Historians have differed on where precisely the artist was when he painted Charing Cross and Waterloo bridges in the smog. “Now scientists claim to have solved the puzzle of Monet’s vantage point, using computerised records of the sun’s movement, ordnance survey maps of London and historical weather records.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
How Live-Broadcast Audiences Differ From Theatregoers
“One of the most intriguing results from the National’s NT Live screenings is that, despite lower expectations, cinema audiences reported higher levels of emotional engagement with the production than theatre audiences,” a report on innovation in the arts has found.
What Happens When The Paris Review Launches A Blog
Sportswriting, that’s what. “The Paris Review softball juggernaut marches on. The Vanity Fair team, who call themselves–no joke–the Veefers, put up a strong fight, but could find barely a chink in our defensive armor, and our bats warmed up in time to afford the Parisians a comfortable margin of victory.”
In Pages Of Haaretz, Novelists Write About Israeli News
“The invitations to Margaret Atwood, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Jonathan Safran Foer, Milan Kundera and others had already been scheduled to celebrate the nation’s book week. Book week it may be, but it is also a week that sees Israel facing international scrutiny over the deaths of nine activists attempting to bring aid to Gaza by boat.”
High Schools May Now Do Phantom, But Can They?
“With rights finally available … the mounting of a high-school or college production of Phantom may be a question of resources. Chuck Vassallo, director of performing arts at the Professional Performing Arts School, in Midtown, said high schools may find it challenging to accommodate the production standards required of a technically sophisticated show like Phantom.”
How The Online Experience Scatters Our Minds
“The idea that the brain is a kind of zero sum game — that the ability to read incoming text messages is somehow diminishing our ability to read Moby Dick — is not altogether self-evident. Why can’t the mind simply become better at a whole variety of intellectual tasks?” The author of “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” “says it really has to do with practice.”
Digital Self-Publishing Enables A Power Shift — Or Does It?
“It’s unclear how much of a danger digital self-publishing poses to the big publishers, who still own the industry’s big hits, whether e-book or print. Many big publishers dismiss self-published titles…. But some publishers say that online self-publishing and the entry of newcomers such as Amazon into the market could mark a sea change in publishing.”
Moviegoer’s Surprise: Peak Viewing Charges At The Cinema
“Theaters have long charged less for matinees and early morning screenings, but charging a higher ticket price to watch a movie in the film-going equivalent of prime time is a newer and less consumer-friendly trend.” Especially when a film that draws an audience of two dozen people costs $16 on a Sunday afternoon.
Tracey Emin On The Importance Of Louise Bourgeois
“The thing I really loved about Louise Bourgeois was that she wasn’t afraid of her emotions; she wasn’t afraid of being totally female and releasing those kind of emotions into the world through her art as a lot of men have done through history…. [Women] are actually much better at this kind of thing than men, and Bourgeois wasn’t the Queen of this, she was the King.”
Reading Arthur Miller, And Recoiling At American Speech
“Occasionally American-English does that; serves up a word or phrase that is so direct, so baldly descriptive that at once it destroys the elegance of the language while adding admirable elemental clarity. ‘Want ads’ is a good example of the form. It’s a vulgar expression but, like a drunk on a train, beguiles more than repulses. I wrote it down.”