Would it help if theory informed artistic creation? The stifling effect of the new academy: The art of the late 20th century has been long on pseudo-profundity and short on popular audience. But no matter, it still sells.

For a number of reasons, art had given up
the ghost under the weight of theory. The
breakdown of distinctions between high
and popular culture led to all manner of
cultural produce and effluent being sifted
and read as text. We were top heavy with
theorists (not to mention curators), who
needed scant visual stimulus to write the
work into the flat ergo of post-modernist
irony: in short, what we had was
nominalism. Artworks merely had to ring
the appropriate bell to set the Pavlovian
critics slavering for interpretation…

NB: some advice on deconstructing
current critical terminology: simply
replace “not” for “post”, so that
post-modern, post-conceptual and
post-ironic become not new, not clever
and not funny. The Guardian

Finally, art buyers are not spared. Art Auction World Under a Shadow. A contemptuous book apparently written under a pseudonym by a renowned Italian art dealer says that the art and antiques world is rife with fakery and is dominated by rip-off artists having their way with gullible collectors. The author is able to explain methods of fakery in a manner which experts say is accurate and shows the sophisticated familiarity he claims. Continental art dealers, in a state of shock, have either offered unconvincing rebuttals or refused to comment. The Times of London

Morten Kringelbach, a Danish neuroscientist researching emotions with functional MRI scanning (a topic of which I have tried to keep abreast here in FmH) at Oxford, keeps a bilingual website in Danish and English including a weblog and a compilation of his own science writing. He’s just mentioned FmH in an article about weblogging, “Journey to the Center of the Web,” in today’s
Information, which he describes as “a highly
respected national newspaper founded in 1945 and read today primarily by
Danish academics and decisionmakers. Information is probably best
described as a cross between Le Monde and Liberation. ” Unfortunately, the article is in Danish. Is anyone aware of a web-based translation site, a la Babelfish, that handles Danish?

Life beyond 2001: “Now 83, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, author of the visionary
2001: A Space Odyssey, has a new forecast for the
coming century: holiday domes on the Moon; the
end of agriculture – and swimmers bred with webbed
feet and built-in snorkels. He speaks to Gyles
Brandreth.” The Telegraph

Soldier AWOL in Teenage Girl’s Closet. “A 15-year-old girl hid an AWOL
soldier in her closet for 3 weeks in an Internet-born romance kept secret from her mother
with whom she lived, the Columbus Dispatch reported.”

Call it
This Year’s Models: “Rockers Elvis Costello and T-Bone Burnett
are teaming with scribe-producer John Mankiewicz (Level Nine
) to
create an hourlong WB dramedy about four fashionistas turned rock stars.

Imagine Television and 20th Century Fox Television will produce the
skein, which revolves around a band of former models who, in their new
careers as musicians, find themselves getting into a variety of sticky
situations. Costello will write an original song for each episode.” Variety

Bush spells trouble for economy, tech policy . ‘Bush’s fiscal proposals would abandon responsibility and exacerbate class
divisions. His technology policy — which amounts to asking “How high?”
when some tech executives say “Jump” — ignores a host of deeply
troubling issues that will be at the core of the future economy and society.’ San Jose Mercury News

Bush spells trouble for economy, tech policy . ‘Bush’s fiscal proposals would abandon responsibility and exacerbate class
divisions. His technology policy — which amounts to asking “How high?”
when some tech executives say “Jump” — ignores a host of deeply
troubling issues that will be at the core of the future economy and society.’ San Jose Mercury News

Bush spells trouble for economy, tech policy . ‘Bush’s fiscal proposals would abandon responsibility and exacerbate class
divisions. His technology policy — which amounts to asking “How high?”
when some tech executives say “Jump” — ignores a host of deeply
troubling issues that will be at the core of the future economy and society.’ San Jose Mercury News