“According to the government-run Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, the museum will feature 67 of Paik’s works, three of his personal belongings and a video archive of his 2,285 studies.”
Tag: 05.09.06
Karel Appel, 85
“With several colleagues, including the Danish artist Asger Jorn and the Belgian artist known as Corneille, Mr. Appel founded Cobra in 1948 at an international conference in Paris. The movement’s original name was Reflex, but it came to be called Cobra, an acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, the cities from which its founders came. The Cobra aesthetic — abstract, spontaneous, expressionistic, riotous with color — was a shot across the bow of de Stijl, which then dominated Dutch art with its rigid insistence on geometric form. It was also a reaction against the hegemony of French Surrealism.”
Classical Award To Alsop
The Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards have been presented. “BBC Radio 3 listeners voted Marin Alsop, conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, their favourite figure in classical music.”
How Concerts Sell Out In Ten Minutes
Have you ever called TicketMaster to buy tickets for a popular concert minutes after they’re released only to be told the show has sold out? “Can a show really sell out in a few minutes? Yes, thanks to the Internet. Ticketmaster, the ticket agent for pretty much every big concert in America, sells tickets on its Web site, over the phone (via 19 international call centers), at 6,500 domestic retail outlets, and through arena box offices. According to Ticketmaster, Internet orders now make up 60 percent of sales.”
Are You Rockist? (Pssst – Rockism Is Bad)
“One thing’s for sure: Most pop critics today would just as soon be accused of pedophilia as rockism. This was certainly the case among the journalists, academics, and geeks who gathered at the 2006 Experience Music Project Pop Conference last month. At EMP, rockism talk was so prevalent that it became a kind of running gag.”
Number Of Books Published In US Declined Last Year
Book sales are down. So publishers have started cutting down on the number of books they publish. “The number of new books and new editions of old works published last year dropped to 172,000, about 18,000 less than in 2004. Publishers, especially small and middle-sized ones, all cut back.”
DaVinci Director Declines Disclaimer
Director Ron Howard has rejected calls from Catholics to place a disclaimer at the beginning of the film adaptation of The DaVinci Code informing audiences that the story is a work of fiction. The Catholic sect Opus Dei, which is fictionalized in the book and depicted as a murderous secret society, had asked for the disclaimer. Howard’s reaction: “It’s not theology. It’s not history. To start off with a disclaimer … spy thrillers don’t start off with disclaimers.”
Taking Outsider Art Worship Too Far
A new art exhibition in London purports to show striking parallels between so-called “outsider art” often created by the mentally ill and some of the 20th century’s greatest “insider” artists. A simple enough concept, but it has at least one critic furious: “A show of ‘outsider’ art… is well worth doing. Nor is it wrong to point out that, in the 20th century, mainstream artists have been fascinated by this kind of art. What is objectionable is to present the art of people with severe mental illness alongside the work of Francis Bacon, Joan Miró or Francis Picabia, and then to propose that there is no essential difference between the two, that both are simply different manifestations of modernity. This is post-modernist crap.”
Africa’s Changing Musical Landscape
For decades, South Africa was the powerhouse of the African music world, cranking out hit after hit and producing popular new artists at a speed no other country on the continent could match. But today, the base of musical power has shifted: Mali and Senegal are top of the pops, and South Africa is nowhere to be found.
Speaking Up For The City
It wasn’t easy for internationally acclaimed architect Richard Rogers to make it in New York, but last week’s announcement that he would design one of the new Ground Zero towers solidified his reputation in America, as it had already been solidified in his native Britain. “He has long been a persuasive, articulate and often lonely voice on the importance of design and density in cities. His practice is famously run with a constitution, the directors earning a maximum of six times the salary of the lowest-paid architect, and last year £1m was donated to charity.”