“As David Hockney has put it: ‘He invented a black world that had not existed before, certainly not in Florence or Rome. Caravaggio invented Hollywood lighting.’ And that resemblance may be no accident.” It seems that Caravaggio may have used a form of camera obscura to project images onto his canvases, where he traced them.
Tag: 07.13.10
Infecting Our Prose: Colons Go Viral
Punctuation resurrection: Thanks to the spread of texting and tweeting, a once-neglected punctuation mark is making a comeback everywhere from blog posts to The New York Times Op-Ed page. The new element of style: the “jumper colon.”
Rediscovering Candy In Middle Age
“The first time I had a Milky Way after years of candy sobriety, I was jolted by the Madeleine experience of the thing. I was transported back to childhood pleasures – the leap into the neighborhood pool, the afternoon spent at the movies, the whispering with girlfriends at the back of the school bus. Since then I have made an effort to reacquaint myself with candy, in part out of a desire to reconnect with that primal past, and in part because, well, candy tastes really good.”
West End Ticket Prices Have More Than Doubled Since ’95
The Society of London Theatre’s “Box Office Data Report for 2009 has revealed the ‘average ticket price asked’ for a theatre ticket in London last year was £43.07 – a rise of more than 100% from its 1995 level of £21.36.” In the same period, “retail prices and average earnings … have gone up by 45% and 68% respectively.”
Orange County Register Closes Its Arts Blog
Says the paper’s features editor, “Our three arts reporters have many responsibilities – including writing news, previews and reviews for our Web site and our newspaper. … [They] will continue to cover their beats and publish online and in print. We are just relieving them of the added duties of a blog.”
Beethoven’s Symphonies All In One Day: Brilliant Or Mad?
“We’re more used to consuming culture in complete cycles and series today than ever before (we’ve all sat down to watch one episode of 24 and ended up slumped on the sofa hours later having got through a whole day with Jack…). But is Beethoven really ripe for the Jack Bauer treatment? Will the result be blazing Beethovenian insight or mere musical overload?”
Victory Gardens Artistic Director Dennis Zacek To Retire
“Zacek, who will be 70 in November, has directed more than 250 productions at the Gardens and was responsible for the creation of its famed ensemble of playwrights, a group of 14 writers to whom Zacek has been fiercely loyal.”
Powerful Women In Television? The Numbers Are Bleak.
“[A]n ongoing gender-bias class-action suit against Wal-Mart alleges that, among other things, only 33 percent of the company’s management is female…. The percentage that helped launch a lawsuit from Wal-Mart employees would represent an improvement for women in the entertainment industry.”
A Rare Sight: A Cuban Theatre Company Performing In US
“This is the first time Teatro Buendia has performed in the United States, but the troupe has traveled around the world.” The company’s artistic director “says that the company has never been censored, is no government mouthpiece, and that she and the troupe do not attempt to sugarcoat the reality of their country as they see it.”
Watching Fela! With Fela Kuti’s Son
“Until Sunday, [Femi] Kuti, 48, had vowed to see ‘Fela!’ only if the show was brought to Lagos, where in the 1970s Fela built a nightclub and residential compound to perform music and criticize the corruption and human rights abuses of Nigeria’s military rulers.”