Our Culture Through A Wagner Filter The English like their mythologies to work out, to resolve themselves. But Wagner doesn't let you do that. "Bluntly, he's a critical component of our culture. We are compelled to make sense of why Wagner deploys myth to prove our own moral uncertainties." The Observer (UK) 03/21/04
Posted: 03/21/2004 10:50 pm
Added Value (Of Art) How is the value of art determined? "Scholars, critics, researchers and historians all shape the value of art. You think you are pure, but you give an expertise and you are participating in the market. Your assessment of quality, authenticity or attribution makes you a player, like it or not. You go to graduate school and think about truth and beauty, but there's this whole other world that affects the truth-and-beauty factor."
Los Angeles Times 03/21/04
Posted: 03/22/2004 12:41 am
Hadid Wins Prizker "Zaha Hadid, whose dynamic designs often seem to defy laws of gravity, has won the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honor. It is the first time the prize has been given to a woman in the award's 25-year history." Los Angeles Times 03/22/04
Posted: 03/22/2004 12:22 am
Picasso - Patron Saint Of Today's Architects? "Today, many architects - bored of straight lines and right angles on the one hand, and of the kitsch post-modern design that did so much to dumb down city skylines in the 1980s on the other - have decided that they want to be Picasso, too. They want to imbue matter-of-fact buildings like office blocks and blocks of flats with the spirit of the great artist and sculptor." The Guardian (UK) 03/22/04
Posted: 03/22/2004 12:19 am
Jamming With Saatchi Charles Saatchi's new show is jammed full of art. "An emporium is what it feels like - piled high, stacked deep. If one more work was tacked to one more inch of wood-panelled wall, the building would surely collapse. The central pantheon that guarantees the box office remains more or less intact: the shark, the dung, Myra and the bloody head, dead dad and the famously unmade bed. But all the other rooms, halls and corridors are jammed. By my count, there are more than a hundred new works on display, plus several more classics from Saatchi's collection. You get three shows for the price of a ticket." The Guardian (UK) 03/21/04
Posted: 03/22/2004 12:11 am
Feckless At The Royal Academy "Nowadays London's Royal Academy, for all its clever rebranding as friend to the Hirst generation, is a silly place: its summer show a trite exercise, its courting of the rich and famous (the newly restored rooms at its home, Burlington House, have been named after the man who gave the most money) a little crass, its style always tending to the posh and the phony. Yet the opening display from its art collection in the Fine Rooms is a powerful reminder that the Royal Academy once mattered, that it was once revolutionary." The Guardian (UK) 03/20/04
Posted: 03/21/2004 11:03 pm
A Museum-Quality Thomas Kinkade? A show of Thomas Kinkade at a real art museum? Really? Fullerton's Main Art Gallery at California State University is hosting a show of the self-proclaimed "Painter of Light." "Having Kinkade at Grand Central is kind of like having McDonald's pitch its Big Macs on PBS, or having Pepsi and Coors Light throw a rock concert on Washington, D.C.'s Mall. 'There's no financial motivation for us to do this. It's for the sake of stirring things up, creating dialogue.' Apparently, the strategy has worked. CSUF students and faculty have been buzzing about the upcoming show, and many are furious." Orange County Register 03/21/04
Posted: 03/21/2004 10:14 pm
Colorado Symphony Finalists The Colorado Symphony has narrowed its list of candidates to replace Marin Alsop as music director to four... Rocky Mountain News 03/21/04
Posted: 03/21/2004 10:01 pm
Indie Record Stores: Downloading Helping Our Business Conventional wisdom has it that music downloading has damaged the recording business. But some independent record stores are "finding that file sharing can help create a buzz online that can lead to more sales, according to a panel of independent music store owners who spoke at the South by Southwest Music Conference & Festival here Friday." Wired 03/20/04
Posted: 03/21/2004 9:42 pm
MTT: Brilliant And Brash Michael Tilson Thomas has made a career of doing the music he believes in. "I very much like the idea of the past, present and future being connected. Because I knew so many composers, hearing them sing their own music in their own voices had a huge influence on me. You learn so much about a person from hearing them sing. So I had to work backward with composers I never met, ones who died 200 years before I was born, to create a voice, a clear expressive point of view." Philadelphia Inquirer 03/21/04
Posted: 03/22/2004 1:10 am
Hytner's Reinvented National Theatre Nicholas Hytner has become a star leading London's National Theatre. "From the start his regime has been charged with a dynamism of purpose, a desire to redefine the National and its role, not just in theatre but the country as a whole. 'A national theatre has never been more necessary because the very word national is up for grabs and the concept is fraught with possibilities'." The Guardian (UK) 03/22/04
Posted: 03/21/2004 11:57 pm
Wanted - A Dead Body (Must Be Able To Act) A London theatre is conducting an unusual casting call - for a dead body. "The consent of the donor of the body is being sought beforehand and the production team aim to treat the subject of death with absolute seriousness, challenging modern taboos about a condition that comes to everybody at some point. Called Dead: You Will Be, the play requires a dead body to 'lie in state' throughout the proceedings." The Observer (UK) 03/21/04
Posted: 03/21/2004 10:26 pm
Vancouver Theatre: Enough With The Shakespeare! The Vancouver Playhouse Theatre says it is giving up Shakespeare, Ibsn and other classics. "The 42-year-old regional theatre company, the largest in Western Canada, announced a dramatic change in mandate yesterday. As of next season, the Playhouse will only produce contemporary plays written after 1950. 'This is an evolution, not a revolution'." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/20/04
Posted: 03/21/2004 9:53 pm
Idolizing Talent - Is It Valid? There has been much criticism of Lit Idol as a way of judging literary talent. But "Lit Idol, for all the apparent crassness of its format, is as good a means as any to truffle out new talent, and is only a pop-culture-friendly revamp of the short story competitions run by newspapers in the old days. But it has reinforced the perception that in contemporary writing, the words are no longer enough. The author must be all-singing, all-dancing, good looking if possible and, if not, with a sufficiently troubled past to keep the public interested." The Observer (UK) 03/21/04
Posted: 03/21/2004 9:47 pm
Dark Times For Animators "For decades, Southern California was the ultimate destination for self-described 'animation geeks' — kids who worked from homemade flip books and cel collecting to get there. But shifts in the industry — a growing appetite for computer-generated graphics and the chronic issue of outsourcing — have eliminated 1,000 jobs in the last three years. It's a frustrating time for animators. Los Angeles Times 03/21/04
Posted: 03/22/2004 12:46 am
The Latest Casualties In The Obscenity Wars A pair of Atlanta radio DJs were suspended Friday shortly after they broadcast sexually explicit talk with a porn star. The two had planned to record the explicit conversation and play it backwards over the air. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 03/20/04
Posted: 03/21/2004 9:36 pm
