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Weekend, July 3, 4
Claim The Slur, Or Bury It? A new documentary purports to examine one of the most delicate debates in American race relations: who, if anyone, should be able to say the word "nigger," and what do the various taboos surrounding the word tell us about our society? "To some degree the filmmakers are using the debate over language as an emblem for a host of uncomfortable racial issues that are pushed to the side, in Hollywood as in other parts of American society." The New York Times 07/03/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 8:48 am
Minimalism (Finally) Gets Its Due "For years, minimalism shows were rare events. In just the last year or two, however, they've hit the big time, big-time... The current flood of minimalism exhibitions indicates a new desire to come to grips with the movement as a whole and to rethink some of the narrow polemics that have built up around it. Instead of being part of the live, ferocious debates of contemporary art, with people choosing sides for and against, minimalism is now the subject of measured, art-historical contemplation. Which means it has truly arrived -- next stop, official, unquestioned Old Master status." Washington Post 07/04/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 10:39 am
The Disappearing Stadium "Imagine a sports stadium that accommodates thousands of fans for an event, then folds up and disappears. Impossible? Perhaps. But it's one of the visions that will appear in the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale... It improbably envisions a baseball field inserted within the urban thicket of Chicago's Loop. The field would be surrounded by a series of movable seating tiers. The tiers, some of which would be constructed into surrounding buildings, would fold and unfold as needed. As outlandish as the idea seems, [the Chicago architectural firm] Studio Gang already has proved it is possible to design and construct a performance venue whose architectural identity changes to suit changing needs." Chicago Tribune 07/04/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 10:03 am
Is The Saatchi Empire Crumbling? Charles Saatchi has never exactly been a favorite with critics. The insanely rich collector has been panned for his lack of discriminating taste, excoriated for inflating prices all over the art world, and even criticized for the architecture of his new London gallery. But the myth of Saatchi, who was once viewed as a mysterious but powerful force in art, may have finally come crashing down in the aftermath of the fire which destroyed more than 100 works in his prized collection. The public reaction to the catastrophe was brutal, the loss "celebrated as a hilarious and deserved comeuppance for Saatchi and his bloated, overpraised, overpaid protegés." The Guardian (UK) 07/03/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 8:31 am
Rock's Birthday? It's A Black & White Debate On July 5, 1954, Elvis Presley recorded his first single. That's reason enough for BMG Records, which distributes the Presley catalog, to declare the date as the birthday of rock 'n roll. "But the marketing blitz, by BMG as well as other companies, reopens a nagging debate: Just when did rock really begin? It's an issue that has long been tinged with racism, specifically the notion that it took a white man to make it rock 'n roll, whereas before it was only R&B and what was then described as 'race music.'" Boston Globe 07/04/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 9:52 am
The Do-It-Yourself Album "Record labels are still vital for many musicians. They get the CD in the bins; they advertise it; they put up the money to produce it in the first place." But for established artists who are sick of the huge revenue chunk swallowed up by traditional labels, a new do-it-yourself method is emerging, and many artists are willing to put up their own money for production costs in return for having direct control of a web-based distribution network that brings in more eventual revenue. The New York Times 07/04/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 9:29 am
The Orchestral Wage Gap Are conductors and executives bankrupting American orchestras? Blair Tindall sees a basic conflict between the skyrocketing salaries of those at the top, and the cries of institutional poverty which have led to stagnating musician salaries and increasingly bitter fights between labor and management. It's true that, of 20 orchestras which settled new musician contracts in the last year, 19 included wage cuts. Still, most musicians don't seem to be bothered by the high salaries of their bosses, just so long as the conductors and CEOs appear to be earning their pay. But with the industry widely perceived to be in trouble and salaries continuing to climb, those at the top may soon find themselves under fire. The New York Times 07/04/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 9:19 am
Heating Up Summer in New York For orchestras like the Boston Symphony, which have revered summer homes like Tanglewood, the long hot months are a celebration of easy revenue and casual concertgoing. But for the New York Philharmonic, which has no regular summer destination, what's needed to get its home audience into the hall during the second season is constant innovation and, um, snappy slogans? "Welcome to Summertime Classics, the fun new festival of smile-inducing classics performed live for you by your New York Philharmonic, in a lively, colourful and refreshingly casual setting. It's classics for your favourite sneakers, not your glass slippers." Toronto Star 07/03/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 9:08 am
U.S. Album Sales Jump "Album sales in the United States for the first half of 2004 are 7 percent ahead of last year's midway point, putting the recording industry on track to end a three-year slump, according to the Nielsen SoundScan retail tracking service. Sales in the first six months of this year totaled 305.7 million units, compared with 285.9 million from January through June 2003." The New York Times (Reuters) 07/03/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 8:56 am
Political Art, Or Mindless Activism Disguised As Culture? George W. Bush may be a divisive leader to many, but there is no question that he has managed to unite one group like few U.S. politicians in history: artists, from painters to actors to musicians, are coming together in record numbers, all with the common goal of ridding the world of this American president. But when does political art become so strident that it ceases to be good art? "Many inside and outside the arts question whether such overt political expression — created expressly to effect change — crosses the line of art and simply becomes a colorful op-ed piece. It's important for the art to stand on its own merits... regardless of the message within it." St. Paul Pioneer Press 07/04/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 10:31 am
UK Schools Reinvesting In The Arts A new "music manifesto" being promoted by the British government in conjunction with a collection of industry groups proposes a major expansion of cultural education in the UK, including a program which would provide free or cut-price musical instruments to schoolchildren. The plan is being seen as "an admission that while the focus on numeracy and literacy in primary schools has been necessary to raise standards, it is too narrow." The Telegraph (UK) 07/03/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 9:42 am
Marlon Brando, 80 "Marlon Brando, the rebellious prodigy who electrified a generation and forever transformed the art of screen acting but whose obstinacy and eccentricity prevented him from fully realizing the promise of his early genius, died on Thursday at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 80." The New York Times 07/03/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 8:16 am
- Endless Promise, Tragic Self-Sabotage Like so many other artists dubbed "genius," Marlon Brando was his own worst enemy, writes Stephen Hunter. He invented an entirely new way of acting that revolutionized the film industry, and yet, his interaction with the insular Hollywood world was "rebellious, beyond [narcissistic], almost countercultural," and would be his undoing. "Death finally found Brando at 80 and he went to it sublimely, having had much experience with the ends of things: He had murdered his own career years earlier. But in the beginning, oh, boy, was he something." Washington Post 07/03/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 8:10 am
- The Man Who Invented Acting Forget all the controversy, all the self-destructive weirdness, says Ty Burr. "It's this simple: Marlon Brando is the most important actor in the history of the movies. He broke the art of screen performance in two. Before Brando, films starred people whose work was rooted in the theater, and whose plummy diction or rat-a-tat toughness was all a marvelous put-on... That's why Brando freaked people out at first. He crossed some inarticulate border of self-presentation that felt private, taboo." Boston Globe 07/03/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 8:09 am
Shakespeare on the Mississippi The sleepy little river town of Winona, Minnesota is not a place where you would expect to find a major theater festival, but the founders of the new Great River Shakespeare Festival are banking on the allure of small-town America and its own no-frills approach to the Bard to draw a crowd ad build a lasting theatrical tradition. "It will take years of artistic nurturing, civic investment and theatrical brilliance to accomplish such goals. This first season is filled with education panels, discussions, music concerts -- a regular Chatauqua -- to energize the local population and lure the curious from around the region." Minneapolis Star Tribune 07/04/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 10:21 am
Youth, Enthusiasm, and Unfathomable Wealth Arielle Tepper is one of Broadway's youngest impresarios, "armed with the romantic notions of a stage-door Annie, the energy of youth and, not incidentally, a considerable fortune derived from the real estate empire of her maternal grandfather, Philip Levin, who died in 1971, the year before Ms. Tepper was born. In 2001, Ms. Tepper inherited a third of the family real estate portfolio, which Crain's New York recently estimated at $1 billion. Ms. Tepper has used part of her share to make herself into an eager new player in the treacherous world of theatrical producing." The New York Times 07/04/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 9:37 am
Russian Film Riding High The fall of Communism was a near-death sentence for the Russian film industry, as the federal funding that had always been a cornerstone of the USSR dried up in the capitalist world of post-Soviet reality. "By 1997, a miserable 12 home-grown films were released per year in Russia. By last year, however, that had shot up to 75, state sponsorship has risen by 14 per cent in 2004 to $70 million, and an average of 30 per cent of any film's budget is now provided by the government. Add to this the fact that most urban Russians under 35 cite filmgoing as their favourite pastime, and the predicted rise this year in the number of screens in Russia from 550 to 700, and it seems that Stollywood has arrived." The Telegraph (UK) 07/03/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 10:17 am
Finally Embracing Reality, Yet Again The music industry appears to have finally embraced downloading as the wave of the future, and many are asking what took so damn long. But John Naughton says that we shouldn't be surprised by the industry's slow embrace of the obvious: "The fact that the music moguls resisted music downloading for so long is par for the course. They opposed audio, cassette and video taping and, later, DVD. Yet each turned out to be extraordinarily profitable. Movie studios now earn far more from videos and DVDs than they do from cinema audiences, but they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the DVD world." The Observer (UK) 07/04/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 10:10 am
New Boss, Same Old Line When Jack Valenti steps down as president of the Motion Picture Association of America later this summer, he will hand the reins to former Congressman and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, a darkhorse candidate chosen for his Washington influence rather than his connection to Hollywood. But don't expect the MPAA's party line to change: according to Glickman, his top three priorities will be "piracy, piracy, piracy." Philadelphia Inquirer 07/03/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 8:58 am
Will Cleveland Lose Its FM Overdose? The Cleveland-based experimental dance troupe known as Sub-Atomic Frequency Modulation Overdose (SAFMOD) is facing a very uncertain future, as company veterans scramble to keep its tradition alive. "Founding artistic director Young Park and managing director Ezra Houser shocked their colleagues last spring by revealing their plans to leave Cleveland at the end of the summer and resettle in Toronto." The couple gave SAFMOD time to find replacements for them, but its been slow going, and time is running out. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 07/03/04
Posted: 07/04/2004 9:03 am
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