Month: April 2005

Do Visiting Orchestras Scuttle The Home Team?

The San Diego area is getting some visits from some high-profile orchestras next season. “With their out-of-town cachet, they have more glamour than the San Diego Symphony, the city’s hometown musical team, which is working hard to cultivate audiences and appreciation. Do visiting ensembles provide unfair competition to the San Diego Symphony? Or are they beneficial to everyone?”

Edwardo Paolozzi, 81

Of the few British artists who came to international prominence soon after the second world war, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, who has died aged 81, was one of the most inventive, prolific and various. Chiefly a sculptor (and one of the first to react against the all-pervading influence of Henry Moore), he was also a highly original printmaker, some of whose collage-based silkscreen images are among the finest examples of pop art – the style he was instrumental in shaping.

Mailer Sells Archive To U Texas

Norman Mailer has sold his personal archives to the University of Texas for $2.5 million. Stored in nearly 500 boxes weighing more than 20,000 pounds, the trove includes all manner of Mailerabilia dating back to his childhood and especially his early years at Harvard (class of ’43), where he majored in aeronautical engineering and wrote an unpublished novel, “No Percentage.”

Dealer Massively Overcharged Sheikh For Art

Why did Oliver Hoare, a leading London art dealer, invoice the world’s biggest collector Sheikh Saud Al-Thani of Qatar for massive overcharges? “On one occasion Mr Hoare invoiced Sheikh Saud £5.5 million for a jade pendant originally made for Shah Jahan. Ten months earlier the same object had sold at Sotheby’s for £454,500. Mr Hoare’s invoices are now being examined by Qatari authorities as part of the investigation into Sheikh Saud’s spending.”

Argentina – The World’s Most Exciting Filmmaking

“Argentina is home to the most exciting filmmaking in the world at the moment – and certainly, with the possible exception of South Korea, it is the core site of fresh work by women directors – if the country itself and the new voices emerging from it weren’t so disparate, drawing from European and American influences as well as the history of a Latin American country second only to Brazil in terms of film production. This achievement is amazing, considering the country’s new wave has risen from – and crashed against – economic ruin.”

Education Fails Classical Music

Peter Maxwell Davies says what ails classical music is the lack of good education. “Successive governments have cut back on music education in state schools to the extent that music specialists have become a rarity. Not only can few teachers read or write musical notation, but the music teachers themselves are unfamiliar with the world of classical music. Can we imagine the teaching of English in circumstances where the teacher not only does not know any poems, novels or plays, but cannot read?”

Hollywood’s Theatre Drain

“Since the beginning of this year, four of Hollywood’s best and most established small-theaters companies — Open Fist, the Actors’ Gang, West Coast Ensemble and Theatre/Theater — have either been evicted or are considering leaving the Hollywood area due to redevelopment and rising property values. All have resided in Hollywood for years, establishing themselves in marginal neighborhoods. ‘Lip service is paid to the importance of theater and the theater community and yet there’s so little public support and certainly no public assistance’.”

Where Does British Art Stack Up?

“British art, historically, has its charms. In addition to Gainsborough’s perfumed rococo world, we have Constable and Turner. All three, if you have grown up with the swagging, blustering variability of British weather, are acute barometers of the national soul. But do their works make it into the world’s top 10, or even top 100?”