Author: Douglas McLennan

THE NEW CRITICS

“After more than a century of professional literary criticism, when the erudite few lorded over discussions of artistic merit, the rules have changed. Thanks to the Internet, anybody can now join ongoing – and very public – evaluations of books, recordings, films and many other materials, with a potential audience of millions of readers. – Washington Post 10/15/00

ART OF BUILDING

“During the past decade, new American performing arts facilities have been popping up like mushrooms after a rain, but architecturally they’ve been a pusillanimous lot. When not actively nostalgic, as in Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall, they’ve tended to favor a kind of buttoned-down corporate look, as in Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, or shopping-mall lite, as in Fort Lauderdale’s Broward Center and West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center.” – Dallas Morning News 10/15/00

THE WAR IS OVER?

Eight years ago Pat Buchanan was calling a “cultural war” in the United States. But this presidential campaign “the blistering cultural issues of the early ’90s – federal funding of the arts, naughty pictures, tart-tongued, disrobed performers – are on today’s back burners. The anti-arts, far-right-wing Buchanan voice lost. They thought it would be easy, the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts based on arguments of pornography and blasphemy. And they lost.” – Philadelphia Inquirer 10/15/00

HOW WE SEE ART

Over the next few months scientists will be tracking the eye movements of thousands of visitors to an exhibition at the National Gallery in London. “It will be the biggest investigation ever carried out into how humans absorb images and how artists’ use of colour and texture affects the way a painting ‘works’.” – The Independent (UK)

LIVING AROUND ART

Design is hot right now – it has a grip on the popular imagination in a way it hasn’t since the 1960s. What does it mean for the way we think about the things around us? “As expressions of The New, these products have inherited the myth of progress, modernity’s defining legend. This is not the first time design has embodied that myth… – New York Times

“CULTURAL ASSETS RELOCATED DUE TO WAR”

Germany has long suspected that many of the artworks taken by the Soviets from Germany at the end of World War II and listed as ‘lost’ were in fact living in Russian museums. “After 55 Years, German officials get to take a brief look at looted art from Berlin’s Museum of East Asian Art. Important works categorized as “irreplaceable” and once believed to be lost forever were among the treasures.” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

WHAT’S WITH ALL THIS TEPID NEW PUBLIC ART?

“The distinctions that have been made between art in architecture, art as decoration, outdoor sculpture and public art still have not fully entered the consciousness of the visual-art community. Many find it easier to blame local authorities for their highly compromised, so-called public art schemes, but perhaps it is time to point the finger closer to home.” – The Sunday Times (UK)

ET TU, SHOSTAKOVICH?

In London, an attempt to discredit Shostakovich. “The essence of the attack is that Shostakovich is unfit to stand comparison with Beethoven, and that placing them side by side merely emphasises Shostakovich’s shortcomings. But the campaign runs deeper than that, for what is being claimed is that few of Shostakovich’s works are worth performing at all, and that recent attempts to find coded anti-Stalinist messages in them – thereby making them seem emotionally ambiguous and thus more ‘interesting’ – are simply a waste of time.” – The Herald (Scotland)

THE HIGH COST OF BEING GOOD

The St. Louis Symphony has achieved a great measure of artistic success. But its bank balance seems to slip a bit further with each season. “Over the last 17 or 18 years, the orchestra has accumulated a potentially crippling deficit of $7 million. (Its annual budget is now $26 million for the orchestra itself with an additional $3 million for its music school.)” – New York Times