“In the modern world, we have seen scientific knowledge assume a status as the most valuable or authoritative kind of knowledge, while artistic knowledge and intelligence is relegated to a secondary status. Science usually struggles when that which is unquantifiable can’t be squeezed into an equation, while music and the arts often stretch perception away from the steady state. Yet equations are metaphors for reality and perhaps have more similarity to art than we might usually accord them.”
Blog
Brook: Ticket Prices Are Killing Theatre
” Director Peter Brook is on a mission. “Wishing to make theater accessible to all, he’s the first internationally known director to lead the way by insisting that ticket prices must come down. Mr. Brook is saying, in urgent effect, if so many people can no longer afford to go to the theater, what’s the point of theater? It’s the most pressing question of all. The cost of tickets is killing the audience. They’re also killing the future. Kids can’t afford to go. Broadway will always be opportunistic Broadway. The bottom-line choices, the safe, star-driven revivals, are by now normal. We’ve come to expect no better. But in our proudly multi-ethnic city, the loyal audiences at our big nonprofit institutions remain noticeably white, middle-class and aging.”
Australia Arts Council Restructured
A plan restructuring the 30-year-old Australia Arts Council that was loudly opposed by many has been approved. “The boards that give grants for community cultural development and new media projects will be killed off and their responsibilities spread across existing boards and two new departments. A $9million pool will be set up to fund projects the council deems significant. And an internal restructure will help staff become more active in finding projects to fund, rather than simply reacting to grant applications.”
Capturing Margot Fonteyn (Not Hardly)
They’re trying to make a biopic of Margot Fonteyn. But it doesn’t seem doable, writes Norman Lebrecht. “What Fonteyn possessed, more than the gift for dance, was a presence that transcends charisma or any of the usual qualities of attraction. She was not a woman of great intelligence. Her conversation was mundane and her interests narrow. Unlike world leaders she was not driven by raging ambition or a desire to improve society. She was Peggy Hookham by birth, and Peggy Hookham by nature, pleasingly down to earth. Yet she could enter a crowded room and everyone present knew she was there. Those who worked with her speak of an aura, an impermeable state of being.”
TV Failing At The Arts
TV isn’t showing arts very well in the UK. Everyone’s bored with it, and it’s easy to criticize. The question is how to make it better. “TV has lost a sense of self-esteem, even if it has plenty of arrogance and self-assertion. It has lost that 1960s mandarin view of art that took its responsibilities very seriously. I’m not saying we should turn back the clock, but TV should be proud of what it does.”
Is Multi-Tasking Rotting Our Kids Brains?
“As U.S. children are exposed to 8½ hours of TV, video games, computers and other media a day — often at once — are they losing the ability to concentrate? Are their developing brains becoming hard-wired to “multi-task lite” rather than learn the focused critical thinking needed for a democracy?”
German Author Accused Of Plagiarism
Best-selling German author Frank Schätzing has been accused of plagiarizing “large chunks of his latest blockbuster from the internet. The book, The Swarm, is an apocalyptic eco-thriller which tells the story of how a mysterious undersea being known as Yrr incites the natural world to revolt against humans. It has been an extraordinary success, selling more than 700,000 copies in Germany. It has even been credited with saving the lives of several German holidaymakers who fled to safety after reading its vivid description of how the tide goes out before a tsunami. Yesterday, however, a German biologist accused Schätzing of “plundering” much of the material used in the book from his scientific website.”
Kahlo Cache Discovered
A two-year renovation project at the home-turned-museum of legendary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo has uncovered a vast wardrobe of previously undiscovered clothing and other valuable artifacts.
Bellow Was Best
“The greatest of late-20th-century American novelists, Saul Bellow, who died Tuesday at 89, resembled his fellow immortals above in a way Americans especially trust. He won the stats game: three National Book Awards, one Pulitzer, and The Big One, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. Yet like any cultural giant, Bellow bestowed more prestige on the prizes he received than they conferred on him.”
Lifestyle Of Fake Architecture
Forget malls. How 90s of you. Today’s temples to shopping aggregation are called “lifestyle centers” (we kiddeth thee not). “While these new malls may appear to be public space, they’re not public at all—at least if you want to do anything but shop. They represent a bait-and-switch routine on the part of developers, one that exchanges the public realm for the commercial one. They’re also enormously successful—by the most recent count, there are about 130 lifestyle centers scattered around the country.”