Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani, “at one time the biggest art collector in the world … [and] a distant cousin of the current Emir, served as Qatar’s minister of culture from 1997 until 2005 and oversaw an ambitious museum building programme for the oil and gas-rich Gulf state.”
Tag: 11.10.14
So Who Paid $101 Million For A Giacometti Last Week?
There was only one bidder for the sculptor’s 1950 piece Chariot at Sotheby’s last week. That bidder was anonymous at the time, but someone has blown his cover …
Quentin Tarantino Says He’ll Retire After Ten Films
“I don’t believe you should stay onstage until people are begging you to get off. I like the idea of leaving them wanting a bit more. I do think directing is a young man’s game, and … I want to go out while I’m still hard.”
“The Realism Canard” And What Movies Do To Our Brains
“The realism canard” is what critic Isaac Butler calls the tendency to find fault with works of fiction, especially films, because events and conditions in them aren’t like real life. (For instance, in outer space, you can’t hear explosions.) Problem is, our brains are fooled by filmed images a lot more than we’d like to think.
Alt-Rock Becomes Chinese
Liang Long, lead singer of the band Second Hand Roses, “strutted across the stage … wearing a red floral-print jacket and snug red shorts. The jacket, adorned with dozens of gold tassels, was as majestically fussy as Michael Jackson’s, but with a more playful touch. … [The guitarist’s] red tutu bounced in time with the beat, and the crowd jumped along with him.”
Watching Ballerinas Prepare Their Pointe Shoes
Some dancers rip them apart and glue them back together, some shellac them, some cut out the material around the toes, some yank out the sole lining. Everyone does it differently, and many spend hours at it. (includes videos)
Russia Launches Sputnik, A New International Radio/Internet News Network
“Russia launched a new state-funded foreign news service Monday to challenge the ‘aggressive propaganda’ of the West and provide an ‘alternative interpretation’ of global events. The new media brand, Sputnik, is the reworked foreign language service of the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency and Voice of Russia radio.”
Jerry Tallmer, 93, Theater Critic Who Founded The Obie Awards
“The Village Voice was a young paper and Mr. Tallmer its young theatre critic when, in 1955, he decided the burgeoning Off-Broadway scene south of 14th Street merited a practical response outside of weekly reviews. He hatched the idea of the Obie Awards, a downtown answer to the uptown Tonys.” He went on to spend 30 years at The New York Post.
Sendak Estate Sued By Philly Museum And Library Over Rare Books
“The executors of Maurice Sendak’s will have not complied with his wishes to bequeath his multimillion-dollar rare-book collection to the Rosenbach Museum and Library and for the revered author and illustrator’s work to continue to be displayed at the Rosenbach. So claims a lawsuit filed last week in northern Fairfield County, Conn., [by] the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia.”
The Women Tagging And Painting The Streets Of Bogotá
“[In Colombia’s capital], where graffiti is classified as a violation rather than a crime, street artists do not have to hide.” Here, three of the most active talk about the challenges of working as a street artist while female.