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Wednesday, January 8




Ideas

Art For Art's Sake So much of the impetus for artmaking is motivated by a desire to be better and better, a need to excel. But what about the craft of art, the practice of art as discipline rather than accomplishment? Maybe this kind of art practice can counter "a market-driven society in which people assign value to each other (and themselves) according to socioeconomic status. It also can be a bulwark against the excesses of America's SAT-calibrated meritocracy. 'There's so much emphasis on potential. Not on what people do, but on what they might do. ... The judgment of people's potential is devastating to people who lose out on that judgment. It deprives people of hope." Chronicle Of Higher Education 01/10/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 10:49 pm

Visual Arts

Museum Cuts in Pittsburgh "In an effort to trim its 2003 budget, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is eliminating its film and video section and permanently laying off 17 full-time and four part-time employees. In addition, six employees have resigned voluntarily and 22 vacant positions will not be filled. The loss of 49 total full-time and four part-time positions is expected to save the parent corporation $4 million this year." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 01/08/03
Posted: 01/08/2003 6:21 am

All ****ed Up And On The Cover This week, London's Guardian newspaper asked five artists to produce cover art for the paper's features section. To illustrate a story on the nastiness of reality TV, Turner Prize winner Gillian Wearing produced a graffiti-like three words which would be considered rude in most newspapers. Here's the cover... The Guardian (UK) 01/07/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 6:10 pm

  • Art Cover Provokes Reader Protests "While a handful of callers were supportive, the vast majority complained about the cover, which was designed to accompany a feature about the increasing nastiness of TV entertainment. Although the cover was designed to provoke debate about the coarseness of TV and of modern language, several readers took issue with the notion the cover design constituted art." The Guardian (UK) 01/07/03
    Posted: 01/07/2003 6:08 pm

  • Wearing Apologizes For Cover Art Turner Prize winner Gillian Wearing was one of several artists invited to design a cover this week for the front page of The Guardian's tabloid section. "To illustrate an article on the new reality game shows, her front cover consisted merely of the three words "Fuck Cilla Black" [Black hosts a reality show] in black felt tip pen surrounded by white space. The cover provoked more than 200 complaints," and today Wearing apologized. The Independent (UK) 01/08/03
    Posted: 01/07/2003 6:02 pm

  • The Guardian Explains "Some more cynical readers have suggested the outcry over the cover was just what we were after. 'Shock tactics designed to outrage people so you can belittle their ideas about art,' was how one reader saw it. But if we knew an image like Wearing's was bound to offend some of our readers, I can assure you there was absolutely nothing satisfying about the wave of anger and dismay that rolled into the paper yesterday." The Guardian (UK) 01/08/03
    Posted: 01/07/2003 5:56 pm

Nazi Heir Art Collection To Open In Berlin The heir to a Nazi arms supplier has canceled plans to build a museum in Zurich to display his large art collection after protests there. Instead, it will be shown in Berlin next year. "The 2,500-piece collection was assembled by Friedrich-Christian Flick, a grandson of an industrial baron who helped arm Nazi Germany's war machine. The collection includes works by contemporary artists such as Bruce Nauman, On Kawara and Nam June Paik. It is to go on display in 2004 for seven years in a downtown Berlin exhibition space." New Jersey Online (AP) 01/07/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 5:50 pm

Music

Beantown Organ To Get New Life Deficits? What deficits? As most American orchestras are scrambling for the funds to cover their basic costs, the Boston Symphony Orchestra is unveiling a project which will see the complete overhaul and restoration of one of the country's great organs, located at the BSO's Symphony Hall. The restoration will cost $3 million (the cost includes a special endowment which will take care of furture maintenance) and should be complete in time for new music director James Levine's debut with the orchestra in 2004. Boston Globe 01/08/03
Posted: 01/08/2003 6:11 am

The Orchestra Axe Falls Again Yet another small North American orchestra is on the verge of bankruptcy. The Colorado Springs Symphony says it needs $217,000 to survive more than another week, and is demanding steep pay cuts from its musicians, who already earn less than $13,000 per year. The musicians, for their part, claim that orchestra management has been grossly incompetent in running the organization, and accuse the board president, whose resignation they demanded in September, of trying to turn the CSS into a "pro-am community group." Colorado Springs Gazette 01/07/02
Posted: 01/08/2003 5:22 am

Music Fans Only Want It Their Way More and more music fans seem reluctant to go to the record store, let alone to concerts, if CD and concert ticket sales are any indication. "CD sales fell last year by almost 11 per cent in the United States and about 6 per cent in Australia as Internet users continued to swap songs for free. Concert sales were also down except among baby boomers who thought nothing of paying high prices to see dinosaur acts." The Age (Melbourne) 01/08/03
Posted: 01/08/2003 5:07 am

  • The Pirates Aren't Going Away The recording industry is acknowledging that, despite its costly and protracted legal crusade to rid the world of audio and video piracy, there will always be music available illegally somewhere online. And in what appears to be a bit of a policy shift, the RIAA's president is saying that "Our aim is not to completely eliminate music piracy or illegal peer-to-peer services altogether." But none of this means that file-sharing sites will see any short-term relief from the legal beating they've been taking. BBC 01/08/03
    Posted: 01/08/2003 5:06 am

We Went To The Fights And An Opera Broke Out... Patrons of the Vienna State Opera are getting increasingly unruly. "Police have had to step in after arguments over stolen seats exploded into fisticuffs. Other causes of conflict include bouffant hair styles that block people's views and ringing mobile phones. A police spokesman told the Kurier newspaper: 'It is becoming increasingly brutal. In the past few months we have had to intervene more and more. Before Christmas it was particularly bad'." The Telegraph (UK) 01/04/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 10:38 pm

This Year's Grammy Nominations Grammy nominations got spread around this year. "In years past, a glut of nominations would push a single artist above the fold, but this year the flattened field presented more subtle story lines amid the sprawl of 104 categories. Among those themes: the musical reverberations of Sept. 11, the solidifying of rap's stature in top categories and the heralding of a new generation of young female stars in the closely watched category of best new artist." Los Angeles Times 01/08/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 6:21 pm

  • Who Are These Guys? Grammy nominators did a ho-hum job of picking artists this year. "In the top three categories alone, the reaction to the nominees is likely to range from hurrah to 'huh?' to 'double-huh'?" Los Angeles Times 01/08/03
    Posted: 01/07/2003 6:05 pm

  • The Complete List Here's a list of all of this year's Grammy nominees Los Angeles Times 01/08/03
    Posted: 01/07/2003 6:01 pm

Arts Issues

The Best Arts Charities In America Which are the best arts charities in the US? Worth Magazine ranks the top 24 in its annual list. Mind you, these are "best" in terms of how they run their non-profit status, not necessarily "best" for the art they produce... Worth Magazine 12/02
Posted: 01/07/2003 10:16 pm

  • Did Worth List Have Eastern Bias? Only four of the organizations on Worth's list reside west of Chicago, and the list of 24 is heavily populated with New York area institutions. "Did Worth's conclusions reflect an East Coast-centric view of the arts world?" Los Angeles Times 01/07/03
    Posted: 01/07/2003 10:01 pm

People

Jean Kerr, 80 The celebrated playwright Jean Kerr has died of complications from pneumonia at her home in New York state. Kerr, who is best known for penning the collection Please Don't Eat The Daisies, which was later made into a film, also had multiple successes on Broadway, and was admired for her willingness to poke fun at the show business industry. Kerr was 80. Toronto Star 01/08/03
Posted: 01/08/2003 6:26 am

Theatre

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Tie 'Em Up And Yell At 'Em A small Vancouver theatre company was tired of staging plays that didn't get reviewed or received poor notices, and needed a fresh idea to promote their latest production. So they kidnapped four local theatre critics, tied them to chairs in front of their theatre, and yelled insults at them. (Okay, okay, the critics were willing participants. But it's still a pretty cool image...) The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/08/03
Posted: 01/08/2003 5:55 am

The Fringe - Where Adventure Lives The West End is fine for what it is. But the real risks, the real experiments, are to be found in the fringe. "Freedom, spontaneity, risk, imaginative challenge: all these things were central to the experience of the fringe. They are all notably elusive in the other available theatrical environments, where those considerations drearily familiar from Arts Council feasibility studies - audience expectation of spectacle, long-term planning, product recognisability - reign." The Guardian (UK) 01/08/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 10:00 pm

Painter Of Light Lighting for one of every eight shows that have opened on Broadway in the past two years has been the work of one man - Brian MacDevitt. Why is he so special? New York Sun 01/07/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 7:30 pm

Another Scottish Theatre Bites The Dust - (What, Is This Government Policy?) Scotland's Cutting Edge Theatre, which pioneered giving outdoor performances of classic plays in some of Scotland’s most historic castles and palaces, has had to cancel plans for a new season because of lack of funding. "In the wake of a series of complaints at the end of last year over the level of Scottish Executive support for theatre in Scotland, Cutting Edge’s fate will seem almost predictable to critics of arts funding." The Scotsman 01/08/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 6:34 pm

Broadway's Mid-Season Report Card "At the midpoint of the 2002-03 season, it looks to be in many respects lively, productive and financially healthy. Halfway through the season - which begins and ends in early May - there's a certain comfort level. And if this spring starts to heat up, as it traditionally does, then it could mean a record-breaking season." Hartford Courant 01/05/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 5:40 pm

Publishing

Critic Norman Lebrecht Wins Whitbread For First Novel The Evening Standard's Norman Lebrecht has won the Whitbread Award for a First Novel. "Starting at 54, even with this groundwork established, is still kind of late. There are precedents - Annie Proulx, Penelope Fitzgerald and most famously Mary Wesley. But why, if Lebrecht is capable of writing such a good novel, did it not spring from him sooner? Simple, he says. He wasn't ready..." The Guardian (UK) 01/08/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 10:05 pm

The Literary Loss Between Page And Screen "Literature has always been a poisoned chalice for filmmakers. It's irresistible because it offers great stories and characters, but it often makes geographic demands that translate into huge budgets. Worse, it covers psychological and intellectual territory that nobody has ever really figured out how to translate into movies." This is especially tough in a country like Canada. Though Canadian writers have scored big internationally in recent years, getting movies made of their work is especially difficult. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/07/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 5:33 pm

Media

Score One For the Little Guy A Norwegian court has acquitted an Oslo teen of video piracy charges levelled against him by Hollywood studios. The teen had broken the encryption code on DVDs he had purchased in order to play them on his Linux-based computer. The court ruled that no one can be convicted of breaking into his/her own property, and that the charges were without merit. Free speech advocates hailed the ruling, while the studios said that they were examining their options for an appeal.Washington Post (Reuters) 01/08/03
Posted: 01/08/2003 6:31 am

Undoing Radio Dereg? Nearly everyone not employed by a media giant or a congressman would agree that the 1996 congressional deregulation of the U.S. radio industry has resulted in an epidemic of predictable, generic, and (for lack of a better term) bad radio. The Telecom Act of '96 also gave rise to such radio monoliths as Clear Channel, which consider it part of their mission to do to small, independent stations what WalMart does to mom-and-pop dime stores. But now, the dynamic duo that brought you the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill appears to be on the verge of introducing Senate legislation to rein in corporate radio, and return at least some of the airwaves to the public.Wired 01/08/02
Posted: 01/08/2003 5:32 am

Film Boom In Thailand "Thailand says it expects a record windfall this year from foreign film-makers lured there by its exotic locations and liberal industry regulations. Officials announced on Tuesday that they expected to rake in 1.5bn baht ($35m) during 2003. They have credited the government's moves to cut red tape governing film shoots and to lower income tax for foreign actors."BBC 01/08/03
Posted: 01/08/2003 5:14 am

Dance

Dancing In Baghdad - A Ballet School Struggles On Founded in 1969, the Baghdad School for Music and Fine Arts has had a struggle. Once its students were the country's middle class. Now, only a few handfuls of young girls attend ballet classes. "Dancing these days has become a kind of escape from the grim realities of everyday life. In our situation ballet is a luxury ... The girls dream of a better life and a better Iraq." Middle East Onlineq 01/07/03
Posted: 01/07/2003 5:52 pm


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