A diary from art critic Adrian Dannatt’s trip to the art fair at the bottom of the world, featuring close encounters with whales, seals, and Alexander Ponomarev’s Alchemy of Antarctic Albedo (or Washing Pale Moons).
Author: Matthew Westphal
When Furtwängler Reopened Bayreuth After The War – With Beethoven
Given all the particular, er, associations attached to Wagner and his operas, the reopening of his own opera house and festival six years after Germany’s defeat was a fraught, touchy affair. Yet conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler pulled it off, forgoing any of Wagner’s own operas in favor of everyone’s favorite German expression of uplift. Sappy? On the contrary, argues Colin Fleming: the performance, newly reissued on disc, “is as viscerally intense as 20th-century classical recordings get … simultaneously draining, in what it pulls from you emotionally, and emboldeningly triumphal.”
Transgender Dancers Work To Challenge The Genre’s Norms
Brian Schaefer pays a visit to the Brooklyn-based company Ballez, whose director, Katy Pyle, says, “We’re using these definitions of masculinity and femininity to create something that’s not neutral, but it’s layered and it’s complicated.”
Learning Egyptian Arabic From The Tahrir Square Revolution
Peter Hessler recounts how the language classes he and his wife took in Cairo in 2011 and ’12 changed, in terms of vocabulary and outlook, because of the Arab Spring.
The Israeli Novel That Was Censored As ‘A Threat To The Jewish Separate Identity’
A year ago, the Israeli novelist Dorit Rabinyan was at the centre of an unexpected storm. Her third book, All the Rivers – about a relationship between a Palestinian artist, Hilmi, and an Israeli woman, Liat – had been selected for the national [school] curriculum. Then, abruptly, it was withdrawn by the education ministry because of its subject matter.”
Ted Hughes Was Even More Abusive To Sylvia Plath Than We Thought, Per Unpublished Letters
In correspondence with her former therapist, Plath alleged that her husband told her to her face that he wished she were dead and that he beat her just two days before her miscarriage.
Leonardo’s ‘Last Supper’ May Be Saved – By A Grocery Chain
“Perhaps you didn’t know, but The Last Supper … is deteriorating rapidly, mostly due to the factors of time, humidity, wartime bombs, and the fact that it was once housed in a prison.” But Eataly, the upscale food purveyor, is paying for a high-tech contraption that may help save the decaying mural. Nate Freeman has the details (and a bit of snark).
Lawsuit Against Art Historian Over Fake Rothko Settled Out Of Court
“The Las Vegas billionaire casino magnate Frank Fertitta has settled his claims against the Swiss art historian Oliver Wick in one of the ten lawsuits brought against the now-defunct Knoedler gallery for knowingly selling fakes. … Fertitta bought a fake Mark Rothko from Knoedler in 2008 for $7.2m.”
Cuba’s Most Famous Dissident Artist Turns To Theatre – Samuel Beckett, No Less
Says Tania Bruguera about her directorial debut, happening this month in Portugal, “I’m interested in how Endgame brings power dynamics into our everyday lives. It feels relevant to see this piece today, when the world is seduced by so-called strong political figures and when democracy is abused instead of enacted. It feels like the end of a chapter.”
San Francisco Ballet’s Lorena Feijoo : The Exit Interview
“Even as she prepares for her company farewell gala, the Havana-born artist remains a highly critical observer of how – and what – she dances.” Allan Ulrich talks with Feijoo about the roles she did and didn’t get to dance and about her training at Alicia Alonso’s famous ballet school and what it has meant for her art.