“Now the elusive avant-garde item is viewable and re-viewable with a flick of your DVD remote. Unsupported by the film industry’s marketing and promotion, such proudly independent works usually plummet straight to obscurity — joining the vast unseen cinema, to borrow the title of a new DVD set devoted to making that cinema more seeable than ever before. Not only is this a great development for movie buffs and avant-garde connoisseurs. It also marks a quantum improvement in the plight of film-studies and art-history professors wanting to illuminate this shadowy continent in the classroom.”
Month: March 2006
O’Connor Takes On The Critics
“How much should a critic know about a choreographer’s intentions and talk about them? There often seems to be a disconnect between what choreographers say they’re doing and what actually occurs onstage.” Tere O’Connor takes issue with how critics write about dance.
Social Networking Beats Big Media Sites
“In the past 12 months, ‘social networking’ has gone from being the next big thing to the thing itself. Last month, MySpace, the site that famously propelled the Arctic Monkeys to pop stardom, overtook the BBC website in terms of visitor numbers. Along with competing sites Bebo and Facebook, MySpace has formed one of the fastest growing sectors on the internet.”
Edinburgh’s New Director – A Minnow?
The Edinburgh Festival has a new director. “Just how Edinburgh, the city of Hume and Mill, the home along one main street of three latterday Walter Scotts – Rowling, Rankin, McCall Smith – the Venice of the North, the greatest arts festival between Aix-en-Provence and Santa Fe, just how Edinburgh got itself into such a selection muddle that it had to hire a minnow from the other side of the world is almost beyond comprehension.”
Blurry Boundaries – Where Is Classical Music?
“Where does classical music begin and end? I don’t mean in terms of chronology – whether it starts with Josquin or Monteverdi, or finishes with Schönberg or Stockhausen. I ask the question in relation to generic boundaries, and I want an answer because so much effort has been expended recently on “breaking down the barriers” which supposedly surround classical music that it has become impossible to maintain any focused sense of what those barriers were originally intended to mark.”
Cincinnati Museum Votes Expansion
The Cincinnati Art Museum is embarking on a huge expansion. “It will cost at least $125 million and add 110,000 square feet, underground parking, new and renovated galleries and an outdoor sculpture park. And it will eclipse the city’s most recent art museum projects: construction of the $35 million Contemporary Arts Center in 2002-03 and the $22.8 million renovation and expansion of the Taft Museum of Art in 2003-04.”
Another Whitney Biennial? Hmnnn…
“The Biennial embodies the Whitney’s eternal identity crisis. The museum cannot abandon its American focus, but today there’s every reason to emphasize global rather than national perspectives. (Besides, art fairs churn out surveys constantly.) What’s the Whitney to do with the Biennial? Its predicament is serious but also funny.”
Shakespeare’s Picture (Probably)
“After three and a half years’ research, and the detailed examination of six paintings, the National Portrait Gallery has concluded that the so-called Chandos portrait shows the true face of Shakespeare – probably.”
Poll: People Like Happy Endings
“Forty-one per cent are overwhelmingly in favour of books with a happy ending, as against 2.2% who like it sad. Women were 13% more likely than men to say they want it all to end happily. Almost one fifth of men expressed a preference for books with ambiguous endings.”
A Trend To Audiobooks
Sales of audiobooks were up four percent in 2004. “The major trend emerging from the survey showed higher revenue from new audio formats and the continued slow fade of the traditional audio cassette. MP3 CDs represented 1 percent of sales and digital downloads represented 6 percent of sales in 2004.”