“Hailed as ‘the Bergman of the boards’ and ‘the Fellini of the foam,’ Mr. Brown brought next to no professional training but an abundance of passion to his art form, which he used to popularize surfing far beyond the coastlines of California.”
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Enrico Castellani, 87, Leading Artist In European Post-War Avant-Garde
“[He] participated in the swirl of movements and self-proclaimed groups, some armed with manifestoes, that flourished on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1950s and ’60s. … Many of these artists emphasized everyday materials and processes; most rejected the expression of subjectivity and emotion that prevailed in the gestural abstract painting and figurative sculpture that immediately followed World War II.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 12.12.17
More “Mundi” Conundrums: Exactly Who Paid the Leonardo’s Princely Price (and why)?
In my Friday post about those said to have “acquired” the $450.3-million Leonardo da Vinci, I suggested that the convoluted Salvator Mundi story was still developing and hard to predict. Sure enough, … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-12-12
Janine Jansen at Carnegie Hall without veneer – or microphones breathing down her neck
What price freedom? Carnegie Hall’s Perspectives series allows its selected artist-curators to have something close to carte blanche over multiple concerts in numerous different forums. This year, the glamorous Dutch violinist Janine Jansen is one of those artists, … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2017-12-11
Five Dancers Accuse Peter Martins Of Physical Abuse
Mr. Martins has long been known to have intimate relationships with dancers, as well as a quick, volcanic temper. That he was able to act so freely, his critics say, points to dysfunctional power relationships between Mr. Martins and his employees, and between him and City Ballet’s management, which at times seems to have looked the other way.
The Best New Architecture Of 2017
“This was the year when postmodernism, for long derided as the gimcrack style of shyster capitalists of the 1980s, was well and truly rehabilitated. (In this it followed on the heels of brutalism, which was long derided as the inhuman style of arrogant socialists of the 1960s.) Historic England started listing postmodern works. Books were published. Playful reincarnations of the style – post-postmodernism, perhaps – appeared at the Chicago Architecture Biennial. In truth, the late lamented architectural practice FAT was doing much of this before the turn of the millennium, but it takes time for the rest of the world to catch up with true visionaries.”
Why The Rock Hall Of Fame Needs Fixing
Some 32 years after that first batch of inductees, with most, if not all, of the genre’s most influential practitioners voted in, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is facing its own midlife crisis. Just as rock originally was a hybrid of pop, blues, jazz, swing, country, R&B, gospel and folk, the music spawned a vast multitude of sub-categories in the half-century since its birth.
NY Philharmonic Raises A Quick $50 Million
“The rapidly raised $50 million was a coup for Deborah Borda, who has only been the orchestra’s president and chief executive officer for a few months but is already putting her stamp on the organization. Ms. Borda has pushed the Philharmonic to rethink the costly and disruptive plans to rebuild its Lincoln Center home, hired a new executive team, and turned her attention to the shaky finances of the orchestra, which has run deficits for most of the current century.”
UK Public Library Survey: 100 Libraries Closed Last Year
“The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy’s annual survey of Great Britain’s libraries paints familiar picture: for the seventh year running, the number of branches and paid staff declined. There are now 3,745 branches remaining in England, Scotland and Wales, down by 105 since 2016, while the number of paid staff has declined by 5% compared with a year ago.”
Study: Jazz And Classical Musicians’ Brains Respond Differently To Sound
In a new, small-scale study, a Wesleyan University research team led by Psyche Loui and Emily Przysinda report the brains of jazz musicians are uniquely attuned to surprising sounds. Electronic monitoring revealed these players have “markedly different neural sensitivity to unexpected musical stimuli,” the researchers write. These musicians are trained not only to anticipate unpredictable turns, but also to engage with them in a positive, creative way. That dynamic reflex stimulates creative thinking.
How Artificial Intelligence Is Going To Change The Art World (And Not Just The Art)
As the complexity and capability of these algorithms grow, their users are beginning to cede more artistic control over their outputs to machines. In doing so, they may be ceding another type of control, too: ownership over the creative product. And the consequences could transform the way mainstream art is produced, how we consume it, and how we value the artists behind it.