Tag: 08.13.00

SHANGRILARTIST

  • “The Delaware Arden should be mythical because it sounds like a place that’s too good to be true. It has an odd but equitable tax scheme, community spirit out of a Jimmy Stewart movie, and a lot of artists. This isn’t surprising, because Arden was founded 100 years ago by a sculptor and an architect who were trying to invent a more perfect form of society. They didn’t quite succeed, but their legacy is an enclave that even today is home to more than an average complement of creative people – artists, artisans, writers and aesthetes of every stripe.” – Philadelphia Inquirer 08/13/00

ACCESSIBILITY AFOOT?

“Conceptual art, performance art and hard abstraction still often dominate the art magazines. But in New York, there is a feast of representational art this summer. I decided to check it out to see if there was anything in these exhibits that would give me a clue as to what is afoot.” – Washington Post

LIVING HISTORY

“Alicia Markova, a living legend not only of British ballet, but of 20th-century civilisation. This is the body that Matisse drew black squiggles down for his costume for her in Rouge et Noir. This skin was rubbed down by the immortal Pavlova with her personal eau de cologne. This musical mind was guided as a child by Stravinsky and Balanchine.” – The Telegraph (UK)

LEAVING THE GETTY

Getty Museum director John Walsh says goodbye after 17 years. “Walsh arrived a year after the Getty Trust received its fortune. As the endowment has grown from $1.2 billion to $5 billion, the Getty Museum has not only spent huge sums on its collections, but also beefed up educational programs, developed what Walsh says is now the best publishing program of any museum in the world and built the new facility at the Getty Center.” – Los Angeles Times

ROBERT WILSON HAS A NEW THEATER PROJECT

“Mr. Wilson is probably the most prolific theater artist in the world. An astonishingly tireless man who presents premieres of 8 to 12 new projects each year in an array of far-flung countries, he directs, designs the sets, co-designs the lighting and usually choreographs them all. He also organizes an army of loyal acolytes in the presentation of twice as many touring productions of older shows throughout the world. He estimates that he spends 10 days a year at his apartment in New York.” – New York Times

BALANCE OF TRADE

“Britain runs a massive national trade surplus in architecture. Our architects can be proud of the European symbols they have created – the Pompidou Centre by Richard Rogers, the Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and the Reichstag dome, both by Norman Foster, the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart by James Stirling and the new Berlin embassy by his former partner Michael Wilford. But the corollary has been a creativity deficit here which is only now beginning to be cut.” – The Independent (UK)

TERM OF THE MOMENT

What exactly does “contemporary” art mean? “Look at what happened to Modern art, which today is considered to have begun as far back as the mid-19th Century. At first the term described the art of its day, but since then the term has been assigned to a certain historical period. Could the category of contemporary art be used one day to classify art of the second half of the 20th Century? What then – the ghastly ‘post-contemporary’?” – Chicago Tribune

AMERICAN DREAMING

“While American theatergoers lament that nonmusical drama on Broadway belongs to the British (and in the ’80s so did a large share of the musicals), the English busily stage works that writers such as Arthur Miller or Tony Kushner can’t get premiered in the United States. This probably says something about the relatively greater sophistication of British audiences. Still, the fascination with secondary plays by our first-rank playwrights can be mystifying to an American – rather like that French thing for Jerry Lewis films. What’s the attraction?” – Washington Post