“As he once put it to me, ‘For the last 14 years, I’ve not gone a day where I go outside and don’t have someone tell me how much they like what I do. I’m really very, very lucky.’ Never mind that Chuck Close is a partial quadriplegic and largely confined to a wheelchair.”
Tag: 07.18.12
Watch Monica Mason During Her Dancing Days
“This week Monica Mason makes her official farewell to Royal Ballet – the company she joined as a dancer in 1958, and which she has directed since 2002.”
Japan May Finally Be Joining The E-Book Revolution
“While consumers in the US and Europe increasingly turn to e-readers, many Japanese have stubbornly refused to part with conventional reading matter. … But that could all be about to change from Thursday, when the Japanese online retail giant Rakuten launches an e-reader it hopes will see off an expected challenge from Amazon’s device later this year, and corner the world’s second-biggest publishing market.”
How Kickstarter Could Transform (Or Disrupt) Public Radio
“Previously it took years to establish a new show on public radio, and the process involved grant writing and lots of politics. Now radio stations and producers themselves can turn to Kickstarter and show there’s an audience that values their ideas. … [But what] if listeners stopped giving to their local stations and instead just spent all their money to directly fund producers via Kickstarter?”
Sure, Ted Shawn Founded Jacob’s Pillow, But He’s A Problematic Icon
“In his 1926 treatise The American Ballet, for instance, Shawn denigrated women (who greatly outnumbered men in the field), African Americans (he saw popular dances rooted in African American traditions, like the Charleston, as a threat to dance as an art-with-a-capital-A), and any immigrant without claim to an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ heritage (he was interested in creating a purely ‘American’ art form), in the service of his own mission.”
London Police Warn Grafitti Artists For Olympics
“It’s no secret that graffiti and street art are being targeted in the run up the London 2012 games. Each day stories emerge of artworks treasured by locals being removed by excited councils, or of graffiti that had remained untouched for years suddenly being washed brown by the over-zealous buff.”
Where’s The Culture In The Cultural Olympiad? Grouses Jonathan Jones
“This is the summer of stupid. … The jubilee was one big festival of refusing to think. … So is the Cultural Olympiad, with its high-class acrobats. Who really cares about [Elizabeth] Streb’s aerial choreography? It has no cultural depth at all. Nor do such highlights of the Olympic summer of culture as a bus balanced on top of a seaside pavilion or a poetry bombing.”
Rajesh Khanna, 69, Bollywood’s First Superstar Heartthrob
“[His] dark, soulful, somewhat fleshy good looks established him as India’s leading romantic hero, and [his 1969 film Aradhana] marked the beginning of a phenomenon, familiar enough in Europe and America but never seen before in Hindi cinema – the frenzied mass hysteria of fans.”
Strike Worries At Both Twin Cities Orchestras
Both the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra “face severe budget shortfalls and are exploring deep reductions in costs. Some fear that could lead to a walkout by musicians on both sides of the river.”
La Jolla Playhouse Director Talks About Color-Blind (Non-Asian) Casting Controversy
The Nightingale, a new musical “adapted from the Hans Christian Andersen story, is set in ancient China but features a multi-ethnic cast of mostly non-Asians. The lead role of a Chinese ruler is played by a white actor.” While artistic director Christopher Ashley is “sympathetic with the need for more Asian Americans in theater, … [he says] Asian Americans have benefited from the company’s use of color-blind casting in the past.”