The famed Bamiyan cliff Buddhas may be rubble, but what about the legendary lost giant Bamiyan Buddha? “It’s hard to believe that the sculpture ever went missing. According to the writings of a Chinese pilgrim who reported seeing the reclining Buddha in AD 629, it stretched 1,000 feet. Today, the pilgrim’s brief, 1,375-year-old account remains the most detailed description of the sleeping Buddha. Probably constructed in the late 6th century, the statue hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years. And even experts who believe the sculpture exists doubt it is — or was — more than three football fields long.”
Blog
Pittsburgh Arts Center Owes Artists Money
The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts closed this week, owing a lot of money. “According to a federal tax return filed by the nonprofit, the center took in $1.9 million in revenue in 2002 but spent $2.8 million. Local artists, who founded the center in 1945, were dismayed to learn of its closing and frustrated because many of them have been trying for months to obtain payment for their work.”
Iraq’s Poetic Sensation
A poem by an Iraqi exile that was published with only 1000 copies has become famous in Iraq. “Brother Yasin and Brother Yasin Again became part of the body of work that has come to represent the secret, silent fight against Saddam Hussein’s regime. It is one of the most important poems exploring, in a revolutionary way, the link between man’s ethereal, spiritual nature and his everyday, habitual life. It expresses simple sentiments while yielding something new with each reading. The Iraqis, who love tragedy, find themselves drawn to this.”
Parthenon Marbles – An Essential Story
Why should the Parthenon Marbles stay in the British Museum? They’re an essential part of the story of art. “Here in these rooms is the fundamental vocabulary of Western sculpture, the beginnings of Giovanni Pisano, Donatello and Michelangelo, the visual and practical storehouse of the Italian Renaissance. To destroy such a treasury of beautiful solutions by removing its heart would to my mind represent as much an act of vandalism as any ever perpetrated upon art.”
More Men, Humor Too, At This Year’s fFIDA
This year’s fFIDA International Dance Festival in Toronto featured 75 choroeographers. “The most startling aspect about this year’s fFIDA was the presence of men. In fact. there were probably more real live, honest to goodness male dancers on stage than in all the previous 13 years combined. Humour made a welcome return, even to the point of bizarre, and surprisingly, solos, usually the fFIDA mainstay, were almost equally matched by duets and ensembles. Angst-ridden, navel-gazing choreographies were on the wane, while abstract, philosophical and/or cerebral subjects reflect a new trend.”
Where Is San Jose’s Medici?
No region has ever attracted as much capital or created as much wealth as Silicon Valley in the 1990s. But unlike great historical centers of money and creativity, San Jose has not developed its culture. “If San Jose is to realize its destiny as one of America’s major cities, cultural development needs to be taken as seriously as economic development. The potential of local organizations is enormous. What they lack is the sustained private investment and unabashed ambition for greatness such funding allows.”
UK Music Sales On The Rise
So much for the internet killing music sales. This summer in the UK, the music business has seen a nice upturn. It includes “improved album sales, a sudden upturn in legal music downloads and an increase in singles sales for the first time in five years.”
Taking Opera To The Trains
“The BBC is planning to mount a live broadcast of a new opera work aimed at a young audience. It will be set inside a mainline station and performed as commuters are making their way home from work. The event will require an hour’s suspension of station announcements.”
Atlanta Opera Slashes Season
Dennis Hanthorn is Atlanta Opera’s new general director. But even before he officially begins, he’s had to make some difficult decisions. “With an almost 50 percent drop in subscriptions to date, Hanthorn eliminated a quarter of the opera’s performances for the coming year to avoid going deeper into debt. Four productions are still on the 2004-05 calendar: “Carmen,” “Don Giovanni,” “La Bohème” and “Fidelio.” But the total number of performances will be trimmed from 16 to 12.”
Hundreds Of Dali Fakes
Hundreds of works presented in a Finnish show marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Salvador Dali have been declared fake. “360 works supposedly by Dali were forgeries or tampered copies. A further 150 works purportedly by artists including Joan Miro, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, were also thought to be forged. Police were tipped off by “dozens” of collectors who bought suspected fakes.”