The world’s most famous living condemned heretic says, “The world was not created in six days and God rested on the seventh. It was not created in the churning of a giant pot… And regarding ‘how shall we live,’ I don’t want answers that come from some priest. [But] as a writer I find I need [religion] to explain the world I’m writing about. As a person I don’t need it and as person I do. I would agree, that tension is irreconcilable. [But] it’s just there. It’s just so.”
Tag: 11.08.08
Toronto’s New Gehry Monument
“The Art Gallery of Ontario pulls back its curtain next week. Frank Gehry’s only show in Canada has a little to do with the story of a prodigal son, and a whole lot more to do with architecture that will illuminate long into the future.”
Harper Gov’t Nixes Canadian Portrait Gallery
“The government has cancelled plans to build a permanent home for the Portrait Gallery of Canada, a move that is likely to anger members of the arts community who slammed the federal Tories during the recent election campaign over cuts to cultural programs… Many in the cultural community fear the Conservative government is targeting the arts since nearly $45-million in cuts to cultural programs were revealed in August.”
Anish The Anti-Sculptor
Sculptor Anish Kapoor “is very interested in negative space, in spaces filled with a nothingness that is, paradoxically, deeply present… ‘On one level you might say it’s not art, it’s a silly game. But I think there’s something in that little edge which is interesting and problematic. There is something going between the meaningful and the banal.'”
No Tolerance For The Weird and Foolish
Inga Saffron weighs in on the controversial redesign of New York’s 2 Columbus Circle, and finds the whole thing disconcerting. “It’s a conscientious if unspectacular effort. Yet it’s impossible to forget that this decorous little tower was once something flamboyant, fun, and maybe even a little foolish… Its demise reminds us how little our society tolerates the weird, even in a metropolis like New York.”
Artists Cast A Critical Eye On The New AGO
“For months, a chorus of voices has enthused about Friday’s Art Gallery of Ontario reopening… Curiously silent have been the artists who, as one might naively imagine, are what an art gallery is all about. There’s a deep-seated reason for this: Artists everywhere have a love-hate relationship with museums and major galleries. They’d rather stay quiet than blow a chance to see their work become part of a collection.”
Ring Cycle Too Expensive For Tough Times
“The economic downturn has scored its first high-profile casualty on Washington’s arts scene. The Washington National Opera has indefinitely postponed its performances of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle, which was to be a highlight of the 2009-10 season.”
Remembering A Critic For The Ages
“A single John Leonard sentence is, more often than not, an unmatchable catalog of learning, wit, enthusiasm and combativeness, and by the time Mr. Leonard died on Wednesday, those sentences surely numbered in the millions. No other critic could range so giddily over so much material… without ever losing his ethical bearings, his sense of humor or the thread of his argument.”
An Autumnal Blowout Of Book Prizes
Canada’s Writers’ Trust literary award is switching its annual announcement date from spring to fall, to better place it among the country’s more prestigious lit prizes. “Despite the risk of competing for the same precious literary oxygen already shared by the Giller and the GGs, as the Governor General’s Awards are known in the book industry… [the switch] amplifies the existing perception of the fall as the make-or-break season in the publishing year.”
Fringe Benefits
Violin lessons are certainly not for everyone – the endless hours of practice, the humiliation of sitting in the very back of a youth orchestra, unsure what everyone else is doing. But for an adult 20 years removed from the experience, suddenly carrying around a violin for a day can lead to an unexpected outpouring of good will. “It is code for a different sort of person – artistic, freethinking, single. A wearer of Goth tops, not a person with lice shampoo in her handbag.”