“Here is how to build a concert hall in London. First, locate a site and allocate a reasonable amount of time – between one decade and three, on average – to secure the necessary consents and cash from the appropriate authorities, elected and self-appointed. Then go ahead and build, knowing that the outcome will have been disabled from the start by all the pen-pushers and do-gooders who had their say before a sod was turned. When the finished hall turns out to be a camel designed by committee, acoustically opaque and incurably malodorous, dedicate the next decade or three to getting consents and cash for its improvement which, you may be sure, will be impaired by the selfsame meddlers who undermined it in the first place, or by their descendants.”
Tag: 08.04.04
Newspaper Pulls Nude Art Ad
The Baltimore Sun recently refused to run an ad for a local art gallery which featured a “stamp-sized, black-and-white reproduction of a nude,” citing the conservative bent of the paper’s readership. The owner of the gallery is puzzled: after all, the Sun regularly runs ads for strip clubs and massage parlors. Furthermore, “on its news pages, The Sun has repeatedly published artistic images of nudes, including paintings and sculptures by Henri Matisse, Michelangelo’s David, and renderings of Honore Balzac by Auguste Rodin.”
Critical Apologies
Minneapolis/St. Paul’s alternative weekly paper turns 25 this month, and what better way to celebrate than to go back through the years and rip your own critics to shreds? The current issue of City Pages features a piece in which the paper’s various art, music, and theater critics apologize for specific wrongheaded judgments they’ve made over the years.
Is NY’s Mayor Shortchanging The Arts?
Whe New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans this summer to reinvigorate the city’s school arts curriculum, teachers and school administrators were thrilled, and observers dared to hope that the long, devastating slide in New York’s arts education program might finally be reversed. But upon closer observation, it appears that there may be a key ingredient missing from Mayor Bloomberg’s plan: the money to implement it.
Questioning The Premise
A reader responds to ArtsJournal’s newest blog by questioning the very foundation of the critical conversation. “While it is interesting to see what name critics apply to certain groups of individual composers, many of those composers eschew the categories anyway, preferring to simply do their own work and get on with it.” Alex Ross, for one, is stung a bit by the critique, but says such reminders may be for the best: “I feel as though casual posts are being scrutinized as if carved in marble. I guess, though, it’s always good for critics to get smacked around a little. Profound, mysterious irony: some of us don’t take criticism very well.”
Photographer Cartier-Bresson Dies
Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the 20th century’s most important photographers, has died in the south of France, at age 96. He was a pioneer of photojournalism as well as co-founder of the influential Magnum picture agency.
The Instant Concert (Thanks To Technology)
In London, “organizing using the Web, cell phones and instant messaging, upstart guitar bands are staging secret, spontaneous concerts at unconventional venues in the latest online music craze, dubbed ‘guerrilla gigging’.”
Maazel Has Emergency Eye Surgery
Conductor Lorin Maazel has withdrawn from conducting Carmen at the Seville Festival in Spain because of emergency eye surgery. “Due to this surgery, doctors responsible strictly recommended that Maestro Maazel should not undertake any physical activities for the next four to six weeks, including conducting.”
Not Lost Beatles Songs After All
Last month brought reports that a man had “bought an old suitcase at an Australian flea market for $36 (U.S.) and found it filled with memorabilia and hours of unreleased Beatles songs. Speculation is rampant that the suitcase contains the secret stash of late Beatles associate Mal Evans, which has been missing for years. Except, of course, it’s not true. The stuff in the suitcase dated from 1995, 20 years after his death.”
Art And The Business Of Art
There is “an emerging camp of artists who see today’s shifting marketplace as one that can support the lives and work of artists—business-savvy artists. And their idea could change the face of fine arts higher education. ‘This is not just about getting artists to sell their work; this is about helping artists live a life with art in it, which can mean anything from starting neighborhood arts projects to placing one’s work in corporate settings to attract attention’.”