“Ever wonder what would happen if several leading entertainment firms decided to work together? Korea is about to find out as five business giants in various entertainment fields signed a cooperative contract Wednesday to start just such a joint venture.” – Korea Herald
Author: Douglas McLennan
HAWKING BLASTS PLAY
Stephen Hawking has attacked a new play called “God And Stephen Hawking. “When I was sent the original version of the play I thought it was ridiculous and rather embarrassing. I found that deeply offensive and an invasion of my privacy. I could probably have got a court order but it might have attracted more attention to a stupid and worthless play.” – The Telegraph (UK)
FAILURE TO PROTECT
British police are “failing to take the theft of fine arts and antiques seriously, undermining a Government initiative to make it harder for criminals to sell stolen property, according to a leading figure in the arts market.” – The Telegraph (UK)
STRIPPING FOR ART
The Guggenheim Museum and the Phillips Collection are making deals to open outposts on the Las Vegas Strip. “The first exhibition of twenty-five pictures including Van Gogh’s ‘Entrance to the Public Gardens in Arles’ and El Greco’s ‘The Repentant St.Peter’ is set to open in September, with more to follow.” – The Art Newspaper
ALLURE OF LONDON
A group of New York artists working in London talk about the differences between the two cities. “They’re impressed by the apparent importance attached to contemporary art in Britain. Stories about artists make the front page of newspapers; television documentaries about art are informative and well made. No matter how crude its terms, Britain, and specifically London, engages in a national debate about art. This does not happen to the same extent in America and New York.” – London Evening Standard
GET THE PICTURE?
Think digital cameras are going to take over the art of photography? Not hardly. “Even a $10 single-use camera offers 10 times better resolution than today’s $1,000 digital.” Now a French chemist “has developed a new method of ‘doping’ film emulsions that promises to make them five times better at capturing light. ‘If it can be widely applied, it will certainly be one of the greatest inventions in photography in the last 60 years.’ “ – Discover Magazine
WHO CONTROLS THE ART
There’s a battle raging for control of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. “People on powerful committees are there because they have a contribution to make, and there is usually an ego commensurate with that capacity to contribute. When such people’s views are bypassed, or worse, not sought in the first place, there is usually trouble.” – Sydney Morning Herald
SO THEY’RE WORTH IT
The board of Fort Worth’s Kimbell Museum defends the $1.5 million salaries it pays to two of its board members for their services to the museum. The museum has been criticized for paying the two for services which are usually voluntary. – Dallas Morning News
ODE TO THE PIANO
“Electronics and metal alloys, computer chips and state-of-the-art plastics: all have been applied to the piano’s design, but they don’t improve the original appreciably. It is what it is, a perfect articulation of an idea that occupies a kind of cultural cul-de-sac. It’s the ultimate expression of one strand of our mechanically clever culture (think of the typewriter or the computer keyboard) joined to our specific notion of music based on the diatonic scale. Its great genius is to translate the merely mechanical into the realm of music.” – The Guardian
ORCHESTRAL MAGIC
Jonathan Harvey had an orchestral premiere in London this week. “Harvey’s music could well gain a cult following amongst the generation which spaced out to the wilder reaches of Pink Floyd or the more surreal moments of John Williams’s score for Raiders of the Lost Ark. In one of his most spell-binding works, One Evening, an Indian tabla rhythm speeds up and rise in pitch, as if the recording were being accelerated, until it actually transforms into a rising musical note which swoops from one speaker to another.” – The Independent (UK)