Adam Mickiewicz’s Dziady (usually rendered in English as Forefathers’ Eve), a text every Pole studies in school, has been used to make strong cultural and political statements for decades. And, as in the States, a low-turnout election recently brought a right-wing nationalist government to power. So the new production of Dziady at the 2016 Theatre Olympics in Wrocław this past fall was potentially far more fraught than Hamilton became after Mike Pence saw it.
Author: Matthew Westphal
City Of Birmingham Symphony Sees Local Funding Cut By 25%
The orchestra known as the platform from which Simon Rattle and Andris Nelsons launched their world-beating careers – and where young wonder-woman Mirga just took over as music director – will be receiving the same amount of city funding it received in the 1980s (and that’s not adjusted for inflation).
UK’s Second City Slashes Culture Funding By A Third
“On Thursday, Birmingham Rep, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Midlands Arts Centre were among organisations told they would receive heavy cuts to funding. The cuts are not out of the blue and organisations had been braced for the news. But it is the scale and, they said, lack of time to implement them that is striking.”
‘Brexit’ Leads 2016 List Of New Entries In Oxford English Dictionary
“Fiona McPherson, senior editor on the OED, told The Guardian the word had been one of the fastest to move from coinage to definition and listing.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 12.15.16
Mission Mishmash: Divided Loyalties in Sotheby’s Plan to Advise Artists, Their Estates & Foundations
Decades ago, before Christie’s introduced the buyer’s premium to New York, auction houses in the U.S. were clear on who they represented: Their client was the seller. Today’s murky waters just got murkier with Sotheby’s… read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-12-15
‘The Surrealist Country Par Excellence’ – Mexico, Cauldron Of Modern Art In The Americas
Mexico was called ‘the surrealist country par excellence’ by no less a Surrealist than André Breton himself. J. Hoberman writes that the show of Mexican Modernism at the Philadelphia Museum of Art “presents a … response to European art that, at least up until World War II, was equal to and in some regards stronger than that of North America.”
Have A Look At Oskar Schlemmer’s ‘Triadic Ballet’, The Original Bauhaus Dance
Last month we told you about an updated version of this work with choreography by Karole Armitage. Here’s video of a 1970s attempt at reconstructing the original.
What People Don’t Get About Vantablack, The Super-Dark Black That Anish Kapoor Got Exclusive Rights To
“The outrage [at Kapoor] was based on a slew of misconceptions: one, that Kapoor had exclusive rights to the material, period – he doesn’t, only to one version of it and only in the field of art – two, that it’s a pigment – it isn’t – and three, that the material was ready to be used, which Kapoor himself has raised doubts about.” And now it’s not even the blackest black anymore.
How Marketers And Designers Make Things Cool
There’s an optimal level of newness – not too familiar, not too surprising – that gets people receptive to a product, or a name, or an idea. Raymond Loewy, arguably the most influential designer of the 20th century, had an acronym for it: MAYA.
The Problem Of Iago, And How Daniel Craig Solves It
“In recent productions he has been rendered modern (which is to say, not purely evil in the original, metaphysical sense) through complex psychological contrivances” – traumatized soldier, or repressed homosexual, or morbidly jealous husband, and so on. “Daniel Craig’s Iago is not a psychopath, or a victim of trauma, or a man deluded about right and wrong. He makes a choice.”