Aesthetics – Page 2 – artdiamondblog.com

How to Monopolize a Dead Technology

(p. C3) LOS ANGELES — When Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” is released in a special roadshow version (with overture, intermission and additional footage) on Dec. 25, it will represent a feat worthy of the heist in the director’s “Jackie Brown.”
The film is scheduled to open on 96 screens in the United States and four in Canada, all in 70-millimeter projection, a premium format associated with extravaganzas of the 1950s and 1960s.
Yet from a theatrical standpoint, the technology is nearly obsolete. Last year, “Interstellar” opened in 70 millimeter at only 11 comparable locations. There were only 16 in 2012 for “The Master,” which renewed interested in the format. No film has opened with 100 70-millimeter prints since 1992. According to the National Association of Theater Owners, 97 percent of the 40,000 screens in the United States now use digital projection.

. . .
“We looked around for anybody who was selling them,” said Erik Lomis, Weinstein’s president of theatrical distribution and home entertainment. “We tried to keep it as quiet as possible as to why. Eventually word leaked out why we were looking for them, and then the price went up.”
. . .
“We’ve been accused of actually cornering the market on 70-millimeter projectors,” Mr. Cutler said. “It’s probably pretty true. There probably aren’t too many out there that we didn’t find.” Most of them were destroyed, he added, during the conversion to digital projection.
. . .
Ultra Panavision also produces subtle aesthetic effects, unusual even to viewers familiar with 70 millimeter. The lens “for lack of a better word is a softer lens,” Mr. Sasaki said. During a screening of test footage for the film, he pointed out the impressionistic qualities of the focus and explained how the image catered to our eyes’ natural depth cues.
With projectors found and lenses made, the next hurdle is labor: Most theaters no longer have projectionists with a working knowledge of these machines. Mr. Cutler’s company will provide training for each site. “One way or the other, we will fulfill this need,” he said. “It will be a combination of house staff that we can train, professional projectionists that we can bring in, projectionists that we can find locally, and potentially some technical staff that we’ll bring in.” Every theater showing the film will get a spare set of belts, fuses and light bulbs, and instructions. Mr. Cutler’s staff will also be standing by for calls.

For the full story, see:
BEN KENIGSBERG. “In a World Gone Digital, Room for a Lost Format.” The New York Times (Thurs., NOV. 12, 2015): C3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 11, 2015, and has the title “Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ Resurrects Nearly Obsolete Technology.”)

For Movies, Film Option Survives Digital Advance

(p. B1) Faced with the possible extinction of the material that made Hollywood famous, a coalition of studios is close to a deal to keep Eastman Kodak Co. in the business of producing movie film.
The negotiations–secret until now–are expected to result in an arrangement where studios promise to buy a set quantity of film for the next several years, even though most movies and television shows these days are shot on digital video.
Kodak’s new chief executive, Jeff Clarke, said the pact will allow his company to forestall the closure of its Rochester, N.Y., film manufacturing plant, a move that had been under serious consideration. Kodak’s motion-picture film sales have plummeted 96% since 2006, from 12.4 billion linear feet to an estimated 449 million this year. With the exit of competitor Fujifilm Corp. last year, Kodak is the only major company left producing motion-picture film.
. . .
Film and digital video both “are valid choices, but it would be a tragedy if suddenly directors didn’t have the opportunity to shoot on film,” said Mr. Apatow. director of comedies including “Knocked Up” and “The 40 Year-Old Virgin,” speaking from the New York set of his coming movie “Trainwreck,” which he is shooting on film. “There’s a magic to the grain and the color quality that you get with film.”

For the full story, see:
BEN FRITZ. “Movie Film, at Death’s Door, Gets a Reprieve.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., July 30, 2014): B1 & B8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article was dated July 29, 2014.)

Seven Seconds to See Whether Design Is Right or Wrong

(p. B14) Jacob Jensen, an industrial designer whose sleek minimalism exemplified the style known as Danish modern, most notably with the stereo systems and other audio products he created for the consumer electronics company Bang & Olufsen, died on May 15 [2015] at his home in Virksund, Denmark.
. . .
. . , Mr. Jensen wrote of his working method:
“In my view, constructing a fountain pen, writing a poem, producing a play or designing a locomotive, all demand the same components, the same ingredients: perspective, creativity, new ideas, understanding and first and foremost, the ability to rework, almost infinitely, over and over. That ‘over and over’ is for me the cruelest torture.
“The only way I can work,” he continued, “is to make 30-40 models before I find the right one. The question is, when do you find the right one? My method is, when I have reached a point where I think, O.K., that’s it, there it is, I put the model on a table in the living room, illuminate it, and otherwise spend the evening as usual, and go to bed. The next morning I go in and look at it, knowing with 100 percent certainty that I have 6-7 seconds to see and decide whether it’s right or wrong.
“If I look at it longer, I automatically compensate. ‘Oh, it’s not too high,’ and ‘It’s not so bad.’ There are only those 6-7 seconds; then I make some notes as to what’s wrong. Finished. After breakfast, I make the changes. That’s the only way I know.”

For the full obituary, see:
BRUCE WEBER. “Jacob Jensen, 89, Danish Designer, Dies.” The New York Times (Fri., May 22, 2015): B14.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the date of the online version of the obituary is MAY 21, 2015, and has the title “Jacob Jensen, Designer in Danish Modern Style, Dies at 89.”)

Castro to Writers and Artists: “Against the Revolution, No Rights at All”

(p. A13) Ricardo Porro, an architect who gave lyrical expression to a hopeful young Cuban revolution in the early 1960s before he himself fell victim to its ideological hardening, died on Thursday [December 25, 2014] in Paris, where he had spent nearly half a century in exile.
. . .
Mr. Porro’s two schools have voluptuous brick domes and vaults, built by hand in the Catalan style reminiscent of Antoni Gaudí, that are almost bodily in their gentle embrace. Supporting them, and contrasting with their soft curves, are angular columns and buttresses that speak of the shattering force of revolution.
. . .
Before the schools were completed, however, artistic expression was stifled as Cuba moved into the Soviet orbit. Mr. Castro had famously answered his own rhetorical question in 1961 about the rights of writers and artists: “Within the revolution, everything. Against the revolution, no rights at all.”
Almost overnight, the art schools’ distinctive style was officially anathema. “You realize that you’ve been accused of something,” Mr. Porro recalled in “Unfinished Spaces,” a 2011 documentary directed by Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray. “And then you realize that you have been judged. And then you realize you are guilty. And nobody tells you.”

For the full obituary, see:
DAVID W. DUNLAP. “Ricardo Porro, 89, Exiled Cuban Architect.” The New York Times (Tues., DEC. 30, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, are added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date DEC. 29, 2014, and has the title “Ricardo Porro, Exiled Cuban Architect, Dies at 89.”)

A Federal “Building Whose Banality Is Exceeded Only by Its Expense”

(p. A3) WASHINGTON–They span 75 feet, weigh 4,300 pounds and can’t move.
The four, black aluminum clouds comprising the once-mobile component of “Mountains and Clouds”–one of the final works of sculptor Alexander Calder, which dominates the Hart Senate office building’s 90-foot-high atrium–haven’t drifted for more than a decade. They once rotated at a gentle speed, but have been frozen in place for years after a bearing failed.
. . .
, , , , mirroring the mixed feelings toward Mr. Calder’s sculpture, many in Washington didn’t appreciate the contemporary Hart building’s break with traditional architecture. In 1981, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D., N.Y.) suggested in a “sense of the Senate” resolution that the plastic covering that had protected the building from wintry elements was preferable to the exterior itself.
“Whereas the plastic cover has now been removed revealing, as feared, a building whose banality is exceeded only by its expense,” said the resolution, which never came to a vote. “Therefore, be it resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that the plastic cover be put back.”

For the full story, see:
KRISTINA PETERSON. “A Nebulous Debate in Washington.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Dec. 26, 2014): A3.
(Note: ellipses are added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 25, 2014, and has the title “Calder Sculpture Triggers Heavenly Debate in Washington.”)

“Valuable Things Should Be Paid For . . . Music Should Not Be Free”

(p. R10) Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.

For the full commentary, see:
Swift, Taylor. “WSJ 125 (A Special Report): Music — it’s Too Soon to Write Off the Album: Yes, Musicians Aren’t Selling as Many of them; but Taylor Swift Argues that the Best Artists Will always Find Ways to Break through to the Audience.” Wall Street Journal (Tues., July 8, 2014): R10.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 7, 2014, and has the title “For Taylor Swift, the Future of Music Is a Love Story.”)

Ezra Pound, a Major Literary Figure of the 20th Century, “Loved the Movies of Walt Disney”

(p. C5) “Mussolini asked,” in A. David Moody ‘s retelling, “what was his aim in writing The Cantos, and Pound replied, ‘to put my ideas in order’; and Mussolini said, ‘What do you want to do that for?’ ” When the poet turned from this dismissal to economic policy, which had lately become the central obsession of his life, the dictator was unimpressed by Pound’s list of 18 proposals, alighting particularly on his assertion that “in the Fascist state taxes were no longer necessary”: “Have to think about THAT,” Mussolini said and ended the interview. To the fascist dictator, Pound, by any measure one of the 20th century’s major literary figures, merited hardly more bother than a fly.
. . .
(p. C7) . . . he was not always an elitist. He loved the movies of Walt Disney, . . .

For the full review, see:
DAVID MASON. “The Makers of Modernism; Pound’s generous spirit looms over 20th-century literature, and in the early years his megalomania seemed harmless.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Dec. 6, 2014): C5 & C7.
(Note: ellipses added; italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 5, 2014, and has the title “The Tragic Hero of Literary Modernism; Ezra Pound’s generous spirit looms over 20th-century literature, and in the early years his megalomania seemed harmless.” The first part of the title in the print version was intended to cover both the review of the Pound biography and an accompanying review of a biography of the writer and publisher James Laughlin.)

The book under review is:
Moody, A. David. Ezra Pound: Poet: Volume II: The Epic Years. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Greenpeace Desecrates Fragile, Ancient Hummingbird Etching in Peru

(p. A7) CARACAS, Venezuela — An expression of concern by the environmental group Greenpeace about the carbon footprint was marred this week by real footprints — in a fragile, and restricted, landscape near the Nazca lines, ancient man-made designs etched in the Peruvian desert.
The Peruvian authorities said activists from the group damaged a patch of desert when they placed a large sign that promoted renewable energy near a set of lines that form the shape of a giant hummingbird.
. . .
. . . the Peruvian authorities were seething over the episode, which they said had scarred one of the country’s most treasured national symbols.
. . .
“The hummingbird was in a pristine area, untouched,” Mr. Castillo said. “Perhaps it was the best figure.”
Mr. Castillo said that the culture ministry had sent out a team with drone aircraft equipped with cameras so that they could evaluate the damage without entering the delicate area.
He said that the harm was both physical and symbolic.
“This stupidity has co-opted part of the identity of our heritage that will now be forever associated with the scandal of Greenpeace,” he said.

For the full story, see:
WILLIAM NEUMAN. “Peru Is Indignant After Greenpeace Makes Its Mark on Ancient Site.” The New York Times (Sat., DEC. 13, 2014): A7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 12, 2014.)

“A Major Critical and Financial Reappraisal” of Norman Rockwell

“Peter Rockwell, son of Norman Rockwell, with “The Rookie,” which sold for $22.5 million on Thursday [May 22, 2014].” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) “Rockwell’s greatest sin as an artist is simple: His is an art of unending cliché.”

In that Washington Post criticism of a 2010 exhibition of Norman Rockwell paintings at the Smithsonian, Blake Gopnik joined a long line of prominent critics attacking Rockwell, the American artist and illustrator who depicted life in mid-20th-century America and died in 1978.
“Norman Rockwell was demonized by a generation of critics who not only saw him as an enemy of modern art, but of all art,” said Deborah Solomon, whose biography of Rockwell, “American Mirror,” was published last year. “He was seen as a lowly calendar artist whose work was unrelated to the lofty ambitions of art,” she said, or, as she put it in her book, “a cornball and a square.” The critical dismissal “was obviously a source of great pain throughout his life,” Ms. Solomon, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, added.
But Rockwell is now undergoing a major critical and financial reappraisal. This week, the major auction houses built their spring sales of American art around two Rockwell paintings: “After the Prom,” at Sotheby’s, and “The Rookie,” at Christie’s. “After the Prom” sold for $9.1 million on Wednesday; “The Rookie” for $22.5 million on Thursday.
. . .
(p. B5) Rockwell also gained a Hollywood stamp of approval. Two of the country’s most famous film directors, George Lucas (“Star Wars”) and Steven Spielberg (“E.T.”) were acquiring Rockwells. Rockwell “is a great story teller, and he used cinematic devices,” Mr. Lucas told an interviewer for the Smithsonian, which mounted the exhibition of his and Mr. Spielberg’s Rockwell collections, “Telling Stories,” in 2010. “He ‘cast’ a painting,” Mr. Lucas said. “It wasn’t just a random group of characters.”
Others, too, were discovering new depths in Rockwell’s work. “What distinguishes the best of his works for me,” Ms. Solomon said, “is that they’re rooted in real emotion. They’re not just a one-liner. Take ‘The Rookie,’ which is a great painting. It captures the tension between generations, when a rookie, a youngster, arrives, and the veterans realize they’ve just met their replacement. Their time is limited. It doesn’t matter if it’s baseball players, or newspaper reporters, or firefighters. It’s about time and how one generation replaces another.”
Laurie Norton Moffatt, director of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., observed: “What we’re seeing in the marketplace is that collectors, in a sense, are catching up with the incredible quality and enduring meaning and message in Rockwell’s paintings. There are a handful of his works that have iconic resonance, enduring meaning, and those pieces are what we’re seeing really take off in the marketplace.”
. . .
What would Rockwell himself make of this? “He would be incredulous,” Ms. Solomon said. The consummate modest man, he was content to be paid by his magazine employers, and never pursued the gallery scene. He often gave away his paintings to family, friends, co-workers or neighbors.
He sold one of his most famous images, “Town Meeting,” an oil study for “Freedom of Speech,” to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1952 for $100, and, according to The Saturday Evening Post, let out a “gladsome yelp” when he learned the Met had bought it. It was the first museum to buy one of his works.
But some things haven’t changed. The painting is nowhere to be seen in the Met’s recently expanded and reorganized American wing. The museum’s website says simply: “Not on view.” (The museum didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

For the full story, see:
JAMES B. STEWART. “Norman Rockwell’s Art, Once Sniffed At, Is Becoming Prized.” The New York Times (Sat., MAY 24, 2014): B1 & B5.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 23, 2014.)

Under Humble Austerity Policy China Builds $11.4 Million Giant Brass Puffer Fish

“A puffer fish statue in Yangzhong has raised ire in view of a government pledge to end spending on vanity projects.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 6) HONG KONG — Chinese Communist Party leaders’ vows of a new era of humble austerity in government may have met their most exotic adversary yet: an $11 million, 2,300-ton, 295-foot-long puffer fish.

The brass-clad statue, which shimmers golden in the sunlight and switches into a garish light show at night, was built by the city of Yangzhong, in Jiangsu Province in eastern China, . . .
. . .
Chinese news outlets said the brass and steel for the fish cost about $1.7 million, raising questions about where the rest of the money went. Construction of the fish tower began on a previously isolated and undeveloped river island in March, four months after Mr. Xi was appointed party leader.
. . .
. . . China is speckled with outlandish works of official art that vie with even a giant, glow-in-the-dark puffer fish for attention and outrage.
Critics berated a county in Guizhou Province for building “the world’s biggest teapot,” a 243-foot-high teapot-shaped tower, complete with spout, that was part of a $13 million project.
In Henan Province, in central China, a government-backed charity has been accused of corruption in spending about $19.6 million on a vast, unsightly sculpture of Song Qingling, the widow of Sun Yat-sen, a revered founder of modern China. Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, is also home to a sculpture of two pigs in a frolicking embrace. From certain angles, the pigs might appear to be mating.

For the full story, see:
CHRIS BUCKLEY. “As China Vows Austerity, Giant Brass Fish Devours $11 Million.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., October 13, 2013): 6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date October 12, 2013.)

“A sculpture of Song Qingling, the widow of Sun Yat-sen, a founder of modern China.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Cultural Impact of Industrial Design Is Greater than Cultural Impact of Fine Arts

(p. C3) Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women. The routine defamation of capitalism by armchair leftists in academe and the mainstream media has cut young artists and thinkers off from the authentic cultural energies of our time.
Over the past century, industrial design has steadily gained on the fine arts and has now surpassed them in cultural impact. In the age of travel and speed that began just before World War I, machines became smaller and sleeker. Streamlining, developed for race cars, trains, airplanes and ocean liners, was extended in the 1920s to appliances like vacuum cleaners and washing machines. The smooth white towers of electric refrigerators (replacing clunky iceboxes) embodied the elegant new minimalism.
“Form ever follows function,” said Louis Sullivan, the visionary Chicago architect who was a forefather of the Bauhaus. That maxim was a rubric for the boom in stylish interior décor, office machines and electronics following World War II: Olivetti typewriters, hi-fi amplifiers, portable transistor radios, space-age TVs, baby-blue Princess telephones. With the digital revolution came miniaturization. The Apple desktop computer bore no resemblance to the gigantic mainframes that once took up whole rooms. Hand-held cellphones became pocket-size.

For the full commentary, see:
Paglia, Camille. “How Capitalism Can Save Art; Camille Paglia on why a new generation has chosen iPhones and other glittering gadgets as its canvas.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., October 6, 2012): C3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date October 5, 2012.)