Wiley, who painted the presidential portrait for former President Barack Obama: “My first thought was that no one makes it as a painter. I was just looking around at the landscape of contemporary art, which was pretty dry in Southern California during the ’90s. There was no modeling for success when it came to a job in the arts. So I thought that my best option would probably be in arts education. … I just knew that that would enable me to support my art habit.”
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Judith Kazantzis, ‘Gadfly Poet Against Injustice,’ Has Died At 78
Kazantzis, born into a literary family (and a titled one – a privilege she steadfastly refused), “explored themes like the power relations between men and women and the abuses of power against the weak, and when it was first published in the 1970s, it resonated with an emerging new feminism — one that was giving a platform to women to express their repressed anger toward patriarchy, find a place in the literary establishment and, perhaps more important, connect with one another.”
When Fiction Takes On Political News (And The News Is Getting Weirder By The Minute)
A tweet just after Brexit passed in 2016 predicted that 2018 would have a ton of novels set against the backdrop of the vote. Well: “We may not quite have seen the ‘slew’ of novels predicted, but there have certainly been a number of significant ones, enough to have generated their own literary category – ‘Brexlit’ – with an academic book on the subject already promised.”
Wait, Why Isn’t Most Of The ‘A Star Is Born’ Music Eligible For The Grammys?
It’s the number one soundtrack everywhere, but filmmakers wouldn’t release the soundtrack before the movie – not even the five days before that would have made it eligible for the Grammys this year. Why not? “The soundtrack really is the story of the film. There are multiple tracks in there that are soundbites from the film and so it was really important that people experience them simultaneously.”
Side-Eye Warner Media’s Decision To Shut Down FilmStruck, But Remember That Streaming Isn’t Ownership
Perhaps it was a larger mistake to think that a streaming service, even one as quirkily great as FilmStruck, could in any way replace going to arthouses or buying little-known classic movies. “For what is ownership, when it comes to the cultural products we love? Is a digital file purchased from iTunes owned? Is a DVD owned? And if we are not the ultimate owners, can we depend at all on private companies, even ones with as rich an artistic legacy as Warner Bros., to preserve their culture and keep it available?”
The Queens Museum, Which Let Its Director Go In An Ugly Way In January, Looks Abroad For Its New Director
Sally Tannant has worked at London’s Serpentine Galleries and has run the Liverpool Biennial, and now she’ll be the new executive director at the Queens Museum.
The Locked-Up Russian Opera Director, Working From House Arrest 1400 Miles Away
In Zurich, Kirill Serebrennikov directs Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, but not with ease. “Through a relay process that can seem closer to international espionage than traditional theater-making — involving files swapped on USB sticks, a lawyer acting as a courier, and extraordinary patience — the Zurich Opera has found a way for the director to retain artistic control from captivity, 1,400 miles away.”
Amazon-Owned AbeBooks Is Dropping Booksellers From Certain Countries, And Booksellers Are Dropping Abe Books
Amazon suddenly dropped antiquarian booksellers from the Czech Republic, South Korea, Hungary and several other countries from AbeBooks. One bookseller from California says, “The biggest e-commerce giant in the world apparently finds it too complicated to do business in Prague. … You have to wonder who’s next. We’re all vulnerable to Amazon’s capricious actions.”
How Did Los Angeles’ Arts Institutions Survive The Great Recession?
There’s no one way to answer that question. “Skeletons of skyscrapers have risen in city’s core, while unemployment rates have fallen. Occupy is gone from downtown, but homeless encampments have taken their place. When historians look back at Los Angeles cultural landscape in the years after the Great Recession — reflecting on the lives of cultural figures like Argote and the well-being of our city’s arts institutions — they’ll find a strange mix of obstacles and successes.”
People Who Own Apartments Across From The Tate Modern’s Expansion Are Taking The Museum To Court
They’d like to “stop ‘hundreds of thousands of visitors’ looking into their homes from the art gallery’s viewing platform.” The Tate, of course, responds that they should draw their blinds.