Phillips’ forray into the high-end art auction business has come to an end. French billionaire Phillipe Arnault has sold his stake in the company, and it is laying off workers and downsizing. Arnault bought Phillips in 1999 and “spent tens of millions of pounds on guaranteeing money to vendors, regardless of how their works of art performed in the saleroom, in an attempt to raise the company’s profile and win market share from rivals.”
Tag: 01.29.03
Thoroughly Practical Theatre
“The Hampstead Theatre is a great achievement, and the more so for having seen off the enemies of promise that are the rules and restrictions that come with Lottery funding. The Arts Council, for example, having binged on earlier projects, set a severe limit of £10 million on their grant to this one. Compared with the hasty, ramshackle architecture of Sadler’s Wells, Hampstead stands out. It also avoided the drastic cost overruns that afflicted the revamped Royal Court.”
British Culture Minister Says UK Should Be More Like Germany
England’s culture minister has written an article in a German newspaper saying England ought to be more like Germany when it comes to culture. “England has a great cultural tradition past and present. (But) perhaps in Britain we simply lack the passion of the Germans to debate culture. We shouldn’t be so shy about talking about culture. British politicians should not be shy about giving culture a high priority in public debate. “Germany is one of the biggest cultural powers in Europe. Britain too. So I hope that the courage that Germany has proved itself to have in the debate about grasping cultural identity will also rub off to some extent on to your English cousins.”
Gioia Confirmed As New NEA Head
Poet Dana Gioia has been unanimously confirmed by the US Senate as the ninth Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Leading the National Endowment for the Arts is a great privilege and an enormous responsibility. Both the arts and arts education face many challenges at present, and the Endowment has much to do.”
Any Hope For The NYer Slushpile?
Aspiring writers everywhere have submited fiction to The New Yorker in hopes of getting published. Indeed, the magazine gets some 4000 unsolicited manuscripts every month. So will submissions to the slush pile have a shot at getting into the NYer under new fiction editor Deborah Treisman? “Someone who’s submitting themselves directly to the fiction editor probably isn’t all that savvy about publishing and probably not about writing either.” Hmmmn…guess not.
Would Frequent-Goer Discounts Bring More People Into the Theatre?
How about this for a plan? It works for airline tickets – People who buy their theatre tickets well in advance get big discounts. The founder of EasyJet, the discount airline, says: “I am sure that going to the theatre is as price-elastic as going to the movies. If you reduce the price, more people will go. Someone should try it with the theatre some day.”
Star Power
Is casting Hollywood celebrities in plays a good thing beyond goosing up the box office? “On the whole, I think the impact of these star performances on London theatre has been overwhelmingly positive. It creates a buzz, it attracts new audiences, it gets theatre talked about. Of course, you do have to make a distinction between what I would call celebrity casting – where you just take some minor celeb and try to use the name to sell tickets – and real star casting, where you’re featuring people whose fame has to do with their quality as actors.” So maybe it would help revive Scottish theatre?
Scottish Arts Exec Calls For Arts Funding Inquiry
After a disappointing announcement of flat funding for the arts by the Scottish government, “the chairman of the Scottish Arts Council has called for a public inquiry to stave off financial catastrophe in the arts and to nurture the sector for future generations.”
Shakespeare In Tehran
Director Dominic Hill was invited to Iran with his production of Shakespeare. It’s been 25 years since the Bard was performed in Tehran. “This reverent attitude towards our national playwright was to crop up again and again during the many interviews I had with journalists and critics. The Persians, as they call themselves, are a cultured, strongly opinioned, passionate people – one mention that I had a degree in English literature and I was treated to a 30-minute lecture on the great Persian poets. Shakespeare is up there with them, and therefore to produce him in modern dress seemed, to the intellectuals and directors I spoke to, incomprehensible, insulting and doomed to failure.”
Delusions Of Greatness
What do we mean by greatness? “The distinction is easier to identify in the performing arts than scientists might credit. Greatness is by definition rare, and fast becoming rarer. Perhaps because so much of the art of interpretation is fakable on film, the magnetism of high performance has been dulled and mediocrity can pass, on first impression, for mastery, while genius is obscured by cheap gesture. Since human nature abhors a vacuum, greatness gets bestowed on whoever catches the public eye.”