Ideas From Apolitical To Artistic Activism "For the past decade, the New York art world seemed to have retreated into an exceptionally apolitical version of postmodernism, convinced by a combination of theory and action movies that a digitally enhanced future would favor spectacle over reality. Now, with the advent of an all-too-real war presented as mere spectacle by television, artists are suddenly faced with the very surrealistic task of making reality real. So it's not surprising to see both in works on view at galleries and in the strategies of the burgeoning anti-war activists a reprisal of the imagery and the sincerity of earlier periods of art history." Village Voice 04/01/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 7:39 pm A Marketplace of Reputation Of what are artistic fortunes made? Why do some artists' reputations move up, while others fall? "Beethoven has definitely slumped as Mozart has soared. Is this because we prefer humane elegance to transcendental striving - or is the potent myth-making of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus to blame? When I was a student 25 years ago, E M Forster was considered among the most profound and influential of 20th-century novelists. Now that homosexuality is no longer much of a battleground, his liberal humanism holds little appeal, and we have become mesmerised by the more aggressive complexities of Kipling instead." The Telegraph (UK) 04/02/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 7:21 pm Visual Arts Beck's Takes Turn For The Radical This year's Beck's Futures show opening Friday at London's ICA has taken a turn for the radical, writes Andrew Renton. "Just when the four-year-old award appeared to have been bedding in as the alternative Turner, it has reinvented itself with a streamlined short list of artists who are hardly visible outside the art world and hard to define within it..." London Evening Standard 04/01/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 6:58 pm The Anti-Art Art Competition "This year s Beck s Futures, a sort of crazy teenage Turner Prize for grown-ups, is so angrily anti-artworld that most of the artists shortlisted didn t bother taking any actual art to the exhibition space." The Times (UK) 04/02/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 6:55 pm Attack On Cradle Of Civilization "It may have only a single official Unesco listing but, with 1,000 acknowledged archaeological sites, Iraq is one huge world heritage zone. And on to this in the past few days have poured 740 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 8,000 smart bombs and an unknown number of stupid ones. One of the first acts of the war was an attack on the museum in Saddam's home town of Tikrit. To an Iraqi regime eager for ammunition for propaganda, this was proof of American and British barbarism. The allies preferred to see it as a symbolic strike at the personality cult of Saddam." The Guardian (UK) 04/02/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 6:46 pm Breton's Apartment Broken Up Despite impassioned protests, surrealist Andre Breton's flat in Paris has been emptied and its contents organized for auction. "Thousands of paintings, documents, photographs and personal souvenirs were carried away to warehouses, destroying what was seen as a surrealist work of art in itself." The Observer (UK) 03/30/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 6:42 pm Claim: Artworld Has Passed Saatchi By Is Charles Saatchi struck in the 90s? Some think so, after seeing his new gallery in London. "Art has moved on, declared Philip Dodd, director of the Institute for Contemporary Art, to internet sites that allow angry Iraqis in Baghdad to virtually bomb Washington and London, moaning one-eyed mummies, and performance artists who sew balsawood soles to their feet. I think Saatchi was about a time and a place. His gallery is a monument to the 90s, and a museum in some ways to a time when he dominated the scene." The Guardian (UK) 04/01/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 6:34 pm Defacing Goya Or "Rectifying" Him? Artists known as the Chapman brothers have "drawn demonic clown and puppy heads on each of the victims" on a rare set of prints of Goya's apocalyptic "Disasters of War". "Some experts believe that what the brothers call their 'rectification' of the prints is a fresh spin for the Manga generation. Others do not. Robert Hughes: Goya "will obviously survive these twerps, whose names will be forgotten a few years from now ... Maybe it's time they put Mickey Mouse heads on the Sistine Chapel." The Guardian (UK) 04/01/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 6:27 pm Defacing Goya Prints "Two years ago, the Chapmans bought a complete set of what has become the most revered series of prints in existence, Goya's Disasters of War. It is a first-rate, mint condition set of 80 etchings printed from the artist's plates. In terms of print connoisseurship, in terms of art history, in any terms, this is a treasure - and they have vandalised it." The Guardian (UK) 03/31/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 6:15 pm Music Houston Symphony Musicians End Strike Musicians of the Houston Symphony have ratified a new contract, ending their 23-day strike. "The players made significant financial concessions. They include a reduction in annual minimum salary in the first three seasons covered by the agreement, achieved via unpaid furloughs of from one to three weeks per year. The agreement expires Sept. 30, 2006. However, the two sides agreed that salaries will return to the median of all full-time United States orchestras in the following contract." Houston Chronicle 04/01/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 6:51 pm Arts Issues The Arts - Where We Go From Here? Challenges for the performing arts are everywhere. Musical America talks with notable figures in the arts world to get a view of the future... Musical America 2002 Posted: 04/01/2003 7:53 pm Instant Messaging Is Eroding Kids' Writing Skills Parent and many educators are becoming "increasingly alarmed by the effect of Internet communication on the writing skills of U.S. teens, who spend an average of 12 hours a week online, according to an America Online survey. Much of that time is spent exchanging 'instant messages' with software offered by AOL, Yahoo and MSN. This informal instant communication lends itself to linguistic shortcuts, shoddy grammar and inappropriate or absent punctuation." USAToday 04/01/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 7:05 am Art Of Protest "In recent months, Bay Area peace activists have infused their dissent with creativity, bringing music, elaborate costumes, sculpture, guerrilla theater and performance art to numerous rallies, marches and vigils. The predominance of art has allowed activists to cross language and cultural barriers and has added spunk, humor and powerful visual images to events that used to be filled with long speeches and chanting. At times, the artwork has diffused tense confrontations with police." San Jose Mercury-News 04/01/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 6:47 am People Margaret Atwood: What's With America? Margaret Atwood is a a great admirer of America. Or at least she used to be. "You were Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront, you were Humphrey Bogart in Key Largo, you were Lillian Gish in Night of the Hunter. You stood up for freedom, honesty and justice; you protected the innocent. I believed most of that. I think you did, too. It seemed true at the time. You are not only our neighbours: In many cases - mine, for instance - you are also our blood relations, our colleagues, and our personal friends. But although we've had a ringside seat, we've never understood you completely, up here north of the 49th parallel." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/01/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 7:47 pm Publishing Are We Reading More Poetry Than We Used To? "On almost any day these days, somewhere in Chicago and its suburbs, a poet is conducting a reading. A poet in residence is opening a world of words to a class of wide-eyed 5th graders. An editor in a cluttered, cramped home office is lovingly cobbling together a poetry journal that will be seen by a tiny audience appreciative of its presence, concerned for its survival. A boisterous bar crowd is giving encouraging applause or withering hisses to contestants in a poetry slam. "That sure wasn't the case in the '70s or '80s. Every once in a while, there'd be a reading, but not all that often." Chicago Tribune 04/01/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 4:44 pm Study: As Book Review Space Declines So Do Book Sales The book business is hurting in Canada. Could it partly be because book review space in newspapers is shrinking? A survey of eight major Canadian papers (including four owned by the CanWest chain) found that "in the CanWest papers, 14 per cent fewer books were reviewed last year than five years earlier. The decline at CanWest most keenly affected Canadian authors, who received half the reviews in 1997 but only 42 per cent of a smaller total last year. Books from small presses were 18 per cent of 1997 reviews at the CanWest papers, versus 11 per cent in 2002. Reviews in the other four papers rose by 17 per cent over the same period. The Star published 100 reviews over three months last year (a 1 per cent increase), the Globe & Mail published 155 (up by 2 per cent), while the Halifax Chronicle Herald tripled its reviews from 19 to 57." Toronto Star 04/01/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 7:00 am Media Minnesota Losing Film Business Minnesota, like many states, has a film office whose job it is to lure movie companies to film in the state. The office helps arrange permits, scout locations and generally make filmmakers' lives easier. It also offers rebates - called "snowbates" here - to bribe production companies. But the state's governor has cut the ofice's budget, and it looks like much of the Minnesota film business will go away. "The board keeps a tally of money spent on filmmaking in the state and compares it to the amount it gets in state subsidies. Over the past 10 years, the ratio is 33 to 1." The Star-Tribune 04/01/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 5:58 am Dance New Funding For UK Dance Education The British government has decided to inject new funding for dance education. "The 3 million package for music and dance announced by the education secretary, Charles Clarke, will make sure that hip-hop and street dance are promoted alongside jazz, tap and ballet. Although dancing is a compulsory part of the primary school curriculum it is rarely taught by specialists and lags far behind music in popularity." The Guardian (UK) 04/02/03 Posted: 04/01/2003 6:39 pm