The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are – by some acounts – Britain’s most prestigious literary awards. Its list of winners is long and impressive. “Yet outside the world of the highbrow literary cognoscenti, few have heard of the awards, despite the fact that they are the UK’s oldest and, many would argue, most prestigious. Now one man armed with a grand vision and a plan to increase the prize money fivefold is aiming to take them out of the shadows.”
Tag: 01.29.05
Theatre Critics’ Lament
Any theatre critic who’s been on the job for a while starts to see the same weaknesses over and over. “Repeated weekly exposure to the legitimate stage, although occasionally resulting in an exquisitely attuned creature like John Lahr, for the most part creates individuals who are primarily aware that a lot of the same mistakes are being made in a lot of different places.”
The Schiller Phenomenon – Making It Big In London (After 200 Years)
Schiller was one of the great German dramatists. Yet his work has never played well in Britain until now. But now he’s a popular money-maker. “The idea that Schiller, shunned for the best part of two centuries by the British theatre, was now big box-office marked a historical watershed. So what has changed? And why is Schiller no longer box-office poison?”
Joseph Beuys – the Art Of Meaning
Joseph Beuys was the greatest German artist of the 20th Century, writes Jonathan Jones. “Beuys was very articulate – almost too articulate – about the meanings of his performances, sculptures, installations and drawings. He was a charismatic man, dressed always the same, in his felt hat and hunter’s or angler’s waistcoat. And he said his art was about the rediscovery of Eurasian origins, the translation and storage of essential energies, the spiritual properties of fat… he spoke to a dead hare, he lived in a cage with a coyote. On the face of it, he was a prophet of the New Age, and his art, on that reckoning, ought to be gobbledegook.”
Weak Dollar Sending Art Back Across The Atlantic
The American dollar’s slide against other currencies has apparently sparked a push by European art institutions to reacquire some of the countless works which had been bought up by American collectors over the decades. “The weak dollar offers European buyers some remarkable bargains. At Sotheby’s Old Masters sale in New York, a Botticelli sold for the equivalent of £246,000. Sources said Italians were particularly active buyers. Italy having produced so much good art, there are plenty of works for Italians to repatriate.”
Opera, The Official Soundtrack Of Death
Opera can be about a lot of things, but more often than not, it ends up being about death, and dying, and what happens to the bereaved after someone dies. Mortality is a natural human obsession, of course, but there does seem to be something about the operatic form that causes composers and librettists to linger on the subject.
There’s Still Some Substance In There Somewhere
As Sundance ’05 steamrolls its way to a star-studded conclusion, Geoff Pevere decides that he has seen some spectacular films, but notes that it’s the little Hollywood overindulgences that will likely stay with him: “Slumming superstars. Californians in general. Recovery junkie Californians in particular. Movies about making movies. Ordinary people with extraordinary abdominal muscles. Dysfunctional families (is there any other kind?). The 1970s. The Tarantino Factor. Quirk. Handheld. Emo-folky soundtrack music. Freeze-frames. Creative swearing from cute kids.”
Just Like A Book Tour, Only Without The Tour
Margaret Atwood loves being an author, and – don’t get her wrong – she loves meeting her fans and hearing about how her books affected them. But the whirlwind nature of the modern book tour has been wearing on her lately, and as a result, she “is developing a remote autographing device that will allow authors to sign books for devoted readers from afar, without those awful tours writers often dread. No, it’s not clear whether she has spoken to Donald Rumsfeld lately.”
Is Saatchi’s New Direction Profit-Driven?
As famed UK art collector Charles Saatchi revamps his collection and turns his focus away from the cutting-edge conceptual art with which he has been identified for fifteen years, many in the art world have begun to wonder exactly what drives the enigmatic Saatchi’s tastes. “Some art critics have long accused Mr. Saatchi of being more dealer than collector, less art lover than marketing genius who exhibits his collection to increase its value… In the 1980’s he built up a major collection of postwar American and European art. He then sold it at great profit and channeled his resources into a new generation of British artists.”
Oscar Snubs Mel & Moore – But What Does It Mean?
“The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11 might have been the year’s most talked-about movies, cultural watersheds that produced hefty lines at movie houses and a mother lode of pundits yapping about the inevitable divide between red America and blue America. Yet one group that seemed curiously uninterested in the religion, politics and controversy the two pictures embraced was the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which opted to leave both off the shortlist for best picture.” So is Hollywood out of touch? Are moviegoers easily seduced by mediocre films that play to their preexisting beliefs? Maybe both.