Author: ArtsJournal2

The English National Ballet Has Severed Ties With Prince Andrew

This seems like a pretty solid idea for a company that has a lot of young women involved. And, of course, “earlier this week the duke announced he would be not be undertaking public duties ‘for the foreseeable future,’ following a widely criticised television interview about his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.” – The Stage (UK)

Has Instagram Killed The Job Of The Paparazzi?

Perhaps, and also perhaps by design. In 2010, Instagram (before it was bought by Facebook), “that free photo-sharing app with a hipster sheen, hit the iPhone. Several months later, Justin Bieber — the biggest star to take to the platform — posted a moody shot of Los Angeles traffic, and suddenly, we weren’t snapping hungrily at the window of a famous person’s car anymore. We were in the passenger seat. As more celebrities signed up, we gained access to their kitchens and bedrooms and closets and bathrooms. Celebrity culture moved inside. It was domesticated.” – The New York Times

Making Sculpture Out Of An Ubiquitous Material – Bullets

Freddy Tsimba uses all kinds of materials to respond in sculpture to his hometown of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. “In 2014 he took a house he had built from 999 machetes to one of Kinshasa’s busiest markets. He stood silently beside it and listened as people argued about what it meant. ‘The reaction was intense,’ he says. ‘People here are still traumatised by the Kulunas,’ a group of machete-wielding youths who rob and kill. Eventually, Mr Tsimba told the crowd he wanted to show that the machete was not just an instrument of death. It was invented for farmers to cut weeds and crops. It could become whatever you made of it—even a house.” – The Economist

George Eliot Was A Translator As Well As A Novelist – And That Profoundly Affected Her Fiction

Eliot’s work on Spinoza’s Ethics, one scholar says, “was the last thing she did before she wrote her stories and became George Eliot. A large part of Spinoza’s Ethics gives this insightful analysis of human emotion, and I think that’s something she obviously learned from, because she has this really amazing understanding of human emotions and how they work.” – The Guardian (UK)

The Talented And Busy Street Artists Of Dakar

Their canvases are houses, specifically the canvases of one working-class neighborhood called the Médina. “The neighborhood has welcomed street artists from all over the world to practice their craft in what the founder of the project calls the open sky museum. Dozens of wall paintings dot the neighborhood, bringing color to usually drab cement walls, and adding to the flourishing international art scene in Dakar.” – The New York Times

The Astonishing Breadth Of Turn-Of-The-Century French Director Alice Guy-Blache’s Career

Guy-Blaché is well-known among film scholars, but the film world and the world at large? Not so much. Quick summary: “Starting out as a secretary at Gaumont Studios in Paris, she began directing her own films in 1896 before taking on oversight of the company’s motion-picture production. She emigrated to the United States with her husband in 1907 to promote Gaumont’s Chronophone technology and, several years later, established and headed up her own studio, Solax, in Fort Lee, New Jersey.” – Los Angeles Review of Books

In Italy, Voice Actors Can Win Dubbing Oscars

Americans deride dubbing, but for much of the world, it’s a lot more pleasant than subtitles. They’re extra good at it in Italy, and thus there are awards: “The dozen-odd categories recognized excellence in voice dubbing, but also sound mixing, and story and dialogue adaptations. Capturing nuances like jokes and figures of speech are key elements of successfully transposing an audiovisual product, whether it’s a film, a TV series, a cartoon or even a video game, from one language to another.” – The New York Times

Raymond Kappe, Who Profoundly Influenced Southern California Architecture, Has Died At 92

Kappe founded the Cal Poly Pomona architecture program and was fired for being, as he called it, “free-swinging.” But, unlike many a faculty member could or would do now, he picked up his bags, recruited his own faculty, and started another architecture school: “The New School, soon to become the influential Southern California Institute of Architecture, or SCI-Arc, opened in 1972 with 75 students at its original Santa Monica campus.” – Los Angeles Times