A piece of public art in West London has residents in a mood to pull it down before it’s even been completed. Why? “What people were promised, what everyone who bought flats here wanted, was unobstructed river views, and your sculpture is blocking the view.”
Month: December 2003
Amis: (Yellow) Dog Day Afternoon
“For every writer who has ever longed to be called the best novelist writing in English — as Martin Amis frequently has — the fate of the 54-year-old author is a cautionary tale. Yellow Dog, a satire as wicked and sustained as anything he has written, has attracted mixed reviews. The kinder ones say things like, Amis at his worst is still better than the rest of us at our best. And the worst ones, especially a rabbit punch by a young novelist named Tibor Fischer, writing in The Daily Telegraph, contain comments such as the already oft-quoted (here once again): It’s like your favourite uncle being caught in a school playground, masturbating’.”
UK Gov To Museums: Get More Kids, Poor People In The Doors (Or Else!)
The British government says that if museums don’t increase the numbers of children and economically poor visitors, they may lose funding. “A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) told us that if a museum fails to achieve its targets for no good reason, “we could withhold extra grant which might otherwise have been allocated to it in the next spending review.” He added that “we could also seek changes in the museum’s governance”—which means that trustees or the chairman might be replaced.”
Why Isn’t Contemporary Music More Popular?
Charles Rosen laments in his new book about the lack of appreciation for 20th Century music. Denis Dutton argues that Rosen is wrong to blame audiences, and might better look to the music itself.
Tough-Love Grammar Book Is Bestseller
A hard-core book of grammar has topped the UK best-seller lists. “Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the brainchild of author Lynne Truss, is subtitled The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. On Sunday it topped the bestseller list of the UK online retailer Amazon, and it is already undergoing its sixth reprint since publication last month.”
A New New History Of Art (That Prefers The Old)
Paul Johnson’s much-discussed “Art: A New History,” is unexpected, writes Joe Phalen. “Johnson’s book differs from the academic tradition best exemplified by Janson’s and Gombrich’s classic histories of art in two points. He goes out of his way to explore and praise many neglected artists of the 19th century: Realist painters well worthy of attention. Secondly, Johnson dismisses the dominant trend of 20th-century modernism as being too much in the nature of “fashion” art, which is to say a combination of novelty and skills with an unhealthy emphasis on the innovation.”
Is Publishing Too Glamorous For Its Own Good?
Dubravka Ugresic laments the evolution of publishing into a marketplace that doesn’t have much attachment to the concept of culture. “In the contemporary media market, literature has acquired an aura of glamour. How has it come to be that all sorts of people —like, say, Madonna— are now rushing into the places formerly reserved for outsiders, bookworms, romantics, and losers?”
Could Online Music Expand Choices?
Could competitive new music downloading stores end up expanding the kinds of music available? “As music labels and retailers compete more aggressively online, they will offer more obscure titles and recordings of live performances that could find a paying audience through downloads but make no financial sense to distribute on CD’s.”