Is it possible that our cultural #MeToo moment dampened enthusiasm for a painting of a nude girl by one of art history’s most reputed misogynists, an artwork the late writer Gertrude Stein described as lovely, complicated, disturbing and repellent?
Author: Douglas McLennan
When Classical Music Is A Weapon (Has It Really Come To This?)
Weaponized classical music is just the next step in the commodification of the genre. Today, most young people encounter classical music not as a popular art form but as a class signifier, a set of tropes in a larger system of encoded communication that commercial enterprises have exploited to remap our societal associations with orchestral sound. Decades of cultural conditioning have trained the public to identify the symphony as sonic shorthand for social status — and, by extension, exclusion from that status. The average American does not recognize the opening chords of The Four Seasons as the sound of spring but the sound of snobbery.
Opportunities For Women Choreographers Still Tough Unless It’s In Your DNA
It’s still tough for women choreographers to get their work into our prominent dance companies. But one company just announced a major new initiative. Not a surprise; the work of women choreographers is by now built into the company’s DNA.
Perceptual Dissonance: Yanny Versus Laurel
There is a world that exists—an uncountable number of differently-flavored quarks bouncing up against each other. There is a world that we perceive—a hallucination generated by about a pound and a half of electrified meat encased by our skulls. Connecting the two, or conveying accurately our own personal hallucination to someone else, is the central problem of being human. Everyone’s brain makes a little world out of sensory input, and everyone’s world is just a little bit different.
The Think Tank Problem And The Rise Of The Little Magazines
Like the New York intellectuals who had clustered around Commentary and the Partisan Review in the Sixties, and partly in conscious imitation of them, the writers and editors of the new magazines blended art, criticism, philosophy and self-examination in the confidence that these activities would all be, when carried out with a sufficient level of clarity and insight, mutually re-inforcing.
Small Study: Musicians’ Brains May Be More Efficient
That all-important ability is called “working memory,” and it takes considerable mental effort. That is, unless you play a musical instrument, or speak a second language. New research suggests that, over time, engaging in those challenging activities effectively rewires the brain, allowing it to complete complex assignments with greater ease. A 2017 meta-study found musicians have stronger working-memory skills; this research provides a likely reason why.
Steve Wynn’s Plans To Reinvent Himself As An Art Dealer
The billionaire has launched an online art gallery called Sierra Fine Art LLC where he is advertising multimillion-dollar works by Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse for sale. Wynn’s lawyer Michael Kosnitzky told artnet News that the billionaire has already transferred a “meaningful” amount of his fabled art collection into the business to begin his new chapter.
Fascinating New Research: Our Brains Are Wired For Social Interaction
A Dartmouth-led study finds that the brain may tune towards social learning even when it is at rest. The findings published in an advance article of Cerebral Cortex, demonstrate empirically for the first time how two regions of the brain experience increased connectivity during rest after encoding new social information.
Researchers: Drugs Can Counter Effects Of Social Isolation
The researchers found that chronic isolation leads to an increase in Tac2 gene expression and the production of NkB throughout the brain. However, administration of a drug that chemically blocks NkB-specific receptors enabled the stressed mice to behave normally, eliminating the negative effects of social isolation. Conversely, artificially increasing Tac2 levels and activating the corresponding neurons in normal, unstressed animals led them to behave like the stressed, isolated animals.
Music Is Slipping The Confines Of Genres
It’s dispiriting to see how ‘what’s on’ listings pigeon-hole music by genre – classical, jazz, pop, folk, world – and then realise that your music doesn’t fit comfortably into any of these categories. Our large-scale shows contain elements of opera, musical, lyric theatre, but none of these accurately characterises their form.