Australia has swung to the right politically in recent years, and some observers believe that the increased hostility to foreigners and aboriginals is having a terrible effect on the nation’s artistic diversity. “The socially-conservative mood, say some arts groups, is also hampering audience willingness to step out of their cultural comfort zones. In turn, this development may be driving commercially safer arts patronage.”
Blog
Who Painted Goya’s Black Paintings?
“Venerated as the first modern artist, Francisco Goya produced nothing more abrasively modern than the series of 14 images known as the Black Paintings, which a half-century after his death were cut from the walls of his country house on the outskirts of Madrid.” But when art historian Juan Jose Junquera tried to write a history of the set, he discovered a number of holes in the story of their creation, and, upon deeper examination, came to the conclusion that Goya could not actually have painted the works at all.
Are You On The RIAA’s Most-Wanted List?
Yeah, yeah, we know. You have a lot of down time at work, and so, for the last couple of years, you’ve been using your high-speed internet access to download a few hundred of your favorite songs without, technically, paying for them. Now the recording industry says it’s hunting down people like you, and you haven’t slept in a month wondering if you’re headed for a court date. But there’s hope: a new web site allows you to plug in your file-sharing username and match it against a list of subpoenas filed by the RIAA.
Austin Looks To The Future, Struggles With The Present
In Austin, civic leaders are banking on the idea that a dramatic new performing arts center slated to open in 2006 will secure the city’s performing arts scene for decades to come. But the PAC has to get built first, and supporters are finding that that’s no easy task in the current economy. The hall is expected to cost $110 million, and the city only has $62 million in hand, forcing organizers to move to a phased building plan which will not alleviate the city’s performing space crunch anytime soon. Still, the PAC will eventually allow the city’s arts groups to perform in a top-notch space at relatively low cost.
The Underdog’s Filmmaker
“John Schlesinger was once quoted as saying, ‘What interests me is not the hero but the coward… not the success, but the failure.’ That sense of empathy and melancholy pervaded the director’s best films, which will be remembered as compelling portraits, not just of their particular times and places, but of characters at their most vulnerable and damaged.” Schlesinger died last week after being removed from life-support machines.
‘Posthumous’ Doesn’t Always Mean ‘Good’
“The posthumous publication of new work by great writers might properly be considered a religious rather than a literary event. When previously unpublished work appears, as has happened in recent years, by Ernest Hemingway, Robertson Davies, Lucy Maud Montgomery, I.B. Singer or Albert Camus, readers momentarily convince themselves that they are witnessing a miracle: He (or She) has risen. Hallelujah! It’s an irrational reaction, of course, but how else to explain the rapture and awe such publishing events engender? Never mind that not everything a great writer ever scribbled — her notes, letters, laundry lists — is worth publishing.”
Replacing Gary Graffman
Gary Graffman embodies the Curtis Institute of Music. Just as the Philadelphia-based school is simultaneously one of the world’s leading musical academies and one of its best performance showcases for young musicians, Graffman, the institute’s director, is both a consummate educator and a revered performer. He is also 74 years old, and Curtis has officially begun the search for his successor. Curtis is a unique school, housed in an old Philadelphia mansion and offering little in the way of non-musical academics, and it is an old institute tradition that the director must be an acclaimed musician first, and a manager second.
Is Canada’s Book Culture Slipping Into Irrelevance?
The seemingly forced resignation of Greg Gatenby from Toronto’s Harbourfront Literary Festival is unfortunate, says Philip Marchand, since Gatenby was one of the few people left in the publishing world who truly understood the importance of nurturing intellectualism, even to the point of occasional absurd pretentiousness. But his ouster is only the latest sign in the Canadian book industry’s 15-year slide towards irrelevance and oblivion. Increasing consolidation of publishing houses and the demise of countless independents has taken its toll, and while there are a few positive signs, the industry is a shadow of its former self.
Seattle’s New Populist Opera House
Opera audiences tend to be a fairly conservative bunch, artistically speaking, and opera houses have generally followed their lead. But in the Pacific Northwest, the newly renovated home of the Seattle Opera has risen in a mass of populist glass and metal, inviting comparisons to the Gehry-designed shrine to Jimi Hendrix located mere blocks away. “Metallic scrims cross the plaza in front of the hall and extend into the spacious multilevel lobby, in a further gesture meant to break down the barriers between opera and the public. At night the scrims will glow with colored lights keyed to the music being performed.”
The Music (Yes, Music) Of Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound was off his rocker, of course. It’s part of what made him such a great poet. That unhinged quality is also what makes his forays into the world of music simultaneously unsettling and fascinating, says Richard Taruskin. “He loved playing the fool, describing his aesthetic theories, the authentic fruit of his genius, in a semiliterate patois familiar to anyone who has read his letters or scanned the titles of his essays. And those theories drove him to compose music despite a confessed inability — vouched for by his fellow poets William Carlos Williams and W. B. Yeats, among others — to carry a tune.”