Individual artists have discovered eBay as a way to bypass the gallery system. And they’re selling their work. “It appears that the practical lessons of Warhol have been absorbed: self promotion is as American as one of Jackson Pollock’s apple pies. What ebay artists have learned is to be pragmatic. They can get real and promote themselves or wait forever for a dealer to do it and create a classier veneer.” – ARTNewsroom.com
Tag: 09.08.00
OLD SUCCESSES
Paris’s “Biennale International des Antiquaires” is the Super Bowl of antiques fairs, and this year business is great as the fair convenes. “As antiques dealers, we are experiencing a fantastic era. We are witnessing Paris’s comeback on the big chessboard, which the international art market represents.” – New York Times
QUICK FADE
Karlheinz Stockhausen was one of the leading lights of the mid-20th Century avant-garde, and he influenced many composers. “Yet today it is hard to find Stockhausen even on CD, let alone in performance. He has all but disappeared from view. Some of the reasons for this lie at his own door. Stockhausen now releases CDs on his own label, but makes it frustratingly difficult to buy them.” – The Guardian
COMPETITION ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE
The Leeds Piano Competition, set to run next week, is one of the most prestigious piano competitions in the world. “But competitions aren’t what they used to be. There was a day when being a prize-winner was a passport to celebrity. But now competitions are so numerous that winning at least something is fairly commonplace. They are also subject to accusations of infighting, poor decisions and corruption.” – The Guardian
BOWDLERIZING BEETHOVEN
Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony begin their Beethoven-as-reconceived-by Mahler series. Some things work, some don’t. “Last night’s concert could not have happened at any other time in history but our own, and because of that, it’s worth hearing. A century ago, critics would have to have been either fer or agin this sort of thing. Now they can hedge with that best of all hedges: Who knows if Mahler’s Beethoven is good or bad, but it’s certainly interesting.” – Washington Post
QUICK FADE
Karlheinz Stockhausen was one of the leading lights of the mid-20th Century avant-garde, and he influenced many composers. “Yet today it is hard to find Stockhausen even on CD, let alone in performance. He has all but disappeared from view. Some of the reasons for this lie at his own door. Stockhausen now releases CDs on his own label, but makes it frustratingly difficult to buy them.” – The Guardian
DANCE COMPANY CLOSES
Cleveland San Jose Ballet has canceled its season and terminated the contracts of its dancers. Two weeks ago the company missed its payroll for dancers and staff, and officials said the 2000-2001 season would be canceled unless $1 million was raised by today. Since then, only $60,000 has been raised. – The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
REINVENTING DANCE
South Africa’s major dance companies have closed for lack of funding. A disaster? Perhaps. “The other point of view is that the departure — particularly of the ballet ensemble, the management style of which was characterised by a blatant disregard for the political and artistic realities that came into play from the middle of the 1990s — is a positive move, leaving a gap crying out to be filled by the entrepreneurially and/or artistically minded. Over the next few months that gap is to be solidly plugged by a plethora of local and visiting dance companies, varying in degrees of motivation from art to capitalism.” – Daily Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg)
DRAGGING DOWN CANADIAN FILM PRODUCERS
Canadian film production houses are hurting, despite an abundance of work. The reason is an ongoing scandal at production house Cinar, which is “under investigation for taking illegal tax credits, allegedly by using Canadians to cover for American writers who didn’t qualify under Canadian content rules, and misappropriating $86 million (U.S.) in unauthorized investments.” – Inside.com
WHERE HAVE THE LITERARY FILMMAKERS GONE?
“The posh literary film (or PLF) is one of the relatively new petit-bourgeois enjoyments. Since the 1980s, indeed, we’ve had nearly all of EM Forster, a good deal of Henry James, more than half of Jane Austen, a bit of Orwell and Wilde and Graham Greene and, any minute now, no doubt, a Technicolor account of Pope’s Dunciad, starring every British actor who ever failed O-level English – which would make it a cast of thousands.” – The Telegraph (UK)