Saltz: Art Auction As Slave Market Jerry Saltz isn't a fan of art auctions: "Contemporary art auctions are bizarre combinations of slave market, trading floor, theater, and brothel. They are rarefied entertainments where speculation, spin, and trophy hunting merge as an insular caste enacts a highly structured ritual in which the codes of consumption and peerage are manipulated in plain sight. Everyone says auctions are about "quality." In fact, auctions are altars to the disconnect between the inner life of art and the outer life of consumption, places where artists are cut off from their art. Auctions have nothing to do with quality." Village Voice 06/07/05
Posted: 06/07/2005 8:39 am
King Tut On Marketing Steroids The four-city tour of King Tut in the US that begins next week in Los Angeles is a marketing extravaganza. "Little about Tut II is like anything the museum world is used to, let alone the museum world of 1976-1979 when Tut virtually invented the blockbuster museum exhibit. For Tut II, museums are merely the venues, not the prime organizers, in large part because no museum could afford to insure the exhibit for its official value of $650 million. Also, Egypt has become a savvy negotiator determined to squeeze as many dollars out of Tut as possible." USAToday 06/07/05
Posted: 06/07/2005 6:31 am
Serra's New Masterpiece Michael Kimmelman writes that Richard Serra's new installation at the Guggenheim Bilbao is "one of the great works of the past half-century, the culmination of a remarkable fruition in Mr. Serra's career. It rejuvenates and pushes abstraction to a fresh level. And it is deeply humane, not least because it counts on individual perception, individual discovery." The New York Times 06/07/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 10:11 pm
Statue Of Ancient Pharoah Found "A life-sized statue of the 13th Dynasty Pharaoh Neferhotep I has emerged from the ruins of ancient Thebes in Luxor. Buried for almost 3,600 years, the six-foot limestone statue shows the "beautiful and good" pharaoh — this is what Neferhotep means — wearing the royal head cloth." Discovery 06/06/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 8:58 pm
Saving Machu Picchu Peru has unveiled a new conservation plan for Machu Picchu. The plan includes restricting the number of visitors. "With the defeat of the Shining Path terrorist movement in the 1990s, Peru has been "rediscovered" by the international tourism industry and the hordes of visitors are causing erosion and other damage to the archaeological site which extends over some 76,000 acres. In addition, mummies dating from the Inca period are being exposed to the elements and wild orchids are threatened by the increasing pollution." The Independent (UK) 06/06/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 8:44 pm
British Art - Home To The World Where are the hot new British artists coming from? All over. The British Art Show "reflects how London's art scene is fast usurping New York and European cities as the place to be." "The final list of 49 artists unveiled today - a day before the original Young British Artist (YBA) and former enfant terrible Damien Hirst turns 40 - incorporates more than 18 different nationalities. Curators of the exhibition said its diversity was a reflection of how London had become a magnet to growing numbers of international artists who were enriching the scene and re-defining the notion of "Britishness"." The Independent (UK) 06/06/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 8:33 pm
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Legal Threat Against "Springer" A Christian group says it will take legal action against a planned production of Springer, The Opera, if it plays in Birmingham. "If you wanted to be deliberately offensive and provocative to Christians, you couldn't do much better than put Jerry Springer: The Opera on at the Birmingham Hippodrome." BBC 06/03/05
Posted: 06/07/2005 6:23 am
One View Of Beethoven You Don't Read Very Often... "Beethoven certainly changed the way that people thought about music, but this change was a change for the worse. From the speculations of Pythagoras about the "music of the spheres" in ancient Greece onwards, most western musicians had agreed that musical beauty was based on a mysterious connection between sound and mathematics, and that this provided music with an objective goal, something that transcended the individual composer's idiosyncrasies and aspired to the universal. Beethoven managed to put an end to this noble tradition by inaugurating a barbaric U-turn away from an other-directed music to an inward-directed, narcissistic focus on the composer himself and his own tortured soul. This was a ghastly inversion that led slowly but inevitably to the awful atonal music of Schoenberg and Webern." The Guardian (UK) 06/05/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 9:24 pm
Fogel: Orchestras Must Change American Symphony Orchestra League president Henry Fogel says orchestras will have to change to survive. "Complex program notes, musicians in white ties and tails and dowagers who hiss if one claps at the wrong time all keep newcomers out of the concert hall, he noted. After recently seeing a conductor wag his finger at concertgoers who applauded too soon, he wondered 'how many more times those people will actually pay money for tickets so they can be humiliated'?" Cincinnati Enquirer 06/06/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 7:11 pm
Philly Opera Racks Deficit, Cuts Staff The Opera Company of Philadelphia has recorded its first major deficit since 1995. "The company ran a $400,000 deficit on an $8.6 million budget for the fiscal year that ended May 31. As a result, the company has let go Susan S. Ashbaker, a key member of the music staff for 16 years; plus the director of marketing, director of development, and two lower-level staff members." Philadelphia Inquirer 06/05/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 7:08 pm
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Waiting To Hear On The Future Of Scottish Art A big official government report on the future of Scottish arts is due out soon. But speculation and rumor are running wild ove what the report's recommendations will be. "In a last round of consultations with arts bodies, some details have begun to leak out. There is mounting speculation in the arts world over not just what the report contains, but how it will be received." The Scotsman 06/06/05
Posted: 06/07/2005 6:34 am
Space Station Looking For Art Managers of the International Space Station are commissioning art for the station. "People associate the space station almost exclusively with scientific work," said Nicola Triscott, director of the science-art agency The Arts Catalyst, which has been commissioned by the European Space Agency to make a six-month study of practical proposals for art in space. "But the agency believes very strongly that the cultural world should have a say in the future of space exploration." The Guardian (UK) 06/07/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 9:09 pm
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Chicago Close To Getting Children's Theatre Children's theatre is booming across the US, but Chicago, despite its vast theater offerings, has long lacked a dedicated children's theater. That's about to change... Chicago Sun-Times 06/07/05
Posted: 06/07/2005 7:56 am
Better Food, Blander Fare At Big Biz Colorado Dinner Theatres "Dinner theater is big business in Colorado. Nine major venues generated about $9.2 million last year. Together they drew about 318,000 people - and that includes only the 550-seat Pinnacle's first month in business. But dinner and a show can run anywhere from $25-$75, a number that keeps increasing along with the quality of the food. At those prices, patrons are becoming less likely to take a risk on edgier shows." Denver Post 06/07/05
Posted: 06/07/2005 7:48 am
Broadway's Tony Bump, Ratings Slump Broadway shows winning Tonys Sunday night got a nice bump at the box office Monday. But "according to preliminary numbers, the celebrities did almost nothing to increase the flat overnight national ratings, showing only a slight increase of about 160,000 viewers. In years past, a number of factors have been blamed for the low ratings, including competition from the N.B.A. playoffs and new episodes of hot HBO shows like "The Sopranos" or "Six Feet Under." This year, however, the show had no such competition, but still drew only 6.6 million viewers, up 2 percent from last year's audience of about 6.5 million viewers." The New York Times 06/07/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 10:17 pm
Broadway Highlights (Tonys Aside) Sure the Tonys have been handed out. Howard Kissel picks his personal Broadway season highlights. "With the perennial laments about the death of serious theater, it seems worth noting that there were enough candidates to fill the Tony Best Play Revival category but only three shows to fill the comparable musicals category." New York Daily News 06/06/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 10:02 pm
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What Happened To Poetry? "People no longer pretend to laud the poet or his craft. The Poet was once the man who wrestled with the Olympian concepts and brought them down to Earth mortal-sized morsels for the Saturday Evening Post. Poetry was the expression of truth and/or beauty professed through the rigors of language and form. When poetry meant Kipling, it had a certain valor and heft in the public mind. Now, that was a poem. By God it rhymed and you could march to it. Then came the new poets who shed the old styles as a useless encrustation of the old dead past, and they lost their claim on the popular mind. Now poetry was seen as a way to detail the author's tormented, neurotic, indecisive inner life -- by means of gassy exhalations devoid of form or discipline. I should know; I wrote miles of that stuff in college." The Star-Tribune (Mpls) 06/07/05
Posted: 06/07/2005 7:41 am
Basically The Book Biz Book Expo America attracts 30,000-plus booksellers, authors, editors and journalists to talk publishing. "The event briefly reconverts a modern business of e-mail, phone calls and faxes to a human one of smiles and handshakes, laughs and shared meals, and lots of giveaways: book bags, galleys, tchotchkes, and the heavy tomes exhibitors don't want to repack and mail." Philadelphia Inquirer 06/07/05
Posted: 06/07/2005 7:03 am
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NY Strikes Out On TV New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to encourage the filming of TV shows in New York by giving tax breaks to producers. But the scheme has failed as none of the shows piloted in New York were picked up for the fall network schedule. New York Magazine 06/06/05
Posted: 06/07/2005 8:02 am
A Formula For The Perfect Sitcom Researchers have come up with a formula to write the perfect sitcom. "There are long-standing golden rules for sitcom, but our findings bring them down to this single equation. Comedic value is determined by multiplying the recognisability of the main character (R) by their delusions of grandeur (D). This is added to the verbal wit of the script (V) and the total is multiplied by the amount someone falls over or suffers a physical injury (F)." The Guardian (UK) 06/07/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 9:05 pm
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Eifman In America In 1977, Boris Eifman organized the Leningrad New Ballet company, later called the St. Petersburg State Academic Theatre of Ballet. In the midst of state-run theaters, this was something to behold. The troupe was the only one in Russia that nurtured modern choreography -- something beyond tutus and pointe shoes. It has evolved into Eifman Ballet, still state funded, but with plenty of outside investors as well. Eifman, a creator of more than 40 ballets is the only living Russian choreographer with a creative resume on a par with the most up-and-coming Western choreographers." San Francisco Chronicle 06/07/05
Posted: 06/07/2005 6:49 am
Basically Bournonville The Danish Ballet mounts a Bournonville Festival. "As dead geniuses go—especially those whose work, being in dance, is essentially ephemeral—August Bournonville (1805-1879) has done pretty well. The legacies of George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Martha Graham—all a century younger than the Danish choreographer—are eroding at an alarmingly faster rate than his, despite the fact that modern times have delivered the preservation tools of sophisticated dance notation (Bournonville used a crude—if singularly effective—personal one), film, and videotape." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 06/04/05
Posted: 06/06/2005 10:39 pm
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