Month: March 2006

Has Liverpool’s Culture Capital Effort Stalled?

When news broke in June 2003 that Liverpool had, perhaps to its own surprise, been names European Capital of Culture for 2008, “the city rejoiced: this would be the crowning glory in the renaissance of a faded seaport finally stirring after a long period of decline. Everyone was behind the project.” But as the date gets closer, preparations have stalled. What will the year actually mean?

France Cancels Flat-Fee Download Plan

French legislators have withdrawn a plan that would have imposed a flat fee for music and movie downloads. “Radical legislators had proposed setting a fee on internet usage that would allow users to download both movies and music for a fee of about eight euros ($11) a month. The fee would be used to reimburse artists. The idea was heavily opposed by recording studios and film associations around the world who said it would rob them of income.”

The Armory Show, 2006 Edition

This year’s New York Armory Show opens. “This year’s fair looks particularly neat. Certain galleries (Sean Kelly, Zeno X) have gone for an almost arctic spareness. Many adhere to a formulaic display: biggish painting (or photograph), medium-size sculpture, little paintings (or drawings) in a nook. Expensive, less expensive, beginner’s luck. The mix can work great.”

Pollini’s Contemporary Crusade

Pianist Maurizio Pollini has achieved elder statesman status. “Now in his mid-sixties, he is no less conspicuous for his championship of such tricky manifestations of the avant-garde as Pierre Boulez’s Sonata No 2 and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstück X. His stance has consistently been that contemporary music should form part of the normal repertoire, rather than being hived off into a specialist ghetto.”

ENO Staff Protested Leader’s Appointment

In December 458 staff of the English National Opera sent a letter to Arts Council England protesting the appointment of John Berry as the company’s artistic director. “The lack of intention to recruit a leading artistic director is, in our view, very shortsighted … and is not what is required to move the company forward. We invited you to explain … what you intend to do.” The reply from ACE’s chairman, Sir Christopher Frayling, accepted the staff’s criticism, but said: “It is not the Arts Council’s job to intervene in the running of ENO or any other arts organisation … To do so would be to act as a shadow director.

Controversial ENO Director Speaks

John Berry gives his first interview since being named to the top artistic job at the troubled English National Opera. “I think you can only do this job in a major house,” he says, “if the artists trust you and are willing to go on a journey with you, and they feel you are willing to go on a journey with them. I’ve worked with 70 or 80 of the world’s leading directors. My life has really been as a producer; that’s what I do. It’s all been about trying to get the best out of people and working in a collaborative way.”

Get Real – Fiction’s Battle

“The major struggle in American fiction today is over the question of realism. Anywhere fiction is discussed with partisan heat, a faultline emerges, with ‘realists’ and traditionalists on one side and postmodernists and experimentalists on the other. No comparable struggle exists in British fiction because experimental fiction has never been substantial enough to mount a decent campaign against the dominant discourse. But the 1960s avant-garde in America was full of talent and vigour.”

Found – A Lost Michelangelo?

Is a fresco on the wall of an Italian church a Michelangelo? “The inhabitants of the Chianti village have long claimed that the artwork was painted by Michelangelo in his youth. The claim was supported in the 1940 by the scholar Roberto Weiss, who attributed the Pietà to the Renaissance master. However, the first visible evidence for the legend was found only recently.”