Damien Hirst is taking a religious turn. His next series of pieces are religion-themed. “In a series of sculptures inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, which will be seen in London this autumn, Hirst will depict Jesus and the apostles as 13 pingpong balls bobbing on spurting fountains of red wine. A washing bowl to bathe Christ’s feet will sit beneath their Formica table.”
Tag: 06.11.03
Top 100 Songs
What are the “greatest” 100 songs of the past 25 years? VH1 has made a list…
To Catch A Thief
Plagiarism seems to be all around us. “Why do they do it? With the Internet making it easy to disseminate and read virtually anything anyone writes, it has become that much easier to catch plagiarists. So why do writers continue to steal the works of others? There are many explanations: gnawing self-doubt, narcissistic self-confidence, haste, pressure from publishers and editors, unrestrained ambition, a self-destructive need to court disaster, and, sometimes, ignorance of what plagiarism is.”
The Arts Tax?
If states are slashing their discretionary spending on the arts, maybe the way to save arts funding is to use dedicated taxes for the arts. “There is a variety of indirect taxes for the arts, which are more prevalent than we realize and have proven quiet successes. These taxes bring consistent funding for the arts through the back door and are not as much subject to the fate of appropriations-based government support, which can be a real roller-coaster ride.”
Genius Or Buffoon Con Man?
Two of the hottest opera tickets this summer are Peter Sellars productions. Sellars is a high concept guy. “Much of Sellars’s talk tends to abstract generalisations. ‘I am more interested in the periphery than the centre. Places with no centre, like Los Angeles, are both more chaotic and more democratic’ is typical. When I asked him about what happened in Adelaide, all he said was, ‘People flip out about the fires in Australia, but the Aborigine tradition is that you have to burn off the land to regenerate’.”