Matthew Westphal – Page 791 – ArtsJournal Wayback

Top Posts From AJBlogs 05.16.18

Fostering intuition
One of the remarkable attributes of experts in a discipline or domain is how quickly they can assess and respond to a complex moment. In a flash, it seems, they cut through the noise, … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2018-05-16

Barker Lark: Oliver Makes Auctions Fun Again at Sotheby’s Revival Meeting (aka Contemporary Sale)
At last, someone knows how to play this game: It’s Oliver Barker, the Sotheby’s auctioneer who succeeded in whipping up a spirited $284.54-million Contemporary Art sale tonight (preceded by the Mandel Collection’s $107.8-million opening act), … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-05-16

Ballyhooed Nude, Picasso Fiasco: Misadventures at Impressionist/Modern Sales at Sotheby’s & Christie’s
How did Sotheby’s manage to be deprecated on Monday for achieving a price of $157.2-million for a Modigliani reclining nude — the highest amount ever paid at that firm for a single artwork? The auction house was … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-05-16

Huge Wyler Retrospective in Paris
One of the beauties of a William Wyler retrospective as big as the one that the Cinemathèque Française has currently mounted in Paris is the chance to see the immense variety of his work. … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2018-05-16

Eight Years After Its Finale, ‘Lost’ Is Developing A Cult Following

“It’s bubbling up all over the place. New blogs and podcasts and Reddit discussions concerning themselves with various aspects of Lost have started to appear without warning. Gamers, too, seem to have suddenly rediscovered the series. This week alone, for instance, a Fortnite user found a hatch in the woods, prompting speculation of a Lost crossover, and a Far Cry 5 user recreated the Lost island in its entirety using the game’s map editor. Meanwhile, in entertainment, you can feel Lost‘s influence everywhere.”

‘Pre-Gutenberg’ – How Poet Anna Akhmatova Made Sure Her ‘Requiem’ Would Survive Stalin’s Reign Of Terror

“Akhmatova knew that the secret police might search her apartment and find her writings, so she burnt the paper on which composed drafts of the poem, after learning it by heart. But what if she were arrested and executed? To ensure the survival of her poem, she taught it to her closest female friends who would remember the poem after her own death. She called this situation ‘pre-Gutenberg’ because state terror had forced her and other underground writers to live as if the printing press had never been invented.”

A Return To Palmyra, Seven Months After ISIS Was Chased Out For Good

Charles Glass: “Within the grounds of the ancient city, nothing was as I recalled it from thirty years before. The triumphal arch was gone, its plinths silhouetted against the bare sky. The Temple of Bel had become a sea of broken stone that archaeologists believe will take a generation to piece together. The agora was unrecognisable.”

Eldridge Cleaver Book Returned To Library 47 Years Late

The worn copy of Soul on Ice, with a detached cover and a hole in the title page, had been due at the Eureka Valley branch of the San Francisco Public Library on Dec. 9, 1970, “If SFPL didn’t cap late fees at $10.01, the fine would have been $1,731.70.”

Under Stress, Your Brain Gets Better At Processing Bad News – And Only Bad News

That’s what a pair of researchers found when studying firefighters in Colorado and undergraduates in London. “When you experience stressful events, whether personal (waiting for a medical diagnosis) or public (political turmoil), a physiological change is triggered that can cause you to take in any sort of warning and become fixated on what might go wrong.”

Comics Legend Stan Lee Sues Company He Co-Founded For $1 Billion

“Lee is suing POW! Entertainment for fraud and conversion, claiming the company and two of its officers conspired to steal his identity, name and likeness in a ‘nefarious scheme’ involving a ‘sham’ sale to a Chinese company. POW! was acquired in 2017 by Hong Kong-based Camsing International, and Lee says POW! CEO Shane Duffy and co-founder Gill Champion didn’t disclose the terms of the deal to him before it closed.”

Wagner, Arranged For All-Female Mariachi Band

That’s exactly what Mexican artist Gonzalo Lebrija has devised for a piece to premiere this month at the Soluna International Music & Arts Festival in Dallas. “Mariachi songs are always loud – they’re about passion and crying. It’s liberation,” says Lebrija. “And I think playing Wagner with the idea of a broken heart, it’s a different language. It’s not Wagner anymore.”

Tap Dance On Broadway: Ridiculous Fabulousness (Or Fabulous Ridiculousness)

“Tap isn’t being used as a dance language here, much less as music. It’s being used as a sparkly outfit, and as a symbol of Broadway’s past. These numbers are fantasies. Two of the new ones are hallucinations.” Brian Seibert on the incongruous tap routines that have been turning up in new and recent shows from Mean Girls to SpongeBob SquarePants to Escape to Margaritaville and back to The Book of Mormon. (Seibert doesn’t entirely approve.)

One Of A Theatre Company Director’s Hardest Jobs Is Giving Notes To Other Directors

Daniel Evans, artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre: “Some directors actively seek out notes and use the opportunity to test the clarity of their intention at a certain crucial moment, or confirmation of a secret doubt they harbour about a certain costume or scene change. Other directors are more cautious and can appear so anxious about the amount of work ahead of them, and their own mountain of notes, that it seems there’s little head space for any other advice. And some (very few in my experience) show no interest in receiving [feedback] or discussing their work whatsoever.”