“To make a building or a landscape is a hugely complex and collaborative business. Many famous architects obscure that fact, and present themselves like fashion designers, delivering a tight brand and a singular sensibility. Snohetta carry themselves like a collective of filmmakers: Their work has no set style and no manifesto. It is visually bold, but shaped by observation and empathy.”
Tag: 08.07.15
How A Word Coined In A Comic Strip Turned Into A Dance Craze (And Launched Louis Armstrong To Stardom)
“The phrase heebie-jeebies was, as far as we can tell, coined in 1923 by cartoonist Billy DeBeck in his popular comic strip Barney Google. Before long, the phrase was popping up all over … [it] implied eccentric movement and vague associations with mental disturbance, which made it the perfect name for a dance that aimed to satisfy the mid-1920s fascination with cutting loose and stepping out of convention for a couple of happy minutes.”
Long-Form Television Like ‘Breaking Bad’ And ‘The Wire’ Is Boring And Ruining Everything
“Soon, everything else in your life – theatre-going, museum visits, eating, breathing – has vanished in your commitment to seven more hours of following the ins and outs of petty crime in Baltimore or the adulterous lives of slow-emoting ad men in 60s New York.”
Too Fragile To Open, The World’s Oldest Multicolor Printed Book Is Digitized
“The revealed pages include eight categories of subjects illustrated by 50 different artists and calligraphers, with birds, plums, orchids, bamboo, fruit, stones, ink drawings, and other miscellaneous imagery, each followed by a text or poem.”
Sotheby’s Didn’t Make As Much Money Last Quarter, But It Has A Plan
“‘Our contemporary group has identified some areas where we can be doing a lot better,’ [new CEO Ted Smith] said, suggesting he might increase Sotheby’s efforts and resources in the United States and overseas, and change the way it related to consignors.”
Why Is The Hirshhorn Director Holding A Gala In NY Instead Of DC?
“The Nov. 9 gala will include 400 invited guests and honor 40 living artists whom the museum considers essential to its identity. But despite Chiu’s statement in the Times story announcing the event — that she intends no snub to the Washington arts crowd — it is a snub, and a distressing indication that she doesn’t understand the purpose, the history or the identity of the museum she now leads.”
Filling Forgotten Niches In The Book World, And Making Money Doing It
“New York Review Books, the publishing offshoot of the literary magazine The New York Review of Books, has made a specialty of rescuing and reviving all kinds of ignored or forgotten works in English or in translation, fiction and nonfiction, by writers renowned and obscure.”
Frank Gehry Is The Wrong Architect For The Revitalized Los Angeles River
“Not that he’s going to clad the entire 52 miles of river in hyper-reflective steel panels OH GOD PLEASE SAY NO. It’s just that Gehry’s work so rarely provides true public space and doesn’t show many gestures to the natural environment—both of which are the most important things the river will need to do.”
Why Don’t Kid Movies Have Kids In Them Anymore?
“The absence of live-action children’s movies featuring child actors in central roles is even more confusing when two other factors are considered: live-action movies tend to be cheaper (Toy Story 3 cost $200m to produce, whereas Home Alone only cost $18m), and child actors are not only everywhere, especially on TV, but are also arguably better than ever.”
When Our Artistic Heroes Fall To Earth (It’s Difficult To Forget Them)
Today, we are in a new moment of iconoclasm, as symbols such as the Confederate flag are reconsidered; as celebrities such as Bill Cosby fall spectacularly from grace; as books, plays, films and operas are reconsidered, edited or banished to the margins of the canon for offending contemporary audiences.