“If anything betrays Whistler’s military background, it is his conception of the artist’s life as a series of frequent engagements with the enemy – hostile critics, backward-looking institutions, uncomprehending patrons, philistines in general. … Was Whistler just as belligerent toward his art as he was with the wider world into which he sent it? You might think so, judging from reports of how he went about making it.”
Tag: 02.18.14
Rafael Bonachela to Stay With Sydney Dance Company Through 2019
The Spanish choreographer has extended his contract for an additional five years, through the company’s 50th anniversary season.
The School Of Merce Cunningham And John Cage On A Downward Spiral
Seattle’s Cornish College “could revolutionize into a destination school, or it could keep on the way it’s been keeping on, responding to lower enrollment by continuing to make cuts, feeding a downward cycle. After 100 years, could Cornish shut down forever?”
A Plan To Find, Recover 20th Century Music Lost Through Repression/Supression
Since the Nazis’ concept of “degenerate music” was driven mainly by racial ideology, the works they suppressed cover a wide range of styles, from atonal modernism to idioms influenced by cabaret and jazz. The Soviet notion of “socialist realism” was sufficiently elastic that almost anyone who didn’t pass muster politically could be targeted as an anti-Soviet composer.
Candy Crush: Addictive Game, Incredible Business, Horrible Investment
Derek Thompson: “Last year the company took in $1.88 billion with $568 million in profits – half $1 billion in profits! To put this in perspective, a mobile gaming company specializing in colored sugar baubles made more than a quarter of Amazon’s lifetime earnings in a year.” But can that possibly last?
Saving a Fellow Photographer’s Work Amid the Chaos of the Central African Republic
AP photographer Jerome Delay tells how, while covering the horrific violence in the capital city, Bangui, he came across – and managed to salvage from a house in the midst of being looted – 30 years’ worth of photos, prints and negatives belonging to his friend Samuel Fosso, who had escaped to the safety of Paris. (audio)
This Company Wants to Print All of Wikipedia As 1,000 Dead-Tree Books
The company PrintPedia, whose product is an app to print Wikipedia content on demand, is trying to raise $50,000 on Indiegogo to produce the complete English-language Wikipedia as a 1,193,014-page, 1,000-volume set of books. Isn’t that completely beside the point? Depends on what exactly the point is.
Lisa Gasteen, Back From the Vocal Dead
Late in the ’00s, the Australian dramatic soprano was going through a vocal crisis so severe that she expected never to sing in public again. Now she’s back at work, thanks to determination, physical therapy and Botox. (She’s lost quite a bit of weight and founded a vocal academy to boot.)
Bedtime Stories by the Dear Leader
“North Korea’s leaders are often thought of as ruthless, secretive autocrats but rarely as popular children’s authors. However, between issuing instructions about prison camps and the development of nuclear weapons, Kim Jong-un’s father and grandfather apparently found time to write stories for the young.”
At What Point Does Watching a Series Tip Into Binge-Watching?
It’s a good question to ask as viewers devour the new season of House of Cards. “Despite its increased prominence, though, there’s never really been a good, single working definition of what binge-watching actually is.” So The Atlantic tries to settle the matter (or at least clarify it).