“Plans to rebury the skeleton of Giotto, the father of European painting, have been canceled in Florence, Italy, following objections by Pittsburgh archaeologist and art historian Franklin Toker, who argues Giotto’s supposed remains may be only ‘the bones of some fat butcher’.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tag: 11.08.00
IN NEED OF SOME PR MAGIC
The Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago, with a collection valued at more than $100 million and works by many American masters, is woefully unknown to most Americans – art historians included. Now the museum’s board has been split by a venomous legal battle and the board has voted to sell off some of its prize portraits. – New York Times
MILLIONS FOR MISTRESSES
Picasso’s portraits of his lovers consistently outsell work by almost every other artist who’s ever lived. In fact, four of the world’s most expensive paintings are of his mistresses, with another poised to join the list when “Femme au Bras Croisés” goes on the block at Christie’s in New York Wednesday. “Why are they wanted, Picasso’s women, at such vast sums? Are they simply rich men’s fantasies? Are their prices multi-million dollar love affairs – money without limit for sex without consent?” – The Times (UK)
THE COFFIN REOPENS
A team of Japanese researchers plans to conduct the first ever DNA analysis of the 3,300-year-old mummy of Tutankhamen to try to the establish the long contested cause of his death. – Daily Yomiuri (Japan)
WHAT’S SO BAD ABOUT QUALITY?
Time Magazine’s Robert Hughes happily proclaims himself an elitist. “What I’m going to talk about is the idea of quality in art, which is a concept which over the last 25 years has taken a hell of a beating. Really good art is much more interesting than really bad art, and there’s a lot of the latter and not a lot of the former. The idea of preferring high, articulate, demanding and beautiful experiences from the visual or aural or any other arts is seen as absolutely nuts. But is it damagingly elitist to prefer good baseball to bad baseball?” – Dallas Morning News 11/08/00
DREAMS OF DESTRUCTION
The quarterly magazine City Journal solicited plans from three architects to envision completely leveling and then rebuilding Lincoln Center from the ground up, instead of the performing arts center’s pending redesign. “The suggestion, however tongue-in-cheek, that the world’s biggest and busiest performing arts complex be razed like Ilium left Lincoln Center at least officially nearly speechless.” – New York Times 11/08/00
HONORING THE MAN AND THE METHOD
The family of the late acting teacher Lee Strasberg, founder of “the method” and cofounder of the legendary Group Theatre, plans to commemorate the centennial of his birth this year by producing a season of new plays by emerging playwrights in Los Angeles. – Times of India (Reuters)
STARSTRUCK BEYOND REASON
Isabelle Adjani’s return to the stage in “Lady of the Camellias,” after a 17-year absence, has transfixed Paris’s theater audiences this fall. More than 50,000 tickets have been sold for just 100 performances and the press has gushed over her return. But little has been said of her actual performance. “Is she any good on stage? To some extent, that’s beside the point. Basking in her stage aura is all that a good many people in France seem to want to do. This is not to single out French theatre-goers. The same is true in the West End and on Broadway. When a big star hits the boards, no one cares what the critics think.” – The Guardian
THE MALE DANCER PROBLEM
It’s still difficult to be a male ballet dancer what with the social stigmas and stereotypes. But “in many ways, things look better than they did 15 or 20 years ago: New York’s School of American Ballet (SAB) and the school of the Dance Theatre of Harlem boast higher male student enrollment than ever before, and the number of gifted male dancers currently onstage indicates that more men are feeding into the pool, probably at younger ages.” – Village Voice