Tag: 10.02.04

Something Beautiful (Or Not)

Quick, give an example of the ideal of beauty in the 20th century. Did you name a Mondrian painting, or Marilyn Monroe? There’s a good chance it was the latter (or some other movie star,) but what will art historians centuries from now have to say on the subject? “Art is no longer interested in providing an image of natural beauty, nor does it aim to procure the pleasure ensuing from the contemplation of harmonious forms,” and that’s fine for the avant-garde, but the divergence of art from the concept of physical beauty does mean that it is difficult to predict which aesthetic tradition will have real staying power.

A House Divided

“Lawyers for the estate of author John Steinbeck’s widow are seeking to quash a lawsuit begun by his other relatives over royalties and copyright. Steinbeck’s son, Thomas Steinbeck, and granddaughter Blake Smyle are suing the late Elaine Steinbeck’s estate for at least $18 million. They are also seeking greater control of Steinbeck’s classic novels.”

Sacramento Symphony Exec Quits, Charges Unethical Accounting

The executive director of the organization that oversees the newly formed Sacramento Symphony has resigned, and is accusing the Metropolitan Music Center of mismanaging funds and playing fast and loose with business ethics. Rachel Lewis also insists that she never signed the musicians’ checks which bounced following the orchestra’s opening concert, and further claims that she tried to convince the MMC to cancel the concert due to a shortage of funds for payroll. The MMC’s board of directors is vehemently denying all of Lewis’s charges.

As Opposed To How We Perceive Designers Now?

James Dyson’s resignation from the leadership of London’s Design Museum may have seemed like little more than an internal debate over direction writ large, but to hear Dyson tell it, nothing less than the future of the design industry is at stake. “If design museums shy away from explaining the guts of design, he worries, the next generation will perceive the designer as ‘little more than the creator of ineffectual ornaments.’ And what’s left of Western industrial manufacturing will spiral into decline.”

Hurston/Wright Awards Announced

Art and literature are supposed to be color-blind, of course, but there’s no escaping the fact that the vast majority of literary prizes are presented by white people to white people. Thus the necessity of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, which annually honor the best of black literature. This year’s prizes were handed out last week: “In the debut fiction category, Purple Hibiscus, the story of a Nigerian teenager growing up in a rich and troubled family, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; in nonfiction, In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. by Wil Haygood; and in the fiction category, Hunting in Harlem, the tale of three ex-cons in contemporary New York, by Mat Johnson.”

AGO Pushing Major Partnership

The Art Gallery of Ontario has forged an unlikely partnership with Russia’s Hermitage Museum in recent years, and the AGO’s Matthew Teitelbaum is determined to take it to “‘the curatorial level,’ which, despite its formal-sounding nature, really means more of a hands-on deal between the Hermitage’s art experts and his own. In short, he wants AGO people to start arranging what the Hermitage might send our way. But put this in some perspective. Since the entire AGO, with or without Frank Gehry touch-ups, probably would fit nicely into the Hermitage’s cat-infested basement, Teitelbaum’s approach can be seen as remarkably progressive, pushy, or somewhere in between.”

Giving The People What They Want

Ken Danby could be considered the Canadian answer to Thomas Kinkade – a stunningly prolific artist (650 original works in a 40-year career) who inspires revulsion in the art world for his nostalgic simplicity and his willingness to mass market his work, even to the extent of signing machine-made reproductions. Still, “Danby’s clientele know what they like and they are legion. His 1998 show at the Carrier Gallery attracted, he says, 10,000 visitors and sold $1.25 million-worth of pictures.”

Graham Greene’s New Relevance

Novelist Graham Greene, who would have turned 100 this weekend, will enjoy a posthumous resurgence this fall, thanks to a bevy of reissues put together for the occasion. The timing couldn’t be better, as Greene’s work seems to have a new relevance to modern events: “The Western world finds itself in international turmoil, in situations similar to those of Greene’s slumming characters, where it’s not always clear that one is doing the right thing. And we find ourselves trying to divvy up the world into categories of absolutes — Good and Evil — when our everyday existence, as echoed by Greene’s protagonists, tells us that things are much more complicated than that.”