Blog

Haydn – Admired From Afar

“Today, nearly all of Haydn’s music is available on CD—but he remains a composer who is more admired than played, at least in the concert hall. No celebrated conductor or instrumentalist champions him; no stylishly written English-language narrative biography has yet been published. The absence of such a biography from the extensive Haydn literature helps to explain one reason for his comparative obscurity, which is that his life, though interesting, was not notably eventful.”

Whitechapel To Double Down

London’s Whitechapel Gallery is expanding. moving next door to its current location. “The former library space, once the home of the largest collection of Yiddish books in Europe, will provide space for site-specific commissions, the display of rarely seen collections, and a new restaurant, bookshop and education room. It will also display work from the archives, which includes material relating to visits to east London by artists including Picasso and Rothko. The architects are Robbrecht and Daem.”

Entry-Level Art On The Internet

Selling art online was one promise of the internet. But it’s never really caught on. Now an artist in Washington State is offering art to be digitally printed for prices beginning at about $25. It’s not schlock but the kind of art you might find in reasonable galleries. Artists receive 75 percent of a sale, with the remaining 25 percent going to maintain and expand the site…

Book Publishing Sucks!

“Book publishing really lies somewhere between art and commerce – in some aspects it is a barely rational industry. While the big four publishers have half the British market, the rest is fragmented into hundreds of small players. Few who have much to do with books make a good living out of it – and this despite the fact that books published in English represent 27 per cent of the world’s share of titles! Most authors receive pitiful advances which are rarely earned out. Salaries among staff in publishing houses are notoriously low. And owners of imprints must mostly do it for the love, since it is an endemically unprofitable industry.”

Springer Protests Surprise BBC

The tens of thousands of complaints to the BBC over the airing of Jerry Springer, The Opera, has surprised programmers. “We were certainly struck by the scale of the protest, and the e-mails as well as letters and phone calls, but obviously viewers and listeners have an absolute right to make their voices heard. The BBC surprised by the scale of the campaign.”

Still Searching For Kuwait’s Art

Where did the art stolen by Iraq from Kuwait during the Gulf War in 1990-91 go? “Although most of the collection looted from Kuwait’s National Museum has been recovered, almost all the jewellery, Islamic art and other works taken from wealthy Kuwaitis by the Iraqis during the six-month occupation has vanished. Only a few pieces have surfaced on the international art market, and none of it was found in Iraq after the war in 2003.”

Sontag Would Have Hated The Reviews Of Her Death

Carlin Romano is apalled by many of the things written about Susan Sontag after her death. Why all the false cliches? “If Sontag had lived for another decade, the esteem in which many international critics held her might have won her the Nobel Prize for literature. Why, then, should the cliché persist that she remained primarily a critic? Might it be that “appreciation writers” — praising her for always thinking for herself — couldn’t do so themselves? That “appreciators” who celebrated her indefatigable reading couldn’t be troubled to read her fiction and enter a judgment of their own? That American media, only attentive to intellectuals when they bark out something outré, insisted on reducing her to a highbrow sound-bite babe?”