Tag: 04.17.05

Art Institute – Taking A Whack At American Art History

Before the middle of the last century, American art lived in the shadow of Europe. Now the Art Institute of Chicago is attempting to tell the story of American art in a more completely historical way. “In what may well be the first time in the history of the museum, American paintings, sculptures and decorative arts occupy a sequence of beautifully installed galleries that clearly and exclusively unfolds about 250 years of American art history.”

Why Boulez Rules The World

Is it odd that Pierre Boulez has gone from being a subversive on the outside to a revered elder statesman? “His 80th birthday this year is being celebrated by Deutsche Grammophon with new recordings and reissues of his own works. He’s the only modernist, living or dead, whose music is widely available on a major label. Critics love that. Here he is, at the tippy-tippy top, and he hasn’t compromised. We will never see “The Pierre Boulez Tango Album.” We’re talking about a guy whose idea of slumming is hearing Richard Strauss’ symbolism-laden opera Die Frau ohne Schatten.”

Broadway – The Great Hitless Way

Broadway musicals used to crank out hits. No more. “Shows just aren’t giving us any new hit songs. Sure, you can hear top 40 hits along Broadway. But the songs were composed 20, 30 or 40 years ago, and they weren’t written for the theater. Instead, they’re shoehorned into shows like “Mamma Mia!” (ABBA), “Movin’ Out” (Billy Joel), “All Shook Up” (Elvis Presley) and “Good Vibrations” (the Beach Boys). Next up is “Lennon,” which opens in July.”

NY Phil – Stars Of Colorado

Three years ago, the director of the Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado had to pitch hard with an idea to bring the New York Philharmonic for an annual summer residency. But the orchestra has been a huge hit, with sold-out concerts and overall festival attendance up 23 percent. So deciding to renew the relationship with the New York band was easy despite the $1 million annual cost.

Back To The Human Figure

Only a few years ago, the idea of artists gathering to paint from a model would have seemed impossibly old-fashioned and hokey – and if the model was female and nude, sexist to boot. Yet for nearly three years now, a number of artists – not students putting charcoal to paper for the first time, but successful artists with established styles and audiences of their own – have flocked to weekly invitation-only sessions. ‘There’s something kind of fun about doing something so geeky, so nerdy, so traditional. To do something so anti-conceptual and anti-Modernism feels really good, as if it were going to lead to helping you express things’.”

Why We’re Drawn To Screen Violence

“Why are audiences simultaneously drawn to, and seriously disturbed by, gruesome portrayals of torture? There is something so compelling about the psychosis driving those scenes. They tend to take place in close-up and are often about a conversation. There’s a lot of dialogue — not the quips you would get from an Arnold Schwarzenegger or a Bruce Willis. There’s often this element of `How much can they withstand before they lose touch with who they are — their psychic identity?’ which can be a much scarier concept than the violence. In other words, depictions of torture have an uncanny way of tapping into our most suppressed fears.”

An Amazing Breakthrough: Scholars Decode Sophocles, Euripides…

For a century, scholars have been trying to read a vast trove of ancient Greek and Roman texts. “Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed. In the past four days alone, Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia.”