“The key fact is his self-invention as a painter, entering art history from essentially nowhere, as if by parachute. Never having had traditional lessons to unlearn (unlike Picasso, with his incessant industry of demolishing and reconstructing the inherited language of painting), Matisse innovated on something like whim—a privilege, without guidelines or guarantees, for which he paid a steep toll in anxiety. There is even a touch of the naïf or the primitive about him, though it is hard to grasp, because his works quickly assumed the status of classics, models of the modern.”
Tag: 08.22.05
Will Menlo Reinstate Arts Commission?
Last year all seven members of the Menlo Park, California Arts Commission quit when the city decided to repeal its percent-for-art ordinance. Now a proposa; to reinstate the commission has drawn hesitation from the mayor. “Personally, I would love to see a huge number of commissions. But the amount of staff time devoted to a commission can be quite intense. If we reinstate the Arts Commission, we have to ask ourselves what it would displace.”
Shakespeare On The Range
“Now in its 33rd year, Montana’s Bozeman Shakespeare in the Parks theater company was created to bring free productions of such classics to rural, underserved communities that dot the northern Rockies. Since its creation in 1973, the company has traversed more than 250,000 miles of dirt and paved roads and performed before a cumulative audience of more than half a million people.”
Movie Studios Get The Word Out On Blogs
Movie studios, looking for new places to advertise their wares, turn to blogs. “We looked for the places that sophisticated moviegoers seek out to find things that interest them. These are the people who are engaged with the world, who are informed about the big conspiracies going on out there.”
Newsweeklies Fade At The Newsstand
America’s newsweeklies are losing single-copy newstand sales at an alarming rate. “The decreases again raise the question of how general-interest publications can hold on to their audiences in a 24-hour cable news and Internet environment while competing against increasingly popular entertainment, pop culture and specialized magazines.”
Library Closure = A Disturbing Turn For Culture
Norman Lebrecht decries the closing of London’s Whitechapel Library. “It illuminates the glaring failures of English education and integration over the past generation, and its transferral to an ‘ideas store’, half a mile away beside a Sainsbury’s supermarket, says all you dreaded to know about the confusion of culture with consumerism that has overtaken the governing classes of this country with such devastating social consequences. Need to know cause and effect for street crime and drink culture? Start with the wrecking of our library system.”
Amazon Sells Short Stories
Amazon has started selling short stories online for 49 cents. “The new program, called Amazon Shorts, is starting with 59 authors, which include well-known names such as Danielle Steel and Terry Brooks. Their submissions range in length from about 2,000 to 10,000 words, which the company expects to translate into an average about seven pages each. Customers who purchase a piece can read it on the Web, download and print a copy, save it in a digital locker, or send the story to an email address.”
Unemployed Aussie Artists Feel Left Out
Unemployed Australian artists complain that they’re discriminated against by government unemployment programs because they’re artists. “The fundamental problem was that there was no box to tick that said ‘I am an artist’. So right from the outset people were made to feel invisible.”
Robert Moog, 71
The synthesizer pioneer died of a brain tumor. “At the height of his synthesizer’s popularity, when progressive rock bands like Yes, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer built their sounds around the assertive, bouncy, exotically wheezy and occasionally explosive timbres of Mr. Moog’s instruments, his name (which rhymes with vogue) became so closely associated with electronic sound that it was often used generically, if incorrectly, to describe synthesizers of all kinds.”
Who Was Robert Moog?
Robert Moog was a tinkerer. “Moog was one of the pivotal pioneers of synthesised sound. His instruments transformed pop music during that most revolutionary and experimental of times, the 1960s.”