“Sotheby’s New York sold Edvard Munch’s 1895 The Scream for $119.9 million on Wednesday night, setting a record for the most expensive artwork sold at auction. The top spot was previously held by Picasso’s 1932 Nude, Green, Leave and Bust – a painting of his much-younger lover Marie-Thérèse Walter that sold at Christie’s in 2010 for $106.5 million.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Dancer’s Heart Stops Onstage; Doctor In Audience Saves His Life
“It almost sounds like the old joke: Is there a doctor in the house? But when a 22-year-old dancer collapsed at a recent performance [at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan], the answer was gravely serious.”
Is This The Hormone At The Heart Of Morality?
Paul J. Zak: “Research that I have done over the past decade suggests that a chemical messenger called oxytocin accounts for why some people give freely of themselves and others are coldhearted louts, why some people cheat and steal and others you can trust with your life, why some husbands are more faithful than others, and why women tend to be nicer and more generous than men.”
How A Five-Year-Old Foreign Film (A Cartoon, No Less) Sparked A Free-Speech Fight In Tunisia
“On Thursday, Tunisian courts will hand down a verdict in the public prosecution of Nabil Karoui, chief of popular Tunisian broadcaster Nessma TV, for airing [Marjane Satrapi’s film Persepolis]. The verdict will say a lot about the future of freedom of expression in the very country whose citizens kicked off the Arab Spring a year and a half ago.”
Asher Fisch Named Chief Conductor Of West Australian Symphony
The Jerusalem-born, Berlin-trained maestro, widely experienced in opera as well as symphonic repertoire, says of the Perth-based band, “They are a wonderful orchestra, they play anything you put on their stands in a very professional way, and it’s an orchestra I can really shape and give a playing style and a profile.”
James Taylor On Fame (And Moaning About It In Song)
“It’s a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you’re being autobiographical. But it’s what everyone wants – to get everyone’s attention, to have your music make a living for you, to be validated in that way. So I’m a little embarrassed that [in ‘Hey Mister, That’s Me Up on the Jukebox’] I complained about getting what I wanted so badly.”
Egyptian Writers Plead With Their Government To Let Them Attend Gaza Lit Fest
“Egyptian authors, bloggers, journalists and revolutionaries are calling on their government to issue permits for them to enter Gaza and participate in the Palestine festival of literature, which is scheduled to start on Saturday in the embattled territory.”
Has Death of a Salesman Lost Its Meaning In Today’s America?
Lee Siegel: “While Death of a Salesman has consolidated its prestige as an exposure of middle-class delusions, the American middle class – as a social reality and a set of admirable values – has nearly ceased to exist. … Instead of humbling its audience through the shock of recognition, the play now confers upon the people who can afford to see it a feeling of superiority – itself a fragile illusion.”
Cranach Adam And Eve Case Goes To US Court Of Appeals
“A long-running lawsuit to force the Norton Simon Museum to surrender one of its prized artworks, 480-year-old paired paintings of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder that were looted during the Holocaust, has reached what could be its last legal round: plaintiff Marei Von Saher’s recent appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.”
Boy Nouns And Girl Nouns: Why Languages Have Gender
“Languages all across the world have what’s called grammatical gender, which means simply that nouns get divvied up into different categories or ‘classes.’ Sometimes those categories are called masculine and feminine, like in Spanish, although for some other languages the categories have nothing at all to do with natural gender or biological sex.”