“At this late stage — Murakami is 68 — critical reception has ceased to matter to Murakami’s international audience. In Japan his books are greeted with Harry Potter–like rabidity, and in the U.S. initial print runs are in the hundreds of thousands. Cribbing a remark John Irving once made to him in an interview, Murakami has compared his readers to heroin addicts, and that may be one reason why he’s consistently delivered an ever-purer-grade product. A Nobel Prize has long been thought to be looming, especially by British bookies. Few of his skeptics would deny that his early work, his self-declared project of importing Western tropes and styles to treat life in Japan and his reckoning with Japan’s history, put him in that hazily defined league. A cynic might say: After Dylan, all is permitted.”
Tag: 05.22.17
The Enduring Allure Of Utopian Visions
Utopian visions are powerful precisely because, being nowhere, they aren’t constrained by present reality but rather point the way to a desirable future. “Utopia’s ‘nowhereness’ incites the search for it. Utopia describes a state of impossible perfection which nevertheless is in some genuine sense not beyond the reach of humanity. It is here if not now.”
How To Keep A Choreographer Alive? The Dancers
Merce Cunningham might be gone, but his work lives through his dancers. “It’s hard to overstate the brilliance of the dancers — Dylan Crossman, Silas Riener, Jamie Scott, Melissa Toogood — who catapult Cunningham’s spirit into the present more than any tangible artifact possibly can. Their movement lives on a precipice, reads like a succession of narrow escapes: almost collapsing, almost colliding. Yet it springs from an unshakeable foundation, from knowing the rules deeply enough to transcend them.”
Theatre, Race, And The Albee Estate – Whose Wishes Should Rule?
News broke last week that Edward Albee’s estate had denied permission for the casting of a black actor as Nick in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, reigniting yet again the debates on non-traditional casting. Alexis Soloski looks at the good-faith issues in the debate: “Part of the difficulty has to do with whether we perceive theater as a collaborative form in which a play is made new each time a director and actors put it on, or whether plays exist as blueprints for a single ideal staging that each production will realize to greater and lesser extent.”
Agnes Gund At 79: Thoughts On Today’s Art World
“I think the philanthropy will go up in that more people will see artists as part of a fabric of solving problems, or of addressing a problem. Before this interview, you asked me about what I was doing selling a painting [Lichtenstein’s Masterpiece], and it was because I’m really interested in getting money through that method that can be used for solving problems through art. I think that now artists are really going to come to the fore when it comes to political and social causes. I think art can make a difference. I think art can help.”
New York Gets Its First Museum Devoted To Contemporary Islamic Art
The Institute of Arab and Islamic Art opened earlier this month in Soho; “[it] has a gallery space and bookstore, and it aspires to organize quarterly exhibitions, travelling shows, artist residencies, and publications.” Vivek Gupta has a first look.
NEH Chairman Resigns
“William D. Adams, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will be stepping down effective Tuesday, the endowment announced, ending a three-year tenure. Mr. Adams cited ‘personal reasons,’ as well as the Trump administration’s decision to appoint a new liaison to the endowment.”
Ratmansky To Reconstruct Petipa’s Original Version Of ‘Harlequinade’
“One of the 21st century’s greatest choreographers is taking another drink from the fount of classical ballet: Alexei Ratmansky plans to create a new Harlequinade next year for American Ballet Theater, a reconstruction of Marius Petipa’s ballet Les Millions d’Arlequin.”
Obie Awards Spread The Love Among (Almost) All The Tonys’ Best Play Nominees
Of the four nominees for the Tony Award for best new play, three had Off-Broadway runs, and each of them was honored by the Obie judges.
Dina Merrill, 93, Actress, Heiress, Philanthropist
“[She was] an actress whose aristocratic poise and willowy good looks earned her many film and TV roles as well-bred society women – parts that reflected her own life as a scion of two of America’s richest families.”