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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Thirty-two years ago James Cameron walked out of Star Wars ready to punch something. Joshua Davies met the obviously manly and megalomaniacal director who, armed with Hollywood's "fuck-you money" (his words) after "Titanic", set off on his quest to out-Lucas Lucas. Only the best and most revolutionary was good enough for his 3-D baby "Avatar": he convinced Sony to invent new digital 3D cameras, convinced cinemas to invest in new multimillion technology, surrounded himself with experts, for example, to create a language for his planet Pandora: "With the language established, Cameron set about naming everything on his alien planet. Every animal and plant received Na'vi, Latin, and common names. As if that weren't enough, Cameron hired Jodie Holt, chair of UC Riverside's botany and plant sciences department, to write detailed scientific descriptions of dozens of plants he had created. She spent five weeks explaining how the flora of Pandora could glow with bioluminescence and have magnetic properties. When she was done, Cameron helped arrange the entries into a formal taxonomy. This was work that would never appear onscreen, but Cameron loved it. He brought in more people, hiring an expert in astrophysics, a music professor, and an archaeologist. They calculated Pandora's atmospheric density and established a tripartite scale structure for the alien music. When one of the experts brought in the Star Wars Encyclopedia, Cameron glanced at it and said, 'We'll do better.'"
The Nouvel Obs invited the philosophers Alain Finkielkraut and Alan Badiou, members of opposite political camps, to talk about national identity. According to Aude Lancelin who moderated the discussion, "it came to an ideological confrontation of rare violence". Badiou, who is striving for a new communism, complains that immigrants are stigmatised and launches a direct attack on his opponent: "The minaret vote by millions of moronic Swiss is just one episode in this trend and you are responsible for it. It is obvious that the intellectuals and the 'feminists' who kicked up a fuss about the headscarf twenty years ago are responsible for this minaret phenomenon... You want an ethics of responsibility? Well there you go! Now deal with it." Finkielkraut describes this attack as scandalous "but I will try not to let it upset me". The immigrants, he believes, are condemned by Badiou's "raised fist. "And this leads me to talk about the psychological profit from your constant comparisons with the black [Nazi] years. If Sarkozy is Petain, that makes you a Resistant. I wish you, you and the intellectual left which has become megalomaniac under your wing, would stop telling yourselves fairy tales."
Its not the first time that the newspaper industry has been disrupted by communications technology, the Economist recalls. The first quake happened in 1845 – with the introduction of the telegram: "For the first time it became possible to read up-to-date business and political news within hours of its occurrence. 'We live in a transition period of society,' declared the New York Herald on May 7th 1846. ... Predictions that newspapers would henceforth favour analysis and opinion over news also got things exactly backwards. Instead, the balance tipped towards the latest news. In 1851 Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, told a British parliamentary committee that 'the quickest news is the one looked to.' Did that mean, he was asked, that 'the leading article has not then so much influence as it has in England?' No, said Greeley. 'The telegraphic dispatch is the great point.' Writing in the Atlantic Monthly in 1891, W.J. Stillman, a journalist and critic, moaned :'The frantic haste with which we bolt everything we take, seconded by the eager wish of the journalist not to be a day behind his competitor, abolishes deliberation from judgment and sound digestion from our mental constitutions. We have no time to go below surfaces, and as a general thing no disposition.'"
With a solo show in the London Tate Modern, Miroslaw Balka must be at the peak of his career. It began almost by coincidence in the early nineties, as the artist told the Polish newspaper: "Today it's easy to talk without complexes about the success of Polish art. But things were very different in the nineties. The world 'success' had something shameful about it, and I was somewhat privileged. Polish artists were virtually unknown and suddenly this man appeared from a country in transformation and helped redefine the situation. By coincidence I was this person, without wanting it, I became a pioneer who was followed by an entire generation."
Twenty years after the collapse of communism, more and more people are blaming the "founding fathers" for the mistakes and the poor reputation of democracy today. Andras Bozoki, sociologist and founding editor of the weekly paper Magyar Narancs, sees things rather differently: it's the Hungarian people who are destroying democracy themselves. Part of this, he writes, has historical reasons: in Hungary, which was occupied for centuries by various super powers, a mindset developed which regards formal rules as something that only need to be seem to be kept. Things were no different under Kadar, and this is why it is so difficult to overcome this mindset. "The Kadar system was a 'soft dictatorship' because it was softened by lies. It was more bearable than other dictatorships because even the system often did not take its rules seriously. This gave rise to system of formal and informal rules, through which Hungarians had to navigate. The corruption of the dictatorship sweetened the system, but this doesn't mean that a system is only good when it's corrupt. The soft dictatorship led to a soft transition to democracy, whose conditions society is trying to soften with the old methods again. But democracy does not get sweeter through corruption, but sour and bitter."
After the attack on Silvio Berlusconi, members of parliament are hurling polemic at the so-called Berlusconi hate campaigns on the Internet. Andrea Botta calls on his compatriots to join the Christmas Eve demonstrations in Rome against the plans of the centre-right to control and limit Internet access. "In recent months a number of centre-right-politicians have been trying to pass new laws to reduce online freedom. (...) No one knows yet exactly what's written in the draft bill that the Minister of the Interior Roberto Maroni threatened in response to the Tartaglia case." (Massimo Tartaglia hit Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on December 13 with a statuette, breaking his nose.) "The closure of a number of Facebook groups has provoked further outrage. Several Berlusconi hate sites may have been closed but dozens are still up and running (for example: Kill Balotelli). There is talk about introducing restrictions but also about working directly with providers (Google, YouTube, Facebook etc.) to close unwanted sites. Vice-Minister Paolo Romani has created a buzz by suggesting that livestream content should subjected to private TV regulation. Apart from clipping the wings of hundreds of blogs and websites, this also represents a conflict of interest for the premier, because it would benefit big business which is also trying to offer its content online - like Mediaset, for example, which is preparing to launch a site much like the American video site Hulu."
Leo McKinstry once again throws open the issue of the rationale behind the British bombing of German cities during WWII. Having scoured a number of archives, he concludes that the hundreds of thousands of German victims were not killed by accident but deliberation: "Typical was a paper, now in the archives of Cambridge University, written in August 1941 by the bombing operations directorate of the air ministry. This argued that the focus of future British attacks must be 'the people in their homes and in factories, also the services such as electricity, gas and water upon which the industrial and domestic life of the area depends'. Warming to this theme, the directorate then found support for such theories in the Luftwaffe's bombing of Coventry. To most Britons, this attack had been an outrage. To the Air Staff, it was an inspiration. The assault on Coventry, argued the paper, was 'one of the most successful raids carried out by the German Air Force on this country', with a ton of high explosive and incendiaries for every 800 citizens. 'If Bomber Command could carry out a raid on the Coventry scale every month, the result would be a complete state of panic in the industrialised west of Germany', as well as 'considerable loss of life and limb, widespread destruction and damage to the houses of workers'."
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.
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.