Author: Matthew Westphal

How Caravaggio’s Life Of Crime Changed His Art

Last week, Noah Charney wrote about how the great painter became a violent, impulsive train wreck. This week, he tells us how much worse Caravaggio got – for instance, he fled to Malta for sanctuary and the Knights welcomed him; the next year, they called him a “putrid and fetid member” of the order and threw him in jail – and how the fact that he was constantly fleeing the authorities affected the way he painted.

Get A First Look Inside A Newly-Opened 3,500-Year-Old Egyptian Tomb

“Discovered at the Dra Abul Naga necropolis on the west bank of the Nile [near Luxor], the newly opened tomb holds statuettes, mummies, pottery, and other artifacts … One of the statues depicts a goldsmith named Amenemhat sitting beside his wife. A figure of one of their sons stands beneath them. The archaeologists say the family lived during Egypt’s 18th Dynasty.” (includes video)

Ian Buruma Talks About Launching A New Era At The New York Review Of Books

“Some shoes are harder to fill than others. Robert Silvers .. ran the left-leaning intellectual magazine with single-minded fervor from the time he co-founded it in 1963 until he died at 87 in March. His shoes may as well be Shaquille O’Neal’s.” But Buruma is up for the challenge, and, as he tells John Williams, he’ll do his job differently: “It was a monarchy, and I think perhaps it will be a slightly more democratic operation. Certainly I think I’ll be more collaborative.”

A Total Of 864 People Will Be Able To See Punchdrunk’s New Production – Is That A Bad Thing?

Lyn Gardner: “Access is always going to be a problem with small-capacity or small-scale shows. But does that mean we should ban artists from making shows that involve an intimacy of experience or one-on-one work because very few can get to see it? It would be odd if in the quest for access we started asking artists to censor the kind of work they might dream of and make.”

Did Someone Really Just Figure Out How To Read The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript?

Last week, researcher Nicholas Gibbs announced in the Times Literary Supplement that he had cracked the medieval text’s long-uindecipherable code. (He says it’s a women’s health manual.) But other experts in the field aren’t convinced. Here Brigit Katz gives us some of the other (weird) theories about the Voynich and the six basic things to know about it.

Daniil Simkin Is Joining A Second Ballet Company

“One of the ballet world’s busiest superstars is adding another role to his resume, and it’s a big one. American Ballet Theatre principal Daniil Simkin is joining Staatsballett Berlin as a principal beginning with the 2018-2019 season. Though he will be based in Berlin, the virtuoso will maintain his position at ABT, performing with the company as often as his schedule will allow.” Here he talks with Lauren Wingenroth about how he got the job and what his plans for it are.

Which Opera Do Opera Singers Think Is The Greatest Ever Written?

BBC Music Magazine took a poll of 172 prominent singers, including the likes of Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming, and Bryn Terfel. You’ve almost certainly heard of the top choice, but it may surprise you (meaning it’s not by Verdi, Puccini, or Wagner); it got more than twice as many votes as the runner-up. (What made us happy is that Peter Grimes made the top five.)

ARTnews’s 2017 List Of The World’s Top 200 Collectors

“The world’s top collectors in 2017 – among whose recent acquisitions are a record-breaking Basquiat and Anicka Yi’s video from the Whitney Biennial – include newcomers like Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, the founder of Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and her husband, Silicon Valley VC Marc Andreessen, comedian and Chicano art aficionado Cheech Marin, and Iranian financier Mohammed Afkhami. And media mogul David Geffen is back!”