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Salle Forth – David’s Back But Evasive As Ever

David Salle is back with a new show in New York, back at Mary Boone’s gallery, where he came to prominence in the 1980s. “Salle is right up there with Jasper Johns as one of contemporary art’s all-time great question dodgers. Although he was initially viewed as a cynical provocateur, that characterization is no longer useful or even accurate. With the gift of hindsight, he seems more like an art Sphinx. His pictures feed at least partly off Mr. Johns’s use of pop images, and their work is similarly confounding, a box of puzzle pieces that you keep trying to put together only to realize that six pieces are missing on the floor of your hall closet.

Readers Defend Baz Boheme

Readers take New York Times critic Anthony Tomassini to task for his piece criticizing Baz Luhrmann’s Broadway La Boheme. “Mr. Luhrmann has got me happy to stand in line again, and has made some of us (including all the twentysomethings who stood alongside me for three hours for tickets) excited about returning to the opera.”

Gehry Weighs In On The WTC

Why wasn’t Frank Gehry among the architects submitting plans for the World Trade Center site? He tells Deborah Solomon: “I was invited to be on one of the teams, but I found it demeaning that the agency paid only $40,000 for all that work. I can understand why the kids did it, but why would people my age do it?”

The Greatest Actor Of His Generation?

Is Simon Russell Beale the best English actor of his generation? “Ask London theatergoers, critics and his fellow actors, and they will say that he is the finest stage actor of his generation. (He turns 42 next Sunday). In role after role, he has shown a virtuosic range with a depth of feeling that few actors can match, playing kings and common men, Restoration fops and Shakespearean clowns, characters from Chekhov and Ibsen, and even singing in the Leonard Bernstein musical Candide.”

Dutoit Speaks – Of Martha And Montreal

On a visit to guest-conduct the Minnesota Orchestra, Charles Dutoit speaks for the first time about his tumultuous departure from the Montreal Symphony, and about his ex-wife, pianist Martha Argerich. “Basically, Martha doesn’t play in America, except when I ask her to. Otherwise, she wouldn’t play at all. I think there are only three pianists on this level,” he said, also citing Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Vladimir Horowitz.

Artists Defends His Controversial Art

The Chinese performance artist shown in a UK documentary seeming to eata stillborn baby, has defended his work: “An artist does not give answers, but possibilities. When facing an issue, we must try to allow people’s debate of an issue to produce a deeper discussion. Only if people did not curse it, did not detest it, would there be something wrong. They are right to scold.”

The New Biographers

“The old style of Canadian biography was written mainly by academic historians and characterized by a slavish devotion to the facts, and nothing but the facts, about the subject at hand.” Boring. But a new generation of biographers has taken more of the novelist approach to their work. “Virginia Woolf said every biography should be written twice – once as fiction and once as fact. Fact is accessible but interpretation is not, and fact won’t tell you much about character and thought.”

General Cluelessness – RIAA Gets Hacked Again

The Recording Industry Association of America has taken the lead against digital copying of music, so it’s not surprising the organization would be a target of hackers. The RIAA was hacked again Monday. “This time, the defacement resulted in bogus press releases on the front door, touting the joys of cheese and interspecies romantic relationships.” This was the sixth time the site had been hacked in six months – the question is why the RIAA hasn’t protected itself better…