“The real-world and social-media combat we’ve been in for the past two years over what kind of country this is — who gets to live in it and bemoan (or endorse!) how it’s being run — have now shown up in our beefs over culture, not so much over the actual works themselves but over the laws governing that culture and the discussion around it, which artists can make what art, who can speak. We’re talking less about whether a work is good art but simply whether it’s good — good for us, good for the culture, good for the world.” Wesley Morris is sympathetic to the impulse, but the result troubles him.
Tag: 10.03.08
Vladimir Ashkenazy Knows It Don’t Come Easy
“His earliest memories go back to Tashkent and the railway truck he and his family lived in after evacuation to the Urals in 1941, when he was four. When they went back to Moscow, it was to a single room. Their old Bechstein occupied the only space not taken up by beds.”
Diet Coke as Spermicide, Jumping Fleas, Problem-Solving Mold – It’s the Ig Nobels!
Yes, these are among the 2008 winners of “the Ig Nobel prize, the annual award given by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine to oddball but often surprisingly practical scientific achievements.”
Orchestra Works To Change Complexion Of American Orchestras
“Although minorities have made tremendous strides in many other fields, African-Americans and Latinos make up only 1.7 to 1.8 percent of professional American orchestras. Rather than wringing its hands over the situation, the Sphinx Organization is addressing the problem directly.”
Lit Prize Juries – They’re All Crazy!
“How capricious it all seems; the judging process is whimsical, arbitrary, wildly subjective. How, for example, is a novelist supposed to take seriously the nonsense spouted by Horace Engdahl of the Swedish Academy, the body that decides the Nobel Prize in literature. He seems to feel that American writing is still in kindergarten, while its European cousin is doing postdoctoral research.”
The Book That Makes Icelanders Read
“Recent research revealed that in Iceland more books are written, published and sold per person per year than anywhere else on the planet. The average Icelander reads four books per year, while one in ten will publish something in their lifetime.” So what started this reading tradition?
Prominent Art Buyer Sues Sotheby’s For “Deceptive” Practices
An art collector is suing Sotheby’s claiming that “the world’s largest publicly traded auction house of ‘a custom of deception’ by concealing its financial interest in property it sells.”
The Art Of Asking Permission
“Artists Christo and Jeanne- Claude conceived the idea of suspending huge swathes of fabric over a river back in 1992. They scouted dozens of Western locations before settling on a mountainous stretch of the Arkansas River, a southern Colorado playground for whitewater rafters in view of old U.S. 50. The couple, both 73, are still waiting for a Bureau of Land Management permit to install their ‘Over the River’ project.”
Insult A Playwright, Lose Your Job
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has removed the controversial host of a Sunday arts program two weeks after she had a heated on-air exchange with British playwright Steven Berkoff. “Less than a minute into the exchange, things became tense when Razer addressed Berkoff as ‘dear’. He told her he had trouble understanding her accent. Razer then called the playwright a ‘curmudgeon’ and a ‘pugilist’, before abruptly terminating the interview.”
Hairspray To Close
“In yet another dose of bad news for Broadway, the producers of the long running hit musical Hairspray, announced on Friday that the show will close on January 18. The announcement makes Hairspray the fourth Broadway show to post a closing notice in the last two weeks.”