Let Art Be Art Have we begun expecting too much of art and music? These days, as an on-demand world drives us to demand ever more instant gratification, fewer and fewer people seem to have time for anything that cannot be appreciated in an instant. Worse, we've trapped ourselves in a mindset that says that the arts exist to bolster our cities and make our children smarter, and nothing that doesn't quickly accomplish those goals is worth having. "It's hard to argue for art on its purest grounds, because describing what makes art so powerful is hard to put into words... Often, the thing that makes a piece of art so important to you means nothing to the next guy." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 7:21 am
Just Don't Let Seacrest Conduct, Okay? Let's be blunt. Fox's runaway smash hit, American Idol, is a worthless piece of television dreck featuring horrible singing, vacuous songs, and predictable fake snarkiness from three judges so caught up in their own brilliance that they seem to have forgotten that the show is supposed to be about music. But still, Idol has become a huge part of America's pop culture, and Dominic Papatola says that the arts world ought to be taking notice. "I'm willing to bet that the main reason for the runaway success of American Idol" lies in its cunning ability to link the worlds of art and competition." Americans love a winner, and they love watching the loser squirm even more, and the arts could use an injection of that type of (admittedly manufactured) excitement if it ever again wants to compete for large-scale attention. St. Paul Pioneer Press 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 7:12 am
Reassessing The Creative Class Richard Florida became a superstar in the world of urban planning and the arts a few years back when he wrote The Rise of the Creative Class, which claimed that creative types, artists, and free thinkers, were the essential component of a successful and thriving metropolis. But several urban planning experts have since questioned the validity of Florida's thesis, calling it overly simplistic and a naked appeal to the type of people who could (and did) make Florida and his theory faous. Still, there's no question that creativity and arts do offer at least some benefit to cities, so the question now seems to be, "What are the benefits the creative sector can deliver for cities, and what are the pitfalls of catering to it?" Denver Post 05/21/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 6:31 am
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Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Tut? King Tut is back, and back with him is a familiar argument about just how much museums should rely on flavor-of-the-month blockbuster exhibitions. "The profit-and-loss potential of blockbuster exhibitions is grounds for increasing debate in a museum world straining to reconcile traditional scholarly ideals with new fiscal realities and populist imperatives." Los Angeles Times 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 8:20 am
Have We Lost The Taste For Imperial Art? 18th-century British artist Joshua Reynolds is widely regarded as one of the masters of his era. But in the last several decades, his work has fallen out of favor with the art-buying public. "Now I have come to think that what turns us away from Reynolds is not that he portrayed Britain badly but too well - perhaps we shun him as an ugly man avoids mirrors. We like to look at Stubbs, Wright and Hogarth because they show us a past that was scientific, modernising, creative; Reynolds shows us something else. He portrays a British history we are less eager to own up to. He portrays the rulers of an empire." The Guardian (UK) 05/21/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 8:14 am
Whatever Happened To Heroes and Wisecracks? Comic books have come a long way from the days when Superman first crash-landed on Earth. But today's generation of comic artists seem almost unnaturally obsessed with brutal imagery and dark themes. Gone are the innocence and humor of the original comic book heroes, replaced by ultra-violence and misery, and the new culture of "violence without consequence" has reached new levels in recent films inspired by comic book art. "Increasingly pop culture defines heroism in terms of violence and domination. Where does that leave us? Is the audience so sophisticated that good and evil no longer hold meaning?" Denver Post 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 8:02 am
The Strange Success Of American Gothic Grant Wood's famous representation of American farm life is one of those works of art so pervasive that it's become a pop icon. But what is it about the stoic visages of that famous Iowa farm couple that has so captivated a nation that is increasingly uninterested in such unglamorous items as farms or the Midwest? The answer is complicated, stemming as it does from the painting's origins, when no one from jaded New York critics to the very Iowa farmers represented in the work could decide for sure whether the artist was making fun of his subjects, or venerating them. Boston Globe 05/21/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 6:21 am
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Fogel: Utah S&O Situation Will Improve American Symphony Orchestra League president Henry Fogel is on the ultimate road trip, meeting with musicians and managers at orchestras across the country in an effort to get a firsthand picture of the industry he's devoted his life to. This week, he's been in Salt Lake City, where he defends the beleagured CEO of the Utah Symphony & Opera, who has been accused of gross incompetence and poor planning by some of the US&O's musicians and donors. Fogel's take on the controversial merger of Utah's two largest classical music organizations is that such plans take time to come to fruition, and he believes that better days are ahead in Salt Lake. Salt Lake Tribune 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 7:28 am
The New Epicenter Of Classical Music It's China's century to lose, according to nearly every newsmagazine and commentator, but much of the country's projected economic and military dominance is still years, even decades away from materializing. Still, in the realm of classical music, China may already be the new frontier. "Conservatories are bursting at the seams. Young people crowd symphony concerts. Private music schools are flourishing, and urban parents jockey to hire the best tutors, seeing music as a path to status and educational achievement... Curiously, some experts say the hardships of the Cultural Revolution, the cataclysmic period of turmoil from 1966-1976, may be one reason Chinese-born composers and performers have soared to world fame, deepening a passion for Western classical music." St. Paul Pioneer Press (KR) 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 7:03 am
Music, Money, & The Politics of the Podium Atsushi Yamada is a staff conductor with New York City Opera, and will lead a performance of Madama Butterfly this weekend as part of the company's tour of Japan. But is Yamada really the top-flight conductor that such an assignment would indicate, or could his ascent to the podium have something to do with the millions of dollars he's raised for his employer? The New York Times 05/21/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 5:52 am
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The Death Of The Critic Arts critics used to wield tremendous power as American tastemakers, their words forming the crux of the cultural sphere and their opinions read as seriously as those of political commentators. These days, cultural tastes are controlled mainly by savvy marketers, and critics have become ever more marginalized, frequently reduced to bleating from the sidelines and begging for a return to serious cultural discourse. "While many lament the situation, some think the decentralization of authority means the arts — and the conversation around them — will flourish without these stern, doctrinaire figures." Los Angeles Times 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 8:24 am
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The Tortured Artist As Marketing Device Controversial British artist Tracy Emin has made a career out of being alternately outrageous and outraged, creating works that demand attention but decrying the bad press she gets. It might be a recipe for modern pop culture success, but it doesn't seem to make for a very stable head space. "[Emin] is, it hardly needs saying, a survivor, and her often harrowing struggle with the world, and with herself, is the narrative that threads through all her work. It's all there - the teenage rapes, the abortions, the cruel and tender boyfriends, the depressions and suicide attempts, the memory of them stitched into her angry, appliquŽd quilts, dragged up though her scratchy, sad drawings, writ large in her scrawled, dysfunctional sentences that look like they have been scratched into the paper as if her life depended upon it." The Observer (UK) 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 8:09 am
The Eakins Issue The debate is raging over the legacy of Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins. "Was he a heroic figure, a paragon of artistic integrity whose paintings of oarsmen, swimmers, family members and the distinguished citizens of Philadelphia expressed America's emerging power in the 19th century? Or was he, as the art historian Henry Adams depicts him in a new biography, a tormented soul, afraid of going insane like his mother, sexually ambivalent, a bully, an exhibitionist, a voyeur who was possibly guilty of bestiality and of incest with female relatives?" That's a wide interpretive gap, and scholars throughout the art world are lining up to argue the case. But the truth is likely somewhere in between... The New York Times 05/21/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 6:16 am
Matisse's Second Wind Henri Matisse probably should have died in his early seventies, when cancer ravaged his body and he prepared his family for his demise under a surgeon's knife. "But when the surgery was successful, Matisse quickly bounced back, declaring that he had won 'a second life' and, at 71, led his art in remarkable new directions... The 13 fruitful years that he unexpectedly gained after his cancer operation are the focus of 'Matisse: A Second Life,' an invigorating new exhibition at the Musée de Luxembourg." The New York Times 05/21/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 6:01 am
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The Incredible Shrinking Tony It's Tony season! Wooooo-hoo! The exciting leadup to that magical night when all of America tunes in to see what Broadway shows will be honored with... well, okay, America writ large actually doesn't seem to care much. But still! It's the night when a modest little statue can lead to salvation for a quality show that needs an influx of revenu... oh, that doesn't work anymore either? Hmmmm. So, um, why do we have these awards again? The New York Times 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 7:50 am
Moscow School To Graduate Americans "Russia's most famous drama school, the Moscow Art Theater School, will graduate its first class of Americans on Monday, including six alumni of the LaGuardia High School for the performing arts in Manhattan. The drama school is the training grounds for the Moscow Art Theater, where Konstantin Stanislavsky developed his famous method for actors and where most of Chekhov's classic plays, including The Cherry Orchard, were first staged... In a kind of extreme form of Stanislavsky method acting - which is based on personal experience and immersion in emotional depths - the LaGuardia students came to Moscow as teenagers in 2001 with no Russian language skills and no ties to the country but a love of theater and a passionate Soviet émigré acting teacher who inspired their leap of faith." The New York Times 05/21/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 6:10 am
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Is 24 Promoting Torture? Fox's terrorist drama 24 has been hailed by critics as a well-written, well-acted, edge-of-your-seat drama since it debuted three seasons back. But of late, the program, which focuses on a counter-terrorist agent who constantly finds himself with 24 hours to save America single-handedly, has introduced a disturbing plot twist: torture. "At least a half-dozen characters have undergone interrogation under conditions that meet conventional definitions of torture. The methods portrayed have varied, and include chemical injection, electric shock and old-fashioned bone-breaking." The shocking nature of the torture would alone be enough to cause concern, but there is a wider problem: 24 frequently seems to justify such tactics as the necessary breaking of eggs to fry the terrorist omelette. The New York Times 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 7:42 am
Palme d'Or To Belgium's Dardenne Brothers A Belgian drama has won the top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival. "L'Enfant is a gritty urban tale of a young couple living on the breadline in France, directed by brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne... It was the second Palme d'Or for the Dardenne brothers, having previously been awarded the prize in 1999 for controversial drama Rosetta. US director Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers, starring Bill Murray as an aging Don Juan searching for a son he did not know he had, won the Grand Prix award - the runner-up for best film." BBC 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 6:48 am
- Hoping For Some Beginner's Luck Cannes is famous for giving novice directors a chance to compete alongside the legends of the film world, and the rookies are always grateful for the shot. But could there be a more nervewracking position to find oneself in? Washington Post 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 6:39 am
Attack Of The Clones It didn't take the DVD pirates long to get illegal copies of the year's hottest movie onto the streets of New York, and it didn't take the NYPD long to launch a crackdown. "Cops seized 1,000 pirated copies of Star Wars: Episode III - just 36 hours after its debut. The illegal DVDs, selling for less than half the price of a movie ticket, were stacked nearly to the ceiling of a Harlem storage facility, alongside 40,000 other illegal disks." New York Daily News 05/21/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 6:39 am
- Canucks Shut Out Canada's film community had high hopes going into Cannes, with critically acclaimed new films by David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan leading the pack. But when the festival wrapped up this weekend, Canada went home empty-handed. So what went wrong? Toronto Star 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 6:35 am
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Where Have You Gone, Bob Fosse? Broadway is booming, but what's happened to the grand old tradition of theatrical dance? "From the galumphing knights in Spamalot, to the interminable Old Navy commercial that was Good Vibrations, to the ballroom gliding in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels that brought to mind the Geritol-flavored heyday of Lawrence Welk, the choreography in musicals this season often seems intended not to capture your attention, not to illustrate the breathtaking possibilities of the human body in motion, not to make a case for dance as an indispensable ingredient in musical theater." The New York Times 05/22/05
Posted: 05/22/2005 7:47 am
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