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roundup
Post #329 • July 23, 2004, 8:46 AM • 8 Comments
Omar Sommereyns for Street Weekly: Picturing Pablo: Picasso's Suite 347 is one of the master's last, great statements on the subject that still intrigues us most: Picasso.
David Minthorn for the Associated Press, picked up by the Miami Herald: Spellbinding wrinkles, smiles of old China. This is about a show in New York City, because nothing worthy of note is going on in the art world in Miami, apparently.
Miami New Times: Current Art Shows.
Go, try to find an art review on the Sun-Sentinel website.
Michael Mills for the Broward/Palm Beach New Times: Artbeat: 53rd Annual All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition.
Gary Schwan for the Palm Beach Post: A gathering of masters. I'm glad at least one South Florida daily sees fit to write about visual art in Miami this week.
2.
July 23, 2004, 6:02 PM
There may or may not be something about art in the Sun Sentinel . . . the general state of print publication web sites is shockingly bad.
1) Only the most recent issue is consistently online. Then, articles seem to disappear (and sometimes change) with not pattern. Newspapers are primarily text. Online mass storage goes for about a dollar per gigabyte these days. I haven't done the math, but i think it would be a trivial expense to keep everything online.
2) Images. WHY are photos that appear in print consistently missing from the online versions of articles? And why, when they appear, are they anywhere between the size of a postage stamp and a business card? You would think they could have easily a half dozen pictures online, and high-rez.
For an industry who's existence is threatened by the internet, newspapers sure aren't trying very hard to be useful. Maybe they're trying to cripple online content so that people are encouraged to buy the print version?
3.
July 23, 2004, 8:00 PM
It is always nice to have something new from Omar the Street Critic. Now he is clueing us in on Picasso. For example, he lays the "romanticized legend" of Picasso's reputation as a "womanizer, temperamental genius and workaholic" at the hands of "numerous biographers." Funny, I always though Picasso actually was all these things. Omar himself refers to Picasso's "rapacious libido" later on. Oh, well.
Omar also informs us that Picasso "first explored printmaking in the 1930s" which came as a big surprise to me, because I always labored under the misconception that Picasso had made prints as early as 1904. Guess I'd better bone up on my art history, right, Omar?
The "53rd Annual All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition" piece carries an illustration of something that looks like a towel on a pole. It is unlabelled, but the implication is that it is the "smart choice for Best in Show," "... a prickly piece called "Is It So? #2," by Denise Moody Tackley of Boca, who uses fine-mesh metal screen and wire, festooned with safety pins, for a surprisingly nuanced commentary on matrimony." Let's make the trip up to Boca to see that one in person, folks.
I agree with Jack about Gary Schwan; I mentioned him in connection with last week's Roundup. He has a nice lively way of writing, despite some painful artspeak here and there. However I worry about his eye. As you said, he seems to have gone for the Othoniel show at MoCA, or at least maintained a very neutral position. As far as I am concerned, one cannot maintain neutrality about such dreck.
Franklin's ironic observation that it takes a Palm Beach writer to devote a full column to 4 shows in Miami is certainly appropriate, and, once again, points out that...well, I guess it is a well-beaten dead horse by now. We just gotta do better.
Oh, and Alesh, your complaint about newspapers online and the lack of pictures is also well-taken. It is a continual frustration. I think habits in a new medium get established quickly and badly, and then it takes years to change.
4.
July 24, 2004, 6:39 PM
One of the things I am not is a lawyer. Let me mention this to explain why there are not many images with web articles or images are so small if there are any.
Copyright law of the United States and related laws in title 17:
Chapter 1 Section 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
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You can read more about copyright matters at www.copyright.gov
5.
July 24, 2004, 7:24 PM
Yeah. So?
6.
July 24, 2004, 7:33 PM
Momoko, that's not the reason. Nearly any image can be reproduced without authorization for journalistic purposes. Newspapers have huge leeway regarding fair use, and no artist would be silly enough to contest the free publicity anyway. I think Oldpro is right - once a content management system is set up for every Knight-Ridder newspaper and years' worth of content is installed on it, engineering valid markup, navigability, usability, clarity, and beauty into it after the fact is painful, and perhaps more to the point, expensive. Since the Herald has no competition as a local daily news source, they have no reason to improve their online presence.
7.
July 24, 2004, 11:01 PM
Franklin, the Herald may have no bottom-line reason for improvement, given the lack of competition, but there are other reasons for doing so--it's just that such reasons tend to be ignored when all that really matters IS the bottom line.
8.
July 25, 2004, 4:41 PM
I still don't get it. For two examples, Knight-Ridder and New Times are both large, national corporations that own more then a few different publications. I've got to believe that they each have a big national web-development team that creates most of the architecture for their publications web sites. If that's the case, and considering both companies appear to spend money lavishly on other stuff, it would seem worth the money to re-design their systems. . .
Also, why wouldn't they have built in support for pictures from the beginning?
1.
Jack
July 23, 2004, 5:14 PM
Even though he's too soft on the glass nonsense at MoCA, I kind of like Gary Schwan. He's worth keeping an eye on. I'm glad this blog brought him to my attention.