A British artist plans to use plastic surgery to graft a human ear grown in a biotech lab onto his forearm. “Even in an art world used to the antics of Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, the Extra Ear project will cause upset. Many critics of unusual modern art say a fringe of the movement is caught in an ‘arms race’ of stunts that have little artistic merit but plenty of shock value. Last month a French artist cut off his own finger with an axe and donated it to a museum.”
Month: August 2003
British Museum: Absolute No To Returning Parthenon Marbles
The British Museum has categorically rejected sending the Parthenon Marbles to Greece for the Olympic Games. “Having for years resisted discussing the issue, the museum’s new director, Neil McGregor, told the Greek minister of culture that, as one of a handful of ‘universal, world institutions’, the British Museum was the best place for them.”
Death Of The Single?
Is the record single a dead item? “High promotional costs mean the industry doesn’t make much money from the sale of a single. But singles attract new consumers (teenagers buy more singles than any other age group) and drive album sales. Singles also generate valuable media interest – for instance, Blur v Oasis in the 90s. Britpop aside, the singles charts have not been much fun for many years.”
Lit In Pictures
“Graphic novels aren’t new – Will Eisner created the first one in 1978. What’s new is their audience and influence. In last year’s flat economy for books, sales for graphic novels leapt by one-third. Of the $400 million in annual comics sales, graphic novels now make up $100 million. Publishers Weekly, the book industry bible, calls them ‘one of the fastest growing categories in publishing’.”
Libeskind’s WTC Is A Project For An Orchestra
Is Daniel Libeskind getting edged out of the WTC project. No, writes Justin Davidson. Hiring Santiago Calatrava to design part of Libeskind’s vision is inspired. “If Libeskind is the great enshriner of memory, Calatrava is a poet of forward motion. His best buildings seem to be poised in the instant before taking flight. Straining yet serene, as fast and frozen as a comic book swoosh, they look like icons of weightlessness. Almost a century ago, a group of Italian artists-ideologues who called themselves the Futurists published a polemic in which they declared ‘that the splendor of the world has been enriched with new forms of beauty, the beauty of speed.’ The Futurists approved of little, but they might have loved Calatrava.”
Brooklyn Opera Revolt Over Use Of “Virtual” Orchestra
Prominent board members of the three-year-old Opera Company of Brooklyn are resigning over the company’s plans to use a virtual orchestra to accompany a performance of “The Magic Flute”. “The one-night-only production is being presented by the Opera Company of Brooklyn, started just three years ago to help foster the careers of rising opera talent. The company is using the virtual orchestra because it cannot afford a live one,” says the company, which has accumulated a deficit in its short lifetime.
Does America Need An African-American Museum?
“The U.S. Senate recently authorized the start-up of a national museum of African-American history and culture that would be part of the Smithsonian Institution and located on the Mall. This seems a very good thing for our nation, although no one has mentioned that a separate museum might seem to replicate the very segregation that the museum is meant to decry. Wouldn’t matters be better served in providing a ‘true’ picture of American history and in understanding African-American ‘contributions’ to American culture, as the official cant goes, if the story was fused with the main national narrative?”
The Tally At Iraq’s National Museum
What artwork is actually missing from the Iraq National Museum? “American and Iraqi investigators last week released a ‘most wanted’ list showing 30 priceless antiquities still missing from the museum’s main collection, along with some 13,000 other pieces. (No, they’re not printed up as playing cards.) Over the past couple of months, Iraqi museum staff, experts at the British Museum in London and U.S. investigators, have discussed the thefts in detail with Newsweek reporters. While some of the picture is still vague and the true culprits still can’t quite be identified, the fog is slowly lifting.”
Cremona da New Jersey
Evelyn and Herbert Axelrod could have given the 30 rare Cremonese string instruments they owned to the Vienna Philharmonic (which reportedly offered $55 million for the lot). Or they could have sold them to the New York Philharmonic, which also came a’calling. Instead they gave them to the tiny New Jersey Symphony for the bargain-basement price of $18 million. It’s a remarkable thing to do…
Revenge Of The Teenage Art Gangs
Teenage art gangs seem to be hip right now. “These days the very youngest and hippest American collectives all seem to come from Rhode Island, namely groups such as Forcefield and Dearraindrop. These are apparently two distinctly different organisations who happen to share the same provincial bohemia and a not dissimilar anarchic aesthetic of extreme visual and sonic overload; what’s more their combined ages probably add up to just one mid-career abstract painter.”