Is Art Sneaking Back Into The Mainstream? "Emerging from the domain of museums, galleries and textbooks, art seems to be a hot topic these days, appearing all around us in everyday culture. Walk into a bookstore, hit a movie, go to a play - and you may find yourself thinking about art." From movies with titles like Mona Lisa Smile to bestsellers like The DaVinci Code to a new wave of novels whose plots evolve from the experience of looking at a single painting, fine art is sneaking its way back into middlebrow American culture. Newsday 01/06/04
Posted: 01/08/2004 5:46 am
Tate Considers Selling Art To Trade Up The Tate is considering selling some of its art to upgrade its collection. "Works by living artists, such as David Hockney, could be sold to allow the Tate to buy better or more appropriate items by the same person. Despite Hockney's stature, the most recent of his pieces in the Tate's collection dates back to 1977." BBC 01/07/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 10:27 pm
Changing The Orchestra Paradigm "In a move unprecedented among full-time American orchestras, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is eliminating the position of music director and replacing it with a handful of 'artistic partners' of international renown. Among the first batch of partners are superstar violinist Joshua Bell and Italian conductor Roberto Abbado." The decision to overhaul the SPCO's business model comes in the wake of a controversial contract, signed last summer, which cut the SPCO musicians' salaries by more than 20%, but also gave them an unprecedented leadership role in the organization. Orchestras around the country will be watching the new St. Paul model closely. St. Paul Pioneer Press 01/08/04
Posted: 01/08/2004 4:55 am
Turmoil At Royal College Of Music The Royal College of Music is one of London's most venerable institutions. But its students and faculty are in an uproar over cuts at the school. "Nineteen salaried staff have been "invited" to reapply for their jobs. The idea is to cut the number of positions, thus saving money, and to weed out those staffers who might undermine the college's attempts to score high in the next research-rating round. Those who aren't reappointed will be offered teaching on an hourly rate or redundancy. The students are said to be "up in arms about their favourite teachers being kicked into touch"." The Guardian (UK) 01/08/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 11:08 pm
Why You Can't Understand That Soprano "Three physicists report in Nature today that they tuned into opera and found a perfectly good reason for not being able to hear the words: the louder the song, the greater the resonance frequency of the vocal tract and the more difficult it is to hear a soprano's vowels." The Guardian (UK) 01/08/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 11:02 pm
The War On Terrorism (and Foreign Artists?) New U.S. customs rules put in place by the Bush administration have the potential to severely limit the ability of foreign-born artists to tour North America, and Canadian organizations are worried that their cultural trade will be directly affected by the actions of the American government. Artists who were born outside of certain pre-approved countries "can expect to be detained [at the U.S. border] under the new U.S. Homeland Security regulations for digital fingerprinting, photographing and a short interview, even if their work visas have been pre-approved by U.S. authorities." Many performers are unwilling to risk such humiliating treatment, and are cancelling planned trips to North America. Toronto Star 01/08/04
Posted: 01/08/2004 6:05 am
Government Arts Funding On The Rise (In Canada) Even as America's state governments slash their arts funding to the bone or beyond, Canada is moving in the opposite direction. "Government spending for the arts and culture has continued to rise, with Ottawa coughing up more than $3-billion for the first time during the fiscal year 2001 to 2002... all three levels of government contributed that year to the fastest rate of increase in cultural spending in a decade, with Ottawa, the provinces and cities together providing $6.8-billion in 2001-2002." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/08/04
Posted: 01/08/2004 5:33 am
US State Arts Funding Cuts Not As Bad As Feared Florida, California and Michigan are among the states that drastically cut public arts funding in the past year. But it could have been worse nationally. "Many other state arts agencies were expected to suffer comparable reductions this year, but did not. Sixteen states kept their cuts to less than 10 percent, and in 18 other states the arts budget actually increased or stayed the same." The New York Times 01/08/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 11:14 pm
US Visa Tangles Make Booking Foreign Artists Increasingly Impractical It's getting impractical to book Foreign artists to perform in the United States. "According to many involved, the new security checks are downright Orwellian - delays last up to six months, applicants must appeal to a congressman to get an update during the process and there are no avenues of appeal. Moreover, administrators are overwhelmed by some 70,000 to 200,000 applications per year, with most of the backlog occurring at the FBI. The sweeping reorganisation of government branches under the Department of Homeland Security has also meant bureaucratic growing pains." Financial Times 01/07/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 10:56 pm
David Denby On The Rocks New Yorker movie critic has a new book out about his losses in the tech diving stock market of 2000. And what did he learn? "Dishearteningly, Mr. Denby's coda - the lessons derived from his humiliating loss of friends, money and dreams - stumbles when it could soar. Toting up what caused the mania, Mr. Denby cites unquenchable greed and rank materialism, turning preacher instead of penitent. As for his own day-of-reckoning reflections, he edges up against death, morality and spirituality but ultimately retreats into boomer cliché. Love conquers all. Live life more slowly." OpinionJournal 01/08/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 4:38 pm
Young UK Playwrights Speak Out The development of UK drama is broken, say many critics. Young playwrights have a catalog of complaints: "The trouble is, there is no middle-ground development. The theatre writer lives an indigent life of development hell that often shows little regard for experience and critical success. It is dependency with an independent tag, so nobody is accountable for the writer but the writer. An in-depth process that includes accountability will provide progress." The Guardian (UK) 01/08/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 11:00 pm
Hughes To Run Paris Review "Four months after the death of George Plimpton, the Paris Review announced yesterday that interim editor Brigid Hughes will permanently run the literary quarterly... Hughes, 30, takes on a role that Plimpton, who died in September at 76, assumed with tireless enthusiasm for half a century. In deference to Plimpton, his official title - editor - will not be filled. Hughes has the newly established title of executive editor." Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 01/08/04
Posted: 01/08/2004 5:58 am
The Rebirth Of Mutanabi Street Baghdad's Mutanabi Street has, for centuries, been one of the centers of Iraqi intellectual life, as reflected in the avenue's bookshops. Dissidents, professors, religious clerics, and ordinary Iraqis gathered together at Mutanabi's open-air book marts to trade ideas and debate philosophy. "In the 1970s, Saddam Hussein crushed intellectual life, forcing Mutanabi Street's alternative ideas and books underground. Secret police informants infested the cafe tables, ready to overhear whispers of dissent. But six months after the U.S. occupation, Mutanabi is again in ferment." Newsday 01/07/04
Posted: 01/08/2004 5:53 am
The Little Film That Couldn't The strange saga of Atom Egoyan's controversial film, Ararat, continues apace in Turkey. "Turkish newspapers were reporting yesterday that the Istanbul-based distributor of [the film] is in contact with associates of a right-wing nationalist group that forced the distributor this week to postpone Ararat's screening in Turkey." Officially, the Turkish government is still allowing the film to be screened, but plans for its debut were scrapped this week in the wake of violent threats from the nationalists. Egoyan considered traveling to Turkey himself, to make the case for his film, but has scrapped the idea as "foolish." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/08/04
Posted: 01/08/2004 5:28 am
- Previously: Turkish Ararat Screening Off "The Canadian writer-director of a controversial film about Turkey's historical genocide says he's surprised a country that seemed so committed to starting a dialogue about its painful past has postponed screening the film amid fears of attacks. Atom Egoyan, whose award-winning film Ararat was scheduled to begin showing in Turkey on January 16, said he's still waiting to hear more details from the Turkish film distributor about why its screening was scuttled... The Armenian National Committee of Canada said the film distributor, Istanbul-based Belge Films, pulled the film's release after receiving threats from Ulku Ocaklari, a group with ties to the Grey Wolves, a nationalist paramilitary group, as well as the Turkish military and intelligence units." Toronto Star 01/07/04
The CDs That Could Save The Industry A new CD technology which creates a fuller, more ambient sound for the listener is being hailed as the technology that could reverse the slide in international record sales. Super-Audio CDs (SACD) have two different layers of music embedded in them: one for "normal" CD players, and one for players equipped with the special digital capabilities that unleash layers of music previously unheard of in digital media. For audiophiles, its the best development in recording technology since the vinyl record. For the rest of the world, even the "normal" CD layer is a vast improvement over the current standard. Financial Times 01/06/04
Posted: 01/08/2004 5:13 am
The Death Of Aussie TV Dramas? Australian-made TV dramas have been failing at an alarming rate. "So what went wrong? Have viewers stopped watching Australian drama? Or weren’t any of these series good enough? Has reality TV altered the landscape to such an extent that people no longer have an appetite for scripted drama? And, if so, is it just a cyclical thing, or is it the shape of the future?" The Age (Melbourne) 01/08/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 10:46 pm
Movie Piracy - An Ego Trip Some groups of digital movie pirates aren't in it for the money. "Insiders and piracy experts say the groups are motivated mainly by ego. Instead of cash, the online underground is powered by bartering — admission to these elite circles is granted only to those with something valuable to offer, such as computer parts or a pre-release copy of a DVD." Los Angeles Times 01/07/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 10:40 pm
The iPod Of Movies? "Archos's device, which costs about $500 to $900 depending on the model, ignores an anticopying code found on a majority of prerecorded DVDs. That means consumers can plug the Archos device into a DVD player and transfer a movie to it. Users also can transfer recorded TV programs and digital music files to the Archos device. The Archos uses a video compression standard called MPEG-4 to cram as many as 320 hours of video at near-DVD quality onto its hard drive, the company says -- the equivalent of 160 two-hour movies." CNN 01/07/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 10:38 pm
How Balanchivadze Became Balanchine History left many such vivid marks - coincidences, close calls and fateful meetings - over Balanchine's career, and none was more crucial than the timing of his birth. If he had been born in a different generation he would probably have remained Balanchivadze and stayed in Russia. During his last years at school, however, the gilded world of the Tsar's Imperial Ballet was overturned by revolution. To a young choreographer, the resulting artistic fomentation was enthralling, but along with it came the risks of starvation and political chaos, and in 1924 Balanchivadze left for the west. The Guardian (UK) 01/08/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 11:05 pm
- Tobias: Balanchine 100 Begins "The trap in talking about Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—with which the New York City Ballet has just opened the winter repertory season of its Balanchine 100 Centennial Celebration—is comparing it to Frederick Ashton’s The Dream. (Balanchine’s take on Shakespeare’s play and Mendelssohn’s music was created in 1962; Ashton’s, in 1964.) The discussion quickly becomes a contest of merits—and Ashton usually wins. His one-act ballet is not merely more succinct and cohesive, it also harbors more emotional resonance. But what if we considered the delights of the Balanchine—and they are many—on their own?" Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 01/08/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 11:00 pm
Hip-Hopping To Survive "Clearly the most powerful dance movement to affect the market in the last 10 years is hip-hop. Its mainstream popularity--which, over the last decade, has cut into the livelihoods of technical jazz dancers seeking film, TV, and other commercial work--shows no signs of abating, but, according to some of the dance professionals we spoke to, the future looks more inclusive." Backstage 01/07/04
Posted: 01/07/2004 10:50 pm
