“An auction on EBay that offered to reveal the identity of the elusive British street artist known as Banksy to the highest bidder has been removed from the website just one day before it was scheduled to close. But was the whole thing just a hoax? Knowing how Banksy operates, the answer is a definite maybe.”
Tag: 01.18.11
Edward Hall’s Bloody, Bloody Shakespeare (And It’s Not Titus Andronicus)
Says the younger Hall of his new staging of Richard III for his company, Propeller, “We’ve tried to be as nasty, as gory and as violent as possible, and as funny as possible. We drown one of the characters and drill his eyes out, and we kill the princes and put their heads in specimen jars.”
The World’s Most Fabulous Dining Room Floor (And It’s 1700 Years Old)
The mosaic, which is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum, dates from circa 300 CE and was excavated in Israel 15 years ago. Its cable-patterned borders surround lions and giraffes, elephants and rhinos, dolphins and doves and snakes and sea monsters.
Washington Post To Boost Arts Coverage
“The Washington Post announced beginning January 23 it will expand coverage of arts and popular culture in the Sunday newspaper, creating separate Arts and Sunday Style sections.”
Why We Need Music (An Explanation)
“Whether music is necessary or not, we still enjoy it first and foremost, and if it were taken away we would have different brains as a result. Music is at the very heart of what it means to be human, and we need science to help us understand this, not to explain it away.”
New James Bond, Sherlock Holmes Novels To Appear
“The Conan Doyle Estate, which represents the family of Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, picked the author to write the novel which will be published in September. Meanwhile US thriller writer Deaver releases the latest addition to the Bond franchise in May. The book, called Carte Blanche, features 007 in a contemporary story set partly in the Middle East.”
Technology Makes Us Free? Er, It Actually Enslaves Us
“Unfortunately, this kind of technological romanticism relies on false historical analogies and sloppy thinking. Modern communications technologies are already being deployed as new forms of repression.”
John Rockwell: A Critical Divide
“There is an inherent tension between reviewers and reviewed, and that’s inevitable, even healthy.”
Finland Considers Building A Guggenheim Museum
“On Tuesday the city of Helsinki is announcing that it has commissioned the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to undertake a feasibility study to examine the possibility of building a new Guggenheim Museum in Finland.”
The Dreaded Book Signing (Well, At Least It Means They Want You)
“Signings after events where you’ve been flying solo may be slightly less soul-destroying. It could be that book-buyers, or owners, will attend a reading by you to deepen their experience of … well, you don’t really want to consider, but perhaps something that might mean they need a book to be signed.”