The Chicago Tribune is asking its critics to write about a review they wish they could have back – an instance in which their immediate reaction, expressed on deadline, came to seem incorrect with the passage of time. For architecture critic Blair Kamin, a pasting of legendary architect Rem Koolhaas sprang immediately to mind. “As I’ve gone through the building over the last three years… I’ve been gripped by tinges of regret — not so much that my criticisms were wrong, but that I blew them out of proportion.”
Tag: 11.26.06
Reimagining Imagism
Art critic Alan Artner goes all the way back to his earliest days at the Tribune for his mea culpa. “When, in 1973, I began writing regularly about visual art for this newspaper, the local crossbreeding of Surrealism and Pop Art known as Imagism was being promoted as the only game in town. [As] a native Chicagoan I resented that any one thing should have been exalted to the exclusion of nearly everything else… But the language in which I wrote about my recoil from Imagism was wrong because it was vehement. And that vehemence came from the mistake of reacting as much to the environment Imagism had caused as to the work itself.”
Stoppard’s Way
Tom Stoppard’s massive new theatrical undertaking, “The Coast of Utopia,” is preparing for its New York premiere, and the playwright is as hands-on as ever in shepherding his creations from page to stage. “Stoppard — whose concerns resemble those of an Oxbridge don more than those of someone who chose not to attend university in order to pursue journalism — has always approached the intellectual backdrop of his plays with the zeal of an autodidact, sedulously researching historical facts and biographical accounts.”
Vienna’s Newest Opera House
“The question of how to keep Mozart fresh is certainly topical [in Vienna] this year, and at the Theater an der Wien in particular.” The music house, which was recently converted to accommodate full time opera use, would seem to be a superfluous venue in a city chock full of performance spaces. But Theater an der Wien “wants to present cutting-edge directors and interesting productions, to attract a different kind of audience. [The] theater’s three main focuses will be Baroque opera, which has not really had a performance space in Vienna; contemporary opera (he is commissioning three new works for coming seasons); and of course Mozart.”
Charlotte MD Leaving Over Budget Issues
The music director of the Charlotte Symphony is severely cutting back the number of concerts he conducts, and has announced that he will step down entirely when his contract expires in 2009. “Perick has improved the orchestra musically, but has been frustrated by its precarious financial situation; at the end of the 2004-05 season the CSO had a deficit of $1.25 million, which is expected to increase when the audit for 2005-06 is completed.”
Absentee Conductors Need Not Apply
When the board and management of the San Antonio Symphony made the decision not to renew music director Larry Rachleff’s contract recently, it caught the orchestra, the public, and the entire industry by surprise. But board members insist that, while they respect Rachleff as a conductor, they feel strongly that his primary job as a professor at Rice University in Houston, where he lives, was at odds with the needs of the SAS.
Are We Finally Ready To Talk About Sex?
Sex used to be the ultimate taboo in American film – movies featuring explicit sex were considered far more socially dangerous than those showing brutal violence and gore. But recently, audiences (and the industry) have appeared to be loosening up on the issue of on-screen sex. “It would be tempting to think that this was because America was finally getting a bit more grown up about sex, or because the nation at war with itself was ready for some frank hedonism.”
Chicago’s Surprising Ballet Comeback
This has been the year of the dance in Chicago, and audiences have been turning out in droves. “Fall could well have resulted in box-office disaster. Within a period of only five weeks between late September and early November, the Joffrey’s ‘Cinderella,’ the [New York City Ballet] engagement and the Kirov vied to sell tickets, and not cheap tickets, some going for as much as $110 apiece. All three engagements fared phenomenally.”
The New Blackface?
Hip-hop culture has always held a mirror up to the racism embedded in American life, but in recent days, references to some of the most disturbing racial stereotypes have begun creeping into the genre in most disturbing fashion. “Free of irony or tongue-in-cheek cleverness, so-called ‘minstrel rap’ appears to be a throwback to the days when performers (some black, some white) rubbed burnt cork on their faces and depicted African-Americans as buffoons.”
Curators On The Run
“Internationalism now rivals youth culture in the art world’s hot pursuit of the never-before-seen,” and the result is a newly active job description for those who make their living curating new shows. “The downside, some curators say, is the perpetual demand for new introductions, which tends to encourage a pell-mell rush to judgment in unfamiliar areas.”