The Doomsday Obsession How to explain the human obsession with the end of the world? It seems as if there have been doomsayers wandering the streets ever since humans walked upright, and these days, with the world in a constant tizzy, there is no shortage of prophets, filmmakers, and assorted crackpots ready to help you prepare for the End Days. "As impressive as the scope of world-enders' thinking these days is its overwhelming detail. Everything from events in the Middle East to the technology of cloning has been worked into one end-times commentary or another." The details serves to obscure the lack of evidence, even as it makes the scenario more real. New York Press 09/24/04
Posted: 09/23/2004 10:48 pm
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"Nazi Art" Exhibit Attacked By Amateur Gymnast The controversial Flick family art exhibit in Berlin has suffered its first casualty at the hands of an unusually limber protester. "Yelling loudly, the 35-year-old woman attacked 'Office Baroque,' a cutout section of wall by American artist Gordon Matta-Clark, doing a series of head-over-heels flips before landing on the work in a handstand, punching both her arms through the drywall... She then ran across the large room, pushing over a section of a spray-painted truck called 'Graffiti Truck,' also by Matta-Clark." There is some question as to whether the woman was actually motivated by anti-Nazi fervor: she is apparently well-known to the Berlin police. International Herald-Tribune (AP) 09/24/04
Posted: 09/24/2004 6:33 am
- Previously: Collecting Great Art With Blood Money "A spectacular exhibition of contemporary art opened in Berlin yesterday, amid a picket by Jewish protesters, with its billionaire owner accused of exploiting art to redeem his family's Nazi past." The quality of the works in the collection is not in question, but the motivations of their owner, Christian Friedrich Flick, are being picked over by press and public alike. The Flick family fortune, which made the art collection possible, was built on slave labor in the explosives factories of the Third Reich. The Guardian (UK) 09/22/04
- Great Art, Sadly Compromised There is little question about the shameful history of the Flick family. But taken as a body of work, the controversial art collection now on display in Berlin is a fascinating journey through the 20th-century's artistic evolution. "Again and again, the visitor is faced with sexual symbols, violence and existential questions. Piles of objects serve as metaphors of the ephemeral and insane." Still, it is clear there is no way for many Germans to view the individual works on display without being constantly reminded of the manner in which they were acquired. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 09/24/04
Posted: 09/24/2004 6:30 am
Looked Like A Good Idea On Paper A new London gallery tries to spruce up its opening with the addition of technology, offering journalists from all over the world the chance to view the art (and the party) from mobile webcams and interview the artists live through instant messaging software. "But glitches and crashes turned the conversation into a rather stilted affair," and as it turns out, viewing art through a webcam is like "viewing art through the bottom of a pint glass." BBC 09/24/04
Posted: 09/24/2004 5:23 am
Looking For The Definition of Irony? "A portrait of Dr. David Hosack, a prominent surgeon who attended Alexander Hamilton on his deathbed after that legendary duel, has vanished from the New-York Historical Society's $5 million-plus exhibition 'Alexander Hamilton, the Man Who Made Modern America.' No, it wasn't stolen." It seems that the NYHS installed an extremely low handrail to prevent patrons from getting too close to the painting. On day one of the exhibition, someone tripped over the rail and put his hand through the painting, which has now been removed for restoration. The New York Times 09/24/04
Posted: 09/23/2004 10:38 pm
A Grand Entrance, Leading To A Large Bill "[Britain's] National Gallery will open its new £21m front door on Sunday and hope that the splendour of the black marble staircase and the excellence of the coffee in the new cafe provokes a gush of public generosity. Although more building work starts next month, the gallery still has to raise £3m of the cost." Having appealed to the government for assistance in purchasing a priceless Raphael miniature last year, the fundraising for the remainder of the gallery's renovations will need to be done in the private sector, no small task in a nation which does not have America's tradition of private philanthropy. The Guardian (UK) 09/24/04
Posted: 09/23/2004 9:44 pm
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Dumbing Down, Or Just Sparing The Audience? It would be easy to blast the Toronto Symphony for its decision to segregate all the new music it will play this year into a few specialty concerts, rather than to intersperse it within its programming of classical warhorses. But "suppose the mainstream classical audience and the new music audience just aren't the same people. Then new music might do better by itself, where it could draw the audience that wanted it... Does anyone actually know how many people in the orchestra audience like to hear new music? Some orchestra professionals I know, perhaps with better data than I have, think the number is very, very small." Sandow (AJ Blogs) 09/24/04
Posted: 09/24/2004 7:19 am
Build Me An Opera! You've Got Five Minutes. "Writing a full-length opera for a major company is like running for president: Blow it and you'll never get a second chance." As a result, many composers are understandably cautious about even approaching the form, and many opera companies that want to put on new works can't find anyone willing to write them. But a program at Toronto's Tapestry New Opera Works has been churning out new material for a decade, although admittedly in five to ten-minute chunks. The composer-librettist labs, in which participants must create a new short operatic work every day, are designed "to discover as quickly and cheaply as possible who is cut out to make operas and who isn't." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/24/04
Posted: 09/24/2004 6:24 am
Making Sacrifices To Keep The Music In The Black The Houston Symphony is trimming expenses, cutting concerts, and delaying auditions for two key positions in an effort to exceed budget goals for the current season. With ticket sales soft, the orchestra decided to cancel planned performances of Beethoven opera set for next March, and is also postponing a recording of a Beethoven symphony. Three other recordings will go ahead as scheduled. Houston Chronicle 09/24/04
Posted: 09/24/2004 5:45 am
Montreal Musicians Authorize Strike The musicians of the Montreal Symphony have authorized their negotiating committee to call a strike at any time if a new contract is not agreed to soon. The MSO players have been working without a deal for more than a year, and their pay scale is currently 34th among North American orchestras, despite being recognized as one of the world's elite orchestras. In response to the strike authorization, the MSO management issued a statement blasting the musicians for their rigidity and refusal to accept fiscal realities. CNW Telbec (Canada) 09/23/04
Posted: 09/23/2004 10:08 pm
Muti Quits Touring Production Conductor Riccardo Muti has withdrawn from a touring La Scala production of La Forza del Destino set for London's Royal Opera House, in a dispute over, of all things, scenery. The argument centers on several small chunks of wall used in the Milan production, which the ROH had deemed too large for its stage. After several weeks of argument, Muti had had enough, and abruptly quit the project. The Independent (UK) 09/24/04
Posted: 09/23/2004 9:56 pm
Those Who Can't Play, Listen Actor Stephen Fry was never much good with a musical instrument in his youth. "At school, one of my greatest regrets was my inability to produce any two notes, in order, that could be said to resemble a tune. One note? Fine, I could produce one note with the best of them, possibly not a very nice note, admittedly, but nevertheless, a note all the same. It was only when I had to produce two or more notes, in succession, in tune, that I had any problems." Still, Fry's inability to play music never inhibited his love of the classical form, and his new book on the subject of listening to the stuff is a true labor of love. The Guardian (UK) 09/24/04
Posted: 09/23/2004 9:34 pm
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Standup Comedy, Now With 85% More God! "Christian comedy" might seem like an oxymoron, but the genre is gaining steam in clubs across America, attracting not just devout churchgoers, but also audiences who prefer their entertainment G-rated and can find little to enjoy in the mainstream world of sex-obsessed standup. "What frequently categorizes the humor in Christian shows is its avoidance of racist and sexist jokes, vulgarity, and making fun of people in the crowd." The Christian Science Monitor 09/24/04
Posted: 09/24/2004 6:14 am
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Laughing To Keep From Crying The U.S. is as politically polarized as it has been in decades, politicians can't seem to stop smearing each other, and oh yes, there's always that terrorism threat to consider in case you were thinking of feeling upbeat today. All that gloom and doom may explain why the political satire is suddenly hot again in the literary world, and several new offerings from well-known authors are testing the limits of dark comedy concerning world events. The New York Times 09/24/04
Posted: 09/23/2004 10:26 pm
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Polarization Makes For Gutsy Films Hollywood may be giving conservatives fits these days, but the new energy amongst filmmakers is downright inspiring to critics, who haven't seen such a sense of commitment to the importance of the medium since the Vietnam era. "With rare exceptions, movies in the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate era have been dominated by the 'me' ethic, concerned more about individual struggles than global ones. When filmmakers have dared to tackle broader social concerns, outside of straight documentaries, they more often than not have done so through the use of symbols or allegory or other distancing devices. God forbid you should actually say what you mean, or wave a fist in somebody's face." Toronto Star 09/24/04
Posted: 09/24/2004 7:10 am
Save Our Children From The Smut! (Because We Won't) Nearly everyone claims to want better television and less sex and violence (especially parents), and in the mid-1990s, the protestations hit such a fever pitch that Congress mandated the creation and installation of a controllable "V-chip" that can block objectionable programs in all new TV sets by the year 2000. Nearly five years after the law took effect, a study shows that an underwhelming 15% of parents actually use the chip, even though the outrage over programming continues unabated. Interestingly, the same study revealed that most parents who want program content policed don't see any need to regulate the advertising aimed at children. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 09/24/04
Posted: 09/24/2004 6:59 am
Does The CBS Fine Mean Anything? The FCC's decision to fine CBS a record $550,000 is getting plenty of press. In fact, it's such a hot topic that if you didn't know better, you'd assume that the fine actually heralded some sort of substantive change. But surveys show that a vast majority of Americans couldn't care less that Janet Jackson's breast got a second of airtime, and are far more concerned about the overall quality level of TV than they are about tightening the decency screws. Still, in the months following the Super Bowl flap, 5-second delays abound and some Hollywood producers are complaining that their shows are being sanitized. Baltimore Sun 09/24/04
Posted: 09/24/2004 5:30 am
The Fox News Of Film Fests The American Film Renaissance, which bills itself as the world's first and only conservative-leaning film festival, wrapped up recently in Dallas, and Britain's left-leaning newspaper of record couldn't resist sending a correspondent. What he found was a group of extremely earnest Americans longing for a few movies that represent their worldview. That worldview apparently includes a fictional Don Rumsfeld predicting the 9/11 attacks in advance, Ann Coulter as a plain-speaking truth-teller, and former government officials explaining "how abortion is robbing America's retired people of their welfare safety net." The Guardian (UK) 09/24/04
Posted: 09/23/2004 9:14 pm
Humanizing Hitler A new film focusing on the life of Adolf Hitler is roiling the European continent, and causing the German people to question whether it is ever acceptable to humanize such a monstrous figure. But humanizing the Führer is exactly what this movie is about, "a Hitler of failed dreams amid a collapsing empire, a man who at turns is delusional, hardhearted, vicious, but also tender, caring, despairing... Downfall cuts an accurate but narrow-gauge path through the historic moment, transiting between the claustrophobic choke of Hitler's underground bunker and the raging slaughter in the streets of Berlin, avoiding the suffering of all but the Germans." The Wall Street Journal 09/23/04
Posted: 09/23/2004 8:59 pm
