“India’s art market may be on the upswing, but the infrastructure that supports it has yet to find solid footing. An especially fragile area, collectors and gallerists say, is conservation and restoration. Despite the country’s growing appetite for indigenously produced art, there are only a handful of recognized art conservation experts.”
Tag: 11.16.10
What It Feels Like for a Mezzo to Turn Soprano
Elza van den Heever: “It was as if the carpet had been ripped from under my feet. I thought I was something and then I turned out to be something else. It was almost like a sex change.”
A Brief History of Corsets
An illustrated tour – from 16th-century metal stays (meant to align crooked spines), through the introduction of whalebone, the invention of sports corsets and maternity corsets, to the development (not what you’d think) that finally convinced America to switch to more flexible foundation wear.
Philip Glass Writing a Second Kafka Opera
“The world famous musician approached the Cardiff-based company [Music Theatre Wales] with his plans for a new opera based on Franz Kafka’s short story, ‘The Trial,’ and asked if they would like to stage it.” The company has recently finished touring with Glass’s first Kafka adaptation, “In the Penal Colony.”
UK Ballet Cos. Are Abandoning Nutcracker for Cinderella
“This Christmas, a mysterious influence has been at work among Britain’s four largest dance companies. Perhaps influenced by today’s dark times, Scottish Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Royal Ballet and Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures are all dancing a dark story of brutality – Cinderella.“
Costa Prize Jury Can’t Find Enough Biographies to Fill Category
“Eyebrows were raised tonight when judges for one of the UK’s most important book prizes failed to find enough biographies of merit to fill their shortlist.”
Mark Rylance’s Acting Secret: Improv (and Volleyball)
The English actor’s favorite way of preparing for a performance: “Improvisational games, the sort of unscripted, spontaneous exercises that he began learning three decades ago as an acting student in London.” Sometimes he and colleagues make up scenes from scratch; sometimes he gets his castmates to play volleyball in the theater.
America’s Greatest Art Forger (And He Says He’s a Jesuit)
“Museum curators are warning of a mysterious man posing as a Jesuit priest who is suspected of duping American institutions with brilliantly forged artworks over the past 20 years. … Unlike other forgers, the ‘priest’ does not ask for payment of any kind for his Picassos, Signacs and Daumiers which have been described as ‘masterful’.”
‘Gayness Was Invented in America’
Morgan Meis: “I’m not saying that America invented homosexuality, of course. That goes a little further back. What America did was to give gayness its specific difference, to make ‘gay’ into an identity you could have publicly like any other.”
Did Leonardo Try to Fig-Leaf Michelangelo’s David?
In a “miraculously preserved bit of his real speech, Leonardo da Vinci is caught out spitefully attempting to emasculate the greatest nude statue in the history of the world.” (Well, maybe.)