“Richard Gray Gallery opened in 1963 in Chicago, becoming one of the first spaces in the city to show work by some of the day’s most prominent artists, among them Jules Olitski, Morris Louis, Hans Hofmann, Louise Nevelson, and Jim Dine, as well as works by modernists like Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, Josef Albers, Milton Avery, and many others. … But Gray’s gallery didn’t only show contemporary art — he also had a passion for work by aboriginal and African artists, antiquities, and prints and drawings.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
What Happens When Convincing Fake Video And Audio Can Be Synthesized? (The Technology Is Here)
“Thanks to a new breed of neural network machine-learning algorithms, compelling yet fictitious video, images, voice, and text can be synthesized whole cloth. Photos of imaginary faces can be realistically fabricated by computers — their emotions, skin, age, and gender dialed in by a knob on a machine. … Videos of politicians can be produced as you might control a puppet. … But in a way, this technological leap could actually be good news for journalists.” (Says a journalism professor.)
Co-Founder Of Miami City Ballet Seeks Court Permission To Diss Edward Villella In Her Memoirs
Toby Ansin, a South Florida philanthropist who founded the company in the 1980s with Villella says she just wants to write up the story of her life as it happened. Villella, who signed a reciprocal non-disparagement agreement with the MCB board as part of a settlement after he was forced out as the company’s artistic director in 2012, is not going along with what he sees as an attempt to escape that agreement.
The Seven Most Influential Art Critics Today (Per The New York Observer)
Yes, new Pulitzer winner Jerry Saltz is on the list and Roberta Smith is not. But the list is gender-balanced and includes two nonwhite women, so it isn’t necessarily propping up the patriarchy. (The list’s compiler is female, for what it’s worth.) And each choice has a well-argued justification.
Dissident Russian Playwright Found Dead, Six Weeks After Her Director Husband’s Death
“A renowned Russian playwright who wrote a play about the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has been found dead, according to a number of reports from Russia. Elena Gremina, 62, reportedly died just six weeks after the death of her her husband, Mikhail Ugarov, who directed the play, which was called One Hour and Eighteen Minutes. The play revolved around the death of Magnitsky in a Moscow prison cell in 2009 after he exposed a coverup by state officials to embezzle an estimated $230m from the Russian treasury.”
Modigliani Is One Of The Most Forged Artists Ever, And The Problem Is Getting Worse
Modigliani scholar Marc Restillini (who has gotten death threats for exposing forgeries): “My worries aren’t about the number of fakes, which is going down, but about the type of forger that we’re dealing with. We have people who are more sophisticated than those of 15 or 20 years ago. … I think that the scientific community [investigating art fakes] doesn’t realize this. Its response is naïve. Instead of taking necessary steps to fight forgeries, it’s taking steps that will encourage them.”
How Did Things At Berlin’s Volksbühne Theatre End Up As Such A Conflict-Ridden Mess?
“The short answer is a local election. The long answer: an unsightly public witch-hunt against [now-former artistic director Chris] Dercon in the press and public forums, an occupation of the Volksbühne building, [plans for] the [Tempelhof] airport venue proving an unaffordable pipe dream, and disappointing audience numbers.”
For First Time, Judges Decline To Award Wodehouse Prize For Comic Fiction
“The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, which has been running since 2000, goes to the novel deemed to best capture the comic spirit of the late PG Wodehouse. … None of the 62 novels submitted for the prize this year ‘prompted unanimous, abundant laughter’, [the judges] said, instead only managing to provoke ‘wry smile[s]’.”
Tom Murphy, Ferocious Irish Playwright, Dead At 83
Fintan O’Toole: “[He] didn’t do kitchen-sink drama and he was always a little bit on the outside. But he produced play after play marked by soaring imagination, ferocious honesty, great artistic ambition and unshakable integrity. … What made Murphy such a distinctive, original and restless presence in the theatre of the last six decades was his ability to evade easy categorization, to bring together the intense exploration of private anguish and the epic treatment of history, politics and myth.”
A New Record Price For A Russian Artwork At Auction: $85.8 Million
Kasimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition (1916) became the top lot in the Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on Tuesday when it sold for $85.8 million with fees, securing a new record for the artist — and for any work of Russian art ever offered at auction.”