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Wednesday, October 5




Visual Arts

More Animals-On-Parade The decorated fiberglass animals-on-parade phenomenon continues in cities around North America. Critics hate them: "It's the scourge of Western civilization." "Yet the fiberglass phenomenon remains wildly popular. Superficially, at least, the reasons are obvious. Most ordinary folks, children especially, find the sculptures just plain fun. They're relatively cheap, so corporate patrons can easily sponsor local artists to decorate them. Because they are usually displayed for only a few months, they aren't around long enough to become eyesores. And when their time is up, they're auctioned off for charity, civic institutions or other worthy causes." Philadelphia Inquirer 10/05/05
Posted: 10/05/2005 5:43 am

Another 9/11 Memorial Clashes With Critics This time it's a design to commenmorate the crash of flight 93 in a Pennsylvania field. "The debates suggest an age-of-terror version of the fights over identity politics, provocative artworks and the Western canon that flared up 20 years ago. In the case of Flight 93, the Hallmark-card Minimalism that is now the lingua franca for memorials — and the design world's version of political correctness — has clashed with the notion that what we ought to remember about its passengers, above all else, is their onboard rebellion." Los Angeles Times 10/05/05
Posted: 10/05/2005 5:03 am

Collector Sues To Stop Sale Of Stolen Paintings In 1978 thieves stole seven paintings from Michael Bakwin. "The paintings, worth about $3 million, surfaced last spring in London, in the possession of the Erie International Trading Co., an obscure organization with a Panamanian address. When Bakwin learned that the company had plans to auction the works, he asked the Art Loss Register, a firm that tracks stolen art, to intervene. Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register, said he wants to know who the owners of Erie International Trading are, how they got the paintings, and what they may know about the theft." Boston Globe 10/04/05
Posted: 10/04/2005 7:12 pm

Saltz: Is New York Art City? Jerry Saltz writes that New York's "art world has never been so flush with money. There are almost 300 galleries in Chelsea, with more than 30 expanding or relocating there this season. A 20-story "gallery condo" is under construction; Matthew Marks is opening a fourth gallery space, Perry Rubinstein a third, Pace a second; Marianne Boesky is building her own building. No one's closing. There are also hundreds of contemporary galleries outside Chelsea. So New York truly is Art City. Or is it? Even with all the buzz, we're in a predicament." Village Voice 10/04/05
Posted: 10/04/2005 6:35 pm

Vettriano: I Don't Copy Jack Vettriano has denied he copied from a book for some of his most famous works. "The painter said he had never made any secret of using a 1987 illustrators' guide for some of his figure drawing. Vettriano denied newspaper reports that he had copied the work or that he had kept his use of the book to himself. He said he had always been upfront about being self-taught and that, like many other artists, he used a reference book for some of his figure drawing." BBC 10/04/05
Posted: 10/04/2005 5:18 pm

  • Vettriano - Popular? Yes. Artist? Definitely Not "Jack Vettriano is not even an artist. He just happens to be popular, with 'ordinary people' who buy reproductions of his pseudo-1930s scenes of high-heeled women and monkey-suited men, and celebrities who fork out for the originals of these toneless, textureless, brainless slick corpses of paintings. I urge you to visit the National Gallery. Look at great paintings for a few hours. Now take a look at Vettriano. I'm not arguing with you; I'm telling you. I look at art every day and I know what I don't like. There I go - being elitist. Art critics are, in the game Vettriano plays, snobbish patsies. Critical disdain is part of Vettriano's success, making him 'controversial'." The Guardian (UK) 10/05/04
    Posted: 10/04/2005 5:06 pm

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Music

Stearns: Another Take On "Atomic" David Stearns: "The opera walks an uncertain line between representation and abstraction, unfolding along traditional linear lines until a fleet of dancers in military uniform, choreographed by Lucinda Childs, suggests "Springtime for Hitler" is on the way. Not until you're deep into the opera do you realize that complete portrayals of key characters aren't attempted; they're presented, nonjudgmentally, in pieces for the audience to assemble. Is it a Faust story? Nothing so cliched. I saw an ironic parable of how saving the world may well destroy it." Philadelphia Inquirer 10/05/05
Posted: 10/05/2005 5:48 am

In Cleveland - Only One In Ten Seats Filled For Organ Concert Cleveland's Severance Hall was almost empty for its first major organ concert this year. "Only about 10 percent of the seats in Severance Hall were occupied Sunday when the hall's Organ Recital Series began its season with a recital by Paul Jacobs, a wizardly musician who deserves massive audiences." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 10/05/05
Posted: 10/05/2005 5:31 am

Twist: Musicians Tell Fans How To Beat Their Record Company's Piracy Measures Some big recording companies are protecting their CD's from being copied or locking the format so they can't be transfered to an iPod. "But these decisions aren't sitting well with some of the artists whose CDs have been secured. A number of leading acts are using their Web sites to instruct fans on how to work around the technology." Rocky Mountain News 10/05/05
Posted: 10/05/2005 5:27 am

National Symphony Gets A New Conductor Washington's National Symphony has signed on Ivan Fischer as its new principal guest conductor beginning with the 2006-07 season. "The initial contract will be for three years, meaning that Fischer may be the senior artistic figure within the orchestra when the present music director, Leonard Slatkin, steps down at the end of the 2007-08 season." Washington Post 10/05/05
Posted: 10/05/2005 5:19 am

Louisiana Phil Takes To The Road Tuesday night, the plucky Louisiana Philharmonic plays a road game in Nashville, its first concert since hurricane Katrina. "The 68-member Louisiana Philharmonic was to open its concert season at the ornate Orpheum Theater on Sept. 15, but the venue, like most of the city, was flooded and may be lost for the season." MSNBC 10/03/05
Posted: 10/04/2005 7:04 pm

Recording Industry Wrongfully Bullying, Suing Downloaders "Attorneys representing some of the 14,000 people targeted for illegal music trading say their clients are being bullied into settling as the cheapest way to get out of trouble. Collection agencies posing as 'settlement centers' are harassing their clients to pay thousands of dollars for claims about which they know nothing, they say." Wired 10/04/05
Posted: 10/04/2005 5:13 pm

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People

Thinking About August Wilson "Reading through Wilson's cycle play-by-play today, there's lots to enjoy and reflect on, but ultimately something exhausting and even programmatic in them, something forced and repetitive, although few critics say so. Reading the reviews of the early, more realistic plays, you would think that they stand alongside the masterpieces of the great American playwrights of the 20th century, or of the great playwrights of any century. At least one review compared Wilson to Chekhov. At their worst, Wilson's plays are overly preoccupied by history. Wilson was a necessary playwright. His best work describes a world that few theater audiences had seen, and it punches holes in common wisdom about race." Slate 10/04/05
Posted: 10/04/2005 5:36 pm

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Publishing

Delay In Nobel Lit Announcement Awarding of this year's Nobel Prize for literature has been delayed a week. "By tradition, the 18-member group that makes up the 219-year-old institution, announces on a Tuesday that it will name the winner the following Thursday at 7 a.m. EDT. It's also led to speculation that academy members may be locked in fierce debate as to who should take home this year's prize, which includes a $1.3 million prize, a gold medal and a diploma, along with a guaranteed boost in sales." Yahoo! (AP) 10/05/05
Posted: 10/05/2005 5:14 am

The Great Experimenters (And Why) "Even while popular writing has quietly glided into the realm of the culturally elite, doling out its severe judgment of fiction that has not sold well, and we have entered a time when book sales and artistic merit can be neatly equated without much of a fuss, Jonathan Franzen has argued that complex writing, as practiced by writers such as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett and their descendants, is being forced upon readers by powerful cultural institutions (this is me scanning the horizon for even the slightest evidence of this) and that this less approachable literature, or at least its esteemed reputation, is doing serious damage to the commercial prospects of the literary industry." So where is the evidence? Harper's 10/05
Posted: 10/04/2005 7:00 pm

The Threat Of Used Books? "According to the Book Industry Study Group, used book sales topped $2.2 billion in 2004, an 11 percent increase over 2003. Much of that growth can be credited to the Internet. While used sales at traditional stores rose a modest 4.6 percent, they jumped 33 percent online, to just over $600 million. More than 111 million used books were purchased last year, representing about one out of every 12 overall book purchases. By the end of the decade, the percentage is expected to rise to one out of 11, a troubling trend when sales for new works are essentially flat; authors and publishers receive no royalties from used buys." Yahoo! (AP) 09/28/05
Posted: 10/04/2005 6:13 pm

Harry Sells 300 Million Books JK Rowling's Harry Potter series has sold more than 300 million copies. "The tales of the schoolboy wizard and his fight against the evil Voldemort have been translated into 63 languages." BBC 10/04/05
Posted: 10/04/2005 5:21 pm

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Media

CBC: What I Learned From Shutting Down? Of course the first priority for the CBC is trying to get its audiences back after a long work stoppage. But "beyond the short-term strategy of attracting back viewers, where does the CBC sees itself going and what does it see as its purpose? Remember, it's been down this road before." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/05/05
Posted: 10/05/2005 5:52 am

Clear Channel Chief Wants Congress To Let Company Own More Stations Clear Channel Communications president and CEO Mark Mays Congress should allow broadcasters to own 50% more stations in the nation's major markets than current ownership limits allow. "Mays claims that satellite radio and Internet services escape regulations on content and capacity that give them an unfair advantage that only can be overcome by allowing broadcasters to get bigger." Hollywood Reporter 10/04/05
Posted: 10/04/2005 7:08 pm

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Dance

Musicians Protest Pittsburgh Ballet's Recordings Union musicians in Pittsburgh plan a four-day protest of live music to demonstrate against Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre's decision to replace its ochestra with recorded music. "Pittsburgh Ballet announced the elimination of the orchestra during unsuccessful negotiations with the musicians this past summer. The company says the move will save $551,000, which is in keeping with its overall 2005-06 budget of $6.4 million, down $1 million from the previous season. In January, PBT had a deficit of nearly $1 million." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 10/05/05
Posted: 10/05/2005 5:38 am

Between Theatre And Dance "In theater, there has been a movement in recent decades away from word-driven narrative. Theater today - interesting theater, not formulaic Broadway commerciality - is as much about movement and image and multimedia and even song as the actorly articulation of text. Not that words still aren't central to the art, but they've lost their arrogant monopoly. In dance, we live in a time of worldwide reaction against the excesses of pure abstraction." The New York Times 10/05/05
Posted: 10/05/2005 4:53 am

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