Raúl Ruiz “is the exile director: a Latin American who made most of his movies in English, French, or Portuguese – and whose aesthetic inhabits an absolute alien territory. His films are drifting, fantastical, introspective, melancholy, erudite, raucous – sometimes telling no story at all, sometimes telling too many. He made so many films, and they so consistently refuse to obey whatever formal rules we’ve come to expect from cinema, that they tend to develop into a blurry whole in your mind.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Egyptian Surrealism (Oh Yes, They Did It There, Too)
“The calls to revise the canon of art history have grown louder in the last few years, but the research, curation, and collection of art from regions that have long been overlooked or ignored is a slow process. Egyptian modern art appears to be the latest to undergo this process of rediscovery and integration into the larger history of art.” (includes audio podcast)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.09.17
SWOT + What?
The SWOT analysis is a well-known and highly valuable tool for strategic planning. … Yet, I’ve found that there are four additional questions that deserve to be asked whenever undertaking a SWOT analysis … read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2017-01-09
Dear White Orchestras
The field is having a moment right now about the lack of black and brown people in American orchestras – on stage, backstage and in the audience. Some of the energy in the current moment can be … read more
AJBlog: SongWorking Published 2017-01-09
Bewitched
Danspace Project presents Vicky Shick and Dancers, January 5 through 7. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2017-01-08
12 Plays of Xmas: 10. Thieves’ Carnival by Jean Anouilh
I’ve just seen the trailer for La La Land (again), and now I’d like some of that at the theatre, please. Colourful, romantic, witty, blithe, with just enough melancholy to cut the sugar icing. … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2017-01-06
Monday Recommendation: Bill Evans Lost Sessions
Bill Evans, Some Other Time: The Lost Sessions From The Black Forest (Resonance) … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-01-09
Dandyism Is An Artistic Act – And A Subversive One
“When we use the word [dandy] casually, we refer to men (it’s almost always men) who are fussy, even anachronistic. But the figure of the dandy, historically, has been far more subversive.”
‘Design Thinking’ Is The Latest Concept (Or Buzzword) In Education Circles
The problem is, as Jessica Lahey writes, figuring out what the term does (and doesn’t) mean.
How I Learned To Love Cy Twombly
Carl Swanson: “The combination of his inscrutability – all those words and phrases, scrawled and painted over, and grandiose titles referencing classical mythology – combined with the work’s billionaire home-decor market value to speak to something clubby, cushioned, and aloof which I never quite got, or felt I should get, or maybe that I felt that I needed to get. And it’s not just me.”
‘The Shakespeare Of The East’, And How China Uses The Shakespeare Of The West To Promote Him
“Tang [Xianzu] is well known in China, though even in his home country he does not enjoy anything like the literary status of his English counterpart – he wrote far fewer works (four plays, [including The Peony Pavilion,] compared with Shakespeare’s 37), and is not as quotable. But no matter. The timing was perfect. Tang died in 1616, the same year as Shashibiya, as Shakespeare is called in Chinese.”
Pop Culture Gets Metaphysical
“Across popular entertainment lately, science fiction, theoretical physics, and spirituality have blended to offer not escapism but wait-there’s-more-ism, offering a tantalizing hint that our perception of reality is too narrow – and that with a little bit of effort, we can see extraordinary things.”
Om Puri, Character Actor With Career In Bollywood And The West, Dead At 66
He first made his mark in the art cinema that developed in India in the 1980s; later, he moved regularly back and forth between popular and indie movies in India (acting in at least three different languages) and film and television in the U.S. and Great Britain (The Jewel in the Crown, East Is East, City of Joy, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Charlie Wilson’s War).
Louvre Attendance Down By Over 20% In Past Two Years
As recently as 2014, Paris’s flagship museum had a record 9.3 million visitors – and those numbers were projected to rise to 12 million by 2025. Then came the terrorist attacks.