Never before have there been so many private collectors making extensive acquisitions of contemporary art. Are they the real key figures of a global art business?...
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Rue89 | Wall Street Journal | Polityka | London Review of Books | L'Espresso | The Spectator | ResetDoc | Outlook India | Al-Ahram Weekly | New York Times
Rue89 27.07.2008 (France)
The whole of France is debating whether two sentences written by cartoonist Sine in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo are anti-Semitic or not. Bernard-Henri Levy responded with an unequivocal 'yes' in Le Monde. But Sine has many supporters. Internet magazine rue89 provides a broad range opinions on the affair, but seems to come down more on BHL's side, recalling the "Carbone 14 Affair", which was named after a Parisian alternative radio station in the early '80s: "In the middle of a beautiful night in August, the humorist Jean-Yves Lafesse, not known for his charm, invites Sine onto his show. It was just after the attacks in the rue des Rosiers in Paris's Jewish quarter, where six people were killed. Each with a bottle of whiskey on the table in front of them, they let themselves go: 'I am an anti-Semite. I will go shortly and paint swastikas on walls... I want every Jew to live in fear unless they are pro-Palestinian ...' Ambiguous this is not." Sine speaks out about the "Carbone 14 Affair" in a video on rue89.
Wall Street Journal 12.07.2008 (USA)
Andrew Higgins tells the story of Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot (a pseudonym) who was arrested at dawn one Sunday in May and had to spend a night in jail. The police also confiscated his computer and notebooks. "The prosecutor's office says he's been under investigation for three years on suspicion of violating a Dutch law that forbids discrimination on the basis of race, religion or sexual orientation. The cartoon affair has come as a shock to a country that sees itself as a bastion of tolerance, a tradition forged by grim memories of bloody conflict between Catholics and Protestants. The Netherlands sheltered Jews and other refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, and Calvinists fleeing persecution in France. Its thinkers helped nurture the 18th-century Enlightenment. Prostitutes, marijuana and pornography have been legal for decades." But fuel was added to the policitcal furor when Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin "the existence of a previously secret bureaucratic body, called the Interdepartmental Working Group on Cartoons. Officials later explained that the cartoon group had no censorship duties and had been set up after the 2006 Danish cartoon crisis to alert Dutch officials to any risks the Netherlands might face."
Polityka 26.07.2008 (Poland)
Historian Jerzy Kochanowski recalls the great history of gold in the People's Republic of Poland, when it was a safe financial investment and an illegal financial speculation. The leaders played a double-sided game: on one hand, they prosecuted smugglers and fought against organised crime. On the other, state institutions assured the flow of gold to citizens and encouraged official purchasing. In 1957 rules were introduced which made it easier to sell gold and platinum than it was to sell industrial goods or groceries. The level at which the state purchase price was set made it extremely worthwhile to smuggle it into the country and sell it to the state."
London Review of Books 31.07.2008 (UK)
Jenny Diski has written a wonderful article about sleeping and waking, about death and all the semi-consciousness states in between. It includes passages such as this one: "Who leaves when you fall asleep? They do, of course. So how can they look at you when they're no longer there? Otherwise it would be you who is not there and everyone else is where they always were, getting on with what they were always doing. That would suggest, on the constant pairing of sleep with death ('Death be not proud . . . '), that when you die the world carries on without you, and that is clearly ridiculous. It is said that when Franco was dying, his ministers (lying, I hope) said: 'Generalissimo, all Madrid is standing outside the palace to say goodbye to you.' 'Why?' the Generalissimo said. 'Where are they going?' This is the first time I have identified with a Fascist dictator, but he was, in this single instance, completely correct in his understanding."
L'Espresso 25.07.2008 (Italy)
Now that the whole world is travelling about, the passport photo no longer provides sufficient identification, writes Umberto Eco. Annoying but unavoidable are the words he uses to describe the US finger-printing policy. Otherwise the whole world would soon be behaving like the taxi drivers in Paris. "One friend told me about how surprised he was to find that several taxi drivers from the Middle East had simply not heard of a number of streets in Paris. So he asked them if they hadn't had to take an exam. The good man answered that if you look Oriental you can use any I.D you want in an exam situation. As long as it shows a vaguely Oriental-looking man on it. The examiners don't notice the difference. So, the honest taxi driver says, the driver who best knows his way around will take the test for all his colleagues."
Further articles: The Vatican Library is under renovation. Until it reopens in 2010, Sandro Magister recommends using the website which has a catalogue of 150,000 manuscripts and is regularly updated. Moses Naim thinks that the situation for women could genuinely be improving throughout the world, albeit slowly.
The Spectator 25.07.2008 (UK)
Ronald Harwood, who wrote the play-turned-movie "Taking Sides" about the de-Nazification of conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, has now written a piece about Richard Strauss, another musician who failed to escape the Third Reich with his hands clean. Robert Gore-Langton introduces Harwood's play which is currently playing at the Chichester Theatre Festival. "Harwood comes at Richard Strauss without prejudice and makes it clear that the man was horribly blackmailed. The story goes that Strauss followed orders because the Nazis discovered that he had a Jewish daughter-in-law, Alice. The price of her survival was his co-operation with the State Music Bureau. His one moment of defiance seems to have been in his refusal to allow the [Jewish] librettist Stefan Zweig's name to be removed from the poster for 'Die schweigsame Frau' (The Silent Woman), an act which cost the opera its run and the theatre manager his job. 'The really low point for him was writing kitsch music - the hymn for the [1936] Olympic games, and the wedding march for the Japanese royal family - he found that appalling,' says Harwood."
ResetDoc 21.07.2008 (Italy)
The magazine Resetdoc, which is dedicated to intercultural dialogue, features a dossier on international media in the age of English-language satellite channels with their competing world-views – from CN to Al Jazeera (Editorial). We were most interested in the dialogue (featured in English) between Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and political philosopher Seyla Benhabib, who begins with an homage to Jürgen Habermas and then goes on to explain what she expects from an interplay of the blogosphere and the print media in the USA: "What I see are both trends: on the one hand the blogosphere is very often run by amateurs and this can lead to misinformation as well as misrepresentation. But on the other hand sometimes you find more information and news on the blogosphere that force the more established media to stand and take note. And actually, this is a good process on the whole because it imposes more checks on the print media."
Outlook India 04.09.2008 (India)
Seema Sirohi reports on the burgeoning number of women who have broken through the glass ceiling in the Indian Foreign Service, and are now getting the top jobs at the embassies and consulates around the world in important places like China an the US: "But it wasn't always like that...There was a time when IFS women had to give a written undertaking that they would resign if they married. The blatantly unfair rules were changed thanks to India's first woman IFS officer, C.B. Muthamma, who moved the Supreme Court in 1979 to protest the rampant gender bias and won." But the real progress could lie in policy in the Middle East where India is slowly starting to send women to head up missions in Lebanon and Qatar, "the hitherto forbidden Arab world where even the West rarely sends women diplomats."
Al-Ahram Weekly 24.07.2008 (Egypt)
Hani Mustafa watched the rather over-complicated Egyptian remake of the 1970's film "Cabaret". "While there are no Nazis, there is a bit of terrorism, and though there is no moral laxity, there is a lot of moral rigour. The Egyptian version of the film 'Cabaret' bears only the faintest resemblance to the original," but its long list of characters and their storylines does include the club's bouncer, played by Mohamed Lutfi, who "offers a good imitation of Marlon Brando, complete with husky voice and death wish."
New York Times 27.07.2008 (USA)
In the Sunday Magazine, a frustrated counter-narcotics official with ambassadorial rank since 2007, Thomas Schweich, documents a long history of thwarted attempts to implement an effective anti-drug programme in Afghanistan against "an odd cabal of timorous Europeans, myopic media outlets, corrupt Afghans, blinkered Pentagon officers, politically motivated Democrats and the Taliban." The situation today: "On May 12, at a press conference in Kabul, General Khodaidad declared the 2008 anti-poppy effort in southern Afghanistan to be a failure. Eradication this year would total less than a third of the 20,000 hectares that Afghanistan eradicated in 2007.(...) Despite this development, the Afghans were busily putting together an optimistic assessment of their progress for the Paris Conference on Afghanistan — where, on June 12, world leaders, including Karzai, met in an event reminiscent of the London Conference of 2006. In Paris, the Afghan government raised more than 20 billion dollars in additional development assistance. But the drug problem was a nuisance that could jeopardize the financing effort. So drugs were eliminated from the formal agenda and relegated to a 50-minute closed discussion at a lower-level meeting the week before the conference."
RSS
The New York Times investigates the new hunger for reality. In Salon, Andrzej Stasiuk sees only individual realities. In the Gazeta Wyborcza, the ethnologist Tomasz Rakowski describes the reality of the Polish poor mines. Sometimes you can turn reality on its head, El Pais reads in the Financial Times. Le Monde diplomatique gives the low-down on the ACTA talks. And the New Yorker dreams of less polish and a bit more grit.
In Magyar Narancs Agnes Heller demands more civil courage of the Hungarians. Mohammed Ali Atassi explains in Qantara, why conservatives in Egypt see women as candy: either wrapped or covered in flies. Oliver Roy outlines in Resetdoc, why's there not so much as a hair's breadth between the Christian right and the secular left. In Magazin, the philosopher Ludwig Haslar tells the Swiss that if they want mediocrity today, they cannot expect the superman tomorrow. Jonathan Safran Foer tells Prospect why he neither wants a chicken in his bed nor on his plate. The NYT embarks on a human-flesh search and finds a kitten killer.
The New Yorker tells the story of how corrupt podiatrists almost brought down the US health system. In Polityka, the Kapuscinski biographer Artur Domoslawski explains how he thinks the legendary reporter should be read. In Tygodnik, Zygmunt Bauman calls for more understanding for Kapuscinski. Magyar Narancs celebrates the ban on Holocaust denial in Hungary. In Le Point, Jorge Semprun asks whether Claude Lanzmann is the only person who's allowed to talk about the Holocaust. Wired describes how Google learned how to tell the difference between a hot dog and a poached pooch.
In Eurozine, the Transylvanian-Hungarian-Armenian writer Kinga Kali tells the story of a "virgjinesha". Prospect celebrates the next art superstar, Argentinian painter Guillermo Kuitca. The Gazeta Wyborcza explains how young people use the web. The New Yorker sends out a message to the depressed: stay away from psychiatric literature. Outlook Indian learns to play Carnatic music online. The London Review swims with the salmon sages.
The Atlantic finds out why the Chinese are not enemy number one in cyberspace. Elet es Irodalom asks why no one in Hungary is interested in former informers. In New Statesman, Tariq Ramadan can't tell us what a moderate Muslim is. The Guardian hearkens to the ticking bomb in Emily Dickinson's bosom and links it to the shards of crockery on the floor. And if it can't smoke, El Pais Semanal wants everything painted black.
In Prospect, Tim Berners-Lee invites the world to play with the British government's data. England, not Nigeria belongs on the terrorist list, literary Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka informs The Daily Beast. In Rue 89, Beppe Grillo explains why Sarkozy is more dangerous than Berlusconi. In Tygodnik Powszechny, Stefan Chwin mourns for the Polish idealist. Polityka reveals where a Pole turns to when he's not allowed to marry. Olga Tokarczuk walks her Polish tangle around Amsterdam for Salon. And the Guardian thinks about Armenian women rubbing their soft breasts on a stone.
In Wired, Chris Anderson celebrates the next industrial revolution - taking place in garages near you. The Boston Globe serenades the camel - Nabati style. In El Pais Semenal, the sociologist Edgar Morin complains about European lethargy. Outlook India asks why the Australians hate the Indians. Odra and Tygodnik are still debating the impact of freedom on literature. In OpenDemocracy, Salome Zourabichvili mourns for the wilted petals of the rose revolution. In Prospect, Martin Amis divides the literary sheep from the goats, according to the pleasure principle. The NYT profiles a dyed-in-the-wool jihadist from Alabama.
Das Magazin reports on the dramatic increase in the number of pupils who have threatened to gun down their classmates. The Spectator warns City bankers about gun-wielding dominatrices in Switzerland. In Sinn und Form, Marc Fumaroli remembers the man whose name shall not be mentioned: Mario Praz. In the New Humanist, Laurie Taylor remembers the holy men who sexually abused him as a child. The Guardian asks why Theo von Doesburg slipped into avant garde oblivion. And in the NYRB, Garry Kasparov asks why computer chess programmers are so uninspired?
OpenDemocracy explains why a novel called "Paranoia" suddenly disappeared from Belarussian bookshops. Prospect fears that a ban on Islam4UK could undermine British democracy. The Gazeta Wyborcza explores Polish-Jewish relations. Le Monde diplomatique watches the carving up of Africa. In El Pais Semanal, maths whizz Marcus du Sautoy explains the sex appeal of suduko. And Gerhard Richter manages to surprise the Nation.
The New Yorker buries itself in the Arab novel. In Le Monde, Bernard-Henri Levy heaps scorn on the state-run caricature of a debate. Qantara points to the person responsible for all the misery in the Arab world: Daddy. In L'Espresso, Umberto Eco takes a pin to the overblown daily paper. The Nation has earmarked 30 billion dollars to save journalism. In Tygodnik Powszechny, the writer Wojciech Albinski explains what makes Poland exotic. And the Spectator waves a tear-stained old hanky as shabby chic fades into the past.
In Merkur, art historian Wolfgang Ullrich defines a new type of artist: the contractor. In Nepszabadsag, writer Peter Nadas considers the crisis in Hungary and how it might end. In NouvelObs, Francis Ford Coppola explains why DVDs should be free. Eurozine introduces Lithuanian literature. In the New York Review of Books, Wyatt Manson asks why Pleiade is omitting Celine's anti-Semitic trilogy from the collected works. In Express, Philippe Gavi reminds us that Mohammed was not a crazed killer. A Californian marvels in NZZ Folio, at the reincarnation of an Indian factory worker. And confronted with the recent proliferation of literary cuddling, the New York Times yearns for a bit of Philip Roth.
Wired tracks James Cameron's 32-year quest to out-Lucas Lucas. In Nouvel Obs, Alain Finkielkraut and Alain Badiou tear each other apart over immigration and national identity. Tygodnik Powszechny introduces the pioneering artist Miroslaw Balka. Andras Bozoki asks why Hungarians are undermining democracy. In The New Statesman, Leo McKinstry explains why the bombing of Coventry was an inspiration to the British Air Staff.
Vanity Fair goes in search of a superpartner. Elet es Irodalom reads a new collection of essays by Imre Keresz. Outlook India complains about journalistic corruption. The New Yorker reads a new Koestler biography. Nepszabadsag foresees the next French revolution. Rue89 wonders about the provenance of prawns. And in the New Republic, Moshe Halberthal celebrates the sublime humility of Amartya Sen.
In Wilson Quarterly, the economist Tyler Cowen sings an ode to multitasking. Prospect has seen the monsters of the left. The Boston Globe follows James C. Scott to the new Shangri-La in the mountains of Tibet. Weltwoche is up in arms about the criticism of Switzerland's anti-minaret vote. In the Novel Obs, Pierre Nora applies his mind to the bestseller. New Criterion knows why the Pop art bubble won't pop. NZZ Folio examines the chicken nugget. Al Ahram asks what political Islam wants. The Walrus mourns for the first victim of the C-58. In Resetdoc, Joseph Massad explains why Arab homosexuals are an invention of the West.
Slovenian poet Ales Debeljak argues for a fusion of cultures in Eurozine. Umberto Eco agrees in Le Monde. The Nation portrays the Salvadorian author Horacio Castellanos Moya, who himself explains in Babelia why 200 years after independence there's nothing to celebrate in a number of Latin American countries. Polityka lies Poland down on the couch. La vie des idees reads a book on Jews and the resistance in France. Americans read more than Europeans, writes historian Peter Baldwin in Merkur. And in The New York Review of Books Robert Darnton makes two bold proposals for a new Book Settlement.