A Jackson Pollock painting from 1949 fetched $11.65 million at auction this week, a record for a post-World War II American artist. The total take from the auction, which also inlcuded works by Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol, was more than $102 million, also a record.
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Kramer: A Clinic In Dumbing Down
The Brooklyn Museum is trying to better connect itself with its Brooklyn community. Hilton Kramer takes offence: “All of this is a ghastly reminder, if we need one, that when arts institutions invoke “the community” rather than the public at large as their primary constituency, you can be certain that something crucial—like, say, artistic standards—is being sacrificed on the altar of identity politics, in this case the politics of race and class. What follows from this descent into political accommodation is a surrender of the institution to a mind-set guaranteed to render it innocuous, if not something worse.”
Cannes Under A Cloud
“The Cannes International Film Festival, which usually counts on big-name stars and underdressed starlets to provide the excitement, will open on Wednesday under a cloud, as thousands of French actors and technicians prepare to carry a bitter dispute over unemployment benefits to this ritzy Côte d’Azur resort.”
Noble: My “Vile” Last Year At The RSC
Adrian Noble speaks about his bumpy last year and resignation as head of the Royal Shakespeare Company: “Of course, there were things that went dreadfully wrong at the RSC, and I deeply regret them. The principal mistake was announcing everything at the same time. I did not leave the RSC in a mess. For one thing, the deficit was £1 million less than what I inherited in 1991, and all the big successes that have come to fruition in the last couple of years – the Jacobean season, Judi in All’s Well – are the result of the changes I was setting up.”
World Turning Away From American Products
American-made consumer products have been popular all over the world. Partly, they’re sold as embodying an American lifestyle. But with America’s image declining worldwide, a new study reports that “the number of people who like and use US branded products has fallen significantly over the past year, while brands perceived to be non-American have remained relatively stable.”
Glass: FCC Crackdown Is Crazy
The FCC’s crack down on “obscenity” should worry us all, writes Ira Glass. The rules are so arbitrary, and the enforcement even more so. And, “what’s craziest about this new indecency witch hunt is that it’s based on the premise that just one exposure to filthy words will damage a child.” What kind of policy is this?
Explore Your Inner Greekness
“Perhaps due to the rise of cultural anthropology or, more recently, to a variety of postmodern schools of social construction, it is now often accepted that the lives of Socrates, Euripides, and Pericles were not similar to our own, but so far different as to be almost unfathomable. Shelley’s truism that “We are all Greeks” has now become, as we say, inoperative.”
Jazz As Institution (Lincoln Center)
“Jazz at Lincoln Center’s first season in its $128 million new home in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle will be a dialogue between the music and where it will be played. It’s a program — starting in the fall and to be announced today — that has been carefully thought out from the moment the organization began to conceive the hall’s physical space six years ago.”
Jencks Wins Gulbenkian Prize
Charles Jencks’ “wriggly earth bank set around three sinuous ponds, which transformed a flat patch of scrubby grass in front of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, has won the £100,000 Gulbenkian museums prize, the richest single prize in the arts. The £380,000 design, Landform is based on chaos theory. Loved by visitors almost to destruction in less than two years, parts have had to be returfed already. Jencks’s inspiration was La Grande Jatte, Seurat’s painting of a Paris park.”
A Home For Jazz
Jazz at Lincoln Center is “the world’s first performance center built for jazz, and the hall represents a milestone for jazz as an American art form. Construction is scheduled to be completed in July, and opening night, after a summer of private “tuning” concerts and adjustments, is set for Oct. 18. The project commits $128 million and prime real estate to recognize the lasting importance of music that was born in the streets.”