“The French economist’s new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is a historic survey of wealth concentration that has quickly become a go-to text for the gathering debate on income inequality. … It is worth considering how the unprecedented amounts of money the wealthy have recently been spending on trophy artworks might be a natural extension of his argument.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
How to Forge a Masterpiece (It’s in the Court Documents)
“The indictment reads in places like a forger’s manual, laying out the materials needed to forge masterpieces and how to create a fraudulent history of a painting’s creation, ownership, custody and location, known as its provenance.”
The Damien Hirst Forgery Trial: A Juror Speaks
“[Such trials] are fairly banal legal processes, cases settled by a jury of peers that considers the facts and comes to a conclusion. But these human beings also become, for a period of a few hours, days, or weeks, endowed with a unique power and perspective: critics with the force of law.” Hyperallergic offers a Q&A with a member of the panel that convicted a Florida pastor of selling fake Hirsts.
Artist Accuses Turkish Government of Deliberately Dumbing Down Populace
Ali Kazma: “Statistically, educated Turks do not vote for AKP … It seems like the interest of AKP lies in mobilizing the regressive parts of the society financially upwards while maintaining their low education levels, gender inequality and intellectual curiosity.”
‘He Was The Greatest Of Us All’: Salman Rushdie on Gabriel García Márquez
“I knew García Márquez’s colonels and generals, or at least their Indian and Pakistani counterparts; his bishops were my mullahs; his market streets were my bazaars. His world was mine, translated into Spanish. It’s little wonder I fell in love with it – not for its magic (although, as a writer reared on the fabulous ‘wonder tales’ of the East, that was appealing too) but for its realism.”
Torvill and Dean: How We Made ‘Boléro’
The legendary ice dancers recount how they created the program that won then the gold medal at the 1984 Winter Olympics – and that remains, 30 years later, one of the most storied performances in the history of the discipline. (Surprise: the Ravel piece was considered a radical choice back then.)
NY Times Architecture Critic Dives Into Transit Policy: Build A Brooklyn-Queens Streetcar!
Michael Kimmelman: “So while Mayor Bill de Blasio continues to refine his agenda, including that promise of 200,000 units of affordable housing, he might consider a streetcar connecting Red Hook to Astoria. … I’m not talking Ye Olde Trolley. This is transit for New Yorkers who can’t wait another half-century for the next subway station.”
Andrei Konchalovsky, Director and Master Aphorist
Says the man who went from co-scripting Andrei Rublev to making the Oscar-nominated Runaway Train to getting fired from Tango & Cash: “Freedom is not a guarantee of good art. The best art comes in the war or the plague.” “[Art] can help politics when politics are ready to be changed. Not before.” “Opera is much closer to circus than to cinema.” “Tango & Cash, like every real Hollywood film, is a film for people who cannot read.”
The Real-Life Murder Case That Shakespeare (May Have) Helped Dramatise
The darkly comic Arden of Faversham is (closely) based on an actual case: the 1551 murder of a wealthy provincial businessman by his wife and her lover.
Can the Relics of the 1964 World’s Fair Be Saved? Should They Be?
“You can see them from at least three highways in Queens, rising up like futuristic beacons: a giant metal circle on top of 16 concrete pillars and three towers stretching skyward, topped by flying saucer roofs. They look like heralds of a new space age. But they were built for the 1964 World’s Fair, as part of the New York State Pavilion.”