Author: Douglas McLennan

CON ARTIST

The man who put the purported Diebenkorn painting for sale on eBay Monday (and received a final bid of $135,805) “acknowledged yesterday that he concocted part of the story he used to describe the work and said he would be willing to let the buyer out of the sale. Far from being a married homeowner who cleaned the painting out of his garage to please his wife, he is single and has sold a raft of paintings on eBay.” – New York Times

AUCTIONS AWAY FROM NEW YORK

Tonight one of Emily Carr’s best paintings goes up for auction in Vancouver. It’s expected to bring the highest price for a painting ever paid in Western Canada. How much?  Between $300,000 and $500,000. “The current record for an Emily Carr painting sold at auction was “In the Circle,” which sold in Toronto in 1987 for $297,000. The current record in Western Canada for a painting sold at auction is $231,000. And the current national auction record is Lawren Harris’s “Lake Superior III,” which sold for $1.56-million.” – National Post (Canada)

ART CATHEDRAL

In the time of Frank Gehry, one may begin to think an innovative new museum requires an innovative new structure to house it. But the new Tate Modern has found its home in a reused power station that has been transformed into a work of art unto its own. “With one neat sidestep Sir Nicholas Serota avoided all the controversy that would inevitably have raged had he commissioned a new building. He picked a site which makes the most of that much-underused London asset, the Thames, and has a stunningly powerful relationship with St Paul’s Cathedral.” – The Telegraph (UK)

DANGER – 650,000 VOLTS: That pretty much describes the impact the new Tate Modern has. “We are trying both to create a museum of modern art and rethink what a museum of modern art is.” – San Francisco Chronicle

OR THE LATEST BEHEMOTH? “What are people going to say in 100 years about all these new museums for modern art that we’re building, which seem to be getting almost as big as the Met?” – New York Times

DEATH KNELL FOR CELLULOID FILM?

George Lucas says he’ll shoot most of the next installment of the “Star Wars” franchise with digital equipment, foregoing celluloid.  “Lucas’s move this month reverberated like the first loud shot in a digital revolution that a growing number of people, both in and outside of Hollywood, believe is now unstoppable. Some insurrectionists are even convinced the cheaper digital cameras will unshackle them from some studio control. Before it’s all over, it could even bring the studio walls tumbling down.” – Boston Globe 05/10/00

THE THEME OF THINGS TO COME

There was a time when orchestras programs looked like smorgasbord menus – a little of this, a little of that – you got yer meat, you got yer potatoes, and let’s not forget the veggies. Now, the marketing people need a good hook. Everything’s got to have a theme. “Anything but a trendy caprice, theme programming is widely perceived as an answer to numerous ills in the performing arts.” – Philadelphia Inquirer

KILLING THEM SOFTLY WITH HER (POP) SONG

Hip-hop diva Lauryn Hill is embroiled in a lawsuit with four songwriters who charge they did not receive proper credit for their contributions to her album. “She will be asked, under oath, a simple question: Who wrote those songs? But just beneath that question is a far more elusive one: What is a pop song, anyway?” – Salon

“JOY”FUL SILENCE

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” was greeted with complete silence at Sunday’s concert in the former Mauthausen concentration camp. “No concert in the history of the Vienna Philharmonic has been discussed as intensively. The debate about whether this concert should go ahead in Austria’s new political situation, has absorbed Vienna for weeks, and was still at full tilt in Austria’s weekend newspapers. Televised live around the country, the Mauthausen memorial was not so much a concert, more a journey of the Austrian soul.” – The Guardian