Tag: 02.04.06

Let’s Stop Making Books That Don’t Need To Be Books

Where do books fit in to the modern culture? “Nobody, not even academics, who are hardier than most, want books in any other form than books. At the same time, we acknowledge that books have become as throwaway as everything else in our culture, so what do we do? First, we stop publishing books that needn’t be books. People who don’t really read don’t really need books — so let them have Jordan and Becks in lots of other ways. Audio, animated-audio, that is, audio with pictures — is just about right for most celebrity publications.”

Frey’s Editor: I Was A Victim Too

James Frey’s editor now says he was duped by the author, and believed that everything in the book was true. “Throughout the editing process, I raised questions with James about the veracity of events he recounted in the book and in each instance he assured me that his account was accurate and true. The only things in ‘A Million Little Pieces’ that I understood were altered were the names and identifying characteristics of some of the people in the book to protect their real identities.”

Appreciating Nam June Paik

“Paik understood the challenge of the new age he helped usher in. He maintained that the central objective in combining art and technology was ‘not how to make another scientific toy, but how to humanize the technology and the electronic medium.’ For him, humanization involved a giddy, celebratory joyfulness. His aim, he once said, was a ‘TV version of Vivaldi’.”

The China Factor – Getting In To Western Art

“China’s spectacular economic rise over the past quarter-century has started to create enormous wealth, and prices for Chinese art have risen steeply, especially in the last three years. But Chinese art collectors have barely begun to show interest in Western masterpieces. Few doubt that in the years to come, wealthy Chinese on the mainland and in Hong Kong will become important buyers of Western art.”

Negotiating The Met’s Return Policy

The Metropolitan Museum has agreed to send disputed artifacts back to Italy. So now the negotiating for how and when intensifies. “The Met has requested that it be allowed to keep the krater and a disputed set of Hellenistic silver at least through the end of next year so that the objects can be on display for the opening of the museum’s expanded Roman galleries in spring 2007. The two sides are also still discussing the possibility that the vase, which the museum bought for $1 million in 1972, might be allowed to return to the Met at some point as a loan from the Italian government and remain in the United States for as long as four years.”

Cartoon Culture = Clash Of Civilizations?

It’s easy to leap to the extremes of the uproar over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad. “Perhaps these cartoons really do crystallize why Islam and the West are incompatible and must hunker down for a ‘long war.’ The only other option, it seems, is to remember that if vastly different worldviews can find no accommodation on a subject, then perhaps it’s too early, in human history, to have the conversation.”

Twain As Literary Lincoln

A new biography of Mark Twain attempts to measure the author’s importance to American literature: “His way of seeing and hearing things changed America’s way of seeing and hearing things … he was the Lincoln of American literature.’ In his prime, a century after the Declaration of Independence, Twain was a Yankee original who rendered the vocabulary and tone of the American vernacular, previously despised, in a way that was neither parody, nor caricature, but literature.”

LA County Museum Hires Michael Govan As Director

“Govan, 42, is a well-known figure in the art world who rose from deputy director at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York to the top job at Dia, a leading cultural institution that collects contemporary art, supports massive outdoor projects in the American West and maintains large exhibition spaces in Manhattan and Beacon, N.Y. During his 11-year tenure, he is credited with transforming Dia from a highly specialized source of funding for individual artists’ projects into an institution that brings contemporary art to a broader audience.”