The British Museum has bought a collection of rare handwritten manuscripts by Virginia Woolf. “The manuscripts form part of two mock newspapers composed by Woolf’s nephews, Julian and Quentin Bell, as children. Some 188 editions of the partly hand-written, partly-typed newspapers – The Charleston Bulletin and The New Bulletin – were found in an old tin trunk.”
Blog
Utzon Wins Pritzker
Jorn Utzon has won this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession’s most prestigious international award. Utzon was the architect of the Sydney Opera House, “perhaps the world’s most famous 20th-century building.”
Art That Defaces Is No “Art”
Eric Gibson wonders why the art world accepts the altering – read “vandalism” – of important classic artworks. Tying string around a Rodin sculpture or defacing Goya prints isn’t art, he writes, and it doesn’t make sense to dignify these acts with serious consideration. “It says something that in our own time it has always been the lesser talents who have left their imprint on the works of their superiors. And you can be sure that, whatever motivated Rubens, it had to do with an artistic impulse far more profound than simply “thinking again about a familiar image.”
Almeida Theatre To “Surprise”
Michael Attenborough, the new director of London’s Almeida theatre, says that when the theatre reopens in May it should be constantly “causing surprise” and that “musicals, classical and new theatre will be part of his ‘eclectic’ long-term vision for the revamped venue.”
Next-Generation Stowell
“When Christopher Stowell first showed an interest in becoming a dancer, his parents ? Pacific Northwest Ballet co-artistic directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell ? were ‘concerned’.” But he persisted and went on to a career with San Francisco Ballet. “Now, two years after retiring from the stage, Stowell, 36, is poised to assume leadership of Portland’s Oregon Ballet Theatre in July.”
Ian McKellan: Shakespeare Was Gay?
“Sir Ian said the complexity of the sexuality in Shakespeare?s comedies with their cross-dressing and disguises was immense’. We don?t really know for sure if Shakespeare was gay and it is not especially that important. But was he interested in the variety of human sexuality? Absolutely. Did he know about it? Better than anybody.”
Study: Stage Fog Harms Actors
A new study says that fog used in theatres and in movies is harmful to actors’ health. “Compared to the control group, the entertainment industry employees had lower average lung function test results and they reported more chronic respiratory symptoms: nasal symptoms, cough, phlegm, wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath on exertion, and current asthma symptoms, even after taking other factors into account such as age, smoking, and other lung diseases and allergic conditions. The entertainment industry employees also had increased rates of work-related phlegm, wheezing, chest tightness, and nasal symptoms.”
Gioia: Two More “Hard” Years For State Arts
Dana Gioia wants to use his position as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts as an advocate for arts funding. “The arts in America are enormously vital, and I think the public support remains strong. What we are facing right now is a very severe – but temporary – budget crisis for the arts brought on by the recession. On a state level, it looks like we have two hard years to manage through. Luckily from a federal level, the NEA budget [$115 million] has actually grown, and our position in helping state and regional councils will be firm.I see my role in Washington to be a national spokesman for arts funding. … I refuse to believe that arts funding is a controversial issue in the United States.”
Theatrics Of War
“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can really kill you. Words, metaphors, stories, can convince complete strangers that they have an obligation to disembowel you. Before anyone makes a smart bomb, they have to be persuaded, by smart words, that they should. Words create what Shakespeare called an “imaginary puissance” that can have lethal consequences. An imaginary garden, with real tanks. If you doubt that literature can ‘cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war’, consider four words enshrined in every library in the English-speaking world: ‘God fought for us’.”
Is Too Much Video Creeping Onstage?
“The artistic power of cinema has had beneficial effects on theatre – in, for example, a greater economy and fluidity in writing and staging – but the dark side has been that stage productions now seem to be apologising for not being films, like someone changing their appearance to look like a rival in love. Modern art has encouraged the use of ‘mixed media’, but the extended use of video in theatre always feels like a defeat. The point of theatre is that the performance is created as we watch.”