My earlier post regarding arts news on the front page was, I believe, a bit misconstrued--I'm no purist when it comes to writing or reading about the arts (in fact, most of my own work on music during the past few years might reasonably be considered political stuff). Yet I'll not belabor the points I was trying to make back then.

I will however take note of arts news on the front page again (below the fold), in today's New York Times. It's a piece about the Lincoln Center Festival's presentation of "The Demons" this July. Since my wife is the fest's general manager (thus, I never actually write about the festival), this was much the dinner table talk at my home. And since this site's own John Rockwell was founding director of the festival (during a short hiatus from his long career at the Times), I figured the piece raised at least his eyebrows.

Patrick Healy's article is interesting not just for its placement, but for its approach to what is ostensibly an arts-marketing "hot ticket in town" story: Healy quotes at length folks who have purchased tickets (sort of like in those Broadway TV ads, only this time before the show has been seen, and with admittedly more substantive comments) and gets into the sticky business of box office politics (how many tickets go to institutional patrons and to press). I'm curious to know how all this struck our crowd.

As Michael Day reports in The Independent, "researchers from the universities of Ravenna and Bologna have prepared DNA tests on the corpses in a Tuscan crypt that many believe contains [Caravaggio's] remains. They have already narrowed their investigation down to nine corpses, which have been sent to Ravenna for carbon-dating."

Reuters' Marie-Louise Gumuchian duly visits the Italian town of Caravaggio, where "a team of Italian anthropologists" went this week to conduct DNA "tests with possible descendents -- some of them carrying derivations of the family name. As Caravaggio died childless the team looked for the painter's closest blood descendents in search of a match."

Meanwhile, in The New York Times, Michael Kimmelman largely ignores the quest for the artist's remains in favor of discussing his work -- including the argument that "Caravaggio has gradually, if unevenly, overtaken Michelangelo."

"It's a two-hour version with no intermission, and it's very action-packed," said Mr. Burdman, who's directing the play. Audiences will be able to get in on the action to some extent by following the show as it moves around the center. "Wear comfortable shoes," Mr. Burdman said. "We've got seven flights of stairs." NYT 3/5/2010

This New York Times excerpt is from a story about a New York Classical Theater production of "Hamlet" directed by the company's artistic director Stephen Burdman. The show is in rehearsal for its opening in April at the World Financial Center, a sprawling space in Lower Manhattan. But the excerpt also tells us a little something about the increasing power of audience participation in live theater - in its process and performance. It's the age of the video games and reality TV, after all, and we want live theater to be engaging not only of our minds but of our bodies, too. We want to be stakeholders in the narrative. Theatergoers and even passersby who witness a sword fight between two Danes downtown should not be alarmed. It's just art. And on the night of the show, you can fully expect to use those comfortable shoes to "get in on the action."

Live theater is now a performance event for everyone!

In Cambridge, Mass., where I live, American Repertory Theater's artistic director Diane Paulus has put muscle into audience participation. Last year, she re-staged her crowd-inclusive "Donkey Show"; it's now running indefinitely in the theater's annex space where nearly nightly crowds turn out to dance alongside the "Midsummer Night's Dream"-cum-Studio 54 disco cast. One addict apparently has seen the show 30 times. (I've been three times.)

We critics, reviewers, consumer reporters - call us what you will - are the dung beetles of culture. We consume excrement, enriching the soil and protecting livestock from bacterial infection in the process. We are intrinsic to the theatre ecology. Eliminate us at your peril.

I was nine and I asked my dad, "Can I have your movie camera? That old, wind-up 8 millimeter camera that was in your drawer?" And he goes, "Sure, take it." And I took it and I started making movies with it and I started being as creative as I could, and never once in my life did my parents ever say, "What you're doing is a waste of time." Never. And I grew up, I had teachers, I had colleagues, I had people that I worked with all through my life who always told me what you're doing is not a waste of time. So that was normal to me that it was OK to do that. I know there are kids out there that don't have that support system so if you're out there and you're listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it. It's not a waste of time. Do it. OK?

That's right -- you could say the Americans and the English are divided by a common language. And not just the words. But I've quite enjoyed it. Granta's history has always been hybrid: an English literary magazine, resurrected by Americans, embraced by the English, and populated by writers from Ingo Schulze to Milan Kundera with of course generous contributions by the profoundly talented British and American novelists who have grown up with us. I think those moments of cultural friction are actually what give the magazine its distinct feel and texture. Managing that and making it into art, rather than something disjointed, is a much bigger challenge than figuring out when it's my turn to buy the round at a pub.

Even if the three critics take Gray up on his offer to let them continue as freelancers, there's no question that readers will notice the difference. Using what has become boilerplate language for media industry budget cutters, Gray told survivors in a memo, "Our goal is the same: To maintain, or improve, our quality coverage." A laudable ambition, but firing people is a thoroughly unrealistic way of attempting to reach it, as editors and publishers well know. What's remarkable is that, as long as they're dealing in fantasy, they don't come up with better talking points.

The issue is not solely one of skilled, experienced critics being cut loose -- though McCarthy, a 31-year veteran of Variety, speaks eloquently to that in an interview with Sharon Waxman. There's also the matter of what happens behind the scenes. Newspapers never have had fact-checkers as such, but good editors and copy editors serve that function, and they've saved many a writer's butt from inaccuracies, inadvertently libelous statements, and general sloppiness. Of course, it helps immensely when those editors know the writers, and therefore know what to look out for. With fewer editors, and freelancers rather than staff writers, the holes in the safety net get larger, and the publication suffers. That can get expensive. For a current case study from a related industry, see publishing's "The Last Train From Hiroshima" debacle.

Charles Aaron on the death of Barry Hannah (Spin)
Laura Bleiberg reviews the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre (Los Angeles Times)
Larry Blumenfeld on Robin D. G. Kelley's "Thelonious Monk" (ListenGood)
Robert Campbell on an urban paradox embodied (The Boston Globe)
Robert Christgau on Dessa's "A Badly Broken Code" (msn.com)
Laura Collins-Hughes on Gina Welch's "In the Land of Believers" (Los Angeles Times)
Lily Tung Crystal on Asian-American actors in the Bay Area (American Theatre)
Francis Davis on Dee Dee Bridgewater and Stephanie Nakasian (The Village Voice)
Sasha Frere-Jones on Bill Withers (The New Yorker)
Matthew Gurewitsch goes nose to Nose with William Kentridge (The New York Times)
Matthew Gurewitsch reviews a Karajan documentary (Pundicity, courtesy Opera News)
Christopher Hawthorne on the death of Raimund Abraham (Los Angeles Times)
John Horn on documentaries and the Oscar effect (Los Angeles Times)
Ann Hornaday on Tim Burton and Johnny Depp's collaboration (The Washington Post)
Marty Hughley profiles Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Bill Rauch (The Oregonian)
Marty Hughley on the revival of ARTicles (The Oregonian)
Ann Powers reviews Jimi Hendrix's "Valleys of Neptune" (Los Angeles Times)
Craig Seligman on St. Clair McKelway (The New York Times)
Laura Sydell on unsigned musicians flocking to ASCAP (NPR)
Laura Sydell on Spotify's impending U.S. launch (NPR)
Werner Trieschmann on Rogue Wave (Nashville Scene)
Jerome Weeks interviews Lou Reed about his landscape photography (KERA, Dallas)
Jerome Weeks talks theater with Mike Daisey (KERA, Dallas)

It is reassuring, and somewhat amazing, that this is a difficult and prized ticket to get your hands on; an Oscar after-party is probably easier to sneak into. I arrived "early" at 8 a.m. Saturday to make sure I could get a table for my party of eight, and despaired when I saw there were hundreds ahead of me. Luck was with me, this time, and I managed to score a table.

It's always a long day. Happily, this year's authors had differing styles and wonderful stories to relate. The four headliners were: Joan Silber ("The Size of the World"), who started with her bookworm childhood (a common theme) and her writing process; Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison ("An Unquiet Mind" and "Nothing Was the Same"), a memoirist and psychiatrist who often addressed her bi-polar disorder; Jane Hamilton ("A Map of the World" and "Laura Rider's Masterpiece"), whose talk - "Is life tragic or comic?" - was a clothesline on which to hang hilarious tales about fighting Wal-mart, a sex show on HBO, and other absurdities; and Jincy Willett ("The Writing Class"), who read the opening chapter of her work-in-progress. The large group split into three for lectures by first-time novelists Jennifer Cody Epstein, Padma Viswanathan and Debra Dean. Book were sold in a separate room. Lunch was chicken salad, rolls and a chocolate-covered strawberry confection.

If there were such a thing as an ideal moment for a small, experimental arts group to find itself in temporary digs, trying to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for a new home and stabilize its finances, the Great Recession probably wouldn't be it. Nonetheless, that was the unlucky timing of San Francisco visual arts organization Southern Exposure, which had decamped in 2006 from its longtime space, expecting to return after a seismic upgrade.

Instead, a series of delays foiled that plan, leaving it a nomad in the depths of the downturn, in a famously expensive city. But SoEx has been rooted in that city since 1974, and vulnerability did not turn into defeat. This past October, it finally moved into its new home: a sleek, 4,000-square-foot rented space in a gritty, industrial zone of the Mission District, kitty-corner from a pipe organ factory. The inaugural exhibition of commissioned work addressed a topic that must have been much on Southern Exposure's collective mind during those wandering years: "scenarios related to an uncertain and ever-shifting future."

Quantitative second place among the collage titles goes to "I Have No Credentials." Again, I can't quite remember when and how it reared its homely little head, but just a couple of years ago, long after I'd quit making the lil' buggers, I had one of those late-night, fatigue-driven (I don't drink) pseudo-epiphanies that disrupt your cognitive life for a few days, maybe a week, then usually fade away. This one hasn't, not entirely, and here it is: There are only two human intellectual enterprises objectively and universally worthwhile--physics (i.e., figuring out how the world, the universe, is put together and how it works), and medicine (i.e., keeping people alive and functioning); everything else--the arts, religion, philosophy, etc.--is more or less bullshit. Stunningly elaborate and wonderfully distracting and palliative bullshit at times, but still bullshit.

The reason why this dubious insight (present here only for me to describe, not to argue as a debate proposition) has stayed with me is because, even at the bullshit end of the spectrum of human endeavors, I appear to myself to be more devoid of "credentials" than the usual denizen of the arts. Like Arthur Miller's traveling salesmen, I'm out there riding on a smile (though with me it's usually a frown) and a shoeshine...and little else.

So packed, what with the 10 nominees for best picture, that the Kodak Theatre is getting uncomfortably crowded, at least in terms of the number of people jostling for orchestra seats. In a story about Oscar-ceremony ticket demand, Variety raises the specter of nominated producers being seated in the parterre. Horrors: the back of the house!

The Wall Street Journal does the math and concludes that a best-picture statue for "The Hurt Locker" would smash a record held by Woody Allen since 1978: lowest-grossing winner "in modern history -- and maybe ever." Women & Hollywood, meanwhile, contemplates what it means if Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win best director, and what it means if she doesn't.

The New York Times poses the question, "Do the Oscars Undermine Artistry?," while the Associated Press notes the corn industry's very different concern: that a best-documentary win for "Food, Inc." could damage its reputation.

Also, a bit of fun: The Los Angeles Times suggests chocolate dresses as a good look for the red carpet, and TheWrap offers a story and slideshow on a pair of human-size, "mysterious 'skeleton-Oscar' statues" that appeared Thursday morning in Los Angeles, one near the Hollywood sign.

Click here for Monday's strip.