Nearly everyone has heard stories of how humans with one damaged sense (e.g. hearing or sight) often experience heightened sensitivity in other areas. Now, a new study suggests that the theory of sensory trade-offs may hold true for the evolution of species as well. For instance, primates (including humans) have a highly developed visual sense, but the ability to see all the colors of the rainbow may have come at the expense of, say, a superior sense of smell.
Tag: 01.24.04
The New Heifetz?
“Nikolaj Znaider, still only in his late twenties, is already being spoken of in the same breath as some of the great violinists of the past – Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, David Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin. The point is not so much that he sounds like any of them but that he is in that illustrious line of musicians who are able to use technique with wisdom and sensibility to exert a strong personality in their playing.” Znaider has very little use for the type of career-obsessed musicians he encountered at Juilliard, and believes that many in the classical industry have completely lost sight of what’s important in their playing. So naturally, critics love the guy.
Nobody Knows Art Like Customs Inspectors
“The definition of art is not something that anyone would lightly undertake. Nor would it normally be left to a US customs official to decide. But that is exactly what happened in October 1926,” when an extraordinary legal battle erupted over a Constantin Brancusi statue being brought into the U.S. “The point was that ordinary merchandise was subject to duty at 40 per cent, while art was not. And the customs official on duty at the time happened to be an amateur sculptor – just the sort of person to have bumptiously confident views about matters aesthetic. He took one look at the Brancusis, concluded that they weren’t art, and levied $4,000 duty.”
Everybody Wants A Bilbao
Frank Gehry will unveil his plans for the Art Gallery of Ontario this week, and the pressure is mounting. “Unlike any of Gehry’s other projects, the Art Gallery of Ontario is a two-headed client: There’s AGO director Matthew Teitelbaum and then there’s the publishing magnate Kenneth Thomson, who has donated not only his massive collection of art but also $70-million in cash to a reinvented art gallery. Added to the froth is a residual expectation that maybe, if everybody tries a little harder, $200-million — the estimated budget for the project — will buy the architectural ecstasy of Bilbao.”
Stolen Goods? Maybe. But You’re Not Allowed To Ask
“An El Greco painting displayed recently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was returned Thursday to the Greek museum that owns it after a state judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming it had been stolen by Nazis at the end of World War II… The suit sought to keep the painting in the United States pending further investigation of its provenance. It was rejected under a federal statute that says a lawsuit cannot be used to seize or control a cultural object brought into this country by a nonprofit institution like a museum for temporary exhibition.”
Gehry and the Tyranny Of Form
When Frank Gehry unveils his plans for the new Art Gallery of Ontario building later this week, the usual debate of form vs. function will surely ensue. “What has the success of the Guggenheim Bilbao done to the discipline of museum design, detractors ask? Has the need for the spectacular rendered the discipline of architecture more superficial, when every urban centre must boast its own curving titanium mothership to feel world class? One can’t help but notice that Gehry has become the architect of someplace wanting to be someplace better.”
Following Plimpton
Many assumed that George Plimpton’s death would see his beloved Paris Review come to a quiet end, or at least that the small, influential literary journal would be transformed into something unrecognizable to the New York literati who are so devoted to it. But new editor Brigid Hughes has no plans to change the magazine, and insists that Plimpton’s rather complicated legacy was actually quite simple, as far as the Review was concerned: “I don’t think it needs to change. The goal is to publish good writing. I intend to do that.”
Captain Kangaroo & The Power Of Calm
Captain Kangaroo (a.k.a. Bob Keeshan) died this weekend at age 76. “Keeshan had many talents, and he had no edge. Having no edge is an admirable quality, but one that almost never flies today. It allowed men (and a few women) like Captain Kangaroo to simply exude an almost suspicious amount of niceness. Yet there was nothing to suspect… In a world designed to be noisy, he built a show around calm. (Except when Ping-Pong balls fell from the ceiling. And when Mr. Green Jeans’s contraptions fell apart.)”
Helmut Newton, 83
“The photographer Helmut Newton transformed fashion into a form of erotica. With his long-legged models shot from below and lit like goddesses carved out of stone, Newton’s vision of women was both threatening and compelling. Through his lens, sexuality was transformed into power. Newton, 83, died yesterday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.”
Making Sense Of Jazz
Jazz is perhaps the ultimate “melting pot” style of music. It is a serious and difficult genre, steeped in intellectual tradition, and yet it often seems to absorb the best (and, some would say, worst) of popular culture in order to stay fresh and evolve. This mixed bag of musical ideas makes for a great many divisions in the jazz community, and the annual conference of the International Association of Jazz Education functions simultaneously as a way for gripes to be aired, and for the past, present, and future of the genre to be documented and discussed.