Nicholas Penny: “The art form I don’t relate to – I’d put it more strongly actually – is video because it seems to me so often merely to be an incompetent form of film, made with the excuse that it is untainted by … the entertainment industry. I’m not very impressed by conceptual art nor very often by performance art. I’m uneasy with some aspects of the legacy of Marcel Duchamp.”
Tag: 10.09.12
The Hoax Of Authenticity (Just Another Status Symbol)
“Yes, modern culture can be hollow and self-absorbed and obsessed with consumption, but the competitive pressure to be more real, more authentic, and less conformist is no less exhausting or misguided.”
Why Historian Eric Hobsbawm Never Gave Up On Communism
“He was born in 1917, after all. He was a 20th century man. Mass political movements are one thing that defines the 20th century. … History had made him a communist and he was going to stay that way. Hobsbawm didn’t try to be wiser than his own times. He didn’t believe he could out-think the 20th century.”
Chicago’s New Art Fair – Too Soon To Know If It Was A Success
Chicago once hosted an internationally important art fair. Now it’s trying to regain some ground with a new fair. But mixed results in its first year have organizers saying already that next year’s fair will shrink.
Will Quitting Paper Textbooks Hurt Learning?
“While e-readers and multimedia may seem appealing, the idea of replacing an effective learning platform with a widely hyped but still unproven one is extremely dangerous.”
Variety Acquired By Parent Company Of Deadline Hollywood
“The Hollywood trade paper Variety has been acquired by Penske Media Corp. and its financial backer, hedge fund Third Point, for about $25 million … Santa Monica-based Penske already owns Deadline.com.”
Tenor Noah Stewart Says Race Still Matters
“I was working in a restaurant once and … [one] night I sang an aria from Carmen, and a French workmate said, ‘Oh, you have such a beautiful voice and your French is good.’ Then she asked, ‘But what are you going to do?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And she said, ‘Well, you can’t sing Don José because you’re black’.’ I just kind of froze and thought, holy cow.”
Jean-Michel Basquiat, World’s Hottest Dead Young Artist
“Almost 25 years on from the artist’s death, the obsession with his work continues to grow, as for the second year running his work sold for more money at auction than any other contemporary artist.” (On Wednesday, his 1984 Big Joy sold for £2.6 million.)
And When We Say ‘Dark Comedy’, We Mean Dark Comedy
“Comedy nights are rarely well-lit, but this is taking things to extremes. Tonight, while the comedians are on stage, every light in the room will be off. This is Comedy in the Dark at the Soho Theatre in London’s West End, the first date of a month-long tour. As the blurb on the website puts it: ‘We’re talking pitch, pitch black’.”
In London, Female Stage Directors Are Coming Into Their Own
Matt Wolf: “‘My God, there are a lot of women directors working in the theater these days in London,’ a female theater director who happens not to be from London remarked to me the other day. It’s true. More women directors are proffering their work in London than I can ever recall and at a level lately that has often eclipsed the men in their midst.”