At virtually no cost, debt-ridden Berlin got the chance last month to “show one of the most distinguished private collections of its kind in the world — one that, moreover, has never been shown in its entirety to the public. Yet the collection has been unwelcome elsewhere because it belongs to Friedrich Christian Flick, the multimillionaire heir of a leading Nazi arms manufacturer. And for Berlin, a city that has served variously as the epicenter of the avant-garde and Nazi despotism, that fact presents a troubling dilemma.”
Blog
Norman Mailer At 80
At 80, with a new book out, Norman Mailer is still stuffed with big opinions. “People are always complaining in sports about how much money these athletes get. At least those athletes can answer, `I’m getting that money because I’m the best in my field.’ In literature it’s exactly the opposite. It’s the mediocrities who make the mega-sums. That was always true to a degree, but it’s intensified considerably.”
Honoring Nureyev 10 Years After His Death
On the 10th anniversary of Rudolf Nureyev’s death, the Paris Opera Ballet mounts a glittering tribute. “The occasion was above all a homage. Thus, with all the pomp and reverence that the Paris Opera Ballet reserves for such occasions, it opened with a défilé, or parade, in which 250 dancers — the entire troupe as well as children from its ballet school — walked slowly toward the audience to the march from Berlioz’s opera “Les Troyens.” A huge photograph of Nureyev then appeared on a screen, followed by a film depicting his life.”
How Random House Boss Was Ousted
Why did Peter Olson fire highly respected Ann Godoff from her perch as the president of the Random House Trade Group? “Mr. Olson’s motives are a matter of great consequence in the book business, where Bertelsmann’s Random House division is the largest consumer publisher in the world. He said his public condemnation of Ms. Godoff’s performance simply reflected honesty about a ruthless devotion to the bottom line: publishers who repeatedly fail to meet financial goals must go.” She failed, so she was out.
An Ode To The Brooklyn Academy
“In New York, there is nothing to match the Brooklyn Academy of Music, affectionately known by its acronym BAM. Its three tiers hold around 2,000, but the embracing curve of its interior makes it seem intimate. What I love most about BAM is the sense that, like Topsy, it just growed. It doesn’t seem engineered. So many ‘arts centres’ – the Barbican and the Lowry not least – are really arts ghettos, plonked down and squashed into the middle of nowhere to suit the exigencies of the town planner.”
House Hunting With The Royal Shakespeare
As everyone knows, the Royal Shakespeare Company is looking for a new London home. “Top of its wish list are the Old Vic at Waterloo – a theatre thick with ghosts of RSC glories past – and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s slightly less gilded New London on Drury Lane, home for most of the past 20 years to the composer’s musical cash cow Cats, based on TS Eliot’s poems.”
Shakespeare Goes To Iran
Shakespeare’s “A Winter’s Tale” took a bow in Tehran this week as the Dundee Repertory Theatre Company played as “part of an initiative by the British Council to open hearts and minds in the Muslim world.” The play was “performed to a sold-out theatre packed with university students, academics and artists hungry for more cultural contact with the west. ‘Opportunities like this come so rarely. We only see foreign theatre productions once a year and to get the chance to see Shakespeare performed by a British cast is just incredible’.”
Debating Censorship In Singapore
Censorship is common in Singapore. But a new set of guidelines concerning censorship are about to come out. “Surveys suggest that a majority of Singaporeans are basically conservative and still want the Government to be responsible for deciding what their children should see and hear. But as our people become more cosmopolitan, there is also a group which argues that Singaporeans should decide for themselves what they want to see, read and hear and what they want their children to read, see and hear.”
The Solo Cartoonist
Created in the traditional way, a cartoon takes teams of artists and years of work. Produced at a digital animation studio like Pixar, it takes banks of advanced computers and $100 million give-or-take for a full-length feature. Andy Murdock is creating his cartoon feature on home computer equipment, doing all the animation himself. “Even five years ago, it would have been hard to imagine an animator, working alone in his studio, making a 3-D feature. But fast computers and software like 3D Studio Max, Maya and SoftImage are making high-quality animation more of a do-it-yourself process.” And Murdock is showing his work-in-progress at this year’s Sundance Online Film Festival. Take a look.
TV Commercials – 30-Second Art
“TV Commercials may be crass, loud, an insult to our intelligence. They may even be a colossal waste of money. But they’re also the one brand of big-budget filmmaking that regularly makes room for artistic risks, especially when compared with most of the programs that surround them. I’d rather watch a beer ad than any episode of ‘Friends,’ and not just because the commercial is shorter.”