Examining The Face Of Evil We like to think of evil as an aberration. That's why it upsets some to examine the face of evil up close, as something more than an abstract. "Barely a year removed from the grisly, televised details of mass murder in the middle of New York City, evil has become tougher to pass off as a metaphysical bogeyman or a freakish glitch. And films including Max, The Pianist and Blind Spot are here to remind us that the Holocaust was suffered, perpetrated and even exploited by flesh-and-blood entities, not mythical embodiments of cruelty." Dallas Morning News 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 11:43 am
What Separates Humans From Other Animals? "Culture was once thought to be a particularly human trait. But careful observation of apes demonstrated that they have culture, too. Before culture, tool use was considered a distinctively human capacity. Again, merely watching other creatures shows that this is not the case. One of the last refuges of the species exceptionalist is language, and indeed, human language does seem to be unique. What remains controversial is this: Does our use of language stem from some innate mental capacity that only humans possess?" Boston Globe 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 9:53 am
Computer-assisted Art How is the computer changing the ways artists make art? We don't mean digital artists, but those traditional artists who have begun using the computer as a tool in their artmaking... Detroit Free Press 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 12:20 pm
Picture Hunting - On The Hunt For Chicago's WPA Murals An effort to find and restore WPA murals in Chicago's public schools has turned up hundreds of them - many painted over or tagged with graffiti. "Others had tears and severe water damage. And all of them were covered with up to 70 years' worth of dirt and grime." So far the project has resulted in restoration of 400 heavily damaged and hidden murals, painted during the WPA (1933-1943) and Progressive Era (1904-1933). Many of the works are by prominent artists.
Washington Post 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 10:21 am
Dutoit Speaks - Of Martha And Montreal On a visit to guest-conduct the Minnesota Orchestra, Charles Dutoit speaks for the first time about his tumultuous departure from the Montreal Symphony, and about his ex-wife, pianist Martha Argerich. "Basically, Martha doesn't play in America, except when I ask her to. Otherwise, she wouldn't play at all. I think there are only three pianists on this level," he said, also citing Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Vladimir Horowitz. The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 1:49 pm
Music As A Football Match Football's popular. So maybe classical music ought to be more like football, writes Julian Lloyd Webber. "In future, all concerts must be refereed. Points for performances will be awarded and performers' league tables established. Issues of promotion and relegation will be keenly watched by merciless, gum-chewing managers, who will have their chosen substitutes from the youth team eagerly waiting on the bench. Wrong notes will be severely penalised and performers adopting too slow tempi will be yellow-carded for time-wasting. String players using over-sentimental portamenti - and pianists who over-pedal - will be justly punished 'for bringing the music into disrepute'." The Telegraph (UK) 01/04/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 12:54 pm
Kennedy Honors - Where Are The American Male Singers? So how is it that six male opera singers have won Kennedy Center Honors since the awards were started in 1978, but never an American male opera singer? Washington Post 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 10:39 am
From A Skeptic - What Explains The Glenn Gould Phenomenon? Twenty years after he died of a stroke, pianist Glenn Gould is still a star. David Patrick Stearns wonders why. "Philosophically, I admire Gould's irreverence: I believe that every performance should confront and challenge the listener. However, his insights often arose from obscure, perverse viewpoints. Once, he recorded Mozart piano sonatas to illustrate why the composer wasn't, to his mind, much good. These interpretive agendas often weren't presented with great regard for communication." Philadelphia Inquirer 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 10:03 am
A Tale Of Two Concertos To conductor James Levine's way of thinking, there is plenty of important American music from the 20th Century that never had fair hearing. So he looks upon his new appointment as director of the Boston Symphony as a way to do something about it. "One of the principal attractions for Levine is that he will finally have the opportunity to serve as an advocate for contemporary music, and American music in particular. For him, this has been a lifelong commitment, but none of his previous positions has enabled him to pursue it fully." Boston Globe 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 7:46 am
Looking For Insight - Artists Come To New York Last month a group of Vietnamese artists came to New York to get ideas and insights from the city's artists. "We're living in the twilight. It's not socialism, and it's not capitalism. Experimental artists like us have to do things for ourselves, but we have to do it quietly so no one will bother us." New York Times 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 2:16 pm
Talking To The Funders Who Make The Decisions Toronto has a number of major arts projects currently looking for funding. In the current funding climate "is there enough money to go around and sustain all these projects? Or are at least some of them doomed to fail while others succeed? The answers to those questions will largely depend on two kinds of players — the arts philanthropists of Toronto and the professional fundraisers hired by various cultural organizations to lead their capital campaigns." Here's what they say... Toronto Star 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 10:54 am
Celebrating (And Saving) St. Petersburg St. Petersburg, Russia is a remarkable and historic city. It's listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it turns 300 years old this year. So the city is exporting the best of its culture to the rest of the world to celebrate. But "if musicians, dancers, historians, designers, poets, actors and more are reintroducing St. Petersburg to center stage, the attention comes in the nick of time. Buildings are crumbling. Population is declining. Tourism is stagnating. The cultural community is dispersing. And modernity - in the form of bold new architecture - is knocking aggressively at the door." Washington Post 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 10:33 am
Pressure To Perform As arts funding declines, ticket revenue becomes more important for arts organizations. But waht does that mean for the kinds of art they make? "We have to ask how are we going to be true to our artistic vision - the original reason nonprofit theaters were founded - and yet not be irresponsible to our community by going out of business. As funding sources become tighter and tighter, this is the conflict facing all artistic nonprofits." Philadelphia Inquirer 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 10:09 am
Building Brands, Building Audiences Getting the word out about your arts orgainzation is not just a matter of printing brochures, making banners and producing marketing spots. The modern arts organization is a brand, and that takes careful management. Too crassly commercial, you're thinking? Boston clients of one communications firm think not. "There are no contradiction between that kind of 'corporate' thinking and artistic risk-taking. Quite the contrary. If people get to recognize the organization, we will get to take more risks." Boston Globe 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 7:38 am
The Greatest Actor Of His Generation? Is Simon Russell Beale the best English actor of his generation? "Ask London theatergoers, critics and his fellow actors, and they will say that he is the finest stage actor of his generation. (He turns 42 next Sunday). In role after role, he has shown a virtuosic range with a depth of feeling that few actors can match, playing kings and common men, Restoration fops and Shakespearean clowns, characters from Chekhov and Ibsen, and even singing in the Leonard Bernstein musical Candide." The New York Times 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 2:06 pm
Don't Break Up Andre Breton A network of latter-day surrealophiles is objecting to the impending sale of surrealist Andre Breton's collections at auction. "While the collection will be preserved on a CD-ROM, the signers of the petition insist that the contents of Breton's jumbled anti-museum make sense "together and only together." They call upon France to establish a permanent place to house this collection which, represents 'the history of a powerful mind, whose creativity, imagination, and moral indignation" were directed toward "the singular possibility of changing life and transforming the world according to the life-affirming movement of desire." Boston Globe 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 7:58 am
- Previously: The Surrealist's Library - A Record Surrealist artist Andre Breton's collection of art - to be sold next year - provides "the most complete history of the evolution of an iconoclastic group which opposed all forms of moral and social convention and replaced them by the 'values of dreams, instinct, desire and revolt'." The 400 paintings, 1,500 photographs and 3,500 documents are an invaluable record. The Surrealists "1924 manifesto laid the ground for some of Europe's most devastating artistic quarrels, often turning on a love-hate relationship with Marxism, including Breton's falling out with the communist poet Louis Aragon." The Guardian (UK) 12/28/02
Broadway Comes To Disney "Disney wants to replicate in the theme parks a formula that has paid dividends for another division: Disney Theatricals, which produces the company's Broadway shows. Take a beloved Disney property ("The Lion King"), turn it over to an accomplished avant-garde stage artist with a distinctive visual flair (director Julie Taymor), and reap critical kudos and huge profits." Los Angeles Times 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 1:32 pm
- Previously: More Adventures With Disney - "Destination" Theatre Admissions at Disney's theme parks are down 25 percent since 2001. What to do? How about theatre? Disney has hired some A-list creators to come up with "a new era in theme-park entertainment." It's theatre presented continuously in 40-minute loops. First up: "a 40-minute version of the 'Aladdin' story, using the score from Disney's animated film. It will run continuously in the brand new 'Broadway-style' Hyperion theater in Disney's ailing California Adventure Park. 'We've coined a new phrase - destination entertainment'." Christian Science Monitor 01/03/03
What's A Young Theatre Artist To Do? When the UK's repertory theatre system collapsed in the 1970s "visionary artists ran to the fringe and reinvented their art form from scratch." But how did those artists support themselves? They went on the dole. And some of today's best-known artists got their starts that way. Today the dole has been replaced by a system that requires full-time availability for paid work. "To bend the rules and do creative work while 'signing on', as we all did in the mad years of early Thatcherism, is no longer possible." The Guardian (UK) 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 12:47 pm
The Royal Shakespeare's London Misadventures Part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's plan to reinvent includes being a major player in London's West End. But that plan is faltering after the company's last five plays there have taken in only 20 percent of what they needed to at the box office. "The plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries have been rapturously received by critics, and sold out when they were premiered at Stratford-upon-Avon, but London audiences have been staying away." The Guardian (UK) 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 12:41 pm
Curiously Refreshing - A Small Theatre's Fight For Rights In 1999 Denver's fledgling Curious Theatre tried to get rights to a Paula Vogel play it wanted. But the big Denver Center had first-refusal rights. So as consolation the rights-administrator granted Curious rights to another Vogel play - "How I Learned to Drive," which the DCTC had passed on, and which then won a Pulitzer Prize. Now Vogel is working with Curious again: "To me, that's why we are doing theater, to disturb the air; to offend people. There is such a need for these smaller companies that will take risks, that will read new plays."
Denver Post 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 11:57 am
Book Jacket Portraying WWII Nazi Ties Upsets Swiss A new book by a Clinton administration official who led negotiations with Switzerland, Germany, France and Austria to "get nearly $8 billion in reparations for art, unpaid insurance policies and confiscated bank accounts taken from Jews during World War II" is angering the Swiss. The objections are not so much about the content, as the cover, which "has a swastika made of gold ingots spread over the red Swiss national flag." But author Stuart E. Eizenstat and his publisher say the design "accurately reflects what he learned during the negotiations in the late 1990s." Washington Post 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 10:45 am
What Makes A Movie Star? Talent? Hard work? Not necessarily. "It's just a personality thing that has nothing to do with acting that most people who are successful have. It's a certain charisma, an energy you're attracted to. Established actors usually have it. Some people have it only under certain circumstances. But either you have it or you don't.
New York Daily News 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 1:55 pm
BBC Chairman Renews Commitment To Arts Programming The BBC has been under attack for some time for shorting the arts in its schedule. Now BBC chairman Gavyn Davies says the critics are right: "We have accepted that the critics have a point and that we should do something to bring the arts back into the centre of the schedule."The Guardian (UK) 01/04/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 12:37 pm
279 Movies Eligible for Academy Awards The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that 279 movies are eligible for this year's Academy Award nominations. "We will next week mail a complete list of those films along with nominations ballots to academy voters, allowing them to nominate these movies or their actors, actresses and directors for awards this year."The Globe & Mail (AFP) 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 12:30 pm
Movie Locations As Tourism (And Branding) Opportunities "Movie tourism is perhaps as old as the movies themselves, but with the recent phenomenon of individual films bestriding the globe, it has intensified." All over the globe tourists are flocking to the "actual places" where this or that scene from their favorite movies were filmed. Some places are rushing to take advantage as a "rebranding" opportunity.The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/04/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 12:25 pm
Critic Society Chooses "The Pianist" As Top Film Critics of the 55-member National Society of Film Critics have named "The Pianist," the biography of a Polish-Jewish pianist and Holocaust survivor, as best picture of 2002. The movie also won best director, actor and screenplay awards from the society Saturday.Chicago Sun-Times (AP) 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 11:15 am
Book Your Blockbuster Early Lead times for getting big movies into theatres are getting longer. "The familiar proclamation 'Coming soon!' no longer means what it once did. Indeed, the film biz is a long way from the comfortable days of picking a release date with a finished film in the can. The studios' battered parent companies, desperate for predictable revenue, find plenty of virtue in long lead times, but it isn't an easy adjustment for film execs accustomed to procrastination."Toronto Star 01/04/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 10:57 am
Art Of Dance "More than half of the art Edgar Degas produced during his 60-plus years as an artist depicts dancers. For his late career, the percentage rises to about two-thirds. Degas not only produced a lot of dance art, he created Western art's most transcendent images of dancers and dance performance. It's difficult to imagine that their radiance and authority could ever be duplicated, let alone surpassed." Philadelphia Inquirer 01/05/03
Posted: 01/05/2003 9:59 am
