Francesca Steele: “All that indecision and self-reflection – a sort of Twilight for grown-ups, only with paler stars and better fashion sense. I don’t deny that Cahiers du Cinéma directors were geniuses of a sort, film critics who saw an overblown and worn-out Hollywood machine and decided to do something about it. … The problem is the characters.”
Tag: 07.19.10
YouTube Removes Work Of Art For Nudity
It’s Susan Mogul’s landmark 1973 video, “Dressing Up”. “Please understand that this work has been shown world wide and is in countless museum collections. This is a work of art that uses the artist and her body as the work. This is an important issue in the preservation of important art made in the late part of the 20th century and should not be wrongly presumed to be offensive.”
Editions du Public: Crowdsourcing The Money To Publish Books
Selected by the editors at an independent publisher in Paris from among 80 submissions (so far), 16 manuscripts are posted on the publisher’s website; “co-editors” invest €11 in whichever titles they choose. Once a manuscript has 2,000 co-editors, the publisher then prints copies of the book for sale in bookstores and online; each co-editor receives a free copy and, depending on sales, a return on the original investment of up to €88.
What’s The One Song That The Whole World Has In Common?
“Happy Birthday to You,” of course. “[B]ecause it can be sung anywhere (and by anyone) – needing no special effects or soundstage or rehearsal – it is quintessentially egalitarian, and therefore, it’s the song that belongs to us all.” Yet this ubiquitous ditty “is not an accidental success. It is not a traditional song nor did it appear ex nihilo.“
Illustrating For Harvey Pekar, The Comics Genius Who Couldn’t Draw
Says one artist, “Harvey’s script was a single sheet of typing paper, divided into a rough grid with a ballpoint pen and covered with sloping, semi-legible handwriting.” Another script “had stick figures, but they looked more like chairs to me. A chair with a balloon on top. It was scrawled on one piece of paper, sort of vaguely laid out. He would draw like seven boxes on the page.”
Tradition! Our Stubborn Longevity Bias
“If something has been around longer, it must be better. New research suggests we hold onto that bias even in instances where quality has nothing to do with longevity.”
Kafka’s Archive Of Papers, Long In Limbo, Finally Opened
“Franz Kafka wanted all his manuscripts to be burned after his death, but his friend Max Brod disregarded the request, seeding a complex legal battle over thousands of manuscripts that has the literary world agog. That legal tussle takes a new twist today as four safety deposit boxes in a Zurich bank containing the manuscripts are opened.”
Another Lost Caravaggio May Have Surfaced In Rome
Scholars are examining an unsigned canvas depicting the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, part of the art collection of the Jesuit order, to determine if it is by Caravaggio. Several historians note that the painting bears many of the artist’s stylistic trademarks; others urge caution, noting that no documentary evidence has been found that he ever tackled this particular subject.
South Bank Show May Be Gone, But Its Awards Will Live On
“Lord Bragg’s South Bank Show Awards are to continue after he signed a deal with the Sky Arts channel. It was thought January’s awards would be the last after ITV’s flagship arts programme The South Bank Show was axed.”
A Sistema For The Banlieue: Intensive Music Education In A Poor Paris Suburb
“Six months ago none of these children had played a musical instrument. Now, they are a handful of rehearsals away from performing in the prestigious Pleyel Hall in central Paris … The concert is the culmination of the ‘Demos Orchestra’ project, an ambitious scheme which took 450 children aged seven to 12, living in disadvantaged areas of the Parisian suburbs, and taught them to play an instrument from scratch.”