“[When] he arrived in Britain in 2002, he was one of the few dance practitioners who could strip down and reassemble an Uzi machine-pistol blindfolded. He was angry, he was darkly handsome, and he had a lot to tell the world – not least that much contemporary dance was ‘boring’.”
Tag: 01.08.12
Unknown Chinese Blog-Turned-Novel Becomes International Hit
“A novel by an anonymous Chinese author living in America, which started life as a blog, has become a worldwide publishing sensation. It has been snapped up by publishers in 15 countries who have been impressed by the fact that it has sold more than a million copies in China and inspired a film by an Oscar-winning Chinese director,” Zhang Yimou.
Exactly How DID Damien Hirst Get To Be A Big Deal?
Jerry Saltz: “Damien Hirst is the Elvis of the English art world, its ayatollah, deliverer, and big-thinking entrepreneurial potty-mouthed prophet and front man. Hirst synthesizes punk, Pop Art, Jeff Koons, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon, and Catholicism.”
Anne Tyng, 91, Pioneering Female Architect And Partner Of Louis Kahn
“During a 15-year relationship that was both professional and romantic, she helped [Kahn] produce his pathbreaking early buildings, including the Trenton Bathhouse and the Yale Art Gallery. Yet until recently, she received little credit for those iconic projects.”
Using Philosophy To Battle Addiction
“Philosophy has a long, stable relationship with reason and more specifically, the relationship between reason, emotions and the will. Addiction seems to involve a total abdication of reason, a messy tangle of emotions and a lack of will.”
Director David Cromer On The Meaning Of Our Town
“People sometimes interpret the play as saying, ‘You have to live life every moment.’ I don’t know that I agree with that. It says that every moment is pretty stunning if you look at it, but you can’t live like that.”
Straddling The Line Between Dance, Theater And Stand-Up Comedy
Over five years of collaboration, Liz Casebolt and Joel Smith have been “steadily honing their particular brand of comic, talky and vaudevillian dance-theater in which they subject their gay man-straight woman friendship, creative process and the tropes of contemporary dance to microscopic scrutiny.”
Hollywood To Depict Art Historians As War Heroes
George Clooney will direct and co-star in “The Monuments Men, a look at the art historians who landed at Normandy to rescue art looted by Adolf Hitler.”
All Those Library Fines Certainly Add Up
“Universities have raised almost £50m from fining students for overdue library books in the past six years. Leeds University accrued the most money from overdue books, collecting more than £1.8m in fines for the six academic years from 2004/05.”
Whimsy Is Hot (But Why?)
“Whimsy. Like iPads and overly bookish spectacles and bacteria, it is everywhere.
It is difficult to pinpoint the moment when whimsy escaped from the birthday parties of six-year-old girls and into the business of serious art.”