2002 Nov
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Jan 7-13 2001
archives
2000 archives
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1. Special
Interest
2. Issues
3. Dance
4. Media
5. Music
6. People
7. Publishing
8. Theatre
9. Visual Arts
10.For Fun
SPECIAL
INTEREST
-
IN
SEARCH OF THE BIG BREAK: The Big Break - it's what
performers live for. It's what makes their careers. But
what about those very talented musicians whose Big Break
never comes? What are the forces that conspire to be that
Big Break?
Philadelphia
Inquirer 10/10/00
-
THE
DECLINING YEARS (EARLIER THAN YOU THINK?): Does intellectual
ability decline with age? Does our brain begin to lose
its tone after the age of 30? That's the age when physicists
and mathematicians are thought to have passed their prime.
On the other hand, historians often don't make their best
contributions until they've reached their 60s.
Feed 10/12/00
-
SAN
JOSE DANCE IS BORN: From the ashes of failure in Cleveland,
the Cleveland San Jose Ballet company is reborn this week
as a new company in San Jose. "It is the latest and
most important chapter in a tale of artistic integrity
and civic pride, of all-American optimism and resourcefulness,
of triumph. What could have been a major tragedy for dance
in the Bay Area - and what in fact was a senseless loss
for Cleveland - has been turned into a major victory for
American culture."
San Francisco Chronicle 10/08/00
-
CORPORATE
READ: "American life is affected by the seemingly
never-ending growth of large corporations... Will it change
fundamentally the way we read and what books are available
to us? The big publishers, who comprise some eighty percent
of all publishing volume, are largely owned by media conglomerates
who are accustomed to earning profitability ratios of
their other media holdings. Book publishing often disappoints
those expectations and has to turn to a kind of publishing
that will 'please their parents'." Feed
10/11/00
-
CLAP
TRAP: Audiences are clapping more and more in the
London Theatre. "It is common in the West End for
audiences to applaud the first entrance of major stars,
as if grateful that they bothered to show up at all. Elderly
actors always get a particularly big hand. This has nothing
to do with their acting ability and everything to do with
their longevity. This applause does not mean 'You're marvellous'
but 'Isn't it amazing that you aren't gaga and in a bathchair'?"
The Guardian (London)
10/14/00
-
LIVING
AROUND ART: Design is hot right now - it has a grip
on the popular imagination in a way it hasn't since the
1960s. What does it mean for the way we think about the
things around us? "As expressions of The New, these
products have inherited the myth of progress, modernity's
defining legend. This is not the first time design has
embodied that myth... New
York Times 10/15/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
ISSUES
-
THE
NEW CRITICS: "After more than a century of professional
literary criticism, when the erudite few lorded over discussions
of artistic merit, the rules have changed. Thanks to the
Internet, anybody can now join ongoing - and very public
- evaluations of books, recordings, films and many other
materials, with a potential audience of millions of readers.
Washington
Post 10/15/00
-
ART
OF BUILDING: "During the past decade, new American
performing arts facilities have been popping up like mushrooms
after a rain, but architecturally they've been a pusillanimous
lot. When not actively nostalgic, as in Fort Worth's Bass
Performance Hall, they've tended to favor a kind of buttoned-down
corporate look, as in Seattle's Benaroya Hall, or shopping-mall
lite, as in Fort Lauderdale's Broward Center and West
Palm Beach's Kravis Center." Dallas
Morning News 10/15/00
-
THE
WAR IS OVER? Eight years ago Pat Buchanan was calling
a "cultural war" in the United States. But this
presidential campaign "the blistering cultural issues
of the early '90s - federal funding of the arts, naughty
pictures, tart-tongued, disrobed performers - are on today's
back burners. The anti-arts, far-right-wing Buchanan voice
lost. They thought it would be easy, the elimination of
the National Endowment for the Arts based on arguments
of pornography and blasphemy. And they lost."
Philadelphia
Inquirer 10/15/00
-
So what experience
does either of the US presidential candidates have in
the arts? AL
GORE "favors public funding for the arts, has
a passion for van Gogh—and relaxes by painting abstractions."
While GEORGE
W. BUSH "takes a moderate stance on government
support and has a taste for American Western art."
ARTNews 10/00
-
THE
CHEAPENING OF APPLAUSE: "New
inductees into the world of performing arts can't seem
to differentiate between what is merely mediocre and what
is truly exceptional. This is can be seen clearly at the
end of every performance I have attended over the last
2 years. Every
performance, good, bad, or ugly received a standing ovation
from the audience. Every one. Ultimately, this cheapens
the performance."
*spark-online 10/00
DANCE
-
TOUGH
AS A LINEBACKER: New study says that the punishment
ballet dancers inflict on their bodies is comparable to
professional football players or wrestlers. "Ballet
is physically grueling and the fact that other dancers
are competing with them adds to the physical stress. They
often perform hurt and are afraid someone will take their
place. Many dancers have eating disorders and they lead
very, very stressful lives. The level of precision required
is comparable to that of an Olympic gymnast."
Chicago Tribune 10/13/00
-
PAUL
TAYLOR AND MERCE CUNNINGHAM: "One of these two
men is 'the world's greatest living choreographer'. Or
the other one is. They have both been called it, by rival
camps. They are the twin faces of contemporary dance:
the one experimental, abstract, visual; the other athletic,
emotional, musical. The followers of dance divide fiercely
on who is the master, with Taylor commanding delight from
those who find Cunningham abstruse, and the Cunninghamites
sometimes scorning Taylor for being too 'accessible'."
The Telegraph (London) 10/10/00
PLUS:
Bolshoi's
artistic director is fired ~ Atlanta
Ballet to produce a full-length version of "Gone
with the Wind." ~ Australian
Ballet has been losing dancers - is it time to panic?
MEDIA
-
WHY
ARE MOVIE PRODUCTIONS LEAVING HOLLYWOOD FOR OTHER COUNTRIES?
"These countries are offering an ever-growing list
of financial incentives to U.S. producers in an effort
to build their own production capacity and increase their
share of the worldwide production industry. There
is no "free market" at work here. Other countries,
recognizing the value of film and television production
to their future economic health, are virtually bribing
U.S. producers to make their films and TV series outside
the United States."
Los Angeles Times 10/09/00
-
WHY
BAD MOVIES GET MADE: What's wrong with Hollywood?
The stars. "What does it say of a culture that prominent
among its most rewarded are those born with high cheekbones
and capable of superficial imitation? This isn't to say,
of course, that there are not actors who work away at
the dramatic art as truly and as dedicatedly as any other
artist - but one could be forgiven for thinking they are
thin on the ground in Hollywood." Sydney
Morning Herald 10/10/00
- WHAT
MAKES A MOVIE AUDIENCE? Given the high stakes of making
movies, the movie-makers want to know what it is that makes
an audience willing to see movies. "Who is this audience,
and what kind of influence do they have on filmmaking? What
kind of influence should they have? Can the audience even
be considered 'the audience', as opposed to just lots of
people with widely diverging tastes?" Chicago
Tribune 10/15/00
PLUS:
Marshall
Mcluhan has been adopted as an icon of the new digital
age by the digerati ~ Movie
studios trying to avoid bad reviews are keeping critics
away from advance screenings ~ Toronto
mayor wants to build an enormous "film city"
production center to service Toronto's $1.2 billion movie
business ~ FCC
chairman slams American TV networks for dragging
their feet over getting into digital television and "ignoring
the public interest".
MUSIC
-
THE
HIGH COST OF BEING GOOD: The St. Louis Symphony has
achieved a great measure of artistic success. But its
bank balance seems to slip a bit further with each season.
"Over the last 17 or 18 years, the orchestra has
accumulated a potentially crippling deficit of $7 million.
(Its annual budget is now $26 million for the orchestra
itself with an additional $3 million for its music school.)"
New York
Times 10/15/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
-
ET
TU, SHOSTAKOVICH? In London, an attempt to discredit
Shostakovich. "The essence of the attack is that
Shostakovich is unfit to stand comparison with Beethoven,
and that placing them side by side merely emphasises Shostakovich's
shortcomings. But the campaign runs deeper than that,
for what is being claimed is that few of Shostakovich's
works are worth performing at all, and that recent attempts
to find coded anti-Stalinist messages in them - thereby
making them seem emotionally ambiguous and thus more 'interesting'
- are simply a waste of time."
The
Herald (Glasgow) 10/15/00
-
ART
OF BUILDING: "During the past decade, new American
performing arts facilities have been popping up like mushrooms
after a rain, but architecturally they've been a pusillanimous
lot. When not actively nostalgic, as in Fort Worth's Bass
Performance Hall, they've tended to favor a kind of buttoned-down
corporate look, as in Seattle's Benaroya Hall, or shopping-mall
lite, as in Fort Lauderdale's Broward Center and West
Palm Beach's Kravis Center." Dallas
Morning News 10/15/00
- Reviews of San Francisco Opera's
premiere of "Dead Man Walking:"
- HOW
TO SELL A NEW OPERA: "The puzzle of how to
produce a new opera that will not tank at the box office,
and that may even last as long as a Volvo (to borrow
a phrase from Leonard Cohen), has become a minor fixation
of opera companies all over North America, including
the San Francisco Opera, which on Saturday raised the
curtain on an adaptation of 'Dead Man Walking'. In many
ways, the opera is a textbook example of current received
wisdom on how to introduce new work into the deeply
conservative opera world."
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) 10/10/00
- "The
music is rich and emotionally charged,
betraying varied influences from Mussorgsky to Britten
and Ravel, and carries enormous atmospheric power."
The Guardian (London) 10/10/00
- "A
triumph beyond what even its most optimistic boosters
could have predicted. San Francisco
Chronicle 10/10/00
- "We
feel worse when we leave "Dead Man" because
misery has been hammered home with music, and a point
is made, unmusically." Orange
County Register 10/09/00
- "For
a first opera Heggie has done much right. His bitter-sweet
music puts him in the line of happy-to-please American
opera composers such as Menotti and Barber, which will
not delight hardline critics, but he knows how to tell
a story, how to hold the audience's interest and rouse
its emotions." Financial Times
10/10/00
- "This
retelling is really a shrewd, highly marketable product:
a love story with unlikely protagonists. It was composer
Jake Heggie's music and playwright Terrence McNally's
libretto, however, that accounted for its uproarious
success with the opening-night audience."
Atlanta Journal-Constitution 10/10/00
- "A
crowd pleaser created by artists who are also crowd
pleasers in all that they do."
Los Angeles Times 10/09/00
- Musically,
Heggie's 'Dead Man Walking' is an impressive piece of
work. Morally, it's a washout. Washington
Post 10/09/00
-
DEAD
OPERA, BALKING: San Francisco Opera premiered
its new opera "Dead Man Walking" this weekend.
"There is nothing musically offensive about 'Dead
Man Walking', but to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, there's
not much there there. The aesthetics of ingratiation
take an artist only so far, and this is subject matter
with far greater needs."
New York Times 10/09/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
"An
opera by a composer of great musical heart."
Boston
Herald 10/09/00
PLUS:
Canadian
Opera Company is promised $20 million to help the build
a new opera house in Toronto ~ Bank
in Singapore awards $250,000 to a young Singaporean violinist
to further her career ~ Is
Boston's Symphony Hall the best concert hall in America?
PEOPLE
-
RAGE
AGAINST THE DUMBING DOWN: For years, British composer
Harrison Birtwistle lived as a recluse on a remote French
hillside. Now, at 66, he's moved back to britain, with
some strong ideas about English culture. "I believe
we have in this country the best musicians in the world,
but we don't have the best orchestras because we don't
give them the money to rehearse. It's spread too thin.
So second-rate becomes good enough, and we don't know
the difference any more." The
Telegraph (London) 10/14/00
-
WORD
MACHINE: Stephen King is a writing industry. He writes
2,000 words a day and churns out a new book every three
months or so. "According to Forbes magazine, he makes
in excess of $50,000,000 a year (and I didn't accidentally
add a few zeros)."
The
Age (Melbourne) 10/10/00
PLUS:
Sidney
Yates the US Congress' champion of government funding
for the arts, died at age 91 ~ Keith
Jarrett's return to the concert hall after a debilitating
illness feeds his cult status.
PUBLISHING/LITERARY
- CHINESE
DISSIDENT WINS NOBEL: Gao Xingjian, an exiled dissident
author whose works are banned in his native China, won the
Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday - the first Chinese
to win the award in its 100-year history. Ottawa
Citizen (AP) 10/12/00
- BIG
NAMES FOR NATIONAL BOOK AWARD: The 20 nominees. Washington
Post 10/12/00
-
LITERARY
DETECTIVE: John Sutherland is a detective of literature.
He examines, "with forensic precision, neglected
details and apparent anomalies in classic novels and plays,"
wondering - was Heathcliff a murderer? Or, posing a full
evidenciary hearing about whether or not Shakespeare's
Henry V, was a war criminal? His books have become best
sellers. The Age (Melbourne)
10/14/00
-
THE
NEW NEW YORKER: Editor David Remnick says the magazine
is becoming more focused on New York, that it doesn't
yet make money but will someday, and that the New Yorker
will soon be available on the web. Inside.com
10/12/00
-
THE
60s IN POETRY: An upcoming academic conference on
poetry in the 1960s gives one of the first glimpses at
"how the academy - or at least the progressive/experimental
poetry wing of the academy - will be canonizing the period."
Accordingly of the 200 papers to be presented, "there
were 151 US poets in the 1960's who are now worthy of
study. Twenty-seven are the subjects of multiple papers."
Exquisite Corpse 10/00
THEATRE
-
THE
ART OF LISTENING: "Having problems hearing the
play these days? You are not alone. Directors of Canada's
larger theatres say their audiences increasingly complain
they just can't hear the actors speaking. Is it a case
of collective deafness? Are modern theatres poorly designed
for acoustics? Have actors lost the art of projecting
a whisper back to the rear balcony? Or have theatregoers
lost the art of listening?"
The Globe and Mail 10/12/00
-
HOW
THE WEB IS CHANGING THEATRE: Theatre productions heading
to Broadway used to be able to open quietly out of town
and work the kinks out. No longer. The web has changed
it all. "This torrent of gossip, news, amusing tidbits,
and reviews - most of them unfiltered, unverifiable, and
true - in chat rooms and on bulletin boards at sites such
as playbill.com, broadway.com, and talkinbroadway.com,
is throwing producers and the reporters covering them
for a loop. Why? For the same reason the Web has turned
every other industry inside out: It's democratized something
that used to be the exclusive purview of an entrenched
elite, and the entrenched elite ain't happy."
New York Magazine 10/09/00
-
CREATING
A NEW MUSICAL THEATRE: "While many on the West
Coast see Broadway as a monolithic entity 3,000 miles
away, "Broadway" is really about the people
who create the shows - and it's those creators who came
to Los Angeles at their own expense because they wanted
to be part of this conference. Their presence wasn't simply
to share anecdotes and professional expertise, but to
stimulate West Coast musical theater writers and encourage
us to keep creating new shows."
Los Angeles Times 10/09/00
PLUS:
London's
National Theatre boss Trevor Nunn is under fire for the
way he's running the company ~ Elton
John "Aida" is a surprising hit of Broadway
despite bad critical reception ~ Broadway
producer Jujamcyn ordered by arbitrator to pay hundreds
of thousands of dollars in back royalties to choreographers
and directors ~ Is
Jeffrey Hatcher America's Most Prolific Playwright?
VISUAL
ARTS
-
SEATTLE
ART MUSEUM SETTLES CLAIMS: The Seattle Art Museum
has settled with New York's Knoedler Gallery over a Matisse
stolen by the Nazis, and sold by Knoedler to collectors
who later donated it to the museum (follow all that?).
The Seattle Museum sued Knoedler after returning the painting
to heirs of the original owner. "We can't specify
a dollar amount but we are being reimbursed for our legal
fees, research and travel costs as well as the loss of
the painting." That will include the museum choosing
a piece of artwork from Knoedler's collection.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 10/13/00
-
WHAT'S
WITH ALL THIS TEPID NEW PUBLIC ART? "The distinctions
that have been made between art in architecture, art as
decoration, outdoor sculpture and public art still have
not fully entered the consciousness of the visual-art
community. Many find it easier to blame local authorities
for their highly compromised, so-called public art schemes,
but perhaps it is time to point the finger closer to home."
Sunday
Times (London) 10/15/00
-
SHOULD
ALL ARTWORK BE RETURNED?
At a time when returning cultural artifacts to their countries
of origin has become a goal, "the most distinguished
specialist on Nigerian antiquities
is now urging that looted and stolen artifacts should
no longer be returned to Nigeria, because of endemic corruption
in the country." The
Art Newspaper 10/12/00
-
A
TRUST BETRAYED? When Rev. William Wolcott died in
1911 he donated his art collection - including a Monet
and two Pissarros - to Boston's Museum of Fine Art. Though
three of the paintings have been on continuous display
in the museum ever since, much of the rest of the collection
has lived in storage. So the trustees of Wolcott's trust
sued the museum to get the paintings back so they could
sell them and establish education projects in Wolcott's
home town. Yesterday a judge said no.
Boston Herald 10/12/00
-
SHOCK
OF THE SAME OLD SAME OLD: A new book charges that
the contemporary art world has become far too narrow-minded.
"Shock art is the safest kind of art that an artist
can go into the business of making today. The real mavericks
of our time have been working quietly and carefully for
years in their studios producing wonderful work few people
have seen. And that even though the NEA is not the cause
of the various ills we've seen, it is to a great degree
an embodiment of the problem." Salon
10/12/00
-
HOW
I SNOOKERED SOTHEBY'S: Michel Van Rijn, infamous art
dealer, smuggler, and author is full of stories about
his dealings with the auction house, including a claim
he faked artwork that Sotheby's then sold. Are the stories
true? Who knows, but they're entertaining reading.
ARTNewsroom.com 10/11/00
PLUS:
A
previously-unknown 500-year-old Michelangelo drawing valued
at up to £8 million is discovered during a routine insurance
visit to an estate in North Yorkshire ~ Pompeii
gets a $5 million lighting project, and the city's stone amphitheaters
will once again host performances ~ Stolen
paintings believed to be by Picasso are recovered in Turkey
~ Many
of Russia's 90,000 official architectural landmarks are
in danger of extinction ~ Ontario's
McMichael Gallery is about to be forced to return control
of its collection over to the original founders by government
order ~ New
Technologies are putting
JUST
FOR FUN
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