Amazon Speaks: Unless they've got a new product to sell, Amazon only speaks directly to the public when it absolutely has to. Which means the Hachette/Amazon dispute has gotten really ugly. After months of not talking about specifics, Amazon posted a long letter explaining exactly what they want out of Hachette: The right to price e-books at $9.99. They argue that they sell more units if they price the e-books lower. "We hope this information on our objectives is helpful," the post concludes. It's a lot more sympathetic than Amazon's last post on the matter. Hachette, at the time of this writing, has not responded.
Like Waves of Nausea, the Traveling Impressionism Exhibitions Keep Coming to SAM: Okay, that's not nice. But. In October 2015, Intimate Impressionism from the National Gallery of Art opens at SAM. It's being packaged as "71 intimately scaled paintings." The traveling impresionism show at SAM in 2008 was good not for its impressionist works but for the pieces that inspired those artists, by Goya, VelĂĄzquez, Titian, El Greco, Hals, and the like. Hmm.
Lindaâs Fest Rocks Lindaâs Tavern Aug. 23: If the Capitol Hill Block Party was too much of a clusterfuck of suburban teens and tweens for you, perhaps Lindaâs Fest will be more to your liking. (Itâs billed as a âNice Place for Nice People,â which is an awfully bold assertion.) The annual bash happens Sat. Aug. 23 (5 pm-10 pm, free, 21+) and takes place in the parking lot behind Linda's Tavern. Bothering the Boylston Ave. neighbors with their youthful punk-, heavy-, and pop-rock noises will be Chastity Belt, Thunderpussy, the Young Evils, Kithkin, and Tacocat (fronted by Stranger music editor Emily Nokes).
Football, Not Art: Mark your calendars, because September's First Thursday Art Walk in Pioneer Square is going to be a First Friday Art Walk instead, held on September 5th rather than the 4th, gallery owners say. Evidently, every year the NFL throws a huge hometown party for the Superbowl winners on the night their regular season begins, and this year that means the NFL is taking over Pioneer Square to celebrate the Seahawks on Thursday, September 4.
The star of Entourage Stands Up for Socialism?: Art critic Ben Davis wrote this great piece about how "the most-typical and most-maligned genres of Instagram imagery happen to correspond to the primary genres of Western secular art," using Kim Kardashian's selfie as a demonstration. Adrian Grenier wants people to read it. He's right, you should. But...weird.
Can the New York Art World Talk about Palestine?: A pro-Palestine exhibition was canceled at the end of last week, and here's the bizarre story of what happened when events were tabled to a nearby bar.
All Aboard! A lot of people are taking Snowpiercer very seriously, and we love reading all the resulting think-pieces.
Ulysses Meets the Lawnmower Man: Soon, you will be able to enjoy James Joyce's masterpiece via Oculus Rift.
Read of the Week: David Berman's "The Diary of a New York Art Museum Security Guard" is incredible. It was published in 1994 in The Baffler, which has made its archive available online! (As we mentioned last week, this summer is the summer of available online archives. See also: The New Yorker's love stories collection.)
