“The art of complaining is very hard to master. To complain about things in my experience is always lowering. Who wants to draw attention to the fact you have been slighted? Isn’t that in itself a form of failure? Complaining stylishly and with grace and/or flair seems virtually impossible. A good complaint requires both a lightness of tone and high-handedness, humour, collusion from the other party and a quiet tenacity. This is a lot to muster when you’ve just been disappointed.”
Tag: 06.01.08
Building-Sized Music
“David Byrne, who interprets the term artist with marvelous expansiveness, doesn’t actually play the building in Playing the Building; it’s visitors who make the sounds. He made the architecture orchestral–feeding air into flutelike heating pipes, triggering hammers on cast-iron columns, and vibrating motors against ceiling beams as if drawing a bow across the strings of a giant fiddle.”
Ten World Problems That Can Be Fixed
“Eight leading economists, including five Nobelists, were asked to prioritize 30 different proposed solutions to ten of the world’s biggest problems. The proposed solutions were developed by more than 50 specialist scholars over the past two years and were presented as reports to the panel over the past week.”
Looking At Those Can’t-Quite-Remember Moments
“It’s estimated that, on average, people have a tip-of-the-tongue moment at least once a week. Perhaps it occurs when you run into an old acquaintance whose name you can’t remember, although you know that it begins with the letter ‘T.’ Or perhaps you struggle to recall the title of a recent movie, even though you can describe the plot in perfect detail. Researchers have located the specific brain areas that are activated during such moments.”
Why Is Klimt Worth $135 Million?
“With Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet – and now with Francis Bacon – you know exactly how the attraction works and why the auction records are blown. These are familiar giants. But Klimt was a Viennese petit maître. He didn’t create an unstoppable movement. He didn’t change art. Until Lauder splashed out on him, Klimt was a beautiful but essentially minor Viennese secret. So, why is he so valuable?”
Hay-on-Wye Lit Festival – Idylic-Gone-Dumb
“You might imagine that Hay is a lovely day out for all the family, a chance for children to meet the authors they love and, conversely, an opportunity for writers to meet the people who actually read their books. Of course, it’s no such thing. Mainly it’s a chance for ramblers and hippies to gather in a field and convince themselves that everyone thinks the same way that they do.”
Mexico’s Musicians Under Attack
Fifteen have been murdered so far. “The attacks on musicians come amid a wave of bloodshed in Mexico, which has usurped Colombia as the drug trafficking capital of the Americas, unleashing violent turf wars and fighting with police. For their part, Mexican musicians have been increasingly singing about cocaine, corpses and Kalashnikovs alongside their traditional tales of poverty and lost love.”
Russia’s BritArt Passion
“Russia’s industrial oligarchs are the new force in the multibillion-pound global art market. Behind the scenes of the Russian art revolution are a host of familiar British names, all connected in some way with Damien Hirst, one of the world’s most successful – in monetary terms – living artists.”
How Big An Issue Is Canadian Art Theft?
“Even in Canada, art theft is more prevalent than most people imagine. Canada is vulnerable because we don’t have an FBI-style or investigative-art team to work on these crimes. The porous Canada-U.S. border is a factor, too.”
Is Montreal Canada’s New Center Of Visual Art?
“So, why is Montreal art so strong these days? First, you have to credit the strong art schools in Montreal and Quebec City. Looking at the CVs of these artists, one sees most of them are homegrown talents trained at Concordia University or the University of Quebec at Montreal.”