“The tall building is the symbol of all that we hope for—height, reach, power, and a revolving restaurant with a long wine list—and all that we cower beneath. It is a symbol of oomph and of waste, the lighthouse of commerce and the outhouse of capitalism, the tallest candle on the biggest cake, and the cash-economy prison made up of countless anonymous cells. When the Empire State Building was being built, as Neal Bascomb reveals in his new book, the motive for its height was insistently said to be commercial—it was more economical, and the spire would be a place for wandering zeppelins to find a mooring—even though everyone knew that the real motive was just to be . . . taller.
Month: December 2003
Family Feud – Why Scotland’s Most Famous Composer Shut Up
James MacMillan is Scotland’s most famous composer. But “over the past five years or so, the steady deterioration in the relationship between the country’s most famous composer and Scottish society at large has progressed gradually and relentlessly, until now, when there is no relationship at all. Systematically, MacMillan has cut himself off from communications with the outside world.
Many of the circumstances of the decline are well-known – notorious, even – though one day there is a large footnote to be written in the history of Scottish contemporary cultural life, in order to document the whole sad, shambolic affair.”
Is Tate Modern Building A Failure?
Architect Will Alsop says that Tate Modern has been hugely overhyped, and that it should never have been located in a former power station. “I don’t think [Tate Modern] is a great building. It casts a very large shadow over the river edge. They should have pulled the existing building down. When I go around I feel I’m being guided in the same way I might be guided round a shopping centre.”
Perry Makes Difficult Turner Choice
Choosing Grayson Perry to win this year’s Turner Prize was evidently no slam dunk as far as the judges were concerned. “The judges’ verdict was anything but a foregone conclusion: it took hours longer than usual to reach a decision, and they went out of their way to praise ‘the outstanding presentations produced by all four artists’. But, in the end, Perry’s use of the traditions of ceramics and drawing, and his “uncompromising engagement with personal and social concerns” put him out front.”
Does Perry Deserve The Turner?
Why did Grayson Perry win this year’s Turner Prize, asks Adrian Searle. “Grayson Perry is, at least in terms of his self-constructed public image and his candid interviews, an interesting, complicated character. But he makes middling, minor art. What counts most, perhaps, is Perry’s invented alter ego, Claire, who is exactly the kind of creation the media loves. Yet I have always wondered what the pots, the drawing, Perry and Claire have to do with one another – apart from all being Perry’s invention, all aspects of Perry.”
The Literary Jackpot (Doesn’t Happen)
Ah yes, what writer doesn’t dream of an instant bestseller – prfereably for one’s first novel. But “the truth is that the jackpot theory of literature only works up to a point, and, particularly, in an impressionable marketplace like America where barrow-loads of fashionable books are bought but not read. Most of the time, in Britain, the so-called ‘overnight success’ usually turns out, on closer inspection, to be the well-deserved fruition of a painstaking apprenticeship.”
Just Who Is Grayson Perry?
“Born in Chelmsford, Essex, in 1960, his parents split up when he was five and his stepfather, the milkman, was a bully…”
Poetry Magazine Windfall Sows Some Discord
“While initially hailed as a blessing, the $100 million gift from drug-company heiress Ruth E. Lilly is sowing discord in the normally harmonious realm of verse. Poetry is embroiled in a lawsuit with a bank over alleged mismanagement of funds. The journal’s editor of 20 years, Joseph Parisi, quit over the summer amid a battle with a newly assertive board. Rival poetry groups complain the magazine is gaining too much influence and will stifle the more-creative elements of the craft. Even Poetry’s staunchest supporters wonder how the monthly journal will survive its sudden windfall.”
Knowledge For Wisdom, Not Acquisition
Academia screwed up, writes Nicholas Maxwell, and we need a revolution to fix it. “We urgently need to bring about a third intellectual revolution, one which corrects the blunders of the Enlightenment revolution, so that the basic aim of academia becomes to promote wisdom, and not just acquire knowledge. Every branch and aspect of academic inquiry needs to change if we are to have the kind of inquiry, both more rational and of greater human value, that we really need.”
When Art Went To War Against AIDS
“If art had often tried to protest prejudice, encourage compassion and console the grieving, it had never tried to provide safe-sex information, lower drug prices and stimulate the development of antiretroviral therapies. I remember thinking, early on, that this was not only unseemly in some way but also too much of an agenda for poor little art to shoulder.”