“[He] was an MGM contract star and an associate artist at the Royal Shakespeare Company from its inception in 1960. In a career of astonishing range and variety, he was a handsome leading man … an action hero in wartime movies, a character actor, a producer, writer, lecturer and hotelier. He also turned down the role of James Bond in the first film of the series. And yet he was not associated with any one role in particular.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Is Costa Rica’s Most Beloved Children’s Book A Racist Caricature?
“The book has long been compulsory reading in the Central American nation’s schools and has even given its name to various businesses, including the tourism website cocori.com. But now it is coming under scrutiny as never before. Members of Costa Rica’s black community – about 8 percent of the 4.9 million population – increasingly view it as a skewed interpretation of their identity by its white author.”
‘A Cross Between The New Criterion And Mad Magazine’: Half Of Komar And Melamid Launches New Art Mag
“As the artist-provocateur Alexander Melamid sees it, modern art is deathly ill, but he thinks he has the cure. It is Artenol, his new quarterly magazine, described on its website as ‘a purgative for an ailing art world, a palliative for afflicted aesthetes.'”
Are Machines Becoming More Like Us, Or Are We Becoming More Like Them?
“As machines become more humanlike, aren’t we humans meeting them halfway? Are computers not simply an extension of our brains? Our inventions may better resemble humans, but we are becoming more machine-like in the process. Are we no longer a natural species, or are we simply a part of nature that has evolved to become less ‘natural’?”
The Literary Crowdfunding Boom
“Authors, publishers and literary journals are all finding new ways of connecting directly to their readers – and their wallets – on online platforms such as Kickstarter. Marta Bausells examines the books industry’s new wave of social financing and picks 10 of the best literary crowdfunding projects.”
What’s Ángel Corella Going To Do With Pennsylvania Ballet? Here’s What
“If you want to know what next year will look like, he said, look no further than this week’s program … New works from highly sought-after choreographers are ‘all going to define the future of the company and what kind of rep we will do,’ he says.”
Louise Bourgeois Peels A Tangerine
“For ‘peeling’ a tangerine isn’t the lesson at hand. ‘You have to understand that in a tangerine there are two important points,’ she says. These points guide the human figure that she proceeds to draw on the tangerine, and that brings to mind some of her drawings of bald, large-breasted figures.”
Jerry Saltz Says This Artist Is ‘Like A Badger Of Painting’
“[Albert] Oehlen is like a badger of painting, a cross between a weasel and a small bear, fearlessly scouring painting’s possibilities, implications, and metaprograms, scavenging for sweet spots, weaknesses, ways to decode, remap, and break down the medium … I love his work, but I am not even sure that I actually like it.”
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Supertitles Are Distancing Audiences From Opera, Says Critic
Fred Plotkin: “They may bring some people to the opera house but they do not necessarily bring people closer and more intimately to opera … They distance people (who are not paying attention) from the overwhelming glory that is the combination of forces – conductor, orchestra, chorus, soloists – who do the astonishing feat of performing (without amplification) some of the most magnificent music ever written.”