“What is striking about Trilogy,” a theatre piece, “is how unfamiliar we have become with the familiar sight of the female form. From the cult of the Virgin Mary in late-middle ages European art to the surgically sculpted cover girls of today, the perfected female nude has been rendered the idealised aesthetic and unequivocal, aspirational norm.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
UK’s National Youth Jazz Orchestra In Danger Of Folding
“For almost half a century the NYJO has been nurturing the next generation of British musicians. Although its musical stock is as high as ever … it is facing bankruptcy and could collapse within the next few months, The Times has learnt.”
This Easter, A Passion Play In Trafalgar Square
“With a cast of about 150 actors, donkeys, horses and an artificial tomb, the organisers anticipate some 25,000 spectators. … The crucifixion, which involves Jesus being winched up a cross, will not ‘pull any punches’ in its goriness.”
House Concerts: Live Music In The Living Room
“While the music industry mutates in ways that impoverish entertainers and annoy aficionados alike (greedy promoters flogging inauthentic acts), the house concert has emerged as an attractive – and easily achievable – alternative to the commercial scene.”
In Recession, Some Opera Companies Find Ways To Thrive
Anne Midgette points to opera companies that are adapting well to the tight economy by keeping their focus on the art.
Rafael Manzano Martos Wins Driehaus Architecture Prize
The University of Notre Dame School of Architecture’s 2010 Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture goes to Spanish architect Rafael Manzano Martos, while Yale architectural historian Vincent Scully wins its Henry Hope Reed Award, for “non-architects who make significant contributions to traditional architecture.”
Patti Smith On Her Friendship With Robert Mapplethorpe
“As Smith describes him in Just Kids, Mapplethorpe is striking, a ‘Hippie shepherd boy’ with dark curls. She says the pair, two of a kind, lanky outsiders who shared artistic drive and a physical connection, ‘Fulfilled a role for each other.'”
A Mock Record Shop As Installation — And Education
The long-vacant Tower Records store in the East Village will bustle this weekend “with performances, panel discussions and conceptual art installations, some lamenting the demise of music stores.” The event’s organizers “say it’s partly meant as a look at what the art world can learn from the music world’s troubles.”
Burj Architects: Wright Didn’t Influence Our Design
Despite what critics have inferred, “the real influences on the Burj Khalifa begin with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s radical unbuilt plans for glass-sheathed towers, designed in 1921 while Mies lived and worked in his native Germany.”
The Slush Pile Is Dead (And The Web Doesn’t Help Any)
“Film and television producers won’t read anything not certified by an agent because producers are afraid of being accused of stealing ideas and material. Most book publishers have stopped accepting book proposals that are not submitted by agents. … It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”