Tag: 08.13.09

A.S. Byatt: Using Real People In Fiction Invades Privacy

“AS Byatt has launched a vigorous attack on writers who combine biography and fiction, calling it an ‘appropriation of others’ lives and privacy’. Her broadside against authors of ‘faction’, which she describes as ‘mixtures of biography and fiction, journalism and invention’, is particularly startling given that it could be applied to her rival for this year’s Man Booker prize, Hilary Mantel, who is longlisted for her historical novel about the life of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall.”

Toronto’s Koerner Hall Is Looking, And Sounding, Good

“The Royal Conservatory of Music invited a handful of people yesterday to look at – and hear – the results of seven years of planning and construction behind Toronto’s newest cultural landmark…. People attending were instructed to not speak publicly about the quality of the sound, because construction is still not complete and because there wasn’t a real audience there to fill the room. But the initial impressions are so fine that it’s hard to not share the pleasure.”

Man Who Strips On Plinth Is Told To Put His Undies On

“The human form may be a mainstay of art, but that didn’t stop police ordering a nude man intent on becoming a ‘living statue’ from covering up as he took part in Antony Gormley’s fourth plinth art project yesterday morning. The man, known only as Simon, arrived in London’s Trafalgar Square fully-dressed, but once he was safely on the plinth at 1am, he removed his T-shirt, kicked off his trousers and then, after pacing for a few moments, took off his underwear.”

Opera Doesn’t Have To Be Drivel

“[E]ven those who supposedly love the art form, and who are involved in putting it on, are increasingly laboring under the delusion that it is inherently over-the-top, overblown, ridiculous, and, well, drivel.” According to this way of thinking, “opera has to have arias; opera has to have big emotions; therefore, we will have arias and ensembles, because they are the ingredients that make opera, even if it means stopping the action to tell the audience things that we already know.”

Govt. Recruits TV Dance Judge To Get Populace Exercising

“For years now, it seems that the Government’s sole interest in dance hasn’t been as a theatrical art form but as a means of preventing obesity in the young and improving the health of the elderly…. Now comes Arlene Phillips, West End choreographer and erstwhile Strictly Come Dancing judge, to join the government-backed crusade to get us all moving.”

A New Wing Gets Cleveland Museum Almost Halfway There

The Cleveland Museum of Art “has accomplished Phase I of an eight-year, $350 million renovation and expansion that–if completed as planned in 2013–will be the largest cultural project in Ohio’s history. … Although lack of adequate space for [its] deep Asian collection was a principal motivation for the current building project, the bulk of that collection will be in storage until the Viñoly expansion is completed in 2013.”

Yale Press Forbids All Images Of Muhammad In Book

Yale University Press has banned not only the “notoriously controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad” from its fall title, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” but also “any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s ‘Inferno’ that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí.”