“A lot of mathematics ultimately is artistic rather than useful. Sometimes you see a picture that’s got a lot of symmetry in it, like an M.C. Escher sketch, and it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s just so amazing!’ But when you study mathematics, you start to “see” things in higher dimensions. You’re not necessarily visualizing them in the same way that you could with a sculpture or piece of art. But you start to feel like this whole system of objects that you’re looking at, and the symmetries it has, are really just beautiful. There’s no other good word.”
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Where Did Leonard Bernstein’s Legacy Go?
Bernstein spotlights some of the fault lines running through the American musical establishment, and the centennial makes it clear that, in spite of his example, they haven’t changed all that much. Ironically, the classical music world will be feting Bernstein in part for his role in merging the American vernacular with high-art music, in works such as “Candide” and “West Side Story.” But throughout his life, critics castigated him for not being serious enough.
Soprano Brenda Lewis, 96
Lewis, who sang for a decade with the Metropolitan Opera and for two decades with the New York City Opera, was known for interpreting the music of living American composers. She originated two signal roles in contemporary opera: the alcoholic Birdie Hubbard in “Regina,” Marc Blitzstein’s adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s drama “The Little Foxes,” and the title role in “Lizzie Borden,” by Jack Beeson.
How Psychedelics Found Their Way Into Northern Renaissance Art
“Whether appearing as a drug or disease, the visual language of the Northern Renaissance was clearly influenced by the ergot fungus. Further research into this historical intersection will offer a better understanding of the way artists have responded to forces of temptation and torment with visual representation and might do so in the present day.”
Vancouver Opera’s Experiment As A Festival Is Rethought
“The inaugural festival, held last spring, fell short of box-office expectations – so from lessons learned, changes are happening. As it works to balance the books, VO is targeting expenses, affecting staff and performers. In another significant change, it will lose its long-time music director at the end of the season.”
How Publishers Wrecked The Man Booker Prize
On Wednesday, the Booker released its fourth shortlist since opening the field to Americans and its first since Paul Beatty became the first American to win the prize last year. It represents the worst fears of all those who bemoaned the decision to let the Yanks in.
Write Like John McPhee? Those Days Are Probably Over
I feel incredibly lucky to make a living as a writer, but today’s luck is very different than McPhee’s in the ‘60s. In his New Yorker contributor biography, McPhee is credited with bylines on “over 100 pieces.” I laughed out loud when I read it; it’s not uncommon today for even established writers to publish that many pieces a year. These stories are not 40,000-word epic sagas about colorful men and their long journeys by truck, boat, or sled; they are shorter, on the Internet, with smaller budgets, and they are more likely to be written by women. McPhee flashes back to 1966, when he spent nearly two weeks lying on a picnic table “staring up into branches and leaves” thinking about how to start an article.
Explaining the Cultural Elite (It’s All About The Consumption)
By means of what is, at bottom, a self-gratifying act, spending money—rather than by means of compassion, piety, courage, or self-sacrifice—a lucky elite has set itself above ordinary people by virtue of its aesthetic tastes and preferences, which it has elevated to a self-defined enlightenment. The result, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett writes, is “a deep cultural divide that has never existed with such distinction as it does today.”
The Best Idea So Far? That We Have No Idea…
“I’d much rather live in a Universe where we discover that today’s view of physics is comically naïve. If I am so lucky as to live to see deep new discoveries about the true nature of reality, I hope to find them bizarre and shocking. In 1,000 years, physics and mathematics will probably have progressed so far that the very nature of the questions will be incomprehensible to us. Researchers will have moved on to bigger, more mind-blowing questions that today’s deepest thinkers are not yet even equipped to ask.”
This Year’s Emmys Sets Up A Debate Between Netflix, Cable And Broadcast
“An Emmy is not necessarily the mark of true greatness, any more than an Oscar win is. What the Emmys reflect is the taste of the voters who work in the TV industry. Not all will be familiar with nominated series on FX, National Geographic or PBS. But you can bet they all have access to Netflixand all the networks.”