Artist Who Once Nailed Scrotum To Red Square Sets Fire To Bank Of France

“The Russian performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky set fire to an entrance of Bank of France in Paris this weekend. The artist also condemned bankers as the new monarchs in his latest act of political performance art in France, the country that granted him political asylum in May. Pavlensky came to worldwide attention for his previous performances in Moscow, such as nailing his scrotum to the ground in Red Square and setting alight an entrance of the Federal Security Service building.”

Roy Dotrice, Star Of Screen, Stage, And ‘Game Of Thrones’ Audiobooks, Dead At 94

His six-decade career included plenty of television and film work (he played Mozart’s father in Amadeus) as well as an astounding number of stage appearances. He was an early member of Peter Hall’s Royal Shakespeare Company, won a Tony as the scheming father in A Moon for the Misbegotten, gave nearly 1,800 performances as 17th-century writer John Aubrey in the one-man show Brief Lives and hundreds more as the president in Mister Lincoln. He holds the world record for the number of different characters voiced in audiobooks – 224, in George R. R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Iceseries, the source for Game of Thrones.

Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.16.17

The Voracious Collector
That headline could apply to dozens of people, especially nowadays in this age of competitive, ostentatious collecting of contemporary and modern art. But I was referring to J. P. Morgan, who in his lifetime purchased … read more
>AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-10-16

Salvaging “Salvator Mundi”: Inside Look at “Extensive Restoration” of Leonardo at Christie’s
“Without question,” Christie’s confidently declared last week, Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (being auctioned on Nov. 15 in New York) is “the greatest artistic rediscovery of the 21st century.” Really? With 83 years still remaining in this century, we’re entitled to pose a few questions. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-10-16

Richard Wilbur, American Poet, 1921-2017
Just a quick post to note the death of the great poet and translator Richard Wilbur. Until two days ago, when he passed away at 96, I would have called him America’s finest living poet. … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2017-10-16

 

Libraries Are Having A Hard Time Figuring Out How To Deal With Homeless Populations

For instance, take the story of St. Louis’ Central Library, which was, for four years, across the street from a large homeless shelter that provided nothing but beds for the night, turning the library into a de facto shelter during the day. “It’s an extremely difficult and complex problem, balancing the safety of the library on the one hand with the acknowledgment on the other that the homeless and marginalized are real patrons, too.”

The Leonardo We Need Him To Be: Walter Isaacson’s New Bio Frames The Artist/Thinker For Contemporary Culture

“Our deepest sense of this most famous artist remains subject to change. The systematic publication of the notebooks, beginning in the late nineteenth century, tipped our understanding of his goals from art toward science, and opened questions about how to square the legendary peacefulness of his nature with his designs for ingeniously murderous war machines.”

Alex Ross: New York’s Two Biggest Musical Organizations Open Their Seasons In Predictable, Traditional Fashion

The Metropolitan Opera opened the season with its hundred-and-fifty-seventh performance of Bellini’s “Norma.” The New York Philharmonic began with its hundred-and-nineteenth rendition of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. This is the safe course that many performing-arts groups are choosing in precarious times: the eternal return to the world that was. Both works are masterpieces that deserve to be heard repeatedly. Yet the implicit message is reactionary. As the nation contends with its racist and misogynist demons, New York’s leading musical institutions give us canonical pieces by white males, conducted by white males, directed by white males.