He’s America’s oldest enfant terrible. Peter Sellars is directing the next edition of Australia’s Adelaide Festival, and has already changed its focus from being the traditional international potpourri to one concentrating on Aussie artists. But before getting too excited about Sellars’ plans it might be instructive for Adelaidians to take a look at his track record… – The Idler
Author: Douglas McLennan
YOU’RE INCREDIBLY SMART IF YOU READ THIS
“We’ve become warier, more ironic about praise in general. No one wants to seem like a smarmy suck-up. No one wants to appear too earnest. The language of superlatives has become worn out and phony. If Mike Ovitz is a visionary, what does that make Charles Darwin? If Donald Trump is charismatic, what does that make Martin Luther King? If every flavor-of-the-month actress is brilliant, what do you tell your seven-year-old daughter when she comes home with an 88 on her spelling test?” – Time Europe
BEAR WITNESS
In recent years numerous museums and exhibitions commemorating the Holocaust have sprung up. But some argue that attempts to represent the Holocaust falsify it, making it an aesthetic rather than a history. “On the other hand, however uncomfortable academics may be with some of the popular representations of the Holocaust, few would question that films such as ‘Schindler’s List’ and ‘Life is Beautiful’ have done more to raise public awareness of the Holocaust than a thousand scholarly tomes.” – New Statesman
JUST WHAT IS MODERN ART?
Arthur Danto ponders the meaning of modern and modernism. “The date 1880 cannot be defended as the beginning of modern art, nor is there any consensus as to when modern art began. Nor can that question be separated from the deeper question of how Modernism is to be defined. – The Nation
RADIO FOR ONE
Internet radio is music to the ears of many listeners tired of the predictable hit-list programming of mainstream radio. But whereas traditional radio is an inherently mass medium uniting listeners on common musical ground, “the very multiplicity that makes Net radio so appealing also makes it somewhat depressing. If Net radio delivers us from everything banal and venal about analog radio, it also endangers what’s vital about old-fashioned broadcasting.” – New Republic 07/17/00
IN RAY CARVER’S MEMORY
“The role of the famous writer’s widow is an awkward one. She is the custodian of the work. She is responsible for the placement of archives, the decision about what remaining material should or should not be released to the world; the keeper of the flame. Tess Gallagher says it was never her intention to become simply ‘a function of Ray’s absence’. As much as she was Carver’s spouse, she is also a writer herself.” – The Telegraph (UK)
CRITICAL PATH
Martin McDonagh seemed to have it all three years ago. Coming from nowhere, suddenly “several of McDonagh’s ferociously comic and unsettling plays” won great reviews and top literary prizes in the US and Europe. But then there was a drunken squabble with Sean Connery at an awards ceremony, “some cranky critical backlash and a few damning interviews” and McDonagh retreated. Now he’s back with a new play. – Seattle Times
REMEMBERING RUSKIN
What was it that made John Ruskin the greatest art and social critic of the Victorian age? A new book is great at exploring his life; less successful at capturing his rhetorical lightning. – Boston Globe
CANADIAN BARITONE Louis Quilico —
— dies at age 75 after complications from surgery. – CBC
THE ART OF COLLECTING
Collecting art for a museum is an “exhilarating, suspenseful, satisfying and frustrating” game. Some of the more interesting acquisitions come through unlikely means… – Chicago Tribune