Matthew Westphal – Page 2088 – ArtsJournal Wayback

Nul Points: The Eurovision Song Contest’s Greatest Train Wrecks

“Since Eurovision adopted its current voting system, where dozens of countries assign between one and 12 points to the competition’s entries via telephone voting, only 14 songs out of thousands have received the most dreaded rating of all: ‘Nul points’. … Its rarity is partly because of the competition’s scale: with so many countries voting, and so many geographical allegiances at play, your song has to be truly putrid to fail to collect one point from anyone.” (includes video hall of shame)

Cornelius Gurlitt, Hoarder Of Nazi-Looted Art, Dead At 81

“Until six months ago, almost no one, even in his native Germany, had heard of Cornelius Gurlitt. Shy and reclusive, he lived alone in an apartment in Munich, anonymous even to the local officials. … His only companions appeared to be more than 1,000 artworks that he kept in his darkened apartment. The remarkable collection, with an estimated value of more than $1 billion, came to light only last year, when it was seized by German authorities.”

‘The American Scholar’ Tries To Crowdsource A Sonnet

In a new project titled “Next Line, Please”, David Lehman is asking readers to collaborate on a Shakespearean sonnet on the anomie of modern office life with the opening line, “How like a prison is my cubicle”.

Dr. Seuss’s ‘Hop on Pop’ Does Not, In Fact, Encourage Violence, Determines Toronto Public Library

But yes, a complainant actually argued that the book “encourages children to use violence against their fathers”, demanded that it be removed from the library shelves, and even asked that the city pay damages.

Christie’s Agrees To Return Looted Statue To Cambodia

“[The auction house] sold the statue, a 10th-century sandstone depiction of a mythological figure known as Pandava, to an anonymous collector in 2009, but bought it back earlier this year after officials determined that the sculpture had been looted” from an ancient Khmer temple during Cambodia’s 1970s civil war.

A Rembrandt Becomes A Rembrandt Again

Jonathan Lopez looks at the newly-authenticated Portrait of Dirck van Os, now restored and back on view at Omaha’s Joslyn Art Museum.

One-On-One Theatre-Meets-Relay-Race (In A Changing Hut By The Sea)

“Taking the form of a short text written by Tim Crouch,” Host, now being performed in Brighton, “works like this: You enter the bathing hut and somebody performs the text to you, and then you perform the text – reading from the script – to the next person.”

The Roots Of Censorship

Colm Tóibín: “In every society where there is an urge to censor, there is always already in place some rawness, some grievance, a fear of the outside world, a hunger for images that are comforting and comfortable, images that cover the national or social or religious wound, or attempt to heal it. And there is a deep and often visceral resistance to images that expose the wound or throw salt on it. This is what makes the battle against censorship in religious societies or developing societies so difficult to manage.”

The First Time Ira Glass Took Ecstasy

“I am mostly a pretty worried person. In conversations, I am always worried about what to say. The first time I took ecstasy, all of that lifted away. All the anxiety, which is the baseline of my life in some way, and I had this moment of like, wait a second! Are there people who feel this way all the time? This is like a whole way to be, where you don’t feel anxious? Oh my god!”

Author: Matthew Westphal