“Academia is providing a valuable lifeline for these artists, allowing them to continue putting their work on in the world in a way that works despite the obvious obstacles. It’s almost painful to wonder how many mid-career artists might have stopped creating work all together without university support. As almost all mentioned the two-job conundrum, it’s not an easy situation. Surely, the security is a huge benefit as artists move toward mid-career, yet the choice comes with continual negotiation, artistic sacrifices, and compromise.” (Part 2 of a 2-part series.)
Month: April 2012
William Klein, Photography Outsider, Finally Has “A Moment”
“Klein burst on to the photography scene in the early 60s with a series of books about cities – New York, Rome, Moscow and Tokyo – filled with raw, grainy, black-and-white photographs that caught the energy and movement of modern urban life with scant regard for traditional composition. The first, Life Is Good & Good For You in New York (1956), once it got published, earned him the opprobrium of both critics and other photographers alike. ‘They just didn’t get it,’ he says. ‘They thought it should not have been published, that it was vulgar and somehow sinned against the great sacred tradition of the photography book. They were annoyed for sure.'”
Building The Perfect City (Utopias Always Work Out So Well)
“Slated for completion in 2015, PlanIT Valley won’t be a mere ‘smart city’ — it will be a sentient city, with 100 million sensors embedded throughout, running on the same technology that’s in the Formula One cars, each sensor sending a stream of data through the city’s trademarked Urban Operating System (UOS), which will run the city with minimal human intervention.”
Kitsch: Still A Topic Of Bemusement?
London’s filled with kitschy fashion and design this season. “But what exactly is kitsch? Why is it making a comeback? And why does it provoke such knee-jerk disapproval?”
Risking Death To Write Poetry In Afghanistan
“Meena’s father pulled her out of school four years ago after gunmen kidnapped one of her classmates. Now she stays home, cooks, cleans and teaches herself to write poetry in secret. Poems are the only form of education to which she has access. She doesn’t meet outsiders face to face.”
Art (And The Rest Of Culture) In L.A. After The Riots
“The civil unrest that devastated Los Angeles in spring 1992 and lighted a fire under the city’s police department and political establishment also sounded an alarm to L.A.’s major cultural institutions: They needed to diversify their programming, expand their audiences, and step up their outreach efforts toward a population undergoing rapid demographic change.”
Cuban Actors Reappear To Ask For Asylum
Two young Cuban actors who star in an award-winning film about young Cubans defecting to Miami have now come out of hiding – in Miami – to say they’re defecting to the U.S.
Don’t Annoy A Classicist, Especially A Famous, Well-Loved One Like Mary Beard
“As likely to cadge a cigarette from a student as to ask them to conjugate a Greek verb, Beard is opposed to the elite image of her subject. ‘The importance of Mary is that she is the living embodiment of the fact that classics isn’t just for posh people and men and in fact never has been.'”
Tonys Committee Rules On One Man, Two Guvnors
The work, a contemporary script based on a 1746 play, isn’t a revival, says the Broadway awards’ eligibility committee. “A committee member, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the eligibility discussions are private, said the view among several on the panel was that the One Man producers had been trying to manipulate the categories and avoid the crowded field competing for best play nominations.”
Artists Sometimes Lie, But What Does That Mean For Art Historians?
Although Georges Braque denied that his painting Vanitas I was about death or religion, some art historians think that he was probably lying. Whom – or what – to believe?