Too Much of a Good Thing in Chicago? Even as Chicago struggles to preserve the reputation of its international art fair, Art Chicago, the stage is being set for a major "art war" in the Second City. As things stand now, Chicago will see not one, not two, but three major art fairs next summer, all within weeks of each other, and all insisting that they are the real Chicago art fair. A battle for top exhibitors and the high-rolling collectors they attract is already raging. Chicago Sun-Times 08/05/04
Posted: 08/05/2004 6:24 am
- Previously: Chicago's Withering Art Fair "The Chicago art establishment, from museums to galleries to artists, still seems shaken by what it perceived to be the failure this spring of its internationally known contemporary art fair." In fact, Art Chicago has been gradually losing the interest of the international art community for years now, and the flurry of activity surrounding this weekend's much-ballyhooed opening of the city's new Millenium Park is meant in large part to put Chicago back on the map where art is concerned. Art Chicago's organizers insist that a comeback is imminent, but observers are skeptical, especially as the fair prepares to move to temporary quarters in a 125,000-square foot tent. The New York Times 07/17/04
Gehry Would Be Perfect For This Job... For years, London's South Bank Arts Centre has struggled with a plague of skateboarders. But the complex's latest management team has taken a new approach, trying to improve relations between the arts community and the skaters. Now, five "skatable sculptures" have been commissioned for the centre's undercroft, in the hope that skaters will embrace the idea of a designated area for their display of skills. The Guardian (UK) 08/05/04
Posted: 08/04/2004 9:02 pm
Burial Grounds Or Just A Gravel Pit? A quarry operation in the North Yorkshire section of England is threatening the survival of several 5000-year-old "vast dumbbell-shaped earthen hedges" which archaeologists say are some of the most significant manmade constructions in the UK. More than 600 protests have been filed with the local planning commission. The Guardian (UK) 08/05/04
Posted: 08/04/2004 8:54 pm
How Do You "Covertly" Install A 20-Foot Statue? "Guerrilla artist Banksy has covertly cemented a 20-foot (6-metre) satirical statue protesting at the British legal system into a central London square. Banksy, best-known for sneaking his work into the Tate, has depicted the figure of justice as a prostitute with leather boots and a thong... The location, an ancient green just outside the City of London, was chosen because it was the site of Banksy's last arrest." BBC 07/04/04
Posted: 08/04/2004 8:08 pm
Judd Done Before He Starts in Kuala Lumpur Conductor James Judd's contract as the new music director of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra has been terminated a year before he was to officially take up the position. Neither side is saying what caused the split. Judd, who is currently music director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, also led the now-defunct Florida Philharmonic before resigning during that orchestra's much-publicized battle between musicians and management. Andante 08/02/04
Posted: 08/05/2004 6:09 am
Questioning The Premise A reader responds to ArtsJournal's newest blog by questioning the very foundation of the critical conversation. "While it is interesting to see what name critics apply to certain groups of individual composers, many of those composers eschew the categories anyway, preferring to simply do their own work and get on with it." Alex Ross, for one, is stung a bit by the critique, but says such reminders may be for the best: "I feel as though casual posts are being scrutinized as if carved in marble. I guess, though, it's always good for critics to get smacked around a little. Profound, mysterious irony: some of us don't take criticism very well." Critical Conversation (AJBlogs) 08/04/04
Posted: 08/04/2004 9:23 pm
Seville Music Festival Postponed Indefinitely "Ambitious plans for an open-air production of Bizet's 'Carmen' in Seville, Spain, and for a music festival of which it was to be the centerpiece, were postponed indefinitely Wednesday. Organizers said they were unable to find a top-level conductor to replace Lorin Maazel, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, who earlier this week withdrew from the project on medical grounds." The New York Times 08/05/04
Posted: 08/04/2004 8:38 pm
Did Mostly Mozart Just Need New Leadership? If there was ever any doubt that a conductor can revitalize a struggling ensemble, Louis Langrée is putting it to rest with his debut this summer at the helm of New York's Mostly Mozart festival. In retrospect, says Anthony Tommassini, the fault for the festival's notorious struggles in recent years must be laid at the feet of Langrée's predecessor, Gerard Schwarz. "It's sad to have to say this so definitively, but Mr. Schwarz, though a tenacious defender of the basic concept of the festival over his 17-year-tenure as director, was just wrong for the job. He lacked a compelling artistic vision and was too limited as a conductor." The New York Times 08/05/04
Posted: 08/04/2004 8:31 pm
Newspaper Pulls Nude Art Ad The Baltimore Sun recently refused to run an ad for a local art gallery which featured a "stamp-sized, black-and-white reproduction of a nude," citing the conservative bent of the paper's readership. The owner of the gallery is puzzled: after all, the Sun regularly runs ads for strip clubs and massage parlors. Furthermore, "on its news pages, The Sun has repeatedly published artistic images of nudes, including paintings and sculptures by Henri Matisse, Michelangelo's David, and renderings of Honore Balzac by Auguste Rodin." Baltimore Sun 08/04/04
Posted: 08/05/2004 6:49 am
Is NY's Mayor Shortchanging The Arts? Whe New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans this summer to reinvigorate the city's school arts curriculum, teachers and school administrators were thrilled, and observers dared to hope that the long, devastating slide in New York's arts education program might finally be reversed. But upon closer observation, it appears that there may be a key ingredient missing from Mayor Bloomberg's plan: the money to implement it. The New York Times 08/04/04
Posted: 08/04/2004 8:01 pm
Hoping Art Can Rise Like, Well, You Know The city of Phoenix has announced a multi-pronged strategy aimed at nurturing the arts in the urban core. Under the terms of the proposal, a loan fund wuld be created expressly for the purchase and renovation of downtown buildings by artists, artists would be given economic incentives to locate downtown, and a portion of the city center would be designated as an official "arts district." Arizona Republic 07/30/04
Posted: 08/04/2004 7:54 pm
The Bassoonist Who Saved Orchestra Hall Paul Ganson is retiring as a bassoonist in the Detroit Symphony. But his instrument is not how his colleagues will remember him best. Ganson is a legend in the Detroit music community, not just for his playing, but for a crusade that he undertook 34 years ago to save the city's Orchestra Hall. "In September 1970, Orchestra Hall was about to be demolished and replaced by a fast-food operation, a sorry end to a proud history. The concert hall, an acoustical wonder even in its failing condition, was built in 1919..." but the DSO hadn't performed there in years. It would take a miracle to save the dying building, and a miracle is exactly what Ganson delivered. Detroit News 08/03/04
Posted: 08/05/2004 7:12 am
Photographer Cartier-Bresson Dies Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the 20th century's most important photographers, has died in the south of France, at age 96. He was a pioneer of photojournalism as well as co-founder of the influential Magnum picture agency. The Guardian (UK) 08/04/04
Posted: 08/04/2004 8:12 pm
New Foote Play Gets A Look A previously unknown play by Horton Foote has been hauled out of a desk drawer and thrust onto a New York stage this summer. But unlike many unpublished works by well-known playwrights, which tend to be underdeveloped and youthfully insecure, Foote's unknown work is a mature play, written when the author had already achieved a great deal of critical acclaim. "The reason it has not been staged before has more to do with his gentlemanly sense of propriety than any reluctance by a producer to stage it." The New York Times 08/05/04
Posted: 08/05/2004 5:57 am
Hitting Too Close To Home A devastating indictment of race relations in the Upper Midwest is currently playing at a theater in the Twin Cities. "The Last Minstrel Show," which details (and satirizes in explicit form) the lynching of three black men in Duluth, is hard to watch and even harder to analyze, and apparently, Minnesotans don't want to hear it. The show is closing after only two weeks, due to abysmal ticket sales in a city that normally embraces theater of all types. "If virtually no one attends a play about an event virtually no one wants to talk about, then, as the show's final production number asserts with nonchalant gaiety, 'Nothing happened.' Right? Isn't that where we're at societywise on the whole race issue?" St. Paul Pioneer Press 08/05/04
Posted: 08/04/2004 8:21 pm
Blame Canada (and Enforce Those Trade Rules!) "Out-of-work film technicians - those actors, prop men and other entertainment industry workers whose names unfurl on the screen as moviegoers scramble out of the theater - are rallying behind international trade rules to stem the flow of film and television production to Canada. With the Teamsters leading the fight, the Film and Television Action Committee... has sent 20 pages of comments to the new Unfair Trade Practices Task Force of the Commerce Department and demanded that the Bush administration take action against Canadian film subsidy programs, which have lured United States filmmakers north of the border and siphoned tens of thousands of jobs out of the country." The New York Times 08/05/04
Posted: 08/05/2004 6:01 am
Copyrights, Parodies, and Right of Fair Use Creators of the satirical web site JibJab have decided to go to court to fight for their right to keep running a popular parody of a Woody Guthrie song featuring cartoon images of President Bush and Senator John Kerry. The site had been threatened with a lawsuit by Ludlow Music, which owns the copyright on the Guthrie song, but JibJab decided to strike first, filing a lawsuit of its own in a U.S. District Court. The case could have far-reaching implications for artists' rights in the digital age. Wired 08/05/04
Posted: 08/05/2004 5:40 am
- Previously: Woody Would Probably Have Approved, But That's Just Tough If you haven't seen the Kerry/Bush "This Land is Your Land" parody yet, go ask a co-worker to show it to you. The online animated creation features the two presidential candidates in S&M gear and dunce caps, singing alternate lyrics to Woody Guthrie's famous tune. The trouble is, someone owns that tune, and apparently, that someone doesn't have Guthrie's devotion to free expression. "About a week ago, the [creators of the parody] were served with a cease-and-desist order on behalf of Ludlow Music, demanding they remove This Land from their website." Wired 07/29/04
But We Already Knew How Good The Shining Was How scary is that new suspense movie that just came out? University researchers in the UK can tell you, right down to the tenth decimal place. The researchers claim to have invented a mathematical formula that can quantify such things: "[it] combines elements of suspense, realism and gore, plus shock value, to measure how scary a film is." As it turns out, The Shining is the perfect formulaic scary movie, while Jaws exhibits the best use of non-gratuitous gore in a scary film. BBC 08/05/04
Posted: 08/05/2004 5:33 am
This Is Why Most Ballet Companies Only Cast Swans & Mice The Bolshoi Ballet needed a horse for its production of Marius Petipa's The Pharaoh's Daughter at the Royal Opera House in London. They planned to bring one with them from home, but quarantine laws interfered. So they found an English horse to stand in, and that animal promptly injured itself. Finally, a local trick-rider provided one of his horses for the Bolshoi's use, but the difficulties didn't end there... The Guardian (UK) 08/05/04
Posted: 08/04/2004 9:08 pm
