Kirill Serebrennikov has been charged with embezzlement and faces 10 years in prison. Supporters have compared his trial to the purge of directors during the Soviet Union and the censorship of leading writers under the Tsars. “People of culture have always held the most dangerous position in Russia,” Liya Akhedzhakova, a celebrated actor who starred in Soviet classics like Office Romance, told the Guardian in court on Tuesday. “They are the first to be targeted.”
Tag: 11.15.18
The Answer To Chaos And Threat In The Modern World? The Values Of Our Great Institutions
“We allow our great cultural institutions to fall into disrepair and disrepute because, as we strip them of their reverential traditions and their arduous canon, we also strip them of our reasons to cherish them. We call them before the tribunal of public opinion to justify their very existence, as if we can no longer see through the smog to the heights of Parnassus, lonelier than ever because we have forgotten that it is even there. We attempt to chain the Muses to the machinery of our modern malaise, as if we do not remember that they exist to show us the way to transcend that malaise, to find our way home again, by way of that steep and difficult climb, to the bosom of art and learning.”
Why We Need A Better Way To Study The Arts
There have been many studies that take advantage of this process, and they bulk out much of the academic literature on the impact and value of the arts. The build-up to this new centre has revealed a critical mass of scholars and artists who have an appetite (and now the opportunity) to do things a bit smarter, with nuance and sensitivity to the richness of cultural experience, that doesn’t simply reduce cultural experiences to mathematical equations.
There’s Just No End — Narrative Closure Is Becoming A Thing Of The Past
Amanda Hess: “The age of the sequel is over. Now it’s the age of the sequel to the sequel. Also the prequel, the reboot, the reunion, the revival, the remake, the spinoff and the stand-alone franchise-adjacent film. Canceled television shows are reinstated. Killed-off characters are resuscitated. Movies do not begin and end so much as they loiter onscreen. And social media is built for infinite scrolling. Nothing ends anymore, and it’s driving me insane.”
The State Of Illinois Needs A New Arts Policy. Really.
The economic-development arguments for the arts are as well-worn as they are indisputably accurate, but it is high time arts advocates in Chicago admit that they have not made an effective statewide case. It also is high time for arts advocates in Chicago to admit that so much state arts funding should not be swallowed up by relatively rich institutions in downtown Chicago. It should be for everyone.
Ai Weiwei Says He’s Done With Museum Shows — And China May Be Done With Him
“Q: But are you allowed to go back?
A: You never really know … they told me I’m free, I’m allowed to go back.
Q: But you’re not sure that they’re telling you the truth?
A: I don’t know if they even know the truth.”
Steve McQueen And Viola Davis On Hollywood, Race And Power
“MCQUEEN: What’s happening with #MeToo and Time’s Up is amazing — these are huge, giant steps. But I just feel sometimes, as a black filmmaker, that it’s still going around in circles.
DAVIS: It can’t just be ‘This is a time for female rage, so this is a time for female-centric movies and maybe some black artists.’ It should’ve been time years ago. This is what it always should be.”
H. Peter Stern, Co-Founder Of Storm King Art Center, Dead At 90
“He and his father-in-law, Ralph Ogden, owners of a business that manufactured metal fasteners for construction and home use …, co-founded [the center] in Mountainville, N.Y., and developed it into a prestigious outdoor sculpture museum with modern and contemporary works arrayed over a vast pastoral landscape.”
Roy Clark, 85, Country Guitar Wizard And Co-Host Of ‘Hee Haw’
“While Mr. Clark’s musicianship and technical abilities were sometimes overlooked by critics who saw only the hayseed star of Hee Haw, he said he had few regrets about his career path. … “I’ve seen too many great guitar players sitting unnoticed on a stool in an orchestra. I said, do I want to be there, playing great and nobody knows it, or do I want to be out front with the lights on me, giggling and laughing, playing guitar and rolling my eyes and they say ‘Golly, this guy’s great?'”
David Hockney Smashes Record For Most Expensive Work By Living Artist
With a total price of $90.3 million at Christie’s last night, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972) became the most expensive piece by a living artist ever sold at auction. Even more unusually, “the Hockney painting went to the block without any type of guarantee — almost unheard of in this day and age, when consignors know how to play the big auction houses off against one another.”