It’s surprisingly easy to find agreement on what is an attractive face and what is not. But “finding answers to why we regard one face as being more beautiful than another is actually not as easy as it seems.” A major research project on ‘facial attractiveness’ by two German universities has been attempting to find out “why some faces are more beautiful than others, how scienctists help unravel the mystery of beauty, and the dangerous relationship between a beautiful body and social power.”
Blog
Future Doctors Studying Art
The number of medical students taking “literature, art interpretation and other humanities courses has surged over the past decade. They are trying to awaken their feelings and intuition as a way to connect with patients who often feel as though they’ve been reduced to a collection of symptoms. Educators say the distilled emotions and insight in the arts offer students a crash course in the old-fashioned skill of the bedside manner. Art, they say, is a textbook on the human condition.”
Spanish Honor
“Spanish drama is fascinated by rules, by the code of conduct by which life is lived in matters of love and honour. Generally speaking we may seem to have lost interest in honour as a topic, but that does not mean that we cannot be stirred by a play in which honour is the motivating force. After all, we understand what humiliation (the opposite of honour) is, and we pursue honour in various of its aspects all the time, by other names. Respect is the current street-slang under whose rubric issues of honour are discussed and fought out.”
No Guts, No Glory
David Hare wonders about the lack of ambition of British theatres and audiences compared to playwrights. “It is clear that much of the free theatre we once loved has become sclerotic, choked up by damp-palmed development officers and fetid sponsorship deals, and patrolled from the watchtowers by a bureaucratic Arts Police that has sought to rob the activity of its very point – its spontaneity – it is remarkable how many of us feel that even if it has been a lifetime of failure, it has not been a lifetime of waste.”
Return To Deep Throat
What is it about washed-up 80s music stars? “Two members of the eighties good-time girl group the Go-Go’s this week announced they were working on a musical about porn queen Linda Lovelace (Deep Throat).”
New Eyewitness Update On Baghdad Museum Looting
“British Museum director Neil MacGregor returned this week from Baghdad, which he visited as part of a Unesco delegation. In an exclusive interview with The Art Newspaper, he reported that three separate storerooms at the National Museum had been looted, in addition to the galleries. Although the number of objects which were taken was very much smaller than had originally been feared, they include some which are ‘extraordinarily important’.”
Turkey Wins Eurovision Contest
Turkey’s Sertab Erener has won this year’s Eurovision song contest with the song ‘Every Way That I Can.’Belgium’s Urban Trad came in second and Russia’s Tatu in third. Erener is one of Turkey’s most popular singers, with album sales of over four million.
The $58 Million Saltcellar
The Cellini saltcellar recently stolen from Austria’s Kunsthistorisches Museum is said to be worth $58 million. How come so much? “The figure they cited is stunning, and no wonder: It comes out of an empyrean that few objects ever visit. Art, like any other commodity, receives its worth partly from the quality of the artifact and partly from its scarcity. But the Cellini is unique—and not just in the sense in which all artworks are unique: Nothing even remotely like it exists. Lose a Warhol, and you can always get another one. Rembrandts are hard to find, but not impossible. But there’s only one Cellini table piece.”
Got The Hall, Got The Players. Why Not Start An Orchestra…
Denver could use a good chamber orchestra, writes Marc Shulgold. Most of the pieces are in place to create one. All it takes is a little money. “Who doesn’t like Bach, Handel and Vivaldi? Who wouldn’t enjoy a Mozart or Haydn symphony played as originally conceived? What’s not to like in those sumptuous string-orchestra pieces by Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Grieg and Dvorak? Particularly when they’re played with professional polish?”
Spano’s NY Phil Debut – A Preview Of The Future?
Robert Spano finally makes his New York Philharmonic debut. The Philharmonic has been “catching up with the younger generation of American conductors lately, perhaps with too great a sense of dutiful deliberation, and Mr. Spano’s debut lets it check off another name on its list. But there is also a sense that the orchestra is scouting out talent for its eventual search for its next music director — a process that would have to involve establishing relationships with the potential candidates. Mr. Spano’s name, along with David Robertson’s and Alan Gilbert’s, has been mentioned as a possibility, although mostly in the context of critics’ wish lists, not by the orchestra itself.”