Across the UK, public debates are drawing huge crowds, speakers’ series are mobbed, and lectures are pulling in fans. The art of public talk and debate has bloomed again as people seek out others to talk. Why is this happening? One theory: “Email cuts you off, in one way, and yet it also links us all up. People are separated as they sit in front of their screen, but they are also much more quickly alerted to what’s happening out there. Public debates have become more attractive because the old places for meeting, like pubs, had grown too noisy.”
Tag: 03.28.04
The Vettriano Debate
Jack Vettriano’s paintings are hugely popular in the UK, and are widely collected by ordinary folk and celebrity alike. So why does the art establishment dislike his pictures, and why don’t they hang in museums? “Vettriano’s work is not being suppressed; it is in every Fastframe shop you pass on the high street. Despite the legitimacy of the argument, I refuse to believe our curators should be bullied by public opinion. Fastframe and our national galleries should occupy different roles in society.”
The Word Project
The Oxford English Dictionary was a long work in progress. “Thirty-one years ensued before the last of 414,825 words was cataloged. From its inception in 1857, the enterprise had consumed 71 years and witnessed the deaths of numerous employees (including the astonishing James Augustus Henry Murray, who was editor from March 1879 until his death in the summer of 1915). The dictionary would number among its contributors J.R.R. Tolkien and novelist Julian Barnes. And, of course, a murderer.”
Hadid Revealed
Who is architect Zaha Hadid, asked Herbert Muschamp. “Born in Baghdad and long a resident of London, Hadid is 53. She has been my personal Alfred Hitchcock movie for roughly 20 years. At times, the suspense has been unbearable. Would Hadid become a builder? Or was she destined to remain celebrated as the designer of some of the greatest architecture never built? Hadid would get a big project, and she would lose it. She would get another big project, and she would lose it. She would be offered a show at a major museum, but would make such legendarily exotic demands that eventually the show would be canceled.”
Robinson Appointed Head Of Palm Beach Symphony
Ray Robinson, 71, has been appointed music director and manager of the Palm Beach Symphony. He “headed Palm Beach Atlantic University’s choral program for 14 years before semi-retiring last season. He also was a freelance music critic for the Palm Beach Daily News. Before that, he was dean of the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, president of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J., and a visiting fellow at Wolfson College at Cambridge University in England. He’s a violist and conductor, an expert on composers Felix Mendelssohn and Krzysztof Penderecki, and the author of 11 books on music.”
Tobias: Problems With Petronio
Everyone likes Stephen Petronio, right? Tobi Tobias has reservations: “What’s not to like? Well, I have two complaints, both of them serious. One: Petronio substitutes fashion (not just clothes, but lifestyle, to use a relevant trash word) for meaning and feeling. Two: The dancing he devises—while executed with stunning fluidity, speed, and strength—is extremely limited in vocabulary, rhythmic interest, and structure.”
At The Movies – Oldsters Rule!
The movies had a good year last year. But the surprise in the statistics was that “the 50-59 demographic enjoyed the biggest increase in movie-going for any age group last year, with a 20 percent hike in attendance.” And what does it mean? You can expect to see more movies appealing to older people…
Where Is The Inner Life Of Dance?
“Martha Graham, Michel Fokine and other pioneers of early 20th-century dance rethought some of dance’s fundamental concepts in their rebellion against what they said was ballet’s empty virtuosity. They created philosophies and techniques of their own, giving an emotional impetus to everything physical. That dance gestures should not be assigned willy-nilly, but should have meaning, was one universal concept. Dance should be an outer manifestation of an inner life, these artists believed. This way of thinking seems to have fallen out of fashion, and has made dance that much the poorer.”
The NEA’s New Profile
The National Endowment for the Arts seems to be politically free of trouble these days. “NEA Chairman Dana Gioia gives the NEA’s foes a challenge they’ve never encountered before: a cultural traditionalist running the agency. (Gioia is a poet who has written for publications such as the New Criterion.) ‘I don’t know how you create art unless you love the past.’ Many conservative regard Gioia as one of Bush’s finest appointments.”
London – Politically Yours
London theatre has turned into a labratory for political ideas. “In the subsidized London theater, where a lengthy, big-cast political opus on global governmental affairs still can pack the house and get the British blood up, talky playwrights David Edgar, Michael Frayn and David Hare get paid to dream how governments would work if they were in charge.”