A black macaque monkey in Indonesia takes his self-portrait using a camera. (via Daily Mail)
This week’s Required Reading examines how copyright law impacts images by animals, art’s LGBT problem, a history of English, China’s political prisoners, against reviews and Frank Lloyd Wright’s dislike of intellectuals.
Did you hear about the recent monkey self-portraits? Well, here’s an interesting questions: When a monkey takes a photo, who owns the copyright?
Philip Kenicott examines the art world’s unhealthy relationship with all things LGBT. Tyler Green asks if Cy Twombly, who died this week, was “hetero-normalized” — while I hate that word, it’s an important question.
A video that tells the history of English in ten minutes.
Jonathan Mirsky writes about China’s political prisoners (including Ai Weiwei) at the New York Review of Books.
Some thoughts over at n+1 about reviews:
If book reviews are nothing but free advertising, they are among the most ineffectual, ill-conceived marketing campaigns ever conceived. It’s strange to think that an account of what’s inside a book would be a good way to sell it. Imagine if McDonald’s commercials told you what went into a Big Mac: rehydrated onions, high-fructose corn syrup, ammonia-treated beef.
Frank Lloyd Wright speaking in 1957 about this dislike of intellectuals:
“I hate intellectuals. They are from the top down. I am from the bottom up.”
Required Reading is published every Sunday morning, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links (10 or less) to long-form articles, videos, blog posts or photo essays worth a second look.
