“If only we had a David Hockney image of Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth or Tom Phillips’s take on Simon Russell Beale or Antony Sher as Richard III. The list of performances one would love to have seen painted is endless: Vanessa Redgrave as Rosalind, Peggy Ashcroft as mad Queen Margaret, Ian McKellen as Richard II, Mark Rylance as Hamlet. Why don’t theatres take the initiative and start commissioning painters to preserve individual performances for posterity?”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
House-Hunting Tour: A Frank Lloyd Wright Masterpiece
“Known as the Ennis House, it’s an architectural masterpiece designed by the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright. But, like a lot of old houses, it needs some work. Drive past the grime and glitz of Hollywood toward the hills of Griffith Park and suddenly, there it is: a Mayan temple perched above the city. Ennis House is one of Wright’s most famous creations — and not only to architecture buffs.” And it’s for sale.
Killing Its Film Program Is Proof LACMA Has Lost Its Mind
“You’ll excuse me, but the logic of needing to stop the program in order to rethink it sounds suspiciously like the apocryphal Vietnam War rationale that ‘we had to burn the village to save it.’ … If I am being a little tough on the museum, and I know I am, it’s because their reasons for doing what they’ve just done seem especially specious. LACMA’s thinking may seem just fine in the abstract but it doesn’t hold up under any kind of examination.”
Nightingales’ Song And Other Sound-Design Obsessions
“Most filmgoers focus on the acting, dialogue, costumes, even the soundtrack, before noticing the many sounds also required to create and sustain a mood. Yet, says [sound designer Jane Tattersall], it’s those background details that can make or break the moment. If she gets them right, her skill is essentially unnoticed; if she gets them wrong, she ruins many months, maybe years, of others’ hard work.”
Orchestras’ Tech Problem (Or: Tweets With Your Beethoven)
“On the one hand, orchestras are constantly looking for ways to reach audiences (let’s not even say ‘new audiences’ anymore; orchestras would be happy to keep diverting the ones they have). On the other hand, a good chunk of the orchestra-going public is horrified, and loudly so, at the thought of any modification to its beloved, traditional experience. It fears that introducing new technology automatically means dumbing down.”
Kerouac’s Mother’s Will A Forgery; Domino Effect Unclear
“In one of the longest-running probate battles in Pinellas court history, a judge on Friday declared the will purportedly signed by Kerouac’s mother — the mom who inherited Kerouac’s belongings at his 1969 death — to be a forgery. … She died in 1973. Her will left everything to Kerouac’s third wife, Stella, who in turn gave everything to her own siblings when she died in 1990.”
O’Keeffe Museum Puts Elementary School On Notice
“Officials of The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe complained recently about a ‘GOK’ logo proposed for the [Albuquerque, N.M.,] school’s new facade, and about T-shirts that said ‘Georgia O’Keeffe Kindergarten.’ E-mails from the museum warned of possible trademark infringement and suggested that fees may be required for some uses of the name. … The school has borne O’Keeffe’s name since it opened in 1988.”
How The Little Mermaid Is Like Bank Of America
“When this fiasco opened to lousy reviews in January 2008, Disney executives ran around town telling everyone that the reviews didn’t matter because ‘The Little Mermaid’ was like ‘Bank of America.’ Let’s see. Bank of America stock price, January 2008: $50. Bank of America stock price, July 2009: $13. You know what? Those Disney executives were right!” (Scroll down.)
Russia Selects Canadian Architects For Mariinsky Project
A Canadian architecture firm has won the commission to design the Mariinsky Theatre’s opera house. “Diamond + Schmitt prevailed over four other finalists – one from Germany and three Russian firms – to win the Mariinsky which, with a budget of €295-million (about $452-million, all of which will be paid by the Russian government) and a completion date of no later than December 2011, has been hyped as ‘Russia’s most important building project in 70 years’….”
Jazz Composer And Theorist George Russell Dies At 86
“George Russell, a composer, educator and theorist who had a powerful effect on the jazz forms and methods that have evolved from the 1950s to the present, has died. … A MacArthur Foundation Award winner, a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master and a Distinguished Artist-in-Residence Emeritus at the New England Conservatory, where he taught for 35 years, Russell died Monday in Boston of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.”