Rene Magritte’s L’empire des lumières(1954). Christie’s Images Limited, 2024
BAM! review – smart gig-economy comedy is a rollicking modern-day farce | Movies
[ad_1]
Sparkling and vivacious, Jordan Tragash’s heartfelt queer comedy captures with considerable charm the conundrums of the precarious gig worker’s lifestyle. For those familiar with Chicago, BAM! – standing for “Broke Ass Motherfuckers!” – is a dose of eye-candy adventure, rollicking through a series of beloved local landmarks. The interlocking stories bring together a delightful group of 20-somethings, all hustling for money. Living out of a storage unit, Auggie (Tuxford Turner) delivers sex toys to make ends meet, a job that is hilariously unsexy in practice. Always on a bike, Auggie soon cross paths with another courier Eve (Tip Sayarath), whose spirited energy makes for a contrast with Auggie’s endearing awkwardness. Throw in a freelance pharmacist – AKA a drug dealer – and his hapless employees, and we’ve got ourselves a real modern-day farce.
Shot with dynamism, the relationship between Auggie and Eve fizzes with spirited chemistry as the film embraces the beauty of chance encounters and found family, something that is made possible by life in a big city. More than a love letter to Chicago, BAM! also celebrates diversity in a way that doesn’t feel forced; from Auggie and Eve to the smaller roles, each character is not only defined by their identity, but feels fully fledged in their struggles, hopes and dreams. The smart, laugh-out-loud funny dialogue also beautifully contributes to this vibrant sense of authenticity.
In an independent film-making landscape that suffers from a uniform look, the colourful palette adds another refreshing touch even if, due no doubt to its economic runtime, the conclusion feels slightly rushed. Still, for a feature debut, BAM! beautifully showcases Tragash’s promise as a director to watch.
[ad_2]
Source link
‘It changed 20th-century art’: revisiting Robert Frank’s The Americans – in pictures
[ad_1]
Frank’s iconic photo book exposed the racism, loneliness and consumer culture lurking behind the American dream. It still resonates today
Continue reading...
[ad_2]
Source link
Rafael Nadal: a career in pictures | Sport
[ad_1]
One of the greatest tennis players of all time has retired from the game. We look back at some memorable moments of a glittering career
[ad_2]
Source link
Neko Case Comes to the Stdebaker Theater – BroadwayWorld
[ad_1]
Neko Case Comes to the Stdebaker Theater BroadwayWorld
[ad_2]
Source link
From the salon and the scarf dance … to silence: the music of Cécile Chaminade | Classical music
[ad_1]
Cécile Chaminade is no longer a household name, or even a recognisable name, even in a time when female composers are being rediscovered and celebrated. I’ve loved her since I was a little boy visiting Hoylake for piano lessons with Heather Slade-Lipkin – her mother used to play Chaminade for me. It seems extraordinary now, but every time Joan would sit down at the piano for this opened-eyed little boy, devouring music like I was in a sweet shop, it was Chaminade’s Automne, or her Scarf Dance, or the tricky Toccata. One treat after another.
I’m playing a lot of Chaminade this season; or, more accurately, I’m playing a few pieces of hers many times – alongside three of the great, 30-minute masterpieces of 19th-century piano music: the Schumann Fantasie, and the B minor Sonatas of Liszt and Chopin. To those surprised by the juxtaposition, I think Chaminade sits very comfortably and proudly there, not because her elegant miniatures are comparable in scope and ambition to those three greatest keyboard works of the 19th century by three geniuses, but because she shared an important place with them in the most popular performance venue of the Romantic era: the salon.
Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Salons have pretty much disappeared today (apart from those who try to resurrect the idea – a musical equivalent of jousting on the village green or taking a ride on a steam train) so we tend to forget that for most of the 19th century solo piano recitals in large public spaces were rare. It was the salon – a large room in a large private home to which music lovers would be invited – which was ubiquitous. Chopin’s whole creative life was fuelled by these opportunities for his music to be heard. His pieces were almost all dedicated to various countesses and rich patrons who would invite him to play for them; the intimate setting of a dozen people listening quietly in an elegant private room was his chosen space.
All the great 19th-century composers wrote some music specifically for amateurs to play at home. Apart from anything else, it was their main source of income. If you had the money and space for a china cabinet it’s likely you’d have a piano in the same room too. Pretty much everyone who had the time and leisure to read a book would have learned the piano as well. Especially women.
Enter Cécile Chaminade. She was born in 1857 into a musical family, receiving her first piano lessons from her mother. When she was 10 she was accepted for study at the Paris Conservatoire but her father forbade it, so she studied with various of its professors privately. Although all women of a certain class at the time were encouraged to play the piano at home, it was unusual for them to be allowed to pursue a career doing so. In fact, women were generally discouraged from travelling or dining alone, two activities which fill the lives of touring concert performers.
One of the keys to understanding the paucity of female composers until the 20th century is that composers generally wrote music for themselves to play, whether in public venues or the more private world of the salon. So if a performing career was not a possibility for a woman then neither was writing music. Chaminade is one of the few who were able to ride over this restriction, a witness to her determination and her popularity.
And Chaminade was exceptionally successful for a while. She played her music all over Europe, including for Queen Victoria who gave her the Jubilee medal in 1897; her Prélude for organ Op 78 was played at the monarch’s funeral. Most of her large output was written between the 1880s and 90s and she had an enormous international renown. Her Scarf Dance alone is said to have sold more than five million copies. In the US hundreds of women across the continent around the turn of the 20th century founded and joined Chaminade Clubs, from Yonkers, New York to Jackson, Mississippi – two of the many which exist to this day, and still present concerts.
Chaminade married a music publisher but they lived in a platonic relationship and separately, he in Marseille and she in Paris. He died in 1907 and she never remarried. It’s hard not to draw certain conclusions from this – a further indication of the restrictions of the age.
Then, soon after his death, and to the end of her life, more than 35 years later … silence. The composing dried up. The performances ceased. The accolades became a distant memory. Ironically, the postwar era of greater emancipation for women passed Chaminade by. It’s astonishing to realise that she died as late as 1944. Alone in Monte Carlo.
Where to place her in the rich period of French musical history that coincided with her life? She has something of the sweetness of Massenet, Delibes, Gounod and other Romantics; we hear the pianistic confidence of Saint-Saëns in the elegant glitter of her figuration; early Fauré’s shifting melancholy is present at times. Her music is at least as charming and lyrical as Debussy’s in his early Arabesques and Clair de Lune. Like Chopin she was a composer of meticulous craft; like Liszt she knew how to make the piano sparkle; and like Schumann there are many moments of tender poetry. She would have loved and played all three composers, and I have the sense she would have been delighted to take her place once more alongside them.
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presents An Evening with Sir Stephen Hough at David Geffen Hall, New York City, on 24 November; Stephen Hough plays Chaminade, Chopin and Schumann at the Barbican, London, on 4 December.
[ad_2]
Source link
THE 12 DAYS OF STRICTLY COME DANCING CHRISTMAS CELEBRITY LINE UP REVEALS
[ad_1]
On the fourth day of Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special 2024 celebrity reveals, my true love sent to me…… Harry Aikines-Aryeetey
The Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special is back! As the Ballroom is once again transformed into a magical winter wonderland, the fourth celebrity behind the all-star advent calendar doors this year has been revealed.
On Strictly: It Takes Two on BBC Two and iPlayer this evening, Harry Aikines-Aryeetey or ‘Nitro’ from Gladiators was announced as the fourth celebrity included in 2024’s Christmas line up, he will be paired with Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer Nancy Xu.
Expect festive cheer, jingle bells, mistletoe madness, bedazzling baubles and six celebrities all sleighing their way to Elstree in a bid to be crowned the Strictly Christmas Champion 2024.
Harry Aikines-Aryeetey or ‘Nitro’ is a Gladiator and Olympian.
In 2023 Harry was unveiled as ‘Nitro’ in the BBC One series of Gladiators. He is also a Team GB sprinter, Commonwealth and World gold medallist sprinter. Harry has competed at the highest level in the UK since his youth. After becoming the first athlete to win gold medals at both 100 and 200 metres at the World Youth Championships, he won 2005 BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year age 17.
Harry has gone on to win gold 4x in the men’s 100m European Championships and at the Commonwealth Games. His long list of achievements include: 2x Olympian, 3x European Champion, 2x Commonwealth Champion, 1x Commonwealth Silver Medallist, 1x European Bronze Medallist, 1x World Bronze Medallist, 1x British Champion, 2x World Youth Champion and 1x World Junior Champion.
Harry Aikines-Aryeetey says: “STRICTLY….ARE YOU READY?! Nitro’s blasting onto the Ballroom floor this Christmas! I’m swapping my trainers for dancing shoes, and trust me, I’m bringing the power, the energy and the moves! This December I’m gonna light up that dancefloor and crank the Christmas spirit all the way UP. Let’s do this!”
In the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special, produced by BBC Studios, each of the six couples will perform a festive fuelled routine in the hope of impressing the judges, Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse, Anton Du Beke and Head Judge Shirley Ballas, and the voting studio audience. But who will emerge the Christmas star of the evening, and lift the sought after Christmas trophy?
The remaining Christmas line up will be announced on Strictly: It Takes Two in due course.
[ad_2]
Source link
Acquisitions of the month: October 2024
[ad_1]
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown
Works from the Tavitian collection by Van Eyck, Rubens, Bernini, Vigée Le Brun and others, and a $45m donation
In a transformative donation, the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has received a gift from the Aso O. Tavitian Foundation of 331 works of art, as well as more than $45m to fund the construction of a new museum wing and a new curator in early modern European painting and sculpture. The art comes from the personal collection of Aso Tavitian (1940–2020), a Bulgarian-born businessman and philanthropist who made his fortune in the software industry and was an avid art collector, amassing some 1,200 works. The donation includes an exceptional collection of Old Master paintings by artists including Watteau, Rubens, Van Eyck, Angelica Kauffman and Jacques-Louis David, as well as sculptures ranging from a bronze by Bernini and a bust of Nicolas Poussin by François du Quesnoy (both made in the 1630s) to a group of 18th- and 19th-century French plaster and marble figures by Jean-Antoine Houdon, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and Gustave Crauk, among others. The Clark already has a strong collection of early modern European painting, but fewer sculptures – a gap that this acquisition will help to fill. Tavitian was a longtime friend of the Clark, serving on its board of trustees between 2006 and 2012. The new wing, which will display the gifted collection in its entirety when it opens, will be named after him.
Madonna of the Fountain (c.1440), Jan van Eyck and workshop. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown
Het Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch
Head of a Woman (Gordina de Groot) (1885), Vincent van Gogh
Het Noordbrabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch has acquired Van Gogh’s Head of a Woman (Gordina de Groot) (1885) for €8.6m, making it one of the most expensive works by Van Gogh ever bought by a museum. The work, a rough oil painting of the face of a peasant woman named Gordina de Groot (who is one of the models in his Potato Eaters, produced in the same year), had been in the personal collection of the London-based collector and dealer Daniel Katz, who bought it at a Christie’s sale in February 2023. After he did so, the Noordbrabants solicited Katz to part ways with the painting, whereupon he agreed to loan it; the work went on view at the Noordbrabants in January. Now, after a dogged fundraising campaign to save what it calls ‘the Mona Lisa of Brabant’, the museum has purchased the painting permanently, thanks to large donations by the Dutch central government purchase fund, the Mondriaan Fund and Vereniging Rembrandt (an association of art patrons), as well as smaller donations by some 3,000 individuals. The acquisition marks a major step in the Noordbrabants’s project to strengthen its collection of works by Van Gogh, who was born and raised in Zundert, North Brabant, and who painted Head of a Woman while living in Nuenen, some 35 kilometres from the museum.
Head of a Woman (Gordina de Groot) (1885), Vincent Van Gogh. Het Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
The Procession of Giants in Brussels on 31 May 1615 (1616), David Noveliers
Every year in Brussels in the medieval period, a pageant called an Ommegang took place, organised by the crossbowmen guild and consisting of processions and other festivities. The Ommegang of 1615 was a notable one, buoyed by a remarkable event that took place on 15 May. During the annual archery competition that formed part of the Ommegang, the daughter of King Philip II of Spain, Isabella Clara Eugenia, who ruled the southern Netherlands as Sovereign Princess, shot down the wooden parrot that was perched atop the Church of Our Lady of the Sablon with her crossbow. To mark the feat, Isabella and her husband, Archduke Albert of Austria, commissioned eight paintings of the Ommegang celebrations by noted court artists of the time, six of which have survived. The Prado, which already owns three of these works (all by Denijs van Alsloot), has now added another to its collection with the acquisition of an extraordinary 3.5-metre-long canvas by David Noveliers depicting the procession of giants, which involved huge, clothed wooden figures being paraded through the streets, as well as revellers, musicians and, on the far right of the painting, an enormous black horse draped in cloth.
The Procession of Giants in Brussels on 31 May 1615 (1616; detail), David Noveliers. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
Doge Marino Faliero Accusing Michele Steno of Insulting the Honor of the Dogaressa (1844), Francesco Hayez
Marino Faliero, also known as Marin Falier, was doge of Venice for only seven months, but in that time he made a significant impression. He launched an abortive coup in 1355 against the city’s aristocracy in an attempt to strengthen his rule, which ended in his capture and beheading – a fate memorialised by Delacroix in a painting of 1826. Lord Byron’s blank verse drama Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice (1821) is about this turn of events, focusing on the (possibly apocryphal) story that Faliero’s coup was conceived as an act of revenge on the aristocrat Michele Steno for casting doubt on the faithfulness of Faliero’s wife, the dogaressa. Now the Yale University Art Gallery has acquired a painting from 1844 by the Italian Romantic painter Francesco Hayez, depicting the moment when Faliero is said to have confronted Steno in the doge’s palace. The work is highly detailed and full of visual drama, from the doge’s seething red eyes to Steno’s bowed head and the expectant faces of the onlookers. Faliero’s arm is outstretched, as if to banish Steno away from the palace; but a closer look reveals that he is in fact pointing to his own throne, on which lines have been scrawled implying that the dogaressa has been unfaithful. The painting was bought from Galerie Canesso and is now on display in Yale’s European galleries.
Doge Marin Faliero Accusing Michele Steno of Insulting the Honour of the Dogaressa (1844), Francesco Hayez. Photo: Yale University Art Gallery
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
25 works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Paul and John Nash, Eileen Agar and more (acceptance in lieu, donation by Cameron’s great-great-granddaughter)
Anne Hewat, the great-great-granddaughter of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79), built up an impressive collection of British art for her home in Chichester, together with her husband, Angus. The couple were long-standing supporters of Pallant House Gallery in their home town – Angus was a trustee and Anne volunteered there, and they, along with two other donors, donated a plot of land to the museum, allowing it to build a new wing there in 2006. Angus and Anne died in 2014 and 2020 respectively; now Pallant House has announced the acquisition, through the acceptance in lieu scheme, of 25 works of art from the Hewat collection, including photographs taken by Cameron of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and John Herschel, a watercolour by Paul Nash, a linocut by Cyril Power and a colourfully abstracted self-portrait by Eileen Agar. The full set of works is currently on show at Pallant House in the exhibition ‘Julia Margaret Cameron to Eileen Agar: The Hewat Collection’ (until 12 January 2025).
Portrait of young girl with lute guitar (Lady Florence Anson) (1866), Julia Margaret Cameron. Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Safe bearing the coat of arms of Louis XIV (1671), Louis Piau
A large chest bearing the coat of arms of Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’, has been acquired by the Louvre. The king oversaw a blossoming in arts and culture in France, particularly in the decorative arts, his major project being the extensive renovations of and additions to the Palace of Versailles. This chest, made of oak with ornate steel plates and crafted by Louis Piau, the royal locksmith, is one of the few surviving examples of ornate furniture from the early part of Louis XIV’s 72-year reign that can be directly linked to the crown. It joins, among other objects in the Louvre’s collection, the king’s personal jewel casket, decorated with elaborate gold filigree and dating from 1676.
Chest bearing the coat of arms of King Louis XIV, signed and dated by Louis Piau (1671). Photo: © Musée du Louvre, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn/Tony Querrec
[ad_2]
Source link
When Statues Become Fathers: Creative Street Art on Equal Parenting
What happens when male statues become fathers for a day? A creative campaign in Sweden is challenging traditional norms about parenting roles.
Imagine a bronze statue of a stoic leader, now wearing a bright pink baby sling with a doll nestled inside. On International Men’s Day, November 19th, male statues across Sweden were adorned with baby slings and carriers as part of a unique campaign to spotlight unequal parenting responsibilities.
Traditionally representing power, labor, or other masculine attributes, these statues were reimagined to symbolize fathers as caregivers. The campaign, organized by the think tank Arena Idé, is part of the #kvantitetstidspappan initiative, aimed at encouraging fathers to spend more time with their children and urging employers to play a larger role in enabling this.
Despite Sweden’s globally recognized parental leave policies, significant disparities remain. Swedish fathers take only 30.9% of parental leave days and 38% of sick leave to care for children.
A recent Novus survey, conducted in collaboration with Make Equal, further reveals that expectations around parental leave remain unequal in Swedish workplaces. Through this campaign, Arena Idé hopes to challenge these norms and has proposed an employer bonus for workplaces that encourage an equal division of parental leave.
The statues involved in the campaign—such as Standing Man in Umeå, Det svenska tungsinnet in Malmö, and Hjalmar Branting in Stockholm—were decorated with dolls in baby slings and carriers.
This created a contrast between the statues’ traditional symbolism and the modern role of engaged fathers.
The initiative draws inspiration from the UK-based group The Dad Shift, which earlier this year launched a similar campaign highlighting gaps in Britain’s parental leave policies.
Vilgot Österlund, a statistician at Arena Idé, emphasizes the importance of changing workplace norms: “When discussing gender equality in workplaces, the focus is often on women and the negative consequences of inequality for them. But here, we see that men are also losing out on something invaluable—time with their children. Through the statue campaign, the new statistics, and our proposals, we hope to make this clearer!”
Read more about the campaign and the proposed reforms in the original article by Arena Idé: Link to the original article.
More statues: 30 Sculptures You (probably) Didn’t Know Existed
How do you perceive the use of public art to challenge parenting norms? Can such initiatives drive societal change? We invite you to share your perspectives in the comments below.
.fb-background-color {
background: #ffffff !important;
}
.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {
width: 100% !important;
}
$486 M. Total at Christie’s Double Header Hides Uneven Night of Sales
[ad_1]
If there is one thing we have learned this year it’s that the collector class still has money to spend, but will only spend it on choicest, most fresh-to-market works. Christie’s 20th century evening sale on Tuesday, which totaled $486 million with a sell through rate of 92 percent by value and 83 percent by lot, certainly proved that maxim true.
The evening opened with 19 lots from the collection of designer and philanthropist Mica Ertegun, which alone brought in $184 million. And while there were moments of drama throughout the sale, often those moments were like a premier league match slogged down by video-assisted referees, plagued by momentum-killing flukes like a dropped call or having to convert currency on the fly.
(All figures reported here include buyer’s premium, unless noted otherwise noted.)
Like last night’s modern art sale at Sotheby’s, which also included a single owner estate sale—in that case, the collection of beauty industry titan Sydell Miller—Christie’s 20th century sale was uneven and slightly erratic, with its fair share of bidding wars and auction records but also an disappointing amount of bid-squeezing and awkward silences. More than 40 percent of the lots hammered at or below their low estimate and 12 lots failed to sell, four of which came in the last six lots of the sale. By that time, most of the people who came to watch had cleared the sales floor for the more inviting environs of their idling black cars or their reserved table at Mr. Chow.
“All this is really about desire,” art advisor Megan Fox Kelly told ARTnews ahead of the marquee sales week. Advisors, she said, try to be rational, provide information, statistics, background, and comparable. “But really it’s all about their desire. I think that’s what we’re going to see this week. People aren’t sitting on their hands right now. There’s confidence. But really it comes down to just a few things, quality of the object, provenance, and desire.”
There were highlights, of course, and that’s where the desire came in. The high watermark was the sale of Rene Magritte’s L’empire des lumières(1954) which brough in almost exactly a quarter of the evening’s total, $121 million, a world record for the artist at auction. The bidding, which bounced around the sales floor and both phone banks before ultimately being won by a collector on the phone with Alex Rotter, the chairman of 20th and 21st century art, lasted a full eleven minutes. You have to hand it to Christie’s for the embrace of spectacle. When auctioneer Adrian Meyer announced the work was open for bidding at $75 million, well below its $95 million estimate, the lights in the room went black. Then suddenly the walls of the sales floor were illuminated with a deep blue, much to the delight of the audience who “ooohd” and “aaahd” like they were at a magic show in the 1920s.
For the last year or so, Magritte has been the art world equivalent of Taylor Swift tickets. There seem to be plenty of popping up, but the price is high, and they are all desirable. Four of the top ten lots from the sale were by the whimsical Belgian surrealist, one of which happened to be another L’empire des lumières, though this example, which was from 1956, was smaller both in size and in price. It sold for $18.8 million against an estimate of $6 million to $8 million. Like many of the lots during the sale, the mini-Lumières went to a buyer on the phone with Christie’s deputy chairman, Asia Pacific, Xin Li-Cohen, hopefully signaling a reactivated Asian market. After this evening she deserves a shoulder massage after having had her arm up, either bidding or covering her mouth as she spoke to a collector, for what seemed like more than half the lots in the sale.
Ed Ruscha’s absolutely stunning 1964 Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half, which also received the dramatic light show treatment, this time in a sci-fi-ish red, held the number two slot on the evening’s top ten list, bringing in more than $68 million on an estimate of around $50 million. (That was a new auction record for the artist.)
Works by Alberto Giacometti, Joan Mitchell, David Hockney, and Willem de Kooning rounded out the top seller list. It’s notable that the two Mitchells, City Landscape and Untitled (both from 1955), hammered at below the low estimate while also counting among the most expensive works sold. Auction math is a funny thing.
Joan Mitchel, Untitled (1955). Christie’s Images Limited 2024.
Also notable are the works that were passed on, which included marquee names like Jasper Johns, Henri Rousseau, Georgia O’Keeffe, Wayne Thiebaud, and Gustave Caillebotte. Given the political environment during what I like to call the auction houses’ harvest season, it’s no surprise that there were some subpar works in the mix, along with the museum-worthy Magrittes and the Ruscha.
“Both sales were solid, while perhaps uneven in quality,” art advisor Mary Hoeveler told ARTnews after the sale, referencing Sotheby’s Monday night sale on Monday night and Tuesday’s at Christie’s. “Christie’s kept the estimates low to not only encourage bidding, but to see where the market is. There is steam behind the market again, and once people see that, more and better works will show up. Next season the consignments will start to flow again.”
At a press conference after the sale, Rotter said that Christie’s was operating under the “masterpiece approach” for this sale.
“In a market that is not so easy to maneuver, we thought that if we present the greatest works we can get, the Magritte, the Ruscha, these are the best examples. Now, there were things that didn’t sell. There were casualties. But I’m not worried about it,” he said. “The works that we put all the emphasis behind really proved us right. They had multiple bidders and showed that a market based on individual taste is on the rise.”
[ad_2]
Source link