The chandeliers at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House are big and impressive. Unless, of course, you’re speaking on a cosmic scale, in which case they’re actually just little sparkly things. Compared to, say, the Big Bang, the chandeliers are pretty infinitesimally small, and one might wonder why one would compare the two at all. But that didn’t stop artist Josiah McElheny from trying to represent both in a single glass sculpture.
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The One About The Giant Elephant
It’s hard to know where to place a story like this. Is it Theatre? Visual Art? Just an Idea? Well, whatever the category, it involves London’s Covent Garden, a French theatre company, Jules Verne, several 40-foot puppets, and a giant wooden elephant. Oh, and according to one London critic, the extravaganza “is to street art what a glacier is to ice cubes.”
Documenting A Revolution Of Thought
It lasted for only a year in the late 1920s, and only 15 issues were ever printed, but Georges Bataille’s controversial and provocative magazine, Documents stands as one of the most influential publications of the 20th century. “Conceived as a ‘war machine against received ideas’, Documents drew in several dissident surrealists such as Leiris, Joan Miró, Robert Desnos and André Masson. As, in his own words, surrealism’s ‘old enemy from within’, Bataille was uncompromising in his disdain for art as a panacea and a substitute for human experience, his problem remaining ‘the place that surrealism gave to poetry and painting: it placed the work before being’.”
It Was A Very Good Year
A chance meeting between an up-and-coming young Canadian choreographer and some Broadway bigwigs appears to have sparked quite an impressive collaboration, and possibly launched a new star into the forefront of the dance galaxy. In the space of only a few months, Aszure Barton has gone from a residency at the Baryshnikov Center in lower Manhattan to directing the choreography for a new Broadway production of Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera, and creating a new solo dance for Mikhail Baryshnikov himself.
Broadway Cleaning Up With High-End Tickets
“So far this season, Broadway attendance is up 4 percent from the same period last year. Total box-office receipts for the season are up 12 percent. You will notice a discrepancy here… There are several reasons of course, like a few hit musicals and a movie star or two on exhibition. But a large part of the answer can be attributed to one factor: premium tickets.”
Is Tate Modern Pointing The Way To The Future?
As Tate Modern overhauls the way it presents its collection to the public, critics are beginning to assess the impact of the changes, not just on the Tate, but museums in general. “The wow factor is important to Tate Modern and key to its success, most obviously through the giant works that have held court in the gallery’s Turbine Hall. This is the challenge facing the gallery: to continue to attract all those casual visitors whose imagination has been captured by some of the contemporary shows on display, while also providing for more regular users of art galleries who rightly demand rigour and a certain level of scholarship on their visits.”
The Real DaVinci Conspiracy
There may be nothing on Earth more overexposed than The DaVinci Code, and that presented a unique marketing challenge for the folks behind the movie version of Dan Brown’s bestseller. How, after all, do you sell a suspense film when the entire world already knows what’s going to happen? The answer may be to abandon traditional marketing altogether, and court the controversy that seems to follow DaVinci around. “The fiendishly clever part? Convincing us the ensuing publicity is merely a series of random events.”
Dallas Looks For A New Leader
As Andrew Litton prepares to depart the Dallas Symphony (see more on this in ArtsJournal’s People section,) speculation is rampant concerning whom the orchestra will turn to as its next music director. On the shortlist: Andrew Davis, Stephane Deneve, and Philippe Jordan, among others.
Cleveland Ballet Series Canceled
Cleveland’s Playhouse Square has announced that it will no longer present the series of touring ballet companies it began showcasing in 2002, citing a “lack of audience growth, declining philanthropic support and the high cost of presenting world-class ballet… The series was started in 2002 to fill a void following the demise of Cleveland San Jose Ballet. It featured American Ballet Theatre, the Kirov Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Joffrey Ballet and other leading international companies.”
Fogel’s Future Plans
As chairman of the American Symphony Orchestra League, Henry Fogel has been on a seemingly endless national tour in recent years, talking to anyone who will listen about the future of orchestras and the changes the industry needs to embrace to thrive in the modern world. First on Fogel’s list: orchestras need to create deep ties within their communities, a strategy that has worked well for other arts groups.