As a subject, the Renaissance should have made great TV. Just point and shoot the art, hire someone who knows about the period to write the script, and you’ve hooked your audience. Yet the BBC’s new six part series views like a “Travel Show” marathon. Yet again, “the BBC has demonstrated that it is incapable of delivering a serious program on the visual arts.” London Telegraph
Month: December 1999
FROM ARTSPEAK TO NOW
Critic Matthew Collings’ new book pierces the veil of artspeak and looks at the rituals, silliness, gossip and integrity of the art world. Salon
- Laurence Jarvik talks with Collings, who explains why the Young British Artists have caused such a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. The Idler 12/1/99
HALF-BAKED
Washington Post critic complained in his review that the show he was writing about was too short. No kidding! Don’t leave at intermission then. Here’s the day-after correction. Washington Post
CONGRESSIONAL SCORECARD
A rundown of legislation and funding pertaining to the arts that made it through the final US Congressional session of the century. Backstage
TOO MUCH TOO LATE
Covent Garden opens tonight, but what should have been a grand opening celebration is marred by things left undone to the last minute. This is not right, writes critic Norman Lebrecht: “Much of our cultural map is a mosaic of mediocrity and make-do. Covent Garden exists to excel.” London Telegraph
- And: Queen opens house tonight. BBC 12/1/99
- PLACIDO DOMINGO AND THE QUEEN: Covent Garden reopens in gala. See video of the opening. See pictures. BBC 12/2/99
WHERE’S THE LITERATURE IN LITERARY STUDIES?
Even the current economic boom can’t accommodate the best of our new humanities Ph.Ds. “Some assume that we humanists have a clear sense of what the humanities do and what makes them valuable – that we simply need to convince those crass others, whether within the university or outside its walls, that they really need us. But that assumption is untrue. No one’s even angry with us now, just bored.” – Boston Review
MOZART EFFECT REVISITED
Six years ago scientists reported that listening to Mozart made people smarter. But last summer a new study failed to reproduce the results from the first, disappointing waves of music fans. A closer look, though, “shows that Mozart’s music does have a profound effect on the brain, though no one knows why. Rats raised on Mozart run through mazes faster and more accurately. People with Alzheimer’s disease function more normally if they listen to Mozart; the music even reduces the severity of epileptic seizures.” – Toronto Globe and Mail