“Vulture brings you … our first, and hopefully last, ad hoc awards for the culture that came out of our year in quarantine. … Some of it was absurd, some ingenious, some unintentionally amusing, some frankly reprehensible (and therefore unforgettable). And all of it kept us just on this side of sane, as we dragged our withered bodies through the longest nine months on record.” – Vulture
Blog
Pissed In Peoria: The Building Owner Versus The Mural Painter
Maybe Hawkins should have asked more questions, he thinks now. Why did “Comte” need the mural painted so quickly? Why over Thanksgiving weekend? And why was he offering so much money? – Artnet
Chinese Landscapes Painted By AI Bot Fool Humans More Than Half The Time: Study
“[Princeton undergraduate Alice] Xue trained an algorithm using 2,192 traditional Chinese landscape paintings collected from art museums. The resulting AI-generated paintings were mistaken for being made by humans 55 per cent of the time.” – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Why Mega-Publishing Consolidation Is Bad For Books
If you’re an independent or even a chain bookseller who gets, say, 50 percent of your fiction, 50 percent of your nonfiction, 50 percent of your kid’s books, and so forth from one giant publisher … well, it owns your checkbook. You are in its thrall. – The Atlantic
Dean Of South Korean Contemporary Art, Suh Se Ok, Dead At 91
“A student of calligraphy, Suh and his [avant-garde] compatriots were intent on forging an experimental, distinctly Korean form of ink painting, eschewing the Japanese techniques that had held sway during its colonial rule of the peninsula, which ended in 1945. They were in dialogue with American and European postwar abstract painting movements such as Art Informel, while spurning their tools, unlike many of their Korean contemporaries.” – ARTnews
If Stars Earn A Percentage Of Box Office, But Then Movies Go Straight To Streaming, What Do Stars Get Paid?
“If old-line studios are no longer trying to maximize the box office for each film but instead shifting to a hybrid model where success is judged partly by ticket sales and partly by the number of streaming subscriptions sold, what does that mean for talent pay packages?” – The New York Times
Why There Will Be No Bad Sex In Fiction Award For 2020
“The award’s judges said they took the decision because they felt ‘the public had been subjected to too many bad things this year to justify exposing it to bad sex as well’. … But the judges warned authors not to take the cancellation as a ‘licence to write bad sex’.” – The Guardian
Philadelphia Orchestra’s New Principal Guest Conductor: Nathalie Stutzmann
“The much-loved French contralto and conductor … expects to conduct about three weeks each year in the main subscription series, plus additional concerts at the orchestra’s summer homes in Vail, Colo., Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and on tour.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
What David Hallberg Really Loves About The Australian Ballet
Well, besides the fact that the company saved his mangled foot. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to come into an organisation that has positivity embedded in it. It is a trait I admire in Australia itself. I lived in Moscow for years; there isn’t much positivity roaming around Moscow or the Bolshoi Theatre for that matter. I mean [the Bolshoi] is a fabulous, world-class company to which I am very grateful for the experience, but the AB has this can-do belief in doing the best they possibly can do.” – Dance Australia
Saving England’s Christmas Pantomimes From COVID
In York, they’re taking the panto around to socially distanced audiences at community centres in every neighborhood. In Coventry, they’re streaming from a studio and using sound effects in place of audience responses. In Liverpool, they’re acting in cinemas with scenery projected on the screen. A South London actor shot a panto in his back garden. Several cities are hosting drive-in pantos, and the BBC has hired major stars for a broadcast. – BBC