“I am exacting, and I push. If someone has the talent they have the RIGHT to be temperamental. They complained about Bette Midler when she was doing Dolly, but she wouldn’t be exciting if she wasn’t temperamental. It’s only the ones who don’t have the talent and are temperamental who make you say, ‘Just get out of here!'”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Sympathy for the monster: a Frankenstein opera-in-progress debuts at Green-Wood Cemetery
After walking through David Lang’s Mile Long Opera on the High Line last week, I thought Gregg Kallor’s double bill of The Tell-Tale Heart and still-in-progress Frankenstein at the Green-Wood Cemetery catacomb in Brooklyn almost seemed mainstream — well, somewhat.
Banksy’s Hanky-Panky at Sotheby’s, Part II: Can You Create a New Work by Shredding an Old One?
While Banksy’s prank has become the talk of the art world, there’s no consensus about what to make of it. People’s interpretations of the deeper significance (or lack thereof) of Banksy’s provocation are colored by how they regard the perpetrator, the art market in general and the auction market in particular.
Classical music reborn
What would classical music be like, after it’s reborn as a contemporary art? When it involves people far more diverse than what we see now? Here’s part one of an answer.
Translating Victorian Biograph Movies Into IMAX Format
Says British Film Institute curator of silent film Bryony Dixon, “With nearly all of the people I’ve shown these films to there is an audible gasp when they see something from 120 years ago and they look new. That’s a very strange feeling. All of those things that tell you something is old have been stripped away.”
For Nearly 2,000 Years, The Aeneid Was Europe’s Most Influential Work Of Literature. Why’s It So Uncomfortable Now?
Daniel Mendelsohn: “While our forebears looked confidently to the text of the Aeneid for answers, today it raises troubling questions. … Two thousand years after its appearance, we still can’t decide if [Virgil’s] masterpiece is a regressive celebration of power as a means of political domination or a craftily coded critique of imperial ideology — a work that still has something useful to tell us.”
Composer Unsuk Chin Wins $200K Kravis Prize And New York Philharmonic Commission
The Berlin-based Korean composer, who has already had three major works performed by the Philharmonic, receives the biennial award just a week after the orchestra premiered the previous prizewinner’s commission — Louis Andriessen’s Agamemnon.
William Forsythe Explains, So That Anyone Can Get It, How Abstract Choreography Presents Narrative
“He illustrates this idea by knotting his hands and pulling up his fingers very rapidly in turn; it took him 15 years to master this movement, he says with a grin, but you couldn’t watch it for 15 minutes without falling asleep. ‘Why? Because no more information is coming out. It doesn’t matter how much effort I’ve made. But if I go like this’ – he sticks out one finger mid-twiddle and holds it aloft – ‘you snap to attention. Your brain goes ‘Oh … anomaly or trend?’ That is the beginning of narrative.'”
The Kids’ Fantasy Epic Based On Sartrean Existentialism (Really)
Lloyd Alexander, author of the five-volume series The Chronicles of Prydain, was deeply influenced by Sartre; indeed, he was the first to translate Nausea into English. “Despite Alexander’s remarkable role in the history of existentialism, oddly no one has made any connection between that philosophy and his own work” — until Jesse Schotter, here.
Advertisers Rush To Co-Opt Banksy’s Shredded Painting
“This week, Banksy must surely be wondering if he has fueled the very machine of late-stage capitalism that he famously despises. … Two McDonald’s agencies had gotten in front of the meme by turning Banksy’s half-shredded image into an ode to french fries, but lots more homages have surfaced since then.”