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USA art 69 articles, created at 2016-09-22 12:00
1 Datebook:Ceramics and Art at Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami
(1.03/2) A joint exhibition titled “Schemes” and “Ghost Hands” w ill be on view at Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, from September 24, through October 22, 2016. 2016-09-22 04:42 1KB www.blouinartinfo.com
2 David Adjaye on Designing a Museum That Speaks a Different Language
(1.02/2) The designer of the Museum of African American History and Culture discusses the project, its structure, setbacks and symbolism. 2016-09-21 19:33 10KB www.nytimes.com
3 Archaeologists & Museums Denounce Destruction of Standing Rock Sioux Burial Grounds The Natural History Museum initiated this sign-on letter concerning the destruction of (1.02/2) Native American burial grounds and sacred sites by the Dakota Access Pipeline... 2016-09-22 01:55 4KB thenaturalhistorymuseum.org
4 Datebook: ‘Terry Haggerty’ at Von Bartha, S-chanf An exhibition featuring w orks by British-born, Berlin-based artist Terry Haggerty, w ill be on view at Von Bartha’s S-chanf gallery from December 27, 2016, through February 3, 2017. 2016-09-22 03:00 1KB www.blouinartinfo.com
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5 Suzanne Farrell Ballet Plans to Close After 2017-18 Season
(1.00/2) The company w as led by Ms. Farrell, an important muse of the choreographer George Balanchine w hen she danced for him at New York City Ballet. 2016-09-21 22:34 1KB www.nytimes.com
6 Datebook: ‘Most Relative Times’ at the Galerie Klüser, Munich Galerie Klüser’s second solo exhibition w ith Polish painter Natalia Zaluska featuring a new selection of w orks highlighting on large-scale (220 x 190 cm and 170 x 140 cm), w ill be on view from October 12 through November 19, 2016. 2016-09-22 03:03 1KB (0.02/2) www.blouinartinfo.com
7 MacArthur Foundation Announces 2016 ‘Genius’ Grant Winners
(0.01/2) The 23 w inners of this year’s fellow ships, aw arded for “originality, insight and potential,” include w riters, visual artists, scientists and law yers. 2016-09-22 04:01 7KB www.nytimes.com
8 Datebook: Penone's 'Ebbi, Avro, Non Ho' at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris is hosting an exhibition 'Ebbi, Avro, Non Ho
(0.01/2) (J’eus, J’aurai, Je n’ai)' by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone that w ill be on view through October 22, 2016. 2016-09-22 03:40 1KB www.blouinartinfo.com 9 Curtis Hanson: A Filmmaker of Sunshine and Noir The director of “L. A. Confidential” used genre cinema to develop his art and craft, then made films that fit their moment. 2016-09-22 02:13 6KB www.nytimes.com (0.01/2)
10 Review: In ‘Hero of the Empire,’ a Young Churchill Earns His Spurs
(0.01/2) Candice Millard’s account of Winston Churchill’s exploits during the Boer War in 1899 vividly recounts an entitled youth w ho w ins headlines for his brashness and bravery. 2016-09-21 22:13 7KB www.nytimes.com
11 NOVA OBIECTA unveils COLUM(N), a set of hand turned cork variations NOVA OBIECTA's exclusive geometric cork set re-envisions the w orlds of sculptural and furniture design- w ith the edition of 100. 2016-09-22 04:15 1KB www.designboom.com
12 Rainey Qualley Sets Sights on Pop Domination In the last six months, she’s been toiling aw ay at renovation and rebirth, starting w ith adopting a new artist name: Rainsford. 2016-09-22 04:01 4KB wwd.com
13 Todd Snyder Taps Trey Laird for First Ad Campaign The black-and-w hite images w ere photographed by Matthew Brookes. 2016-09-22 04:01 2KB wwd.com
14 Gosha Rubchinskiy Bottles ‘Perfect Summer Weekend’ The Russian designer constructed a story — and a book — around his first perfume w ith Comme des Garçons. 2016-09-22 04:01 3KB wwd.com
15 Style.com Unveils Advertising Campaign The e-commerce and omnichannel shopping proposition — w hich launched earlier this month — unveiled its launch advertising campaign. 2016-09-22 04:01 2KB wwd.com
16 Datebook: ‘Autumn/Winter season, 2017’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 'Autumn/Winter season for 2017' is on view at the National Gallery of Victoria and offers a dynamic art experience relevant to diversified audiences. Organized in collaboration w ith the Art Exhibitions Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria w ill feature Melbourne... 2016-09-22 03:25 1KB www.blouinartinfo.com
17 ‘Mr. Robot’ Season 2 Finale: Fade to Black The second season of “Mr. Robot” didn’t so much end as slip into darkness. 2016-09-22 03:06 7KB www.nytimes.com
18 Datebook: Daniel Jacoby's Sydney Series at Maisterravalbuena, Madrid An exhibition titled “Sydney w ould have nothing to hide if others did not have anything to fear”, representing the w ork of w ell-know n artist Daniel Jacoby, is on view at Maisterravalbuena, Madrid and w ill run through 12 November 2016. 2016-09-22 03:05 1KB www.blouinartinfo.com 19 Milan Scene: Restaurants, Bars, Exhibits and More Fun things to do and see, and places to eat and drink on the go and around the show s during Milan Fashion Week. 2016-09-22 03:00 2KB wwd.com
20 ‘Designated Survivor’ Series Premiere: Glasses Off Kiefer Sutherland’s Tom Kirkman seems a w arm, resolute presence, if not yet a hero, in a chaotic year. 2016-09-22 03:00 5KB www.nytimes.com
21 lazareth wazuma GT fuses a car with the spirit of motorcycling lazareth w azuma GT creates a blur betw een the genres of vehicles 2016-09-22 02:15 2KB www.designboom.com
22 ‘Empire’ Season 3 Premiere: The Fall “Empire” once again delivers the combination of personality, politics, pulp and pop that took it to the top. 2016-09-22 02:00 7KB www.nytimes.com
23 Dead Shot Mary, Pistol-Packing Trailblazer, Returns in One-Policewoman Show A new play relives the career of Mary Shanley, a pioneering policew oman and detective w ho once made headlines for her gun-toting arrests. 2016-09-22 00:50 8KB www.nytimes.com
24 studio_GAON's concrete house provides solitude in korea studio_GAON has constructed a concrete hill-top house on the island of jeju, off the southernmost coast of south korea. 2016-09-21 23:15 3KB www.designboom.com
25 Natalia Vodianova, Paul Polman, Annie Lennox Honored by Fashion 4 Development Wednesday’s F4D First Ladies luncheon aw arded an assortment of sustainable- minded individuals. 2016-09-21 22:40 3KB wwd.com
26 Avery Amereau Is a Rarity in Music: A Contralto This singer, 25, a rising star in a narrow field, w ill sing at Alice Tully Hall on Thursday and make her Metropolitan Opera debut in November. 2016-09-21 22:21 5KB www.nytimes.com
27 Review: Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam Evoke Dreams and Ghosts On the moody “I Had a Dream That You Were Mine,” Mr. Leithauser and Rostam shamble through styles and approaches w ithout fretting over how all the pieces w ill fit. 2016-09-21 22:19 4KB www.nytimes.com
28 Review: It’s a Wild, but Peaceful, World for the Former Cat Stevens The singer, w ho is now named Yusaf Islam, performed in his show, “A Cat’s Attic,” at the Beacon Theater. 2016-09-21 22:19 4KB www.nytimes.com 29 erik giudice architects' canopy for jonkoping station in sweden the matchstick structure by erik giudice architects pays homage to the city’s past as tändsticksstaden, famous matchstick capital of sw eden. 2016-09-21 22:10 3KB www.designboom.com
30 Claire’s Stores Can Breathe Through Holiday Even w ith the revised credit facility, it might run into problems again at year end. 2016-09-21 22:06 2KB wwd.com
31 Forget Twitter. I’d Rather Binge Theater. Our critic Charles Isherw ood prizes epic theater. Here’s his take on tw o inspired long- form w orks coming to an end in New York at roughly the same time. 2016-09-21 22:05 8KB www.nytimes.com
32 Review: A Rough Cut of ‘The Thief and the Cobbler’ Makes It to MoMA A dream project by the animator Richard Williams, this film, still in an incomplete state, screens through Tuesday at the Museum of Modern Art. 2016-09-21 22:04 2KB www.nytimes.com
33 Review: ‘Pitch,’ a Gender Changeup, but With Clichés Intact Kylie Bunbury stars in this baseball drama as a female pitcher w ho gets called up to the major leagues. It starts on Fox on Thursday. 2016-09-21 21:56 3KB www.nytimes.com
34 Review: ‘Notorious’ Offers Nice Cheekbones, but Not Much Else This ABC drama about a cable-new s producer and a celebrity law yer starts Thursday. It doesn’t have the zing of Shonda Rhimes’s show s on the same night. 2016-09-21 21:53 3KB www.nytimes.com
35 Karl Lagerfeld Appears in Promotional Film for Paris Alain Ducasse and David Guetta are among other personalities featured in the spot. 2016-09-21 21:50 2KB wwd.com
36 Watching Apple and the Smartwatch Market Will the Apple Watch Series 2 be enough to make smartw atches more mainstream? Opinions are mixed. 2016-09-21 21:39 3KB wwd.com
37 Review: City Ballet’s Gala Evening of Misses... and a Lot of Skin Our chief dance critic on the company’s “Ballet and Fashion” event, w hich included four premieres and questionable choices about dancers’ attire. 2016-09-21 21:37 7KB www.nytimes.com
38 Spring 2017 Fashion Trend: Shirting Updates at Coterie Shirting w as rew orked into oversized shapes and used as fresh detailing for Spring 2017 at Coterie. 2016-09-21 21:29 2KB wwd.com 39 Jimmy Choo Celebrates 20 Years With High Tea Never w as a cup of tea and a slice of cake more appreciated. 2016-09-21 21:27 1KB wwd.com
40 The Roots Picnic Expands to New York City, Featuring David Byrne This event from Philadelphia heads to Bryant Park, w ith guests also including Wu-Tang Clan, Nile Rodgers and D’Angelo. 2016-09-21 21:23 1KB www.nytimes.com
41 Hip-Hop Dance at the Crossing the Line Festival The French breakdancer Anne Nguyen makes her New York debut at the festival, presented by French Institute Alliance Française. 2016-09-21 21:11 1KB www.nytimes.com
42 simon davidson uncovers the overlooked artistry of 'burnouts' cars consumed by colorful plumes of smoke are the subject of australian photographer simon davidson's series 'burnouts'. 2016-09-21 21:05 1KB www.designboom.com
43 Puppies and Friends at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every w eekday 2016-09-21 20:58 3KB www.artnews.com
44 ‘Marvel’s Luke Cage’ Sweeps From Barbershop to Neighborhood Battle A superhero tries to lie low in Harlem, but he is soon forced into a show dow n in this Netflix show w ith a hip-hop and R&B soundtrack. 2016-09-21 20:51 1KB www.nytimes.com
45 It's a South African ‘Slacktivist’ Protest in Umlilo’s New Music Video Umlilo reunites w ith Alv Corp and Odendaal Esterhuyse in the new music video for "Umzabalazo. " 2016-09-21 20:35 3KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com
46 Review: Melissa Errico Laughs, but Can’t Let Go, at 54 Below “Funny, I’m a Woman With Children” at Feinstein’s/54 Below w as full of Ms. Errico’s humor, though she w as unable to fully let go in some numbers. 2016-09-21 20:28 2KB www.nytimes.com
47 MoMA Looks at Migrants and Efforts to Help Them “Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter” at the museum considers how designers are responding to the plight of those on the move. 2016-09-21 20:25 1KB www.nytimes.com
48 Artist Suzan Frecon Wins $25,000 Artists’ Legacy Foundation Award At 75 years old, Suzan Frecon continues to impress the art w orld. She is the latest recipient of the Artists’ Legacy Foundation artist aw ard. 2016-09-21 20:17 2KB news.artnet.com 49 Smaller Stars Will Get a Chance to Shine at Latin Grammys With many of Latin music’s major artists on the sidelines, the field w ill be w ide open at the aw ards show on Nov. 17. 2016-09-21 20:15 2KB www.nytimes.com
50 How an Art Collective Shipwrecked a Giant Astronaut at Burning Man Robots arts collective talk about their w ork for this year’s Burning Man. 2016-09-21 20:15 5KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com
51 Report From Detroit: Culture Lab 2016 Detroit w as a symbol for the national economic recession several years ago, and it has since become a symbol for rejuvenation. But is the city really rejuvenated? 2016-09-21 20:06 7KB www.blouinartinfo.com
52 Here’s Who Is Speaking at Creative Time’s First Summit in DC New York arts nonprofit Creative Time has invited over 50 speakers to Washington DC for it's annual summit on art and social change. 2016-09-21 19:58 3KB news.artnet.com
53 : Four Female Artists Fill a Gallery with Feels In this safe space, artists open up about the trials of being on the internet as a girl. 2016-09-21 19:55 2KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com
54 Public Art by Björk, JR, and Yoko Ono Comes to Moscow Times Square Arts ships its greatest hits from the Big Apple to Russia. 2016-09-21 19:10 4KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com
55 lina creates a surprisingly spacious studio in poland mode:lina's 37 square meter space includes kaw ecki's office, kitchen and bedroom, and manages to include a hidden room for the designer's 6 year old son 2016-09-21 19:01 2KB www.designboom.com
56 A 17th-Century Portrait Will Be the Earliest Painting by a Woman at the Tate “Portrait of an Unknow n Lady” w as made betw een 1650 and 1655 by Joan Carlile, one of the first w omen know n to be a professional painter in England. 2016-09-21 18:40 2KB www.nytimes.com
57 Fall Movies: Insider Preview With A. O. Scott The Times’s co-chief movie critic A. O. Scott talks about the fall movies, the film festival scene and highlights from the new season. 2016-09-21 18:37 1KB www.nytimes.com
58 Mark Bradford's Pride of Place Through costume, performance, and an iconic basketball jersey, Bradford's photos question myths about masculinity and the black body. 2016-09-22 01:55 3KB aperture.org 59 Seeding and Siting — Centerpoints — Walker Art Center From the hydroseed that's painted the hillside blue-green to the new ly planted grove of honey locust trees near the Walker entrance to the daily appearance of new sculptures, our campus renovation... 2016-09-21 18:10 902Bytes blogs.walkerart.org
60 Take a Peek Inside Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s Art Collection With new s of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt heading for divorce, w e decided to take a look at the celebrities' art collection. 2016-09-21 18:07 3KB news.artnet.com
61 Datebook: 'Limbo' at Wunderkammern, Milan Wunderkammern presents artist Doze Green's exhibition 'Limbo' w hich w ill run from September 28 through November 2. 2016-09-21 17:33 1KB www.blouinartinfo.com
62 The Fifth Edition of Photoville Opens in a New Location at Brooklyn Bridge Park The 2016 edition of Photoville opens at Brooklyn Bridge Park. 2016-09-21 17:30 3KB www.blouinartinfo.com
63 frank gehry to modify eisenhower memorial design frank gehry w ill remain involved in the design of the eisenhow er memorial, after the family of the former president announced their support for the project. 2016-09-21 17:20 2KB www.designboom.com
64 This Mural’s Message is Revealed in Its Own Reflection SpY's large-scale w all piece in Norw ay creates an interesting mirror effect against a placid body of w ater. 2016-09-21 17:20 2KB thecreatorsproject.vice.com
65 Datebook: ‘Bani Abidi. Exercise in Redirecting Lines’ at Kunsthaus Hamburg Kunsthaus Hamburg is currently hosting the solo of acclaimed Pakistani artist, Bani Abidi, w ho is now based in Berlin. The exhibition is on view through October 30, 2016. 2016-09-21 17:13 1KB www.blouinartinfo.com
66 Museum Officials and Archaeologists Sign Petition Against N. Dakota Pipeline Anthropologists and academics also join in letter to the Army Corps and other federal agencies, to fight development in American Indians’ sacred space. 2016-09-21 17:09 4KB www.nytimes.com
67 Music for Aliens: Campaign Aims to Reissue Carl Sagan’s Golden Record The recording, sent into space for aliens to hear, included sounds of Earth, music and greetings from around the w orld. 2016-09-21 13:52 4KB www.nytimes.com 68 Toy Factory Productions Brings 'Innamorati Two' Musical to Singapore Stage The bilingual theater company is back w ith a new Mandarin musical, debuting on September 22 at the Drama Centre Theatre in Singapore. 2016-09-21 08:16 2KB www.blouinartinfo.com
69 Miami’s Refurbished Stadium Will Be Decked Out in Street Art A dozen artists have contributed w ork to the Hard Rock Stadium, the Dolphins’ new ly renovated home. 2016-09-21 04:01 4KB www.nytimes.com Articles
USA art 69 articles, created at 2016-09-22 12:00
1 /69 Datebook:Ceramics and Art at Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami (1.03/2) Related
Venues
Mindy Solomon Gallery
“Schemes” by Cuban artist Ernesto Garcia Sanchez and “Ghost Hands” by American artist Linda Lopez will be on view at Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, from September 24, through October 22, 2016.
The exhibition features Lopez’s ceramics and Sanchez’s paintings in the gallery’s project space.
The exhibition examines Sanchez’s paintings that resemble tube like objects punctured to hold brushes and pencils. His artwork takes on a performative angle through the process of controlling his technique and using just one side of the device. Sanchez allows the other side to flow freely with the subconscious act of painting. Lopez, on the other hand, uses rugs made by Mexican artisans alongside her sculptural pieces that form a bridge between what we know as historic memory and new beginnings. There exists comfort in her works. Colors that radiate homeliness and a need to nest this, come from her unique cross-cultural perspective. Linda Lopez’s ceramics and Ernesto Garcia Sanchez’s paintings provide a fresh perspective and energy to the traditional media. An opening reception with the artists will take place Saturday, September 24th, from 7-9pm.
Datebook: 'A Sharp Clif f Datebook: Robert Kelly Solo Datebook: Giuseppe Penone Datebook: Noa Yaf e's 'The Af ter A Sof t Landing' at 'Black on Bone' at Sophia at Marian Goodman Gallery , Shadow' at RawArt Gallery GAIA Gallery , Istanbul Contemporary Gallery , London blouinartinfo.com blouinartinfo.com London blouinartinfo.com blouinartinfo.com
2016-09-22 04:42 BLOUIN ARTINFO www.blouinartinfo.com
2 /69 David Adjaye on Designing a Museum That Speaks a Different Language (1.02/2) The first really fine major public building of the century to rise in the nation’s capital, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, opening on Saturday, fills the last prime plot of land along the National Mall in Washington and, with it, a gaping hole in the American story. Its three-tier bronzed aluminum skin, burnished and intricate, rising as if from out of the earth, contrasts with the white marble, concrete and glass palaces telling other chapters in that story.
The building was designed by the Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup, a consortium of firms, led by David Adjaye, the London- based, Ghanaian-British architect, working with Philip Freelon and the engineer Guy Nordenson. Mr. Adjaye, whose American commissions include an art museum in Denver and a subsidized housing project in Manhattan, sat down recently to talk about the project, its structure, setbacks and symbolism. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Looking back, are you happy?
Fundamentally, really happy, yeah. There have been many trials and mutations. I’m really happy we didn’t lose the key form of the building.
Which is?
I wanted to see if we could make the silhouette of the building the beginning of the narrative.
You’re talking about the three-tier facade of bronzed, canted panels, which become a sort of inverted triple pyramid. It draws on the shape of a Yoruban caryatid, a traditional West African column with a corona at the top.
I was completely moved by the corona motif. It seemed like a way to start to tell a story that moves from one continent, where people were taken, along with their cultures, and used as labor, then contributed towards making another country and new cultures. That history then continues in the decorative patterning of those panels.
The patterns riff on the ironwork of a former African-American slave from Charleston, South Carolina. Am I right?
People keep thinking that the slave trade was about cotton picking. It was also about bridge building, canals, house making. Labor in all its forms. So, I suddenly went, ‘Oh my God, well, let’s really talk about architecture and African-American history, let’s go back and look at Georgia and Charleston, you know, all these places, through a different lens. There, the history is right in front of you — this incredible tradition of metalsmithing by freed slaves. There were no molds. They learned all this by hand. It is part of the history of American architecture.
You are not American. You’re British-Ghanaian, the son of a diplomat, raised in Britain. How do you relate to this history?
In Africa and throughout the black diaspora, we all sort of see the American experience as the modernity of black culture.
Modernity? I’m talking about the emancipation that happened through the civil rights movement, which stirred independence movements elsewhere. We forget that that is a new phenomenon, a modern phenomenon.
When you said “modernity” I thought you were talking about contemporary African-American culture.
Absolutely. That too. I think many people don’t realize how much the popularity of Obama is not just simply because he’s black, but also because he’s part of this modernity.
So how did this notion of modernity enter into the design of the building?
The building is classical in its inspiration, with a base and capital, but it’s also not a classical building. It’s a very modern building in how contemporary thinking has been applied to material science and circulation. We wanted a building that wasn’t just about itself, but about its context and about the experience of consuming information in the museum.
You’re talking about the layout of the building, the ways you move through it?
I think about the building in three parts. There are the historical galleries, which make a kind of crypt, in an underground space. Then a second part deals with migration from the South to urban centers and the beginning of the professional classes. I wanted the journey from that crypt up into the corona to be analogous to history, as a kind of migratory process, toward the light. Then you go up to the uppermost level; I call it “Now.” It’s about the arts. So this tripartite structure relates to the corona’s three tiers. It’s meant to suggest the link between symbolic form and the museum’s content.
You also orchestrate views, through the facade, with cutouts, and through windows in the galleries, onto the National Mall.
You’re looking at the Jefferson Memorial, you’re looking at the Washington Monument, you’re looking at the Lincoln Memorial. You’re looking at Congress. You’re looking at the National Archives and the White House. History is played out in front of your eyes.
And you wanted all this to be visible from within, as you move through the museum.
From within, yeah, through what can sometimes look like strange apertures on the outside. People say to me, “Is that your idea of stylish architecture?” This is not a project about intuitive whimsy. Everything here is driven by research, which creates its own kind of poetry, I hope. Most museums on the Mall are closed to the outside in the sense that they take you to another world. They function a bit like cinema: You go into a different world and then you come back out. I didn’t want that. The experience of being black is not a fiction. There’s something important about always coming back to the light of day.
The ground floor is basically a transparent container, a sort of Miesian glass box, open all around, letting light in. Outside the entrance facing the Mall there’s a water feature, which you cross, making a kind of symbolic passage, to a porch, beneath the bronzed facade, that I gather alludes to the Southern tradition of porches.
It’s a building that I was clear from the start was not going to be white marble. It needed to speak a different language. Bronze is a material for both memorials and monuments. I thought bronze was perfect for the panels on the outside. The thing is that the Smithsonian has this extraordinary thing of wanting its buildings to be guaranteed for 50 years. You could make a bronze building cost-effective, but the problem was that we couldn’t get anyone to guarantee it would have no problems for 50 years. Bronze was not a price issue. The problem was that the weight of bronze is onerous. This is a mechanically fixed system: trusses support these things, and they all have mechanical fixings. It was the potential failure of the fixings that posed the challenge. You have to be able to access any of those panels, meaning you have to be able to get to each panel, be able to take it off and not disrupt the functionality of the building or its safety. Aluminum solved the problem. With these panels, four men can basically unbolt a panel and take it off.
The panels are light?
By comparison with bronze. They are in the safety limits of allowing four strong men to be able to fix one — like glass, like the weight of a big, heavy double-glazed panel of glass. Whereas, bronze would be 10, 20 times as heavy. We talked with foundries and they said, “Look, recycled aluminum is incredibly sustainable. And we can use a bronze alloy finish that is exactly the same as bronze.” So we said great. And on a sunny day — I will show you an image, you’ll freak — people go, “It’s on fire!”
The building does change in shifting light. It goes from somber to silver. That said, some people complain that it is anomalous on the Mall.
We kept hearing that. I think a lot of people misunderstand what [the Mall’s planner, Pierre Charles] L’Enfant was trying to do. He imagined palace buildings. But then at junctions, corners, ends, he allowed for form. The Mall allowed for I. M. Pei, at a corner, to create a very interesting form [with the East Building of the National Gallery of Art]. The Hirshhorn occupies a tiny, junction site. [Its architect, Gordon] Bunshaft, in a sense, acknowledged the tiny, junction site by making a circular building, because a box would have looked diminutive next to all these giant palaces.
There’s the Smithsonian Castle, too.
The Mall is really very rich in terms of urban ideas. People think of it all as one system. It’s actually a diverse landscape of buildings. I studied L’Enfant’s original plans. He draws these funny little buildings, almost like follies, in these junctions and ends.
Your museum is at one of these ends, where the Mall pivots toward the Washington Monument. An end and a beginning.
Yeah, it is the end, full stop, turn, go.
You create an angled window that frames the Washington Monument, which reminds me a little of the angled window in Marcel Breuer’s Whitney Museum.
Yeah, Breuer’s Whitney was a big inspiration for me. It’s a model of a late-20th-century museum, with stacked boxes and flexible volumes, which, as you move through them, provide these sublime views outside.
In a sense, your building completes the Mall, filling a last, empty space.
You know the Mall is set up for the people of the country to understand the fundamental nature of the country. There is already a museum that talks about space and exploration. Another museum talks about natural history. Another, about the founding of the nation, another showing portraits of the people. It became very clear at the end of the 20th century that there were still missing chapters, about peoples displaced by early settlers, whose lands were taken from them, and about peoples brought here as slaves. Their stories are fundamental to the DNA of this country. Creating museums for their stories is not about serving special interests. It’s about celebrating the true diversity of the country, showing how people, even people who moved here under the most traumatic conditions, ultimately thrived. You see the museum as a celebration of African-American history.
It’s a memorial and also a monument to an incredible contribution.
Dav id Adjay e: Building on History blouinartinfo.com
2016-09-21 19:33 By www.nytimes.com
3 /69 Archaeologists & Museums Denounce Destruction of Standing Rock Sioux Burial Grounds (1.02/2) The Natural History Museum initiated this sign- on letter concerning the destruction of Native American burial grounds and sacred sites by the Dakota Access Pipeline company. If you are an archaeologists, anthropologist, historian or museum worker you are invited to add your name by emailing
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To President Obama, the United States Department of Justice, Department of the Interior, and the Army Corps of Engineers:
As archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and museum workers committed to responsible stewardship, we are invested in the preservation and interpretation of archaeological and cultural heritage for the common good. We join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in denouncing the recent destruction of ancient burial sites, places of prayer and other significant cultural artifacts sacred to the Lakota and Dakota people.
On Saturday, September 3, 2016, the company behind the contentious Dakota Access Pipeline project bulldozed land containing Native American burial grounds, grave markers, and artifacts– including ancient cairns and stone prayer rings. The construction crews, flanked by private security and canine squads, arrived just hours after the Standing Rock Sioux tribal lawyers disclosed the location of the recently discovered site in federal court filings.
Former tribal historic preservation officer Tim Mentz called the discovery of the site “one of the most significant archeological finds in North Dakota in many years.” “This demolition is devastating,” Tribal Chairman David Archambault II said. “These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors. The ancient cairns and stone prayer rings there cannot be replaced. In one day, our sacred land has been turned into hollow ground.”
We are familiar with the long history of desecration of Indigenous People’s artifacts and remains worldwide. Many of us put countless hours into developing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) to prevent burial desecration of this type, yet the pipeline was approved without a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), and the cultural resources survey did not involve proper consultation with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other tribes in the region.
The destruction of these sacred sites adds yet another injury to the Lakota, Dakota, and other Indigenous Peoples who bear the impacts of fossil fuel extraction and transportation. If constructed, this pipeline will continue to encourage oil consumption that causes climate change, all the while harming those populations who contributed little to this crisis.
We call on the federal government to abide by its laws and to conduct a thorough environmental impact statement and cultural resources survey on the pipeline’s route, with proper consultation with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. We stand with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and affirm their treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, and the protection of their lands, waters, cultural and sacred sites, and we stand with all those attempting to prevent further irreparable losses.
With concern,
The Natural History Museum is a mobile and pop-up museum that highlights the socio-political forces that shape nature. It is an independent museum that does not take money from corporations or the government. We rely on individual donations from people just like you. Please consider making a contribution to support our work: http:// thenaturalhistorymuseum.org/ donate .
50 Museum Directors Sign Letter Supporting Standing Rock Sioux Tribe news.artnet.com
2016-09-22 01:55 thenaturalhistorymuseum.org
4 /69 Datebook: ‘Terry Haggerty’ at Von Bartha, S-chanf (1.01/2) Related
Artists
Terry Haggerty
An exhibition featuring recent works by British-born, Berlin-based artist Terry Haggerty, will be on view at Von Bartha’s S-chanf gallery from December 27, 2016, through February 3, 2017. The show will highlight novel metal reliefs that reach out from the wall.
Terry Haggerty (b. 1970, London) is known to widen the precincts of abstract art and has deftly created a unique and distinctive visual language through the study of form and perception. The demonstration on view brings to light new three-dimensional wall reliefs that do not include painted lines for the first time. While seeming impossible to the eye, Haggerty’s compositions suggest and incite new approaches of coming in contact with three-dimensionality.
Click on the Slideshow for the sneak at the exhibition.
Datebook: ‘Adriana Varejão. Datebook: James Howell at Azulejão’ at Gagosian Von Bartha, Basel Gallery , Rome blouinartinfo.com blouinartinfo.com
2016-09-22 03:00 BLOUIN ARTINFO www.blouinartinfo.com
5 /69 Suzanne Farrell Ballet Plans to Close After 2017-18 Season (1.00/2) The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, a company known for keeping the legacy and choreography of George Balanchine alive at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, plans to close after the 2017-18 season, officials said Wednesday.
“I am very proud of what I have been able to do with my company over the past 15 years,” Ms. Farrell, 71, said in a statement. She added: “I love to teach, have always evolved as an artist and I live in the now.”
The company, which has performed annually at the Kennedy Center since 2001 and toured extensively, will close, and Ms. Farrell, its artistic director, will take on a new role as a teaching artist with the Kennedy Center, which plans to add more dance studios as part of an expansion that is scheduled to open in 2018. Ms. Farrell has begun informing her dancers.
The company was led by Ms. Farrell, an important muse of the great choreographer George Balanchine when she danced for him at New York City Ballet. It performed 65 ballets by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Maurice Béjart, and played a major role in preserving the Balanchine tradition.
By becoming a teaching artist again, Ms. Farrell will be returning to her roots at the Kennedy Center. She first led a master class for local ballet students there in 1993. Ev en Balanchine’s Arithmetic Contains Drama nytimes.com
2016-09-21 22:34 By www.nytimes.com
6 /69 Datebook: ‘Most Relative Times’ at the Galerie Klüser, Munich (0.02/2) Related
Venues
Galerie Kluser
Galerie Klüser’s second solo exhibition with Polish painter Natalia Zaluska featuring a new selection of works highlighting on large-scale (220 x 190 cm and 170 x 140 cm), will be on view from October 12 through November 19, 2016.
Considering her studio as a laboratory for innovative creative practices, Zaluska is known to explore the possibilities of painting as a medium in a contemporary context with her key aim to redefine two-dimensionality. The artist’s working attempts put forward questions which tend to examine the limits of painting as a medium. In addition to the choice of material, the artist also focuses on the factors of pace, time and space which are equally influential in the composition’s creation.
Click on the slideshow for the sneak of the exhibition.
Datebook: Hans-Peter Datebook: 'Just Black and Feldmann at Galerie Des White' at Galerie Klüser, Galeries, Paris Munich blouinartinfo.com blouinartinfo.com
2016-09-22 03:03 BLOUIN ARTINFO www.blouinartinfo.com
7 /69 MacArthur Foundation Announces 2016 ‘Genius’ Grant Winners (0.01/2) Getting a phone call from an unidentified number in Chicago in late summer is a fantasy many artists, scientists and other creative people have entertained. But that doesn’t mean it seems real when it actually happens. “I thought I was having a psychotic breakdown,” the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins said of his reaction to learning several weeks ago that he was among the 23 people selected as 2016 fellows of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
“I went out on the street, and ran into a friend,” Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins continued. “I had him look at my cellphone, just to confirm that the call had been real.”
This year’s winners of the MacArthur fellowships, awarded for exceptional “originality, insight and potential,” and publicly announced on Thursday, include writers, visual artists, scientists, nonprofit organization leaders and others, who are chosen at a moment when the recognition and money — a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000 distributed over five years — will make a difference.
“We want to give people new wind against their sails,” said Cecilia A. Conrad, a managing director of the foundation and the leader of the fellows program.
The honorees include relatively well-known figures in the arts like the poet Claudia Rankine, 53, whose book “Citizen,” (2014) which explored racism in everyday life, won numerous awards and made the New York Times best-seller list; the essayist Maggie Nelson, 43, who won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism for “The Argonauts,” a hard-to-classify exploration of gender, motherhood and identity; and Gene Luen Yang, 43, who in January became the first graphic novelist named national ambassador for children’s literature by the Library of Congress.
The youngest fellow is Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins , 31, known for plays, like “An Octoroon” and “Neighbors,” that address race, class and history, sometimes through the remixing of charged stereotypes. The oldest is Joyce J. Scott , 67, a Baltimore-based artist whose work includes performance art and large-scale sculptural pieces that incorporate traditional beadwork into pointed commentaries on American culture, the black female body and other subjects.
If there’s a detectable theme to the group, it might be a willingness to cross borders and to work in the cracks among existing genres, disciplines and institutions.
“A lot of the work I do has been in the in-between spots,” said Josh Kun, 45, a cultural historian at the University of Southern California, who was cited by the foundation for public humanities projects like “Songs in the Key of L. A.,” which explored the diverse cultural roots of the sheet music in the collection of the Los Angeles Public Library.
The MacArthur Fellowship, awarded since 1981, is one of the most prestigious prizes in the United States. Potential fellows are nominated by a shifting group of anonymous experts in various fields, then further winnowed by a committee of about 12 people, whose names are not released. The award has come to be known as the “genius” grant, a term that tends to provoke annoyance at the foundation.
“What we’re really focused on is creativity,” Ms. Conrad said. “Genius is a state, but creativity is an activity: It’s stuff you’re doing.” The new fellows also include people working outside the spotlight, in fields that barely existed when they were starting out.
Anne Basting , 51, a professor of theater at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, recalled that when she wanted to write her doctoral dissertation about the social performance of aging, her advisers tried to talk her out of it. She has since created performance pieces derived from stories generated by seniors with dementia, like “The Penelope Project,” based on “The Odyssey.” She also founded TimeSlips , an organization dedicated to using storytelling techniques to help cognitive-impaired seniors draw on imagination, rather than memory, to communicate and connect.
“My whole career, it’s always been, ‘What is the next, biggest question?’” Dr. Basting said. “With this fellowship, I can ask, ‘What’s the 15th question?’”
Winners in the sciences include those who do pure research, as well as those focused on applied work. Bill Thies , 38, a computer scientist at Microsoft Research India in Bangalore, works with local organizations to devise basic cellphone interfaces that help people in low- income rural areas gain better access to medical treatment , social media networks and other social goods.
“In technology, we tend to think of creativity as meaning futuristic, large, expensive things,” Dr. Thies said. “With my work, it’s the other way around.”
Coincidentally, the fellows also include two close colleagues at the California Institute of Technology: Dianne Newman , 44, a microbiologist who studies the co-evolution of microbial metabolism and environmental chemistry, in both the ancient Earth and the human body; and Victoria Orphan , 44, a geobiologist whose work on micro-organisms in deep-sea beds sheds light on their role in determining climate.
“We’re very good friends,” Dr. Newman said. “They told me before she knew. I had to exercise patience not to spill the beans.” (The fellows, who are each allowed to tell only one person ahead of the official announcement, are not informed who the other recipients are, though the rule was bent in this case, the foundation said.)
Dr. Newman said she hoped to use some of the money to encourage talented people to go into science. Others spoke of paying down mortgages, saving for children’s college or just buying themselves uninterrupted time.
But most said the simple validation of their work, and of the often unsung collaborators who make it possible, meant as much as any financial windfall .
José A. Quiñonez , 45, the founder of the Mission Asset Fund , a nonprofit group in San Francisco that helps people build credit history based on informal lending circles common in immigrant communities and among others without access to bank loans, said he saw the award as a boost for the people he serves.
“Our laws and our policies tend to be really ignorant of the beautiful ways that people are helping each other,” he said. MacArthur Foundation’s 23 ‘Genius’ Grant Winners f or 2016 nytimes.com
2016-09-22 04:01 By www.nytimes.com
8 /69 Datebook: Penone's 'Ebbi, Avro, Non Ho' at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris (0.01/2) Related
Venues
Marian Goodman Gallery
Artists
Giuseppe Penone
Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris is hosting an exhibition 'Ebbi, Avro, Non Ho (J’eus, J’aurai, Je n’ai)' by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone that will be on view through October 22, 2016.
The works presented in the exhibition reveals that for Giuseppe Penone, gestures and tactile perceptions are connected to individuality and time. The exhibition displays a selection of works where the artist makes the human body’s relationship with the natural world tangible with the clear and resonant print of his hand. In most of his works- the golden leaf of ‘Spoglia d’oro’; ‘Germinazione’, a series of wall sculptures in acrylic resin; ‘Avvolgere la terra’ made with the combination of terracotta and resin, quartz color, leather and aluminium- the recurrence of the artist’s hand imprints or gestures is significantly noticeable. These gestures highlight the intimate and complex connections between human and nature. The other works in the exhibition also follows the same theme.
Datebook: Giuseppe Penone at Marian Goodman Gallery , London blouinartinfo.com
2016-09-22 03:40 BLOUIN ARTINFO www.blouinartinfo.com
9 /69 Curtis Hanson: A Filmmaker of Sunshine and Noir (0.01/2) Curtis Hanson and Los Angeles were made for each other. He grew up in that city, learned from it and, in his 1997 noir “L. A. Confidential,” gave it one of its greatest films. Mr. Hanson, who died Tuesday at 71, hadn’t directed a feature since “Chasing Mavericks,” a 2012 drama about California surfers. Mr. Hanson left “Mavericks” before finishing it (Michael Apted took over for him), apparently because of health issues. It’s a sunny distraction if now also a rueful finale to a career that for about decade starting in the mid-1990s, enlivened movie screens with grace, range and peerless turns from the likes of Russell Crowe, Kim Basinger and Michael Douglas.
I interviewed Mr. Hanson a few times over the years, first before “L. A. Confidential” was released and later for a 2003 monograph I wrote on the film. He was unfailingly gracious and generous with his time, answering my questions patiently and thoughtfully. I learned something about him and his working methods from our conversations, as well as something about our city, which he put into “L. A. Confidential.” One of the most striking details he shared was how, back when he was growing up, Los Angeles was filled with empty plots of land, like the weedy lot in which the Black Dahlia — for a while, the most famous of Los Angeles’s murdered victims — had been discovered.
“L. A. Confidential” is the third novel in James Ellroy’s L. A. Quartet (“The Black Dahlia” is the first) and Mr. Hanson didn’t get around to reading it until after the film rights had been sold. Once he did, he knew he had to make it: “I thought, this is the L. A. story that I want to tell because it’s the L. A. of my childhood.” He did, selling his vision for the film using a portfolio that included photographs of jazzmen like Chet Baker, crime photographs and a bleak, portentous shot of a newly opened freeway. Mr. Hanson also included publicity stills of Aldo Ray and Veronica Lake, placeholders for roles played in the film by Mr. Crowe and Ms. Basinger.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that he pitched his ideas for the film using photographs. Mr. Hanson knew how to move a camera (he generally didn’t call attention to his own prowess) but he had a particular gift for stillness. Some of the most memorable sequences in “L. A. Confidential” open with an unnerving quiet that is punctured by the sounds of explosive rage or thunderous gunfire or, in one ghastly scene, the shocking image of a room crowded with bloodied corpses. Much like the ordinary city lot in which the Black Dahlia was discovered, these moments of quiet at first suggest a normalcy that the story’s raging violence consistently negates.
Mr. Hanson was never part of any cinematic school or wave, like the so-called movie brats (Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola) who palled around and sometimes worked together. Mr. Hanson came to the movies the old-fashioned auteurist way: he wrote about them first. His vehicle was a magazine, Cinema, owned by his uncle, Jack Martin Hanson. Jack bought the magazine as a way to publicize the clothing store he owned in Beverly Hills — Jax — “the grooviest, sexiest, most altogether bonarro boutique on Rodeo Drive,” as Mr. Ellroy once scatted in an essay he wrote featuring Mr. Hanson.
By 1964, Mr. Hanson was editing Cinema as well as taking a lot of its photographs. “It’s what made me comfortable with the movie camera,” he said. His first interview was with Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten whose credits included “Roman Holiday” and “Spartacus.” Much like Peter Bogdanovich — another cinephile turned interviewer turned filmmaker — Mr. Hanson was drawn to veterans of the old studio era. “I interviewed people whose work I admired,” he said, “which in many cases meant they were inactive.” Like Mr. Bogdanovich, he also got his start under that one-man studio known as Roger Corman.
Mr. Hanson’s first professional credit (as Curtis Lee Hanson) was on the script for “The Dunwich Horror,” an adaptation of an H. P. Lovecraft story. Mr. Corman produced both it and Mr. Hanson’s feature directing debut, “Sweet Kill” a.k.a. “The Arousers” (1970), about a killer with mother issues. It was an unhappy experience for Mr. Hanson, who was forced to sex and gore up the story to suit Mr. Corman’s commercial requirements. Mr. Hanson moved on, though if by fits and starts. One of his first notable credits was the 1982 shocker “ White Dog ” (about a vicious dog), which he wrote with his friend, the director Samuel Fuller, in a 10-day frenzy.
Like Mr. Fuller and like so many veterans of the old studio era, Mr. Hanson used genre cinema to develop his art and craft, as in “The River Wild,” a thriller in which Meryl Streep persuasively takes on Kevin Bacon’s villain. Mr. Hanson was a sympathetic director of women, but he was an equal opportunity filmmaker: He gave Mr. Douglas one of his greatest roles in “Wonder Boys” and scored with Eminem in “8 Mile.” Thereafter, Mr. Hanson’s career faltered with films that have charms, but not the vibrancy of his most productive period. And of course by 2012, the year “Mavericks” opened, it had become tougher than ever to get mid-budget movies off the ground.
At times, I have wondered if Mr. Hanson’s talents might have been better served if he’d found a way into New Hollywood. In 1967, he certainly recognized that something new was in the air, as he expressed in an editor’s note for Cinema.
“‘Bonnie and Clyde’ is not yet finished,” he wrote, but it “is the most significant American movie in years.” It was significant because its makers were creating a personal movie in Hollywood. It was significant, he continued, because “it possibly indicates (said the kid with a flush on his cheek and a gleam in his eye) that at least one studio (Warner Brothers) has struggled free from yesterday and is looking toward the movies of tomorrow.” His optimism was beautiful and may explain why he kept at it through so many lean years, eventually going on to make movies that fit their moment perfectly.
Curtis Hanson, Director of Wicked Noir ‘L.A. Conf idential,’ Dies at 71 nytimes.com
2016-09-22 02:13 By www.nytimes.com
10 /69 Review: In ‘Hero of the Empire,’ a Young Churchill Earns His Spurs (0.01/2) Candice Millard’s third book, “Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape and the Making of Winston Churchill,” would make a fine movie, though Richard Attenborough did, in a sense, get there first. In 1972, he made “ Young Winston, ” drawn from Churchill’s own account of his early life, and it includes the same material Ms. Millard recounts so thrillingly: the future prime minister’s brash heroics in the South African Republic in 1899, which culminated in a prison break and nine days on the lam.
“I’m free! I’m free! I’m Winston bloody Churchill, and I’m free!” he shouts in the film, just as he crosses the border to safety — a moment, we later realize, that could just as easily have referred to Churchill’s psychological relief as his physical freedom: He had finally shaken off the legacy of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, whose formidable early accomplishments and later humiliations stalked him like the moon.
As her subtitle suggests, Ms. Millard similarly believes that the conflict in the Boer Republics profoundly influenced Churchill. But her book is much shorter on the anxiety of influence and far longer on the blustery impatience of youth. In Ms. Millard’s retelling, young Churchill was entitled, precocious, supernaturally confident — one of those fellows whose neon self-regard is downright unseemly until the very moment it is earned.
“Churchill seemed far less Victorian than Rooseveltian,” she writes. (Well, his mother was American.) Or, as his first biographer wrote: “Winston advertises himself as simply and unconsciously as he breathes.”
On its face, Churchill’s role in the Second Boer War may not seem like a substantial enough subject for a book.
Don’t be fooled. Over the years, Ms. Millard has made a stylish niche for herself, zooming in on a brief, pivotal chapter in the life of a historical figure and turning it into a legitimate feature- length production. In “ The River of Doubt ,” she focused on Theodore Roosevelt’s adventures in the Amazon basin to recover from his defeat in 1912. (These excursions seemed to be the political equivalent of rebound girlfriends for him.) In “ Destiny of the Republic, ” she focused on the assassination of James A. Garfield, particularly the doctors who serially bungled their attempts to save his life.
The story Ms. Millard tells here is no less cinematic or dramatic. Churchill covered the Second Boer War as a correspondent for The Morning Post, but he was hardly an ordinary reporter: He insisted on traveling with his valet; he took along roughly $4,000 of fine wines and spirits, including 18 bottles of St.-Émilion and another 18 of 10-year-old Scotch.
Most critically, though, he brought with him a great thirst for redemption. Churchill, 24, had just stood for Parliament and lost, having made the dire mistake of running “on the strength of his father’s name rather than his own.” Though he’d already fought in two wars — one in Sudan, the other on the northwest frontier of British India — and witnessed another as a reporter in Cuba, he “returned home every time without the medals that mattered, no more distinguished or famous than he had been when he set out.”
It was not for lack of trying. He charged the Pashtun while riding a bright gray pony. He stuck out like a bride.
Churchill hoped that the Second Boer War would finally do the trick. It did, and how. While on a scouting expedition on an armored train, he and scores of British soldiers were shelled by pom-poms, vicious weapons with a deceptively quaint nickname. His army instincts took over, and it was in large part because of his courageous efforts — and a dash of MacGyver ingenuity — that anyone on the train came back.
The bad news: Churchill was captured. The good news: Everyone in England knew about his bravery. The headlines were the stuff of his dreams. “MR. CHURCHILL’S HEROISM” screamed The Yorkshire Evening Post. This part of the book — where the train derails — is the only part where the narrative derails, too. (The logistics of this particular skirmish? A bit of a bore. Or rather, too minutely conveyed. They’re hard to follow.)
Soldier through. The rest of Ms. Millard’s book — about Churchill’s time as a prisoner of war, his audacious escape, the outcome of the conflict — are as involving as a popcorn thriller. Ms. Millard does an excellent job conveying the drama of confinement, both inside the prison and out. Being on the run meant hiding in many dark, dank, undignified spaces. It meant tolerating uncertainty, which Churchill hated. It meant being powerless, utterly dependent on the mercy of strangers, and he hated that, too. “It had been hard enough,” she writes, “to take orders from his superiors while he was in the army.”
Ms. Millard also shows, as she has in her previous work, that she has a great ear for quotes — an underrated virtue in writers of history. (Favorite example: The British ambassador to Berlin wrote that Churchill’s mother had “more of the panther than of the woman in her look.”) Her eye for detail is equally good. With just a few key images, she conveys how the most formidable empire on the planet could be so discomfited by an unpolished, seemingly ragtag army of Boers: “At most, British soldiers spent two months of the year actually training to fight,” she writes. “The other 10 were devoted to parading, attending to their uniforms and waiting on their officers.”
It didn’t help matters that the British soldiers brought heaps of amenities into the field, which required many mules and oxen to lug. They were the hopeless dowager aunt who brings way too much luggage on holiday.
But the real example of profligacy in this story may be young Churchill’s ego. It’s not a surprise, exactly. What’s striking is the high volume of evidence Ms. Millard has compiled to show how unswervingly he believed in his own majestic destiny more than 40 years before he fulfilled it, and how early this belief began to appear, like the first visible outlines on a Polaroid.
“I do not believe the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending,” Churchill wrote to his mother from Bangalore, trying to reassure her he wouldn’t be killed in India.
The powerful really are different from you and me. They have more confidence. It requires outsize stamina and self-assurance to save a nation. “The first time you meet Winston you see all his faults,” his first love, Pamela Plowden, once said. “And the rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues.”
Rev iew: ‘Easy ’ Stars the Young and the Muddled, Connecting in Chicago nytimes.com
2016-09-21 22:13 JENNIFER SENIOR www.nytimes.com
11 /69 NOVA OBIECTA unveils COLUM(N), a set of hand turned cork variations NOVA OBIECTA, a paris-based furniture and design studio, has introduced an exclusive set of geometric sculptural objects made of cork and named COLUM(N). the products of this collection have been hand-turned using recycled particles and cork harvested from france.
NOVA OBIECTA aspires to geometric abstraction in their work, through calculated and strict shapes. the studio seeks innovative visions around geometrical and sculptural furniture. therefore, their crafting techniques and choice of materials highlight the exclusivity of this collection.
COLUM(N) 3.21 and 3.40 -edition of 100- copper and brass the items are complemented with brass and copper metallic mixtures. they were introduced in the design as ‘intervals’ to limit the geometric evolution of cork. the ‘rings’ are finally hand-polished and varnished to protect their finish in the following years. the cork is also oiled to protect it from moisture. the set is made up of two different items, and each one is identified with a particular number: 3.21 (brass) or 3.40 (Copper). these represent the average ratio between each cork height and their metallic ring’s diameters.
NOVA OBIECTA’s COLUM(N) cork set will be available at le bon marché in paris as of the 20th of october. designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.
2016-09-22 04:15 Nova Obiecta www.designboom.com
12 /69 Rainey Qualley Sets Sights on Pop Domination “Basically, within the last several months I have kind of allowed myself to ask for things that I want,” says Rainey Qualley, slouched in platform sneakers and a mesh T-shirt on a couch in a Midtown Manhattan photo studio.
What the 26-year-old wants is a career in music — but by her rules, which has involved a bit of growing up, self-assessment and seizing the reins.
It also has involved a switch from one type of music to another. On Friday, Qualley continues to re-brand herself as Rainsford when she debuts her latest electro- pop single, after a start in country music. “I think the more that I really ask for what I want and find specific things that I want to do, it’s just transformative,” she says.
She has a role model to look up to when it comes to focusing on specific types of careers. Qualley is the eldest daughter of actress and model Andie MacDowell; together with younger sister, “Leftovers” actress Margaret Qualley, she was raised in Montana and North Carolina, purposely away from the entertainment world’s fuss, before flocking to it at age 18. “I was very eager to get out of the small hometown scene,” she says. “So I moved to New York to try to make all that happen.”
She learned guitar from her father, former model Paul Qualley, before studying music history and theory at Belmont University in Nashville for a year. Blame it on the Tennessee influence or the years in Montana, but her first songwriting efforts were in country music. “The first song that I wrote there, they started playing it on XM Radio, so I was like, ‘OK I guess this works, this seems like I am good at this,’” she says.
Songs like “Me and Johnny Cash,” which was released last year, rooted her in the country genre. But while her voice suits the music, Qualley came to realize her taste was elsewhere. “I think it was a great growth period and I got to open for Willie Nelson and play the Grand Ole Opry, so it was incredible for a lot of reasons,” she says. “But it wasn’t ultimately the music that I really loved and [wasn’t] what was fulfilling for me as an artist.”
In the last six months, she’s been toiling away at renovation and rebirth, starting with adopting a new artist name: Rainsford. “I have been doing everything entirely independently,” she says. “I’ve been reaching out to different producers that I like, and everything from the aesthetic of photos to the web site, I’ve been totally in control of. For me, it’s awesome because I feel like I’m capable of a lot more than I had been given the opportunity to be in control of.”
The shift from country to pop — a trend sparked by former country megastar Taylor Swift doing the same — has also led to some courting by fashion houses, be it front row at Miu Miu or dressed for the Chanel dinner at the New York Public Library this past spring. Like the music, the style bit has relaxed since her crossover and Qualley differentiates between her on-duty and off-duty tastes. “I feel like if I’m trying to look hot or whatever, I just feel not like myself, like I’m trying to be something else,” she says of dressing for events rather than the vintage thrifts from L. A. she regularly wears. “I like wearing clothes that, I guess, are a little bit strange. Clothes that don’t make me feel like I’m trying too hard.”
Following New York Fashion Week, during which she took in the Creatures of the Wind show, she might travel to Europe for the collections, while visiting her sister on set — if work on her upcoming EP allows. Mostly, though, she’ll feel it out as it comes. “I don’t exactly know the full plan,” she says, “because I’m kind of making it up as I go.”
2016-09-22 04:01 Leigh Nordstrom wwd.com
13 /69 Todd Snyder Taps Trey Laird for First Ad Campaign Todd Snyder’s relationship with American Eagle Outfitters continues to pay dividends.
The designer, who sold his company to the retailer last year for $11 million, will launch the first advertising campaign for his men’s wear brand today.
“Being that this is our first year under American Eagle and we have our store opening in November, we wanted to come out of the gate with something special and put a stake in the ground to solidify who the Todd Snyder guy is,” Snyder told WWD.
The designer approached Trey Laird of Laird+Partners, with whom he had worked with at The Gap and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, to kick around some ideas. “I always wished I could work with somebody that talented,” he said. “So I told him I didn’t have a ton of money but asked if he would help, and he was willing.” Laird partnered Snyder with celebrity photographer Matthew Brookes, who cast four models for the campaign, which is called “Todd Snyder: Gentlemen of New York.” Snyder said each of the models has a “different story.”
Brookes shot the men in black-and- white in different locations around Greenwich Village to capture the classic New York sensibility of the brand.
The images feature Miles McMillan, “The Urban Artist,” who Snyder said represents the “younger and more-sporty” side of the brand; RJ Rogenski, “The Urban Poet,” has a “rugged sophistication”; Akin Akman, “The Urban Athlete,” was tapped for his “superfit” physique, and Adonis Bosso, “The Urban Traveler,” is “just cool when you look at him.”
The images will be featured on the company’s web site beginning today as well as on taxi tops and other places around the city this fall “to lay the foundation for the brand,” the designer said. Other initiatives will be added as the store opening gets closer.
The 5,000-square-foot flagship at 23 East 26th Street, off Fifth Avenue, will be located in the bustling Madison Park district of Manhattan. It will include a tailor shop, a barbershop and the designer’s collaborations with Globe-Trotter luggage, Macintosh trenches, John Smedley knits and Superior Labor bags. A Black Label suit that is manufactured by Southwick, in Massachusetts, will be offered in the store exclusively as well.
2016-09-22 04:01 Jean E wwd.com
14 /69 Gosha Rubchinskiy Bottles ‘Perfect Summer Weekend’ His debut scent, produced in collaboration with Comme des Garçons, springs from the youth scene that is the focus of his photography and his men’s wear collections.
“When we started, it was not just about the smell, but more about feelings and we are talking about Moscow, about young boys skating on the streets, about summer, concrete, wood and city smells,” he said in an interview during London Fashion Week, where he debuted a new skate brand at Dover Street Market, called Paccbet, the Russian word for dawn, by his skater friend Tolia Titaev. “It’s not just a product — it’s art and visuals around it, so that’s why we will launch a small book at the same time. It’s called ‘Perfume Book.’”
The tome, in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, is to be sold separately from the eponymous scent, debuting Oct. 8 at Dover Street Market in London during the Frieze art fair and the Paris Trading Museum and Comme des Garçons perfume shop in Paris. It is to arrive at other Dover Street Market locations in November, followed by a wider rollout in early 2017. The fragrance will retail for $88.
Rubchinskiy followed one model, Louison Savignoni, who has appeared in some of his other books and runway shows, to capture the “perfect summer weekend.”
“It’s one boy on a vacation, the beach, some landscapes, summer and skateboard and that’s it,” he sad. “It’s the best way to explain my perfume.”
The designer collaborated with perfumer Alexis Dadier to translate all of those impulses into an olfactory expression, incorporating accents of tar and rubber to connote skateboard wheels heating up on the pavement.
Top notes include angelica root and buchu flower essence, with mandarin seed and blue chamomile mid notes and styrax, vetiver and patchouli for the dry down.
Rubchinskiy acknowledged the narrowing-down process from dozens of scents was challenging and complicated. He solicited input from his friends, some skater kids, and also Adrian Joffe, chief executive officer of Comme des Garçons International, which produces and distributes Rubchinskiy’s fashion collection.
Eventually, the eureka moment came.
“I think it’s a smell for young people,” Rubchinskiy said, skirting the word unisex, which makes his soft face curl into a rare frown. “It’s not for men or women — it’s like Commes de Garçons perfumes in the idea that I want some girls using their boyfriend’s perfume; it’s more like an art piece than a perfume. That’s why we are doing the launch during Frieze; it’s an art thing.”
Rubchinskiy decided on an oval bottle with a cap made of wood, echoing the original material for skateboards.
“We specifically made it the same color as the normal skateboard and Tolia’s friends helped us to choose the right one that looks exactly like a skateboard,” he said.
Asked if he’s a fan of fragrance, the designer replied: “It depends: Sometimes I like, sometimes I don’t. It’s interesting. I like not only smell, but also stories. I have a few Commes des Garçons scents and I like when it’s interesting. Not everyday perfume, or aftershave.”
Asked about the next step, Rubchinskiy smiled and gave a little shrug. “I don’t know. Now we have this one. Let’s see what happens.”
2016-09-22 04:01 Miles Socha wwd.com
15 /69 Style.com Unveils Advertising Campaign The campaign imagery was composed by the e-tailer’s team in a collage-style format. The visuals feature Style.com products and runway images from brands including Chloé, Mary Katrantzou, Preen and Paul Smith as well as Rick Owens, No. 21 and Raf Simons, which will be stocked later this year.
The online omnichannel teamed with British Vogue on reusable stickers designed to be pulled off from the advertisement in magazines.
“As we started to play around with the designs, incorporating catwalk and product cut outs, it became apparent really quickly that it would be so fun if they were actually stickers,” a company spokeswoman told WWD. “So that you could pull out of the kaleidoscope and take with you on your notebook, your laptop or your phone. We hope that people will show us where they’ve decided to stick, and create their own little collages with them. We want the customers to realize that Style.com is the place to come to get inspired, and to ultimately own that inspiration.”
The campaign will run in the November issues of British Vogue and GQ, which hits newsstands in October.
“The Style.com campaign evolved from the same place as our fashion vision,” said Jane Gorley, creative director at Style.com. “We wanted to visually represent the feeling of being pulled into a kaleidoscopic world of beautiful clothes and accessories, presented in unexpected, enticing ways. It’s psychedelic but still familiar, and will draw people in to explore the wonderful world of the new Style.com.”
The web site, which offers a shopping experience alongside shoppable options from titles including Vogue.co.uk and GQ.co.uk has signed over 300 brands, some of which will be launched at a later stage and have cultivated a range of collaborations.
RELATED STORY: Condé Nast Launches New Style.com >>
2016-09-22 04:01 Lorelei Marfil wwd.com
16 /69 Datebook: ‘Autumn/Winter season, 2017’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 'Autumn/Winter season for 2017' is on view at the National Gallery of Victoria and offers a dynamic art experience relevant to diversified audiences. Organized in collaboration with the Art Exhibitions Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria will feature Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition for 2017, Van Gogh and the Seasons in an Australian exclusive.
This demonstration being curated by Sjraar van Heugten, an art historian and the former Head of Collections at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, will represent one of the most significant and original artists of the late 19 th century through the prism of the circle of life – signifying birth, bloom, maturity and death via portrayal of nature. Some of the other exhibitions that will also be on display in the program include “Shut Up And Paint”, “Common Ground”, “Realtime: Miyanaga Akira”, “Who’s Afraid Of Colour?, “Lawrence Weiner: Out Of Sight” in addition to many others. 2016-09-22 03:25 BLOUIN ARTINFO www.blouinartinfo.com
17 /69 ‘Mr. Robot’ Season 2 Finale: Fade to Black Ending a season of unremitting bleakness with an unambiguous, unhappy ending would have been harsh of “Mr. Robot,” but understandable. Ending it on a note of near-total uncertainty, with virtually none of its major story lines resolved for either good or ill, is somehow even crueler.
We learn the lethal nature of the vast hacker conspiracy’s “Stage 2” (note how its architects eschewed the more neutral “Phase 2” for its appropriately cancerous alternative) — blowing up the building where E Corp is warehousing all its paper records and killing everyone inside — but we don’t find out if the plan went through.
We catch up with on-the-lam fsociety co-founders Mobley and Trenton at the big box electronics retailer where they now work, but so does Dark Society assassin Leon; we don’t know if he’ll kill them before Trenton gets the chance to enact her so-crazy-it-just-might-work scheme to undo everything the 5/9 hack has done. (We don’t learn what that scheme is, either.)
We discover along with Darlene that the F. B. I. agent Dom DiPierro and her colleagues have fsociety’s supposedly secure organization mapped out to every last low-level associate and unwitting patsy, but we aren’t shown whether this knowledge breaks her resolve or strengthens it. We don’t see the archvillains, the E Corp chief executive, Phillip Price, or the Dark Army overlord, Whiterose, at all.
Sure, the show tosses a few crumbs our way — Cisco’s dead, Darlene and Tyrell Wellick are alive, Romero was killed by a random stray bullet, Joanna Wellick’s mysterious phone calls and evocative gifts are part of a campaign of vengeance by Scott Knowles, whose pregnant wife was murdered by Tyrell.
But in the main, the way the final scenes before the credits and the subsequent “stinger” end — the world fades to black on a gutshot Elliot, gunned down by Tyrell, as his Mr. Robot persona flickers out; Manhattan plunges into darkness as Angela heads out to meet her wounded friend, who seems to have survived the shooting but about whose condition we know nothing else — stand for the rest of the episode. “Mr. Robot” Season 2 didn’t so much end as slip into darkness.
A quick Google search for “23 burning questions the ‘Mr. Robot’ season finale must answer” or the like will indirectly indicate just how many people will be unhappy with this approach. So much of Season 1’s visceral pleasures — the cyberthriller sequences, the shocking twists, the anticapitalist triumphalism, the ragtag band of losers, loners, racial minorities and emotional outcasts taking on the system and winning — were stripped away or rendered moot as Season 2 went on.
The revolution failed, even played directly into the hands of the system’s masters. The tense hacking sequences were kept to a relative minimum. Elliot spent almost the entire season isolated from his friends and family, who fractured and split up in turn. The season’s biggest surprise, that Elliot was incarcerated the whole time he appeared to be living at home with his mother, was anticipated by many viewers, as seems to have been the show’s intent from the start. A proverbial- cum -literal “explosive finale” would have gone a long way to ameliorating the dispiriting impact of these deliberately dour storytelling decisions.
But two quotes from the episode — one from a character, one from a song on the soundtrack — point the way to appreciating the season finale, and the season as a whole, for the crazily confident act of artistic self-immolation it was. The first comes from Agent DiPierro, talking to Darlene about “The Careful Massacre of the Bourgeoisie,” the fake slasher movie that served as a sort of tonal Rosetta Stone for the season’s horror-movie vibe. “It’s not really scary, but gory,” she says. “You know how those two things aren’t really the same?”
The implication is that while gore can be fun, fear is where greatness lies. Blowing up E Corp or taking down Price and Whiterose or ending on some similarly pyrotechnic note would have been the equivalent of empty-calorie splatter — giving us the emotional roller-coaster ride evoked by the series’ constant Coney Island iconography but returning us safely to the starting point. It’s better to be difficult and delay gratification; to be disturbing and relegate violence to terrifyingly irrational outbreaks of the sort visited on Cisco, Darlene and Dom by the Dark Army, or on Joanna by an enraged Scott, who beats her nearly to death, or on Elliot by Tyrell, whom he believes is a figment of his imagination until the moment he gets shot in the stomach with the gun of his distraught partner in crime.
The second quote is a question, and a musical one at that. It’s posed by Kenny Rogers (and his duet partner Sheena Easton, by way of original writer-performer Bob Seger) over the season’s closing minutes: “We’ve got tonight — who needs tomorrow?” To focus solely on the answers, or lack thereof, the finale provides about the show’s future is to ignore the many dark delights on offer even now. There’s actor Martin Wallstrom as Wellick, a presence withheld from the screen almost entirely until this final episode, when he is called upon to unleash a lifetime of mind-warping fear, frustration, ambition and emptiness as he tearfully turns on the one man he’s ever felt understands his drives.
There’s Brian Stokes Mitchell as Scott, in an oddly similar place of devastation and dread, sobbing and begging for forgiveness one moment, exploding in a graphically brutal assault the next. There’s Stephanie Corneliussen as Joanna Wellick, a supremely loathsome cocktail of vulgarity and cruelty, who begins her meeting with Scott by graphically describing her arousal over his latest mind game and ends it with shouting how glad she is that his unborn baby died. There’s Carly Chaikin and Grace Gummer as Darlene and Dom, two “Jersey girls” who could not look and sound more exhausted by the cat-and-mouse game they’ve played.
There’s Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson and Christian Slater as his Mr. Robot persona, and the ultrarare use of a hand-held camera, swirling around them as they argue about who was really calling the shots — as vivid an illustration of our inability to control our destructive impulses as you’ll find on TV, if you stop taking the split-personality aspect so literally and see how it speaks to so much more.
Would any of this be materially improved if the E Corp building were blown to bits, or if anything similarly definitive and prosaic happened? Like the singer of the song, this season finale (literally) turned out the light and (figuratively) asked us to come take its hand — a risk, but one eminently worth taking. “We’ve got tonight, babe. Why don’t you stay?”
2016-09-22 03:06 SEAN T www.nytimes.com
18 /69 Datebook: Daniel Jacoby's Sydney Series at Maisterravalbuena, Madrid Related Venues
Maisterravalbuena
An exhibition titled “Sydney would have nothing to hide if others did not have anything to fear”, representing the work of well-known artist Daniel Jacoby, is on view at Maisterravalbuena, Madrid and will run through 12 November 2016.
The new artworks of the Sydney series feature various modules, ranging from Meccano-like structures to a shop window. The artist has crafted flat shapes following the geometry patterns of the clothes, thus procuring abstract sculptures concealing elusive anthropomorphic remnants. Using dim light settings, an inexplicable space opens up, letting the viewers in the position of flâneurs, pacing around a track prepared by lights and module structures.
Click on the slideshow for the sneak of the exhibition.
2016-09-22 03:05 BLOUIN ARTINFO www.blouinartinfo.com
19 /69 Milan Scene: Restaurants, Bars, Exhibits and More Room Mate Giulia
4 Via Silvio Pellico
Tel.: +34-912-179-287
Hours: 6 to 9 p.m.
Today, Milan-based photographer, street-style darling and globetrotter Micol Sabbadini will present the bold, colorful pictures she took during her trips to her beloved Australia over the past few years. The images have also become the prints for a capsule collection of scarves for the luxury Faliero Sarti brand.
Galleria Antonio Battaglia
5 Via Ciovasso
Tel.: +39-02-365-140-48
Hours: 4 to 9 p.m.
One of the busiest areas during fashion week, the Tortona neighborhood has recently welcomed this restaurant-cum-bar, currently the hottest spot to have a yummy — yet still healthy — lunch in the district.
The Botanical Club 33 Via Tortona
Tel.: +39-02-423-2890
Hours: Noon to 2 a.m.
The fashion flock has no time to waste, especially during collections. So, the management at the most luxurious hotel in town has launched a service enabling visitors to eat breakfast while specialists take care of their nails, hair, feet and skin. And, it’s not just for hotel guests — it’s open to the public.
Taste & Shine Breakfast
Four Seasons Hotel
6/8 Via Gesù
Tel.: +39-02-770-88
Hours: 7 to 9 a.m.
Sticking to a fitness routine during fashion weeks is pretty hard. To get in a daily workout, IN/EX, a new gym, offers calisthenics classes, along with yoga and dainami, a mix of yoga and pilates, in a quiet, zen-like location.
IN/EX
7 Via Molino delle Armi
Tel.: +39-02-873-383-33
Hours: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
For those who want to discover new shopping areas in the city, Corso Garibaldi offers plenty of options. One of its gems is Milaura, a boutique founded by fashion expert Laura Poretti, who along with selecting a range of international niche brands, also designs the in-house Milaura line of sophisticated women’s staples with a twist.
Milaura
35 Corso Garibaldi
Tel.: +39-02-890-939-05
Hours: 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
2016-09-22 03:00 Alessandra Turra wwd.com
20 /69 ‘Designated Survivor’ Series Premiere: Glasses Off At the Emmy Awards ceremony this week , while accepting her Emmy for best actress, “Veep” star Julia Louis-Dreyfus offered an apology for the toxic political climate that pervades Washington. “Our show started out as a political satire, but it now feels like a sobering documentary.”
If TV depictions of political leadership can influence reality, then we could do far worse than to follow the lead of Kiefer Sutherland’s Tom Kirkman. “Designated Survivor” stars Sutherland as the last cabinet member alive after a bomb rips apart the Capitol. The show arrives in the midst of a fraught landscape in which acts of terrorism erupt across the globe and the idea of what it means to be presidential has been blurred, tangled, and taken a side trip through the “Twilight Zone.” There may not be any Emmys for this slightly hackneyed drama, but at the very least, President Kirkman seems to be a warm, resolute presence in a chaotic year.
Kirkman first appears in full dad mode: swigging a beer, munching on popcorn, wiping his glasses on a ratty gray Cornell hoodie. (Somewhere, Andy Bernard is fist pumping emphatically.) A treacly-yet-lovable phone conversation with his daughter, Penny, tells us two things: First, that he’s a charming, laid-back pushover; and second, that something terrible is about to happen. When’s the last time a fictional, tender father-daughter phone call didn’t end in tragedy?
Sure enough, the signal cuts out, the secret service barges in, and Kirkman throws open the window to see the Capitol burning in the distance. It’s a tense, thrilling sequence, and the most captivating part of the episode. We’re not accustomed to seeing Mr. Sutherland look overwhelmed, but here he matches the stunned fear of Tommen Baratheon staring out his window at a similar blaze. In this one look, the specter of Jack Bauer is all but erased.
A flashback sequence shows Kirkman back at home with his family playing the goofy dad again, butchering pancakes and blanching at his teenage son’s reference to dubstep. (Sorry guys, but you’re going to have to do better than dubstep as a signifier for hipness.) Kirkman’s family is likable but rote: There’s a young daughter too adorable to not be put in peril at some point down the line and a son too broodingly winsome to not eventually serve as a distraction. It seems silly to spend so much time with a wholly unordinary family when, you know, the majority of the United States government has been murdered, but the show stops at nothing to remind you that Kirkman is at heart a family man.
Back in the White House post-disaster, Kirkman struggles to find any sense of authority. It’s time for his first presidential decision: How to handle Iran sending navy destroyers to seal off an oil-heavy region. This is a huge test not only for the president but also for the show, as we’ve seen countless television presidents stamp out crises in dramatic ways. President Bartlet of “The West Wing” might engage in a riveting 20-minute debate with Sam and Toby about a theoretical counterattack’s moral and ethical dilemmas; President Underwood of “House of Cards” might use a back channel to swiftly blackmail a key Iranian official in the middle of the night; President Meyer of “Veep” would spew a tirade of profanities (mostly aimed at the hapless Jonah).
So what’s President Kirkman’s route? He opts to hold off on a naval confrontation and instead consult the Iranian ambassador first. Sound, but boring. It might be good politics, but it’s not so good television. A gruff general, disagreeing with Kirkman and peacocking around the edges like a cartoon villain, serves as a pretty flimsy straw man. Admittedly, though, Sutherland hits his stride when he greets the ambassador in the White House — he starts off cordial before dropping his voice to an ominous growl. It’s a scene in which he balances respectful diplomacy with glowering force, and one that gives an indication of the tone the show might take on. At least in this first episode, it is openly rooting for Kirkman and his measured process. There’s something noble, empowering even, in self-doubt.
While “24” quenched a thirst for post-9/11 revenge, “Designated Survivor” understands that terrorism is an unyielding part of global life. Both Brussels and Paris are mentioned as reference points. The enemy now is hidden and scattered, so the show dives in not with fury, but painstaking deliberation.
The supporting cast so far is small and underwhelming. Maggie Q plays Hannah Wells, a no- nonsense F. B. I. agent scavenging for evidence on the ground; Kal Penn, who’s familiar with the White House , plays the no-nonsense speechwriter Seth Wright; Italia Ricci plays Kirkman’s no-nonsense chief of staff, Emily Rhodes. Hopefully in future episodes they’ll have more to do. (What’s up with the two Asian-American actors getting all-American names, by the way?)
The episode ends with Kirkman removing his glasses, Superman-style, and addressing the nation. He definitely isn’t TV’s new antihero — but he hasn’t yet proved himself a hero, either.
2016-09-22 03:00 By www.nytimes.com
21 /69 lazareth wazuma GT fuses a car with the spirit of motorcycling lazareth wazuma GT fuses a sports car with the spirit of motorcycling some time ago french bike builder lazareth revealed its motorcycle with a maserati engine. the french motorcycle and automobile tuner is known for mixing genres of vehicles, and producing some the most outrageous custom creations in europe. it’s ‘wazuma GT’ fuses the performance of a car with the spirit of motorcycling, suchlike the 2016 polaris ‘slingshot’. it has four wheels, but really only three contact points; a minimal amount of bodywork; two seats; and an engine. what truly makes the lazareth ‘wazuma GT’ stand out, is the unique placement of the rear wheels, which sit incredibly close together. all four wheels have three points of contact with the ground. two seats are situated next to each other and each person has their own private cockpit. sat low to the ground and featuring a low seat position, both passenger and driver can really feel all of the 385 horsepower produced by the V8 supercharged jaguar 4.0 engine. it produces an impressive 375 horsepower and 387 lb-ft of torque, which sends the power to the two rear wheels via a five-speed automatic transmission. much more power can be drawn from a V8 engine these days, but with the ‘wazuma GT’ weighing in at just 2,170 pounds (985kg), it can comfortably compete with some of its 500 horsepower counterparts. the ohlin’s shocks are completely adjustable; the wheels are OZ ‘botticelli’s’ and the tires are michelin ‘pilot super sports’. from most car/motorcycle fusions we have seen before, this french racer certainly looks suitable for racing between calais and provence / côte d’azur. 2016-09-22 02:15 Martin Hislop www.designboom.com
22 /69 ‘Empire’ Season 3 Premiere: The Fall “Empire” wasn’t built in a day — it was built one jaw- dropping, Twitter-ready moment at a time. Fox’s blockbuster drama about the Shakespearean dynamics between a family of performers, producers and businesspeople at the pinnacle of a hip-hop record label is, or was, simply very good at being a ritzy prime-time soap opera. It moved its many story lines along at breakneck speed, careening through multiple shocks and twists each episode with little of the plot-prolonging wheel-spinning endemic to the genre. For an instructive comparison, viewers should watch not just any entertaining daytime soap, but even a relatively sharp and setting- specific nighttime serial like “Gossip Girl”; the ruthless efficiency of “Empire” is unparalleled. And from corpses in cars to main characters behind bars, it always knew how to end an hour, a stretch of episodes or an entire season on a strong note.
Then suddenly, last season, things went sour. The decision to stretch the smash hit’s second outing to a relatively lengthy 18 episodes from 12 necessitated a midseason break, after which the show returned feeling, for the first time, out of step with the musical and political moment. While the series had tackled issues as pressing and powerful as the Black Lives Matter movement with both genuine passion and thoughtful humility about entertainment’s role in it all, the presidential primaries and the rise of Donald J. Trump had passed it by. Meanwhile, the soundtrack’s trademark use of confessional lyrics to reflect the characters’ “real” desires and dilemmas were eclipsed in the real world by Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” a visual album that blended diaristic candidness with barely veiled political fury more deftly than Hakeem and Jamal could ever do.
But those events were, of course, beyond the show’s ability to control. Its decision to bog itself down in the hoariest soap clichés — pregnant women getting pushed down staircases, long- lost family members materializing out of the ether — was a self-inflicted wound.
Ditto the second season finale’s sudden shutdown of long-running plotlines and potential stunners: Annika gets grabbed by the feds but tells Lucious immediately rather than serving as a secret snitch for any length of time; Jamal gets shot by his friend Freda Gatz when she tries to assassinate his father, but heals offscreen; Lucious’s mentally ill mother resurfaces in front of the paparazzi but is pulled away before she can damage his reputation, also offscreen. The ostensibly climactic wedding between Hakeem and his girlfriend and collaborator was disrupted by a character we’d never even heard of until that episode (Xzibit’s vengeful Lucious associate Shyne, who returns this season). By the time Rhonda and Annika took that plunge over the balcony, leaving us with the kind of “someone died … tune in next season to find out who!” cliffhanger that drove viewers of “The Walking Dead” to distraction this year, it was hard to know if the show would rise again intact.
Based on Wednesday’s season premiere, the answer is a qualified yes — for the show, anyway. Rhonda, unfortunately, is down for the count, her body crushing the roof of a limousine in the show’s go-for-broke opening gambit. (Fortunately for the actor Kaitlin Doubleday, the character shows up as a hallucination in the mind of her bipolar widower Andre; it’s a twist her real-life sister Portia Doubleday, a co-star on the mind- and reality-bending “Mr. Robot,” would no doubt appreciate.) The jump-scare impact, the perfect trickle of blood from her mouth as her eyes stare without seeing, the subsequent assault by Andre on her murderer, Annika, which ends only when her water breaks as she goes into premature labor — this is the show at its most lurid and ludicrous, which is exactly what it needed to be to regain its sapped energy.
Throughout the episode, the director Sanaa Hamri relies on hypercharged word-and-image combinations to give the story the oomph that the umpteenth “the Lyon family is split by infighting” scene simply can’t, of which Rhonda’s death is only the most striking example. In the hospital minutes later, Annika shouts and screams her way through a standard-issue TV- drama birth scene, until her husband, Lucious — they married to prevent her from testifying against him last season — poses as a concerned spouse in order to whisper in her ear the false story of Rhonda’s death she must recite to the cops.
The personal chaos of Lucious’s life is driven home most effectively not by any of his truculent sons or even his estranged ex Cookie, but by real-world hip-hop titans Birdman (as himself) and French Montana (not as himself, oddly enough).
In particular, Birdman’s strident objection to Lucious’s self-characterization as “a king” is all the more effective given his own embattled status as the head of Cash Money Records, in which capacity he’s currently engaged in a simmering feud with his former protégés Lil Wayne and Drake. Without the distinctive sight of the heavily tattooed rapper-producer, the lines would fall flat.
Elsewhere, when Shyne returns and tries to muscle his way into Empire, his actions — beating Hakeem’s producer in view of a studio full of people — speak louder than his words. A protest song sung by Jamaal and his new backup singer, Shyne’s niece Nessa, combines plot points (Freda shooting Jamaal) and real-world events (the Orlando nightclub massacre, the killing of unarmed black people by the police) against a stark backdrop of black-and-white imagery. It’s that alchemical combination of personality, politics, pulp and pop that took “Empire” to the top.
But it’s not all cranked-to-11 flash. The show’s secret weapon has long been its surprisingly nuanced performances. (The exception is the menacing work of Terrence Howard, which is still simply too strange to be mere scenery chewing.) Supporting player Serayah, for example, has a fine, funny moment as the show’s Rihanna manquée Tiana, forced to exasperatedly plead with Hakeem, her drunken ex, to put his pants back on when he shows up at her place after his failed wedding. Taraji P. Henson’s talent as Cookie is no secret at all, but she can say so much without actually speaking, as she does when she spots a photo of Lucious and his wife of convenience, and simply lowers her head to peer at it over her sunglasses. That gesture communicates so much about her disbelief that this affront has actually happened, and her emotional distance from those at the center of it.
This is not to say that “Empire” has entirely eliminated its late Season 2 sagginess. The continued presence of Tariq, Lucious’s F. B. I. agent half brother, adds a superfluous new feuding family member to the mix. Shyne’s assault-and-battery menace is almost immediately undercut by a friendly conversation with his rival Lucious the next day. And I’d happily go a lifetime without watching this show serve up another awkward, argument-disrupted dinner, or another concert in which one of the Lyon children goes off-script and performs a song their domineering father hasn’t approved. But how angry can you get at a pulp-pop mélange that ends with Lucious telling his infant stepdaughter to “Wait till we show them how dark hell can get” as federal agents spy on them through the eyes of a stuffed teddy bear? Real life has gotten dark; small-screen devilry like this makes for a welcome distraction indeed.
2016-09-22 02:00 SEAN T www.nytimes.com
23 /69 Dead Shot Mary, Pistol-Packing Trailblazer, Returns in One-Policewoman Show Armed with her trusty.32- caliber revolver and a bottle of Irish whiskey, Dead Shot Mary is back in town.
Her real name was Mary Shanley, and she was nicknamed for her skill at pulling a pistol from her handbag and compelling fleeing pickpockets to halt in their tracks, even on the crowded streets of Manhattan.
She was credited with more than 1,000 arrests during her 26-year career with the New York Police Department , from 1931 to 1957, and as one of the earliest female first-grade detectives was considered a trailblazer.
She died in 1989 at age 93, but here she was, portrayed by Rachel McPhee, at a rehearsal for “Dead Shot Mary,” a one-woman show that opened recently.
Although the production is a modest one — the Bridge Theater at Shetler Studios, on West 54th Street in Midtown, seats only 30, and the monthlong run will end on Oct. 15 — it serves to revive a larger-than-life New York figure who has been all but forgotten today.
The show portrays the poignant side of a woman defined by the hard-edge language of the crime blotter; during a rehearsal, Ms. McPhee paced in front of a backdrop of enlarged news clippings, reflecting on the ups and downs of her character’s career as a tough plainclotheswoman.
In her monologue she lamented that, even with all the laurels she had received as a crime fighter, “I’m always the freak at the zoo.”
Detective Shanley was the star of the pickpocket squad, and dressed to match the crowd she was disappearing into, at a department store, a fancy Fifth Avenue boutique or a large theater on Broadway.
Though she never married or had children, she would sometimes pose as an innocent mother by bringing her young niece along with her, recalled a relative, Patrick Mullins.
In an interview, Mr. Mullins said that his mother, Mary Shanley Mullins, was that very niece. She used to tell him that Detective Shanley “had this sixth sense, that she could smell a crook,” he recalled. “She could go into a crowd and know who to tail.”
Detective Shanley grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, with little money but plenty of street savvy, he said. She was a spirited storyteller and loved cocktails and big cars, and often showed up unexpectedly with presents for his family.
“She was a more-than-life-size figure, and a lot of fun,” said Mr. Mullins, 64, a filmmaker and film editor who has made a short documentary, “ Sleuthing Mary Shanley ,” about his great-aunt. “She was a good-time gal.” According to articles published in The New York Times, Officer Shanley was promoted in 1935, earning a third-grade detective’s shield, then rose steadily until she earned the first-grade rank in 1939, at age 43. She was the fourth woman in the Police Department’s history to do so. She was also perhaps the first policewoman in New York to use a gun in the capture and arrest of a suspect.
One article in The Times called her an “Annie Oakley” of the department, and quoted her as saying, “You have the gun to use, and you may just as well use it.”
One early arrest, in 1931, involved a fortuneteller who feigned telepathy by keeping a phone hidden in her headdress. There was the time she collared one Chinatown Charlie, a notorious pickpocket who preyed on shoppers along Fifth Avenue.
Then there was the arrest during a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Dressed as any other worshiper in a black suit, black jeweled hat and glasses, Detective Shanley saw a female pickpocket take cash from a woman kneeling in prayer. She fired two shots to stop the woman from fleeing.
In 1935, she was hospitalized after being thrown down a flight of stairs by a “ masher ” she was trying to apprehend at the Savoy Theater, The Times said.
In 1937, she arrested two stickup men by firing a warning shot in the air, and was promoted to second-grade detective. During the ceremony, Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia told her he considered it an honor to be “pinning a badge on you,” The Times reported.
La Guardia called Detective Shanley “a credit to the Police Department of the city,” and said that women on the force “can be used for very effective police and detective work.”
There were shootouts. An article in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle in June 1937 described Detective Shanley “nabbing two hardened criminals, after a hot pursuit through subway trains and a volley of pistol shots in the Times Square area.”
She was on patrol in a smart gray wide-brimmed hat and polka-dot green dress in June 1938 when she confronted a suspect outside Macy’s in Herald Square. He pushed her in the face and ran, but was felled by a swing of her leather pocketbook, The Times reported.
By the time two nearby officers arrived to help, she had her badge in one hand and was holding the suspect by the collar in the other.
“Well, I got him,” she told them. “I can take him in myself.”
A Daily Eagle story from 1950 described Detective Shanley, at age 54, apprehending a 22-year- old man “evidently embarked on a homicidal jaunt” inside a Macy’s store in Jamaica, Queens.
Revolver raised, she sneaked up behind him and said, “Drop that gun, boy,” the paper reported. A 1955 article in The Times described her firing a shot while pursuing a “seat tipper” — a criminal who tips back a folding seat to nab a purse — in a theater. Wearing a pale blue hat and light earrings, she was punched by the man, but he was apprehended anyway.
Once, having spied a crowd in pursuit of Grace Kelly while the actress was out shopping, Detective Shanley broke up the crowd. Then she escorted Ms. Kelly for two hours.
Part of the play touches on a scandal that enveloped Detective Shanley in 1941, which began with a barroom altercation near her apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. According to a Times article, Detective Shanley and her bulldog, Jiggs, had dropped in to the Spanish Rail saloon around 3 a.m., but the barman refused to serve her, even after she displayed her detective’s shield.
A man, drinking at the end of the bar with some friends, insulted Detective Shanley and her Irish ethnicity. She brandished her gun and shot in his direction, narrowly missing him.
She was arrested and charged with “conduct unbecoming an officer and overindulgence in intoxicants,” The Times reported. She was hospitalized, perhaps for a mental breakdown, and temporarily demoted back down to the rank of policewoman.
Detective Shanley retired in 1957, at age 61, after 26 years on the job. “Nemesis of 1,000 Criminals, Will Retire to Log Cabin,” a Times headline read. She spent some time in Florida but eventually returned to New York, where she died.
Onstage, Ms. McPhee is a dead ringer for Detective Shanley. The show was written by Ms. McPhee’s husband, Robert K. Benson, who said he discovered the detective’s story while browsing online and immediately recognized it as a perfect role for Ms. McPhee, who could portray the grit of “a tough old broad married to the job,” but also “go under that veneer and find out who this person was, what was she like at home.”
Ms. McPhee, who grew up in Wisconsin, said she arrived at the ideal New York accent by mixing a bit of Rosie O’Donnell with the Queens accent that Carroll O’Connor brought to Archie Bunker on “All in the Family.”
The show, directed by Stephen Kaliski, has attracted the interest of law enforcement groups. One performance will be held for members of the Policewomen’s Endowment Association, a group that represents active and retired female officers.
“They’re bringing attention to what this woman did as a trailblazer in the department, and it’s great to see that brought to life,” Sgt. Nora Ahmed, president of the association, said. “She’s a phenomenal story, especially in a male-dominated profession.”
2016-09-22 00:50 By www.nytimes.com
24 /69 studio_GAON's concrete house provides solitude in korea studio_GAON has constructed a concrete hill-top house on the island of jeju, off the southernmost coast of south korea. the name of the house — yoojeongheon — means ‘wind stays, sunshine caresses’. an island rich in history, the house is just a short walk from the sea. the village is in close proximity to the historical birthplace of kim man-deok, a famous female figure from 18th century korea who became one of the region’s most successful merchants.
the studio wanted to build a house sensitive to the history of the island all images by youngchae park despite the elevation of the area, the surrounding views have become restricted in recent years due to the highly concentrated nature of construction in the area. this, coupled with a site of just 145 square meters, meant that for studio_GAON, economy of space became the forefront concern of the design. to remove any sense of claustrophobia, the ground level of the house is opened up, allowing for space and breathability in an otherwise compact urban environment. throughout the house there is a sense of fluid mobility. narrow corridors seem to suggest rather than dictate movement, creating a natural flow within a limited space. the site sits on a hill, facing the north port of the island constructed from concrete, the house is designed to withstand the strong winds and adverse weather conditions of the island province, while also creating a space of calm and solitude. the studio’s original intention was to conceal the rough concrete exterior of the house with an alternate material, but ultimately favored an unfinished, coarse aesthetic. the resulting building gives the impression of having been hewn from the rock face, and is intended as a reference to the porous basalt native to the region. an interior courtyard adds to the feeling of spaciousness on the ground floor, a sun-filled atrium dramatically opens the building’s interior to the sky above. a plan incorporating few interior supports has produced an unburdened and welcoming entryway that, true to the house’s name, allows both the sun and sea-breeze to penetrate the building’s frame. an outer platform or ‘daechuhng’ links to the interior, and leads to a large reception room, or ‘sa-rang’, both of which are aligned so as to make full use of the nearby ocean view. the use of sliding doors on the ground floor has produced a flexible space that can become expansive or intimate. the cosy, modern interior of the house is a pleasing contrast to its outside; a combination of wooden floors and white surfaces create spaces that are both composed and contemporary. a spiral staircase provides access to the rooftop, which includes a closed-roof terrace and allows for full appreciation of the island’s stunning views. the studio choose to leave the face of the building untreated traditional sliding doors make for flexible use of the reception area the windows are set in black frames, giving a air of solidity to the design windows cover the face of the building, making the most of the locations limited light the living spaces are located on the second floor a metal staircase leads to the roof terrace, with views of the surrounding area designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.
2016-09-21 23:15 Joowon Moon www.designboom.com
25 /69 Natalia Vodianova, Paul Polman, Annie Lennox Honored by Fashion 4 Development Before F4D founder Evie Evangelou started the awards ceremony at The Pierre hotel, one of the honorees, Natalia Vodianova , talked up her Elbi app and platform of charities and socially responsible brands aimed at encouraging Millennials to do good by simple gestures, such as sending a sick child a drawing for them to color in the hospital or making micro- donations.
“Five billion ‘like’ buttons are pressed on Facebook alone each day. If we could turn just 1 percent of those like buttons into love, we’d be generating incredible power behind great causes,” she said, referring to the option for micro-donations. “We hope Millennials will be the heart of Elbi. They don’t look at doing good as something you do at the end of the year or at the end of your life. It’s something to do now. We have impulsive shopping. Why don’t we have impulsive giving?”
Designer Tamara Ralph mingled with honorees like Suzy Amis Cameron, Unilever ’s chief executive officer Paul Polman, Petra Nemcova and Annie Lennox (Nadja Swarovski could not be there to receive her award). Ralph was calm as can be even though her first non-Paris runway show for the Ralph & Russo collection would be held within the hour. In the next year, the company will open 11 stores in Asia, the Middle East and the U. S. including a Madison Avenue one. Ready-to-wear will launch next year, and cosmetics may follow, she said.
Cameron was in New York with her 6-foot-tall niece Audrey Amis, who is meeting with modeling agencies. It was a bit of a flashback for Cameron, a former Ford model , who also acted long before she founded Red Carpet Green Dress. Another sustainable-minded attendee, Livia Firth, said she is furthering her involvement with Chopard, Marks & Spencer, Kering, Stella McCartney and Gucci to work with trusted suppliers. In addition to supporting F4D honoree Annie Lennox’s Circle project, Firth said she is working on a “Social Media for Social Good” project with Stanford University.
With distribution in about 190 countries and 2 billion consumers using its products daily, Polman said, “What I’m thinking about more and more is, ‘How can we use that size and scale to drive more transformative changes to evolve capitalism to a better model ?’ We have big initiatives for cutting out deforestation, moving to sustainable agriculture, cutting food waste, driving social compliance in our value chains, creating livelihoods. One of the biggest challenges we have with the forced revolution that is coming, for all its goodness, will probably also destroy a lot of jobs. We’ve made a commitment to create 5 million jobs, [for] women in particular, in about 10 years.”
Asked if Unilever will acquire Jessica Alba ’s Honest Co., Polman said, “We never talk about what we do in the future. There are some parts of the business that you talk about the future — sustainable development goals….”
2016-09-21 22:40 Rosemary Feitelberg wwd.com
26 /69 Avery Amereau Is a Rarity in Music: A Contralto Contraltos, the female singers with the lowest vocal range, have always been scarce and seem especially rare today. The days of Kathleen Ferrier and Marian Anderson are long past. Edith Wiens, a stellar soprano and a renowned teacher, calls the contralto voice — or, informally, alto — a freak of nature, a product of “that inch in the throat.”
But on Thursday evening, Avery Amereau , an extraordinary American alto on the rise, will sing Berlioz’s delectable song cycle “Les Nuits d’Été,” with Thomas Crawford and his period-instrument American Classical Orchestra, at Alice Tully Hall. Just 25, she will make her Metropolitan Opera debut in November as the Musician in Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut.”
“I don’t mean to exaggerate, but this woman made my knees shake,” Mr. Crawford, a veteran maestro, said immediately after his first encounter with Ms. Amereau, in a rehearsal on Monday. “The voice is just ravishing.”
In a master class from 2013 , available on YouTube, the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato listens to Ms. Amereau’s rendition of the aria “Cara sposa,” from Handel’s “Rinaldo.”
“Like chocolate, right?” Ms. DiDonato gushes. “It’s like velvet, caramel chocolate.”
Ms. Amereau is in her last year of studies at the Juilliard School, where she completed a master’s degree and has made notable appearances onstage: among others, as Olga in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” and in the title role of Britten’s “The Rape of Lucretia.”
“Avery is unusual in being a contralto in vocal color and range, combined with a young, physical presence,” Matthew Epstein, a noted vocal guru who has worked with Ms. Amereau at Juilliard, wrote in an email.
“That deep, burnished sound is a gift,” Ms. Wiens, her principal teacher at Juilliard, added. “It’s not a teachable quality.”
Ms. Amereau agrees: “I feel that I am an alto,” she said in an interview. Yet she often bills herself as a mezzo-soprano. Why wouldn’t a lavishly gifted young contralto shout her arrival from the rooftop?
It is a matter of practicality, Ms. Amereau explained. If the contralto field might seem the ultimate seller’s market, it is also relatively small, and, versatile as she is, Ms. Amereau fears that being pigeonholed as an alto might limit her opportunities.
She probably needn’t worry. Alexander Neef, the general director of the Canadian Opera Company, laments the difficulty of finding real contraltos to fuel the continuing renaissance of Baroque opera, with its many roles originally geared to castratos. “I would think it’s the thing that everyone is looking for,” Mr. Neef said of the alto voice, in a telephone interview. In any case, the important thing at this stage of Ms. Amereau’s career is that her great natural gift is being carefully nurtured.
She was born and raised in Florida. Her early schooling included choral singing and some training in music theory, but music was “an interest,” she said, “not a passion.” Then lightning struck. She enrolled at Florida State University, seemingly headed toward the law, but suddenly decided that what she really wanted to study was music, and she wanted to do it at the Mannes School in New York.
Somewhat to the puzzlement of her parents, she passed up three scholarships at Florida State. At Mannes, she studied voice with Dan Marek, who brought her along slowly, she said, stressing scales and other technical work, with an eye toward longevity.
At 19, she began a series of annual visits to the International Meistersinger Academy in Neumarkt, Germany, where she studied with Ms. Wiens, its artistic director. Ms. Wiens is the current curator of Ms. Amereau’s voice, and she treasures it, calling Ms. Amereau a Rolls- Royce.
Like others, Ms. Wiens remembers hearing her for the first time. “The first few notes flew up in my head with a rare beauty,” Ms. Wiens said. She has grown ever more impressed, she added, not only with the development of the voice, but also with Ms. Amereau’s instincts, taste, commitment and work ethic.
Still, a high soprano teaching a contralto? “Any good voice teacher should be able to teach all voices,” Ms. Wiens said.
Besides, Ms. Amereau said, Ms. Wiens “can sing lower than I can.” (Ms. Wiens offered to do so on the phone, with warnings about ear damage. I declined.) And anyway, where would Ms. Amereau find a top-flight alto to teach her?
The contralto world, though thinly populated now (beyond the Polish star Ewa Podles ), has a distinguished history, which Ms. Amereau first encountered through a recording of Tchaikovsky’s “None but the Lonely Heart,” by the American Eula Beal, on YouTube. She later caught up with other stalwarts, like Ferrier and Anderson.
Ms. Amereau seems well on her way to taking a place beside them in contralto history. Though she may feel that her career has been developing slowly, and is all the better for it, what she has achieved in five or six years looks, in another light, meteoric.
2016-09-21 22:21 By www.nytimes.com
27 /69 Review: Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam Evoke Dreams and Ghosts Hamilton Leithauser has one of the most tactile voices in rock: a coarse yet viscous instrument, like wet concrete. So it’s striking that he keeps returning to the intangible, the realm of phantasm and reverie, on “I Had a Dream That You Were Mine,” his persuasively moody new collaboration with the producer and multi- instrumentalist known as Rostam. The album borrows its title from the first line in the opening track, “A 1000 Times,” which examines unrequited obsession in the form of a recurring dream. On “The Morning Stars,” over a train-beat shuffle, Mr. Leithauser takes his own turn as an apparition. “Oh, I’m the one who rattles all your windows and your doors,” he sings, in a shivery cry. “Howling in the night beyond your walls, beneath your floors.” (“In other words,” he adds helpfully, “I’m your ghost.”)
To the extent that there’s some haunting going on here, it involves more than the cold ashes of a romance. Mr. Leithauser is best known as the lead singer of the Walkmen, a scratchy workhorse of aughts-era New York City indie-rock, which went on indefinite hiatus a couple of years ago. Rostam Batmanglij, who works under his first name, was, until recently, a core member of Vampire Weekend, a tidier, less cathartic, more widely heralded New York band.
Mr. Leithauser and Rostam are castaways by choice, though it’s hard to hear this music without picking up echoes of the bands they left behind. That doesn’t feel limiting, if only because of the sense of mutual discovery in the music. (They’ll perform on Monday at Rough Trade in Brooklyn .)
This is an album that shambles through styles and approaches without fretting over how all the pieces will fit. It doesn’t abide by the parameters for commercial indie-rock, nor plunge into the thriving subgenre known as Americana. More than anything, it seems the simple byproduct of strong personalities enjoying the process of finding common ground. In the video for “A 1000 Times,” they not only pantomime playing the song, but also enlist their dads to do the same.
Rostam, who produced two tracks on Mr. Leithauser’s 2014 solo debut, “Black Hours,” came to the table with strong ideas about how to reframe his colleague’s singing. One result was “ In a Black Out ,” the album’s standout ballad, which inhabits a twilight shimmer of fingerpicked acoustic guitar. (You may have heard the song just this week in a major ad campaign .)
The collaboration didn’t follow a strict division of labor: Both artists originated melodies and song structure; both contributed lyrics. They worked in Rostam’s home studio in Los Angeles, later adding drums (Stephen Patterson of White Rabbits) and saxophone (Joe Santa Maria). There are flare-ups of doo-wop, throwback soul and stomping folk, offered as if in boozy tribute to Greil Marcus’s coinage about “ the old, weird America.” But Mr. Leithauser takes pains to stress continuity. “I use the same voice I always had!” he insists on “Sick as a Dog.”
Elsewhere, the album’s evocations are shouldered lightly: “You Ain’t That Young Kid” begins with a harmonica over a rambling rock beat, underlining Mr. Leithauser’s noted affinities with Bob Dylan. But the cadence and detail of the lyrics — which recall the collapse of a relationship, complete with a metaphorical nod to ghosts — more clearly suggest a contemporary band, like Okkervil River.
Along similar lines, “Peaceful Morning” juxtaposes a banjo and acoustic bass with a raft of vocal harmonies evocative of Vampire Weekend. “Oh I wish I could hear it, cause I still feel the spirit,” Mr. Leithauser sings. “From the rafters to the ceiling, I’m waiting on that feeling.”
That sense of charged anticipation extends to “1959,” the chamberesque art song that concludes the album. “So I rumble down your hall/Do you hear me through the wall?” Mr. Leithauser asks.
He receives a response, though not quite an answer, from a sweet-voiced guest singer, Angel Deradoorian, who warns against trusting in moonbeams or heartbeats, neither of which are permanent. The song ends with Ms. Deradoorian’s making a noncommittal pledge — “One day I’ll stop to listen” — as her voice recedes into the distance, slowly vanishing.
2016-09-21 22:19 By www.nytimes.com
28 /69 Review: It’s a Wild, but Peaceful, World for the Former Cat Stevens Nostalgia, invocations of peace and love, and diplomatic positioning were all part of “A Cat’s Attic,” a gentle retrospective concert by Yusuf, the former Cat Stevens. Two shows at the Beacon Theater were his first full New York concerts since 1976 , the year before he converted to Islam, changed his full name to Yusuf Islam and spent nearly three decades away from secular music.
Before that, Cat Stevens, born Steven Demetre Georgiou in London, had been known as a voice of kindly introspection, picking an acoustic guitar and singing about affection and a search for peace. Even his hit breakup song, “Wild World,” strove for compassion: “Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there.” His voice was reedy, grainy and prematurely grizzled; decades later, his tone hasn’t changed. Slender, soft-spoken and gray-haired at 68, Yusuf reminisced on Tuesday night about his unlikely life story and sang what had been staples of early-1970s FM radio: songs like “Peace Train,” “How Can I Tell You” and “Father and Son,” which, he revealed onstage, was initially supposed to be part of a musical about the Russian Revolution.
Longtime fans reverently sang along, ready to let Yusuf’s most controversial moment — his 1989 endorsement of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie — recede behind his later, more peaceable sentiments. He has claimed he was misinterpreted; on Tuesday, his second set included the Animals’ hit “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”
Yusuf, who switched to piano for songs like “Sad Lisa,” was accompanied by Eric Appapoulay on guitar and Kwame Yeboah on bass, percussion and keyboards, playing subdued versions of his old arrangements. The stage backdrop was an attic room recalling the “bedsit” where he wrote many of his early hits; on one wall, it had a tour poster of Cat Stevens in 1976, black- haired and bearded. “Welcome to my little house,” he said.
The biography that Yusuf told onstage — his “journey” — hinged on setbacks leading to epiphanies. In the 1960s, he was a striving hitmaker in England, reaching the charts with songs like “Matthew and Son” — a peppy tune about exploited labor — and “Here Comes My Baby,” which he slyly updated on Tuesday with a mention of texting.
But after a pop-star phase, he developed tuberculosis, and when he returned to songwriting he was transformed: quieter, more thoughtful, more spiritually curious. A musical trademark in many of his songs is a skipped beat, or a bar of 3/4 time in a 4/4 song, which gives the tune a subtle jolt. Songs from his 1968 album, “Mona Bone Jakon” — “Trouble,” “Katmandu” — were among the concert’s understated gems. Years before his conversion, he was already singing about quests for answers in songs like “I Wish, I Wish,” “Miles from Nowhere” and “On the Road to Find Out,” which were all part of his first set.
His second set drew on the 1970s, with songs like the folky “The Boy With a Moon and Star on His Head” — a fable that he carefully announced “never happened,” presumably because it revolves around extramarital sex — and “Angelsea,” with its heaving riff. In 1976, Cat Stevens was swimming off Malibu, Calif., he said, when he nearly drowned and desperately prayed to God, who rescued him by sending a wave. His conversion followed in 1977; though he didn’t use the word “Islam” onstage, he said, “I took my message, and I walked away” and that he also faced “aggressive aversion to what I had chosen.”
The songs he played from the 2000s, after he returned to a pop career, were friendly and nondenominational but resolute: “To be what you must, you must give up what you are,” he sang in one from 2009. He meshed his tentatively utopian “Maybe There’s a World” with the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” itself a skipped-beat song. And after he played some hits, he concluded with “Morning Has Broken”: originally a Christian hymn and still tenderly devout.
2016-09-21 22:19 By www.nytimes.com
29 /69 erik giudice architects' canopy for jonkoping station in sweden the philosophy behind the design envisioned by erik giudice architects is based on the connection between the city of jönköping in sweden and its surrounding nature. this link is demonstrated through the use of a light and a playful wooden canopy structure, partly transparent and open towards the city on one side and to munksjön lake on the other. the matchstick structure pays homage to the city’s past as tändsticksstaden, famous matchstick capital of sweden. by using a combination of wood and polycarbonate panels, this iconic structure will provide shading, sunlight and natural ventilation while protecting against the elements. the organic nature of the design offers the station a strong identity and the elevated platform coupled with the semi-transparent cover will give the traveller arriving aboard the high-speed train an instant view over the surrounding lakes and forests. the station will offer jönköping instant recognition on the new high-speed railway link and in line with the ambitions stated in the design vision, jönköping- staden och sjöarna. the polycarbonate covering can be integrated with solar panels on the south side, offering the station the possibility of generating energy for its own use. rainwater will naturally run off the curved structure and will be harvested and reused within planted areas with the trees. the use of wood and curved, irregular surfaces helps absorb and diffuse noise from the train and other traffic and adds to a more peaceful atmosphere, a place where people are invited to linger and relax. transparency and openness help sunlight reach below the cover and onto the platforms and other areas, ensuring that all areas of the station have access to light with entrance areas on all sides, making the spaces above as well as below the viaduct feel safe and secure for all users. at the upper level, visitors are invited into the matchstick forest through long, circular ramps which take them to the top of the canopy and onto a walkway, at once opening up to the lakes and the forests around jönköping. here, the visitors can enjoy a drink or simply walk around admiring the view over the lakes, the forests, and the city. the lower level of the station will host a number of different uses including ticket offices, shops, cafes, and restaurants. it is where other modes of transportation connect with and within the train station. it has been designed to favor easy access for all users and a good flow of both pedestrian and motorized traffic in and around the station through the use of wide sidewalks, large entrance areas and transparency which offers excellent visual orientation. designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.
2016-09-21 22:10 www.designboom.com
30 /69 Claire’s Stores Can Breathe Through Holiday Claire’s Stores Inc. got some much- needed breathing room, at least through the holiday selling period.
The tween jewelry chain worked out an arrangement with its lender, HSBC Bank Plc, to revise its European credit facility. That arrangement allows Claire’s to complete a bond swap to help ease its interest payments as well as pay the $77 million interest payment that was due on Sept. 15. The new revised facility also gives the retailer some funding for operations through the end of the year.
The retailer is in a sector that has been troubled for some time. Many apparel retailers that target tweens and teens have filed for bankruptcy court protection, most recently Aéropostale Inc. Pacific Sunwear of California Inc. and The Wet Seal are other chains that filed. Aéropostale was acquired by a consortium led by Authentic Brands Group, while Pacific Sunwear was acquired by private-equity firm Golden Gate Capital and The Wet Seal was acquired by Versa Capital. Deb Shops, which filed in December 2014, and is closer to the tween market, shuttered its operations in March 2015.
While the revised agreement gives Claire’s time to try to effect a turnaround, there’s a chance it might run up against the same problem come Dec. 31, 2016, when the credit facility requires a paydown.
While the changing shopping patterns of Claire’s demographic hasn’t helped the chain, its financial problems have also been due to the debt it took on following the leveraged buyout in 2007 by Apollo Management.
Earlier this month, the company widened its second-quarter loss to $32.1 million for the period ended July 30, compared with a loss in the year-ago quarter of $18.9 million. Sales for the period fell 8.8 percent to $317.2 million from $347.6 million. The company’s store count for company-operated stores was 1,699 North American stores and 1,102 European stores. It also has 596 franchise-operated stores plus another 806 concession stores. Its stores are under the nameplates Claire’s and Icing.
2016-09-21 22:06 Vicki M wwd.com
31 /69 Forget Twitter. I’d Rather Binge Theater. It’s often said that we live in an era that prizes speed and brevity above all else. There’s long been fast food, but now there’s fast fashion, too. Why take the time to phone someone when an email will take less of your time? Why send an email when a text message would be quicker?
For that matter, why take the time to type the words “I know, right?” or “Just kidding” when you can just type “IKR?” and “JK”?
Attention spans may be shrinking to the blink of an eye or two, but there are still some of us who would rather read a fat Victorian novel than plow through a day’s tweets. (Shameful, but true: I am still not on Twitter. It was hours – hours! — before I learned of the sad demise of “Brangelina.”)
And while I am never brokenhearted to learn that a play I’m going to see runs a tight 90 minutes, some of the most memorable theatergoing experiences of my life have also been among the longest. I am thinking not just of “The Flick,” Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play that clocked in at more than three hours, but of productions that can take up a full day’s span.
I saw all of the great Irish writer J. M. Synge’s plays, presented by the Druid Theater, separately on three nights in Dublin several years ago. Then, at the urging of the director, Garry Hynes, I saw them again on a single day in Dublin. Ms. Hynes felt that the immersion in Synge’s world that came from watching them back to back was far more illuminating, and moving, than seeing the plays in discrete chunks.
She was right. And I happily saw them all once again in a day when the production came to New York.
What good long-form theater can do so well is draw us out from the picayune distractions of daily life — the email inbox inevitably filling up, the bleeps from our phones — to give us a wider and deeper view of our experience, or, more significantly, someone else’s. Time slows down, the nagging irritations of our personal lives slip away, and we enter into a world imagined by an artist or artists that holds us captive for a while.
We emerge into the real world a little bit disoriented — and, yes, probably tired and ready for bed — but with a crucial sense of having entered another realm for a while, lived there, and learned something from it.
Of course, not all of my long-form theatrical journeys have left me with a smile on my face. I have immense respect for the director-writer-actor Robert Lepage, but his nine-hour “Lipsynch,” presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2009, was a meandering, maundering meditation on language and speech that ultimately left me with just one word ringing in my head after it concluded: “Taxi!”
But by a happy coincidence, two of the most adventurous, inspired and, yes, lengthy works of theater I’ve seen are coming to a conclusion in New York at roughly the same time. Both reward the time spent, spectacularly.
For the next couple of weeks, Taylor Mac performs his long-gestating magnum opus (or let’s be optimistic and call it his first magnum opus), “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” in three- hour installments at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. They continue through Oct. 3, culminating in a marathon performance on Oct. 8 at noon that lasts a staggering 24 hours. Bring your sleeping bag if you want to catnap.
If you aren’t holding tickets for Mr. Mac’s performance this Saturday, you could watch the final three installments of the similarly long-aborning “Life and Times,” from the experimental company Nature Theater of Oklahoma, which are being screened (yes, screened — more on that later) at Anthology Film Archives as part of the French Institute Alliance Française’s Crossing the Line Festival.
With these concluding segments, the project will have stretched to 16 hours or so — shy of Mr. Mac’s endeavor, but pretty lengthy by any standards nonetheless. The final three parts take up about four and a half hours.
Neither of these events fall squarely into the category of theater. Mr. Mac’s production is a hyperextended song cycle blended liberally with inspired patter, history viewed through a queer prism, elaborate audience-involving theatrical gambits and the occasional guest star. I have seen half of the production, covering the years 1776 through 1836, and the years 1896 through 1956 (which I reviewed last year ), and can attest to its glittering uniqueness: the most spectacular drag act imaginable, combined with superb musicianship and generous doses of progressive gender politics.
The first four “episodes” of “Life and Times,” conceived and directed by Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, were presented at the Public Theater in 2013, in collaboration with Soho Rep. Although radically strange, even by the standards of experimental theater, they took place onstage, with live actors and musicians present. But the next installments — Episodes 4.5 and 5 — left theater entirely behind. The first was a short animated film, the second a book loosely inspired by early medieval illuminated manuscripts.
The final three episodes (No. 6 was performed only in Europe) are entirely filmed, although, in keeping with the dizzying, dazzling variety that exemplify the project, each has a distinct style. Episode 7 departs most startlingly from what has come before in that the voice that we had been hearing (or reading), that of the performer Kristin Worrall, is entirely absent.
The previous episodes were drawn from recorded telephone conversations with Ms. Worrall, using her exact wording. Liberally sprinkling familiar verbal tics like “like” and “um” throughout her chatter, not to mention fractured sentences and digressions, she unfolded the not particularly remarkable story of her youth and teenage years, in often hilariously granular detail.
In Episode 7, a similar allegiance to the quirky poetry of human speech trapped in amber remains, the voices we hear are those of Ms. Worrall’s friends and family, not her own. (She does appear in the movie, as herself.) The story of Ms. Worrall’s life picks up as she’s adrift, attending college, taking dead-end jobs and generally experiencing the kind of malaise that descends upon artistically inclined but far from driven young people as they negotiate the first years of adulthood.
Perhaps reflecting this sense of life flattening out after the hormonal turbulence of adolescence, the movie is filmed almost entirely in black and white. The visual style, however, is striking: Scenes are filmed against hazy backdrops of other films; a short introductory segment imitates an old-style newsreel, replete with scratches on the film. Only in the last moments does the movie transform into color.
The next, considerably shorter episode, is made entirely in color — but it’s also entirely sung. (All three episodes have English subtitles.) A filmed opera, in effect, the movie zips between various locations in and around New York and returns Ms. Worrall’s voice to the fore. It climaxes, movingly, in Ms. Worrall’s reflections on her experience during the events of Sept. 11, 2001, as we watch the actors singing as they stride across the Brooklyn Bridge, with the new 1 World Trade Center building in the background.
Episode 9, meanwhile, is also sung, but it’s an extended spoof of a rap video. This last leg of the journey felt like a letdown — almost as if Mr. Liska and Ms. Copper had run out of inspiration — but it hardly diminished my admiration for the project as a whole.
In “Life and Times,” they and their collaborators turn a regular life into an aesthetic saga. The process itself became a funny and moving illustration of the idea that even as we change and evolve, something of us — in this case represented by the specific voice of Ms. Worrall — remains intact. Life is both ever-various and surprising, and, at the same time, one long uninterrupted (and, admit it, sometimes awfully boring) conversation with ourselves.
2016-09-21 22:05 By www.nytimes.com
32 /69 Review: A Rough Cut of ‘The Thief and the Cobbler’ Makes It to MoMA “The Thief and the Cobbler” is to animated movies what “The Magnificent Ambersons” is to live- action ones: a staggering masterpiece that can never be seen in its ideal form. “Ambersons,” directed by Orson Welles, was completed but then mutilated by its studio, its original version lost; “Cobbler,” a dream project the animator Richard Williams had been working on since the 1960s, was wrested from him by financiers in 1993, incomplete by about 15 minutes.
The material supervised by Mr. Williams (who’s esteemed for, among other things, his work on “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”) was shaped into two subsequent features, one a well-meaning but ineffectual salvage job, the next an out-and-out bastardization. Bootleg “reconstructions” have circulated among buffs for years. This week, the Museum of Modern Art (in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) screens a restored version of Mr. Williams’s last work print of the film, titled “The Thief and the Cobbler: A Moment in Time.”
Its story features an exotic kingdom, a beautiful princess and an evil vizier. The title cobbler is taciturn and pragmatic in a way that’s magical; the sneaky thief is as persistent as Wile E. Coyote. The fully rendered material is amazing. Backgrounds evoke “Sleeping Beauty”-period Disney with a surrealist skew reminiscent of the work of the Czech master Karel Zeman. The action is dizzying, and the frequent playing with perspective is convincingly Escher-like.
It’s unclear how Mr. Williams would have made the disparate elements of his vision cohere, but it’s also ultimately irrelevant. Though several distinctive animated movies have been released this year, “The Thief and the Cobbler,” even in its sadly incomplete state, leaves them in the dust. Novices and kids may be alienated by its rough-cut form, but mavens will rightfully rejoice.
“The Thief and the Cobbler: A Moment in Time” is not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. 2016-09-21 22:04 By www.nytimes.com
33 /69 Review: ‘Pitch,’ a Gender Changeup, but With Clichés Intact By default, the new Fox series “Pitch” is not your usual baseball drama. Beyond “A League of Their Own” and “The Bad News Bears,” there aren’t a lot of stories featuring women or girls actually playing the game, let alone a woman who gets called up to the major leagues.
But when you get beyond the premise — Ginny Baker (Kylie Bunbury), a minor leaguer who throws in the high 80s and has a highly effective screwball, gets called up by the San Diego Padres to make a start — you’ll find that “Pitch” is a highly conventional sports tale, a fastball down the middle rather than a darting curve. You’ll also discover that the soap opera beats and sylvan images of the traditional baseball picture are still pretty effective.
“Pitch,” which makes its premiere on Thursday, doesn’t subvert sports clichés, it just adapts them to a new gender. The hoary fathers-and-sons trope becomes father and daughter, with Ginny assuming the athletic role abdicated by her older brother. We’ve been here before — when her father makes her learn the screwball by throwing nectarines, when her major league catcher gives her a midgame inspirational speech on the mound, when ownership tells her manager that he can’t send her back down to the minors because it would look bad.
(We’ve seen the father-daughter dynamic before, too, in the short-lived sitcom “Back in the Game” and the Clint Eastwood vehicle “Trouble With the Curve,” but those didn’t show women actually playing.)
The pilot (and only episode available for review), written by the show’s creators, Dan Fogelman and Rick Singer, and directed by Paris Barclay, is glossy and brisk and does about as good a job as you could hope for of putting some life into the baseball formulas. It succeeds only intermittently at that, but it has two other significant advantages.
The show’s close ties to Major League Baseball mean that San Diego’s Petco Park was available for shooting, inside and out, and the locations provide a bracing authenticity. And the pilot doesn’t get too distracted by sociology and locker-room politics, supplying a sufficient amount of the pure, foolproof imagery and action that are almost always a baseball story’s primary strength. (The only real exceptions to that rule being the baseball films directed by Ron Shelton, “Bull Durham” and “Cobb.”) When Ginny walks onto the field framed against a sellout crowd, or leaps into the air after a crucial strikeout, the images carry an undeniable, atavistic charge.
Ms. Bunbury, previously seen in “Twisted” and “Under the Dome,” has reportedly worked hard on her pitching in real life. You couldn’t argue that she has a credible major league delivery onscreen, but it’s not so far off that it’s bothersome, and in her carriage and manner she’s a more believable professional athlete than male co-stars like Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Mo McRae. Bob Balaban, as the team’s owner, and Dan Lauria, as the manager, are steady backup players.
“Pitch” is clearly in search of an audience beyond sports fans, and there’s a danger that off-field melodrama will outweigh baseball — a late angels-in-the-outfield twist in the pilot is alarming. Like the manager, the producers would be well advised to just let Ginny pitch.
2016-09-21 21:56 By www.nytimes.com
34 /69 Review: ‘Notorious’ Offers Nice Cheekbones, but Not Much Else “Notorious” is technically a television drama about the symbiotic relationship between a cable-news producer and a celebrity lawyer. But it’s really a show about cheekbones. When Piper Perabo and Daniel Sunjata face off onscreen, you may duck involuntarily, afraid of being cut by a dangerously sharp zygomatic arch.
The attractiveness of the stars is more relevant than usual because “Notorious,” making its premiere Thursday on ABC, doesn’t have much else going for it. Taking the place of “Scandal” (which has moved to midseason) on what had been an all-Shonda Rhimes night, it’s clearly meant to provide the same kind of polished, over-the-top melodrama that Ms. Rhimes’s shows are known for. (“Notorious” follows “Grey’s Anatomy,” which Ms. Rhimes created, and precedes “How to Get Away With Murder,” for which she is an executive producer.) But Josh Berman, the writer and producer (“CSI,” “Bones”) who created the show with the entertainment blogger Allie Hagan, doesn’t appear to have the Rhimes touch, based on the one episode available for review.
The problems with “Notorious” start with its premise. Neither the TV producer Julia George (Ms. Perabo) nor the lawyer Jake Gregorian (Mr. Sunjata) looks like a character we’re going to care about, let alone root for. (They’re based on the real-life lawyer Mark Geragos and the former “Larry King Live” producer Wendy Walker.) There’s not a lot of dramatic or emotional payoff in watching how they cooperate to stage events for the mutual benefit of his clients and her show. And in the pilot, which involves a tech billionaire accused of a hit-and-run homicide, the way Julia and Jake seem to two-handedly control the entire Los Angeles media-criminal justice complex is more absurd than amusing.
Ms. Rhimes’s shows succeed in part because their high stakes — the fate of the presidency (“Scandal”), the daily gore of a large hospital (“Grey’s Anatomy”) — help to justify their storytelling excesses. There are several deaths in the “Notorious” pilot, but there’s nothing that feels like it’s life-or-death. The story always returns to the eventful but uninteresting frenemyship of Julia and Jake, with its anemic banter and ever-so-slight sexual tension.
The one cast member who makes an impression is Kate Jennings Grant as the host of the show within the show, “Louise Herrick Live.” Louise isn’t the most nuanced character — we mostly see her lounging around in her underwear, just before or just after sex with her new boyfriend, a young singer who was a recent guest on her show. But Ms. Jennings Grant makes something appealing out of Louise’s combination of on-camera professionalism and unapologetic voraciousness. Most of the time, though, “Notorious” leaves you scratching your head, wondering what exactly you’re watching. Like “Scandal,” it’s a show that incorporates mystery, comedy and romance but is basically about crisis management. What it mainly demonstrates is the magnitude of Ms. Rhimes’s achievement in making something entertaining from that unpromising starting point.
2016-09-21 21:53 By www.nytimes.com
35 /69 Karl Lagerfeld Appears in Promotional Film for Paris Directed by Jalil Lespert, the “Yves Saint Laurent” and “Versailles” director, the film also stars locals and tourists. “The idea is to approach it in an intimate way, through the eyes of Parisians — people who are Parisians just for a few days or who have always been Parisians — and to have a patchwork of places and characters that mix and make us discover Paris,” Lespert said in an exclusive interview ahead of the screening. “It can be an Asian tourist, a hipster from the Marais or Karl Lagerfeld .”
Fashion pops up throughout the film, which includes footage of the Dior 2016 fall couture show and Balmain men’s spring catwalk.
Its making-of took place in iconic Parisian sites, including the Louvre, Eiffel Tower and Galeries Lafayette department store, as well as places less known to tourists. “What I find magnificent in Paris is that each neighborhood has its soul. After the attacks, it’s about showing a city where we live, breathe and love, where we can go to cafés, museums, ballets,” said Lespert.
For him, promoting Paris feels like an act of brotherhood. “I was born, raised in Paris and I live here,” he explained.
The film’s formatting ranges from 15-second to two-minute-and-30-second clips that are understood will be shown in venues including airports, airplanes, hotels and on social media.
The film, whose sponsors include LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Galeries Lafayette and Air France is part of a larger plan, budgeted at about 2 million euros, or $2.2 million at current exchange, that was started in May by French authorities and other backers to promote the city as a go-to spot.
Paris remained the first touristic destination in the world in 2015, with 16 million visitors. But the Nov. 13 attacks continue to weigh on visitor levels today. Hotel arrivals of foreign guests to Paris were down 11.6 percent between January and May of this year.
2016-09-21 21:50 Laure Guilbault wwd.com
36 /69 Watching Apple and the Smartwatch Market On Friday, the world’s most popular and recognizable smartwatch got both an upgrade ( Apple Watch Series 2) and a pricing update (some down to $269), but will it be enough to make smartwatches more mainstream? Opinions are mixed.
On one hand, consumers rated Apple Watch the highest out of a group of six of the best-selling smartwatches from Apple , Citizen, Garmin, LG and Motorola in a study by crowd-sourced testing firm First Insight. Researchers asked 1,500 consumers, 30 percent of whom reported owning a smartwatch , to offer feedback on factors such as pricing and likelihood to purchase.
Consumer sentiment toward Apple Watch was 41 percent positive, and it received a “value score” of 7 out of a possible 10. The Motorola Moto 360, with a 35 percent positive customer sentiment, came in second.
According to consumers, the Apple brand name, when it comes to smartwatches at least, might not be enough to make a sale: Only eight percent of consumers said that brand was important to them, while 37 percent ranked features and functionality as the number-one factor, which was followed by price, at 25 percent. Speaking of price, 75 percent of women and 60 percent of men wanted to pay $200 or less for a smartwatch. Although the original Apple Watch model is now $269, the Series 2 is $369.
“From Apple’s entry into the market to the expectation of how smartwatches could impact our lives, the hype has not materialized,” said First Insight chief executive officer Greg Petro. “Now is the time for smartwatch manufacturers to get smart. They must take time to understand what consumers really want and abandon preconceived notions regarding design and functionality that have led to the market’s decline before it even had a chance to take root.”
Lauren Guenveur, who is consumer insight director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, which just released its own smartwatch report, said that while Apple “continues to dominate” the smartwatch segment with a 33.5 percent share, growth in the sector is slow. In the next 12 months, 9.3 percent of U. S.-based nonowners said they intend to purchase a wearable, Kantar found. This is slightly below 11.3 percent for Great Britain.
“September 7th’s unveiling of the Apple Watch Series 2 showed Apple addressing the key considerations cited by those planning to buy, including GPS, one of the most-desired functionalities, and waterproofing, the most-desired feature,” Guenveur said.
During the summer, the International Data Corp. reported that Apple Watch sales had fallen, likely in anticipation of the updated models .
New products and updates throughout the market could contribute to a rise in sales. Last week, IDC projected that total smartwatch shipments would rise 3.9 percent this year to 20.1 million units, with unit volume growing to 50 million by 2020. IDC research manager Ramon Llamas said that this growth would be driven by lower prices, untethering from a cell phone and designs that resemble traditional watches.
2016-09-21 21:39 Maghan McDowell wwd.com
37 /69 Review: City Ballet’s Gala Evening of Misses... and a Lot of Skin At Tuesday’s “Ballet and Fashion” gala, given by New York City Ballet, the best-dressed people onstage were the four who had choreographed the evening’s world premieres (Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Lauren Lovette, Justin Peck, Peter Walker), and the solo guest cellist ( Sara Sant’Ambrogio ) who accompanied one of them. The whole gala, a trivial event, had a back-to-front quality of misplaced priorities and unresolved ideas. None of the ballets were important. Three of them actually suffered from their unflattering designs.
This is a shame. Two of the premieres, Ms. Lovette’s “After Clara” and Mr. Walker’s “ten in seven,” were the first professional choreography by their makers: Each showed talent without looking ready for presentation by one of the world’s foremost companies.
Ms. Lovette’s ballet is the more accomplished but also the more cluttered, following well- established lines (classical structures largely indebted to George Balanchine, chamber music by Robert Schumann), with behavior both hectic and cute. Mr. Walker , using commissioned music played live onstage — pop-rock-jazz by Thomas Kikta — is the more originally modern in overall stage idea, but here lacked the rhythmic vitality to sustain interest. Mr. Kikta’s music, in seven sections, had largely predictable rhythms; Mr. Walker’s 10 dancers, with end-stopped phrasing, seemed more trapped than liberated by them.
The inclusion of two female choreographers, Ms. Lovette and Ms. Lopez Ochoa (the only City Ballet outsider of the four choreographers, she has made work for many companies), shows a desire to alter the company’s recently exclusive reliance on male dance makers. Ms. Lopez Ochoa’s “ Unframed ,” though set to an oddly time-traveling collage of music by Boccherini, Vivaldi, Elgar, and Peteris Vasks , had the evening’s best costumes (chic uniforms, black with white borders, by Rosie Assoulin ); the best lighting (a box of stage space with two corners of white neon by Mark Stanley ); and plenty of shrewd organization.
But Ms. Lovette and Ms. Lopez Ochoa also choreographed the most sexist duets, with men busily manipulating women. And both presented bare-chested men, though these dancers’ female partners nonetheless behaved as if both parties were fully dressed. In “Unframed,” Sterling Hyltin and Adrian Danchig-Waring had a showy duet in their underwear, but why? Her elaborately coifed mane made an impression but, despite all his detailed attention to her body, she made no serious response to his.
Shouldn’t modern partnering be more about two-way manners than one-way manhandling? If costuming sets out to show the beefcake aspect of male dancers, then why not create stage worlds in which women respond to the beauty of men’s bodies, as men traditionally do to women’s? The women of the Lovette and Lopez Ochoa ballets weren’t passive; they made demands, they showed needs, but they carried on as if this were ballroom Romanticism à la Balanchine. (The most engaging role in either was for Indiana Woodward as a perky soloist, without male partner, in “For Clara.”)
As an evening of entirely heterosexual choreography, Tuesday was a retreat from the four premieres (made by men) of last year’s fashion gala, in which certain degrees of same-sex partnering were essential parts of each ballet. The most interesting study of male-female relations was Mr. Peck’s “The Dreamers,” a pas de deux for Sara Mearns and Amar Ramasar. To the adagio of Bohuslav Martinu’s Second Piano Quintet , and in colored and patterned costumes by Dries Van Noten , this showed both man and woman with independent lives and thoughts, soliloquizing as well as cooperating.
Ms. Mearns , the evening’s most arresting personality, as she so often is, had a marvelously simple motif, a slow rise (relevé) of both feet onto point while addressing Mr. Ramasar : She made the slowness feel dramatically charged, thoughtful, even smoldering. I enjoyed the successive solos each had while the other lay on the floor, as if in sleep; or rather, I enjoyed them as a dramatic idea.
Still, on first viewing, “The Dreamers” — though it extends Mr. Peck’s skill in the duet genre — feels schematic, not quite convincing. Mr. Ramasar suffered from the evening’s worst-executed costume: a jacket-like, seemingly padded shirt with a halter and trousers. And Mr. Peck’s choreography, unlike that of his two previous ballets to Martinu compositions, failed to persuade me that this is dance music — a failure shared by Ms. Lovette’s use of Schumann’s Introduction and Concert Allegro (Op. 134) in “For Clara.”
Is there a worse way to introduce an inexperienced choreographer to City Ballet than by requiring him or her to create for a fashion gala? Yet each premiere was preceded by short documentary films in which couture seemed all. Music was not mentioned in these films — even in their final credits.
In a final film, celebrating five years of the company’s fall fashion galas, Sarah Jessica Parker (a chairwoman of the event) told us that this attention to fashion was in the tradition of Balanchine, City Ballet’s founding ballet master. Really? Balanchine might have worked with Coco Chanel once, but his taste in costumes was probably what caused the most complaints about his work during his lifetime. Music, the ingredient overlooked by the gala presenters, was certainly the invariable underpinning of Balanchine’s diverse brand of ballet, but who’d have known that on Tuesday?
Questions about the evening’s fashion choices abound; they apply to choreographers, designers and the company’s director of costumes, Marc Happel (a central figure in the introductory documentaries). Why do Ms. Lovette and her designer, Narciso Rodriguez, think it good to present men bare-chested in tights, but women with smock-like dresses hiding most of the female torso’s shape? Since Emilie Gerrity and Unity Phelan were in parallel roles, why was Ms. Phelan the only woman not wearing one of the smocks?
Why, in “The Dreamers,” was Mr. Ramasar given such an ill-fitting, uncomfortable-looking top? Couldn’t someone advise Mr. Walker and his designer, Jason Wu , that the various colors employed for individual costumes project with unequal force, and that lime green has a garishly upstaging effect? The use of curved lines down the men’s trousers made their legs’ musculature look peculiar.
In truth, the fashion gala is one of City Ballet’s many post-Balanchine gimmicks; it’s also a detour from the kind of dance theater that has made this company a world leader. To prove the point, the company’s very next program, opening on Wednesday and in repertory through Oct. 8, is one of its many “Balanchine Black & White” bills , in which leotards and tights rule, without scenery. No frocks, no smocks; dance and music foremost.
2016-09-21 21:37 By www.nytimes.com
38 /69 Spring 2017 Fashion Trend: Shirting Updates at Coterie Brands showing at Coterie were all about the borrowed-from-the-boys look as one of the top Spring 2017 fashion trends. The trade show was brimming with oversize men’s shirts, reworked button-downs, and dresses updated with shirting details.
The strongest versions featured classic shirting in oversize, nightshirt-length styles with unexpected sleeve shapes. Favorite silhouettes frequenting a multitude of collections included exaggerated, enlarged shapes with mandarin collars for a breezy, effortless appeal. Cheesecloth fabrications were a popular material choice that evoked California-easy vibes. Simple pieces like sheath dresses were revised in denim with shirting used as piping and sashes to exude a lighthearted appeal.
Drew Clothing, a New York City-manufactured brand, displayed an off-the-shoulder style in traditional men’s wear shirting completed with lace sleeves that played with the marriage of masculine and feminine aesthetics. “Mixing fabrics has always been in Drew’s DNA. For spring our design team has utilized men’s wear-inspired fabrics, incorporating pinstripe shirting and chambray fabrics and adding feminine touches. Details include lace sleeves on the pinstripe fabric, belts and bows that bring a touch of femininity to the mix,” said Drew Philips, head of design and merchandising of the brand.
Seen the runway at Demna Gvasalia’s Fall 2016 Vetements collection, editors and celebrities have more than embraced the trend. Street-style photographers have captured a smattering of influencers like Instagram’s head of fashion partnerships, Eva Chen, sporting a reworked shirt in recent days outside of New York Fashion Week. Celebrities have quickly picked up the look as well: Rihanna and Gigi Hadid have both been snapped wearing oversize, men’s wear-inspired shirts.
Fast-fashion retailer Zara also has been quick on the uptake – the chain is offering a host of interpretations from collegiate classics to embroidered shirtdresses for its Fall 2016 collection. Though certainly not a new concept, the trend feeds directly into the widely popular Nineties gender-blurred style that features languid silhouettes, which is a favorite among Millennial shoppers. Evocative of the booming trend, brands showing at Coterie clearly made note of key items belonging to the look to resonate with the influential demographic.
2016-09-21 21:29 Elizabeth Doupnik wwd.com
39 /69 Jimmy Choo Celebrates 20 Years With High Tea The light-filled space of the charming Collins room was filled with a selected edit of socialites, bloggers and fashion editors, all grateful for the very pretty sustenance.
The Berkeley’s Prêt-à-Portea is famous for translating the creations of brands like Jimmy Choo into very fashionable biscuits, and was simultaneously launching “Prêt-à-Portea, High Fashion Bakes & Biscuits” a new book that showcases a collection of over 20 secret recipes and baking techniques from the hotel’s head pastry chef, Mourad Khiat.
Seated next to her mother Yasmin, Amber Le Bon posed for a selfie with a blue biscuit that perfectly matched her Vivetta dress. “It’s been getting steadily and steadily more pink as the year goes along,” said the model of her baby pink tresses. “I do it myself in the shower using a Crazy Colours dye and I have to use latex gloves so I don’t get pink hands, which is why I have a big industrial sized box of Latex gloves in the bathroom which, of course, is kind of embarrassing because I have to explain to guests that they’re there to dye my hair and not for anything more nefarious.”
“Everyone has so many obligations during fashion week, so I thought why not have a civilized cup of tea and be really English and elegant at the same time,” said Choi, who heads to Milan on Thursday for the brand’s spring presentation. Other guests at the tea party included Erin O’Connor, actress Tamsin Egerton, The London Chatter blogger Kelly Eastwood, photographer Candice Lake, illustrator David Downton, Tania Fares, Rosie Fortescue, Lady Violet Manners and Lady Kitty Spencer.
2016-09-21 21:27 Julia Neel wwd.com
40 /69 The Roots Picnic Expands to New York City, Featuring David Byrne It’s about time the Roots Picnic expanded from the band’s hometown, Philadelphia, to New York City, where the Roots have their daily gig on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
The two-day festival, at Bryant Park, has a broad aesthetic — funk, R&B, hip- hop, soul, disco, blues, rock, reggae — that’s as eclectic as one of those D. J. sets from their drummer, Questlove.
The lineup for Saturday, Oct. 1, currently sold out, features D’Angelo and John Mayer as well as the Roots playing their own material. On Sunday, the Roots will back three New York City-based acts: Wu-Tang Clan, David Byrne and Chic’s guitarist Nile Rodgers. Also featured will be the New Orleans funk of Trombone Shorty, the indie-rock of Deerhoof, the 1980s hip-hop of EPMD and a “live mixtape” of rappers selected by Black Thought of the Roots: Freddie Gibbs, Styles P, Royce da 5’9” and J. Period.
2016-09-21 21:23 By www.nytimes.com
41 /69 Hip-Hop Dance at the Crossing the Line Festival The French breakdancer Anne Nguyen combines years of dance-battle experience with an avid interest in geometry — fields not as unrelated as they may sound — in her works for par Terre Dance Company , the Paris-based troupe she founded in 2005.
As part of the Crossing the Line Festival, presented by the French Institute Alliance Française, she’s making her New York debut with two projects that consider the hip-hop dancer’s complex relationship to space.
After four performances of “Graphic Cyphers,” featuring an army of New York street dancers at sites in the Bronx and Times Square (through Sunday, Sept. 25), Ms. Nguyen heads to Gibney Dance in Lower Manhattan with “Autarcie (….): a search for self-sufficiency” (Thursday, Sept. 29, through Saturday). While the protean “Cyphers” moves the audience around and through the dancers, “Autarcie,” for four women, finds possibilities in the limitations of a stage. The “game of strategy,” as Ms. Nguyen calls it, is interpersonal and mathematical. ( crossingthelinefestival.org .)
2016-09-21 21:11 By www.nytimes.com
42 /69 simon davidson uncovers the overlooked artistry of 'burnouts' cars consumed by colorful plumes of smoke are the subject of australian photographer simon davidson’s series, ‘burnouts’. these high-horsepower maneuvers see a vehicle remain stationary while its wheels wildly spin, causing the tires to quickly heat up and fiercely smoke. rather than focusing on the ordinary response to these loud and chaotic circumstances, davidson seeks to capture the otherwise overlooked beauty in their occurrence.
saturated shades of pink, purple, orange and blue envelop each car in a thick veil of vapor. ‘amongst the bombastic chaos of a burnout, tranquility exists,’ davidson says. ‘hidden from the conscious self, these zen like moments are only revealed by the slicing of time. the immediate reality for a sideline spectator of a high horsepower burnout is vastly different from what I’m searching for. burnouts are loud, acrid and the air is thick with smoke and tyre dust. in my burnout series I am looking to explore beauty where it’s not immediately obvious.’
2016-09-21 21:05 Nina Azzarello www.designboom.com
43 /69 Puppies and Friends at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris Installation view of “Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict,” 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.
Today’s show(s): Puppies Puppies takes is showing at Galerie Balice Hertling in Paris with with two semi- concurrent shows: “Puppies Puppies with Cédric Rivrain” (September 8 through September 17) and “Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict” (through Saturday, October 8). These exhibitions, which follow another pair of concurrent shows earlier this summer, are collaborations between the various artists.
Installation view of “Puppies Puppies with Cédric Rivrain,” 2016, showing, Human Bones in Ikea Bag (blue) (yellow) (green) , 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of “Puppies Puppies with Cédric Rivrain,” 2016, showing, Human Bones in Ikea Bag (blue) (yellow) (green) , 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of “Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict,” 2016, showing Will Benedict’s I AM A PROBLEM (2016), at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of “Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict,” 2016, showing Will Benedict’s I AM A PROBLEM (2016), at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of “Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict,” 2016, showing Will Benedict’s I AM A PROBLEM (2016), at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of “Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict,” 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of “Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict,” 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris. COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of “Puppies Puppies with Cédric Rivrain,” 2016, showing, Human Bones in Ikea Bag (blue) (yellow) (green) , 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of “Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict,” 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
2016-09-21 20:58 The Editors www.artnews.com
44 /69 ‘Marvel’s Luke Cage’ Sweeps From Barbershop to Neighborhood Battle I wasn’t alone in not being able to look away from Mike Colter in “Marvel’s Jessica Jones” on Netflix. As Luke Cage, the source of Jessica’s bittersweet longing, Mr. Colter played his superhero brooding and tender, shackled by the memory of his dead wife and enraged when he discovered the truth of her demise. Just because he had unbreakable skin didn’t mean that his heart couldn’t split in two.
“Marvel’s Luke Cage,” which debuts Friday, Sept. 30, on Netflix, gives us more license to stare. This third installment in the Defenders series propels Luke a few months into the future, where he’s rebuilding his life on the sly by sweeping up at a Harlem barbershop and reading The New Yorker. Those super abilities? He doesn’t want them. But a battle for control of the neighborhood forces him out of the shadows.
Alfre Woodard and Mahershala Ali play embattled cousins; Rosario Dawson offers nurturing. Pay extra attention to the soundtrack, a mix of hip-hop — each episode is named after a Gang Starr song — and R&B, with Raphael Saadiq, Faith Evans, Jidenna and Charles Bradley performing.
2016-09-21 20:51 By www.nytimes.com
45 /69 It's a South African ‘Slacktivist’ Protest in Umlilo’s New Music Video Screencaps by the author
A laptop plays YouTube footage of riot police squabbling with student protesters in the opening shot of Umlilo 's new music video. The hybrid music video/performance art film takes a creative look at the current academic landscape of South Africa in light of the ongoing #FeesMustFall protest movement. Student-led demonstrations erupted last year in response to a surge in university tuition costs. Thus, " Umzabalazo " follows the movement from the perspective of two characters—an affluent young man who participates with the protests via his laptop from the comfort of his suburban home, and his ‘alter ego,’ who takes the form of a eccentric diva prowling the streets of Johannesburg.
"Umzabalazo" is the fourth single off the South African recording artist’s sophomore album, Aluta. The video considers the notion of decolonization in modern day South Africa, and how the concept has changed in an increasingly digital age. The video explores the ideas of privilege and 'slacktivism,' a term coined to describe an action aimed at inciting political or social change that is regarded as requiring little time or effort, like signing a petition or posting something online. In regards to the video’s narrative, Umlilo says, “We wanted to create a unique South African story that reflects the existential crisis and bewilderment many people feel in this digital era.”
For the video, Umlilo gets back together with previous collaborators Alv Corp and Odendaal Esterhuyse , the multimedia artist who wrote, directed, and produced the singer’s " Reciprocity " music video last year. The actual shoot was recorded and livestreamed on Periscope as Umlilo performed at different historical sites around Johannesburg. A 360-degree image was taken at each location of the shoot as part of an interactive story map feature designed by Seven Spyre to accompany the music video. Check out "Umzabalazo" below:
You can check out the interactive component of the video on Umlilo’s website , and stream and download the song on SoundCloud.
Related:
Performance Artist Umlilo on the Release of "Reciprocity"
Street Artists Are Fighting South African Housing Corruption With Pink Splashes of Paint
Nina Simone's “Young, Gifted and Black” Inspires an Exhibition in South Africa
2016-09-21 20:35 Nathaniel Ainley thecreatorsproject.vice.com
46 /69 Review: Melissa Errico Laughs, but Can’t Let Go, at 54 Below Melissa Errico is lucky she has a sense of humor: without it, the frenetic life she described in her amusing show “Funny, I’m a Woman With Children” at Feinstein’s/54 Below on Tuesday evening would be an exhausting roller-coaster ride. But as she put it in a declamatory rendition of the show’s opening number, James Taylor’s “Secret o’ Life,” the key is “enjoying the passage of time.”
The glamorous 46-year-old singer and actress (and the last person to play Eliza Doolittle on Broadway in a 1993 production of “My Fair Lady” ) is the stressed mother of three children. It made sense that the climactic number of her overlong program was an agitated rendition of “Children Will Listen,” from “Into the Woods.”
A song usually interpreted as a grand summation of hard-earned wisdom about the responsibilities of parenting became a warning suffused with the anxiety of a mother in the thick of the struggle. While it brought out the best in Ms. Errico’s strong, slightly metallic Broadway voice, it also rang with an unmistakable note of panic.
A similar undertone of fear ran through her performance of the Sondheim song “Marry Me a Little,” a marriage proposal whose frightened narrator imagines an impossibly polite union in which the partners “keep a tender distance” and “look not too deep” and “go not too far.” The focus turned to social anxiety in Ms. Errico’s rendition of Joni Mitchell’s seldom-performed song, “People’s Parties,” an X-ray of a tense social gathering.
In her cabaret shows over the years, Ms. Errico has struggled to integrate pop songs into her programs, and this talky number was one of the few for which she successfully adopted a conversational tone.
As is often the case with singers as well trained as Ms. Errico, letting go and relaxing is difficult, if not impossible. Singing a medley of bossa nova ballads that require a soft caressing voice that swoons into the melodies, Ms. Errico was unable to let go. While her pianist Tedd Firth bathed her in lush harmonies, she couldn’t find a relaxed, dreamy style that would allow her to float happily downstream under the stars.
2016-09-21 20:28 By www.nytimes.com
47 /69 MoMA Looks at Migrants and Efforts to Help Them Worldwide, some 65 million people have been forced out of places they knew as home by drone attacks and ground warfare, by arson and engineered starvation, and by psychological violence in countless forms. Where can these wanderers rest? That’s the question asked by the exhibition “Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter” at the Museum of Modern Art (Oct. 1 to Jan. 22). The show considers two interrelated population developments. On one hand, millions of migrants are kept on the move and must carry their lives on their backs. On the other, refugee camps, once temporary necessities, have become permanent habitations.
The museum considers how designers (Estudio Teddy Cruz, Henk Wildschut, Tiffany Chung) are responding. ( Moma.org. A related show, “By the People: Designing a Better America,” at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, documents 60 projects addressing homelessness and the role of community in the United States. C ooperhewitt.org .)
2016-09-21 20:25 By www.nytimes.com
48 /69 Artist Suzan Frecon Wins $25,000 Artists’ Legacy Foundation Award At 75 years old, Suzan Frecon continues to impress the art world. She is the latest recipient of the $25,000 Artists’ Legacy Foundation artist award.
“The recognition of your peers is so important,” she said in a statement. “If your peers respect your work that is really wonderful.”
In 2000, painter Squeak Carnwath, sculptor Viola Frey, and community advocate Gary Knecht created the foundation to encourage artists to consider their legacies and support other artists in the process. Frecon is the sixth woman to win the award.
She joins the center stage of artists such as John Outterbridge (2010), noted for his convergence of assemblage, folk art, African sculpture, and community activism; Los Angeles painter Mary Weatherford (2014), acclaimed for her emotionally charged and atmospheric flashe on linen works that incorporate neon lighting tubes, and Chicago artist Jim Nutt (2015), known for his grotesque and surreal portraits.
Frecon was born in a small town in Pennsylvania called Mexico, and obtained a degree in fine arts at Pennsylvania State University in 1963.
For the past four decades, the artist has been known for her exploration of abstract oil and watercolor paintings. Using the pigments that she grinds herself, she focuses her attention on color composition and form, with large shapes filling her canvases.
Her work has been included in the 2000 and 2010 Whitney Biennials, and she has been exhibited in the United States and internationally. The artist is represented by Lawrence Markey Gallery in San Antonio, Texas, and David Zwirner Gallery in New York.
2016-09-21 20:17 Kevin Uma news.artnet.com
49 /69 Smaller Stars Will Get a Chance to Shine at Latin Grammys It’s a wide-open field at the Latin Grammys this year as many of the award show’s most reliable winners — Juanes, Shakira, Calle 13, Alejandro Sanz, Juan Luis Guerra — are without eligible major albums. Instead, the nominations, announced on Wednesday, feature a heap-leading four each (including Album of the Year) for the Mexican sibling duo Jesse & Joy, the Colombian pop singer Fonseca and the Brazilian singer-songwriter Djavan. The producer Julio Reyes Copello and the songwriter Ricardo López Lalinde also scored four nominations each for their behind-the- scenes work with Fonseca, Andrés Cepeda and Diego Torres.
Some of the more dominant names in modern Latin music do pop up among those nominated: Shakira’s duet with Carlos Vives, “La Bicicleta,” is up for Record of the Year, as is “Duele El Corazón” by Enrique Iglesias and Wisin. “Los Dúo 2” by Juan Gabriel, who died last month , was nominated two times, including for Album of the Year.
The Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli also received a nomination for Album of the Year for the Spanish edition of his 2015 LP “Cinema,” which features songs from classic film scores and soundtracks. His rendition of “Me Faltarás,” from the 1994 Italian film “Il Postino: The Postman,” received a nod for Record of the Year as well.
The 17th annual Latin Grammy Awards will be held on Nov. 17 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas; the show is set to air on Univision beginning at 8 p.m.
The full list of nominees is available here .
2016-09-21 20:15 By www.nytimes.com
50 /69 How an Art Collective Shipwrecked a Giant Astronaut at Burning Man All images courtesy the artists
Using an assortment of reclaimed wood and found materials to create gigantic public sculptures, the Robots art collective eschews traditional public art practices and still ends up with massive work. The works have ranged from a wooden lattice skull wedged between two buildings, to an enormous Alice in Wonderland -esque blue teapot in the middle of a New Hampshire forest.
Robots' work has many inspirations, but much of the sculptures are rooted in science fiction, nature, and geometry. The collective, as member Jen Patterson tells The Creators Project, was recently in Nevada working on a Burning Man build. And like most of the group’s works, and most things seen at Burning Man, it was big and ambitious. “We [built] a giant shipwrecked astronaut emerging from the sand,” Patterson says. “The sculpture was a useful space inside his torso, and his skull and space helmet were performance area. We [built] this for Camp Rubber Armstrong, who will reuse the sculpture in future years.”
While the collective fluctuates between two and 15 members, depending on the project’s scope, the Burning Man Robots team included Patterson, Lee Whiteman, James Harris, and Stephen Shiell. Whiteman started making these larg- scale sculptures in the Welsh countryside back in 1995, “reconfiguring chairs into public sculptures,” as Patterson explains.
“[He] started doing graffiti with objects rather than paint in around 2005,” Patterson says. “Then whilst working on a music video for Bat For Lashes around 2009, it gave him the opportunity to build some large-scale sculptures out of found objects and recycled materials. He then took this concept of these large-scale sculptures into public art and Robots collective was born. Since then we have created sculptures all over the world.” Patterson says that working with reclaimed wood means that Robots don’t need a big budget in the initial phases of the project. Indeed, materials for sculptures can even be found close to where the collective ends up leaving the sculpture. “Using free materials also gives you creative freedom to experiment as you go, knowing that you have a limitless supply,” says Patterson.
Robots both sketches out the sculptures and improvises during the build. A lot of what happens with a sculpture depends on logistics. “An ideal situation is to build the sculpture responding to existing buildings and to allow it to grow and change organically,” Patterson notes. “Increasingly, we need to build and install our sculptures in modular parts—this involves more planning and pre-design.”
The collective took the modular parts approach for their build of their shipwrecked astronaut. After sketching it up, Robots plotted key measurements, with the team sculpting freehand around those frameworks.
“We're not carpenters so we have developed our own techniques and coming at building from a creative point of you rather than a crafted point of view,” explains Patterson. “We're only just starting to catch up with ourselves as far as real carpentry goes. But our self-taught intuitive approach has helped us to attempt very complex joinery that perhaps we would have not tried had we been trained carpenters.”
Whiteman tells The Creators Project that the Burning Man build was tough out there in the Nevada desert. He was in awe of the other creators who worked on some of the bigger installations. “It's hard to gauge reactions at the festival,” he explains. “For one, people have dust masks and goggles on, so you can't see reactions. Also, Burning Man is visually stimulating everywhere you look. The people at our camp and a few that I talked to near the sculpture really enjoyed the intricate nature of the skull and the joinery involved, so from a crafting point-of-view I got very positive feedback.”
“You compete with the desert, and scale has to enormous to gain any traction there, then you compete with everything and everybody else,” he adds. “I think a vehicle is the way to really get reactions. For me, in some ways Burning Man has always been the last place I ever wanted to put a sculpture just because it's one of the only places in the world where these things are the norm. But, personally, I loved the way the astronaut seemed to be buried in the sand—it was so reminiscent of those early sci-fi book covers from the 70s.”
Click here to see more work by Robots art collective.
Related: A Sailboat-Shaped Bridge Opens in Copenhagen
Help Bring Burning Man a Walk-in Kaleidoscope
[First Look] Inside This Year's Burning Man Temple
2016-09-21 20:15 DJ Pangburn thecreatorsproject.vice.com
51 /69 Report From Detroit: Culture Lab 2016 Related
Venues
Culture Lab Detroit
Detroit Institute of Arts
Artists
Adam Pendleton
Glenn Kaino
Dennis Scholl
Glenn Ligon
Jane Schulak, founder of Culture Lab Detroit [Photo by John Froelich]
“I think that there is an opportunity in next few years for Detroit to change the global dialogue about how our world and our communities can collectively transform themselves into a new generation contending with new industrial and environmental challenges,” artist Glenn Kaino told Artinfo at Culture Lab Detroit, a two-day symposium exploring how art and architecture can tackle systemic issues such as urban blight and economic disparity — national issues laid bare in Detroit. Said Kaino: “I’ve been struck that, from the minute I’ve been here, every person I’ve spoken to has been so hopeful and has spoken about the city with such passion and love.”
The city was a symbol for the national economic recession several years ago, and it has since become a symbol for rejuvenation. But is the city really rejuvenated?
In comes Culture Lab Detroit, an annual public conference that brings together artists, architects, and other influential cultural figures to address this and other issues.
Culture Lab was founded in 2014 by Jane Schulak, one of Detroit’s most active patrons of the arts. The first edition, which featured architect David Adjaye, artist Theaster Gates, and artist design duo Fernando and Humberto Campana, addressed the ways in which art and architecture intersect issues of urbanity. Last year’s event, the second edition, tackled architecture and urban farms and green-spaces, and featured such speakers as architects Sou Fujimoto and Reed Kroloff, landscape designer Walter Hood, and chef and food activist Alice Waters.
The narrative of Detroit’s downfall is well-known: the nation’s industrial capital brought down by suburbanization, scandal, and the floundering auto industry it helped to create. The city hit rock bottom from 2008-13, and nearly brought its art community with it. The city filed for bankruptcy, the largest municipality in the history of the country to do so; its population dropped by nearly 25%, an unprecedented figure for a major American city; and its infamous mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, resigned after being indicted on felony charges. (He’s currently serving a 28-year sentence.) The city even tried to sell the 60,000-piece art collection of its most famous museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts (which had become city-owned due to its own financial problems), to pay its bills.
Since then, the story of the city’s rejuvenation has become equally well known, perhaps because of its predictability: a city ravaged and abandoned rebuilds itself through art. And indeed, at first glance, the city’s art scene looks to be thriving. Cultural institutions are setting up shop in abandoned industrial buildings, ad-hoc arts spaces are popping up in skate-parks and forgotten storefronts, and its museums — DIA and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) — are back to national relevance. But perhaps the art scene isn’t quite as fresh as it seems. For instance, the large majority of it is funded by philanthropy — a handful of major patrons, in particular. This isn’t new, of course — the vast majority of the art world has become reliant on private funding — nor is it necessarily a bad thing. But at the very least, it doesn’t seem like a model built for long-term success.
This year’s Culture Lab Detroit, held from September 15 -16, tried to tackle this issue. The event was themed around “walls” — not only architectural structures, but points of societal division, historical definition, and so on. (Not to mention the most topical wall — the one along the U. S./Mexico boarder, proposed by a current presidential nominee.) Panelists included artists Trevor Paglen, Adam Pendleton, and Glenn Kaino; MacArthur fellow and National Design Award-winning architect Elizabeth Diller; Director of the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, Franklin Sirmans; and Eva Franch i Gilabert, the director of Storefront for Art and Architecture.
The theme was subdivided into two separate panels, one each night. The first, featuring Paglen, Diller, and Sirmans, and moderated by Dennis Scholl, a prominent arts patron and former Vice President of the Arts of the Knight Foundation, addressed the role of the contemporary art museum, in this a time when such cultural institutions are going through something of an identity crisis: major museums have been forced to get creative in the battle to keep attendance figures up, presenting populist programming, bringing in high-profile architects for costly-redesigns or expansions, opening cafés as carefully curated as the art, and so on; while every other week wealthy art collectors are opening their own museums for off their private collections. The second, with Pendleton, Kaino, and Franch i Gilabert, moderated by DIA Director Salvador Salort-Pons, tackled the idea of art and activism.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the event was the audience. The turnout was great, but more than that, nearly every person seemed to be demonstrably engaged in the discussion, and not because of their interest in art or architecture (important though that may have been in addition), but for their interest in Detroit.
On the second night of talks, Adam Pendleton captured this well while expressing his consternation at participating in such panel at all. Citing Glenn Ligon’s response to a public installation by Thomas Hirschhorn at a housing project in the Bronx, Pendleton discussed how the anxiety he had over funding the arts in Detroit when the illiteracy and poverty rate in the city are at alarming levels. “We as artists, curators, museum directors are in this cycle of talking about things through abstractions,” Pendleton said. Art can have “tremendous social value. But the kids have to know how to read.” He went on: “At this particular moment, it’s hard for me to speak to this audience as an artist, even though that’s what I am…. If you’re funding an [art] project for $30 million and a few blocks away a house of learning is falling apart, there’s a problem. What so often happens in the art world is that we assume art is good, just because we say its ‘art.’”
“It’s like the house is fire and [we’re] watering the garden.” It’s a stark metaphor for the current state the arts in Detroit — especially coming at a well-funded symposium dedicated to the arts — but one that needed vocalizing.
However, the best metaphor for the whole event came right after that. During the audience Q&A following the second panel, a man in the back grabbed the mic, and began to preach, sermon- style, about the merits of merely showing up: “Everyone here is missing the point. Arts are the humanities,” he said. “If you’re here, you’re a humanitarian.”
As he talked, he approached the stage; when he got there, he turned around, addressing the audience instead of the panelists. “There’s an African proverb that says, ‘Each one, teach one.’ Give a pencil if you can.” The crowd applauded.
Then, before almost literally dropping the mic, he plugged his live audio business.
2016-09-21 20:06 Taylor Dafoe www.blouinartinfo.com
52 /69 Here’s Who Is Speaking at Creative Time’s First Summit in DC Taking place only weeks before the presidential election, the latest Creative Time Summit seeks to address how to transform civil society.
For the first time, Creative Time is inviting over 50 speakers to meet under the title “Occupy the Future” in Washington, DC, from October 14–16, 2016.
“The question of democracy is up for debate, and elections around the world are reflecting a certain disillusionment with the electoral process and its candidates,” Creative Time artistic director Nato Thompson said in a statement.
Related: Katie Hollander Appointed Executive Director of Creative Time
Billed as “the world’s largest international conference on art and social change,” the participants read like a who’s who from art and culture.
Speakers include a variety of figures from art, media, music, and politics. The event is headlined by Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, Serpentine Galleries co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist, Minor Threat and Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye, Guardian and Harper’s columnist Thomas Frank, artist Vaginal Davis, actor and designer Waris Ahluwalia, and artist Carrie Mae Weems. Janani Balasubramanian of DarkMatter will also be speaking.
The Creative Time Summit DC also features two special commissions by photographer Sheila Pree Bright and by DC’s Floating Lab Collective. For her photo series, Bright followed the Black Lives Matter movement and captured images of protests in Baton Rouge, Atlanta, and Philadelphia.
Related: 17 Disruptors Who Have Completely Changed the Art World The Floating Lab Collective was commissioned to create the set design for the event. Recalling the Sistine Chapel , the set portrays the key figures and visual metaphors of social progress in Michelangelo’s legendary Renaissance painting.
The full list of speakers and participants includes: Alicia Garza, Anna Hutsol (FEMEN), Andrea Bowers, Carrie Mae Weems, Casa Taft 169 & La Maraña, Crew Peligrosos, E. Ethelbert Miller, Elissa Blount-Moorhead & Arthur Jafa (TNEG), Eva Barois De Caevel, Haneen Zoabi, Gelitin, Gluklya & Anna Bitkina, Hank Willis Thomas & Eric Gottesman, Hans Ulrich Obrist with Eileen Myles, Ian MacKaye, Janani Balasubramanian (Dark Matter), Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Khalid Albaih, Liberate Tate, Jonas Staal, Journal Rappé, Jun Yang, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, May Boeve, Melissa Mays, Newton Harrison, Nut Brother, Patricia Ariza, Pedro Reyes, Peter Svarzsbein, Radio SouriaLi, RAQs Media Collective, Ryan Hammond, Sheila Pree Bright, Sheldon Scott, Step Afrika, Terike Haapoja, Thomas Frank, Vaginal Davis, Voices of a People’s History of the United States, and Waris Ahluwahlia.
2016-09-21 19:58 Associate Editor news.artnet.com
53 /69 : Four Female Artists Fill a Gallery with Feels Arvida Byström, Self-Portrait - Detail, 2016. Images courtesy the artists
Be prepared to get emotional as you enter QWERTY, Flirty, and Crying , a group show of female new media artists at Big Picture LA. Bathed in pink neon light, the gallery space is a buffet of encrypted love notes, Barbie paraphernalia, and women taking control of the female form. Eight new works from Kyttenjanae , Ambar Navarro , Brittney Scott , and Arvida Byström construct a safe space for the artists to express the vulnerabilty inherent to being a girl on the internet.
The legacy of 4chan's Rule 16, "There are no girls on the internet," is a mob of anonymous dudes who make it their business to harrass the women of the web. QWERTY, Flirty, and Crying is a chance for Navarro, Kyttenjanae, Scott, and Byström to express digital feminity without fear. Navarro's En Crypted Love tackles the challenges of romance online romance, while both Kyttenjanae's wheres god and Byström's Self Portrait react to and reject the male gaze, reclaiming the female form for themselves without rejecting playfulness and sexuality. Scott's glowing URLs URLs URLs sign is a beacon to passersby, welcoming them into a celebration of strong women and internet culture.
Check out QWERTY, Flirty, and Crying below.
Brittney Scott, URLS URLS URLS, 2016, neon, vinyl graphics, 72 x 60 inches
Ambar Navarro, ouch.jpg, 2016, print on plexiglass, mirror clips, 26 x 40 inches
QWERTY, Flirty, and Crying installation view
Kyttenjanae, wheres god, 2016, 3 channel video
Ambar Navarro, En crypted Love (Blue); En crypted Love (Red), 2016, acrylic, LED light, power, 18 x 24 inches
QWERTY, Flirty, and Crying is on at Big Picture LA through October 15. Check out Kyttenjanae , Ambar Navarro , Brittney Scott , and Arvida Byström 's other work on their Instagram accounts.
Related:
[NSFW] What's a Female Artist to Do When Her Art Goes Viral?
According to Female Artists, This Is What Hysteria Is Really Like
GIF Six-Pack: Female Artists You Should Know
2016-09-21 19:55 Beckett Mufson thecreatorsproject.vice.com
54 /69 Public Art by Björk, JR, and Yoko Ono Comes to Moscow Photograph by James Ewing for @TSqArts
Most New Yorkers think of Times Square as a barren consumerist wasteland, but one incredible thing does happen there: by turning creators loose on the world’s most famous intersection, Times Square Arts turns it into a gigantic public platform for contemporary performance and visual arts. It’s one of the highest-profile public arts programs and has commissioned projects by Laurie Anderson, Björk, and JR, to name a few. Now, for the first time, it is exporting its collection. From September 17-25, Times Square Arts trades the Big Apple for Russia, in a collaboration with the Theatre of Nations in Moscow.
Many Americans assume Russia’s societal restrictions make it somehow culturally averse, but Sherry Dobbin , the Director of Times Square Arts, thinks that’s a misconception. “It’s incredibly progressive, in a way. There’s more support for artists here than there is in the U. S. There’s a curious tension between the fact that the U. S. can be great about talking about freedom of expression, but the reality and the funding doesn’t reflect that ethos,” she tells The Creators Project. Artists are hard-pressed to find equivalently generous funding in America. “Would we do this? Would we take Moscow’s public art and pay to bring them here?” Dobbin says.
Photograph by Justin Bettman for @TSqArts
Dobbin is restaging some of Times Square Arts’ greatest collaborations in Moscow. The show includes 15 pieces from Midnight Moment , the Cinderella-esque program that syncs the electronic billboards of Times Square. It features the work of new artists every month, from 11:57 to Midnight each night. It also reinterprets R. Luke DuBois’ Times Square Portraits as video art, broadcasting more than 17,000 faces and photos the artist took and posted to social media during his residency. And in May 2013, JR took over Times Square and pasted photo booth photos all over Duffy Square. A similar version in Moscow will connect the two countries.
Photograph by Ka-Man Tse for @TSqArts
When she approached artists about reproducing their work in Russia, every single artist Dobbin talked to said yes. “Yoko Ono not only said yes, she asked if it would be okay if we used the recording of John Lennon singing ‘Imagine’ with the soundtrack. Björk had her editor do a whole new cut, so we could do it with sound. So the artists we’ve worked with have been really excited about it,” she says.
Photograph by Justin Bettman for @TSqArts
Curating a show in Moscow dealing with a famous American landmark has the potential for disconnect, but Dobbin says it resonates. “Part of the idea was of a crossroads. Sitting at the crossroads of theater and art, or the crossroads of the world,” she explains. “The title, Times Square(d): Theatre of the Absurd , made me realize that standing in Times Square is like Waiting for Godot. People are there, but they don’t know why. They don’t know what’s going to happen or what to expect. The Rhinoceros doesn’t seem so odd now, because when you walk around Times Square, you’re going to run into characters from Frozen and a naked cowboy and the Statue of Liberty. It’s like being in a very long absurdist drama.”
Photograph by Ka-Man Tse for @TSqArts
The exhibition is partly interactive and partly documentation of Times Square Arts’ work, but the appetite for public art in Russia is enormous. Sculptures and installations dot parks and streets in Moscow, and nearly 1,000 people showed up for Dobbin’s first speaking engagement there. A guided tour of the show will also be live streamed. “I’m surprised by how much has not been reflected in the media about what’s positive here,” Dobbin says. Her work represents one step towards dismantling an ideological iron curtain, real or imagined, between Russia and the U. S.
Photograph by Justin Bettman for @TSqArts
Photograph by Ka-Man Tse for @TSqArts
Times Square(d): Theater of the Absurd is at Moscow’s Theatre of Nations’ New Space through September 25. Check out their Instagram.
Related:
An Animated Sun Rises Over Times Square
Times Square Is Now A Heat Sensitive Camera
A Sea of Flowers Floats Through Times Square
2016-09-21 19:10 Kara Weisenstein thecreatorsproject.vice.com
55 /69 lina creates a surprisingly spacious studio in poland mode:lina studio has designed a functional micro live & work space for maciej kawecki, owner of polish design group brandburg studio. the flat — which is a neat 37 square meters in total — incorporates kawecki’s living room, office, kitchen, bedroom and washroom — and even manages to include a secret hiding spot for the designer’s six year old son. the shelves can be easily removed to reveal the play room image by patryk lewinski mode:lina’s main objective was to create a functional, intimate space for brandburg business meetings that could also be used for more casual creative development workshops. after work, the flat needed to transition seamlessly into a calm, domestic space that could accommodate the needs of both the designer and his son. on one side of the room, a lofted wooden structure lifts the bed onto a second level, while incorporating the kitchen and computer space below. the spaces most notable characteristic is a sliding wall of shelves, located behind the computer space, that can be removed to reveal a secret play room for kawecki’s son, with storage place for toys. the rest of the space is left open and flexible for business use, with a large exposed wall space for workshopping ideas and a desk for meetings that can also be used as a dining table in the evenings. one side of the room is a flexible office space, perfect for meetings or casual gatherings image by patryk lewinski a lofted unit raises the bed onto a second level image by patryk lewinski a small window looks from the kitchen into the play room image by patryk lewinski the computer area is located beneath the stairs image by patryk lewinski a bike rack on the wall allows for simply, easy storage image by patryk lewinski the play room has shelves of its own, concealed within the wooden structure image by patryk lewinski black and yellow — bradburg studio’s colors — are recurrent throughout the studio image by patryk lewinski a simple design allows for a number of flexible arrangements image by patryk lewinski concept drawings for the space image courtesy of mode:lina designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.
2016-09-21 19:01 Mode Lina www.designboom.com
56 /69 A 17th-Century Portrait Will Be the Earliest Painting by a Woman at the Tate LONDON — A rare portrait by Joan Carlile, one of the first women known to be a professional painter in England, will become the earliest work by a female artist to enter the Tate collection here. The acquisition of “ Portrait of an Unknown Lady ” (circa 1650-1655), one of only 10 paintings by the artist known to be in existence, was announced at the Tate’s annual news conference on Wednesday, when Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain, affirmed the Tate’s commitment to showing more work by female artists.
Little is known about Carlile, the daughter of a Royal Parks official, who reproduced the works of the Italian masters in miniature and also painted portraits. Two of her paintings — among the few that are known to have survived — are in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the National Trust.
A man was thought to be the painter of “Portrait of an Unknown Lady” when it went on sale in 2014 at an auction in the southern English city of Salisbury. It was bought by Bendor Grosvenor, an art dealer and historian who recognized the work as Carlile’s.
In an interview with “The Telegraph,” Mr. Grosvenor said that the artist’s style “is quite recognizable if you know what it looks like.”
Mr. Grosvenor added: “As a portrait painter she’s no Van Dyck. Part of her value lies in her story and background — but her work is no less fascinating for that.”
The portrait will undergo restoration before going on public display.
2016-09-21 18:40 By www.nytimes.com
57 /69 Fall Movies: Insider Preview With A. O. Scott Times Insider shares insights into the working and thinking at The New York Times. Today, T he Times ’s co-chief movie critic talks about movies and the new fall season.
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For 75 years, there has been talk of the death of cinema. After screening dozens of movies at the Telluride Film Festival and elsewhere, however, the Times co-chief movie critic A. O. Scott concludes that the state of cinema is strong. Vital signs are everywhere.
In this podcast , Mr. Scott shares his thoughts on the best offerings of the season, as well as the funniest, the most likely to make you cry, the best movie about academia — and more. Interested in who Mr. Scott thinks may be the greatest actress in the world? Or the movie he liked best and thinks most likely to be overlooked by critics? Surprised to learn that Barry Jenkins’s “Moonlight” (which has been eight years in the making) comes to mind when Mr. Scott is asked about the hands-down, best, must- see movie of the season? (“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Mr. Scott says, “a beautiful movie.” ) Listen in .
Susan Lehman is host.
2016-09-21 18:37 SUSAN LEHMAN www.nytimes.com
58 /69 Mark Bradford's Pride of Place The multidisciplinary artist investigates myths of black masculinity through costume, performance, and an iconic basketball jersey.
By Antwaun Sargent
Mark Bradford’s photographs, like his grid-based abstract paintings, are maps. They always seem to be charting the ways identity spreads across the different territories of the body. In Pride of Place (2009), a series of twenty chromogenic prints, Bradford becomes a cartographer of the body’s failure. The individual photographs show the limitations of the myth that the body is a neat container of race, sex, and gender performance.
Bradford, a very tall, black, gay man, was born in inner city Los Angeles in 1961. For Pride of Place , he transforms himself into an NBA star in drag, fashioning himself in a vintage Los Angeles Lakers jersey on top of a voluminous purple and gold dress. Against a warm, orange backdrop, he engages in a performance, playing up the physical expectations of height, weight, and appearance. In the foreground, the camera catches Bradford’s back as he rolls and falls. Arms failing, it seems as if he has lost his balance trying to be someone he’s not.
“Working within this landscape, for me, a 6’7” black male, is likened to Madonna (the singer, that is) being allowed to give a concert in Vatican City,” Bradford told Christopher Bedford in a catalogue interview for the 2010 exhibition Hard Targets at the Wexner Center for the Arts. “It’s just too good to pass up, and what is too good to pass up is the questioning of my maleness and the black body. So many times in America we think we know the black body, enough to understand and draw formal conclusions about it. I wanted to mix it up a little, to peek under the dress.” Pride of Place was inspired by Bradford’s 2003 single-channel video performance Practice. For three minutes, Bradford’s moving image can be seen on a basketball court running, dribbling, and clumsily negotiating space and desire. At some point, he shoots— swoosh— nothing but net. The artist’s static and moving body in Pride of Place and Practice gesture toward what success looks like, even in failure.
Antwaun Sargent is a writer based in New York. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker , The New York Times , and The Nation.
Mark Bradford will represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2017.
Read more from “ Vision & Justice ” or subscribe to Aperture and never miss an issue.
2016-09-22 01:55 aperture.org
59 /69 Seeding and Siting — Centerpoints — Walker Art Center From the hydroseed that’s painted the hillside blue-green to the newly planted grove of honey locust trees near the Walker entrance to the daily appearance of new sculptures, our campus renovation project is truly ramping up. Updates this month: a visit with sculptor Kinji Akagawa, a spate of new arrivals, and a narrowing of a busy street. A […]
2016-09-21 18:10 By blogs.walkerart.org
60 /69 Take a Peek Inside Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s Art Collection Divorce is messy business, and in the case of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who have, to the disappointment of many, hit their fork in the road , the event is nothing short of an operation.
Over the years, the couple was reportedly amassing a “sort-of private gallery” (as the Culture Trip described it) at their Château Miraval in the South of France. Though the couple has kept their collecting habits private, research firm Wealth-X estimated Pitt’s art collection to be worth $25 million.
In light of their decision, artnet News is taking a look at the art they’ve collected, and enjoyed, during their partnership. From works by street artists like Banksy and Dom Pattinson, to traditional sensations like Ed Ruscha and Richard Serra , here’s a peek at the artists in their holdings in the roundup below.
Related: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s Divorce Could Tear Their $25 Million Art Collection Apart 1. Dom Pattinson When Jolie and Pitt tied the knot in 2014, a close friend gifted the newlyweds a set of prints from artist Dom Pattinson’s Hope series. “They are building a large art collection at Miraval,” a source told US Magazine. The artist’s work shares striking affinities with fellow street artist Banksy, whom Pitt has been publicly associated with for years.
2. Neo Rauch At Art Basel in 2009, art collector Eli Broad reportedly gave Pitt the extra push he needed to purchase a million-dollar canvas by German artist Neo Rauch. According to the Wall Street Journal , Broad told Pitt that he and his wife had several works by the artist of their own. Etappe was presented by David Zwirner.
3. Schoony Jolie and Pitt, along with Benedict Cumberbatch, Damon Albarn, and many others, have all collected a version of Boy Soldier by British artist Schoony. According to artnet News’ Amah-Rose Abrams , the artist worked in the US film industry before rising in status as a sculptor.
Related: Who is Schoony, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s Favorite Artist?
4. Banksy In 2007, Lazarides Gallery in London’s Soho neighborhood held a special auction of works by Banksy. According to the Daily Mail , the couple dropped £1 million (roughly $2 million at the time) on a number of the gallery’s offerings. Pitt has had a longstanding relationship with the street artist, the most recent encounter being a trip to Banksy’s ‘Dismaland’ park.
5. Marcel Dzama According to the Guardian , Canadian artist Marcel Dzama entertains a number of celebrity collectors, including Jim Carrey, Gus Van Sant, and one Brad Pitt. The artist’s works in watercolor and ink take visual cues from surrealism and folk art, and don’t shy from depicting women in compromising positions.
6. Richard Serra According to Widewalls, the couple has a soft spot for artist Richard Serra. The American sculptor, though known for his formidable sculptural installations, has also produced a series of drawings.
7. Ed Ruscha Last year, Pitt was spotted visiting Berlin gallery Spruth Magers, where a show of Ed Ruscha’s works were on view. The exhibition featured drawings of neglected mattresses left on the wayside in Los Angeles.
2016-09-21 18:07 Rain Embuscado news.artnet.com
61 /69 Datebook: 'Limbo' at Wunderkammern, Milan Wunderkammern gallery, Milan, is presenting American artist Doze Green's exhibition 'Limbo' which will run from September 28 through November 2. Green, born in New York in 1964, is an acclaimed pioneer of the Graffiti and Urban Art movements in the US. He frequently explores the human soul through symbols such as occult, sacred geometry, myths and gods from ancient societies.
Curated by Giuseppe Pizzuto, "Limbo's" major themes are waiting, indefiniteness and transition when seen in relation to human life. The exhibition will include primarily monochromatic and bi-chromatic works created with mixed media on canvas and paper.
2016-09-21 17:33 BLOUIN ARTINFO www.blouinartinfo.com
62 /69 The Fifth Edition of Photoville Opens in a New Location at Brooklyn Bridge Park Related
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Brooklyn Bridge Park
United Photo Industries
The fifth edition of United Photo Industries’ annual event, Photoville , opens this evening in a new location at Brooklyn Bridge Plaza in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The village of shipping containers and outdoor exhibitions has grown this year to host over 60 concisely curated photography shows, the themes of which are incredibly varied, to say the least.
The New York Times gives us a tribute to the beloved photos of Bill Cunningham, who was still working for the paper up until his death in June; while the Fashion Institute of Technology, School of Visual Arts, and Parson’s School of Design all present student shows. Group exhibitions on themes such as Canadian identity, ESPN sport photography, and work by incarcerated teenagers at the Richmond Detention Center, sit alongside numerous solo presentations like Mark Robinson’s visualizations of the moon taken through NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, and Sophie Gamand’s endearing pit bulls adorned with flower crowns. Fans of Gamand might be pleased to learn that the event is not only free, but dog friendly as well.
Sam Barzilay, who established the fair with cofounders Dave Shelley and Laura Roumanos in 2012, admits that naming favorites is hard, but gives us a few personal picks from this year’s edition. They include National Geographic’s five exhibitions—all stellar examples of the magazine’s award-winning photography; Kadir van Lohuizen's project documenting rising sea levels (which is particularly poignant at this waterfront location, which was heavily impacted by 2012’s Hurricane Sandy); and Getty Images’ show of Instagram Grant winners. The latter exhibits photographers who have been honored for their work using Instagram to document underrepresented communities around the world. This offering, shown at an event that is so focused on presenting photographs as physical objects, brings some interesting issues to the fore. In our current age, where image consumption is becoming increasingly more virtual, as Barzilay notes, “we are being inundated with an endless stream of images on a daily basis.” But in Photoville, it’s refreshing to find a place where photos are appreciated and enjoyed for their “IRL” presence, so to speak. It’s about “seeing fantastic photography in so many formats and sizes,” Barzilay says, “making new connections, and seeing and experiencing the power of photographs, with their accompanying stories, to inform and connect us all.” The event is open through Sunday, September 25.
2016-09-21 17:30 Juliet Helmke www.blouinartinfo.com
63 /69 frank gehry to modify eisenhower memorial design frank gehry will remain involved in the design of washington DC’s eisenhower memorial, after the family of the 34th president of the united states finally announced their support for the project. eisenhower’s family had expressed reservations concerning the project, until a new theme and proposed redesign was put forward by former secretary of state james baker III. the eisenhower memorial commission will now work with architect frank gehry to begin making the agreed upon modifications. while gehry’s current design includes a steel tapestry and two stone carvings with statues, the new elements will include a representation of the site of eisenhower’s allied command of the D-day landings in normandy, and a renewed focus on the former president’s home state of kansas. the current design includes a steel tapestry and two stone carvings with statues
‘I believe we have reached an excellent compromise and that the proposed modification appropriately honor eisenhower, kansas’ favorite son, as both general and president,’ said senator pat roberts, chairman of the eisenhower memorial commission. ‘the commission is extremely grateful to secretary james a. baker III, a member of our esteemed advisory committee, for his work with the eisenhower family in creating a compromise that makes all parties pleased with the outcome and proud to move forward together.’ the memorial is set to be positioned at the center of a four-acre urban park the memorial is set to be positioned at the center of eisenhower square, a four-acre urban park located at the base of capitol hill. it is hoped that the memorial would be completed in time to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-day, on june 6, 2019. see designboom’s previous coverage of the project here. it is hoped that the memorial would be completed by june, 2019
2016-09-21 17:20 Philip Stevens www.designboom.com
64 /69 This Mural’s Message is Revealed in Its Own Reflection You won’t find the artwork of Spanish artist, SpY , on the walls of a gallery or in a museum: the graffito-turned-urban art activist operates almost exclusively within the public realm. In his latest large-scale text mural for the Nuart festival , an annual international street art gathering held in Norway, SpY painted the word "alive" upside down on the exterior wall of an abandoned warehouse. The mural’s location and position next to water is significant because it creates a reflection of the text right-side up. The body of water flips the text off the wall as well as the other buildings surrounding it, making "alive" come alive amidst the city’s concrete horizon.
SpY’s mural and installation work is geared to instigate reflection, to create a public dialogue that isn’t confined to the people who can afford to visit a gallery. Previous installations like Cameras and Barriers incorporate inert items found in urban environments. SpY replicates these in a way that creates a commentary on our urban reality. See Alive come to life in the video below: Check out previous works by the artist on his website , and learn more about Nuart festival, here.
Related:
SpY's "Cameras" Is Less Obnoxious Than Any Street Art By Banksy
Street Artist SpY Hangs A Giant Moon Over Switzerland
Street Artist Tags a Wall with €1,000 in Coins
2016-09-21 17:20 Nathaniel Ainley thecreatorsproject.vice.com
65 /69 Datebook: ‘Bani Abidi. Exercise in Redirecting Lines’ at Kunsthaus Hamburg Related
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Kunsthaus Hamburg
Artists
Bani Abidi
Kunsthaus Hamburg is currently hosting the solo of Berlin-based acclaimed Pakistani artist, Bani Abidi. Titled “Exercise in Redirecting Lines,” the exhibition is on view through October 30.
Abidi’s films, photographic works, and drawings are established in an investigation of the mechanisms of participation, representation, and power, community and communication. Abidi has been bent in her own socialization by her experience with resettlement across the globe. Her works tend to narrate convoluted societal subjects of inclusion and exclusion, while still putting together these questions substantial to the viewers in their insightful and personal impression.
2016-09-21 17:13 BLOUIN ARTINFO www.blouinartinfo.com
66 /69 Museum Officials and Archaeologists Sign Petition Against N. Dakota Pipeline Over a thousand archaeologists, anthropologists, curators, museum officials and academics have added their names and voices to the protest against an oil pipeline being built in North Dakota. In a letter released on Wednesday, 1,281 people have signed on to an appeal to President Obama, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers , asking for further study of land involved in the pipeline project, around the Missouri River near the border of South Dakota.
Development of the area has been contested by Native American tribes like the Standing Rock Sioux , who contend that the land and water crossings are sacred space, used for burials and containing historically and culturally vital information about their origins.
“It’s smack-dab practically in the center of our ancestral homelands,” Kelly Morgan, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux and its tribal archaeologist, said. Construction of the pipeline on private land has already wiped out some stones and markers that the Standing Rock Sioux considered valuable, they say, a development that helped spur the letter campaign.
The letter states, “We join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in denouncing the recent destruction of ancient burial sites, places of prayer and other significant cultural artifacts sacred to the Lakota and Dakota people.”
David Hurst Thomas , the curator of North American archaeology at the American Museum of Natural History, who signed the letter, said that in considering development projects, archaeologists and anthropologists (he is both) weigh whether a landscape’s features are distinctive, or could add to an understanding of the country’s heritage.
“In this case, it’s pretty clear that the Standing Rock area is important to our national history for a lot of reasons,” he said. He joined other prominent signers of the letter, including Richard W. Lariviere, president and chief executive of the Field Museum in Chicago, and Brenda Toineeta Pipestem, chairwoman of the board of the National Museum of the American Indian.
The Dakota Access pipeline, as it’s called, built by the Dallas-based company Energy Transfer Partners, has also drawn scrutiny from the Society for American Archaeology and other professional organizations. In a letter sent to the Corps of Engineers last week, the president of the society, Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, wrote that the group, which has more than 7,800 members, had “unresolved questions” over whether the Corps had properly handled its duties under the National Historic Preservation Act. Development on the land may have also violated the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, she wrote, along with other laws.
A spokesman for the Corps said that his office had received the Society’s letter and “are reviewing the comments and concerns raised in it.” In a surprise move on Sept. 9, the federal government asked for a temporary halt to construction of a portion of the pipeline, acknowledging the concerns of the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes and pledging to consult with them on land use. Still, in a statement released on Sept. 13, Energy Transfer Partners vowed to complete the $3.7 billion project, which runs 1,170 miles, from the Dakotas to Illinois, where it will connect with other oil pipelines. It is already nearly 60 percent finished, the company said.
Opposition from academics, curators and scientists to the way the pipeline project has unfolded has been unusually vast and swift, Dr. Thomas said. “I can’t recall anything like it,” he said.
The new letter campaign against the pipeline was originated by the Natural History Museum , a New York-based mobile organization which has in the past released similar letters advocating for science and natural history museums to cut ties with fossil fuel companies and the philanthropists who support them, an effort that many institutions undertook.
2016-09-21 17:09 By www.nytimes.com
67 /69 Music for Aliens: Campaign Aims to Reissue Carl Sagan’s Golden Record Carl Sagan’s Voyager Golden Record — of sounds of Earth , recorded greetings and an eclectic mix of music that was sent into space — has long been out of print and pretty much unobtainable for decades.
One copy of the record is attached to NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, which has entered interstellar space , the farthest artifact ever tossed out by humanity. A second copy, on Voyager 2, is not quite as distant, just 10 billion miles away.
Both are receding from Earth at more than 35,000 miles per hour.
Not even Dr. Sagan, the Cornell astrophysicist who led the creation of the record in 1977 for the listening pleasure of any aliens who happened upon it, could get a copy.
He asked. NASA said no.
But now, a Kickstarter crowdfunding project begun on Wednesday is planning to reissue it, long a dream of David Pescovitz, an editor and managing partner at Boing Boing , the technology news website, and a research director at the nonprofit Institute for the Future .
“When you’re 7 years old, and you hear about a group of people creating messages for possible extraterrestrial intelligence,” Mr. Pescovitz said, “that sparks the imagination. The idea always stuck with me.”
He teamed up with Timothy Daly, a manager at Amoeba Music in San Francisco, and Lawrence Azerrad, a graphic designer who has created packaging for Sting, The Beach Boys, Wilco and other musicians.
The reissue will not exactly be like the original, which was pressed out of a gold-plated copper disk. The original was also intended to be played at 16 2/3 revolutions per minute, half of the usual speed of LP records. That was necessary to cram in a variety of sounds of Earth, spoken greetings in 55 languages, 116 images and 90 minutes of music.
The reissue will consist of three LPs pressed out of vinyl recorded at normal LP speed. The box set will cost $98 plus shipping, with the project aiming to raise $198,000. For the MP3 generation — or anyone without a phonograph — digital downloads are available for $25.
Mr. Pescovitz aims to distribute the records next year in time for the 40th anniversary of the Voyager launches. (Voyager 2 launched first, on Aug. 20, 1977; Voyager 1 launched a couple of weeks later, on Sept. 5.)
Perhaps now the recording, meant to encapsulate thousands of years of music, will finally find an audience. The songs include a Peruvian wedding song, a Pygmy girls’ initiation song, a movement from one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, and “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry.
“Isn’t it funny?” recalled Timothy Ferris, a science writer who produced the original record. “It hasn’t been heard by any aliens yet, and it hasn’t hardly been heard by humans.”
A CD-ROM version was issued in 1992, and NASA has since put digital versions of the greetings and sounds of Earth — but not the music — on SoundCloud. But this is the first time it will be available as an LP.
“For us, it’s creating a physical, tangible object,” Mr. Pescovitz said.
Mr. Ferris said the song selections were done by consensus, although Dr. Sagan, who died in 1996 , did not like “Johnny B. Goode” at first. Alan Lomax, a folk music archivist who was another volunteer member of the committee selecting material for the Voyager records, also disliked the song and complained to Dr. Sagan that it was adolescent.
Mr. Ferris recalled Sagan’s response: “Well, there are a lot of adolescents on Earth, too.” The song went on the record.
But Mr. Ferris added, “You can’t take it too far or you’d be doing Miley Cyrus.”
A dozen copies of the golden record were made. Afterward, Dr. Sagan wrote to NASA, asking if he and John Casani, the project manager for Voyager, could obtain copies as mementos.
Robert A. Frosch, the NASA administrator, replied that all of the copies had been distributed to various institutions, mostly NASA centers, except for one copy reserved for President Jimmy Carter.
Today, it is not easy to get a glimpse of a copy. The aluminum cover can be seen at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, but the record itself is not on display. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the NASA center that operates the continuing Voyager missions, has its copy of the record on display in a case in an auditorium that is open to the public, at least during public lectures .
2016-09-21 13:52 By www.nytimes.com
68 /69 Toy Factory Productions Brings 'Innamorati Two' Musical to Singapore Stage Related
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Drama Centre Following their hits “The Crab Flower” and “Titoudao,” bilingual theater company Toy Factory Productions is back with a new Mandarin musical, subtitled in English. “Innamorati Two” will make its debut on September 22 at the Drama Centre Theatre in Singapore.
Directed by the acclaimed Goh Boon Teck, “Innamorati Two” builds on the sold-out success of “Innamorati” in 2014. Portrayed as a “brilliant tour de force of Mandarin theater,” this new piece by playwright Jiang Daini touches upon a different and compelling storyline, evoking the resilience of the human spirit against life’s emotional and physical challenges.
The seven-member cast comprises home-grown star Jin Wong, seasoned singer Chriz Tong, Assistant Director Sugie Phua, as well as Ann Lek, Stella Seah, Sunny Yang, and Jacky Lau. Each of them contributed original songs to the musical’s score — which, according to a press release, is a “bold first move for Singaporean theater.” For artists Jing Wong, Ann Lek, and Sunny Yang, this is their first time writing and composing music. Under the musical direction of Elaine Chan, best known for the LTA jingle “Love Your Ride,” the music is largely inspired by cosmopolitan indie pop influences.
Described as a theater company “with real soul,” Toy Factory Productions and its Chief Artistic Director Goh Boon Teck have produced thought-provoking performances, establishing themselves as one of Singapore’s leading theater companies. The group's bilingual productions have enabled them to reach a bigger and wider audience, and participate in creative exchanges around the world, including in countries like Australia, China, Egypt, and Russia.
2016-09-21 08:16 Claire Bouchara www.blouinartinfo.com
69 /69 Miami’s Refurbished Stadium Will Be Decked Out in Street Art A dozen giant street-art murals, some up to 150 feet wide, by 12 artists, will be on view at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla., when the venue opens to the public for the first regular home game of the Miami Dolphins’ season on Sunday.
The project, which has been kept under wraps by the artists and the team until now, was commissioned by the Dolphins’ owner, Stephen M. Ross, and Goldman Global Arts, a new company dedicated to major art projects. The stadium has been under renovations in recent months that cost an estimated $500 million and included rebranding the venue with its new name. (The venue has had several names over the years, and was until recently known as Sun Life Stadium.)
“We were renovating this stadium to be something more than just a football stadium,” Mr. Ross said in a phone interview, describing the project as part of a broader attempt to make “a major entertainment center.”
In recent weeks, nine artists and art groups including Logan Hicks , the Miami-born artist Jen Stark , a Portuguese street artist known as Vhils and the Chilean graffiti artist Dasic Fernández have moved into the stadium to paint works for its walls. The other artists whose work is being unveiled on Sunday include the German street artist known as 1010 , the twin-brother duo How & Nosm , AVAF , Momo and CRASH, a graffiti artist from New York.
The first three works commissioned for the stadium, by the London Police , POSE and Case, were unveiled last November, though it wasn’t announced until now that they were part of this larger project.
The art is mostly abstract, bright and colorful, though some works include nods to football. Five more artists will complete pieces in the stadium in October and November. By December, about 30,000 square feet of stadium walls will be covered. By comparison, it will have 22,400 square feet of video screens.
The idea for the installation was born of conversations between Jessica Goldman Srebnick, the chief executive of the property development firm Goldman Properties ; the artist Peter Tunney; and Dolphins management.
Goldman Properties has led redevelopment projects in areas including Center City in Philadelphia and SoHo in New York. About 10 years ago, the company set its sights on the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami. In 2009, aiming in part to revitalize street traffic in the area, Ms. Srebnick’s father, Tony Goldman, established Wynwood Walls , a showcase for street art that has grown into an international attraction.
When Ms. Srebnick and Mr. Tunney, a resident artist at Wynwood Walls, heard about the stadium renovation, they began talking with the Dolphins about the potential for an art project there.
“It really is about taking what is extraordinary about Miami and about culture and about global art and infusing it into an environment that most people wouldn’t really think about,” Ms. Srebnick said in a phone interview. Over the last year, she and Mr. Tunney have worked with Mr. Ross to choose the works that will appear in the stadium.
One artist, Mr. Hicks, has made a giant rendering of Miami’s landscape for the project. He traveled to Miami in the spring and spent hours walking the streets and took a helicopter ride to see the city from above to help generate ideas. He will bring his son to Sunday’s game, he said. “Nowadays we’ve gotten to a place where sports in a way has kind of become the religion of a lot of people,” Mr. Hicks said. “I guess the stadium would be the church.”
2016-09-21 04:01 By www.nytimes.com
Total 69 articles.
Created at 2016-09-22 12:00