Barrie Kosky, for the past five seasons artistic director at the Komische Oper, “has had a revitalizing effect on the company, one of three full-time opera companies in Berlin, thanks to his riotous productions and his eclectic repertoire choices.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
New $100K Landscape Art Prize, World’s Largest, Goes To Australian Aboriginal Artist
The Hadley’s Art Prize, launched and funded by a hotel magnate in Tasmania and believed to be the world’s richest prize devoted to landscape art, went to Peter Mungkuri for his Ngura Wiru (“Good Country”), an ink-on-paper drawing about his remote birthplace in South Australia.
Egypt’s President Is Using The Arts To Push His Agenda (Just Like His Most Famous Predecessor)
Gen. Gamal Abdel-Nasser, who overthrew King Farouk and established the Republic of Egypt, “often used art as a means to convey political messages and decisions to citizens, raise their morale and entrench their sense of belonging to the state.” (Among his collaborators: Umm Kulthum, then and now the Arab world’s most revered singer.) The country’s current president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is using a similar approach.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.24.17
Berkshire Museum Disposables: Bierstadts, Bouguereaus, Calders, Church, Inness, “George Washington”
The hit list is out. The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA, today identified (see the above link) all 40 works that it intends to sell through Sotheby’s to bankroll its $60-million reinvention plan. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-07-24
Digging to France
When I tell a U.S. colleague about several concerts I’m playing in France he says: “You’re Jerry Lewis!” The French, it’s true, have a long tradition of appreciating U.S culture, and yes, that silly American … read more
AJBlog: PianoMorphosis Published 2017-07-24
Into the Wilderness
At the bottom of the hill where I live is what used to be called a Dead End. Now, I believe, developers address them more euphemistically – No Outlet, for example. The pavement doesn’t stop … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2017-07-24
Recent Listening In Brief
It is impossible to review even a smattering of the dozens of albums that land in the Rifftides mailbox. With the Sweden trip looming, time allows for mentions of a few relatively … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-07-24
When New Yorkers Rioted Over How To Perform ‘Hamlet’
“When Major-General Charles Sandford recalled the scene at the Astor Place Theatre on May 10, 1849, it was with a sentiment one would not normally associate with a night at the theater. ‘During a period of thirty-five years of military service,’ wrote the general, ‘I have never seen a mob so violent as the one on that evening. I never before had occasion to give the order to fire.'”
Why I Wanted My Asian-American Daughter To See Asian-American Actors Playing Shakespeare
Nicole Chung writes about her meaningful mother-and-child trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Winter’s Tale.
The B-52s: The Most Subversive Band In American Rock History?
“The subversive genius of the B-52s isn’t quite acknowledged as much as it could be – even though the band invented new wave-wacky and was mindful about keeping ahead of the stylistic curve. … You can chalk up a lack of respect to the group’s kitschy veneer (and, more specifically, its penchant for making kitsch cool) unfairly superseding the music itself. That’s perhaps most galling: After all, the B-52s’ early LPs are gloriously weird without sounding forced or self-conscious.”
Is The Age Of Trump Killing Comedy? No – It’s Helping Comedy Return To What It Used To Be
“You may have heard, in the past year, that irony and satire are dead, that in the age of Trump they have become indistinguishable from their opposites. … Everyone recognizes that something essential to comedy is failing: the power to defeat lies. … [But] comedy’s association with honesty is far more recent than we might think. You and I just happen to have grown up during an unusual period in the history of comedy, one in which it became strangely bound up with truth and virtue. Trump, thank God, has cut the knot.”
Stolen Francis Bacon Paintings Recovered In Spain
Three of the five works taken from the Madrid home of one of the artist’s friends were found by Spanish police following a tipoff from a team asked to authenticate one of the paintings. Several suspects were arrested last year.
Federal Judge Okays Copyright Lawsuit Against Richard Prince – And Ruling Sounds Ominous For Defendant
“Photographer Donald Graham … alleges that Prince unlawfully used his photograph Rastafarian Smoking a Joint (1996) when he enlarged an Instagram post of it for his New Portraits show at New York’s Gagosian Gallery in 2014.” The judge noted in his ruling that “Prince has not materially altered the composition, presentation, scale, color palette and media originally used by Graham.”