Is Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum in danger of losing its important collection of 14 Malevich paintings? “The heirs of the Russian avant-garde artist, who have successfully claimed works from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Busch-Reisinger Museum of Harvard University, are now in pursuit of a significant part of the largest collection of Malevich’s works in the West. They say that the Stedelijk bought the works from someone who didn’t own them and had no right to sell them.”
Tag: 11.04
In Search Of Stories
Where is the best storytelling today? Not in books, alas. “In the cinema, a core of narrative innocence survives across a spectrum of values represented by Spielberg at one end and Abbas Kiarostami at the other. In the novel, however, story has gone down in a blaze of modernist attitudes.”
New Tech – As Found In Nature
Biomimetics is the fusion of ideas found in the natural world and technology. And science is learning to make new products by mimicing things found in nature. “Nature has been conducting evolutionary experiments for millions of years, so if we’re lucky enough to find something close to what we require in nature, then it’s very likely to have been highly optimized, and we’re unlikely to do much better.”
Justice For All – The Passing Of A Poet
Several distinguished poets have died this year. But with American Donald Justice’s passing last summer, it is “hard not to feel that a curtain has begun to descend over an eminent generation of American poets. From this uncertain vantage point at the outset of the century, one is hard pressed to imagine who might succeed them.”
Cheapening The Nobel Prize
How is the Nobel Prize for Literature being chosen these days? “More and more, the Nobel Prize has gone to a person who has the correct sex, geographical address, ethnic origin, and political profile—“correct” being determined by the commissars at the Swedish Academy. Laureates like Toni Morrison, Dario Fo, and José Saramago cheapen the Nobel Prize. But this year’s laureate, the Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek (born 1946), marks a new low.”
The Derrida Divide
When French Deconstructionist Jacques Derrida died las month, the eulogizing was predictable. ” If the response came from outside the academy, it tended to be bemused or critical. If a response came from the purlieus of the professoriate, however, it was likely to be sorrowful, eulogistic, even starry-eyed. There was nothing surprising about this.”
Gambling On Culture
The Heritage Lottery Fund has made an impact on culture. But what kind of impact? “So what has HLF achieved in the past ten years? Has it been too conservative? Or too politically correct? Is it right that a non-governmental body, funded by our gambling appetite, should be the last refuge for Britain’s most important distressed buildings, artworks and natural environments? And has the HLF’s change of direction since Labour came to office meant support for too many “inclusive” projects at the expense of the more traditional kind? The HLF has presided over a decade of unrivalled munificence towards the heritage world – £3.33bn awarded to 1,680 projects throughout Britain.”
Poets Take On Publishers Weekly (And Win)
Over the summer, Publishers Weekly decided to discontinue its monthly poetry forecast. “But for many in the world of independent presses, where the bottom line is quite a bit lower than in commercial publishing, that explanation wasn’t good enough. Zaleski estimates that Publishers Weekly received approximately 150 phone calls, e-mails, and letters about the decision. The response was so great that the magazine reversed its decision and reinstituted its monthly poetry section in September.”
How Do You make New From Old?
There are no new sounds in music – just musicians using familiar notes in new ways. But. “It is rare that governments and the industry at large are ahead of the curve when it comes to cultural trends, and recent legal rulings have made the creation of new music from appropriated sources problematic. It is a sensitive issue because while intellectual property needs to be protected, new intellectual properties can only be born in a nurturing environment and appropriation has become such an important element in a substantial body of new work.”
Hollywood’s New Asian Accent
“Something remarkable is happening in Asian cinema, and Hollywood has cottoned on. ‘Check out the latest US movie production slate and it is hard to escape the conclusion that Hollywood is turning Japanese. And Korean. With a dash of Thai and Hong Kong thrown in.”