Does Money Equal Art? Is it true that "nothing great ever happens in art unless there's some big money somewhere on the scene?" That "there must be some kind of economic boom and not too much warring" and that "peace tends to equal commerce and commerce equals art?" New Statesman 02/02/04
Posted: 02/03/2004 6:29 pm
Cheap Music (And Movies) For All! How to make all this file-sharing business legal and profitable? Harvard professor Terry Fisher (a very smart guy, and a leading thinker on intellectual property issues) has devised a system that would pay artists and their recording labels and make the trading of music and other digital media cheap and plentiful. And what would it cost? Six bucks a month, and painlessly collected... The Register 02/01/04
Posted: 02/03/2004 4:17 pm
The Case Of The Missing Ivories (Questions Remain) So the small ivories stolen from the Art Gallery of Ontario have been returned. But surely that's not the end of the story. There are too many unanswered questions about this odd art theft caper... Toronto Star 02/04/04
Posted: 02/04/2004 7:54 am
The Art Of Looking Good (Conceptually) At Toronto's flagship Holt Renfrew store, high-style fashionistas can now pick up a bit of high-concept art with their upper-end shoes and dresses. "We want to intrigue and challenge people, and add a conceptual texture to their lives. I'm offering luxe for the mind, an intellectual indulgence." All this may sound a little rich, but the list of artists involved is startlingly good. Plans are afoot to sell Louise Bourgeois jewellery, lamps by Parisian installation artist Pierre Huyghe, and pottery by Turner Prize-winner Grayson Parry." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/04/04
Posted: 02/04/2004 6:20 am
Israel Demands Removal Of Art Exhibit "Israel has demanded the removal of a 'horrifying' exhibit at the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam that includes caricatures comparing Ariel Sharon to Adolf Hitler." The Guardian (UK) 02/01/04
Posted: 02/03/2004 5:23 pm
Barnes Could Raise Money By Sale Of Art ... The Barnes Foundation could raise $50 million by selling off some of its art. Though some of the artworld establishment would frown on the idea, selling some assets might allow the Barnes to stay where it is without moving to Philadelphia. The judge hearing a motion to relocate said last week: "If it appears that adequate capital can be produced [through a sale], the ethical problems presented thereby may have to yield to the donor's expressed wishes." Philadelphia Inquirer 02/01/04
Posted: 02/03/2004 4:44 pm
Death Of Classical Recording? Nahhh! Norman Lebrecht predects the end of the conventional classical recording business. But Anthony Tommasini begs to disagree: "Smaller labels like Nonesuch and Naxos, which once just filled in the gaps with records of specialty repertory and adventurous artists ignored by the majors, are proving that it is possible to release important recordings at midrange prices and still pay the bills. And though the financial repercussions from the downloading of CD's have the recording industry feeling besieged and impotent, some bold orchestras have, like many rock groups, taken matters into their own hands and released self-produced CD's, recorded live and available on the Internet." The New York Times 02/04/04
Posted: 02/03/2004 9:32 pm
- Previously:
Lebrecht: The Sky Is Falling, And I Mean It This Time Norman Lebrecht has been proclaiming the death of classical music recording for some time, and now, he is confidently predicting that 2004 will be the last year of the classical recording industry's existence as a distinctive branch of the music business. Classical records have become a niche market, says Lebrecht, and haven't even begun to utilize the new technologies available to them. Worse yet, the labels themselves have abandoned any effort to invest in new talent for more than a paltry few albums, thus making it impossible for emerging musicians to develop an international following. La Scena Musicale 12/31/03
Study: Singing Is Healthy For You A new study by researchers at the University of Frankfurt reports that singing is good for you - that it boosts your immune system. Andante (DPA) 02/03/04
Posted: 02/03/2004 6:44 pm
At The ENO - Plenty Of Questions As the English National Opera gets set to move into its renovated home, some big questions have yet to be answered, writes Norman Lebrecht: "The critical public issue for ENO is, as it has been for a decade, the question of identity. The company is not English, except inasmuch as its singers mangle the vernacular. It is not National, lacking the resources to tour. And it is desperately keen to shed the corsets of Opera in the quest for new audiences and fresh relevance. It is, in sum, a product in need of rebranding, a relic of a very different society that has failed to adjust to post-industrial demand." La Scena Musicale 01/31/04
Posted: 02/03/2004 6:40 pm
Crippling Classical Music On iPods Digital music players are great... for pop music. For classical? Well, the way music is indexed on these things makes it impossible to sort and search. It's a nightmare. "It's enough to make you scream. Before classical music is ever going to take off in digital downloads, the whole classical-recording database--this is a mammoth job, but it's got to be tackled--will have to be rejiggered. Music has to show up correctly labeled, and fully searchable, by composer, composition and performers (with each artist's role correctly specified)." OpinionJournal 02/04/04
Posted: 02/03/2004 4:36 pm
Promoting Smoking Through The Arts In Seattle, the company that makes Lucky Strike cigarettes has become a patron of the arts. The company spreads money around, promoting Luckys in subtle ways - such as hiring attractive young people to sit in bars passing out tickets to alternative arts events (and talking up smokes). "Instead of battering the brain of the target audience, Lucky slides neatly into consciousness, trailing clouds of glory gathered from discreet arts funding. Credit spreads by word of mouth, making the product -- which was launched as a brand in 1871 -- appear modest and friendly." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 02/03/04
Posted: 02/03/2004 5:08 pm
Plans To Show Hitler Painting Scrubbed In Tokyo, plans to exhibit a painting by Adolf Hilter have been scrapped. "A spokesman for Toshiba Entertainment, the film's Japanese distributor, reportedly said that too much interest in the painting had led to the exhibition's cancellation." BBC 02/04/04
Posted: 02/04/2004 5:53 am
- Hitler Painting To Be Displayed In Tokyo A painting by Adolf Hitler is to be exhibited at a theatre in Tokyo in conjunction with a film about the dictator's life. "The showing of the watercolour is meant to back up the message of the film - to show that Hitler had a human side to him and that is all the more reason why he is terrifying because a despot could be born again." BBC 02/03/04
Posted: 02/03/2004 5:20 pm
Phantom Slides In To Second Tonight, Phantom of the Opera becomes the second-longest running show in Broadway history, sliding ahead of Les Miz. The show has gone on 6,681 times "through 11 Phantoms, beginning with Michael Crawford, but just one chandelier: that 900-pound, beaded monster that has since traveled 422 miles in its nightly plunge over its audience's heads." New York Post 02/04/04
Posted: 02/04/2004 6:34 am
Canada's Richest Writing Awards Announced "The finalists for the Great Annual Literary Awards - the most lucrative night in Canada's literary awards scene, with $133,000 distributed over nine prizes - were announced yesterday by the Writers' Trust of Canada." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/04/04
Posted: 02/04/2004 6:16 am
Lingua Franca - Suing Freelance Writers For Sport And Money The hearings drag on for freelance writers who are being sued by the trustee for the Lingua Franca bankruptcy. The trustee is going after writers for fees paid to them for stories they wrote in the last three months of the magazine's life. But there are indications that the judge hearing the case isn't taking the claims for payment very seriously... Village Voice 02/03/04
Posted: 02/03/2004 4:24 pm
- Previously: Lingua Franca Debacle A bankruptcy trustee for the erstwhile Lingua Franca magazine puts the screws to freelance writers in an attempt to get them to give back money the magazine paid them before folding. "A dead magazine putting the squeeze on its freelancers? Insiders are lamenting this sad end to the glorious saga of Lingua Franca, which tweaked higher education and popularized what is now known as the journalism of ideas. In chilly apartments around the city, freelancers are freaking out, calling lawyer friends, and wondering how they will come up with the money." Village Voice 01/12/04
Mel Gibson To Delete Controversial Line From Film A controversial line will be deleted from Mel Gibson's new movie The Passion of Christ. "It didn't work in the focus screenings. Maybe it was thought to be too hurtful, or taken not in the way it was intended. It has been used terribly over the years." The New York Times 02/04/04
Posted: 02/04/2004 6:40 am
L'affaire Jackson - The Horror! The morality play is unfolding right on schedule after Janet Jackson exposed a breast on American TV. "The flap - the Federal Communications Commission is launching a full probe into the whole half-time show, because a horrified nation demands it - is unfolding because the knocker was flashed on network TV during a 'family' program. The thing is, I think, that CBS is now so weirdly infatuated with the Jacksons that it believes that they're your average American family." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/04/04
Posted: 02/04/2004 6:26 am
A Pop Culture Moment Right Down There With The Rest Of Them "Whatever it was, the quick glimpse of Janet Jackson's bare breast during Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show has emerged as a pop-culture moment that will be remembered and debated, perhaps most significantly by the Federal Communications Commission, which quickly announced an investigation into the incident." Denver Post 02/04/04
Posted: 02/04/2004 6:13 am
...Because It's Easier To Get Outraged By A Publicity-Seeking Jackson Repurcussions are mounting after the Janet Jackson Superbowl incident. "There is a growing consensus that CBS so egregiously abandoned its responsibility as media gatekeeper that it calls into question the entire realm of American broadcasting - from the way network ownership has changed in the last two decades, to the actions of the federal agency set up 70 years ago to ensure that it operated in the public interest." Baltimore Sun 02/04/04
Posted: 02/04/2004 5:59 am
