“While Saint Nicholas may bring gifts to good boys and girls, ancient folklore in Europe’s Alpine region also tells of Krampus, a frightening beast-like creature who emerges during the Yule season, looking for naughty children to punish in horrible ways – or possibly to drag back to his lair in a sack.”
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America’s Oldest Book Is Now Most Expensive Printed Volume Ever
The Bay Psalm Book, a new translation from the Hebrew of the Biblical Psalms printed in Massachusetts in 1640 for the use of Puritan worshipers, was sold by Boston’s Old South Church at a Sotheby’s auction for $14.6 million.
Mandela‘s Long Walk To The Screen
What did it take to get Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom made? “English movie stars and a producer willing to wait out some 30-plus screenplay drafts” – not to mention, of course, the blessing of the man himself.
“Like One Skyline Perched Atop Another”: Rem Koolhaas’s New Rotterdam Mega-Building
“Filling a hefty chunk of the southern skyline, at 150 metres tall and more than 100 metres wide, De Rotterdam looks like someone has sliced up the drawings and stuck them on the horizon – but not put the pieces back together quite right.”
The Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold At Auction Is Now –
Three Studies of Lucian Freud at $142.4 million. The sale, at Christie’s New York, was part of the most lucrative art auction ever ($691.5 million).
Have A Look At The Finalists For The 2013 Turner Prize
Visitors to the finalists’ show in Derry “can attend a Mad Hatter’s tea party with Laure Prouvost’s grandparents, be accosted by strangers to discuss the free market thanks to Tino Sehgal, see Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s made-up portraits, and join the world’s daftest life-drawing class hosted by David Shrigley.”
Julie Taymor Is Making Theater In New York Again
After directing both the most successful musical of all time (The Lion King) and the most expensive and possibly the most troubled (a project she now refers to as “that other show”), Taymor is staging A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One early decision she made: no flying actors.
Dallas Cowboys’ Stadium Gets An Anish Kapoor Sculpture
Sky Mirror, a 35-foot concave stainless steel dish on a black granite pedestal, “reflects the eastern sky on its concave side and on the stadium side, the crowds.” (But is it incinerating any nearby gardens?)
Qatar Gets Quite An Eyeful Of Damien Hirst
The very prosperous, very conservative country’s capital has acquired some public art that might be seen as provocative almost anywhere. “Called The Miraculous Journey, it consists of 14 monumental bronze sculptures … chronicling the gestation of a fetus inside a uterus, from conception to birth, ending with a statue of a 46-foot-tall anatomically correct baby boy.”
End Of An Era For Japan’s Rubber-Suited Sci-Fi Monsters
“For decades, Japanese studios dazzled, terrified and tickled global audiences with monster movies and television shows featuring actors in rubber suits laying waste to scaled-down Tokyos … But now, in an era when lifelike digital effects have made the use of small models and suited actors look quaint and kitschy, tokusatsu is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.”