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[news]
Work by well-regarded Seattle artists appears uncomfortably similar to that of other artists. Idea plagiarism? What's wrong and what's right in terms of originality and art is a matter of serious debate. If no one did anything wrong, then how can a work of art be tainted? Which is worse, theft or ignorance? The Stranger .
Their performances are forbidden by Belarus's restrictive regime, which controls every aspect of life in the country, in a manner that has barely changed since the days when it was part of the Soviet Union. So the Free Theatre has to keep one step ahead of the authorities. The Guardian.
A woman named Jane started a blog and said whe was going to kill herself in 90 days. She got a web following. Turns out, the blog is a kind of "art" project... "It was meant for me and (what I ignorantly thought would be) a small number of people who might find it on BlogSpot. Gawker.
The European Union proposes extending musicians royalties for 95 years as in the U.S., up from 50 years, under a plan to avoid cutting off income for artists as they retire. Bloomberg.
A massive renovation of the Museum of the Moving Image will shutter the New York facility for an extended period. YAHOO
"President Putin and Prime Minister Brown have withdrawn as patrons of the Royal Academy (RA) exhibition which opened last month." The Art Newspaper
"If anyone deserves to be called the ‘artist of the twentieth century’, that man is Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973). The forthcoming exhibition Picasso in The Hague covers his entire career and reveals his untiring urge to experiment. The works on show will include not only oil paintings, but sculpture, drawings, prints and ceramics." ART DAILY
"London Underground decides image of unclothed Venus is likely to offend commuters" GUARDIAN.
The Canadian government proposes to end a service that transports art beten museums across the country. Museums worry that traveling exhibitions will be dramatically curtailed. National Post.
From the beaches of southern England to the thoroughfares of London, the fightback against 'bad' public sculpture in the UK has begun. In recent years an unprecedented number of tasteless statues (with the rare exception, such as works by Antony Gormley) have appeared across the country. The Art Newspaper.
Aric Sigman says that all TV is bad for young kids. The phrase 'educational television' was, of course, invented by people who make television. To me it's an oxymoron. The Globe & Mail.
Canada has taken no meaningful steps toward modernizing its copyright law to meet the minimum global standards of the WIPO internet treaties, which it signed more than a decade ago. .CBC .
Leaving the stage at London's Barbican, violinist David Garrett, 26, one of the UK's foremost young concert performers, had an accident that every world-class musician must dread: he tripped and landed on his violin. The Independent .
"Understanding that people are often almost more fascinated in how dancers work and how choreography gets made than they are in the finished product, Misnomer.org has already tried a new approach to posting videos of its work online." Voice
"For my money, what makes games unique among all other forms of entertainment is that they allow us to experiment with insanely dangerous physics. Games are only arena of modern life in which otherwise responsible adults are permitted to smash expensive things all to hell, purely for the sheer joy of it." Wired
HarperCollins has decided to beging offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site. The New York Times
The arts aren't an issue in this year's election, and it's even difficult to find out what the candidates' positions are. But here's a helpful guide... DancerUniverse
Four paintings by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Degas and Monet worth an estimated SFR180m (£84m) have been stolen from a museum in Switzerland in what police today described as a "spectacular art robbery". The Guardian
Obama "beat both former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter to win best spoken word album for his audio version of his book The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream." Houston Chronicle
Ismail Gulgee, one of Pakistan's most senior and internationally renowned artists, was discovered brutally murdered along with his wife Zareen and a maid in their house in Karachi. The Art Newspaper
"Out go the big budgets, lengthy run times and large venues. But in come the stars from the world of literature and music, who have been asked to produce 15-minute operas which will sit beside each other at sold-out shows in small theatres in Glasgow and Edinburgh early next month." The Independent (UK)
"Without subsidies or quotas, what's the incentive for theatres to show an unknown Canadian film instead of a Hollywood movie with more obvious box office potential? They'll say 'We can play a blockbuster with no advertising, no work, do nothing and everyone will come, or we can take your stupid Canadian movie and no one's going to come.' " The Globe & Mail (Canada)
Creative writing as an area of study is booming in Australia ... Australian universities now offer more than 70 of these courses. There are numerous mature-age students willing to pay universities $100-plus an hour to sit in a postgraduate writing class. But "the creative writing boom throws up striking paradoxes." The Australian
The financial markets ae in turmoil. But "most areas of the market seem to be immune from the anxieties that have been taking hold of the outside world." International Herald Tribune
Argentine cinema has carved out a niche at arthouses, taken fest kudos and plied styles like minimalism and comic bathos with taste... But now returns are narrowing as costs rise for studio time, wages and promotion. Debate is raging within the industry over how best to keep Argentina competitive in a Hollywood-dominated world. Variety.
Classical music's scrappiest record label proved to be its most prescient when the internet revolution came upon the world. What put Naxos ahead of the game, and what did founder Klaus Heymann see in the industry that convinced him to make a huge online push when he did? The Guardian.
There was a time when high- and middle-brow culture coexisted on television, in the form of wildly popular variety shows that showcased everything from dancing poodles to orchestras to The Beatles. Those shows mirrored and even led a mass pop culture that was more populist than what we have today. City Beat.
Forget the Bilbao Effect. It's not Frank Gehry who has ridden the U.S. museum-building boom, it's Renzo Piano." Piano's new addition to the LA County Museum of Art opens to the public next week, and James Russell says that the architect's work is all starting to look the same, and what used to seem innovative now just seems repetitive. Bloomberg.
Academy Award organisers have said they are 'running out of time' in the search for a deal to avoid the Oscars being hit by the Hollywood writers' strike, even as the guild prepares to present a tentative deal to its members this weekend. BBC.
They would get one Euro for each hour reading. "A recent European Commission study showed 31 per cent of Spain's students were leaving school early. Spanish students were also some of the worst at reading in Europe, with 21 per cent of 15-year-olds having difficulties, compared with the European Union average of 19.8 per cent." The Globe & Mail
"If a show with a cultlike following, stellar reviews, a not insurmountable $1 million capitalization cost -- and after some adjustments, a $50,000 weekly running cost -- couldn't turn a profit, then what could?" The New York Times
There's a shocker! A new study "calculated that Americans from ages 15 to 18 listening to 2.4 hours of music a day hear 84 references to substances daily and more than 30,000 annually. About two-thirds of the references put drugs, alcohol and tobacco in a positive light by associating them with sex, partying and humor." The New York Times
"It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars." Wired
"Insiders calculate that the number of post industry members who have lost their jobs or been put on hiatus is in the thousands. That figure includes great numbers of freelance workers such as editors, assistants and post coordinators as well as staffers at postproduction facilities." Yahoo
The Bush administration wants to hack federal funding for public broadcasting by more than 50% and possibly zero out the budget in as little as two years. Variety
"George Clooney, one of Hollywood's most bankable stars who earns up to £15 million a movie, has taken a swipe at the film industry, saying he believes the golden age of cinema is dead... Clooney places the glory years of cinema firmly between 1964 and 1976 when he says studios produced almost a masterpiece a month." The Telegraph
Pixar is well known for having changed animation forever, by hiring the top talent in the business and spending lavishly on the best technology money could buy. Of course, relying on computers inevitably means dealing with their obsolescence, which often comes astonishingly quickly. The Independent (UK)
"Nowhere does the [movie trailer] mention the fact that Sweeney Todd is a musical. In fact, it goes out of its way to conceal the fact that the movie is entirely sung, save for a few snippets of dialogue... Stung at paying to see a collection of tortuously constructed Stephen Sondheim tunes when they were expecting a gory Gothic thriller, a fair proportion of cinema audiences has been walking out of Sweeney Todd." The Guardian (UK)
"An Andy Warhol painting stolen from a Manhattan art gallery a decade ago has resurfaced at Christie's auction house, and on Tuesday the gallery sued to have it returned. The painting, one of Warhol's Dollar Sign portraits that was created in 1981, is worth at least $100,000." MSNBC
The inevitable rise in sea level that comes with climate change is going to make it increasingly difficult to control flooding in low-lying Holland. But instead of cursing their fate, architects are designing a new Holland that will float on water, and the Dutch government seems willing to try out the scheme. NPR.
At first glance, this seems like an excellent idea. After all, Labour's decision to drop museum entry charges 10 years ago was a sign that thinking about culture was shifting. And schemes such as Nicholas Hytner's £10 season at the National have made for bigger, broader audiences. But is a week of free events really the best way to give every member of society access to the arts? The Guardian.
The story of why "The Fifth Column" has been neglected is a complicated one, involving several mishaps, an inept Hollywood screenwriter, and a 1940 Broadway production of a bastardized version of the play. New York Sun .
The total includes record estimates for Impressionist art this week: 89 million pounds for Christie's today, 82 million pounds for Sotheby's tomorrow and 72 million pounds for Christie's contemporary art on Wednesday. Bloomberg.
Language evolves in sudden leaps, according to a statistical study of three major language groups. The finding challenges the slow-and-steady model held by many linguists and matches evidence that genetic evolution follows a similar path. New Scientist.
Why not sell tickets to rock concerts and use the proceeds to underwrite the classical end of your business? It makes sense on paper, and it's worked before." And yet, "regional symphony orchestras and theater companies are increasingly finding themselves squeezed off the stages of performing-arts centers by high-grossing Broadway road shows. The Wall Street Journal.
Hollywood's striking writers and major studios [have] reached the broad outlines of a new employment contract, resolving key sticking points over how much writers should be paid for work that is distributed over the Internet... A final contract could be presented to the Writers Guild of America's board as early as Friday. Los Angeles Times .
Interactive theater places theater-goers in the middle of things, at times making them performers. The imaginary wall is broken down in this type of work, and the audience has a different experience of what is happening.But what if the audience doesn't agree to being part of the procedings? Chicago Tribune.
Foreclosures are the dark side of the American dream. And, just as many works of art depict the joys of homeownership after long striving... others have depicted with equal vigor the pain of losing those homes -- and losing them because of fast-talking salesmen who peddled not snake oil, but adjustable-rate mortgages. Chicago Tribune.
Author George Packer, who wrote a well-regarded non-fiction book on the American invasion of Iraq, has now written a play based on the tragic stories of ordinary Iraqis who agreed to serve as translators for the Americans and paid dearly for it. "It was the struggles of the Iraqis that stayed with Mr. Packer after the journalism was done, and what prompted him to bring 'Betrayed' to the stage." The New York Times.
Oscar-nominated films are often small, dark and unintended for mass audiences. They're about art, after all, not commerce. But that's especially true of this year's crop, which has little mainstream buzz and among the lowest box-office totals in recent years. Toronto Star.
A group of Japanese, European and American scientists are collaborating to restore damaged murals in caves in the Bamiyan Valley, famous for its two gigantic statues of the Buddha that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. The Daily Star.
Researchers are working on contact lenses that could display information on it. The lenses could use the electronic lens as a cell-phone display, to see who is calling and to watch videos during a commute. MIT Technology Review
They have conditioned audiences to expect an inhuman degree of performance accuracy, comparable to what a recording studio's editing team can produce by patching together the best moments from multiple takes. Critics, meanwhile, judge performances by the degree of textual fidelity to the 'urtext' -- a score that tries to reproduce the composer's original intent. Wall Street Journal
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