Death Of Theatre Criticism? Theatre criticism is dying, writes Bill Marx. But why? "The fact is most of today's critics have no interest in ideas: they are functionaries who treat reviewing as diplomacy rather than provocation. Once criticism becomes a job, rather than an act of passionate thought, timidity inevitably follows. 'The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction,' proclaims poet William Blake. The consumer guide critics are winning; the horses that provide context are going to the glue factory on their knees. And a tear or two should be shed. But do not despair, because in the future the tygers of wrath will growl and a mad dog or two bark." WBUR (Boston) 12/04/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 9:10 pm
Screaming At Volcanos For more than a century art historians have wondered what event inspired Edvard Munch's most famous painting "The Scream." Now some astonomers in Texas have come up with a theory based on a major natural event... The New York Times 12/09/03
Posted: 12/09/2003 8:46 am
Power(Point) To The People! Former Talking Heads musician David Byrne has turned to PowerPoint as his latest artistic medium. "His art presentations make babble of business-speak, and question whether the form of what we communicate can affect its truth: Rebellious flow charts stream backward, screens overflow with clip art gone wild, deliverables and leave-behinds assume surreal new roles, and renegade bullet points assault the viewer in a rapid-fire barrage." Wired 12/09/03
Posted: 12/09/2003 6:16 am
Barnes Collection Makes Its Case In Court A hearing to determine the fate of the Barnes Collection began Monday. The Barnes wants to break its founder's trust and move to downtown Philadelphia. Museum officials testified the Foundation will go bankrupt if it is not allowed to move. Philadelphia Inquirer 12/09/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 7:29 pm
I Wanna Be Taller (The Tallest) "The tall building is the symbol of all that we hope for—height, reach, power, and a revolving restaurant with a long wine list—and all that we cower beneath. It is a symbol of oomph and of waste, the lighthouse of commerce and the outhouse of capitalism, the tallest candle on the biggest cake, and the cash-economy prison made up of countless anonymous cells. When the Empire State Building was being built, as Neal Bascomb reveals in his new book, the motive for its height was insistently said to be commercial—it was more economical, and the spire would be a place for wandering zeppelins to find a mooring—even though everyone knew that the real motive was just to be . . . taller. The New Yorker 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 7:16 pm
Is Tate Modern Building A Failure? Architect Will Alsop says that Tate Modern has been hugely overhyped, and that it should never have been located in a former power station. "I don't think [Tate Modern] is a great building. It casts a very large shadow over the river edge. They should have pulled the existing building down. When I go around I feel I'm being guided in the same way I might be guided round a shopping centre." The Guardian (UK) 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 4:25 pm
Perry Makes Difficult Turner Choice Choosing Grayson Perry to win this year's Turner Prize was evidently no slam dunk as far as the judges were concerned. "The judges' verdict was anything but a foregone conclusion: it took hours longer than usual to reach a decision, and they went out of their way to praise 'the outstanding presentations produced by all four artists'. But, in the end, Perry's use of the traditions of ceramics and drawing, and his "uncompromising engagement with personal and social concerns" put him out front." The Guardian (UK) 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 4:20 pm
- Does Perry Deserve The Turner? Why did Grayson Perry win this year's Turner Prize, asks Adrian Searle. "Grayson Perry is, at least in terms of his self-constructed public image and his candid interviews, an interesting, complicated character. But he makes middling, minor art. What counts most, perhaps, is Perry's invented alter ego, Claire, who is exactly the kind of creation the media loves. Yet I have always wondered what the pots, the drawing, Perry and Claire have to do with one another - apart from all being Perry's invention, all aspects of Perry." The Guardian (UK) 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 4:18 pm
- Just Who Is Grayson Perry? "Born in Chelmsford, Essex, in 1960, his parents split up when he was five and his stepfather, the milkman, was a bully..." BBC 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 4:10 pm
SPONSOR
From One Generation To The Next Some of the world's most distinguished artists gathered at Lincoln Center on November 10 to celebrate the completion of the inaugural year of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. www.rolexmentorprotege.com
The Detroit Symphony's $2 Million Deficit Hot off the opening of a new $60 million home, the Detroit Symphony "will announce an operating deficit of nearly $2 million on a $28-million budget at its annual meeting of members on Wednesday, according to people with knowledge of the orchestra's finances." Detroit Free Press 12/09/03
Posted: 12/09/2003 8:39 am
Andrew Davis To Pittsburgh? Is Chicago Lyric Opera director Andrew Davis shopping for a new job? "Last weekend, the 59-year-old Davis squeezed Friday night and Sunday afternoon performances with the Pittsburgh Symphony into a schedule that included conducting Wagner's five-hour "Siegfried'' in Chicago Saturday night. Pittsburgh's music director, Mariss Jansons, will be leaving his post at the close of this season after seven years, and last week in an interview with a Pittsburgh newspaper before the concerts, Davis candidly admitted being interested in the position." Chicago Sun-Times 12/09/03
Posted: 12/09/2003 7:37 am
Steve Jobs: Recording Companies Need To Be Educated How did Apple get recording companies to buy in to the iTunes download store? "We told them the music subscription services they were pushing were going to fail. MusicNet was gonna fail, Pressplay was gonna fail. Here's why: People don't want to buy their music as a subscription. They bought 45s, then they bought LPs, they bought cassettes, they bought 8-tracks, then they bought CDs. They're going to want to buy downloads. They didn't see it that way. There were people running around -- business-development people -- who kept pointing to AOL as the great model for this and saying, 'No, we want that -- we want a subscription business'." Rolling Stone 12/08/03
Posted: 12/09/2003 6:06 am
Of Thee I Sing (Won't Anybody Listen?) Why is choral music such an outsider in the larger music world? Indeed, choral music has almost as much trouble gaining acceptance as new music. "Could it be that the choral world has too strong a hold on its citizenship? Are the immigration policies too stringent to allow "non-choral composers" inside, and likewise, to allow "choral composers" opportunities to sell their wares to the outside world? Certainly composers such as Arvo Pärt are becoming known in the choral world almost to the point of being appropriated into that 'community,' albeit willingly. On the other hand, many composers find it difficult to break into, but not for lack of desire." NewMusicBox 12/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 9:04 pm
SF Opera Posts $3.8 Million Deficit "The San Francisco Opera will close the books on the 2003 fiscal year with an operating deficit of $3.8 million, General Director Pamela Rosenberg said Friday. That deficit on an operating budget of approximately $60 million is a sizable amount, but far less than the previous year's loss of $7.6 million -- not to mention the $9.2 million shortfall that company officials had originally predicted." San Francisco Chronicle 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 7:49 pm
Former NYPhil Trustee Jumps To Lincoln Center A major trustee of the New York Philharmonic, who left the board last month after opposing the orchestra's proposed merger with Carnegie Hall, has joined the board of Lincoln Center. "While Rita Hauser has made donations to Lincoln Center and has served on its board as a representative of the Philharmonic, most of her financial support — millions of dollars — has gone to the orchestra during her 25 years on its board. She said yesterday that she might continue to support the Philharmonic but 'not at the same level'." The New York Times 12/09/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 7:34 pm
DC Gov Gets Into The Arts Biz Historically, Washington DC government has not funded the arts in much of a significant way. But DC recently approved $20 million towards a new downtown home for the Shakespeare Theatre. The city's mayor wants to dramatically increase cultural funding - "despite the city's general fiscal troubles - by pitching theaters and galleries as economic development projects and arguing that they should be funded through sources that do not directly compete with routine city services." Washington Post 12/07/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 9:04 am
Buena Vista Star Gonzalez, 84 "The Cuban pianist Ruben Gonzalez, one of the leading members of the musicians that formed the Buena Vista Social Club, has died aged 84." BBC 12/09/03
Posted: 12/09/2003 6:14 am
Kennedy Center Honors Comedienne Carol Burnett, country music star Loretta Lynn, soul legend James Brown, film and stage director Mike Nichols and violinist Itzhak Perlman get their Kennedy Center Honors. "In time-honored style, each was enveloped in adulation, encomiums supplied by a parade of fellow celebs." Washington Post 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 7:51 pm
Barenboim - An Artist's Dilemma "The question of when an artist must engage in politics remains a painful, personal dilemma. It is an issue that preoccupies Daniel Barenboim, Israel’s most celebrated musician and its most vociferous critic. Barenboim has taken his opposition to Israeli policy to the front line, forming a youth orchestra from both sides of the conflict and teaching twice a year at a conservatory in Ramallah whose 800 students, he admits, are imbued with a hatred of Israel. He has been abused by Israeli politicians and pelted with vegetables in a Jerusalem restaurant. But the more he criticises Israel, the deeper his commitment grows." La Scena Musicale 12/03/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 7:45 pm
Family Feud - Why Scotland's Most Famous Composer Shut Up James MacMillan is Scotland's most famous composer. But "over the past five years or so, the steady deterioration in the relationship between the country's most famous composer and Scottish society at large has progressed gradually and relentlessly, until now, when there is no relationship at all. Systematically, MacMillan has cut himself off from communications with the outside world.
Many of the circumstances of the decline are well-known – notorious, even – though one day there is a large footnote to be written in the history of Scottish contemporary cultural life, in order to document the whole sad, shambolic affair." Glasgow Herald 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 4:33 pm
Wright: Melbourne Theatre Stuck In The 19th Century "According to Tom Wright, theatre in Melbourne has become stylistically mired in late-19th-century naturalism and has lost its intellectual edge. 'There's a discourse in Melbourne, mostly led by Adrian Martin, that takes cinema seriously and contextualises it as an art form. That's exactly what's lacking in theatre. No one's providing a sense of historical perspective, and that makes it easy for theatre companies to develop a certain plodding sensibility where comfort becomes the major factor'." The Age (Melbourne) 12/09/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 3:54 pm
Our Expanding Shelves (Too Many Books?) Are too many books being published? Well, that depends whether you're a reader or a publisher. "The most recent figures show that in 2002, total output of new titles and editions in the U.S. grew by nearly 6 percent, to 150,000. General adult fiction exceeded 17,000 - the single strongest category. Juvenile titles topped 10,000, the highest total ever recorded. And there were more than 10,300 new publishers, mostly small or self-publishers. No wonder we're all running out of shelf space." Hartford Courant 12/09/03
Posted: 12/09/2003 7:42 am
In Praise Of JM JM Coetzee is the kind of author you can feel good about being enthusiastic, writes Lynne Coady. "This is an author whose work one can celebrate unreservedly, who refuses to be anyone's public platypus, whose recent winning of the Nobel Prize for literature is the kind of thing that makes readers feel really, really good about whoever's keeping shop over there in Stockholm, and really, really contemptuous toward the Man Booker Prize judges, who neglected to shortlist Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/09/03
Posted: 12/09/2003 6:29 am
Coetzee Shows Up For Nobel JM Coetzee turns up in Stockholm to accept his Nobel. "Although he did not turn up to collect either of his Booker Prizes in 1993 and 1999, he delivered this year’s Nobel Lecture last night and will receive the prize itself on Wednesday. What Coetzee will not do is make himself available for interview. He belongs to that small band of heroic writers who - without being as reclusive as Pynchon or Salinger - have declined to make themselves available for publicity purposes." The Scotsman 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 9:19 pm
The Literary Jackpot (Doesn't Happen) Ah yes, what writer doesn't dream of an instant bestseller - prfereably for one's first novel. But "the truth is that the jackpot theory of literature only works up to a point, and, particularly, in an impressionable marketplace like America where barrow-loads of fashionable books are bought but not read. Most of the time, in Britain, the so-called 'overnight success' usually turns out, on closer inspection, to be the well-deserved fruition of a painstaking apprenticeship." The Observer (UK) 12/07/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 4:17 pm
Poetry Magazine Windfall Sows Some Discord "While initially hailed as a blessing, the $100 million gift from drug-company heiress Ruth E. Lilly is sowing discord in the normally harmonious realm of verse. Poetry is embroiled in a lawsuit with a bank over alleged mismanagement of funds. The journal's editor of 20 years, Joseph Parisi, quit over the summer amid a battle with a newly assertive board. Rival poetry groups complain the magazine is gaining too much influence and will stifle the more-creative elements of the craft. Even Poetry's staunchest supporters wonder how the monthly journal will survive its sudden windfall." Wall Street Journal 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 2:54 pm
Criticism Of Disney's Eisner Growing Is Michael Eisner vulnerable as head of Disney? After Roy Disney quit Disney's board last week, more public criticism of Eisner has surfaced. "Despite a charm offensive by Mr. Eisner in response to the board uprising last year - wooing anxious or skeptical directors, institutional investors, partners and members of the news media over cocktails and in interviews - many say he has just papered over a lack of substantive change at the company." The New York Times 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 7:41 pm
Some NBC Affiliates Refuse to Carry Saturday Night Live "Over the weekend, half a dozen or so NBC stations refused to show "Saturday Night Live" because Al Sharpton, a presidential candidate, was hosting. They objected either because of the equal time rules or out of fear the 90-minute program would embarrass them by amounting to more political coverage than most TV stations offer in six months." Chicago Tribune 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 4:04 pm
The Changing Balanchine "Once upon a time it was easy to defend the orthodoxy of the Balanchine style in practice. It was on stage with the master's imprimatur at the New York State Theatre. Things are not that simple anymore. Suddenly, Balanchine is everywhere. And his dances simply don't look the same on Martins' New York City Ballet, Tomasson's San Francisco Ballet, Mitchell's Dancer Theatre of Harlem, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet or in Villella's own Miami City Ballet." Miami Herald 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 6:51 pm
What Is Matthew Bourne, Exactly? "When Matthew Bourne was on the way up, it was generally accepted that what he did was choreography. When his 1995 Swan Lake became a huge success, however, dance critics began to say that he was not a choreographer but a director. The (sniffy) implication was that London is full of mere directors, whereas the world has few true choreographers. That Bourne was proficient at arranging a piece of theatre was not to be denied; but how efficient was he at making a dance?" Financial Times 12/08/03
Posted: 12/08/2003 4:10 pm
