: Art, Media, Audience, 12.07.20

FDR, Radio, and What’s Wrong Today

During the Depression, during World War II, FDR and radio bonded; he was even, as Murray Horwitz remarks, “the biggest star of old-time radio.” – Joseph Horowitz
Tags: Art, Ajblogs, Murray Horwitz, 12.09.20, FDR Radio

The Agonizing, Years-Long Journey That Took David Hallberg To The Australian Ballet

“I was broken,” the new director of the company says. In 2013, he injured a foot, and the treatment he got for it (including one badly misguided surgery, followed by another to correct the first) over the next two years was disastrous, much worse than he revealed publicly at the time. At age 33, not only could he no longer dance, he couldn’t really walk properly. Desperate, he got a one-way plane ticket to Melbourne and turned to the Australian Ballet’s unique physiotherapy team. Here’s the sto...
Tags: Art, Dance, Melbourne, David Hallberg, Australian Ballet, 12.05.20

Paris Olympics Will Include Breakdancing As A Sport

The Olympics announced on Monday that the competitive dance form will be among the new sports set to debut during the 2024 games. The Olympics website states that breakdancing (named “breaking”), skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing will be new categories for the next summer Olympics. – Deadline
Tags: Art, Dance, Paris, 12.07.20

Foursquare’s Brand Refresh Reflects Its Mission as a Location-Based Services Company

At the mention of Foursquare, the first thing that comes to mind for many casual observers is the consumer app that launched in 2009--the early days of social media--that offered a way to "check in" at different locations, review businesses, read recommendations and get badges for their activity. Since then, the company has evolved into...
Tags: Design, Advertising, Rebrands, Location Based Services Company

Louise Glück Felt ‘Panic’ At Receiving Nobel Literature Prize

“‘Mostly I am concerned for the preservation of daily life with people I love,’ she told the prize organisers on 8 October, when asked how she felt about winning. ‘It’s disruptive. [The phone] is ringing all the time. It’s ringing now.’ Speaking to the press outside her house that same day, she said she felt ‘agitation and joy’ before getting in a waiting car.” – The Guardian
Tags: Art, Words, 12.07.20, Louise Glück Felt

The Complicated Legacy Of James Beard (And What It Says About American Food Culture)

“In the decades that followed World War II, no public figure prosecuted the cause of introducing America to seasonality, freshness, and culinary pleasure with greater vigor than James Beard. Gay, bow-tied, effusive, charismatic, and possessed of a lavish appetite, Beard had the misfortune to live in an era at once bigoted, repressed, paranoid, abstemious, and uninterestingly dressed. Today he is best known for the awards dispensed by his eponymous foundation, which remain, 35 years after his de...
Tags: Art, America, People, James Beard, 12.04.20, James Beard Gay

Marina Abramović’s Method for Overcoming Trauma: Go to a Park, Hug a Tree Tight, and Tell It Your Complaints for 15 Minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQmAHmLy5DA One of the most renowned of Chinese poets, Du Fu, survived the devastating An Lushan rebellion that nearly brought down the Tang Dynasty and resulted in an incredible loss of life around the country. His poems are full of grief, as translator David Hinton notes. The opening of “Spring Landscape” contains “possibly the most famous line in Chinese poetry,” and a painful comment on humanity’s place in the natural world. The country in ruins, river...
Tags: Psychology, Google, Amazon, Art, College, Life, Nature, Marina Abramovic, Facebook Twitter, Josh Jones, David Hinton, Durham NC Follow, The New York Review of Books, Madeleine Thien, Du Fu, Marina Abramovi

Man Posing As Building Owner Hires Artist To Paint Mural, Then Disappears

“Joshua Hawkins said a man named “Nate” hired him last month to paint a mural on his building and offered Hawkins more than he was asking to do it. Hawkins said he met that man twice, first when the man dropped off paint and the first half of the payment, and again when the man brought the final payment before the piece was finished.” – Central Illinois Proud
Tags: Art, Visual, Hawkins, Nate, Joshua Hawkins, 12.07.20

Great Dead Pop Singers Are Posting TikTok Videos

“Frank Sinatra has a TikTok account …, as do Whitney Houston, John Lennon, and Prince. Some of the profiles were clearly set up by the late-singers’ estates. Others seem to be the work of record labels, in a bid to introduce their catalogues to a younger generation. And while the phenomenon is a little weird, it’ll also probably work.” – Mic
Tags: Art, Music, Frank Sinatra, 12.04.20, Whitney Houston John Lennon

Man Posing As Building Owner Hires Artist To Paint Mural, The Disappears

“Joshua Hawkins said a man named “Nate” hired him last month to paint a mural on his building and offered Hawkins more than he was asking to do it. Hawkins said he met that man twice, first when the man dropped off paint and the first half of the payment, and again when the man brought the final payment before the piece was finished.” – Central Illinois Proud
Tags: Art, Visual, Hawkins, Nate, Joshua Hawkins, 12.07.20

Furloughed Nashville Symphony Musicians To Get $500 Weekly Stipend

An agreement between management and the musicians’ union provides that the payments will begin on Jan. 3 and run through the end of the cancelled due to COVID) season on July 31. In exchange, the musicians agree to take part in community performances and other outreach activities. – Nashville Scene
Tags: Art, Music, Nashville, Jan, 12.07.20

Miles of Ice Age art discovered along South American river

A 15-kilometer "Sistine Chapel" of Ice Age rock art has been found along the Colombian Amazon. It includes depictions of now-extinct animals like mastodons, giant sloths, and paleollamas. Via LiveScience: Indigenous people likely started painting these images at the archaeological site of Serranía La Lindosa, on the northern edge of the Colombian Amazon, toward the end of the last ice age, about 12,600 to 11,800 years ago. — Read the rest
Tags: Amazon, Art, Video, News, Ice Age, Paleolithic, Serranía La Lindosa, South American river

Well, Someone’s Taken Credit For The Monoliths (Just Guess What They’re Doing Now)

“An anonymous collective called The Most Famous Artist says it was behind … the original steel stele in Utah as well as the replica that popped up in Atascadero, California, before being swiftly dismantled by a band of Christian zealots. And now — as if there were any doubt as to where this was headed — the collective is selling facsimiles for the low, low price of $45,000.” – Artnet
Tags: Art, Utah, Visual, Atascadero California, 12.04.20

Inside The Collapse Of The Baltimore Museum Of Art’s Big Deaccessioning Plan

Peggy McGlone and Sebastian Smee report on how director Christopher Bedford’s plan to raise $65 million to fund diversity-equity-and-inclusion projects by selling paintings by Andy Warhol, Brice Marden and Clyfford Still was conceived, approved, attacked, and withdrawn. “There’s one thing the Baltimore episode made clear: Even the most noble of causes, including paying the mostly minority guards a living wage and improving access for the community, can’t be funded by monetizing the collection.”...
Tags: Art, Baltimore, Visual, Sebastian Smee, Christopher Bedford, Peggy McGlone, 12.06.20, Andy Warhol Brice Marden

The Pandemic’s Threat To American Culture

Joseph Horowitz: “More than handwringing, this litany invites historical analysis. Why is no one in Congress or the White House talking about protecting crucial cultural interests, echoing discussions abroad? For three centuries, Americans regarded Europeans as cultural parents; we would emulate, learn, and grow. Where does that relationship stand today? Are we still growing up? Reverting to infancy? Opting out?” – The American Scholar
Tags: Art, Congress, White House, Issues, Joseph Horowitz, 12.07.20

Mystery of the monoliths: if only it were aliens

The strange, reflective objects that have appeared in wildernesses worldwide were an inspiring stunt but are now just a tedious prankSomeone had to spoil it. That could be the motto of the social media age when things that begin as wonders become mere memes. Now our inability to let well alone is turning the most mysterious art happening of 2020 into another tedious prank.Strange metal monoliths are materialising everywhere, in California, Romania, the Isle of Wight and, according to the latest ...
Tags: Art, Spain, World news, US news, Culture, Art and design, Sculpture, Romania, Isle Of Wight, Netherlands Germany, Wight, Utah California, Compton Beach, California Romania

Noël Coward's private lives: the photographs that could have landed him in jail

A newly discovered album contains intimate, joyful glimpses of the playwright drinking, partying and holidaying with his famous friends and lovers. The result is an astonishing insight into gay life in the interwar yearsIn 1931, Noël Coward was the highest-earning author in the western world, celebrated for his scintillating comedies and sensational dramas of hidden love such as The Vortex, Private Lives and Easy Virtue. As well as writing hit songs, musicals, novels and short stories, he painte...
Tags: Photography, London, Theatre, Culture, Art and design, Stage, Kent, Alec Guinness, Mountbatten, Carey, Coward, Noel Coward, Joyce Carey, Goldenhurst Coward

Has The Childhood Home Of Jesus Christ Just Been Discovered?

Is this for real? Well, as archaeologist Ken Dark puts it, “I can be confident that it’s the house that the Byzantines believed, and was probably believed in the 4th century, to be Jesus’s childhood home.” – Artnet
Tags: Art, People, Jesus, Ken Dark, 12.07.20

For Second Time, Federal Judge Shuts Down Trump’s Attempt To Shut Down Tiktok

“On October 30, … U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols granted an injunction that prevented [a ban on new downloads of the app in the U.S.] from taking effect. In the latest ruling, Nichols … found that TikTok had shown it would suffer irreparable harm if the order were allowed to take effect.” – Variety
Tags: Art, Media, Trump, Nichols, Tiktok, Carl Nichols, 12.07.20