Week
of May 5-11, 2001
1.
Special Interest
2. Dance
3. Media
4. Music
5. People
6. Publishing
7. Theatre
8. Visual Arts
9. Arts Issues
10. For Fun
AJ
EXTRA
IN-COUNTRY
- THE BATTLE FOR NATIONAL CULTURES: Canadian support for their
own culture may seem impressive from the outside, but take away
the loaded deck and what's left? Are cultural subsidies the only
way to preserve national cultures? ArtsJournal.com
05/09/01
1.
SPECIAL INTERESThttp://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#specialinterest
PAID
REVIEWS: Only about 10 percent of the some 70,000 books published
annually are ever reviewed professionally. So now you can buy
one. "Any publisher or author can buy a review through a
website for $295. Included in the price is the right to print
the review in any marketing or publicity effort, lifetime archival
of the review on-site, and distribution to numerous licensees."
Wired 05/09/01
WRONG
TURN IN ART? Is modern art a sort of intellectual mistake?
A French philosopher argues we've made a wrong turn. "In
the case of modern art, one of the fundamental villains is the
same as one who has been fingered - by the philosopher Karl Popper
- in the matter of Marxism. The guilty man was Plato, who held
that everyday, visible items such as chairs and people are merely
inadequate derivatives of the 'real', abstract concepts of furniture
and folks." The Telegraph (UK)
05/05/01
GOING
CORPORATE: Art school graduates are finding themselves increasingly
in demand, and not just in the waitering trade. "In a field
once stigmatized as impractical, graduates in fine arts, communication
design, photography, animation and interior design no longer have
to worry about life as a 'starving artist.'" Detroit
Free Press 05/09/01
PROTECTING
NATIONAL CULTURES: France has asked Canada to join in "the
battle against the homogenizing of national cultures. The idea
is that Canada, along with other G7 nations and the countries
of the European Union, will move closer to the strict rules which
France has already adopted to protect its film, television and
book industries against U.S. pop culture. Proud France has realized
that it can't win the fight alone." The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/05/01
2.
DANCEhttp://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#dance
THARP
PULLS OUT: Choreographer Twyla Tharp had announced she would
be starting a company again and taking a studio home in Brooklyn's
new $560 million cultural district now under construction. But
late last week Tharp abruptly pulled out of the project.
The New York Times 05/09/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
HOPE
OF A GENERATION: Christopher Wheeldon a British-born graduate
of the Royal Ballet School in London is considered one of the
dance world's "great young hopes, an interpretive artist
with a sense of both theatricality and history. 'No ballet choreographer
of his generation can match his imaginative use of the classical
vocabulary'." The New York Times 05/10/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
WE'RE
ENGLISH, WE DON'T DANCE: Why are there so few good English
dancers? Is it inadequate training? "Derek Deane, the outgoing
artistic director of English National Ballet, notoriously complained
that British girls are 'too bummy and too titty' to make the grade
with ENB. Among the company's 13 principals and senior soloists,
only three are British." The Independent (UK) 05/06/01
THOROUGHLY
MODERN MIKHAIL: Mikhail Baryshnikov was supposed to be the
last, best hope for the future of classical ballet, and he made
his mark as a master of the old form. So when he quit his post
as head of the American Ballet Theater in 1989, some thought he
would simply fade away. More than a decade later, however, Baryshnikov
is still going strong as one of the world's foremost promoters
and creators of modern dance. Philadelphia
Inquirer 05/06/01
3.
MEDIAhttp://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#media
A
NEW DIRECTION: In movies, the director is everything. Not
so TV, where, in the early days, directors were hired "more
for their ability to handle the newfangled equipment than for
creativity. Interesting directors did venture into live television
but... speed generally was valued over artistry." Now, things
are changing, dramatically. Washington
Times 05/09/01
AGAINST
ALL ODDS: It's hard enough to make a movie and get it noticed
when you live in a bustling film town like L.A. or Toronto. But
let's say you live somewhere north of the Arctic circle in Canada,
deep in Inuit territory, and you'd like the Cannes Film Festival
to screen your creation. You'd better have a ten-year plan...
Ottawa Citizen 05/11/01
HOLDING
OUT HOPE: The head of the Screen Actors Guild isn't giving
up on a strike-free summer just yet, but tough issues remain unresolved.
"One of SAG's chief concerns going into the talks is the
plight of the so-called 'middle-class' actor - working actors
who in recent years have fallen on hard times due to a phenomena
known as 'salary compression.'" Inside.com
05/10/01
GUILD
TO VOTE ON CONTRACT: "The heads of the Hollywood writers
union agreed last Tuesday to forward a tentative contract settlement
to the guild's nearly 11,000 members to vote on by June 4. The
guild requires a simple majority of votes to certify the three-year
pact, which negotiators recommended on Friday after a series of
marathon bargaining sessions." Nando
Times (AP) 05/10/01
CANNES
DO: The Cannes Film Festival opens, this year with a distinctly
arty non-Hollywood tone."The official selection includes
22 films in competition and 24 in the non-competitive section,
Un Certain Regard, which is, this year, a roll-call of unfamiliar
names." Sydney Morning Herald
05/09/01
COMING
SOON, SMART AND SMARTER? It used to be that independent
filmmakers could trade on the business of being smart, edgy and
challenging. "But 'too smart', like 'arty', has entered the
film industry lexicon as a pejorative description," and the
indies have started acting like the more conservative commercially-motivated
studios. But the new cult-hit smart thriller Memento is
finding an audience, and making money - so.... Los
Angeles Times 05/07/01
THE
ARTE OF TV: America has no similar TV channel devoted to culture.
But Arte, the German-French culture channel, turned 10 last week.
It has risen from its initial underdog status to become a luminous
figure on Europe's media landscape and now - having survived labor
pains and sundry attacks on its young life - it is at another
crossroads." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 05/06/01
VIRTUAL
SUPERSTARS: Ever since movie technology started to become
truly impressive, producers have used it primarily to distract
viewers from either the lack of a coherent plot line or the inability
of certain leading actors to, well, act. But a new wave of computer-animated
films aims to use technology to create frighteningly accurate
virtual facsimiles of the famous actors behind the characters'
voices. Boston Globe 05/06/01
4.
MUSIC http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#music
DEATH
OF AN INSTRUMENT? "The symphony orchestra is no longer
available to composers as an instrument of change. As a result,
much of today's most exciting music is not being created for it.
It's not that composers have lost interest in the orchestra. It's
just become prohibitively expensive." NewMusicBox
05/01
WHO'S
IN CHARGE HERE? The final artistic authority in virtually
every modern orchestra belongs to the music director, or principal
conductor. Musicians, who are likely to spend many more years
in service to their ensemble than any music director, are expected
to defer in every way to the man with the baton. But why? A musician
and union chief explores some alternative possibilities. Harmony
04/01 (PDF file - Adobe Reader required)
THE
WAR ON PIRATES: The Recording Industry Association of America
says 1.7 million pirate CDs were seized in 2000 - up 79% over
the year before. This is not a victory however, but more a sign
of the proliferation of illegal recordings. "Don't think
you're going to stop it as long as there's demand and money to
be made.'' BBC 05/11/01
NOT
GOOD ENOUGH: Violinist Nigel Kennedy has declared a holy war
on the practices of English orchestras. They offer one rehearsal
of a concerto before performance, clearly not enough to explore
an interpretation in any detail. "I don't think I am going
to play in London with an orchestra until I can be assured that
I'm getting adequate rehearsal." The
Telegraph (UK) 05/09/01
WHEN
CRITICS KILL MUSIC: Has rock music died? No, but "a new
class of music writers is on the rise - call them the rock curmudgeons.
Call them dangerous." Thay've stopped listening to rock -
and it shows. Chronicle of Higher
Education 05/07/01
LIVING
WITH MUSIC: Why is it that many art lovers' taste in contemporary
visual art is so much more developed than their sense of contemporary
music? Michale Tilson Thomas and Frank Oteri wonder if contemporary
music is just a more in-your-face experience. NewMusicBox
05/01
SPEAKING
OF FESTIVALS, the Times is out with its annual list of the
best (and all the rest) of North America's summer classical music
festivals. Organized by state. The New York Times 05/06/01
(one-time registration required
for access)
BIZET
IN DA HOUSE, YO! This week, MTV is presenting Carmen in
hip-hop form. Despite the network's over-stylized editing, this
updated (and, truth be told, barely recognizable) retelling of
Bizet's classic is the first ever attempt to draw the pop culture-saturated
youth market into the world of opera, and if it achieves even
a tenth of what recent Shakespeare "updates" have, the
opera world may yet be grateful for the effort. Philadelphia
Inquirer 05/06/01
- OPERA
MAY NOT NEED HELP: "Opera today is perceived as a luscious
stew abounding in appealing ingredients. People of virtually
all ages are flocking to opera houses to experience this sensory
explosion... The NEA found that the largest age group was 25
to 45, while the number of 18-to-24-year-olds grew by 18 percent
over the previous decade." The
Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 05/06/01
PLUS:
EARLY
MUSIC MUFFLED: The biggest early music organization in New York
is shutting down. The five-year-old Gotham Early Music Foundation
had suffered huge financial losses even as it brought many of the
world's top performers to New York venues. Andante
05/11/01CONDUCTOR
OF THE YEAR: Pierre Boulez has been named "conductor of
the year" at the annual Royal Philharmonic Society awards in
London. BBC 05/09/01SINGING
THE PRAISES OF NEW MUSIC: Getting tradition-bound classical
musicians to embrace new music can be like pulling teeth. But choruses
have been welcoming new works with open arms, and composers are
willing to take less money in exchange for better attitudes and
more artistic freedom. Philadelphia Inquirer 05/10/01
5.
PEOPLE http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#people
A
CARFUL OF FLOWERS WILL DO THAT FOR YOU: Ismail Merchant is
the salesman half of the Merchant-Ivory team, which has made such
movies as Room With A View and Remains of the Day.
As a boy, he once went to a movie with an actress: "We arrived
at the theater surrounded by people. And they were throwing marigolds
on us. And we were submerged in flowers - actually submerged.
I said, 'My God, if you're making a movie, you're submerged in
flowers!'" He's been hooked ever since. Nando
Times 05/08/01
CALLAS,
THE TEEN YEARS: Given her turbulent childhood and neurotic
upbringing, it's a wonder Maria Callas ever had a career, let
alone one that lasted as long as it did. A new 670-page biography
traces the Diva from age 14 to 22. The
Times (UK) 05/08/01
THE
POET AND THE PEAT: Seamus Heaney could be a character in any
one of a dozen stock Irish working-class plays. A son of the land,
called to highbrow undertakings by an artistic power he cannot
explain, Heaney is best known these days for winning the Pulitzer
Prize last year for his new translation of Beowulf. But
his own poetry has been called the most profound stuff being written
in the English language today. Dallas
Morning News 05/06/01
MORRIS
GRAVES, 90: Artist Morris Graves, a founding member of the
Northwest School of art and the last of the Northwest Mystics,
has died at the age of 90 in Northern California. New
Jersey Online 05/06/01
6.
PUBLISHING http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#publishing
CAN'T
HANG ON TO THEM: Amazon claims 32 million customers. But is
it true? An analyst says the company is losing customers fast.
"Amazon lost 2.3 million customers in the quarter ended March
31, while adding 3 million first-time shoppers." Bookwire
(USAToday) 05/09/01
BUYOUT:
So now a website is offering authors the opportunity to buy
reviews. What's the point, wonders Alex Good. "Whether
a book that does get a paid review will be any better off is
doubtful. With all of the stigma that attaches to self-publishing
and e-publishing, one can imagine an even more negative response
to this kind of reviewing, with its obvious violation of canons
of objectivity." And do reviews make a difference, anyway?
GoodReports 05/10/01
AIM
FOR THE CENTER: "A society in which literature has been
relegated - like some hidden vice - to the margins of social and
personal life, and transformed into something like a sectarian
cult, is a society condemned to become spiritually barbaric, and
even to jeopardize its freedom. I wish to offer a few arguments
against the idea of literature as a luxury pastime."
The New Republic 05/08/01
THE
WIND IS MISERABLES? "Call it parody, plagiarism
or sequelization, once-upon-a-time-one-more-time is the idea for
a spate of recent books. Of course, literary borrowing isn't exactly
new - Aeschylus borrowed from Homer; Shakespeare borrowed many
plots." Los Angeles Times 05/07/01
THE
DOWNSIDE OF THE e-SLUSH PILE? Electronic publishing has held
out the promise that authors can more easily get their work out
to an audience. But "there has been a surprising backlash
against writers being able to make their work so readily available.
Many voices have been raised, saying that all this is a bad thing.
A very bad thing." Is it? Complete
Review 05/01
THE
RETURN OF SHORT STORIES? Why aren't more short stories published?
Publishers are convinced that short fiction, like poetry, is a
refined form that is, "essentially, too snooty to attract
a large audience, and they're not going to publish any more of
the stuff than is absolutely necessary to give one of their writers
or themselves the faintest of literary veneers."
Nonetheless, are there are signs of a possible revival? Mobylives.com
05/07/01
LITTLE
THINGS MATTER: Why are newspapers cutting their books sections?
"Information about books is hard to come by. If one knows
exactly what one is looking for, then of course it is fairly easy.
But one of the great things about book review sections and magazines
is that one comes across information about titles one never knew
existed, or titles one had not considered in the proper light."
The Complete Review 05/01
A
BOOK IS A BOOK OF COURSE OF COURSE: Random House is suing
e-publisher RosettaBooks for publishing electronic versions of
books Random had previously published. The original contracts
assigned "book rights" to Random. So do electrons constitute
a book? Some heavy definitions are in order... Inside.com
05/09/01
7.
THEATRE http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#theatre
ALL
DC's A STAGE: Time was (and not all that long ago) that Washington
DC was a cultural backwater. Then came the fabulous museums and
the Kennedy Center. But somewhere along the way, a thriving theatre
scene got going. The city now boasts 80 theaters staging 300-plus
productions a year. Christian Science
Monitor 05/11/01
LETTING
IT ALL HANG OUT: Nudity is so often used on stage these days,
one wonders if it makes any impact. "Nudity, like any other
element of theater, can be used well or badly, or even perniciously.
If its used boldly, creatively and sensitively, it can make us
think and feel, as well as look. Otherwise it will prove merely
meretricious, sleazy or boring." LA
Weekly 05/11/01
THE
LIVING THEATRE: Audiences and tastes keep changing, why not
theatres? Seriously - why must a theatre built for one purpose
stay the same even when time has passed? Shouldn't the interiors
of theatres be made to change with the times? The
Guardian (UK) 05/09/01
RUNAWAY
HIT: The Producers wins 15 Tony nominations,
tying the record for most nominations for a single show. Here's
the list of nominees. Theatre.com
05/08/01
- RESISTANCE
IS FUTILE: "[T]his year The Producers is going
to sweep just about every Tony Award in sight. No clever ad
campaign is going to change that... Instead, smart theater people
say, the producers of the also-rans should use their ad dollars
to target mainstream theatergoers, not Tony voters."
New York Post 05/08/01
THE
NEW MUSICALS: Is it a new era for American musicals? There
are lots of new projects and the new genre has become a hit. "But
does quantity also indicate quality? Or are we simply witnessing
a rat race toward the lowest common commercial denominator? Does
the new work stack up against the great American classics of the
20th century?" Backstage 05/07/01
THEATRE
THAT PAYS: Why shouldn't London's National Theatre produce
popular musicals? And if they have a commercial afterlife, so
much the better, says producer Cameron Mackintosh. As for the
some £600,000 a year National director Trevor Nunn stands to make
for directing My Fair Lady - "Why Not? He's done an
incredibly talented piece of work." The
Telegraph (UK) 05/08/01
8.
VISUAL ARTS http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#visualarts
TATE
IS TOPS: The Tate Modern is celebrating its first birthday,
and the attendance numbers tell quite a success story. Some 5.25
million visitors crammed into the fledgling museum in the last
year, nearly twice the number officials expected. The blockbuster
year makes the Tate the most popular modern art museum in the
world. BBC 05/11/01
LET
IT ALL HANG OUT: The typical museum only has a fraction of
its collection on display at any one time. That's changing though
- "In the last decade the idea of letting the public roam
freely through what a library would call open stacks, and what
some museums have called open study centers, has been winning
converts among major museums." The
New York Times 05/08/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
- SOLVING
THE SPACE CRUNCH: More and more, museums and the trustees
who love them seem to be concerned about the amount of artwork
locked away in storage. So now come calls in Edinburgh to build
a new museum to house some of the 90 percent of objects in storage
at the National Museum. The Scotsman
05/10/01
DEFINING
MODERNISM: "The definition of modernism seems to be inseparable
from its genealogy: Where and how did it originate? Who were its
progenitors and who are its legitimate heirs? The formation of
early collections of modern art in the United States helped to
validate and thereby shape the historical perspective through
which American modernism has been assessed." American
Art 05/01
BETWEEN
LAW AND DIPLOMACY: Germany
has yet to fully untangle its responsibilities and claims for
art looted by the Nazis. But resolving conflicting claims will
take something between the law and good diplomacy. So why'd it
take so long? Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung 05/09/01
SORTING
OUT THE DESIGNS: Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art is choosing
a design for its new building. The finalists' designs are controversial,
and now the museum has released details of the designs it rejected.
Sydney Morning Herald 05/08/01
- WHAT
WENT WRONG: So what's wrong with the designs that didn't
make the cut? Sydney Morning Herald
05/08/01
WAR
RESTORATIONS: Negotiations between Russia and Germany for
the return of artwork the Soviets took from Germany during their
occupation after World War II have become more heated and difficult.
One old-style Russian diplomat says: "the atrocities committed
by German aggressors on Russian soil automatically disqualified
Germany from any form of legal redress."
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 05/06/01
THE
POLITICS OF INDICTMENTS: It took a long time for prosecutors
to finally indict execs at Christie's and Sotheby's in the price
fixing investigations. I think that prosecutors generally felt
that art was a corrupt business, that there were a lot of things
going on that were not appropriate: tax evasion schemes, smuggling,
all kinds of stuff. Now they have made it a price-fixing case.
The Art Newspaper 05/04/01
MORE
PROBLEMS AT THE V&A: "The architect behind the Victoria
and Albert Museum's controversial spiral extension, costing £80m,
has been asked to reduce the cost of the project. German architect
Daniel Libeskind has been told the extension is not top priority,
and that it may be delayed while other work is done." BBC
05/06/01
9.
ISSUES http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#issues
BEIJING
CRACKDOWN: China has issued new regulations governing what is
and is not permissible for the republic's artists. Any work deemed
"bloody, violent, or erotic" by Chinese censors could
result in a lengthy jail term for the artist who creates it. BBC
05/10/01
POLITICAL
PUZZLE: Hollywood loved Bill Clinton and Al Gore and gave
Gore much money for his campaign. In return Gore attacked Hollywood
for its portrayal of violence. By contrast, though Hollywood doesn't
like Bush and doesn't support him, Bush has refrained from taking
up a moralistic tone against the entertainment industry, even
when his staunchest supporters would like him to. Los
Angeles Times 05/06/01
FRANCHISING
FOR FUN AND PROFIT: From the Guggenheim to the Bolshoi, arts
groups are cloning or "franchising" their brands to
grow their influence (and get cash). The
Age (Melbourne) 04/09/
SMITHSONIAN
FUROR ABATES, SOMEWHAT: The new head of the Smithsonian provoked
a flurry of complaints when he announced plans to shut down some
parts of the vast institution. Those complaints - from his staff,
from independent scientists, and from the public - worked. The
shut-down plans have been scrapped, at least for now. Washington
Post 05/07/01
10.
FOR FUN http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#forfun
A
DIFFERENT DANCE: Two weeks ago they were stars of Macedonia's
National Ballet. But the company's dancers have been drafted into
the country's war effort, helping to sell arms. "They find
themselves clutching 9mm handguns, dressed in jumpsuits and camouflage
paint as they encourage buyers at the Skopje arms fair."
The Telegraph (UK) 05/11/01
STUNG:
It was supposed to be a concert by Sting in front of the Great
Pyramids. Add an Egyptian opening act, and it could have been
one of those "occasion" events. Instead, it turned into
a fiasco, a national incident, with wounded Egyptian pride and
angry accusations all around. Los
Angeles Times 05/06/01
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