Author: Matthew Westphal

‘Salvator Mundi’ Probably Won’t Be At The Louvre’s Leonardo Retrospective — And There May Be A Good Reason For That

Very few people even know where the world’s most expensive painting is right now: it’s supposed to be at the new Louvre Abu Dhabi, but it’s never appeared there. (There’s a report that it’s aboard Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s megayacht.) The painting was expected to be a centerpiece of the (Paris) Louvre’s big Leonardo 500 show, but the museum is hearing nothing from its owners. Sebastian Smee observes that there’s one powerful incentive for those owners not to send it to France. – The Washington Post

Gramophone’s Recording Of The Year Is Bertrand Chamayou’s Saint-Saëns Piano Concertos; Jaap Van Zweden’s Other Band Is Orchestra Of The Year

Chamayou’s Erato-label disc of the 2nd and 5th Concertos with Emmanuel Krivine conducting the Orchestre National de France prevailed over nine other category winners to take the top prize. The Hong Kong Philharmonic was elected Orchestra of the Year, the only honor awarded by public vote. Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson was named Artist of the Year and countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński was chosen as Young Artist of the Year, while Dame Emma Kirkby was given a Lifetime Achievement Award. – Gramophone

Morphing ‘Swan Lake’ Into A Modern Irish Folk Tale

Choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan has taken the kernel of the Tchaikovsky/Petipa classic’s story and transplanted to in the milieu of contemporary Ireland to create Swan Lake/Loch na hEala, with a score of Irish and Nordic folk music accompanying a narrative of a depressed loner and a young woman molested by a priest and changed into a swan so she can’t tell anyone of his crime. – The New York Times

The Rehabilitation Of Marie Antoinette

“This week, 226 years since her execution on Oct. 16, 1793, a new exhibition in Paris aims to show how the queen’s image has been transformed in recent years. From reviled royal to pop icon, her face now appears on gift shop souvenirs at her former home at Versailles, on bars of chocolate, hairbrushes, mugs, shopping bags, fridge magnets and snow globes.” – Los Angeles Times

Shape-Shifting Screens: How Filmmakers Are Playing With Aspect Ratios

The proportions of movies’ height and width have changed several times over the course of cinema history, but, for practical reasons (projectionists don’t like changing equipment all the time), at any given time the ratios have been standardized. Until the rise of digital projection, that is. Now it’s fairly easy for filmmakers to play with aspect ratios, and that’s what they’re doing. Ben Kenigsberg looks at four examples from this fall’s releases. – The New York Times

There’s Doublethink At The Heart Of Arts Awards, And This Year’s Double Booker Prize Brought It To The Surface

“Everyone agrees that competition is the enemy of art. And yet, on the whole, there is also an agreement to conspire in the notion that it isn’t. This paradox, this doublethink, usually works fine, since it opens up the space in which the extra-artistic functions of prizes can be fulfilled.” Charlotte Higgins analyzes how this doublethink works — and how the decision of this year’s Booker jury to flout the prize’s rules messed it up. – The Guardian

Number Of Self-Published Books In U.S. Up By At Least 40% In One Year (And Probably Much More)

“According to Bowker’s annual survey of the self-publishing market … the total number of print and e-books that were self-published in 2018 was 1.68 million, up from 1.19 million in 2017. [This figure] does not include self-published e-books by Amazon’s Kindle division, … [which is the] largest publisher of self-published e-books.” – Publishers Weekly

Longtime San Francisco Chronicle Music And Dance Critic Marilyn Tucker Dead At 89

“Tucker’s primary love was music, a devotion that she first cultivated in the Lutheran church of her childhood. But over the course of her [three decades] at The Chronicle, which began in 1964, she developed a wide-ranging versatility that allowed her to write about theater, literature and especially dance.” – San Francisco Chronicle