Police were called to the Tate Modern gallery in London this weekend, after a visitor to the museum reportedly “attacked” a statue. The statue in question was Auguste Rodin’s classic marble sculpture The Kiss, which is in the Tate because conceptual artist Cornelia Parker has wrapped it in string to represent “the claustrophobic nature of relationships.” The attacker broke free from a tour group, and used scissors to cut some of the twine before being subdued. He has been released on bail.
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Down With The Language Bullies
“Language bullying – or prescriptivism, as it’s more politely called – is conservative in the worst sense. It advances a stuffy and old-fashioned view of language, the rules of which it considers set by supposed experts, such as the authors of grammar books, rather than common usage. It is deeply anti-populist and snobby, not to mention just plain wrong and cranky. Most ‘rules’ cited by bullies are highly suspect.”
Are Book Reviews “Advertising Posing As Criticism?”
Heidi Julavits has largely given up on book reviews. In an essay in the new magazine Believer, she writes: “Maybe it’s simply that book reviews have devolved to a point where they function as little more than advertising posing as criticism; the only books likely to be ratified by critical coverage are the books that promise to be ratified by the marketplace.” Critic Bob Hoover takes offense: “The newspaper book editors I know, me included, have never written or run a review of rearranged copy cribbed from a press release or looked at the best-seller list as a source of recommendations, those titles ‘ratified by the marketplace’.”
The Man Who Invented Photography
“The world may not know who painted the first painting or who carved the first sculpture, but we do know who made the first photograph in a modern sense. And it wasn’t Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, whose 1826 invention of a photomechanical printing plate was indeed epochal, or Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre.” It was William Henry Fox Talbot. He’s the man who “set certain basic terms by which photography operated for almost the last 150 years. He invented the photographic negative, the process by which light creates a negative image on a piece of chemically treated paper, which can then be reproduced – once or in great quantity – in a positive form.”
Art Scam – Art For Drugs
US prosecutors have charged a Connecticut art broker and two New York art dealers with money laundering in a scheme to exchange art for money. The art included a Degas and a Modigliani.
Thaw In French Government Attitude To Art
The French government has for some time been deaf to concerns of the art market. But “last year saw the right wing get a resounding majority in Parliament, and the present government is no longer hostile to the arguments of the art market. The reform of auctioneering has shaken up the establishment and brought new players into the field.”
San Antonio Symphony Misses Another Payroll
The San Antonio Symphony has paid its back-owed payroll, but then failed to make payroll this week. “The symphony office has begun calling early subscribers to let them know the money they’ve paid for next season will be needed now.”
Michael Kelly, 46
Michael Kelly, editor-at-large of the Atlantic Monthly, has been killed in a Humvee accident in Iraq. “Kelly is credited with revitalizing the respected but sometimes dull Atlantic, which won three National Magazine Awards last year and carried many high-profile cover stories, including a three-part series on the cleanup of the World Trade Center site. He took the reins after Washington businessman David Bradley bought the Atlantic from Mort Zuckerman in 1999. Kelly stepped down as editor last fall and also planned to write a book about the history of the steel industry.”
Seattle Rep Cuts Staff, Season
Seattle Repertory Theatre is the latest arts organization to make cutbacks. “Managing director Benjamin Moore said a full-time work force of 102 annual and seasonal employees will go down to 93, and the number of productions next season will decline from nine to six. Moore is projecting income of between $6.5 million and $7 million next season, down from revenues of $8 million this year.”
A Graffiti Park? Lock ‘Em Up And Throw Away The Key
A Los Angeles group holds a graffiti party and want to build an “aerosol art park with an art supply store and big canvas panels. Once embraced by the mainstream and given a legal place to work, poor graffiti artists could stop risking their lives tagging freeway signs and start holding museum openings.” But a Los Angeles Times editorial makes fun of the idea: “Please, hold the breathless praise for graffiti artists.’ They have defaced the sides of too many elementary schools, scarred the trunks of beautiful old sycamores, destroyed sorely needed benches in already scarce parks. In neighborhoods used as canvases for graffiti, people tend to call it vandalism, not art. They don’t throw a party; they call the police.”