“Print publications increasingly see no need for critics in the age of blogs. With self-produced recording and downloads, the job is in some ways becoming almost impossible; opening the mail or surfing the Internet often sends me into a spiral of despair, because there is far more music pouring in by the day than I can possibly hear and make sense of.”
Tag: 11.06.07
What Makes A Significant Collector?
“Since the Second World War a rather different strain of collectors has grown up. Their pastime has acquired a much more public dimension. They pursue their own passions — but with a growing awareness of wider responsibility. Their hoards are a matter of public record. Their finest pieces become globetrotting loans.”
Why Don’t Theatre And Poetry Mix?
“Theatre and poetry are kissing cousins. Theatre, it seems to me, is a deeply poetic art, and poetry is profoundly theatrical. They are crucially and profoundly different, and yet there is much in each art form that can be learned from the other.”
Jackpot – Five Museums Get A Windfall
“Five museums and galleries yesterday won the art world’s equivalent of the lottery: a jackpot of £1m each to spend on acquiring international contemporary art.” The money is courtesy the UK’s Art Fund.
A Rhapsody On Pink
“Pink is the colour of hypocrisy. The heyday of pink as we know it began in 1859, when a new pigment was isolated from coal-tar and called after the nearby town of Magenta. The new colour had never been seen before; it was not part of the spectrum of white light. It had never been seen in painting or in decoration.”
Oprah Recommends… Er, Cancel That…
“Oprah Winfrey has pulled a discredited children’s book, Forrest Carter’s “The Education of Little Tree,” from a list of recommended titles on her Web site, blaming an archival “error” for including a work considered the literary hoax of a white supremacist.”
Pay-What-You-Want Radiohead (Not Much, It Turns Out)
The band made its new album available to fans who could decide for themselves what to pay. “Fewer than four out of 10 fans worldwide who downloaded ‘In Rainbows’ between Oct. 10 and Oct. 29 purchased it, paying $6 on average.”
NY Dealer Returns Stolen Art To Italy
“New York art dealer Jerome Eisenberg returned eight pieces of ancient art valued at about $510,000 to Italy, one of the first private gallery owners to turn over antiquities which the government says were illegally removed from the country.”
New Auction Record For Matisse
“Henri Matisse’s 1937 ‘L’Odalisque, Harmonie Bleue,” starring a curvy young woman in green pantaloons, sold tonight for a record $33.6 million at Christie’s International in New York. Matisse’s previous auction record of $21.7 million was set in June at Sotheby’s in London.”
Claim: Blockbusters Are Bad For Art
It’s not just the circus atmosphere or the crushing crowds. Critics say that accidents with great workds of art “inevitable with so much art now on the move.”