Tag: 12.03.18

See Every Surviving Vermeer Painting, United In Google’s Virtual Museum

“The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, which owns what is perhaps Vermeer’s best-known masterpiece, Girl With a Pearl Earring, has teamed up with Google Arts & Culture in Paris to build an augmented-reality app that creates a virtual museum featuring all of the artist’s works” — even The Concert, the Vermeer that was stolen in the 1990 robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. — New York Times

Leonard Slatkin’s Successor In Lyon: Nikolaj Znaider (Yes, He Conducts, Too)

“Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, who recently changed his artistic name, Nikolaj Znaider, back to his original and passport name, has been announced as the new Music Director of the Orchestre national de Lyon. The 43-year-old Danish [violinist and conductor] will take up the position in September 2020 for a period of four years, succeeding Leonard Slatkin, Music Director from 2011-2017.” — The Strad

James Frey Wins 2018 Bad Sex In Fiction Award

“Years after gaining notoriety for embellishing [sic] parts of his memoir A Million Little Pieces, the US author James Frey has a new notch in his bedpost … Seeing off competition from an all-male shortlist that included Haruki Murakami and the Man Booker prize-nominated Gerard Woodward, Frey won for his novel Katerina, a ‘“fictional retelling’ of a love affair the author started while on a hedonistic trip to France in the 1990s.” — The Guardian

What It’s Like For American Dancers To Study Ballet In Cuba

Sofia Castán Vargas, a 16-year-old San Diegan/Tijuana now enrolled at the Alonso Cuban National Ballet School, and Catherine Conley, a 20-year-old alumna who stayed on to become a corps member in the Cuban National Ballet, talk about the challenges a student from the U.S. wull face and the particular qualities of Cuban training that drew them there. — Pointe Magazine

The Perverse Imagination of Edward Carey

A few weeks ago I got a historical novel, written for adults, called Little, based on the life of Madame Tussaud. I soon learned that my 12-year-old son had beaten me to this author’s work: He’d already read Heap House, the first novel in the outlandish, fantasy-based The Iremonger Trilogy, aimed at precocious kids. I was lucky enough to speak to the writer, Edward Carey, about how he kept it all straight, and how slight the differences between categories are.

$100,000 Grawemeyer Award To Joël Bons For Concerto For Cello And Asian Instruments

“Nomaden, which was written for the French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and the Atlas Ensemble, a group of 18 musicians from Asia, the Middle East and Europe, had its premiere at the Cello Biennale in Amsterdam in 2016, where it was received enthusiastically. It pairs its cello soloist with musicians who play instruments from China (erhu and sheng), Japan (sho and shakuhachi), India (sarangi), Turkey (kemenche), Armenia (duduk), Iran (setar) and Azerbaijan (tar and kamancha).” (includes audio) — New York Times

Cornwall, Long Neglected, Needs A Literature Of Its Own

And outsiders can’t really do it justice. “There are recent novels set in Cornwall, but they tend to be about a romanticised past (Poldark casts a long shadow) or sell a fantasy of the place to tourists, making life there sound quaint and trivial. The fantasy is damaging because, behind the veneer of Seasalt clothing and Doom Bar ale, the reality couldn’t be more different: not only is Cornwall the most remote county in England, in terms of geography and transport links, but it is also one of its poorest, with a high suicide rate to boot.”

Now The Artist Who Was Going To Whitewash A Banksy Says That Would Bring It Too Much Attention, So He Might Not

Ron English, who bought Slave Labour for $730,000, said he was going to whitewash it to protest the idea that street art can be bought and sold. That didn’t work so well: “‘My phone has not stopped ringing,’ he said, listing off the various offers and ideas that he has since fielded. Whitewash the mural at my gallery, one person said. Charge admission, someone else suggested. Do it on pay-per-view, advised a third.”