Tag: 04.03

Conceptual Construct – The Art Of Learning Performance Art

How does someone learn to be a performance artist? Can you learn how to smear that chocolate over your body or lock yourself up in a suitcase? “More students are studying performance practice, and more are studying its history and theory, in a range of departments: art history, performance studies, anthropology, curatorial programs. Still, even with performance as something of an entrenched category in the current cultural climate, it’s a lucky student who can find a sympathetic mentor in most traditional art schools.”

Inside Hitler’s Bookcases

Hitler was a major bibliophile. He had an enormous collection. “By 1930, as sales of Mein Kampf bolstered his income, book buying represented his third largest tax deduction (after general travel and transportation): 1,692 marks in 1930, with similar deductions in the two years following. More telling still is the five-year insurance policy Hitler took out in October of 1934, with the Gladbacher Fire Insurance Company, on his six-room apartment on the Prinzregentenplatz, in downtown Munich. In the letter of agreement accompanying the policy Hitler valued his book collection, said to consist of 6,000 volumes, at 150,000 marks—half the value of the entire policy. The other half represented his art holdings.”

What Happened To The Serious Arts On PBS?

“While film and video makers still have a presence on PBS, albeit usually in the late night slot, contemporary performing arts appear to have been replaced by baby boomer-oriented MOR rock, a recent renewal of interest in early doo-wop, R&B and soul, light classical fare (including all the multitudinous variations on the Three Tenors), a very curious and unexpected surge in pop music directed at a rather older viewing demographic like some kind of updated version of the Lawrence Welk (e.g. Roger Whittaker), and all manner of new age-y, glitzy, and otherwise flimsy, mainstreamed versions of world music and dance. Enough of Yanni, Fleetwood Mac, Riverdance, Sarah Brightman, and Andrew Lloyd Webber! Give me some new music and contemporary performing arts of substance and meaning!”

Is Music Better With An Explanation?

Why do we need theory to explain music? “Actually, theory can be beautiful and illuminating (as opposed to complicated, obfuscating, quagmired, self-important, self-absorbed). And nothing could be more human: the desire to create systems out of chaos or near-chaos is a natural and (usually) noble expression of humanity’s ability to reason. And there are theories about everything: Goethe had one about color, Einstein had one about gravity, Eisenstein had one about film montage… Freud about dreams. Darwin even had a pet theory (literally). But music theory is surely the strangest. That’s the burden of trying to make sense of the most ethereal, ephemeral, abstract–one could argue the most free–art form.”

Has Political Comedy Lost Its Edge?

“Many Americans, it’s often remarked, who don’t read the papers get their news from the likes of Jon Stewart and David Letterman. Comedy needn’t have a political purpose. It can just be funny. But at its best, political humor can be subversive, pushing the world in at least a different direction. Rush Limbaugh, a former deejay, who is as much a humorist as polemicist, had this effect 10 years ago, though probably not any more. But, in general, because political comedy is so pervasive, it may have lost much of its ability to be persuasive. With political comedy now 24/7, it’s startling to be reminded that the art form, as we know it, didn’t exist until about 40 years ago.”

Prisoner Of HDTV

The transition from analog broadcast television to digital broadcast television (DTV), now an enshrined part of American broadcasting policy, faces a horde of technical, legal, economic, and social problems. Taken together, the problems look as unbeatable as any monster. Making things worse, many factions with a stake in the outcome are at war over such issues as technology mandates, copyright protection, and fair use.” So who really cares? “There’s much more than digital television at stake. Bad government actions in this sphere – and you can be sure that Congress and the Federal Communications Commission will act rather than refrain from acting – could permanently shoehorn part or all of the computer revolution under government-driven design control. Not only would this likely kill the dynamism of the information-technology sector, but it is unlikely to do much to protect copyright interests.”

What Are They Teaching In Art Schools These Days?

“It’s not easy sorting out how best to use the short time allotted to arts degrees; an undergraduate fine-arts major often spends only one of his four years in art classes—hardly enough time to learn the traditional skills of drawing, painting, sculpture, and photography, let alone today’s laundry list of new forms. Even a two-year master of fine arts (M.F.A.) program doesn’t provide much time for training, compared with the decades-long master-apprentice system of earlier centuries. Countless other challenges have art-school faculties reexamining their missions and values. The proliferation of programs and students; the embrace of diverse art forms and content; the professionalization of art practice; the rise of cultural theory; whether (and how) to teach the new technologies that have sprouted in the last decade.”

Echoes Of Other Language

“Is there such a phenomenon in poetry as a ‘shadow language,’ that is, a concealed or tacit foreign language which exerts a strong and sometimes fruitful pressure on the native tongue of a poet? In one sense, of course, the answer is an obvious yes. Much of traditional English poetry would have been the poorer without the pressure of, say, Latin or French.”