Tag: 05.24.03

Conceptual Retreads – Who Needs It?

“Clearly Britain is in a bad way. A watered-down conceptual art is the current orthodoxy. Much of what looked new and radical when it first emerged in the 1960s is now being run past us again, and it’s limping badly. And so much of it is the same. It really looks as if art students were issued with a pattern book of how to come up with a show — six ideas on the back of an envelope: good tried-and-tested old concepts that won’t cause anyone too much trouble. How has this come to pass? The decline of one of our greatest glories — the art schools — has much to answer for.”

Future Doctors Studying Art

The number of medical students taking “literature, art interpretation and other humanities courses has surged over the past decade. They are trying to awaken their feelings and intuition as a way to connect with patients who often feel as though they’ve been reduced to a collection of symptoms. Educators say the distilled emotions and insight in the arts offer students a crash course in the old-fashioned skill of the bedside manner. Art, they say, is a textbook on the human condition.”

Spanish Honor

“Spanish drama is fascinated by rules, by the code of conduct by which life is lived in matters of love and honour. Generally speaking we may seem to have lost interest in honour as a topic, but that does not mean that we cannot be stirred by a play in which honour is the motivating force. After all, we understand what humiliation (the opposite of honour) is, and we pursue honour in various of its aspects all the time, by other names. Respect is the current street-slang under whose rubric issues of honour are discussed and fought out.”

No Guts, No Glory

David Hare wonders about the lack of ambition of British theatres and audiences compared to playwrights. “It is clear that much of the free theatre we once loved has become sclerotic, choked up by damp-palmed development officers and fetid sponsorship deals, and patrolled from the watchtowers by a bureaucratic Arts Police that has sought to rob the activity of its very point – its spontaneity – it is remarkable how many of us feel that even if it has been a lifetime of failure, it has not been a lifetime of waste.”

Got The Hall, Got The Players. Why Not Start An Orchestra…

Denver could use a good chamber orchestra, writes Marc Shulgold. Most of the pieces are in place to create one. All it takes is a little money. “Who doesn’t like Bach, Handel and Vivaldi? Who wouldn’t enjoy a Mozart or Haydn symphony played as originally conceived? What’s not to like in those sumptuous string-orchestra pieces by Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Grieg and Dvorak? Particularly when they’re played with professional polish?”

Spano’s NY Phil Debut – A Preview Of The Future?

Robert Spano finally makes his New York Philharmonic debut. The Philharmonic has been “catching up with the younger generation of American conductors lately, perhaps with too great a sense of dutiful deliberation, and Mr. Spano’s debut lets it check off another name on its list. But there is also a sense that the orchestra is scouting out talent for its eventual search for its next music director — a process that would have to involve establishing relationships with the potential candidates. Mr. Spano’s name, along with David Robertson’s and Alan Gilbert’s, has been mentioned as a possibility, although mostly in the context of critics’ wish lists, not by the orchestra itself.”

Chum In The Water – Harsh Critic About To Become The Criticized

James Wood is described as “the most brutal, the most loathed, the most respected literary critic of his time.” He has been “merciless in debunking many esteemed writers of the age — Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie. Now the New Republic book critic is about to publish his own first novel, and James Wood the novelist is fair game. “A critic writing a novel is like William Bennett in a casino. All eyes are upon him.”

New $100 Million Canadian Museum Opposed By Museum Community

The Canadian government intends to announce a new $100 million museum of Canadian history and politics. But critics including opposition MPs and the museum community say that “the money would be better spent helping cash-strapped institutions across the country. ‘Museums in Canada are desperately underfunded. Some even are verging on bankruptcy.”