“I could never find my own style, no. I have never done anything original. Everything I’ve done I’ve stolen from other people. I mean, Mozart also stole right and left, and so did Bach. All good composers were thieves. It’s totally normal. You pick up something, do it your own way and it no longer belongs to anybody. This idea of genius is absolutely irrelevant to art. Genios in the original latin means daemon. It is something that everybody has! So it is the opposite of our concept of it. It is a meaningless word today.” – Van
Blog
Joys Of A Print Newspaper? Ritual!
Andrew Ferguson used to subscribe to four print newspapers, but over the years devolved to digital (as most of us have). So he tried an experiment and subscribed again. And what did he learn? It’s all about the personal rituals. – The Atlantic
How An Unlikely Art House Film Beat Superhero Blockbusters To Win China’s Box Office
How did such a strange project make an astounding $38 million on its release day of December 31, 2018? In the same way so many of its big-budget rivals did throughout the year—with good marketing. – The Atlantic
The Number Of Music Teachers In Scottish Schools Has Fallen 40 Percent In Seven Years. Here’s Why
The reason? Funding, of course. And more and more schools are charging for lessons, and now, even for instruments. This has decimated the number of students who sign up. It’s a vicious circle. – The Scotsman
“Chill” Music? Seriously? This Is Where Muzak Went To Die
This has become a popular music genre. But “the music wasn’t for anything. It merely existed to facilitate and sustain a mood, which in turn might enable a task: studying, folding laundry, making spreadsheets, idly browsing the Internet. Spotify presently classifies chill as a genre, and there are an incredible number of playlists devoted to insuring a chill experience.” – The New Yorker
Is The Met Fashion Gala Falling Out Of Fashion Itself?
Tickets are expensive – $35k per person – for the “Oscars of the East.” But the event, managed by Vogue is showing some signs of waning. No magazine, not even Vogue, has the same influence over the industry that it once did and social media has given advertisers, brands and designers a lot of their own power to create “moments” and “brand awareness.” – Women’s Wear Daily
It’s A Brave Choreographer Who’ll Replace Jerome Robbins’s Dances For ‘West Side Story’
Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker is creating new steps for Ivo van Hove’s Broadway production in December, and Justin Peck is doing the same for Steven Spielberg’s movie version. But arriving before those is this spring’s new production at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, making Aletta Collins the first choreographer to replace Robbins’s work in a major professional staging. Says the director, Sarah Frankcom, “Robbins was saying something about where dance was at that time. The relationship between dance and theatre is really different in 2019.” – The Guardian
Why Is this Museum Exhibition So Troubling?
Several weeks ago, I visited the Dallas Museum of Art to see an exhibition of works by Jonas Wood. His paintings, mostly, are striking. They have wall power. They are easy to like. But the whole thing makes me queasy. The museum is being used. – Judith H. Dobrzynski
Music that sends cats hunting
This headline is not kidding. To judge from the playlist for pets Yannick Nézet-Séguin created, his three cats are mostly Romantics. But the tastes of David Patrick Stearns’s four cats run more toward the experimental — and one piece, about a squid, brought out Daddy’s Little Predator. – David Patrick Stearns
Nathan Glazer Rose In An Era Of Rich Intellectual Stew. It’s Fascinating To Reflect On What’s Changed Since Then
Peter Skerry’s essay is quite pessimistic about how the world has evolved. He writes that the meritocracy structures we have built have become ingrown, timid and self-involved. He wonders if Glazer would agree with him… – The American Interest