“Jonathan Ferrara was a gallery owner, an innkeeper and a colorful and driving force in New Orleans’ up-and-coming visual arts scene. Hurricane Katrina wiped that canvas nearly clean, and it left Ferrara – a man who has gone about life in bold brushstrokes since graduating from Towson High School 20 years ago – unsure what to do next…”
Tag: 09.30.05
Americans Watching Record Number Of Hours Of TV
“During the 2004-2005 television season, members of average American homes collectively spent 8 hours and 11 minutes per day watching TV. (The season ran from Sept. 20, 2004, to Sept. 18, 2005.) The figure – 2.7 percent higher than last year and 12.5 percent above viewing levels a decade ago – represents the greatest amount of time being spent watching TV in American homes since Nielsen began measuring national audiences in the 1950s.”
The West End’s Old Shoes
London’s West End is stuffed full of Old Chestnut revivals. “All the big musical shows are designed to make audiences feel safe about going to the theatre. This is a valid, indeed admirable, function of the art form; most people don’t want to buy a £50 ticket for the shock of the new. We hanker after entertainment as a comfort zone. But there is a danger that by leaving new work almost entirely to the subsidised and fringe theatres, the West End will prosper only as a money-making mausoleum.”
Is Russia The Next Big Art Market?
“Russia and its nascent art market is the new Eldorado for art dealers. Moscow accounts for at least 85% of the country’s wealth and soaring oil prices are further boosting revenues. The city is plastered with billboards advertising luxury brands, new buildings are being hastily erected everywhere and out in the Western suburbs, a $60 million shopping mall is rising amid the birch forests: it is surrounded by $20 million homes. Dealers and decorators are scrambling to furnish these empty homes, as well as properties in the South of France and London, both obligatory for Russia’s super-rich.”
The People’s Choice Conductor
The readers of the UK’s Gramophone magazine have voted San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas their Artist of the Year. “Thomas beat out a slate of musicians compiled by the editors that also included mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, pianist Marc-André Hamelin, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and tenor Rolando Villazón.”
The Rebel
“James Dean has been dead for 50 years. That’s hard to imagine, just as it’s hard to imagine that he was ever alive, at least alive in the normal sense of occupying space and being in only one place at any given time. These mundane facts — life, death, time, space — are hard to reconcile with the whole Dean package, the talent, the legend and the iconography that have accumulated around his memory in the years since his fatal smash-up on Sept. 30, 1955.”
Broadway’s Hottest Couple Sells Out
Want a ticket to see Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane in the new Broadway revival of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple? Well, you should have thought of that weeks ago. The show is sold out through the end of its planned run, and the producer recently came to the dual realizations that a) he no longer has to care what the critics will say, and b) it would be dishonest for him to place any ads for the show, since he has no tickets to sell. Of course, if you’re truly desperate for your Broderick-Lane fix, you could always try the ticket brokers, but bring plenty of cash: a decent seat is going for as much as $1000.
Look At Me! Look At Me Helping!
In the wake of the dual hurricanes that battered the U.S. Gulf Coast, television and its stars have suddenly become all about helping out. You can hardly flip a channel without coming across some sort of benefit or helping hand effort. But Paul Brownfield says that there’s something profoundly disturbing about the charitable handout offered by television: after all, the networks and stars parading so publicly could easily have helped out quietly like everyone else, but then American wouldn’t have been able to see them helping. And really, that’s the important thing.
TV’s Own Indie Fest
“After eight years of pitching and persuading, the first New York Television Festival opened Wednesday with the backing of TV Guide, such networks as NBC, Fox, MTV and Comedy Central, and powerhouse agencies like William Morris. Participants are an eclectic lot that includes a former NASCAR racer and a metalworker in Madison, Wis. Most found out about the event online or at one of three launch parties in New York, Los Angeles and London earlier this year. As the first event of its kind, the television festival represents an initial step toward creating an alternative way to develop programming outside the studio and network system. But it remains to be seen whether the five-day event has the potential to remake the television industry the way Sundance and other film festivals affected the movie industry.”
Guggenheim Gets The New Adam At Long Last
“A monumental example of Pop Art whose whereabouts were unknown to scholars and art historians for 30 years has been given to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The New Adam, a nine-panel painting 8 feet high and nearly 40 feet long by the Oklahoma-born artist Harold Stevenson, has long been considered one of the great American nudes.” The painting was originally created for the Guggenheim in 1962, but was rejected for exhibition due to its content.