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Posted in Culture Chatter on 20 November 2009
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Terribly sad news that Jeanne-Claude, the artist and longtime collaborator and partner of Christo, passed away on November 18. In recent years, the husband-wife team achieved incredible critical and popular success with their “The Gates” project in Central Park, yet that statement seems to undercut what “The Gates” was able to achieve: its elegance and simple beauty, its transformation of space and movement, its gentle consideration of society, life, leisure, nature, and beauty - and achieving these ends on such a grand scale. Heck, my parents, who rarely step inside a gallery save the annual pilgrimage to the Met’s old masters and medieval collections, even went to it. My favorite story about Jeanne-Claude, though, comes from the documentary about another art couple, collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel. A number of decades ago, the Vogels wanted to buy a Christo rendering, but the artist’s recent success had priced-out the Vogels. Hearing the Vogels were cat lovers, Jeanne-Claude came up with a solution: cat-sit Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s cat for the summer, and they would give the Vogels the piece. The AP obit is here.
Posted in Culture Chatter on 20 November 2009
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It’s Le Corbusier’s fault that architecture has tended towards the soulless and the inhuman, concrete structures that turn the social landscape into a banal wasteland, says Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal:. Whatever the shortcomings of Le Corbusier’s ideas made manifest, Dalrymple is right to point out that is more often the students of the master who do the most harm:
“By their very presence, the raw-concrete-clad rectangular towers that obsessed him canceled out centuries of architecture. Hardly any town or city in Britain (to take just one nation) has not had its composition wrecked by architects and planners inspired by his ideas.”
Posted in Culture Chatter on 19 November 2009
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The Winspear gets its archdaily write up here, complete with lots of pretty pictures and diagrams. It’s a no nonsense rundown of the opera house’s essentials, a building which “redefines the essence of an opera house for the twenty first century.”
Posted in Culture Chatter on 19 November 2009
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The International Association of Theatre Critics has published a code of practice for theatre critics, which include such suggestions as asking critics to acknowledge that they are “explorers of the art of theater” and should “welcome new ideas, forms, styles, and practice.” Seemingly harmless stuff, it seems, but on the Guardian theater blog, Chris Wilkinson rounds up all the ruffled feathers.
Posted in Culture Chatter on 16 November 2009
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We missed the chance last week to re-welcome the THE Magazine folks back to the fold. Their new venture, Arts + Culture DFW, began popping up at galleries last week. Those boys don’t miss a beat. Between the folding of THE and the launch of A + C there seemed to have only been a single month without the a comprehensive print periodical steered by Scot Hart. Jerome Weeks offers word on how the mag will try to heal the, ahem, frictions between THE and their writers. As for me, their name can now be blamed for my having Arling and Cameron’s brilliant title track off their 2001 album We are A&C stuck in my head. It’s hard to find that song online, so we’ll post the next best thing – the next track on said album: the Euro- Shibuya-kei classic “Dirty Robot.” Oh and we can’t forget A & C’s fantastic collaboration with Pizzicato Five on that monster of an album: Happy End of the World. Enjoy.
Arling and Cameron - “Dirty Robot”
Pizzicato Five w/ Arling and Cameron - “Arigato We Love You”
Posted in Culture Chatter on 12 November 2009
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A few days ago Zac Crain casually aside-d in the comments on a Frontburner post that Austin’s music scene has been coasting on reputation. Is there a connection there to this: Arturo Palacios is moving Art Palace from Austin to Houston. Glasstire has an interview with Palacios. Palacios on the move:
“In the last couple of years, the work has shifted to getting the art out of Austin via art fairs, collaborating with spaces outside of Austin, getting national attention and placing works in important collections. By moving to Houston, I see a continuation of these efforts, and I will be aided by being in a city that can act as more of a “portal” to the outside world.”
Posted in Culture Chatter on 9 November 2009
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My four-year-old’s evaluation of Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are was fairly concise: “They messed up the book.” A.O. Scott returned to the film a second time with his kids to see how they responded to adaptation of the classic children’s tale that has received mixed reviews. He found that at its heart, Jonze’s film focuses on a theme too often absent even from adult films:
“No place is free of conflict and bad feeling, and no person has the power to make problems disappear. Where there is happiness — friendship, adventure, affection, security — there is also, inevitably, disappointment. That’s life.”
As a result, Jonze’s film is relentlessly melancholic, and surprisingly memorable. Three weeks later, my daughter is still asking why Max’s sister’s friends crushed his igloo. I suppose to a four-year-old “that’s life” doesn’t cut it as an explanation.
Posted in Culture Chatter on 9 November 2009
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To celebrate twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall (“Bliss was it that dawn to be alive / But to be young was very Heaven.”), the Op-Ed editors of the New York Times asked nine poets to compose new works about the event. The Telegraph looks back on the last twenty years of German culture. It also seems worthwhile to take another look at the beautiful graffiti that transformed that monument of dread. And while it is tempting to take the opportunity to post that David Hasselhoff gem that supposedly inspired it all (or not), we’ll instead post the other anthem of Berlin 1989: Nena’s Wunder Gescheh’n.
Posted in Culture Chatter on 6 November 2009
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“What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit, low-tax alternative succeeds not only on its own terms but also according to the criteria used by defenders of high benefits and high taxes.” That’s the takeaway from this piece in City Journal, but the article is worth reading all the way through, especially to learn this surprising statistic:
According to a report issued earlier this year by McKinsey & Company, Texas students “are, on average, one to two years of learning ahead of California students of the same age,” though expenditures per public school student are 12 percent higher in California.
Posted in Culture Chatter on 5 November 2009
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Loyal readers of this corner of the site may have noticed that it has been quiet this week. I won’t bore you with the details of the home move, the ruined furniture in storage and subsequent search for replacements, and the long hours at the day job that have contributed to the silence. But I did want to find the posting-time to apologize to anyone caught in the traffic on westbound I-30 near the Sylvan exit last night in the 7 o’clock hour. That was my fault. You see, a canister of acetylene gas fell off a truck and wedged itself underneath my car where it popped open and caught on fire. We really had to stop right there in the right lane and pull the kids out of their car seats and get them across the Sylvan exit ramp and off the road. I would have liked to have pulled all the way off the road so that traffic could continue to flow smoothly, but there was, you know, the fire to worry about. Oh, and thanks to the two guys who came up from the trucking company on the service road and had the foresight of bringing a fire extinguisher. We didn’t realize the car was on fire until you told us it was - so really thank you for that. And since you were able to put out the fire before it spread to the engine, the car didn’t blow up after all. You know what? I actually just drove it home after the firemen and police went on their merry way. So thanks again.
