Ideas The Greatest, Whatever, Uh-huh What is it with critics pronouncing this or that artist the "greatest" of a generation? Laziness, that's what, writes Peter Plagens. "A critic’s pronouncing somebody 'the greatest/most-important sculptor/bassoonist/director/novelist/cheesemaker/whatever of his generation' says much more about the critic than the anointed artist. It says that the critic has reached a state of fatigue and impatience with taking forward-looking, right-now judgmental chances on quirky 25-year-olds who probably won’t pan out over the long haul, making the critic look misguided. It says that the critic is more comfortable looking backward. It says the critic has reached a plateau of self-importance on which he wants to go around conferring cultural knighthoods on artist-commoners who’ve managed to rise above their making-clever-baubles-for-the-rich stations to become, almost, big thinkers. And it says that the critic wants to get the authoritative-sounding but actually sonorously empty words 'greatest' and 'generation' together in the same sentence." Newsweek 06/12/03 Posted: 06/12/2003 6:27 pm Visual Arts Ashes To Art (Hi, Uncle Charlie) Miss that special someone? Now you can keep them around, even after they're dead. A Seattle artist is "making urns from human ashes, following a formula Josiah Spode invented in 1797, producing fine English china glaze by adding calcinated cow bone to the company's clay mixture. Friends and relatives of various deceased gave him the ashes he's using in his human urn sculptures. Each comes in an edition of two, one piece for the commissioning parties and one for him." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 06/13/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 12:26 am Thieves Hit Rothschild Collection "On Tuesday night, in what is believed to have been the latest in a long line of highly organised 'stolen to order' art heists, a gang of thieves escaped with a haul of precious items worth hundreds of thousands of pounds from Waddesdon Manor, home of the world-famous Rothschild Collection. Thames Valley police confirmed that a gang of five men, disguised in boiler suits and balaclavas, broke into the National Trust-owned stately home near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and made off with more than 100 gold boxes and a number of other valuable pieces including several works of art." The Scotsman 06/13/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 12:18 am Art Returned To Iraq Museum In Trunk Of A Car The Iraq Museum has had one of its most valuable artworks returned. "The sacred Vase of Warka, a centrepiece of the Iraqi National Museum collection and feared to have been lost for ever after being looted, was returned yesterday. Three unidentified men brought it to the museum in the boot of a car." The Scotsman 06/13/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 12:05 am Broad Donates Money For New Contemporary Art Museum Philanthropist Eli Broad has agreed to fund a new building for contemporary art for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "In a memorandum of understanding with museum leaders, Broad has laid out plans to pay for 'every penny' of a new, 70,000-square-foot building, said LACMA board Chairman Wally Weisman. The new building, tentatively dubbed the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA and projected to cost roughly $50 million, would stand along Wilshire Boulevard just east of the former May Co. building now known as LACMA West." Los Angeles Times 06/12/03 Posted: 06/12/2003 10:47 pm Norway's Biggest Art Heist Since "The Scream" Norwegian authorities are calling the bold theft of a classic landscape painting from industrial concern Norsk Hydro "one of the biggest art heists in Norway since Edvard Munch's 'Scream' was stolen in 1994. The thieves disabled security cameras and alarms to steal JC Dahl's 'Rjukanfoss' landscape from 1830." Aftenposten (Norway) 06/12/03 Posted: 06/12/2003 6:31 pm Music Glennon: Is Rock Music Dying? "Though it gives me no joy whatsoever to say it, I've become certain that rock is in its last days. And I've started to believe that the subgenre that appears on the surface to offer rock its best hope for a full recovery is actually nothing more than a sign that death is nearer than anyone had thought. I've begun to believe that the far-reaching and seemingly endlessly expansive subgenre of rock-based experimental music is simply a function of the sickly old art form examining its life, noting the many things it might have been (in addition and, often, in opposition to the many things it actually has been), exploring each of them to the extent it's capable, sighing at the thought of some missed opportunities, perhaps even registering slight pangs of regret for what it did instead (prog-rock, perhaps, or death metal, and, of course, Steely Dan)." Valley Advocate (Massachusetts) 06/12/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 7:23 am Now Italy Is Without Music "Since the dawn of European music, Italy has been its chief wellspring of melody and imagination. Johann Sebastian Bach learned his craft copying out concertos by Vivaldi and claiming them as his own. Mozart wrote his operas to Italian texts by Varesco, Calzabigi and da Ponte. But the recent death of Luciano Berio leaves Italy without a single composer of world renown - indeed, without one composer whose name might elicit a flicker of ragazzi recognition in any town piazza from Milan to Palermo. Italy has become overnight a land without music, a calamity of uncalculated cultural magnitude." La Scena Musicale 06/11/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 1:30 am Arts Issues Lincoln Center Construction Boss Quits The chairman of Lincoln Center's redevelopment project has resigned, calling the project "wasteful and badly managed." The resignation is another blow to the troubled performing arts complex, which saw the New York Philharmonic announce it was leaving two weeks ago. Peter Lehrer said as he resigned Lincoln Center: "A lot of money has been spent on planning with not enough to show for it." The New York Times 06/13/03 Posted: 06/12/2003 11:54 pm Oakland Mayor Backs Off Artist Evictions "Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown has dropped plans to evict artists from the popular downtown Alice Arts Center to make room for the expansion of his arts charter school." The artists had been protesting the possible eviction. The center served 50,000 people a year through classes and performances. San Francisco Chronicle 06/12/03 Posted: 06/12/2003 6:52 pm Theatre Is Theatre Inherently Political? If playwrights speak to the human condition, can their work be anything less than political? Do we inherently trust playwrights who are overtly political? A group of prominent playwrights gathers to discuss the issue. Backstage 06/12/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 7:37 am Print Your Own Tickets Buy your tickets online and print them out on your own printer. It's happening in Australia. "The Lion King will be the first major theatre production in Australia to use direct printing from the internet to make tickets available to patrons. Taking the pain out of queueing at the box office and dramas over lost or mislaid tickets, customers will be emailed a file with their ticket and other information on the show, with a $3 saving on the booking fee." The Australian 06/13/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 1:18 am New Theatre - Give 'Em What They Want "Something like a dozen innovative Seattle theater groups are grabbing younger audiences - people under 40 who pretty much elude the established stage institutions. Youth-friendly companies pattern their content and their style on TV, our No. 1 baby sitter, our low-cost mood-altering drug. The resultant shows are episodic. They are funny. They use a lot of music. They are sexy. They feature characters and situations with which under-40s can identify. Brandon Jepson performs for a Jet City Improv crowd. The bulk of Jet City audiences are between 16 and 25. And they are satirical. Using ridicule as a demolition ball, they whack away at anxiety-causing people, situations and organizations." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 06/13/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 12:23 am Broadway: How Do You Define Success? So this year's Tony Awards broadcast was entertaining... the rating didn't improve. "Despite the general impression inside the industry that the television broadcast was handled well and even ? gasp! ? entertaining at times, the Nielsen ratings didn't improve. About eight million people watched the Tonys last year; about eight million people watched the Tonys this year. Is that surprising? More important, is it depressing? In the end, no. Some 11.4 million tickets to Broadway shows were sold last year, a number that has held roughly the same for several years." The New York Times (2nd item) 06/13/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 12:00 am Broadway's Tricky Season Ah yes, Broadway ended up having a big-selling season at the box office. But for producers, navigating the minefield of situations that came up this year required some extra risk-taking. "New York theater has had a troubled winter. Bad weather, a Broadway strike, the war in Iraq, and an uncertain economy have made for dicey times for an industry still trying to figure out what the new normal is since 9/11 knocked it for a loop." Christian Science Monitor 06/13/03 Posted: 06/12/2003 11:10 pm Publishing Indy Bookstore Declines Harry The last time a new Harry Potter book came out, an independent bookstore in Toronto got the jump on the sale date and began selling it early. That led to recriminations from the publisher, the lawyers got involved, and ... tens of thousands of dollars and a few years later, the publisher wants to know if the bookstore wants a piece of the new Harry. Not a chance, says the bookstore owner. "The whole thing was totally ridiculous. You put an embargo on Saddam Hussein, not on children's books." Toronto Star 06/13/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 1:01 am Joyce In Bloom "There are many puzzles attached to James Joyce's Ulysses, not the least of which is its reputation of being unreadable. It might be the greatest novel in the English language, so it goes, but who can read it? For those who can, there is no puzzle: Joyce's account of one day in the life of his antihero, Leopold Bloom, is as spellbinding as the entire history of Odysseus's journeys during the Trojan wars in Homer's Odyssey, on which it is loosely modelled." Sydney Morning Herald 06/13/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 12:34 am Reforming Saddam's Literary Reputation Saddam wasn't just a dictator, of course, he was a best-selling author whose books were greeted with rapturous reviews. Of course now that he's out of power, the critics have reformed their judgment of Saddam's literary efforts. "Ali Abdel-Amir, a writer, has pronounced his former leader?s novels 'shallow'. The female characters are 'always unfaithful and were either Kurds or Iranians', he said." The Scotsman 06/13/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 12:10 am Media Aussie TV/Filmmakers Wary Of US/Aus Free Trade Deal The US/Australia free trade deal was made primarily for agriculture. But Australia's film and TV industry is upset because it fears American products will overwhelm the home-grown industry. "The Australian film and television industry is small by world standards and protected by a raft of local media content rules. Some 55% of commercial television primetime viewing must be Australian made. At upwards of $250,000 an hour for quality drama, that's no small investment. In contrast, top rating US shows can be bought in for as little as a tenth of the cost of the homegrown version." BBC 06/13/03 Posted: 06/13/2003 7:30 am