“There is something about walking into a Louis Kahn building that makes analysis seem superfluous, if not silly. The best ones just succeed—not simply at keeping out the rain or the cold but at suggesting something important about our relationship with the built world. It may sound too basic, or too sappy, to say that the reason for Kahn’s continuing appeal is that he sought an architecture that was more concerned with the timeless than the fashionable. But it’s also the truth.”
Tag: 11.14.03
Saling Young – Strong Contemporary Art Sales
This week’s Phillips auction of art made since 1945 set record prices for several artists. The buyers were younger than the average blue-chip auction crowd, and “the growing appetite for these newer works was more apparent than ever. There are new young collectors drawn to contemporary art. These are really the blue-chip artists of tomorrow.”
Shock Of The New (Good?)
“Audiences and institutions have long believed that anything that unsettles is intended to provoke. The provocation hardly needs to be sexual. It can be childlike (“My 5-year-old could do that!”) or primitive (Gauguin) or political (Grosz) or distorted (Cubism) or conceptually unsettling (Duchamp’s urinal; Cage’s “4′ 33′ ” of silence). For a long while, when people raged against such provocations, I would take the defiant position of assuming, unless authoritatively informed otherwise, that the artist had no intention to provoke. Of course, there are deliberate provocateurs, sometimes for overt careerist ends. But what counts is the art. Great art is always shocking.”
A “Bento Box For Art”
Herbert Muschamp says the New Museum of Contemporary Art’s planned building for the Bowery, is a “seven-story bento box for art.” “Like every substantial building that has gone up in Manhattan in the past decade, Saana’s design demonstrates the fecundity that occurs when the idea of context is distinguished from mere adjacency. Add to, rather than fit in with: this is the crux of the distinction. When a building is dedicated to contemporaneity, as the New Museum will be, the design should add to the present.”
Ace To Collaborate
Choreographer Trisha Brown has an amazing record of getting other artists to collaborate with her. “Her 40-odd years of innovative creation and performance have brought about some memorable collaborations, most frequently with Robert Rauschenberg but also with Robert Whitman, Donald Judd, Nancy Graves, Terry Winters and Fujiko Nakaya. They have designed sets, costumes, environments, atmospheric effects and music for her. Add to these visual contributions the aural enhancements of the composers Laurie Anderson, John Cage and Dave Douglas.”
Taboo – It’s Rosie’s Fault
Critics are panning the Rosie O’Donnell-produced “Taboo,” which opened on Broadway this week. Clive Barnes says that while the show was an eccentric charmer in London, on Broadway it’s just out of place. “The Plymouth Theatre is not that kind of place at all, and a professional Broadway producer would have seen that at once. First-time producer Rosie O’Donnell, attracting more attention to herself than David Merrick in his heyday, seems almost virginal in her lack of experience.”
Music In Black And White
Brita Brundage wonders about the complexion of Hartford’s music scene: “I’ve noticed that groups playing traditionally black music forms in the area – be it jazz, funk, blues, Latin, even reggae and hip-hop – are made up almost entirely of white musicians. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with white musicians playing music of any style, the question of legitimacy has started to gnaw at my ability to appreciate the music.”
CD Price Cuts = Mass Uncertainty
As some music companies lower CD prices, everyone from artists to record store owners are wondering what the effect of the cuts will be. With profit margins down, for instance, will small indie record stores offer esoterica that stays around for a long time? And the recording companies… who knows what they’ll even look like six months from now?
The Return Of Cats?
Ben Brantley forgot for a moment where he was at the opening of Taboo. The show, he reports, is “a dressed-up, low-down temple to the holy trinity of sex, drugs and soft rock ‘n’ roll, and the sort of place where good boys and girls go bad real fast. So why do I keep waiting for one of them to step forward and belt out “Memory”?”
The Miami PA Center” Battle With Quality Control
Construction of Miami’s new $260 million performing arts center is well over budget and way behind schedule. An audit of the project shows that contractors have not been careful about quality control. And the budgeters didn’t plan enough to pay for inspections. Indeed, the quality control program will “run out of the $900,000 earmarked for it about 13 months before the scheduled completion date.”