Vanina Guerillot é a segunda esquiadora portuguesa a ganhar medalhas em provas internacionais
02/02/16 DESPORTO
Vanina Guerillot tornou-se na segunda esquiadora portuguesa a conquistar uma medalha em provas internacionais depois de Andrea Bugnone, no mesmo escalão, ter sido o primeiro esquiador português a alcançar o mesmo feito, em 2012, também no Troféu Borrufa.
Vanina Guerillot tornou-se a segunda esquiadora portuguesa a conquistar medalhas em provas internacionais, depois de se ter sagrado vice-campeã de ‘slalom gigante’, na categoria de infantes, no Troféu Borrufa, em Espanha.
Vanina Guerillot, de 13 anos, filha de mãe portuguesa e pai francês, a viver em Courchevel, França, integrou a comitiva lusa em Andorra onde decorreu a competição.
A jovem esquiadora consegue a proeza depois de Andrea Bugnone, no mesmo escalão, ter sido o primeiro esquiador português a conquistar medalhas em provas internacionais de desportos de neve, em 2012, também no Troféu Borrufa.
Andrea Bugnone, residente na Suíça e filho de mãe portuguesa, agora com 16 anos, vai ser o primeiro atleta nacional a participar nos Jogos Olímpicos de Inverno da Juventude, entre 12 e 21 de fevereiro, em Lillehammer, na Noruega.
A delegação portuguesa em Andorra conta, para além de Vanina Guerillot, com mais cinco esquiadores: Manuel Ramos, Lourenço Simões, Pedro Marim, Henrique Brancal e Lucas Viegas.
Para Pedro Farromba, presidente da Federação de Desportos de Inverno de Portugal, os resultados internacionais que começam a surgir são fruto do trabalho feito no país e junto dos portugueses residentes no estrangeiro, à procura de atletas com capacidades para representarem Portugal.
Em declarações à agência Lusa, o dirigente informou estar feita a sinalização de talentos a residirem no estrangeiro: “Falta garantir-lhes as condições de treino, porque sabemos onde há atletas portugueses com capacidades.”
Para que isso aconteça, realça, é necessário um maior apoio por parte do Governo.
Christie's Defies Predictions of Market Chill With $138 Million Impressionist and Modern Art Sale
X
Marc Chagall Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel (1928)
Price realized:£7,026,500/$10,111,134/€ 9,260,927.
Image: Courtesy of Christie's
With art market pundits anticipating a ‘chill' in 2016, Christie's opening salvo was conversely mild, and without too many portents of gloom. But it wasn't on fire either. The sale realised £95.9 million ($138 million), including premium, or just around the lower estimate of £83.6-123 million without premium. A tolerable 22 lots, or 25 percent of the 89 lots, went unsold, including only 2 in the category of works selling for £1.7 million ($2.5 million) or more. But just as many lots sold to bids either on or below the low estimates.
The sale, which included a separate catalogue for surrealist works, trailed last February's £147 million pound sale by some margin. “It wasn't easy," commented Guy Jennings, managing director of The Fine Art Fund Group. “I'd say the market has softened a bit. But it was steady." Jay Vincze, the head of the Impressionist and modern art department at Christie's London said the shortfall on last year was because last year he had two exceptional collections. “There was no chill; this was about normal for us."
René Magritte, Mesdemoiselles de l'Isle Adam (1942).
Estimate 2,000,000 – 3,000,000 British pounds. Price realized: £1,986,500/$2,858,574/€ 2,618,207
Image: Courtesy of Christie's
If Christie's were looking for some certitude in the middle market, it could be found. They had a racing start with works on paper by Pablo Picasso and Henri-Edmond Cross soaring over estimates leaving underbidders in the room—dealer Hugh Gibson and advisor Wentworth Beaumont—empty handed.
Some of the top lots were coming back to auction having sold just before the 2008 crash, so it was a test as to whether those values could be maintained. Egon Schiele's 1909 self-portrait oil painting had previously been in Ronald Lauder's collection until he sold it in 2007 to help pay for his acquisition of some expensive, restituted works by Gustav Klimt for the Neue Gallerie. In 2007, it sold on a single bid for £4.5 million pounds, and the buyer, a ‘private European collector,' was hoping for a small mark-up at £6-8 million. Tuesday night, it sold for £7.2 million.
Also the property of a ‘private European collector' was a 1925 still life by Picasso which had been bought in the same Christie's auction for a mid-estimate of £2.8 million. Christie's had doubled the estimate this time around, to £4-6 million, and it made a modest return, selling it for £4 million pounds to a phone bidder against the London dealer Ezra Nahmad.
Other top lots to sell were a blissfully romantic work by Marc Chagall, Les Maries de la Tour, which clipped the top estimate selling for £7 million ($10 million) to adviser Thomas Seydoux who, when he was at Christie's, was known for his close relationships with Russian collectors. The painting last sold at auction in New York in 1991 for $600,000. And Fernand Leger's dynamic Le Moteur, a smaller version of a painting of the same title which sold for a record $16.7 million in 2001, sold this evening to dealer, Hugh Gibson, within estimate for £5.2 million.
Paul Cézanne, Ferme en Normandie, été (Hattenville) (1882).
Price realized: £5,122,500/$7,371,278/€ 6,751,455
Image: Courtesy of Christie's
There was a meaty selection of early 20th century German paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Lyonel Feininger, Otto Dix and more, which, except for a weak still life by Max Beckmann, sold mostly above estimates. A street scene in Murnau in 1908 by Wassily Kandinsky—not long before he shifted towards abstraction, was snapped up below estimate for £1.4 million by Amsterdam-based advisor Matthijs Erdman, and an early expressionistic landscape by Karl Schmidt-Rottluf, Windy Day, was chased by German advisor, Jorg Bertz, before selling to a phone bidder near the top end of its estimate at £1.3 million. The star of this section, though, was the relatively unknown Neue Sachlichkeit artist, Georg Scholz, with a satirical 1920s critique of small town bourgeois activities (Small Town by Day) in Germany, which quadrupled the low estimate selling to New York's Acquavella Gallery for a record £1.2 million. Christie's saw this coming because much the same happened with a gouache study for this painting in 2012.
On the minus side was a small, rather dull Giacometti painting, Buste d'homme, which had been bought just before the credit crunch for £1.6 million. Now estimated at £1.8-2.5 million, it failed to find a buyer. Making losses for the sellers were a Matisse drawing, bought in New York in November 2012 for $458,500, which now sold for £266,500 ($383,494), and a large jazzy canvas by Andre Lhote, Gipsy Bar, for which the owner paid a seemingly extravagant $2.7 million dollars back in 2007. That record still stands, as Gipsy Bar sold this time round for a more reasonable £1.1 million ($1.9 million).
Georg Scholz, Badische Kleinstadt bei Tage (1923).
Sold for: £1,202,500 / $1,730,398 / €1,584,895
Image: Courtesy of Christie's
Christie's had made much of the promise in Asia when touring the highlights from its sale in the East last month. But bidding from Asian collectors was muted. A verdant Farm in Normandy by Paul Cezanne (1882), sold near the low estimate for £5.1 million, as did Chagall's run-of-the-mill Violinist under the Moon, which sold for £1.8 million—both to Asian phone bidders. The strongest Asian bidding came for an early, rather awkward looking portrait of a young man by Cezanne which was estimated at £300,000, but sold for £1.2 million.
The surrealist section of the sale appeared to be a bit disappointing because past sales have been getting stronger and stronger. Christie's has built a reputation as the leading auctioneer for surrealist art under the guidance of deputy chairman, Olivier Camu, who is also a specialist in the area. Last February, they chalked up 66 million pounds of sales for their Surrealist sale (over the £37-54 million estimate). This evening, the level of consignments was down, with a pre-sale estimate of £26-39 million, as was the total, £29.5 million. Echoing Vincze, Camu said the disparity was only due to the exceptional private collection it had for sale last year, which is not something you can depend on.
Salvador Dalí, Le voyage fantastique (1965).
Estimate 1,200,000 – 1,800,000 British pounds. Price realized: £1,426,500/$2,052,734/€ 1,880,127
Image: Courtesy of Christie's
However, many of the lots that had higher estimates had already been at auction within the last five years, and were thus well known to buyers. The top lot, Max Ernst's The Stolen Mirror, an homage to his former lover, Leonora Carrington, set a record $16.3 million (£10.3 million) when it sold for four times the lower estimate to a European collector at Christie's New York in November 2011. That collector must have needed to sell and been prepared to take a loss as he secured a guarantee from Christie's, most probably near the lower end of the £7-10 million estimate. But bidding was thin on Tuesday and the painting fell to a lone telephone bidder—likely the guarantor—for a premium inclusive £7.6 million.
Also taking a loss was Christie's. Rene Magritte's 1947 painting, Mesdesmoiselles de l'Isle Adam, which is simultaneously delightful and scary, sold at Christie's New York in November 2014 below estimate for $4.3 million dollars. The painting had a third party guarantee, but had somehow managed to become property of Christie's (i.e., the guarantee didn't materialize). Now with a lower £2-3 million estimate, it sold for £2 million ($2.86 million), with Christie's having to shoulder the difference.
Egon Schiele, Selbstbildnis mit gespreizten Fingern (1909).
Price realized: £7,250,500/$10,433,470/€ 9,556,159.
Image: Courtesy of Christie's
The other Christie's owned property, Joan Miro's Femme et Oiseau dans la Nuit, 1968, carried the second highest estimate of the surrealist sale at £3-5 million, down on the £4-6 million it carried in June 2010 when it sold for £5.2 million. Although it had not been guaranteed, it was not paid for. Fortunately for Christie's, there was plenty of bidding on it the second time around, spurred first by London dealer Angela Nevill, and then by Ezra Nahmad, before it sold to a phone bidder for £5.8 million, just enough to get Christie's out of jail.
Another of the higher valued lots that had been at auction relatively recently was Salvador Dalí's Le Voyage Fantastique, a 1965 portrait of movie star, Raquel Welch, that blended sci-fi elements with a Lichtenstein-like benday-dot technique. This obviously appealed to the Mugrabi family of art dealers when they bought it in 2011 in New York for a mid-estimate $1.9 million. With a similar estimate of £1.2-1.8 million, it might have tempted one of the Asian buyers who have taken Dalí to heart, but it sold on a £1.2 million bid ($1.7 million), and not to an Asian collector, leaving the Mugrabis unusually short on a deal.
Whoever takes their workout seriously knows the value of a good diet in powering towards fitness goals. From big meal plans right down to snacking habits, each digested morsel is a reflection of attitude.
No one understands this better than professional athletes particularly those with longstanding success. One such athlete is Russian tennis star, Maria Sharapova, who told woman with drive in an exclusive interviewthat she genuinely enjoys her food – both cooking and eating it.
“I love looking forward to a meal. Because food is such an important part of health and taking care of your body, it is something I enjoy thinking and speaking about and preparing for myself.”
You do not have to be a five-time Grand Slam champion to understand how your food choices impact your workout performance. These five pointers will have you eating like your sports hero in no time. Also read: The Heart of Maria Sharapova
Have Breakfast
The childhood advice is worth repeating – do not skip the one meal that will prepare you for the rest of the day. Athletes have breakfast no less than 30 minutes after waking up to stabilise their blood sugar and decrease their total caloric intake throughout the day.
Cannot eat like a king at the break of dawn? You do not have to. Get your body used to having an early meal by starting with a glass of juice. Then move on to proteins like omega-3 rich eggs or egg whites, low-fat organic dairy, lean breakfast meats and whole grains like steel cut oats or quinoa.
One of the simplest breakfasts is wholesome cereal with low-fat milk, a banana and juice. Not only does it provide carbohydrates, protein and vitamins, but is also easy enough to carry with you.
Stay Hydrated
The secret to hydration is consistency. Drinking water throughout the day rather than loading up on fluids only during your workout will better help replace what you lose in sweat.
“Breakfast for me starts with water,” Maria says. “I drink half a liter of water when I wake up just to feel like I have started on a clean note. Only then do I have a coffee.”
Also be consistent in your choice of fluids. If you drink water throughout the day, then do not switch to sugar-loaded energy drinks during workouts. Concerned about replacing electrolytes? Then dilute an energy drink with water.
Find Superpower Food
Certain food work wonders for an athlete’s metabolism, stamina and recovery. These six sit at the top of the power food list. Raw almonds. The best high fat, anti-inflammatory food for recovery, to maintain the metabolic process, support stamina and improve blood and oxygen flow. Chunk light tuna in water. A source of protein, magnesium, potassium, B vitamins and omega-3 essential fatty acids that enhance recovery time after a strenuous workout. Edamame. These small Japanese beans are one of the best plant proteins, similar in quality to eggs and cow’s milk, that improves blood pressure, controls blood sugar and improves the immune function. Skinless grilled chicken breast. A great source of protein and vitamin B to convert proteins, fats, and carbohydrates into usable energy. Greek yogurt. Enhances recovery from fatigue and maintains a healthy immune system. One or two servings a day can help maximise loss of fat and minimise loss of muscle. Peanut butter. A great snack for quick, sustained energy. Research has found that those who eat nuts twice a week are less likely to gain weight than those who almost never eat nuts.
Keep The Carbs
If you are gearing up for a long-distance or high-intensity competition, then carbs will keep you in top form. Replace a small protein or vegetable at dinner the night before with a carb-rich food to ensure you get the proper amount of carbs without going overboard. Some of the best carbs for athletes include sweet potatoes, oats, wild rice and chickpeas.
Eat For Recovery
Believe it or not, one of the best routes to recovery lies in a carton of chocolate milk. Drinking chocolate milk no more than 20 minutes after a workout or competition will help reduce muscle soreness and fatigue, and enhance recovery. If chocolate and milk are not part of your diet, then a piece of low-fat cheese, a protein shake or a small sandwich with egg and lean meat will do just as well.
Entrepreneurship is a wonderful journey and also one that is dotted with early business mistakes that eventually will leave us a whole lot wiser. But as we strive to avoid the big blunders, we often forget to look out for the smaller slip-ups.
Many of my clients who have been in business for years are always taken aback to discover that they are still committing very basic business mistakes. Here are five common ones that have repeatedly come up in our coaching sessions.
Mistake #1: Using A Generic Email Address
Do not use your personal email address or a business address with a Gmail, BigPond, or Yahoo account. Your business email needs to be aligned with your brand and website, and should clearly state yours and your company’s name.
Using a generic email address whilst corresponding with clients and prospects is not only unprofessional but gives an impression that your business is lacking in some way. It seems elementary but you would be surprised at how many people still overlook this basic yet crucial rule.
Google surveyed businesses that started out with a generic or personal email address but later switched to an address with a business domain. About 60 per cent of these businesses reported an increase in customer engagement and 42 per cent reported an increase in sales after the switch. Those are massive results for something as simple as changing the words after the “@” symbol.
Mistake # 2: Keeping Yourself Hidden On Your Own Website
Your website is the frontline of your business and potential customers’ first experience with you. Before feeling a connection to your brand, they need to feel connected to you. The easiest way to spark this connection is to upload videos of you talking about your product or service.
Your first videos should be about who you are and what you do. Then follow up with videos that explain the value that potential clients will receive from your product or service. Keep the videos under 90 seconds.
If you are camera shy then either start practising in front of the camera or consider other alternatives, like recording a podcast or writing a blog. Choose a medium that will let your personality shine through.
My clients often tell me that they felt a connection with me just by watching my videos. When they finally meet me, they say it is like meeting a friend.
Mistake # 3: Being Vague About What You Offer and To Whom
This is the core of your marketing strategy. Ask yourself who your target market is, what socio-economic group they fit into and other demographics like gender, age range, location and background. This will form the basis of your marketing plan and ensure you attract the ideal client.
Next, identify your product offering based on this target market. What do they need and are you passionate about delivering it? Both must match up. I discovered early on that I loved helping adolescents and young adults who suffer from depression to be able to fully participate in life again.
Then find out where your target market hangs out and what they read. This will determine where you place your advertisements and publish your articles. Prioritise the mediums that can sell your message.
Mistake #4: Not Offering A Valuable Freebie
A freebie can take the form of a downloadable report or an eBook in exchange for potential clients’ contact details. I offer two types of freebies. The first consists of reading material like eBooks and reports. My most popular downloaded content is Eliminating Anxiety in 3 Easy Steps.
The second freebie is a complimentary Needs Analysis consultation where I provide potential clients with enough information for them to make an informed purchase decision.
I have a 70 percent success rate with these two methods. It is all about creating rapport and establishing how you can help each person solve his or her specific problem.
Mistake #5: Chasing Perfection
Do not wait for perfection in your business to take the next step. Do it now and improve as you go. Waiting for perfection will send you into a spiral of inaction.
My personal experience taught me that it is better for a good product to be available now than for a perfect one to be ready in two years. My first e-book, 10 Golden Rules For Weight Loss Success, was not perfect when it was first released but it has continued to provide value to my clients to this day. The book has gone through many edits since then, and is now a piece of work that is as close to perfection as it will get.
So let go of the need to be perfect. Your best will still provide value to your clients who need your services now and who cannot wait a few more years until you are “better” at what you do.
Helen Mitas is the founder of Hypnofit, a thriving wellness clinic in Melbourne. She specialises in taking start-ups to a six-figure turnover within 18 months just as she has done with her own business. Helen is also a clinical hypnotherapist, business mentor, speaker and the published author of Mindset Dominance. She can be reached at www.helenmitas.com
Launching a startup can be both thrilling and terrifying. Launching a startup that will pioneer a whole new industry is pretty much the same thing albeit on a colossal scale.
When blazing a new trail, the pivotal question goes from “will people buy my product?” to “will the world follow me into a new frontier?”
The key challenge is no longer besting the competition but creating the playing field. And the ultimate reward is offering people better quality of life rather than a product with better features.
Catherine Cervasio, founder of luxury brand Aromababy and pioneer of the organic baby skincare industry in Australia, can attest to all the above. Being first at the table meant a rare opportunity to create something bigger than a mere business and she seized it with both hands.
Aromababy, which turns 23 this year, has since transitioned from industry pioneer to industry leader and counts John Travolta, Dannii Minogue, Princess Mary and Jamie Oliver among its clientele. woman with drive asked one of Australia’s biggest successes for her tips on being an industry pioneer.
Be your own research lab
How do you conduct market research on a non-existent market? The answer is become your own test subject. In Catherine’s case, she could not have found a better one. As a new mother with a background in skincare, she knew exactly what she wanted for her own baby as well as the limitations within the industry. “Creating a range of organic skincare products was an obvious solution but it was only after talking to cosmetic chemists and formulators that I learnt they had never worked with natural ingredients.”
So Catherine delved into her own research by discussing ideas with new mothers, midwives and healthcare professionals. She used their feedback to develop a formula that provides the best outcome for a baby’s sensitive skin.
Educate. Do not sell.
When you are the only person who understands the inner working of a new industry, you have a choice of two very powerful roles – salesperson or educator.
Catherine advises picking the latter if trust and loyalty are part of your brand’s ethos. She has a zero tolerance policy for stretching the truth to win a sale, and makes sure that her entire team upholds this.
“It is not about getting the sale at any cost or about chasing profits. It is about providing the right information, allowing people to make an informed decision and hoping that some will choose your products based on their new knowledge.”
If sales is in your blood, then sell trust not a trend. Going the distance in the real world is worth a whole lot more than going viral on social media.
Take responsibility for setting industry standards
When there are no standards to live up to, it can be tempting to cut yourself some slack. Especially when no one would know any better.
Catherine remembers the many times she was advised to downgrade the active ingredients in her formula in order to reduce manufacturing costs and enable her to compete purely on a price point. She refused to lower her standards.
“I learnt that there are many products claiming to be natural and organic even when their essential oils amount to less than half a percent instead of three-quarters of the overall formula. This is why certain products cost what they do. You get what you pay for.”
And sometimes, you also get found out.
Think global
There is little point in going through all the trouble to pioneer an industry only to confine it to your backyard. And yet many pioneers develop tunnel vision and resist looking beyond their own shores. To Catherine, who took Aromababy international 15 years ago, this is unfathomable.
“We are dealing digitally with the whole world so you need to look at markets outside Australia to be sustainable. And when you do, you also need to consider whether you can sustain a growth in finances, space, resources and manpower while remaining viable.”
Catherine had her eye on the global market from the start but her initial route was an unconventional one. In the early years she would keep tabs on any new celebrity parents visiting Australia and find a way to get her products to their heads of security. Her success stories include Sylvester Stallone and the late Michael Jackson.
“I would not take this route today, but when you are young, passionate and driven, you go all out!” she laughs. “But I am older and things have changed as Aromababy is now well-known here and abroad.”
Everybody’s a Critic. And That’s How It Should Be.
Credit Post Typography
NEXT month, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will complete its annual ritual of designating the best in two dozen cinematic categories. The Oscars have come under fire this year for the predictable, shameful racial homogeneity of their nominations, but that is not the only reason to complain.
I am a critic. A scold, a snob, a paid hack intent on punishing artists and spoiling the fun of the public. That, at least, is the role I’m sometimes called upon to play. And in that capacity I’d like to say: Forget about the Oscars. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that you will, if history is any guide. The best-picture winners that live up to the name — “The Godfather,” “The Apartment,” “The Hurt Locker” — are outliers in a field of bloated, flash-in-the-pan mediocrities. “Around the World in 80 Days”? “Out of Africa”? “Crash”? Please.
Meanwhile, the pantheon of all-time great films is largely a roster of the snubbed, from “Citizen Kane” to “Do the Right Thing” to “Boyhood.” The best film in any given year is almost guaranteed to be one that didn’t win, or one that wasn’t nominated at all.
That much is obvious. The Oscars are silly. Why should we suppose that 6,000 members of an insular and entitled professional association would be reliable judges of quality? A show-business oligarchy can’t seriously be in the business of legislating taste.
But neither can the public. Box-office data is hardly an answer to industry-insider cluelessness. “Avatar” has made more money than any other movie ever, but does anyone think that makes it the best movie of all time?
Then again: Who am I to talk? I make my living sorting, ranking and judging movies, part of a professional guild devoted, precisely, to the legislation of taste and the denomination of excellence. If the academy is out of touch, what does that make me? A dinosaur. A stagecoach driver in the age of Uber. An old man yelling at a cloud.
On the Internet, everyone is a critic — a Yelp-fueled takedown artist, an Amazon scholar, a cheerleader empowered by social media to Like and to Share. The inflated, always suspect authority of ink-stained wretches like me has been leveled by digital anarchy. Who needs a cranky nag when you have a friendly algorithm telling you, based on your previous purchases, that there is something You May Also Like, and legions of Facebook friends affirming the wisdom of your choice?
The days of the all-powerful critic are over. But that figure — high priest or petty dictator, destroying and consecrating reputations with the stroke of a pen — was always a bit of a myth, an allegorical monster conjured up by timid artists and their insecure admirers. Criticism has always been a fundamentally democratic undertaking. It is an endless conversation, rather than a series of pronouncements. It is the debate that begins when you walk out of the theater or the museum, either with your friends or in the private chat room of your own head. It’s not me telling you what to think; it’s you and me talking. That was true before the Internet, but the rise of social media has had the thrilling, confusing effect of making the conversation literal.
Like every other form of democracy, criticism is a messy, contentious business, in which the rules are as much in dispute as the outcomes and the philosophical foundations are fragile if not vaporous. We all like different things. Each of us is blessed with a snowflake-special consciousness, an apparatus of pleasure and perception that is ours alone. But we also cluster together in communities of taste that can be as prickly and polarized as the other tribes with which we identify. We are protective of our pleasures, and resent it when anyone tries to mock or mess with them.
Obsessives and dilettantes, omnivores and geeks, highbrow and low, we are more likely to seek affirmation than challenge. Some people love opera. Others love hip-hop. Quite a few are interested in both. “It’s all good!” you might say. But you don’t believe that, any more than I do. Some of it is terrible. There is, axiomatically, no disputing taste, and also no accounting for it.
And yet our ways of thinking about this fundamental human attribute amount to a heap of contradictions. There is no argument, but then again there is only argument. We grant that our preferences are subjective, but we’re rarely content to leave them in the private realm. It’s not enough to say “I like that” or “It wasn’t really my cup of tea.” We insist on stronger assertions, on objective statements. “That was great! That was terrible!”
Or maybe that’s just me. This newspaper, after all, pays me to turn my personal impressions of movies into persuasive arguments — not only to share my feelings about movies but also to assess them and provide some useful counsel to readers. So it might seem as if I’m setting out here to make a self-serving point. Don’t trust the Hollywood insiders who control the Oscars! Ignore the quantified peer pressure of Rotten Tomatoes or Box Office Mojo! Listen to me!
And sure: I do have a stake in defending the relevance of my own job, even as I grant that it’s kind of a ridiculous way to pay the rent. Critics are sometimes appreciated — or even, in rare cases, admired, like Roger Ebert — but we are more often feared, resented or ignored altogether. In the popular mind, critics are haters and killjoys. Maybe we’re sadists, like the viperous, martini-swilling New York Times theater reviewer in “Birdman.” Or maybe we’re masochists: In spite of that cruel caricature, “Birdman,” an Oscar best picture, is “Certified Fresh” by Rotten Tomatoes (I think it’s vastly overrated, by the way, but that’s just my opinion).
Credit Post Typography
The ability of critics to make a living may be precarious, but criticism remains an indispensable activity. The making of art — popular or fine, abstruse or accessible, sacred or profane — is one of the glories of our species. We are uniquely endowed with the capacity to fashion representations of the world and our experience in it, to tell stories and draw pictures, to organize sound into music and movement into dance. Just as miraculously, we have the ability, even the obligation, to judge what we have made, to argue about why we are moved, mystified, delighted or bored by any of it. At least potentially, we are all artists. And because we have the ability to recognize and respond to the creativity of others, we are all, at least potentially, critics, too.
This means, above all, that our job is to think. As consumers of culture, we are lulled into passivity or, at best, prodded toward a state of pseudo-semi-self-awareness, encouraged toward either the defensive group identity of fandom or a shallow, half-ironic eclecticism. We graze, we binge, we pick up and discard aesthetic experiences as if they were cheap toys. Which they frequently are — mass-produced widgets from the corporate assembly line.
Meanwhile, in our roles as citizens of the political commonwealth we are conscripted into a polarized climate of ideological belligerence. Bluster substitutes for argument. Important political divisions are at once magnified and trivialized. There is little room for doubt and scant time for reflection as we find ourselves buffeted by sensation and opinion.
How do we sort through it all? How do we manage the prodigious too-muchness of the demands on our attention? The incentives not to think — to be one of the many available varieties of stupid — are powerful. But there is also genius around us, and within us. There is “Hamilton” and “To Pimp a Butterfly,” “Transparent” and the novels of Elena Ferrante. Take your pick! Make your case!
We are far too inclined to regard art as a frivolous, ornamental undertaking and to perceive taste as a fixed, narrow track along which we stumble, alone or in like-minded company. At the same time, we too often seek to subordinate the creative, pleasure-giving aspects of our lives to supposedly more consequential areas of experience, stuffing the aesthetic dimensions of existence into the boxes that hold our religious beliefs, our political dogmas or our moral certainties. We belittle art. We aggrandize nonsense. We can’t see beyond the horizon of our own conventional wisdom.
Enough of that! It’s the mission of art to free our minds, and the task of criticism to figure out what to do with that freedom. That everyone is a critic means that we are each capable of thinking against our own prejudices, of balancing skepticism with open-mindedness, of sharpening our dulled and glutted senses and battling the intellectual inertia that surrounds us. We need to put our remarkable minds to use and to pay our own experience the honor of taking it seriously.
The real culture war (the one that never ends) is between the human intellect and its equally human enemies: sloth, cliché, pretension, cant. Between creativity and conformity, between the comforts of the familiar and the shock of the new. To be a critic is to be a soldier in this fight, a defender of the life of art and a champion of the art of living.
A 16th-century depiction of St. Anthony that had been attributed to the workshop of Bosch or a follower is now thought to be by the Dutch master’s hand.
A court revised the punishment given to a stateless Palestinian poet, Ashraf Fayadh, who was convicted of apostasy. He was also sentenced to eight years in prison.
A “Loyalty in Culture” initiative, included as an amendment to a budget bill, proposes denying state funds to institutions that do not express “loyalty” to the state.
The Print Room offers a revelatory production of "Five Finger Exercise," but "Waste," at the National Theater's Lyttelton stage, and Cirque du Soleil's "Amaluna," at Royal Albert Hall waver.
He posted on Facebook a photograph of the notice denying him entry, writing that he and his sons had “been detained by the Hong Kong police for over 14 hours.”
Pyotr Pavlensky was taken to a hospital notorious for giving insanity diagnoses to political dissidents in the Soviet period, raising worries about a revival of politicized psychiatry.
The author of six acclaimed books in Spanish, his newest novel, "Sudden Death," which earned major literary prizes in Mexico and Spain, is his first novel to appear in English.
The Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art has mounted the biggest exhibition of the designer's work in 30 years, hoping to burnish his reputation.
The Angkor Panorama Museum is the most ambitious foreign project by the Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang, which employs hundreds of North Korean artists.
Eight Egyptian officials are to face a disciplinary tribunal for their role in a botched repair job that caused lasting damage to the famed burial mask.
"Cycle Revolution" at the Design Museum of London charts the growth of bike use in the city, along with the engineering, fashion and cultures of what it calls bike tribes.
Ms. Charles-Roux’s first novel, “To Forget Palermo,” won the Prix Goncourt, France’s biggest literary prize, in 1966, four months after the magazine ousted her.
As theater companies prepare to go all out in 2016 to commemorate the anniversary, opera companies are doing the same, to honor his vast contribution to their art.
Revisiting a half-dozen movies that seem especially relevant to the work of thinking and understanding that lies ahead after the Nov. 13 attacks on Paris.
Each week, Pamela Paul, the editor of the Book Review, talks to authors, editors and critics about new books, the literary scene and current best sellers.
