This month, Coptic Christians in Egypt are celebrating the 2000th anniversary of the Holy Family’s travel through Egypt. In preparation for the thousands of pious pilgrims that will come to retrace their path, the Egyptian Heritage Revival Association is pouring millions of Egyptian pounds into the restoration of tombs, icons, altars…and the installation of restrooms. – Egypt Today
Tag: 06.00
VOICE OF A NON-GENERATION
Dave Eggers has been anointed the new new thing for his debut book. And certainly the attention is well deserved. But many of the glowing tributes miss the point of his “anti” memoir. In fact, it’s more like an “ultra” memoir, “almost confessional in its eagerness to put virtually every question of substance, memory, and motive plainly before the reader. And the habits that mark Eggers’s writing – the suspicion of all that purports to be authentic, the constant urge to peer behind the curtain – seem less like examples of “the latest postmodern hardware,” than characteristics of a certain generational vernacular, whose sources are widely recognized (six hours of television a day, advertising metastasized to every cranny of life, and the conventions of post-Watergate journalism, to name a few), but whose real purpose is just as widely misunderstood. – American Prospect
THE BATTLE OF BRITTEN
From about 1945 up until the ’60s Benjamin Britten was lionized as the Great English Composer. But as he failed to embrace the more intellectual rigors of serialism and atonality he was demoted in critical reputation. But these many years later, Britten is more performed than any other 20th Century English composer. “Though not all of Britten’s music is of the first rank, much of it is comparable in quality to the finest compositions of the giants of modernism.” – Commentary
FROM THE OUTSIDE IN
The New Republic‘s art critic Jed Perl has a new book purporting to sort out the ills of the artworld. “Perl belongs to that strange tradition of art critics who are at odds with the art world at large — something for which there is no precise parallel, certainly not in the worlds of mass-circulation film or music criticism, for example. In a way Perl seems to be arguing for a culture and for artists who are no more accomplished, brilliant, or relevant than Perl himself. It’s a middlebrow context that makes him look good.” – Artforum
INTERPRETING GOGOL
Nikolai Gogol’s play “The Inspector” was first performed in Russia in 1836, but like enduring works of art it still relevant to today. The inspector is a “man truly lost, a man totally lacking in principles” – a new Japanese production demonstrates how Eastern acting styles (in contrast with Western methods) allow the actors to arrive at the point of truly understanding a role. – The Japan Times
ETHIOPIAN CHRISTIAN ART FOR 400
Everything you ever wanted to know on this subject. – Addis Tribune (Ethiopia)
TO PAINT OR NOT TO PAINT…
“Why dwell on artists anyway? What makes them so special compared to ‘ordinary’ humans? My considered view is that there is no essential difference, as the human condition is innately artistic. Everyone is potentially an artist: all it takes to become one is the self-realisation that that’s what you already are. It is not what you do that makes you an artist, but your awareness of something within that constitutes an artistic or aesthetic dimension.” – *spark-online
TO PAINT OR NOT TO PAINT…
“Why dwell on artists anyway? What makes them so special compared to ‘ordinary’ humans? My considered view is that there is no essential difference, as the human condition is innately artistic. Everyone is potentially an artist: all it takes to become one is the self-realisation that that’s what you already are. It is not what you do that makes you an artist, but your awareness of something within that constitutes an artistic or aesthetic dimension.” – *spark-online
INVITE FOR PIRACY
Arguably, the motion picture industry should never have allowed DVDs to see the light of day – they can be too easily copied. Yet they did, and predictably, hackers are copying away, and, just as predictably, the movie makers are suing. A little late though, don’t you think? – *spark-online 06/00
QUAKE-PROOF
- San Francisco’s de Young Museum was damaged in the 1989 earthquake. Plans are well along to rebuild. But “if local community activists have their way, the design for the ambitious $135 million project will soon be subjected to a process that many observers believe could doom it. And although the proposed building, by acclaimed Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron Architekten AG, has been hailed by those culturally-in-the-know as a masterpiece of contemporary Modernism, it has come in for some blistering criticism from an unexpected quarter: other architects.” – Metropolis