“In an overflowing salesroom at Christie’s, bidders from all parts of the globe were happy to pay top dollar Tuesday night for everything from an abstract canvas by Mark Rothko to a painting of a monumentally fat woman by Lucian Freud. The auction also included a five-bedroom Modernist house, which was snapped up for a record price.”
Author: sbergman
Uncertain Prospects For Cannes Films
Cannes opens today, and while “everyone may be expecting the bounty of good and even great films from around the world over the next 12 days, the excitement is tempered by a sense that those films are facing unusually difficult prospects back in the United States.”
An Unusual Year For The Tonys
“The Tony nominations are in, and it would be difficult to come up with a season that presented a clearer portrait of where Broadway is headed and where it has been.” From a hip-hop musical to an acclaimed play penned by a writer new to Broadway, the nominations have a decidedly transitional feel.
Rauschenberg’s Dance Fixation
“Something inherently theatrical about Robert Rauschenberg’s talent — always evident in his radical feeling for color, light, composition and new ingredients and juxtapositions –prompted him to his boldest and freshest conceptions when he worked onstage. From the early 1950s until 2007 he designed for dance. And in the late ’50s and early ’60s, when he first came to fame, he was recurrently (at times constantly) occupied in dance theater.”
Freud Painting Sets Auction Record
“A life-sized Lucian Freud painting of a sleeping, naked woman has set a new world record price for a work by a living artist. The 1995 portrait, titled Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, sold for $33.6m at Christie’s in New York.”
Honda Robot Makes Podium Debut
“Asimo, Honda’s humanoid robot, made its conducting debut Tuesday at Orchestra Hall, leading the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in “The Impossible Dream” of Broadway fame… An engineer cued Asimo wirelessly.” Incoming DSO music director Leonard Slatkin showed up for the event, and joked to Asimo, “I’ll believe it when you conduct Mahler 7.”
Is The Art Market Headed For A Crash?
“All appears well in the art world, with the millionaire buyers seemingly insulated against the current economic uncertainty. The global market doubled in value between 2002 and 2006 to £28bn… Records also fell this week for Munch, Rodin and Léger. But the headline figures are disguising signs that the market has already cracked.”
Fiction That Reliably Reflects National Reality
The story of Israeli literature is as troubled and turbulent as the country’s 60-year-old history. “In a world where the struggle over meaning is felt to have the power to determine the destinies of peoples, it has most often – certainly most powerfully – acted as the nation’s conscience, shattering the rhetoric of state.”
Britart’s Best?
“Will Rachel Whiteread, unshowy as she is, be the Britartist who stands the test of time? Whiteread was always regarded as the serious-minded one among the Britart pack. While the work of Damien Hirst, the Chapman brothers, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas screamed for attention, Whiteread’s tended to whisper – despite its scale. It also caused huge controversy.”
The Disquieting Rise Of Street Art
“It’s the anti-establishment movement that has taken the art market by storm, keenly collected by hedge-funders and Hollywood’ s A-list. Now, even Tate Modern is giving Street Art its stamp of approval.”