Artists on this year’s Beck’s Futures prize shortlist have a show. “If there is anything that connects the six artists here it can be seen, as much as anything else, as a refusal of the market-affirming object-based practice of the YBAs.”
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Bobby Short, 80
Cabaret singer Bobby Short, the tuxedoed embodiment of New York style and sophistication who was a fixture at his piano in the Carlyle Hotel for more than 35 years, died Monday. He was 80.
SXSW: Music For Music
Austin’s SXSW Festival attracts 1,300 bands and 10,000 music industry people. “The conference makes clear that the music business is not just the recording business, and the recording business is not just the major labels. As the large music conglomerates bemoan a world of digital downloading, decreased sales and tight radio playlists, independent bands and labels have simply gone about making music. For musicians who don’t expect their careers to rise and fall by radio hits and blockbuster albums, major labels have less and less to offer.”
Da Vinci Code Recluse
Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown has become the kind of celebrity who has trouble going out in public. “Gone are the days when he could sit undisturbed in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, sketching out the murder scene that opens his blockbuster novel. He has stopped taking commercial flights because of the commotion that usually accompanies him, with people lining up in the aisle to get his autograph on books, cocktail napkins, even the occasional air-sickness bag.”
Mayne Wins Pritzker
Thom Mayne has won this year’s Pritzker Prize for architecture. “In its citation the Pritzker jury acknowledged Mr. Mayne’s countercultural roots, calling him a product of the turbulent 60’s who has carried that rebellious attitude and fervent desire for change into his practice, the fruits of which are only now becoming visible in a group of large-scale projects.”
A Proposal To Save Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
Can the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation (based in Scottsdale, Arizona) be saved? “The foundation has been beset with financial woes, revolving-door management, turmoil on its board of directors and faculty and student turnover in its famed architecture school.” One solution being proposed to to try to work with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy…
Portland In The Passing Lane
“But for a long time, Portland [Oregon] has deferred to its larger Northwest cousin Seattle in the size and repute of the city’s major performing-arts institutions — its professional theaters, opera and ballet companies and venues. Could this be about to change? With recent infusions of arts talent and leadership, funding support and new construction projects, the City of Roses is indeed making a bid for the bigger time.”
Outsider Comes In
“People still debate the relative value of art made to be used (crafts and design), and art made to be contemplated (painting, drawing and sculpture). It’s the utilitarian versus the high art tradition. But why must high mean better? Why can’t it just describe a certain history of techniques and practices? Given the adulation and money poured into the high art world by collectors and corporations, the notion of art for art’s sake seems pretty passé.”
Slaughter At The BBC
As much as 20 percent of BBC staff are expected to be laid off in director general Mark Thompson’s radical remake of the venerable public broadcaster. That includes “the loss of 1,500 jobs in programme-making divisions such as news and sport. Initial estimates of up to 5,000 job cuts are being hastily revised upwards by broadcasting unions, which are threatening strike action if compulsory redundancies are enforced. Including jobs that will be lost as a result of redundancies, the outsourcing of some roles and the sell-off of commercial divisions such as BBC Broadcast and BBC Resources, up to 6,000 jobs are now expected to go in the biggest ever cull of staff at the corporation.”
Remembering Bobby Short
Pianist Bobby Short was the best at what he did. “To dismiss Mr. Short, as some did, as a plaything of the rich and the chic is to overlook his contribution to jazz and to New York cultural life. He was one of the last exponents of an ebullient dusk-till-dawn nightclub culture that flourished in Manhattan until it was done in by television, rock ‘n’ roll and its own inflationary pressures.”