The recording industry says it will only prosecute “light” users of music file-trading services. But what does that mean? “Because the RIAA has refused to quantify what constitutes a ‘substantial’ amount of file sharing, file sharers are left to wonder whether they are vulnerable to litigation.”
Month: August 2003
Can The Whitney Be Saved?
Hilton Kramer writes that the Whitney Museum was founded with high ideals but has sunk to “parlous condition.” Kramer wishes new director Adam Weinberg good luck – “he returns to a museum that many artists now despise—for the right reasons, too—and the public has every reason to distrust. I wish him luck. He will certainly need it, if the recent track record of the Whitney’s board of trustees is any guide.”
Painting – Nothing New Under The Sun In 17,000 Years
Picasso, on visiting Lascaux, reportedly remarked that “we have discovered nothing new in art in 17,000 years.” NYU professor Randall White writes in a new book that, “all of the major representational techniques were known at least by the Magdalenian [Period, beginning about 18,000 years ago]; oil- and water-based polychrome painting, engraving, bas-relief sculpture, sculpture in the round, charcoal and manganese crayon drawing, molded clay, fired ceramic figurines, shading, perspective drawing, false relief, brush painting, stamping and stenciling.”
Edinburgh’s Golden Summer
This summer’s Edinburgh Festival looks like it will be the most successful edition ever. “With two weeks to go, the Festival has already taken more than £2.38 million at the box office this year – more than the entire sales for last year’s event. And senior figures say the previous record of £2.4 million, set in 2000, should be broken soon.”
New Thinking About Musicals
Can the musical be reinvented? That’s a question for the Edinburgh Fringe. “Although it remains astoundingly popular, the musical suffers a strange reputation. Revered by the likes of Trevor Nunn, the classic American works of the 1930s-50s are seen as blue-rinse fodder, kitsch nonsense that has little appeal for young theatregoers. The 1990s saw a new trend for musicals tackling social problems – Rent dealt with Aids, and Ragtime was about racism in the US – but often these felt horribly glib. There is something about the form, about the way it forces characters to ignore the plot and break into song, that seems to demand silliness, irreverence and tongue-in-cheek charm.”
Rwanda Project Founder Dies
Theatre producer and photographer David Jiranek died this weekend at the age of 45. Three years ago Jiranek “traveled to Rwanda to bring disposable instamatic cameras to the children in an orphanage founded and still run by a 90-year-old American matriarch, Rosamond Carr, to care for the young survivors of the Hutu-Tutsi genocide. An exhibition of the astonishing images created by the children became the basis for a photography exhibition shown in Rwanda’s capital city and at various galleries in the United States, most recently this summer in New York.”
Opera House In The Maine
A couple from the big city moves up to Maine, buy a dilapidated old opera house and set about restoring it. “While residents here are typically skeptical of newcomers, this village has welcomed the restoration. Last year contributions and revenues totaled more than $200,000, nearly double the income in the first year. Almost all the performances have been sellouts this summer.”
Writer Writes Her Revenge
Ten years ago mystery writer Martha Grimes was dumped by Knopf, her publisher at the time. “Knopf dropped her, she said, probably because at that time she wasn’t earning back her advances.” Now – after a string of successful books, Grimes has written a story about the publishing industry that “may” bear a resemblance to real people in publishing.
Aboriginal Artists Vs. The Prince
England’s Prince Harry is under fire for some aboriginal images he included in his paintings. “Some of Australia’s best-known Aboriginal artists have recently become aware of the prince’s paintings of lizard motifs and claim he has stolen their culture. That the artworks have been valued at £15,000 each has compounded the insult to poor desert communities.”
Taking Sides Over Harry
“In a farcical way, the row over Prince Harry’s art embodies a fundamental worldwide conflict between modernity and religion, the secular and the spiritual. It’s a struggle in which the devil – modernity – could do with some better tunes. The case against Harry is not simply that his pictures are a pastiche, in their banally decorative way, of Aboriginal art, but that he has appropriated symbols with specific cultural meanings.”