“Once, it must have been possible to have stood in front of a great painting and to have felt your world being slowly flooded as if by some wondrous light. Now, it is possible to stand in front of a great painting and to feel nothing more than: yeah, I’ve got the postcard.”
Tag: 11.19.06
Scottish TV – A Basic Lack Of Entertainment
Scotland sends £180 million a year on its public broadcaster. The public affairs and news shows are great, writes Tom Little. But when it comes to producing entertainment… well, is this really the best they can do?
Breuer – Inside The Outside
Director Lee Breuer hasn’t had nearly as much attention for his experimental vision than some of his colleagues. Maybe “Breuer’s independent, unpredictable methods and visionary ends aren’t what the commercial theater or most of the major nonprofits are buying or selling.”
Myopia, Exhibit One: The Whitney
The Whitney’s big celebratory 75th birthday show is a dud, writes Christopher Kinght. “Fittingly, apathy is pretty much what the show deserves. Why? Call it an eye for an eye. The myopia is breathtaking. We might be living in a new millennium, but this exhibition still thinks the only 20th century American artists of note are New Yorkers. This boring, repetitious lack of discernment might also help explain a rising tide of inchoate critical restlessness with Manhattan’s art museum culture.”
Sorting Out The Vision For Orange County’s New Concert Hall
Orange County’s new Segerstrom concert hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is working out the kinks in its acoustics. But the hall has some challenges, not the least of which is attracting audiences. At performances by two of the world’s great orchestras – the New York Philharmonic and the Kirov – there were plenty of empty seats. “When that happens, something is wrong. And what is wrong is that prices are too high (a $200 top for the Kirov) and that there is not enough culturally curious elite in Orange County to support an elite showplace.”
A Closer Look At Albert Evans
“Albert Evans stands out. The cheap explanation is that he’s the lone African-American principal dancer in the New York City Ballet, and only its second ever, besides Arthur Mitchell in the 1950s and ’60s. But the truer distinction is artistic: regal and uninhibited, Mr. Evans moves like few others of his generation.”
Opera’s Big New Thing: Puppets!
“Puppets and all that goes with them have had a place in opera for centuries. But mostly they have inhabited a parallel universe, miming on miniature stages to the voices of unseen singers, live or recorded. Why use them alongside breathing singers on the stage of a regulation opera house?”
A Close Personal Relationship With Your TV
“Grandiose promises of an interactive future circulated for decades, then seemingly died out a few years back. But today more than 25 million homes can engage with their television on something approaching their own terms.” So what do people really want from their TVs?
Criticize The Form, Yes; But The Substance?
“When choreographers present wrongheaded reductions of vexing, long-lived political questions, we critics too often give them a benefit of the doubt we would never extend to a playwright, a politician, a tenth grader. We may quibble with the show’s tangential ideas and execution, but we rarely question the issues on which the work is premised, however sketchily.”