Frank Lloyd Wright Does Baghdad?
In the 1950s Frank Lloyd Wright went to Baghdad and drew up plans for "rebuilding Baghdad into a glittering capital of Islamic culture like the one that once dazzled the world." Librarians at the Library of Congress in Washington DC have the plans, and some suggest they should be used. "Iraqis think we want to kill their culture. Yet when America's greatest architect drew a plan for Baghdad in 1957, where did he turn for inspiration? Not to American or European 'modernism,' which was so fashionable at the time, but to Arab and Persian architecture, which had shaped the famous Baghdad of the 8th and 9th century."
Washington Post
06/29/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 10:42 pm
Art In The Walls
"As contemporary artists increasingly turn to wallpaper as their chosen medium, this superficial material is gaining some serious respect. In fact, artists have been dabbling in wallpaper since the 16th century (or earlier), among them Albrecht Dürer, Thomas Rowlandson (whose 'Grotesque Borders' caricatured the British upper crust) and Salvador Dalí. Andy Warhol used it famously in 1966, when he papered the Leo Castelli Gallery with his 'Cow Wallpaper,' a fuchsia-and-yellow series of repeated bovine heads, accompanied by floating silver balloons. Like Warhol, most artists reviving this tradition do so with ironic or subversive results."
The New York Times
06/29/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 9:12 pm
Neuro-Mozart - Does It Exist?
Does listening to Mozart make you smarter? That's the claim, repeated often, without much scientific study to back it up. Now the Neurosciences Institute, a "respected research body perched by the sea near La Jolla," California is presenting a concert series with neuroscience experts to address the question.
Los Angeles Times
06/29/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 10:21 pm
British Music Crisis? What Music Crisis?
"The British music industry, both live and recorded, employs more than 100,000 people and generates around £3 billion a year, yet it is perceived unquestioningly to be in the slough of despond. The hand-wringing reaches its apogee on Wednesday when Britain's most popular radio station, Radio 2, devotes five hours to The Great British Music Debate." But British music has never been healthier. Music occupies a central role in our lives, and look at this week's Glastonbury festival. Each "festival-goer has paid £100 for admission, and all tickets sold out within 18 hours of going on sale."
London Evening Standard
06/27/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 10:08 pm
Let Me Introduce You To Music
This trend of classical musicians speaking to their audiences before performing a piece of music is becoming very popular. But why? Why is it necessary to introduce the music? "Perhaps this thirst for the human voice has been created by television and radio. We are so used to being talked at, bombarded with information, never left in silence for a moment, that it has become unthinkable for a performer to need and use silence. Nobody ever plays on TV without first being talked about, or talked to, or talking themselves. The space between us and the performer always has to be filled."
The Guardian (UK)
06/28/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 9:38 pm
Why The Symphony Orchestra Is Dying
Why is the symphony orchestra dying? Bernard Holland spells it out in clinical style. "Classical music has only itself to blame. It has indulged the creation of a narcissistic avant-garde speaking in languages that repel the average committed listener in even our most sophisticated American cities. Intelligent, music-loving and eager to learn, such listeners largely understand that true talent and originality must find their own voice. What they do not understand is why the commitment to reach and touch listeners in the seats does not stand at the beginning of the creative process, as it did with Haydn and Mozart. This kind of art-for-art's-sake has much to answer for."
The New York Times
06/29/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 8:43 pm
Oh Canada - Knock It Off!
"Normally, the job of any Canadian arts journalist is to provide readers with an endless chorus of hurrahs, to be a booster, a fan, a tireless glee-clubber for all things Canuck." But really - this relentless pushing of all artists Canadian is at best tiresome, and at worst... Enough with the Diana Krall and Celine Dion soundtracks playing endlessly through all our public spaces...
The Globe & Mail (Canada)
06/28/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 9:22 pm
Good Old-Fashioned Entertainment Outsells Empty Flash
Last weekend, the latest Harry Potter book outsold Hollywood's biggest movie. This disproves the idea that kids need the fast-cut media rush to be entertatined, writes Frank Rich. "We live in a blockbuster entertainment culture, where the biggest Hollywood movies, most of them pitched at teenagers, saturate the market for a week or two, then vanish with little lasting trace on the collective consciousness. There's not enough time for the word of mouth that might allow something special but not instantly salable to find a mass audience, so why should a big studio take the chance? It's easier just to churn out the proven formulas and franchises, dumb and dumberer with each installment. This disposable blockbuster machinery is the antithesis of the career trajectory of the 'Harry' series."
The New York Times
06/29/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 8:49 pm
Where Art Means Business
Asheville, North Carolina used to be a manufacturing town. Now it makes arts, and resident artists think of themselves as leaders of the local economy. "We're running a business here, not a charity. I might not be making a product that you can load into a truck. Our product may be intangible, but it adds to the quality of life. And I'm not polluting either."
USAToday
06/27/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 11:33 am
Old Style Historian
Kenneth Clark would have been 100 this year. "Clark was the incarnation of a deeply outmoded type: the white upper-class worthy. He is best remembered for his 1969 television series, Civilisation, about the history of Western European culture, an inscrutable, perfectly turned-out English gentleman lecturing on high culture and its values to the masses. By the mid-1970s, his brand of art history was already being criticised for being too elitist, an old-fashioned upper-class amateur connoisseurship that was being superseded by ways of looking at art that emphasised society and politics. By the 1980s, when he died, his series had come to seem the epitome of what some now call heritage TV."
The Telegraph (UK)
06/28/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 10:03 pm
David White Goes West
For 28 years David White has been executive director of Dance Theater Workshop in New York and "one of the movers and shakers" in the dance world. There's not much he's set out to accomplish along the way to producing 1000 or so artists that he has been unable to do. Now, at age 55, he's leaving New York for St. Paul, Minnesota...
The New York Times
06/29/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 8:56 pm
A Year In The Theatre
Peter Marks reflects on his first year covering theatre in Washington DC. "For a critic making his way through his freshman year in the area's playhouses, these were the moments that defined the season, that most exuberantly lifted the spirit and dazzled the senses and boggled the mind."
Washington Post
06/29/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 10:39 pm
Asian-American Writers - The Next Wave
Amy Tan's 1989 novel, The Joy Luck Club, "presented a heartwarming picture of Chinese American life that enjoyed wide mainstream acclaim, but that many younger Asians felt was overly romanticized, even 'whitewashed.' Now, whether a result of that legacy or the nuisance of persisting stereotypes that insist Asians are quiet, studious and obedient, the bulwark of "immigrant fiction" has burst. A flood of vital, angry, sometimes violent and even sardonic new fiction from young Asian American novelists is being released this year."
Los Angeles Times
06/29/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 10:34 pm
Rap With Andy And Will (Or Not)
Britain's poet laureate Andrew Motion last weeke wrote some rap for Prince William's birthday. What a mistake. "The poet laureate going hip-hop is like Mel C going punk - except without quite so many flying bottles. Even so, within hours of the rap being published, an online petition was launched demanding, with a rather sinister turn of phrase, that Motion 'be removed'. The factor which will prevent MC Motion being sprayed in 20ft letters across the Buck House gates is not that he attempted the rap, but that it is so toe-curlingly off-the-mark, that instead of putting William - and the royal family - in some sort of modern context, it's more like a trap door beneath William on the gallows of cool, with Motion being forced to yank the lever."
The Guardian (UK)
06/28/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 9:44 pm
Write Canadian (Whatever That Means)
"Of all the elements of Canadian culture, literature may be the most definitive. Canadians are voracious readers of their own writers - from the founding 'CanLit' boom featuring Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler to, more recently, Barbara Gowdy, Rohinton Mistry and Yann Martel - and Canadian writing tops bestseller lists and wins awards internationally. How is the next generation carrying on this legacy and how is their work affected by such factors as Canada's racial diversity, media saturation and changing values?"
The Globe & Mail (Canada)
06/28/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 9:26 pm
ALA: A Controversy Over Cuban Colleagues
The American Library Association has become embroiled in a controversy over small independent libraries in Cuba. "Small lending libraries run out of people's homes, they circulate materials that the librarians say are banned by the government. To some members, the [American Library] association has been ignoring the repression of their colleagues and the cause of intellectual freedom; to others, a small group has been trying to hijack the organization to pursue an anti-Castro agenda."
The New York Times
06/28/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 8:58 am
True Grit - Audiences Seek Out Documentaries
"It's an easy fact to overlook; with low budgets, modest publicity and limited distribution, documentaries remain the widely ignored stepchildren of the film business. Yet while Hollywood studio films dominate our multiplex screens, cinemagoers are increasingly seeking out documentaries, on the correct assumption that they offer something more substantial." The Telegraph (UK)
06/28/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 9:51 pm
The Golden Man Of The Golden Age Of Movie Musicals
There's been speculation for some time now about whether the movie musical might return. To get an idea of the Golden Age of the movie musical, take a look at the work of Arthur Freed, a producer of musicals for MGM and "a producer of a type that no longer exists. No movie executive today can tap the wealth of talent that Freed had under contract at MGM, backed up by all the costumers, carpenters, electricians and painters he might need..." The New York Times
06/29/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 9:08 pm
In Search Of Ratings, Aussie TV Takes A Dive
Australian TV is having a crisis of quality. It's getting worse. "Without doubt, the commercial television industry is undergoing the biggest corporate shake-out of its 47-year history. The battle for profits has seen a generation of higher-placed executives recently cut loose. Proprietors have upped the pressure on the new guard to turn around a historic slump in advertising spending and cut costs even harder than their predecessors. They must boost ratings to attract more advertising dollars and make the network look better than its competitors." The Age (Melbourne)
06/29/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 8:25 pm
LA's New Home For Dance
Los Angeles has long had a troubled history as a nurturer of dance. But now that the Los Angeles Philharmonic is vacating the Music Center for Disney Hall, the Music Center is producing its own dance season. It's a conservative season, but it's a start on the road to developing a new dance audience. "Indeed, for better or for worse, the season supplies a kind of action painting of what American dance is like at the beginning of the century."
Los Angeles Times
06/29/03
Posted: 06/28/2003 10:27 pm
