Blake Gopnik attempts the Whitney Biennale with a positive attitude: “If art lovers are almost always disappointed by the Whitney’s survey, maybe the problem lies in our expectations rather than in the show itself. Though it features more than 300 works chosen from across the nation in something like nine months, we still somehow imagine that the biennial should be a tight, coherent show of excellent art. In fact, it can never be more than a grab bag of whatever work happens to have been made since the previous edition of the show. Great exhibitions come about when curators identify important art that speaks to them, and then spend many years shaping it into a show that will speak to us. The Whitney Biennial comes about because another two years have gone by and someone’s got to pull something together, fast.”
Tag: 03.14.04
Roos – The Music Critic Who Didn’t Like Editing
James Roos was the classical music critic for the Miami Herald for 31 years before being diagnosed with a brain tumor. He was a tough critic who didn’t much like to be edited. “Jim was notorious for going to the composing room after the evening edition to restore his pieces to their pre-edited state. Consequently, he was banned from the composing room. That was a long time ago.”
For Writers – the Best Of Times
Things have changed in the publishing business in the past decade. “That’s the real cultural revolution: the shift in the balance of power from the publisher to the bookseller. Thatcherism, which made the market king, empowered the bookseller and put the publisher on the defensive. For the past 10 years at least, most published writers in Britain and America have enjoyed a golden age of remuneration, publicity and, yes, sales scarcely dreamed of before. In 2004, the author’s lot, though far from ideal, is better than it has ever been.”
Hip-Hop For Old People? (Naw!)
“How does one grow old gracefully in hip-hop? Truth be told, I’d rather talk about hip-hop’s aging than my own, and since I have watched hip-hop from its infancy, I’ve been thinking about the relevant and parallel question: How does a culture like hip-hop, so invested in its youth, experience its own aging process?”
The Man Who Made A Movie Without Leaving His Room
Kerry Conran has spent 10 years working on making a movie on his computer. “Conran has not constructed a single set or miniature. Rather, they are computer images, built and animated in a virtual 3-D environment, or stitched together from photographs, which are then draped around the flesh-and-blood actors, who have been shot separately on an empty set in front of a blank ”blue-screen” background, along with those few minimal props with which they actually interact (a ray gun, a robot blueprint, a bottle of milk of magnesia). The film, in other words, is one long special effect with Jude-Law-size holes in it.”
WTC – Contemplating The “Safest Building In The World”
For a variety of oh-so-obvious reasons, project managers of the new tower to rise above the site of the World Trade Center say they’re building the “safest building in the world.” “In an attempt to live up to that very public promise — to overcome public fear, and reassure prospective tenants — the designers of the tower are carrying out a most unusual exercise that is in equal parts brainstorming, forensic analysis and Götterdämmerung-style what-iffing.”
The Self-Effacing Diva
Alexandra Ansanelli is a young star ballerina at New York City Ballet. But she’s so unassuming and self-effacing….can you be a prima star without the ego?
Where The Art Is: Miami
Miami is now home to some major contemporary art collectors. Some collectors have been so successful in their hording that they’ve even built personal museums for their collections. “When we arrived here Miami was acultural. Now there are all these energies coming together that give it the excitement of a frontier.”
Tower Records To Come Out Of Bankruptcy Stronger
Tower Records has been in financial difficulty for a while. So there was considerable concern that when the chain declared bankruptcy last year, the end was near. Not so. “Wrapping up a fast-track case that’s been mostly a formality, Tower is poised to emerge from bankruptcy protection Monday with its debt load $80 million lighter and its business intact.”
The Shostakovuch Question, Round 257
Time once again to play The Shostakovich Question. “The ‘Shostakovich Question’ is a debate is over the relationship between the composer and the triad of Stalinism, Mother Russia and Shostakovich’s own deep humanism. It asks: why did Shostakovich remain in the USSR, while others like Stravinsky left? Was he obliged by a love of country to acknowledge, if not accept, the government? Or was his life torn between a public and private self? Indeed, was every musical phrase a thread woven through a tortured tapestry of dissent, a passionate but coded cry of opposition?”