“I am not without my supporters, but I often feel it will go no further than Clive Barnes’ succinct evaluation: ‘Neil Simon is destined to remain rich, successful and underrated,’” Simon wrote in the introduction to a volume of his plays. He made clear, however, that, painful as this assessment might be, he had no desire to be “poor, unsuccessful and overrated.”
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How Digital Image Manipulation Has Invaded The Culture
“For my generation, editing your own image has become as routine as using social media. We grew up with airbrushing and Photoshop and saw the exposés of flawless magazine cover stars who weren’t flawless at all. Instead of rejecting the falsehoods we’ve made it part of our daily lives, crafting idealised digital versions of ourselves that feel like an essential corollary to real life. Technology has set a new standard for beauty that quite literally doesn’t exist in real life. Rather than reject that, we’ve embraced it.”
A Scottish City Banks On A Jewel Of A New Museum
The new V&A museum opens in September. It marks the end of an eight-year undertaking that saw Dundee embark on one of the most important cultural projects Scotland has known. The spectacular new museum has been built on the city’s waterfront, the first to bear the imprint of the V&A outside London. Its Japanese architect, Kengo Kuma, has said he wanted to “create a new living room for the city.”
Will US Tariffs Kill Sales Of Chinese Art?
The latest list of targeted Chinese goods ran to 205 pages. It included sand blasting machines; eels, fresh or chilled (excluding fillets); hats; and, at the bottom of the last page, paintings and drawings executed entirely by hand, original sculptures, and antiques more than 100 years old. The tariffs would apply to all artworks that originated in China, regardless of how they entered the United States. That means American buyers could be required to pay 25 percent more for a Ming dynasty bowl sold by a British owner at an auction in New York, as well as for a painting by a young Beijing-based artist at a gallery in Hong Kong.
‘Take Things For Granted’ Is Actually Very Good Advice
Philosophy professor Neal Tognazzini: “I think there’s something distinctively valuable about allowing many aspects of your life — even the very fact of your life — to recede into the background, into a unconscious mental box we might label ‘presuppositions.’ I would go so far as to say that these presuppositions are what enable you to live a life at all.”
Superlative Numbers At the Met. But Crazy Ones Too
Last week, the Metropolitan Museum of Art issued a press release saying it had welcomed its one-millionth visitor to its special Costume Institute exhibition, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination. Really? Truth is, we can’t be sure of that. Because of the complex installation, actual numbers are nearly impossible to compute.
Monday Recommendation: Luciana Souza
Luciana Souza, The Book Of Longing (Sunnyside)
Returning to recording, Luciana Souza is inspired by poetry. The Book Of Longing finds her drawing inspiration from poets of two centuries …
Cleveland Museum Invites The Musicians In To Be Inspired
“We’re in a very unique position at the art museum to be a tremendous platform or area for churning up ideas and inspirations. So what if we have composers in and say, with very few or no restrictions, ‘This is all here for you. What comes from this?’ And a broader, wider open space to think deeply about what moves us and what can come from that.”
Secrets And Lies At The Heart Of Anton Chekhov’s Marriage
In May 1901, the great playwright married actress Olga Knipper – much to the dismay and confusion of his family and friends, who knew him to be a compulsive womanizer. Less than a year later, Knipper became severely ill and had to terminate a pregnancy. It turns out, as biographer Donald Rayfield has discovered, that the child could not have been Chekhov’s, and he almost certainly knew it.
Huge Data Set On Audience Buying Behavior Released
There are now more than 600 organisations participating in Audience Finder, including “performing arts venues, touring companies, museums, galleries, festivals, outdoor arts and many other kinds of cultural organisations”. Their ticketing data has been gathered over the past seven years and dates back to 2011/12, although data from these early years is less comprehensive and accessible than more recently gathered information.