IDEAS
http://www.artsjournal.com/ideas
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The Age Of Irony Is Post-Modernism dead? No - it's deeply embedded in popular culture. "The increasing influence of postmodernism on pop culture is born of our overfamiliarity with the tricks of conventional storytelling, according to Poe. We now have generations growing from infancy bombarded by TV and film that employ narrative conventions. What used to be necessary storytelling devices - a recognizable chronology, character development, emotional identification with characters and situations - are becoming clichés. Fans of postmodernism think of themselves as too educated and too smart to fall for those clichés. Postmodernism is ironic; it's always winking at the audience and making them part of the game, enlisting them as co-conspirators." Orange County Register (KC Star) 02/09/03
Trouble Remembering? The idea of erecting monuments has seemed so old-fashioned for a long time. "The view that memory is an impediment to modernity has been widely shared by architects, artists, and theorists. The obsolescence of the monument became almost an axiom of the modernist creed. But sometimes aesthetic theory and artistic fashion must yield before the harshness of lived history. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial began to change the prevailing opinion that the monument is dead, not least because it availed itself of a modernist vocabulary to accomplish its commemoration." The New Republic 02/03/03
A Virtual Culture Online (And It's Evolving) More than 500,000 people are paying $13 a month to participate in a virtual world role-playing game. They choose characters and interact with other players. An interesting thing has happened - a culture is evolving in the game, an economy is being built, and the complexity of the game system is such that anything a player does impacts others. "The intriguing part is that most players expand their assets and abilities not through violence or chicanery, the modus operandi of a typical single-player computer game, but through virtual market transactions." Economists are fascinated... Slate 02/05/03
A Mechanical Duck That Pooped Inventors have been trying since forever to create mechanical devices that move or act like live beings. "The eighteenth century was 'the golden age of the philosophical toy,' and its most celebrated engineer was Jacques de Vaucanson. For Vaucanson, recreating life meant imitating its processes and movements — most famously, its bowel movements. While he entertained audiences with automata that played the flute and the organ, his most celebrated invention was a copper duck that realistically 'gulped' food through a flexible neck and then excreted it on a silver platter. First displayed in 1739, the duck caused a sensation." New York Review of Books 02/14/03
Bloomsbury? What Did They Ever Do For Us? "Bloomsbury, the fragile but oddly resilient cargo of intellectuals, art theorists, novelists and wife-swappers who between them exerted such a sinewy grasp on early to mid-century English culture, represents perhaps the most desperate example yet of the reading public's tendency to admire literary people for non-literary reasons, for personality and peculiarity rather than what exists on the page. Look at what Bloomsbury achieved, in terms of books written and ideas entertained, and with a few marked exceptions (Woolf's The Common Reader, Strachey's Queen Victoria) the trophy cabinet is conspicuously bare." The Independent (UK) 02/02/03
ARTS ISSUES
http://www.artsjournal.com/artsissues
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No More Money - So Deal With It, Says Culture Minister Despite harsh public criticism in the past few weeks, the Scottish culture minister says there will be no injection of cash to help the arts. Nor will there be a bailout of the Scottish Opera, which is in dire financial condiction. And what of the National Theatre plan? That, says the minister, will still go ahead, and he hopes to attend first performances there while he is still in government. But with a static arts budget, observers are skeptical. The Scotsman 02/09/03
Critical Disconnect It seems like critics are more out of step with audiences than they have been in a long time. Critics' favorite movies aren't the big box office hits. Reality TV has captured viewers' hearts, but not the critics. And pop music critics consistently pick albums and artists that don't sell well. "So what gives? Should critics really worry about staying in sync with the masses? Should they start grading on a curve?" Hartford Courant 02/07/03
Censorship Or Convenience? Pablo Picasso's striking anti-war painting 'Guernica' hangs at the United Nations in New York, a sobering tapestry greeting visitors to the offices of the U.N. Security Council. But yesterday, as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to the Security Council, 'Guernica' was nowhere to be seen, concealed behind a blue curtain and a row of flags. The U.N. insists that the cover-up was in reponse to the needs of television cameras, but Peter Goddard reports that it "may have been prompted by U.N. realization that images of the mural's vivid anti-war message were televised world-wide when it appeared as a backdrop to the Jan. 27 interim report by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix." Toronto Star 02/06/03
The Arts Of Protest Increasingly, artists seem to be speaking up about politics and the looming war with Iraq. "I don't think it's an accident that in totalitarian societies they always arrest the artists first, though we don't seem particularly dangerous. I think the responsibility of the artist, each of us in our way, is to tell the truth. And the truth generally involves a great deal of ambiguity, and in times of war ambiguity and paradox are the first things to go. People want simple black and white answers." The New York Times 02/06/03
Arizona Also To Zero Out Arts Funding? American state governments are going after arts funding with a vengeance. "In Arizona, where the state Commission on the Arts has received $5.1 million in each of the last two years, a joint legislative committee on Jan. 27 proposed zeroing out that spending in 2003-04. The committee also proposed emptying the state's $7-million arts endowment and spending the money elsewhere." Los Angeles Times 02/05/03
New Jersey Arts Groups Brace For Cuts Cultural leaders are predicting that if New Jersey eliminates all its arts funding, as threatened, that 100 cultural organizations could fold. Arts groups would have to slash programs, and many would take a decade to recover. "The 20 to 30 arts leaders who sat through the half-hour meeting told the governor that the impact would go beyond quality-of-life issues." Studies have shown that the arts annually generates $1 billion in economic activity in New Jersey. Philadelphia Inquirer 02/05/03
Thinking Big In Toronto "The Toronto Arts Council yesterday unveiled an ambitious, 10-year program designed to raise the level of awareness of the arts in Toronto and, more important, to put the city's struggling arts organizations on a more financially stable keel." A recent study revealed that there is a gap of almost CAN$45 million between what arts groups in the city have, and what they need to function. The new program will create an ambitious and large-scale fundraising structure which will hopefully close that gap by 2012, if all goes according to plan. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 02/05/03
That's Why They're Called "Non-Profit," Isn't It? Everyone knows that the American economy is in the tank, and that such times call for belt-tightening all around, particularly at non-profits. But John van Rhein is frustrated by the recent slew of defeatist cost-cutting measures at arts institutions across the country. "Arts groups get into trouble once they allow their marketing departments to shape their artistic programs. To pull back and stop taking calculated risks can only be counterproductive in the long run." Chicago Tribune 02/05/03
Another "Cultural Strategy"...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah... This week, London's mayor Ken Livingston delivered a proposal for the city's "cultural strategy." And.... "I spent a dreary weekend ploughing through 'London: Cultural Capital's' 170-odd pages, all of them replete with the cliches of the current culturespeak. Meaningless pleas for excellence, creativity and access abound. Innocent trees have been felled to provide the paper on which Ken laboriously explains how he wants London to be green and prosperous, and its cultural diversity to be respected. The art of stating the bleeding obvious lives on in strategies and this one is jumping with it. Beyond the waffle, what is proposed?" The Telegraph (UK) 02/05/03
The Right Celebrity To Impress (Even At Covent Garden) Frank Johnson goes to the ballet at Covent Garden and is amused at the buzz generated by a pair of celebrities in the audience. "It is not easy for people from popular culture to impress, amuse or interest people gathered for purposes of high culture. They must make us pleased that they share our pleasures or are taking the trouble to try them. Celebrity is not the same as fame. Posh and Becks are celebrities. So is — to choose just another example from popular culture — Sir Elton John. Miss Hurley, say, is just famous. Her presence at Covent Garden would interest, but not fascinate or delight, us." The Spectator 01/18/03
New Jersey Governor Proposes Elimination Of All State Arts Funding New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey has proposed elimination of the state's entire spending on the arts - $31.7 million in cultural funding in next year's budget. Cuts include "all $18 million from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts budget, as well as $3.7 million from the historical commission and the next $10 million installment for the New Jersey Cultural Trust, a public-private partnership meant to stabilize struggling cultural groups." Cultural groups are stunned: "We went to our own funeral today. We understand the fiscal crisis facing New Jersey. What we don't understand or accept is why we are being singled out (and) ... eliminated." Newark Star-Ledger 02/04/03
In Zimbabwe - A Crackdown On Artists "The arts in Zimbabwe are struggling for air in an even more repressive atmosphere than anything experienced in South Africa. 'It's well past censorship. It's rule of fear. It's total control'." The Telegraph (UK) 02/04/03
Bush Delivers Arts Budget Proposals President George Bush delivers his funding requests for the arts to Congress. "The president followed through on his support for improving Americans' knowledge of the country's history by proposing $25 million for a humanities endowment initiative called "We the People." The president is concerned about our lack of understanding ourselves, our historical amnesia. By contrast, funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that would help television and radio stations make the transition to digital transmission, supported in the past by President Bush, were eliminated in the new budget request." Washington Post 02/04/03
Missouri To Discontinue Arts Funding? Missouri Gov. Bob Holden's proposes to eliminate funding for the state arts council, which "distributed as much as $5 million in the flush year 2001 to organizations as varied as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra to the family folk festival in St. Joseph, Mo. Holden proposes that the council pay for arts programs by dipping into the Missouri Cultural Trust, a state savings account that matches private donations with public money." St. Louis Post-Dispatch 02/02/03
Starving Scotland's Culture There's a cultural crisis in Scotland. Funding for culture is down, and there seems to be little commitment on the part of the government to make culture a priority. "The Executive responds by arguing that it needs to concentrate on health and education. The urge to fund anything cultural has been sapped by the overspend on the parliament building, heralding in an almost Covenanter-like distrust of frivolity." Scottish arts are healthy now. But does the Scottish Executive plan to "starve Scotland back into the cultural night that preceded the Act of Union - and what an irony that would be." The Observer (UK) 02/02/03
Out From Behind The Curtain - A Russian Export When Boris Eifman started his dance company in 1977, he was spurned by Soviet authorities. " 'Back then, the authorities looked on me as a pornographer, not a choreographer.' His crime was not to dissent from Soviet politics, but to choreograph in a style that challenged the orthodoxies of Soviet ballet. Today, Eifman Ballet Theatre is one of Russia's prime cultural exports, and Eifman, its 56-year-old director, cuts an engaging ambassadorial figure." The Guardian (UK) 02/06/03
Ballet San Jose To Stay Open, For The Moment "Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley -- which just Monday told a city panel that it might close by week's end without an emergency $100,000 grant -- on Tuesday said it could stay in business because it raised some of the money in pledges within the past 24 hours, Executive Director Andrew Bales said. Even if Bales is able to make payroll for now, it's unclear how the ballet will solve its underlying funding problems. Last year, the ballet had to be rescued by four board members who came up with $2 million in donations. And it remains unknown what would happen if projected ticket sales fail to materialize." San Jose Mercury News 02/05/03
Martha Graham - Back From Hibernation So had the Martha Graham Company survived its time away from the stage? "The good news is that the tremendous effort that’s gone into keeping the company together and bringing it to this level of performance has paid off: This is not yet great Graham, but it’s intelligent, ambitious and often satisfying. There’s a platoon of young dancers devoted to what they’re doing; you can see it in the expressive and energized corps. In certain works — Dark Meadow, for one — the corps is now the strongest element. But then the famous Dark Meadow, with its step-right-up-and-stroke-me phallic impedimenta, is looking dated these days." New York Observer 02/05/03
Men Of Dance - Busting One Stereotype For Another A documentary about four star male dancers at American Ballet Theatre tries hard to portray them as normal guys. Too hard. Obviously the documentary-maker wants to bust stereotypes of male dancers being sissies. But to hear everyone tell it in tonight's broadcast, dancing is just a guy's thing. For example, "Ethan Stiefel likes to ride a motorcycle and what chiefly attracted him to ballet, he says, is the opportunity to place his hands on women's bodies. No, no, no. Believe it or not, men in tights are drawn to ballet by a calling, a compulsion toward artistic endeavor and yes, ambition." The New York Times 02/03/03
Two American Performers' Unions Talk Merger The two major American performers unions have taken the first step in merging to form a new union. "At a joint meeting, the national boards of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists on Saturday approved principles of consolidation that are the first step in forming a new union. Supporters said consolidation would maximize their strength and resolve jurisdiction fights, such as who represents actors in digital productions." Nando Times (AP) 02/09/03
What's Wrong With Canadian Filmmaking? Producer Ivan Reitman has some ideas. "The Canadian producer has been trained and encouraged to focus on qualifying for a range of content rules and points set by an ever-changing platoon of politicians and bureaucrats. Unfortunately, this intense focus on technical criteria sometimes means that creating films for the real world is ignored. The audience is forgotten. Navigating the minutiae of this hermetically sealed world of institutionalized filmmaking genetically selects Canadian producers for failure." Toronto Star 02/07/03
Oscar's Weird Foreign Policy "The foreign language nomination committee for the Oscars isn't the U.N. Security Council, but each year at this time it must wade through global politicking, diplomatic challenges and sometimes hard-to-fathom national preferences as it selects five nominees from the offerings presented by countries around the world." Some of the choices are unusual - excellent films get passed up while dogs are allowed to bark. So, predictably, there are controversies. "Many of this year's 54 entries have been bizarre or even difficult to watch." Los Angeles Times 02/07/03
You Can Do That On TV? "Everywhere you look on prime-time television, there is language and behavior that would have been unthinkable just a few short seasons ago. But the truth is, while the avalanche of sleaze alone may seem major to the casual observer, it's actually just a small part of what TV insiders regard as a wholesale reevaluation of the way TV does business. The only guarantee at the moment is that more changes are on the way." Christian Science Monitor 02/07/03
More Than $2 Trillion, But Nothing For PBS? The budget that President Bush sent to Congress this week tops $2 trillion, and is already being criticized for being overly generous to to many constituencies, given the current state of the national economy. But public television stations nationwide are wondering where they can sign up for some of the president's fiscal generosity, after discovering that the budget calls for the elimination of funds designed to ease the transition of such stations to digital broadcasting, as mandated by the FCC. Without the funding, many public stations in rural areas have claimed that they will be forced off the air. Los Angeles Times 02/05/03
No More Freebie Movie Tickets For LA Actors During Oscar season, movie theatres in Los Angeles have traditionally given free admission to actors with SAG union cards. Not this year. "This year, though, actors are getting another tough break in a tough town, as theater owners apparently have cut off the freebies many of them have traditionally offered to card-carrying members of the Screen Actors Guild. The reasons for the cut-off are a bit murky." Los Angeles Times 02/03/03
Is Indie Film Dead? A question from the frontlines at the Sundance Film Festival: "Is independent cinema dead in the United States - or, is it just playing possum?" Los Angeles Times 02/02/03
Local From Afar - A DJ Who Has No Idea What He's Introducing Clear Channel - the company that owns hundreds of radio stations in the US, is making use of sophisticated editing and mixing to splice together shows for local markets that sound local, but in actuality are recorded in studios often thousands of miles away. "With a lot of cutting and pasting, the engineers create 11 customized hourlong countdown shows for cities like New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, and two national pop and rhythm-and-blues countdowns for other markets..." Carson Daly, the host, doesn't even know which songs he's introducing on his shows. The New York Times 02/03/03
MUSIC
http://www.artsjournal.com/music
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English National Opera Chooses New Director English National Opera has chosen Sean Doran - currently heading the Perth Arts Festival in Australia - as the beleaguered company's new artistic director. It will be a tough job. "By the time he arrives in April, the result of the strike ballot among the 68 members of the chorus, faced with one in three redundancies to reduce the company's deficit, will be known, and the Musicians' Union will have decided whether to initiate grievance procedures over the treatment of the orchestra." The Guardian (UK) 02/08/03
How About A Seat Sale? UK business leaders came to talk to orchestra managers this week about ways to market and sell tickets. One idea, popular in the airline business, is "yield management", where "tickets become more expensive as departure dates approach. Concert-goers who book their tickets well in advance might pay £10 for the best seat while those who turn up at the box office on the day could pay up to £30." The Guardian (UK) 02/10/03
Classic Music At Fire Sale Prices Prices for classical recordings have never been better. "Several factors have brought prices to this nadir. Contrary to any number of reports, the classical recording industry isn't dying. But it's definitely contracting. Far fewer new recordings are being made, so to keep market share, major labels are reissuing older titles when they aren't even old." Some of the deals n classic recordings are amazing... Philadelphia Inquirer 02/09/03
San Francisco Opera's New Tune - A Good One No one likes cutting back, but San Francsico Opera is making the right move in scaling back its budget for the next few seasons. "The courageous decision by General Director Pamela Rosenberg and the board to finally get real about the company's perennial financial difficulties represents that classic first step in the breaking of any bad habit - admitting you have a problem." San Francisco Chronicle 02/09/03
Why The Colorado Springs Symphony Fell Apart How did the Colorado Springs Symphony get to the edge of bankrupcty and see its musicians revolt and start their own orchestra? Management of the orchestra says it was a "downturn in the economy, lack of a sustainable donor base and low market demand." Musicians say it's been poor management and a string of questionable decisions... Colordao Springs Independent 02/12/03
Pop Goes The Jingle "With traditional sources of revenue falling, the music industry is now desperate to get advertisers to use original pop songs to sell everything from handbags to hamburgers. This trend, which media types call 'synchronisation', is leading to another: the decline of the jingle. Once pop songs in their own right (America's first radio jingle, Pepsi's “hits the spot”, became a jukebox hit in 1939) catchy jingles are being discarded. Despite the $90,000-plus cost to license a pop song (compared with $15,000 for a customised jingle), advertisers, especially those aiming at younger consumers, think it money well spent." The Economist 02/07/03
Opera Australia Survey: Old Audiences Are Different From New Audiences After Opera Australia ran up a $2 million debt and botched the PR over not renewing director Simone Young's contract, the company commissioned a study of audience concerns. Among the findings: "The subscriber's enthusiasm to "frock up" to go to the opera creates problems. 'It is about a sense of occasion, as well as going to the theatre. But this cuts across new audience members who might feel intimidated because they can't pronounce the titles and are not sure how to dress." The Age (Melbourne) 02/07/03
Chill Out Dude Classical chillout albums are a curious phenomenon. The numerous albums that visit this territory do very well: Virgin's Classical Chillout was the bestselling classical compilation of 2001, shifting 400,000 units, and those who bought it were younger than the usual classical fans. Chillout as an idea has become as good as a brand. And, as EMI's research shows, many potential customers associate classical music with, above all, relaxation. More stimulating compilations, such as Euphoric Classics, sell less well." The Guardian (UK) 02/06/03
Calgary, From The Ashes "The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra's creditors agreed Wednesday to a repayment plan that will give them half of what they're owed. It puts the orchestra one step closer to being able to perform again, which they haven't done since mid-October when they asked the courts for bankruptcy protection... The CPO has developed a restructuring plan that required $1.5 million in new money, and that those they owed money to accepted 50 cents on the dollar. With the creditors unanimous agreement and the city and province kicking in $250,000 each, the orchestra is close to re-opening." CBC Calgary 02/05/03
A Broken Industry In the U.S., orchestras are in fiscal trouble. In Canada, it's a full-blown crisis. Orchestras in Calgary, Winnipeg, and Edmonton are all facing uncertain futures, and Toronto narrowly avoided financial catastrophe last year. Robert Everett-Green finds much irony in the dichotomy between orchestras which continue to perform at an admirably high level, and a system of arts funding so inadequate that it might as well not exist at all. "What needs fixing is the whole system, including the relationship between arts groups in the same community, and the chain of responsibility that governs the individual organizations." The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 02/06/03
Three Prokofiev Works Performed For The First Time Three pieces by Prokofiev are being performed for the first time, 50 years after the composer died. "They include a Soviet anthem, a march and two movements from a ballet score which have been unearthed by a musicologist working at Goldsmiths College, London." The Guardian (UK) 02/06/03
As Slow As It Gets - The World's Slowest Piece Of Music The first three notes of the slowest/longest piece ever written was being played on a German organ this week. It's written to last 639 years. "The three notes, which will last for a year-and-a-half, are just the start of the piece, called As Slow As Possible. Composed by late avant-garde composer John Cage, the performance has already been going for 17 months - although all that has been heard so far is the sound of the organ's bellows being inflated." BBC 02/05/03
How Do You Beat Piracy? Go Analog. Record companies have been known to become apoplectic when advance copies of new releases given to critics wind up in the hands (and computers and MP3 players) of the public. Many companies have resorted to handing out self-destructing CDs and threatening critics with legal action if they distribute the music early. But the V2 label has come up with a unique way to prevent advance copies of the highly anticipated new White Stripes album from being converted to tradable computer files: they put it on vinyl. Detroit News 02/05/03
The Promoter Who Couldn't Pay "For 75 years, Community Concerts has brought the arts and such luminaries as Beverly Sills and Isaac Stern to small-town America... But now the whole enterprise is in jeopardy, with Community Concerts dismissing employees and leaving a trail of bounced checks, unpaid performers and dissatisfied presenters in its wake." Fingers are pointing, and most of them are aiming squarely at the company's owner and chief executive, Brenda Trawick. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 02/02/03
The Woman Who Was Already There A flurry of media interest greeted the news in January that the notoriously exclusive Vienna Philharmonic had finally hired its first female musician, a violist named Ursula Plaichinger. The strange thing is, Plaichinger has actually been a member of the orchestra for nearly two years, a fact which no English-language publication known to ArtsJournal bothered to mention. The media blitz came after the worldwide broadcast of the Vienna Phil's famous New Year's concert showed a brief glimpse of Plaichinger as she played with her section, the first time the orchestra had ever allowed a woman to be shown on its television broadcasts. Andante 02/05/03
Berlin To Keep Staatsoper Independent? For two years cash-strapped Berlin has been trying to decide what to do ith its three opera houses. Proposals were made to merge operations, but that plan was vigorously opposed by Staatsoper director Daniel Barenboim. Now it looks like the companies may be saved. "Under proposals announced by the city's arts chief, the Staatsoper and its renowned orchestra, the Staatskapelle, would retain their independence. But the three opera houses would pool a wide range of technical and administrative facilities and their ballet companies." The Guardian (UK) 02/05/03
Beethoven Is Best - But Why? "Beethoven’s audience is so all-encompassing as to include those whose familiarity with his work is limited at best. Indeed, he is the only classical composer whose name is generally known to people who do not listen to classical music. It is as revealing that the cartoonist Charles Schulz chose Beethoven as the favorite composer of one of the characters in Peanuts as it is that Lorin Maazel chose the Ninth Symphony to perform last fall at his inaugural concerts as music director of the New York Philharmonic. What is striking about this mass popularity, though, is that it has not diminished in the slightest the respect in which Beethoven is held by musicians." Commentary 02/03
Something About Puccini In America the business of opera is built on Puccini, and on a mere handful of his works, at that. "Puccini, of course, isn't responsible for the lack of artistic diversity in American opera houses, but a mere trio of his works are so fundamental to the financial stability of American opera that they have had a stultifying effect." Yet in the history of music, Puccini has not been accorded the respect that his popularity suggests. New books re-evaluate... Chronicle of Higher Education 01/24/03
Nagano Gets Munich Opera Job Kent Nagano has been appointed director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, succeeding Zubin Mehta. Nagano had been widely touted as the next music director of the Montreal Symphony, and the Munich appointment likely kills that possibility. "Canadian journalists had whipped the public into a frenzy of anticipation, praising the 51-year old Nagano’s musicianship, his ability to speak French and his 'cool' image." La Scena Musicale 02/03/03
Coming Home - Folk Music Takes To People's Houses Folk music has its roots in small intimate places. But now, "with few venues willing to hire folk acts and few middle-class suburbanites willing to make the schlep downtown, search out parking and elbow other patrons to get the bartender's attention, folk house concerts are quietly spreading like wildfire with the help of e-mail and Internet advertising." Wired 02/04/03
Revising Stravinsky David Schiff tries to sort out what's Stravinsky and what's Robert Craft in Craft's revisionist history of his time with the composer. It's a daunting task. "Are Stravinsky’s ventings on contemporary music, delicious to read but often spiteful and self-serving, omitted here, because, as Craft says, the musical scene has changed beyond recognition – wouldn’t that make them all the more interesting? – or because Stravinsky’s judgements have not stood the test of time, certainly not his dismissals of Britten and Messiaen and the plaudits for Stockhausen? Or because the stinging verdicts were not actually Stravinsky’s?" Times Literary Supplement 02/04/03
The Internet: Friend To Musicians Who Aren't Stars One musician is angry about the recording industry's attempts to shut down music file-trading. "The Internet means exposure, and these days, unless you're in the Top 40, you're not getting on the radio. The Internet is the only outlet for many artists to be heard by an audience bigger than whoever shows up at a local coffeehouse. The Internet allows people like me to gain new fans; if only 10% of those downloading my music buy my records or come to my shows, I've just gained enough fans to fill Carnegie Hall twice over." Los Angeles Times 02/03/03
LA Opera - Pulling Into The Passing Lane It's been a rough year for the Los Angeles Opera. But the company has announced a bold next season, and seems to be moving into the passing lane. Mark Swed suggests the company is on the road to becoming a major force in American opera. "Five years ago, no operaphile would think to mention Los Angeles in the same breath as San Francisco and Chicago, American's second and third opera cities, after New York. But compared with San Francisco Opera's upcoming 81st season and Lyric Opera's 49th season, our 17-year-old company looks to become not only their artistic equal next season, but perhaps even a leader." Los Angeles Times 02/02/03
From The Met To Disney (And Back Again) Francesco Zambello is an acclaimed director who has worked in the world's top opera houses. So why is she working for Disney, creating a show for their theme parks? "I'm a populist, an opera evangelist. I believe in making shows that speak to a broad audience. I'm not afraid of the word `entertainment.' So far the sort of mainstream hit scored by other 'serious' directors of opera and drama like Trevor Nunn (with "Cats"), Nicholas Hytner ("Miss Saigon") and Julie Taymor ("The Lion King") has eluded Ms. Zambello, and not for lack of trying." The New York Times 02/09/03
Mandela, Artist Nelson Mandela is enjoying a surging art career. He has been making drawings in charcoal and pastel of his time as an inmate at the brutal Robben Island prison. "In just five months, the 84-year-old former South African president and Nobel Peace laureate has sold more than 1,000 lithographs of five drawings. The inspiration for the new career came when art publisher Ross Calder saw Yoko Ono was using John Lennon's sketches to raise money for charity. He took the idea to Mandela, suggesting he could do the same. 'I may be artistic, but it's in the back, far recesses of my mind. It will take a lot to get that out'." New Jersey Online (AP) 02/07/03
Czech Republic - Where Artists Lead Playwright Vaclav Havel has stepped down as president of the Czech Republic. So is the country ready for another artist to lead it? Musician Karel Gott, who has topped the Czech charts for much of the last four decades, has been proposed by a group of rock musicians, and he says he's interested in running for the job. BBC 02/06/03
Wild-Man Critic Leslie Fiedler [who died last week at 85] "made his name, in the late '40s, as a lit-crit prodigy in the grim-faced Cold War literary establishment known today as the New York Intellectuals or "the family." He could easily have set himself up simply as an Upper West Side sage. He was charismatic and leonine and had the credentials — an outsized oeuvre, ease with languages (Japanese, Italian), lecture gigs all over the world. Crowing was his natural idiom. He was a master of hectoring overstatement..." Slate 02/05/03
Mayhew To Run Covent Garden "[London's] Royal Opera House has appointed a woman to its top post for the first time, announcing Tuesday that Dame Judith Mayhew will succeed Sir Colin Southgate when he retires as chairman in August. New Zealand-born Mayhew, currently chairwoman of the University of London's Birkbeck College, will join the Opera House board next month." The Opera House is coming off a financially successful run of the Nicholas Maw's much-discussed operatic adaption of Sophie's Choice. Andante (AP) 02/05/03
Lou Harrison, 85 American composer Lou Harrison, died Sunday in a Denny's in Indiana on his way to a festival of his music at Ohio State University. "Mr. Harrison's primary contribution to Western music, aside from the sheer beauty of his works, was his wide-ranging, deeply felt connection to the musics of non-Western cultures, Asian especially. He studied in Taiwan and South Korea and was deeply immersed in Javanese music. He built several gamelans, or Indonesian percussion orchestras, spawning a movement that spread through North America (there are some 200 ensembles built in direct emulation of Mr. Harrison's)." The New York Times 02/04/03
Poets Uprising "Poets may rightly grumble that they aren't read or paid enough, but in times of crisis it's the poets, of all the artists in all countries, who suddenly seem the most important. Robert Lowell was a face of protest during the Vietnam war. Rupert Brooke and Robert Graves were among those who, writing from the trenches in World War I, best conveyed the anguish of war in what was not protest but patriotic poetry. So now, hardly surprisingly, we have our poets stepping forward to protest war, at what appears a fairly late moment. Why are poets the leading dissenters?" The New York Times 02/06/03
Harry - A Record Cover Price For A Children's Book The new Harry Potter book could weigh in at more than 1000 pages. But it will also sport a heavy price. "Scholastic Children's Books, the U.S. publisher of J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix', announced Thursday a suggested retail price of $29.99. 'That's definitely the highest price for a children's novel we've ever seen'." Nando Times (AP) 02/06/03
Books Are Dead...Good Riddance "Books suck. Most books are dopier than television or movies or even advertising (many books tend to be just collateral promotions or the lesser offspring of dopey television, movies, and advertising). Even if there are precious exceptions, the overwhelming number of big-money, industry-sustaining books are incontrovertibly dum-dum things. More cynical, more pandering than any other entertainment product. Working at a magazine where every day random books come flying in by the bushel you get a sense of the magnitude of the wasteland. Books may be the true lowest-common-denominator medium. What’s more, in the book business, you have to work in really deadening conditions..." New York Magazine 02/05/03
Booknotes - Keeping It Simple C-Span's "Booknotes" is a serious place to talk books. Host Brian Lamb has a big following, but the appeal of the show is in its simplicity. "This is not a show done for intellectuals. A lot of people thought it was in the beginning. They started to hear me ask some very basic questions, and they'd say: 'Oh, my goodness, why is he asking those stupid questions?' So: Why is he asking those questions? 'I want to know the answer'." Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette 02/06/03
Indie Booksellers Push States To Collect Online Sales Taxes Independent booksellers are lobbying states to collect taxes from online book stores that have a physical presence in those states. That would mean that books ordered through Barnes and Noble's online store would have to collect sales tax. "The issue remains whether or not online stores and their real world namesakes have a business relationship that would trigger a tax liability." Publishers Weekly 02/04/03
Poetry In Times Square A young poet goes to Times Square to read poetry on the street. And people stop to listen. "The American public's relationship to poetry is complicated. At best, poetry seems to be perceived as a rare salve to be applied in the wake of national tragedy; at worst it's an elite parlor game. Much of the blame for such perceptions can be placed squarely on American poetry itself, which has privileged difficulty over clarity—in the process taking itself right out of public view. I don't exactly fault modern American poetry for being difficult. The sensory experience of Times Square is as difficult as any poem and still we live within it. The power of great modern poetry is that it takes the monstrosity of Times Square and locates the human being at its heart." Poets & Writers 02/03
Protesting The Protesting Poets Roger Kimball was looking forward to going to the White House next week for lunch with Laura Bush and a symposium on "Poetry and the American Voice." Then he heard the event had been cancelled after Copper Canyon Press founder Sam Hamill had organized an anti-war protest around the event. "What about the many distinguished poets who believe Sam Hamill is a publicity-craving nonentity who spoiled their chance to celebrate American poetry at the White House? They, of course, have not been mentioned much. 'Poets for Responsible U.S. Foreign Policy' is not news." OpinionJournal.com 02/05/03
Vatican Gives Blessing On Potter The Vatican has given its blessing to Harry Potter. Why should the Vatican even care? Some evangelical groups have protested the books for "glamorizing magic and the occult." But a spokeman for the Vatican says: "If I have understood well the intentions of Harry Potter's author, they help children to see the difference between good and evil. And she is very clear on this." Yahoo! (AP) 02/04/03
Library Use Soaring As Economy Slips Unemployment is bad in New York, and people have time on their hands. So they go to the library. "Use of public libraries here has climbed almost 10% since the summer of 2001 and that circulation is up 12%. Computer use just for resume writing at Mid-Manhattan increased 128% over the last year. On the fourth floor of that charmless branch on Fifth Avenue, there isn't an empty seat on a snowy afternoon..." Los Angeles Times 02/03/03
Great Books Of All Time - Harry By A Nose? After the success of its "Great Britons of all time" poll, the BBC is going to apply the formula to books. Viewers will nominate 100 books. "In November, the top 10 books will be announced - and the case for each one will, as with Great Britons, be made in a one-hour special programme, presented by a celebrity, or at the very least a personality. Finally, before Christmas, there will be another giant vote. The result? It's almost certain that 'The Lord of the Rings' will triumph over 'Harry Potter', in a tightly fought contest. Or vice versa." London Evening Standard 02/03/03
Did HG Wells Plagiarize From Toronto Woman? Did HG Wells plagiarize his "The Outline of History," published in 1920, from a 50-year-old Toronto woman named Florence Deeks? Deeks spent a good part of the the middle and later part of her life trying to prove that Wells had based his work on a manuscript she had sent to Macmillan publishers in 1914. A new book takes up her case in an attempt to win justice... Los Angeles Times 02/02/03
Kids - Forgetting The Classics? Are kids losing touch with the literaryt kids' classics? A survey in Britain reports that only three percent of children had read "Little Women." "Only 12% had actually read Alice in Wonderland, only 2% 'Swallows and Amazons', and only 6% 'The Secret Garden'. By contrast, 81% had read 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'. 'The Lord of the Rings' scored 31%." The Guardian (UK) 02/01/03
Live Music In Broadway Orchestra Pits? Essential As union and producers duke it out on Broadway over live music, 'it's easy to be misled that it's all about the numbers. In the talk about minimums and control, we shouldn't forget what's most important about the issue: the music. The essence of live theater is in the adjective 'live.' No matter what is said, it's never the same when electronic music or pre-recorded music replaces live acoustic sounds. In this pre-recorded environment the control goes from the baton of the conductor to the dial of the programmer, who has become the actuary of this new musical world. The difference between a live orchestra and a virtual orchestra is the difference between a football game and Game Boy." Hartford Courant 02/09/03
Flopped On Broadway? Hit The Road Jack (There's Money Out There) So a much-publicized show doesn't make it on Broadway. "In recent years several flop productions have all taken to the road and experienced financial and, to a lesser extent, critical success, sometimes by altering their look and content for a national audience hungry for splashy Broadway fare." The New York Times 02/10/03
Broadway Musician Strike Inevitable? Negotiations on a new contract between Broadway producers and musicians began this week, and musician minimums are the big issue. The two sides are well apart. "Producers have taken what one source calls a 'blood oath' that they will hang together in the event of a strike. They expect the union to take a divide-and-conquer approach, striking only those shows with weak box offices or that don't yet have their 'virtual orchestras' in place (there are a few). Should that happen, every show will bar musicians from the theater and use pre-recorded music." New York Post 02/07/03
Moscow Theatre Reopens After Last Year's Siege The Moscow theatre where 170 people were killed during a siege by Chechen rebels has reopened. "Moscow's city government has given $2.5m (£1.5m) to repair the Dubrovka Theatre which now has a high-tech security system. Nord-Ost's producer and co-writer, Georgy Vasilyev, himself a hostage, had always vowed the show would go on despite 18 cast and crew members being killed." BBC 02/06/03
Can A Show Be An 'Enemy Combatant'? Overseas opposition to the Bush administration's foreign policy has taken an unusual turn in London, in the form of a wildly popular (and wildly unsubtle) satirical play called The Madness of George Dubya. The show, which is about to move to a new venue to accomodate the demand for tickets, portrays the American president as "a pajama-wearing buffoon cuddling a teddy bear while his crazed military chiefs order nuclear strikes on Iraq." Los Angeles Times (Reuters) 02/06/03
The Spacey Factor Actor Kevin Spacey is to become "director of a new, permanent Old Vic theatre company, which will stage shows for eight months a year, leaving the theatre open to other groups, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, for the summer months. The Oscar-winning actor, 43, will star in two productions a year, as well as directing shows and tempting stars keen to follow the growing Hollywood tradition of taking pay cuts for prestigious outings on the London stage." The Guardian (UK) 02/06/03
- Old Vic On The Rise News that Kevin Spacey is going to help lead London's Old Vic Theatre is just the latest of the theatre's high-profile news. "The Old Vic now stands bang at the centre of the celebrity, glitz and charity nexus. Its board is an awesomely terrifying display of the new establishment. It is well connected, glitzy and hot. All it lacks are shows. This strange anomaly, a furious amount of excitement, spectacle and glittering noise around a peculiar emptiness, is not so surprising since it is so resonant of the age we live in. And the Old Vic, more than any of our theatres, has always reflected the age it lived in back to itself." London Evening Standard 02/05/03
- A Yank In London Kevin Spacey "has become such a fixture of London life that he felt compelled to reassure people that 'in no way should this decision be viewed as abandonment of my own country.' Asked whether his commitment to the Old Vic had limits, he said, 'It could be 5 seasons, it could be 10, it could be 20'." The New York Times 02/06/03
Readying For Battle On Broadway "In what is shaping up to be one of the most bitter showdowns in Broadway history, theater producers and musicians have begun negotiations on a new contract that will hinge on the size of orchestras. Producers say union rules on the minimum number of musicians squeeze the producers at a time when Broadway rents, salaries and production costs have made mounting a musical almost prohibitively expensive. Union leaders say they are fighting for musicians' jobs and the tradition of live music in the Broadway theater. Both sides are making preparations for a strike." The New York Times 02/05/03
American Butts Too Big For West End Seats? Are Americans discouraged from going to London's West End theatres because the seats are too small? "The seats were built for backsides of a Victorian era, not of a modern era - or indeed an American size - and many of the bars are dingy and overpriced and haven't seen a lick of paint since Oscar Wilde was last there." Backstage 02/04/03
Denver Center Theatre's Muted Celebration Next season is the Denver Center Theatre's 25th anniversary. But the theatre's celebrations will be somewhat muted. The 25th season contains only one premiere, and tight budgets make restraint mandatory. "That premiere is a new musical, but its loneliness in a collection of regional premieres and American revivals points toward the shrinking endowment of the Bonfils Foundation, which largely underwrites the theater company. Donovan Marley, the theater's artistic director, said next season will also see more staff reductions, and while he hoped they would be through attrition, he could not guarantee it." Rocky Mountain News (Denver) 02/04/03
London's New Theatre - About Time "Museum directors have long since realised that the overall aesthetic experience of visiting a museum is vital to a full appreciation of the art it held, and now theatre directors are catching up, as Bennetts Associates' new Hampstead Theatre demonstrates. The theatre, at Swiss Cottage in London, opens on February 14, when it will be the first new stand-alone producing theatre in London since the National Theatre in 1976." The Telegraph (UK) 02/03/03
VISUAL ARTS
http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts
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Manchester And Liverpool Pull Ahead On Museum Spending After a decade of big spending on museum spending in London, last year the northwest pulled ahead. "Manchester and Liverpool profited to the tune of £100m with the money spent on two new culture palaces, one extension and one revamp, in a year when just £33.7m was spent on new or updated buildings in the capital." The Guardian (UK) 02/08/03
Painting Lost In Crash Of Space Shuttle "One of the treasured objects lost in the Columbia space shuttle disaster was a painting of the Earth as it might look from the moon, created 61 years ago by a Jewish teenager in a Nazi concentration camp." Los Angeles Times 02/09/03
A Rebirth Of Roman Architecture Rome is so full of classic architecture, modern Romans have mostly shrugged their shoulders and said - can't top that. "So it may be a surprise to learn that Rome is regaining its creative momentum. Over the past several years, the city has seen the launch of a series of major building projects designed to update its cultural profile. The first of these, a $157-million complex of three concert halls by celebrated Italian architect Renzo Piano, was unveiled in December. Two major civic projects by American Modernist Richard Meier are under construction." Los Angeles Times 02/09/03
Compromises On The Way To A Design For Lower Manhattan These are serious architects vying to design a replacement for the World Trade Center. "But the selection also underscores the degree to which commercial considerations and political maneuverings will determine what the final master plan will look like. What the Libeskind and Think designs share, to different degrees, is an ability to bend to the political needs of the various interests that control the site's future, in particular downtown's commercial power brokers. And in that sense, the designs say less about our collective ideals than about the limits of the democratic process when it comes to building in New York." Los Angeles Times 02/10/03
- WTC - Questions Of Design/Process "In light of the emerging power struggle that will determine how much of the grand designs for ground zero get built, any effort to assess the finalists may come off like an exercise in aesthetic hairsplitting. But as the redevelopment officials who sponsored the competition vie with real estate developers and others who remain intent on overstuffing the 16-acre site with commercial space, such an analysis becomes essential, if only because it reminds us what this exercise is all about." Chicago Tribune 02/09/03
Spanish Government Refuses to Talk About Painting Looted By Nazis An American citizen claims that a Pissarro painting in a Spanish museum was stolen from his family by the Nazis. "But despite a persistent claim to the Pissarro painting, the Spanish authorities say that the museum is the legal owner and that any claim should be made in the courts, a response that has drawn criticism from American lawyers familiar with the claim. 'The reaction of the Spanish government is quite astonishing. Why should a government that already has a law relating to the return of Holocaust property refuse to have a discussion on the issue'?" The New York Times 02/10/03
Double Down - Curators Play Cards To Get Art To convince collectors of important Picasso and Matisse art to loan their work for a show, curators started playing acrds with them. "The object of the game? To create sparks for a three-city show in which the two artists would face off on the gallery walls. Collectors got to shuffle the deck, juxtaposing the cards in various ways. But the game always ended the same way: the collectors were asked to part with their card, their art, for a year. It worked." The New York Times 02/09/03
Cleveland Museum's $225 Million Addition Even when you're spending $225 million for an "extension" of a museum, there are trade-offs. Will the Cleveland Museum get its money's worth? "For me, the answer at this point is a resounding yes. Rafael Vinoly's design, which would cost $225 million to build, is undergirded by a precise, diamond- hard logic that mar ries dramatic physical changes with a new vi sion about the muse um's potential. The key is whether Vinoly can follow through with details big and small that will make all the difference in the final product. This is no minor question."
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 02/09/03
Architects Buzzing Over Muschamp's Flip-Flop On Libeskind Last December New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote of Daniel Libeskind's plan for the World Trade Center site that "If you are looking for the marvelous, here's where you will find it. Daniel Libeskind's project attains a perfect balance between aggression and desire. It will provoke many viewers to exclaim that yes, this design is actually better than what was there before." Then this past Friday he wrote that "It [Libeskind's idea] is an astonishingly tasteless idea. It has produced a predictably kitsch result." Architectrue watchers are wondering what happened, and some are angry... Archlog 02/07/03
- A Poll On The Finalists Says... So which of the two competing finalists to design a replacement for the World Trade Center do people like? Hmmmmn...one poll says neither (by a wide margin). NY1 02/09/03
Curry Kicker Cancels Project A British performance artist was paid £12,000 to kick a carton of curry through the middle of the town of Bedford. But the event was canceled today for "fear of too much interest" and large crowds. The proposed stunt got a lot of publicity this week after controversy when some declared the idea a "waste of taxpayers money." The concept behind the take-away box performance was "to highlight rowdy Saturday night behaviour" and "destabilise and question this revelry by kicking a take away curry and carton from one end of the High Street to the other." BBC 02/09/03
Artist Mails Himself To Tate An unemployed actor had himself sealed up in a box and mailed to the Tate Museum. He said he had "turned himself into living art to explore the way that artists are seen as objects." A number of people from the Tate came out and applauded as the box was opened. The Times (UK) 02/07/03
Art Thief Sentenced To Four Years The French waiter who stole millions of dollars worth of art over six years has been sentenced to four years in prison for the thefts by a Swiss court. Why did he take the art? "He believed he was one of the very few people sensitive enough to appreciate the true beauty of works of art." BBC 02/07/03
Who Gets To Decide The WTC Job The competition between the two remaining design proposals for the World Trade Center site is also a contest between who gets to decide the shape of the project. "Two views of what comes next are now contending, pitting Roland W. Betts, a director of the development corporation with strong personal ties to the White House, against Charles A. Gargano, the state's top economic development official, some Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executives, developers and others." The New York Times 02/07/03
The "Third Rail" Of Art History? After Lawrence Weschler wrote about David Hockney's theory about how Old Master painters might have used optical devices as aids in their work, he got an avalanche of protests. "I write about all sorts of things–hell, I write about relations between Jews and Poles, for God’s sake – so I’m used to getting letters. But I’d never found myself on the receiving end of anything like this. It turns out that the question of technical assistance may be the Third Rail of popular art history. Most people, it seems, prefer to envision their artistic heroes as superhuman draftsmen, capable of rendering ravishingly accurate anatomies or landscapes or townscapes through sheer inborn or God-given talent." ArtKrush 12/02
Matisse Book Stolen From Greek Museum A rare book featuring illustrations by Matisse has been stolen from a Greek museum. "The book's cover was left behind and replaced with an art magazine that contained images of the French master. Because of its identifying number and missing cover, the stolen material would be difficult to sell at auction." New Jersey Online (AP) 02/05/03
WTC Choices On Target There seems to be general satisfaction with the choice of finalists for the World Trade Center site. "The process of deciding what will replace the destroyed World Trade Center has produced a unique cultural moment. In previous years, when there has been a major cultural issue playing itself out in public, people largely rallied to make clear what they didn't want. The debate about the World Trade Center site has turned all that on its head. Not surprisingly, there is an unprecedented level of public engagement with and emotional investment in this project. And that involvement has driven the project forward but led it to embrace the most 'cutting edge' designs - Mr. Libeskind's and THINK's." OpinionJournal.com 02/06/03
- Made To Order (But Whose Orders?) A good building is the result not just of a good architect, but a good client. The two finalists for the WTC site have interesting proposals, but whether or not either one is able to actually build what they propose over the next decade will be complicated by just exactly who the client is - and there are competing jurisdictions... New York Observer 02/05/03
Time To Move On - Is London Stuck On Its Past Glories? "Emerging from London art schools, the BritArtists brought glamour, hype and excitement to the capital and revitalised its arts scene in the 1990s. But now London has become a victim of its own success. In cities that have witnessed less global attention for their artists, such as Los Angeles or Berlin, there are thriving scenes, and new movements emerge every couple of years. London, however, has remained stagnant, while commercial galleries trawl through the dregs of Goldsmiths' Class of 1990 for the one-that-got-away and focus is diverted from what's really new." London Evening Standard 02/04/03
Getty Passes On Masterpiece For years the J Paul Getty Museum in LA has been able to buy whatever art it wanted - and has. But at the recent Old Master auctions in December the Getty failed to even bid on an important work that would have been a natural for its collection. "The decision of the world’s richest museum not to even bid on one of the last great narrative pictures of the Renaissance (one arguably of even greater rarity and importance than the $50 million Northumberland Raphael) is incomprehensible." The Art Newspaper 02/1/03
Model Attraction - This Year's Best NY Art Show This week, the competition for designs for the World Trade Center site is expected to be narrowed to two finalists. Regardless of which plans make the cut, the models of the proposed plans has been the hit art event of the season in New York. "Some days, the place gets so jammed—with people chattering in every language from Japanese to Italian—you have to rubberneck to get a decent glimpse. The models are like magical toys, some with moving parts and lights, others with stunning video displays providing a virtual-reality trip into the future." Newsweek 02/10/03
Into Every "Painter Of Light" A Little Darkness Must Fall Thomas Kinkade, the self-styled "Painter of Light" was a phenomenon, selling millions of dollars worth of sentimental paintings out of mall-front stores. But lately business has been bad, and Kinkade dealers are furious. "The dealers have their own ideas about why sales have slowed: Media Arts has been flooding the market with cheap reproductions of the same art for which they're forced to charge top dollar. Although dealers are prohibited by contract from discounting the paintings by even a dime, Kinkades have been showing up at national discount chains, puncturing the carefully wrought myth that they are collectibles with a generous scarcity premium." Los Angeles Times 02/03/03
Phillips Auction House Sold - Will Downsize Phillips' forray into the high-end art auction business has come to an end. French billionaire Phillipe Arnault has sold his stake in the company, and it is laying off workers and downsizing. Arnault bought Phillips in 1999 and "spent tens of millions of pounds on guaranteeing money to vendors, regardless of how their works of art performed in the saleroom, in an attempt to raise the company's profile and win market share from rivals." The Telegraph (UK) 01/29/03
- The Downfall Of Phillips - So Unnecessary Phillips was founded in 1796, and did fine until four years ago when the push to compete with Sotheby's and Christie's turned serious. "Phillips, which was supposed to become a major force in the art market, is left with just half a dozen departments and some 85 employees. This journey to disaster started out sensibly enough. Arnault's LVMH group has made a fortune from marketing scent, champagne and suitcases and Arnault believed that selling art would be no different..." The Telegraph (UK) 02/03/03
