Birou Notarial8

Missouri local school board ends ban on Slaughterhouse Five

By Kevin Murphy

KANSAS CITY, Missouri | Tue Sep 20, 2011 12:46am EDT

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - A school board in southwest Missouri on Monday restored two books it had banned from public schools for being contrary to teachings in the Bible.

The Republic School Board voted 6-0 to make the two books - "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Twenty Boy Summer" - available to students for independent reading as long as they are kept in a secure section of the school library.

Only parents or guardians can check them out.

Under a policy the board adopted in July, teachers still cannot make the books required reading nor read them aloud in school. The old policy had removed the books from the school altogether.

The novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is a satirical account of the bombing of Dresden, Germany, during World War II. Some people object to violence, language and sexual material in the book.

"Twenty Boy Summer," by Sarah Ockler, is about young people and sexual relationships.

Area resident Wesley Scroggins, a Missouri State University associate business professor, objected to those books and other materials he said "create false conceptions of American history and government and or that teach principles contrary to Biblical morality and truth."

Several anti-censorship organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, sharply criticized the book ban, which received national attention.

In August, The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis offered up to 150 copies of "Slaughterhouse-Five" to any Republic students who wanted to read it.

(Edited by Peter Bohan)

John Martin, "master of apocalypse," gets rare show

A worker walks past John Martin's recently restored ''The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum'', in Tate Britain in central London September 19, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Andrew Winning

By Mike Collett-White

LONDON | Mon Sep 19, 2011 11:59am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - The public adored John Martin's apocalyptic images of destruction and chaos yet the art establishment shunned him, helping to consign the British artist's works to the storage vaults.

Now a new show at London's Tate Britain gallery seeks to remind modern viewers what all the fuss was about nearly 200 years ago, when thousands of people queued to see Martin's work.

Charting the artist's rise to stardom, fall from grace and brief posthumous rehabilitation, "John Martin: Apocalypse" represents the largest display of Martin's works seen in public since 1822.

The exhibition, which runs from September 21-January 15, 2012 also features Martin's "lost" masterpiece, "The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum," painted in 1821 but badly damaged in a flood in 1928.

Experts have carried out a painstaking restoration of the large, dramatic canvas, and the work will be seen in public for the first time in almost a century.

"His images touched the lives of thousands of ordinary people in Britain and around the world, but his reputation has suffered from art world snobbery and misunderstanding," said Martin Myrone, curator of the show.

Martin is best known for his large canvases depicting spectacular scenes from the Bible, legend and history in which the romanticized backdrop -- architectural or natural -- dwarfs the human element.

Among the earliest examples on display in the exhibition is "Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion," dated 1812, based on James Ridley's popular Orientalist fantasy "Tales of the Genii."

Myrone said the picture was deliberately designed and executed to have maximum impact at the Royal Academy exhibition where it was first displayed.

He said Martin chose the upright format rather than the more familiar landscape, and painted in bright red to draw viewers' attention to the dramatic work.

"John Martin was trying to make a name for himself and grab public attention," Myrone told reporters at a preview of the show.

The tactic worked, and Martin built on his early success with a series of blockbuster paintings, notably "Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon" (1816), "The Fall of Babylon" (1819) and "Belshazzar's Feast" (1820).

Two were purchased by Martin's former employer in 1821 and went on display in a touring exhibition around the country that was highly profitable for the organizers but made little or no money for Martin himself.

The artist, never slow to eye a commercial opportunity, aimed to match the success of that tour with his own solo exhibition in London, where "The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum" was the centerpiece.

Soon after, he turned his attention to producing a series of mezzotint engravings to illustrate John Milton's "Paradise Lost" after receiving a hefty commission.

His work with prints helped spread his fame around the world, although they did little to enamor the critics who became increasingly hostile to his work.

John Ruskin, the arbiter of artistic taste in the 19th century, once wrote: "Martin's works are merely a common manufacture, as much makeable to order as a tea-tray or a coal-scuttle."

Myrone said he suspected "some form of class prejudice" in such judgments, while Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis saw parallels between Martin's self-promotion and that of contemporary artist Damien Hirst.

The exhibition, organized roughly chronologically, dedicates a separate room to Martin's "Last Judgment" triptych painted toward the end of his life.

According to the Tate, the pictures were on show from 1854, the year of Martin's death, until the 1870s, travelled across Britain as well as to New York and Australia and were seen by up to eight million members of the public.

By the turn of the 20th century, they were out of sight and out of mind, dismissed as examples of Victorian "bad taste."

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Russian modern art gets younger, less politicized

By Nastassia Astrasheuskaya

MOSCOW | Tue Sep 20, 2011 5:01am EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Up-and-coming artists competing for Russia's top contemporary art prize kicked off a marathon of exhibits in the Russian capital, which hosts the fourth Moscow Biennale.

A studio strewn with musty books, pages rustling in an artificial breeze; a multicolored play-dough cube squeezed into a cage; and a sphere made out of hundreds of plastic bags were among the 40 art works contesting the prestigious Kadinsky prize.

Named after abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1904), the award hands out cash-prizes of up to $55,100 to modern artists featured at Moscow's Central House of Artists.

"This exhibit cuts across Russia's contemporary art and art forms of today," said Shalva Breus, who founded the award in 2007.

Breus hailed an increase in the number of younger participants and avant-guard ideas alongside a steady decline in Soviet symbolism in Russian art.

"If three years ago, artists widely addressed imperial symbolism, be it of the Russian empire or the Soviet empire, there is no more of that today," he told Reuters at the opening. "There are many more abstract installations."

The fading references to Soviet symbolism in contemporary art highlights that award nominees are getting younger each year, with today's art students born at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The trend may also be market-driven, as younger collectors emerge in Russia, demanding art that speaks to post-Communist era, participants said.

"The buyers of Russian modern art are mostly Russians, and the new emerging trend is that there are a lot more younger collectors nowadays: The so-called 'Progressive Youth'," said Mikhail Molochnikov, a Russian artist working in Moscow, Berlin and Zurich galleries.

Globalization is also erasing the focus on local politics and history, experts said. Nevertheless, a few artists waxed nostalgic for Soviet times and one work -- "First Grade" -- depicted the legs of schoolchildren in traditional Soviet gear.

While themes are changing, Russian contemporary artists lagged behind their Western peers in the use of innovative materials, Breus said.

"We are trying to catch up with the West and we are copying European artists but we are definitely still falling behind," he said.

A jury will vote on the winners by the end of the exhibit, which is on until October 7. There are three categories in which to win: "Project of the Year," "Best Young Artist," and "Media-art Project of the Year."

The fourth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art opens on Thursday, lighting up galleries across the city until November.

($1 = 0.725 Euros)

(Reporting By Nastassia Astrasheuskaya; editing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Paul Casciato)

joi, 22 septembrie 2011

Warhol painting among $2.8 million Irish bad bank auction

DUBLIN | Mon Sep 19, 2011 8:18am EDT

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's state-run "bad bank" will auction works of art by the likes of Andy Warhol and Alex Katz after it put global auction house Christies in charge of a 14-painting collection valued at up $2.8 million on Monday.

Created to purge Irish banks of their risky real estate loans, the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) is selling helicopters and private jets as well as skyscrapers and five-star hotels to try and claw back the 31 billion euros ($42.7 billion) it has shelled out for the loans.

NAMA's chief executive said in July that the agency was getting tough on the lavish lifestyles of some of its debtors, many of whom became household names before a property crash brought Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" economy to an abrupt end.

Christie's said the collection -- which includes Warhol's "Dollar Sign" painting that it values at between $400,000 and $600,000 -- belonged to one NAMA debtor and was being offered with the debtor's co-operation.

The Irish Times newspaper reported last month that the collection was formerly owned by Derek Quinlan, an ex-tax inspector who went on to buy several of London's top hotels, including the Savoy.

NAMA has seized control of a number a buildings belonging to Quinlan who also owned part of the Citigroup Tower in London's Canary Wharf business district, which was put on the market earlier this year for more than 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion).

A spokesman for NAMA said it would not comment on the identity of the debtor.

U.S. pop art painter Alex Katz's "Ace Airport" will go under the hammer along with Warhol's Dollar Sign in Christie's New York auction room on November 9 and is expected to fetch between $150,000 and $200,000.

Works by William Scott, Roderic O'Connor and Jack Butler Yeats -- brother of Irish author and poet W.B. Yeats -- will be auctioned in London a week later.

($1 = 0.725 Euros)

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Anna Willard and Paul Casciato)

luni, 19 septembrie 2011

U.S. needs a wake-up call, says new Friedman book

Author of the book, ''The ''World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century'', Thomas Friedman delivers a speech at a seminar held by Asia Society in Hong Kong December 16, 2008.

Credit: Reuters/Woody Wu

By Andrea Burzynski

NEW YORK | Fri Sep 16, 2011 1:04pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new book by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum began with a broken subway escalator the authors encountered during their daily commutes that they saw as epitomizing the state of politics and economy.

"That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back" comes at a time when many Americans are puzzling over the issue posed by the title.

Faced with stagnating unemployment numbers, an historic credit downgrade by S&P, and partisan rancor over how to reduce the U.S. debt, the two foreign policy columnists tap into public hunger for answers.

"People are getting more and more concerned. When you see the polls, you find a large majority feels the country is on the wrong track," Mandelbaum told Reuters.

The authors, who describe themselves as "frustrated optimists," attempt to diagnose America's problems and prescribe solutions to return to a robust economy.

The book, which has hit No. 3 on the Publishers Weekly hardcover nonfiction bestsellers list after its release last week, addresses a wide range of popular issues such as the national debt, education, energy consumption and technology.

Friedman and Mandelbaum take pride in the United States' past successes, which they attribute to a set of policy priorities they call "the American formula".

The formula includes government investment in education, infrastructure and research and development, attracting and retaining the most promising immigrants, and certain regulations on the private economy.

"America didn't get to where it is today in terms of its vibrancy and level of development by accident. It got here by applying this formula," said Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist. "The book is a wake-up call and a pep talk to get back to that formula."

PASS THE POTATO CHIPS

America's problems have come about because it has strayed from its formula for success and failed to take leadership on issues that will be integral to future prosperity, such as energy technology, write Friedman and Mandelbaum.

For example, the authors point out that U.S. consumers spent more money on potato chips in 2009 than their government applied to energy research and development.

The book also decries "magical thinking" about the economy, which the authors cite as a key factor in the spiraling deficit. They call on the United States to "spend less, save more, and accept higher taxes".

"We really feel a sense of urgency about this," Friedman said. "We're driving around right now in a car without a bumper or a spare tire."

The authors also take aim at the political partisanship they feel is responsible for exacerbating many of the country's problems. "We really believe the country is nowhere near as divided as our politics right now," said Friedman.

As Congress returns to Washington after summer break, presidential candidates campaign, and President Obama touts a major new proposal to encourage job growth, Americans are eager for a plan to address their country's woes.

Friedman and Mandelbaum call for "political shock therapy," a third party presidential candidate who will adopt pragmatic solutions from both ends of the political spectrum and speak truth about the consequences of maintaining the status quo.

"We believe that it's the platform that's important, not the candidate," said Mandelbaum, who has written more than a dozen books and is a US foreign policy professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Though they are not optimistic that such a candidate could be elected, the authors believe he or she could have a major influence on the nation's political priorities as a whole.

For Friedman, the author of the bestseller "The World is Flat", the stakes are also personal.

"If we can't sustain the American dream, my daughters will not just grow up in a different America -- they will grow up in a different world," he said.

(editing by Christine Kearney and Bob Tourtellotte)

"Father of pop art" Richard Hamilton dies aged 89

By Mike Collett-White

LONDON | Tue Sep 13, 2011 12:00pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - British artist Richard Hamilton, regarded by many as the father of pop art, died on Tuesday. He was 89.

"This is a very sad day for all of us and our thoughts are with Richard's family, particularly his wife Rita and his son Rod," art dealer and gallery owner Larry Gagosian said.

A statement from the gallery called Hamilton the "father of pop art" and a "pioneering artist of unparalleled skill, invention and lasting authority.

"His influence on subsequent generations of artists continues to be immeasurable."

Nicholas Serota, director of London's Tate gallery, added: "Greatly admired by his peers, including (Andy) Warhol and (Joseph) Beuys, Hamilton produced a series of exquisite paintings, drawings, prints and multiples dealing with themes of glamour, consumption, commodity and popular culture."

Despite his age, Hamilton had been working until just a few days ago on a major museum retrospective of his work scheduled to travel to Los Angeles, Philadelphia, London and Madrid in 2013/14.

Gagosian did not say how Hamilton died or where, although he was in Britain.

Hamilton's best known work was his 1956 collage "Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?," considered by some historians to mark the birth of the pop art movement.

Hamilton is also credited with coining the phrase "pop art" itself, in a note to some architects who were considering putting on an exhibition with him along similar lines to the 1956 "This Is Tomorrow" show.

In words dating from 1957 that are seen as prescient of the likes of Warhol and, more recently, Damien Hirst, he wrote:

"Pop art is popular (designed for a mass audience), transient (short term solution), expendable (easily forgotten), low cost, mass produced, young (aimed at youth), witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business."

Hamilton is often associated with the swinging 60s, including for his painting of Mick Jagger and art dealer Robert Fraser in handcuffs following a drugs raid.

He also designed the sleeve of the Beatles' "White Album," consisting of a plain white sleeve with the band's name embossed on it.

Hamilton is remembered for his modesty and sense of humor as well as his artistic talent.

Asked about people's perception of "Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?," he said in a recent newspaper interview: "I'm rather bored with it but it's a nice little earner!"

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

San Francisco hopes graffiti vandals will go virtual

By Laird Harrison

OAKLAND, Calif | Tue Sep 13, 2011 1:46am EDT

OAKLAND, Calif (Reuters) - San Francisco arts officials are embracing what they say is a digital-age solution to the decades-old problem of graffiti: An iPhone application that allows "virtual" tagging instead of the real thing.

The app, Graff City, uses augmented reality -- software in which digital information can be added to a photograph -- to create the appearance that the user is finger-painting or spray-painting on any surface within view.

The user can then take a picture of his creation and upload it to Facebook or e-mail it to another user. Other users who visit a tagged location can see what previous users have done.

"The goal is to give young people who might be tempted to tag or vandalize property an alternative," Tyra Fennell, arts education program manager for the San Francisco Arts Commission, told Reuters.

The app was created by the marketing firm McCann Worldgroup, which offers it free through the iTunes store.

"It encourages the actual art form rather than defacing public property," McCann account supervisor Ben Stender said.

Fennell said Graff City is an extension of the city's StreetSmARTS program, in which graffiti artists compete for $3,000 grants to paint murals on walls made available by property owners.

But artists must fill out applications, submit portfolios and be selected by a panel of judges in order to participate in StreetSmARTS, and so far only 30 walls have been offered up.

By contrast, Graff City is available to anyone with an iPhone, and in the future the application may be adapted to iPads and other brands of smart phone, Stender said.

While no one has surveyed graffiti arts to see how many have iPhones, Fennell believes a significant number will be able to take advantage of the program.

"The presumption is that people who tag are lowlifes or thugs," she said. "That's not true. There are people in private school who tag. And I have a sense that most people have cell phones, and a large number have iPhones."

But Bob Van Gelder, president of Graffiti Specialists graffiti removal company in San Francisco, was skeptical of the iPhone app's ability to deter taggers.

Some are motivated to mark their territory in real as opposed to virtual space, while others want to cause malicious mischief, he said, adding that some might even use the app to plan their vandalism.

"My first thought is they could use it as a sketch which they would then transfer to a wall" with real paint, he said.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Cynthia Johnston)

Book fanned long love of Japan for noted scholar

By Yuko Takeo

TOKYO | Thu Sep 15, 2011 12:53am EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - An ancient Japanese book believed to be the world's first novel helped U.S.-born scholar Donald Keene fall in love with Japan more than 70 years ago.

Now 89, the man who befriended giants of Japanese literature such as Yukio Mishima has returned to his adopted home to take up citizenship and live out the rest of his life.

"1940 was the worst year of my life. I think it was the worst year of their life for most people in the western world," Keene told reporters.

But reading "The Tale of Genji," a 11-century book depicting the life and loves of a prince at the Japanese court nearly a thousand years ago, changed everything.

"I realized how there was another world possible. The contrast between my daily world, which was horror, and their world, in which they made everything they touched beautiful, talking poetry," he said.

"I felt like a barbarian, but a grateful barbarian."

Keene, who graduated from university in 1942, studied Japanese language under the auspices of the U.S. Navy and subsequently worked in military intelligence during World War Two, interrogating prisoners and translating documents.

He then went on to a career as a noted scholar of Japanese literature and is credited with playing a key role in gaining recognition for "The Tale of Genji" as world-class literature.

But after more than half a century teaching at New York's Columbia University, he retired this spring and came to Japan.

On Mishima, who was notorious for committing ritual suicide in 1970 after trying to carry out a coup the day he delivered the final book of a series to his publisher, Keene said aspects of his friend of nearly two decades were always hard to understand.

"I received one of the last three letters he wrote. What he said was that he thought I understood him. Perhaps I did understand him, but not enough," he said.

"He was a unique person. There's no one like him now in the world of Japanese literature, I'm sorry to say."

After spending most of his life bringing Japan and the West closer through literature, Keene felt that his return was appropriate, largely as a way of thanking his Japanese friends.

Asked why he had finally decided to take up Japanese citizenship, Keene said, "I got tired of being different. I wanted to become Japanese, as much as my face permits."

(Editing by Elaine Lies)

Book Talk: Historian unearths human story of Britain's spies

By William Maclean

LONDON | Thu Sep 15, 2011 7:29am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Writing authoritatively about a spy service is hard for an outsider but Britain's is a particularly tough case.

Fact must be sifted from a big body of popular fiction, much by novelists with an intelligence background including James Bond author Ian Fleming and the current Hollywood version of John le Carre's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" starring Gary Oldman as spymaster George Smiley.

Gordon Corera, author of a history of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from the Cold war to the present day, set out to solve this conundrum by persuading several former UK intelligence officers to tell him some of their best stories.

These personal recollections are blended with anecdotes culled from more narrowly focused histories and memoirs written by men and women of various nationalities who dealt with SIS, also known as MI6, while toiling in diplomacy or the armed services over the decades.

The result is "The Art of Betrayal: Life and Death in the British Secret Service" published by Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

He spoke to Reuters about the book.

Q: MI6 is one of the most written about organizations. It's a crowded field. What made you want to tell your version?

A: I wanted to tell the human story, in large part as that goes to the heart of what lies behind MI6's work in recruiting agents. I didn't want to write a history of committees, saying there were 13 desks looking at the Soviet Union on such and such a date and then x desks a few years later. I was looking for personal stories and motivations behind people like Oleg Penkovsky. That's what the service's work is about, what actually lies behind the act of spying. There's quite a lot in the public domain if you know where to look. So part of what I was trying to do was to bring together all that material but also add what I could from some particularly strong access to people like the late (SIS officer) Daphne Park. I had done a radio series where I had been into MI6 and interviewed the then chief John Scarlett. So I could tell an overarching story through to the present in a way that no one had done before.

Q: To what extent did you want to pick apart the magical reality that MI6 occupies in the public mind?

A: Fiction defines what we understand about British intelligence although many of the great fiction writers, whether it's le Carre, Ian Fleming or Graham Greene, had backgrounds in real intelligence work. I think that's a sign of how fact and fiction have become intertwined in a way which has become quite hard to separate, even for some of those of those within the organization. What I was trying to do was to say here was the fictional understanding of MI6, let's see what it's really like -- James Bond, John le Carre.

The answer is that at certain times it is a bit like that. There are periods of bravado or aggression that have not ended very well. There have been periods of le Carre-like introspection which have also been quite difficult. Fiction offers an interesting way of understanding some of the cultures within the organization, but equally I did want to say it isn't like the fiction. The truth is it's not about a license to kill or some of the other myths.

But there has been an interesting debate within MI6 about how far the fiction helps to serve their purpose in recruiting officers and agents in the field? Some have long believed it's quite useful to have this mystique. But there are others who argue - and who I think now have the upper hand - that it's actually a bit dangerous to over rely on the fiction. In the era of accountability and transparency it's not enough to rely on the fiction for people to have a better understanding.

Q: You described a service that was institutionally insecure about the way its bosses see it. Is that now resolved?

A: The insecurity in the past came out of secrecy. Precisely because it didn't officially exist, it didn't have a sound footing and could have been abolished at a whim. The insecurity was born out of some of its failures like the (Soviet agent) Kim Philby disaster. At the end of the Cold War, it does get a sound legal footing. Then you have a new crisis. There's a real sense of concern in the early 1990s as an organization about what it is for. You've got people going up to the Chief in Whitehall and saying jokingly "Oh, your still here! We didn't realize you're still around." September 11 seemed to answer some of those insecurities but in doing so it drew MI6 into politics and into the firmament of Iraq and very hot issues like the relationship with America and how it treated its detainees. Few would dispute now that we need an intelligence service, but at the same by moving out of the shadows and into the light they're also drawing a lot more scrutiny and coming under a lot more pressure than they did before. I don't think that's a threat to MI6's existence but it's posed a new set of questions about how close it gets to policy and politics.

Q: Has the shadow of the Iraq weapons of mass destruction been removed from SIS?

A: Iraqi WMD was a shattering blow. The pride of the organization is on recruiting good agents and here was one time when that was put on public display and it turned out to fall apart. Most of the sources just evaporated under scrutiny and that goes to the heart of what they are supposed to be doing which is recruiting agents and human intelligence. The only thing that's helped them is that there have been other issues since then for them to focus on and in particular dealing with the terrorist threat has given them a clear purpose.

Q: Do you get the sense that, if the files were opened or you had years more to research, you'd get a lot more stories, or do you feel you've got the best here, and the rest is a bit dull.

A: I think you'd find a few more triumphs and probably a few more disasters we didn't know about. I think there are a few agents run in the Cold War that have not come to light. It's easy for intelligence agencies to say all our successes are secret, our failures public. I'm not sure that's always true.

(Edited by Paul Casciato)

Lost Banksy mural uncovered on Berlin gallery wall

n">(Reuters) - British street artist Banksy's mural "Every Picture Tells a Lie" was rediscovered in Berlin this weekend, eight years after a gallery layered it in paint to create space for new works.

Banksy, whose identity is unknown to the public, is a world-renowned graffiti artist. His newly recovered mural was spray-painted in 2003 for an exhibit at a contemporary art gallery in Germany's capital.

The mural was excavated as part of an art project by Brad Downey, a Berlin-based American artist, whose exhibition is titled "What Lies Beneath" and focuses on layers of paint.

"The unearthing is Downey's project -- he wanted to play with it," said Stephane Bauer, head of the Kunstraum Bethanien gallery, where the Banksy work is being displayed.

Downey, who also took part in the 2003 exhibit, remembered Banksy's work and wanted to uncover it for his 2011 project.

Under Downey's careful instructions, restorers uncovered the artwork, which portrays winged-soldiers with smiley faces carrying guns. The words "Every Picture Tells a Lie" are scrawled in blood-red paint above them.

Banksy first drew attention in the early 1990s with controversial stenciled graffiti, seen by some as subversive and by others as satire.

His commercial pieces have sold for huge sums -- the most famous of which is "Space Girl and Bird," which was auctioned in 2007 for 288,000 pounds, or close to half a million dollars.

The gallery is unsure of what will happen to Banksy's work once Downey's exhibit ends on Oct 23rd. It could go back to hibernating behind white-washed walls -- that is, if someone doesn't try to buy it first.

But Bauer said it was difficult to say how much the Banksy is worth. "I don't think it can be worth much since it is just one layer of paint among many," Bauer told Reuters.

Gareth Williams, who has helped sell Banksy pieces in the past, said that in order to price one of his artworks, details are first sent to the artist's agency for authentication before the pieces can sell.

Williams, head of the Urban Art department for Bonham's Auction House in London, said that if the mural found in Berlin is authenticated, Bonham's would be happy to help the gallery owners sell it.

(Reporting By Natalia Drozdiak)

"Kill Me If You Can" tops best-sellers list

NEW YORK | Thu Sep 15, 2011 3:46pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Kill Me If You Can" held on to the top spot of the Publishers Weekly best-sellers list on Thursday.

The list is compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide.

Hardcover Fiction Last Week

1. "Kill Me If You Can" by James Patterson & Marshall Karp (Little, Brown, $27.99 1

2. "The Race" by Clive Cussler & Justin Scott (Putnam, $27.95) -

3. "Dark Predator" by Christine Feehan Berkley, $26.95 -

4. "A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin (Bantam, $35) 2

5. "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown, $25.99) -

6. "Prey" by Linda Howard (Ballantine, $26) -

7. "Pirate King" by Laurie R. King (Bantam, $25) -

8. "Flash and Bones" by Kathy Reichs (Scribner, $26.99) 4

9. "The Leftovers" by Tom Perrotta (St. Martin's, $25.99) 6

10. "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" by Stieg Larsson (Knopf, $27.95) 10

Hardcover nonfiction

1. "In My Time" by Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney (Threshold, $35) 1

2. "Start Something That Matters" by Blake Mycoskie (Spiegel & Grau, $22) -

3. "That Used to Be Us" by Thomas L. Friedman & Michael Mandelbaum (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28) -

4. "The Two-Second Advantage" by Vivek RanadivØ & Kevin Maney (Crown, $25) -

5. "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, $27) 4

6. "A Stolen Life" by Jaycee Dugard (Simon & Schuster, $24.99) 2

7. "In the Garden of Beasts" by Erik Larson (Crown, $26) 6

8. "The 17 Day Diet" by Dr. Mike Moreno (Free Press, $25) 3

9. "Bossypants" Tina Fey (LB/Reagan Arthur, $26.99) 12

10. "1493" by Charles C. Mann (Knopf, $30.50) 10

(Ediiting by Patricia Reaney)

One sentence letter by J.D. Salinger offered for $50,000

LITTLETON, New Hampshire | Tue Sep 13, 2011 11:53am EDT

LITTLETON, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Owners of a handwritten one-sentence letter by reclusive writer J.D. Salinger hope to sell the document for $50,000.

Writing in nearly illegible cursive on stationery bearing his initials, the author of "The Catcher in the Rye" and "Franny and Zooey" urges his maid to finish her chores before leaving for vacation so that he will not be "bothered with insignificant things."

In its listing on Ebay on Tuesday, the Nevada-based company selling the note calls autographed Salinger items "exceedingly rare."

Salinger, who lived in Cornish, New Hampshire until his death at age 91 in 2010, was so guarded about his personal life that he filed suit to block the publication of a biography based in part on his private letters. The author did not own a telephone and shunned contact with fans of his work.

The full letter dated March 12, 1989 reads, "Dear Mary -- Please make sure all the errands are done before you go on vacation, as I do not want to be bothered with insignificant things. Thank you. J.D. Salinger".

FBI arrests Florida man over L.A. art scam

Matthew Taylor, 43, of Vero Beach, Florida is shown in this mug shot released by the United States Attorneys office.

Credit: Reuters/U.S. Attorneys Office

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES | Thu Sep 15, 2011 6:58pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A former art dealer was arrested in Florida on Thursday on accusations he sold a Los Angeles collector forged paintings he claimed were by Claude Monet, Mark Rothko and others, federal prosecutors said.

Matthew Taylor, 43, of Vero Beach, Florida, was also accused of stealing paintings from a Los Angeles art gallery.

Taylor was charged in a federal grand jury indictment last week with wire fraud, money laundering, interstate transportation of stolen property and possession of stolen property. He faces up to 100 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

The wealthy Los Angeles art collector Taylor is accused of targeting bought more than 100 forged paintings from him for over $2 million between 2002 and 2007, the indictment said. The collector has not been identified.

"We just don't see that many cases along these lines," said Thom Mrozek, a Los Angeles-based spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Taylor, who years ago ran a gallery in San Diego, tried to pass off some of the paintings he sold to the Los Angeles collector as works of famous artists such as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement.

"The expertise he obtained working in the art world helped him perpetrate the fraud against the collector," Mrozek said.

The indictment said Taylor told the collector he got the paintings at estate sales, but that they were actually created by obscure artists and altered by Taylor to give them the appearance of works by famous painters.

He did that by painting over or otherwise obscuring signatures to hide the identity of the original artists, then forging signatures of famous artists, according to the indictment, unsealed on Thursday.

Prosecutors say Taylor also affixed on some paintings fake labels from museums, such as the Guggenheim in New York, to make it appear the works had once been part of the collections at those institutions.

In one instance, Taylor used the work of an artist who was close to Monet and had a similar style, passing it off as a creation of the great French impressionist, Mrozek said.

An attorney for Taylor could not be reached for comment.

The accusations that Taylor defrauded the Los Angeles collector by selling him over 100 paintings are contained in the wire fraud charges, Mrozek said. That is because selling an item under false pretenses is a form of fraud, he said.

Taylor is also charged in the indictment with stealing the painting "Seascape at Twilight" by the late landscape artist Granville Redmond from a gallery in Los Angeles and later selling it to a different gallery for $85,000.

The indictment also accuses him of stealing "Park Scene, Paris" by the late Lucien Frank from the same Los Angeles gallery.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Cynthia Johnston)

Dahl family seeks $800,000 to save writing hut

LONDON | Tue Sep 13, 2011 10:00am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Roald Dahl's family has launched an $800,000 campaign to relocate the garden hut where the British children's author created classics including "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "James and the Giant Peach."

Dahl, who died in 1990 aged 74, would go from his home in Great Missenden, northwest of London, to the hut in his garden every day for 30 years.

No one else was allowed into the small outbuilding, built in the 1950s from a single layer of bricks.

Dahl's grandson Luke Kelly came up with the idea to relocate the interior of the hut and its contents, including the author's own hip bone, to the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Center close to the family home.

The relocation is estimated to cost around 500,000 pounds ($790,101) organizers said on Tuesday. They hope to install the hut's interior and open it to the public by March 2012.

"When my grandfather died he left in his wake an aching gap, but also a palpable magic and limitless imagination, which is not exclusive to my family," said author and former model Sophie Dahl, the author's granddaughter.

"It is now time for us to save the hut, but even more importantly, to share it."

There has been some skeptical reaction to the Dahl family's fundraising campaign on micro-blogging site Twitter.

"Stella McCartney to appeal to taxpayers for money to restring her father's Hohner Bass guitar," wrote journalist Misha Glenny, in a gentle dig at the campaign.

Another Twitter message dubbed Sophie Dahl the "Big Stingy Giant," a play on the title of one of her grandfather's classics "The BFG" (The Big Friendly Giant).

The press release on Roald Dahl's website said that the family "had done its utmost to safeguard the hut," which is now in a state of disrepair.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

marți, 13 septembrie 2011

From Picasso to Elvis, Chinese buy up Western culture

A black bustier with gold accents and band of black beading at bottom hem, worn by Madonna on her 1987 Who's That Girl Tour, is pictured in this undated publicity handout. The bustier, which is expected to bring up to $8,000 at auction, will be sold by Julien's Auctions at their second annual Legends Auction in Macau on October 22, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Julien's Auctions/Handout

By Jordan Riefe

LOS ANGELES | Fri Sep 9, 2011 8:46pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The art world shook last February when a report by The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) revealed that China had overtaken the United Kingdom to become the world's second largest art market.

The art world shook again weeks later when Artprice, the industry's final word on such matters, announced that upon its review, China topped the United States as the No. 1 market.

What are Chinese investors buying?

Everything from Pablo Picasso's "Femme Lisant (Deux Personnages)," for $21.3 million, to exclusive rights to Elvis Presley's earliest known live recordings, which will hit the auction block October 22, in Hong Kong.

In a country where only 60 years ago there was no such thing as an art market, the appetite for fine arts, antiquities and good old-fashioned, Hollywood-type memorabilia is big.

China's disposable income has multiplied 10-fold in the past 20 years, according to the China-based Hurun's list of the rich individuals. The annual study shows 64 percent growth in average wealth over the past two years, 400-500 billionaires (the world's most), and close to a million millionaires -- average age, 39.

"More and more (investor) money is sitting on the sidelines and looking for a place to go," says Jeff Rabin of ArtVest Partners, a firm specializing in art investments. With financial markets experiencing so much volatility, arts and memorabilia increasingly seem like viable investments.

In the past two years alone, auction house Christies has increased partnerships in Hong Kong from 95 to 130, all of them Chinese. In addition, the venerable auctioneer is placing native Mandarin speakers in their showrooms in London, New York, Geneva and Paris.

WHERE ELVIS IS THE KING

The rising level of wealth in China has begun to trickle from major cities to outlying areas, though the vast majority of the nation's 1.3 billion still live in poverty.

"It sort of breaks down to those people who are quite wealthy and know something about art to those who are really more farmers or industrialists and don't have the knowledge or the access to understand the art market," said Rabin.

But even the people who may not understand high-value art and antiquities, have a place at auction houses when the hammer comes down, in particular, for Western celebrity memorabilia.

Darren Julien of Beverly Hills' Julien's Auctions is currently planning his "Legends" event next month in Macau. Items will include the rights to a 1955 Elvis concert as well as a dress worn by Marilyn Monroe, Madonna's gold bustier and a note signed by John Lennon.

"One person told me that they would rather have this than a Monet," said Julien, who bases a third of his business in the Asian market. He recently put a basketball up for auction signed by Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan. The estimated value was about $500. It sold for $294,000.

Part of the appetite for western items is due to the fact that most all of China has been cut off from western culture for so long, yet the best of the world's performing arts were coming from U.S. and European music, movies and television.

"The real good films were the American films. It was the only view they had of another life outside their own," said Julien. "When you're buying these things, you're buying a memory."

Never mind that art and memorabilia markets remain unregulated and opaque and purchases are sometimes ill-liquid in aftermarkets once the items have been acquired.

"If people really want something," said Julien, "they're going to do whatever it takes to get it."

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

September 11 art show stands out for what it avoids

1 of 2. The sculpture ''Woman on a Park Bench'' by George Segal, part of a New York MoMA PS1 exhibit on the attacks of September 11, 2001, is seen in a handout photo.

Credit: Reuters/MOMA PS1/Courtesy the George and Helen Segal Foundation and Carroll Janis/Handout

By Basil Katz

NEW YORK | Fri Sep 9, 2011 10:04pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The attacks of September 11, 2001 were the most witnessed disaster in history, yet to capture their impact, a new exhibit has no art, pictures or music depicting that fateful day.

Works in the show, "September 11," opening on Sunday at New York's MoMA PS1, make reference to the World Trade Center towers or to a blue and sunny sky reminiscent of that day, but let viewers make their own connections to the deadly attacks.

In fact, most of the 70 or so works in the exhibit at MoMA PS1, the Museum of Modern Art's satellite location in the New York City borough of Queens, were made before 2001.

Selected from a wide-swath of contemporary artists, with some work dating back to the 1960s, the exhibit is meant to trigger memories and emotions 10 years after planes crashed into the twin towers, bringing them down and killing thousands of people, without addressing that day explicitly.

"There were certain things that we did not want to see, I think in part because of how much we have been forced to see," said MoMA PS1 curator Peter Eleey, describing the challenge of assembling an art show on the well-documented tragedy.

The torrent of images from September 11, Eleey said, "dramatically complicated how art could respond."

So, he chose instead to avoid showcasing it directly.

Curators installed a 1999 audio recording called "World Trade Center Recordings: Winds after Hurricane Floyd" by artist Stephen Vitello in the basement boiler room of the museum.

The recording is of eerie creaks and groans of the skyscrapers as they were buffeted by a hurricane.

An untitled 2008 work by artist Roger Hiorns consists of mounds of silvery dust of a pulverized passenger aircraft engine spread on the floor in a seemingly haphazard way.

A photograph by American artist William Eggleston of a hand twirling a colorful iced drink in the sunny cabin of an airplane might bring to mind how an ordinary flight turned into a hellish nightmare. The photo, "Untitled (Glass in Airplane)" is from the 1960s.

The show also includes a light installation by James Turrell, and works by American artists Diane Arbus, Alex Katz and Ellsworth Kelly. It ends on January 9, 2012.

(Reporting by Basil Katz; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

Arkansas museum showcases World War II Japanese American art

By Suzi Parker

LITTLE ROCK, Ark | Sat Sep 10, 2011 3:52pm EDT

LITTLE ROCK, Ark (Reuters) - For decades, Mable Rose Jamison Vogel hauled trunks of art and documents -- bits and pieces of a remarkable chapter in American history -- around the country whenever she moved.

Created by Japanese Americans while they were held captive in Arkansas camps during World War II, the paintings, sculptures, carved wooden bird pins and even a belt made from an orange electrical cord told stories of daily life in a dark era in American history.

Vogel was one of their art teachers, encouraging them to decorate their dire surroundings. Her efforts helped preserve the tales of tens of thousands of Americans who were forced into camps by the U.S. government after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

This weekend, "The Art of Living" exhibit opens at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock. with more than 100 artifacts from Vogel's collection and additional pieces by twin sisters Kazuko Tanaka and Yetsuko Saguchi, who were interned at Rohwer.

"There has been a groundswell of interest in this history," said Nathania Sawyer, the exhibit's producer. "This collection gives a very deep picture of how these people were using art in their everyday life."

The government operated 10 camps during World War II in Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, California and Idaho. Several other states had temporary camps.

After the Pearl Harbor bombing in 1941, military leaders feared that Japanese Americans on the West Coast posed a national threat. The government forced 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans living along the Pacific Coast into what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "concentration camps" in sparse areas. More than half of them were American citizens.

They were allowed little time to settle business affairs or sell or store their belongings. They were instructed to bring only what they could carry, including bedding and dishes. Once at camp, families lived in cramped single-room quarters until the end of the war. They worked the land, and children attended school. Each camp had its own mayor and police department.

Art was both a popular pastime and an escape from life in dire conditions. At some camps, jazz bands became popular.

The Japanese Americans in Arkansas collected and made materials for their art. One landscape in the collection was painted on discarded denim. Cardboard and box tops were used as canvases. Discarded wood and wire were transformed into sculptures. Burlap became woven rugs.

"Jamie Vogel was so diligent in preserving this story," Sawyer said. "She was very interested in these students and the people who were doing art in the camps. Over the years, she loaned it out, put on exhibitions all over the country and kept the story alive. It offers a very deep picture and how these people were using art in their everyday life."

Jennifer Carmen, a fine and decorative art appraiser in Little Rock, calls the Vogel collection "unique among internment collections" in its vast scope of documenting day-to-day life in the camp.

In June, the National Park Service awarded 24 grants totaling $2.9 million to preserve these sites and interpret Japanese American life during this era.

In 2006, Congress established the grants program to give up to $38 million after President Clinton, in 2000, recommended that the Department of Interior preserve this part of history.

The first grants were awarded in 2009.

Arkansas, which received three grants this year, was the only Southern state to have camps. For the last 10 years, Arkansas has hosted various educational events about the two camps.

In 2004, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock created a series of events called "Life Interrupted," which included a reunion of 1,300 people who had lived in the camps.

Star Trek star George Takei, whose family was sent to Rohwer, attended the event.

The art ended up at the Butler Center after decades of efforts by Vogel and her friend, Rosalie Santine Gould, a former mayor of Gould, Ark.

When she died in 1994, she left a substantial part of the collection to Santine Gould, who has spent her life preserving the story of the two camps at Jerome and Rohwer, Ark., about 100 miles south of Little Rock.

Last year, Gould gave the collection, which was sought by many major art museums, to the Butler Center.

(Edited by Karen Brooks and Greg McCune)

vineri, 9 septembrie 2011

China ceramics sale seen glowing amid economic gloom

By James Pomfret

HONG KONG | Thu Sep 8, 2011 11:04am EDT

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Despite darkening global economic clouds, Sotheby's expects solid demand for a batch of rare Chinese ceramics from a vintage European collection after a much hyped auction of works from the same Swiss owners fell flat in April.

The Meiyintang collection, an assemblage of European ceramics gathered over nearly half a century by pharmaceutical tycoons, the Zuellig brothers, was one of the last intact classic major private collections of Chinese ceramics until put on the block in Hong Kong earlier in the year.

But the much-hyped sale ultimately disappointed with two blockbuster lots, a golden phoenix Qing vase and a sublime Chenghua palace bowl, languishing unsold on the auction block after market players blamed excessive pre-sale estimates and tighter credit requirements for choking off enthusiasm.

The two items found undisclosed buyers afterwards.

Sotheby's, however, is hopeful a second offering of 40 Meiyintang treasures to be put up for sale in October will stoke fresh interest despite stock market jitters over Europe's worsening debt crisis and U.S. economic fragility.

"From the few collectors we've shown the pieces to I'm confident the sale will do very well," Nicolas Chow, Sotheby's Asia deputy chairman, told Reuters.

"There are some people who're worried about the market but if you look at how solid assets have been moving like gold and diamonds I see no reason to worry about Chinese art,

"An important piece of porcelain is maybe a little bit less liquid than a great diamond but at the same time I would say it's at least as solid an asset as that."

Among the Meiyintang (Hall Among the Rose Beds) imperial wares is a group of large, physically grand objects including a bulbous half-meter wide famille-rose vase from the Qing Qianlong period (1723-1735) decorated with glossy pink peaches, an auspicious Chinese symbol for longevity, and interlaced rose branches that is expected to fetch up to $15 million.

Another, older, blue and white Meiping vase from the Ming Yongle dynasty (1403-1425) adorned with monochromatic fruit and floral motifs is also estimated to be worth up to $15 million.

The entire Meiyintang sale is expected to net $55 million.

CHINA RISKS, REWARDS

Chow said pre-sales estimates for the Meiyintang (Hall among the rose beds) wares would be less aggressive than last time round. But a controversial stipulation that bidders provide hefty pre-sales deposits would still be imposed to mitigate the risks of buyers defaulting on payments as the prices of imperial ceramics soar ever higher.

Late last year, a Chinese collector bid a record 51.6 million pounds for an ornate Qing vase discovered in the attic of an English house but refused to pay up in a conspicuous instance of non-payment for Chinese art.

Since then, Sotheby's and other auction houses have required deposits as a safeguard against such credit risks.

"At the time when we were promoting ourselves and when the sale took place, there were rumors around the market that a big vase that had been sold in Europe had not been paid for. So there was a certain degree of paranoia and caution on the part of buyers," said Chow, referring to the April Meiyintang sale.

While market players said Sotheby's insisted on a HK$8 million ($1,026 million) deposit for premium lots in its spring Hong Kong sales, the amount was expected to be less this time round, Chow said, without giving specifics.

Despite Sotheby's bullishness, its share price has slipped over thirty percent since April to $36.22, with the luxury art market often shadowing economic cycles. But at the very top end of the market, masterpieces of Chinese art have bucked downturns to climb in value as robust alternative investments.

(Editing by Elaine Lies)

Book Talk: Book research made Ann Patchett faint

By Pauline Askin

SYDNEY | Thu Sep 8, 2011 6:11am EDT

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Prize-winning U.S. author Ann Patchett has always taken research for her novels seriously -- but never more so than with her latest, "State of Wonder."

Set deep in the Amazon, the book centers on a doctor who goes in search of a former mentor engaged in research on a tribe where the women are fertile until they die -- but also touches on topics such as malaria, corporate greed and facing up to questions from the past.

Seeking to educate herself about the details of a caesarean section by watching an actual operation, Patchett -- who won the Orange Prize for a previous book, "Bel Canto" -- ended up mortified when she fainted and was nearly admitted to hospital herself.

In Australia for the Melbourne Writers Festival, Patchett spoke about research and writing.

Q: What inspired your latest book?

A: "I wanted to write a book about a teacher/student relationship in which the teacher and the student meet again as adults as equals. This is not the story of a child student but of a medical student who was so profoundly influenced by her relationship with this teacher and the teacher essentially doesn't remember her.

"I think that's a very common thing. Teachers can't remember all of their students, especially the good ones. Teachers tend to remember their horrible students who really made their life hell. The ones that are easy-going and turn their homework in on time, you don't remember those people."

Q: You take your readers to the Amazon in this book, why?

A: "The thing that I love about being a writer is that I love going outside of myself and my personal experiences and I like to write about things that I don't know anything about because it's a great opportunity to educate myself. I can think of something that I don't know anything about, that I'm interested in, malaria, and say I'm going to write a book in which there is malaria and it gives me the opportunity to study and research and think about it. It's wonderful.

"I didn't do that in my earlier books but certainly in the last several books I have gone into places and characters and situations that are very far outside of my experience."

Q: For "Bel Canto," you listened to a lot of opera for your research. What special research did you do this time?

A: "I went to the Amazon, I did do a lot of research about malaria, fertility and birth in general. I actually went and watched a caesarean section. I'd seen a live birth before but that was a first. I fainted at the end, not until the very end when they were sewing her up. I blacked out in such a way that when I finally came to about ten minutes later they were making plans to admit me to the hospital. I really embarrassed myself terribly. It was like when you have to go to the bathroom when you're at the symphony and you think I can wait, I can wait and I knew I was going to faint but I kept thinking, I can wait, she's almost finished, I can wait and finally I turned to my friend and said, I have to go now and she said NURSE and they got me before I hit the floor. I was sweating and convulsing, it was terrible. I have to tell you no one who isn't in health care should ever see a caesarean - it's beyond disgusting but it was totally worth it."

Q: Do you write the outline of the books before you write and if so why?

A: "Yes I do, I tend to write the scene and then do the research and I use the research to correct myself. If you do the research first you get so caught up in the details that it takes over sometimes, but when I wrote the (caesarean) scene for example I talked about the surgeon making such delicate stitches and when you actually see a caesarean it's actually like they might as well be sewing you up with twine. It was so physical. I had no idea it was physically that hard so it was great to see that and then go back and put those details."

Q: Do you outline your books before you start?

A: "I do. I always know how the book will end before I start it. To me it's like planning a trip. It's like getting a map and so there's all sorts of little details that I don't know about the trip. Like coming to Australia, I know I'm here for two weeks and I know I'm going to these cities but I don't know what I'll do at night, where I'm going to have dinner. There are little things you don't know but the basic overview of the trip you do know and that's what writing a book is like for me."

Q: The characters in your books are all very diverse, the unwed mother, the middle aged black man, a Japanese interpreter. What inspires your characters?

A: "I want my books full of diverse characters. It's important to me because the world is full of diverse people. It's so funny, people say to me why did you write about Japanese people or black people and I always think... do you only know white people? To me it's a natural reflection of the world and it's interesting. Books entirely comprised of white people tend not to be as interesting to me or as natural at this point in time. As much as my books are not autobiographical they reflect my interests."

Q: Will your visit to Australia inspire a story?

A: "It sure could, it's an inspiring place."

(Editing by Elaine Lies)

joi, 8 septembrie 2011

9/11 anniversary casts shadow for Muslims: author

Muslims pray at King Fahad Mosque on the first day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in Culver City, Los Angeles, California August 1, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

By Pauline Askin

SYDNEY | Thu Sep 8, 2011 3:08am EDT

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The approaching tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is casting a long shadow for U.S. Muslims, many of whom are dreading the approaching anniversary because they fear a resurgence of prejudice and hate, said author Mona Eltahawy.

Egyptian-born but U.S.-based, Eltahawy said the attacks on New York and Washington were a shocking and negative introduction to Islam for many in the United States, compounding the difficulties for Muslims already struggling with their identities in the diverse, secular nation.

Despite the fact that African American Muslims had been in the nation since slavery days, public awareness of Muslims in general had remained low.

"A lot of Americans were totally unaware of what a Muslim is until 9/11. The first introduction to Islam was a very negative one," Eltahawy said from Melbourne, where she attended the Melbourne Writer's Festival.

"Now that we're coming up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11, it's a time to say we're here and we're not going anywhere, we're Americans and Muslims too. It's been a difficult ten years and a lot of us are dreading this tenth anniversary because it brings out a lot of hate and prejudice."

Eltahawy, a former news agency journalist turned essayist and columnist, left the security of an office job for the hazards of freelance work just around the time of 9/11.

While she didn't personally experience any hostility, which she attributed largely to the fact that she doesn't wear a head scarf or "look Muslim," the heated atmosphere -- and all the years since -- have made her question what that phrase actually means.

One of her biggest struggles is to break the stereotype that conservative equals authentic.

"I identify as a liberal progressive secular Muslim. One of the messages I try to convey is I'm just as authentic as a conservative Muslim," she said.

"When you think Muslim women, you think women in a head scarf or a women like me. There isn't just one way to think of what a Muslim women is, there's a diversity of appearances and a diversity of voices," she said.

But the last ten years, from 9/11 to the Arab Spring this year that saw the overthrow of long-term Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, have been exciting and professionally satisfying.

Among some of the biggest and most interesting changes have been the emergence of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, both of which were highlighted during the upheavals in Egypt and elsewhere across the Mideast this year.

Terming them "a great connector," she said such services had played a key role in spreading information, to the extent that she now finds Twitter her number one news source.

"Social media has given us a front row seat to revolutions in various parts of the region but they did not create those revolutions," she said.

Putting too much weight on the role of social media risks devaluing the participation of millions of people, she added.

"These are most definitely not social media revolutions. To say they were social revolutions removes agency and courage from all those people who went out on the streets and faced, whether it was the Mubarak regime security thugs ... or what we saw happening in Libya."

(Editing by Elaine Lies)

miercuri, 7 septembrie 2011

China warns museums after series of embarrassing thefts

BEIJING | Wed Sep 7, 2011 5:05am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has ordered its museums to tighten security after a series of embarrassing thefts, including at Beijing's Palace Museum, and will temporarily shut those which don't meet standards, state media reported on Wednesday.

Curators at the Palace Museum, housed in the former home of China's last emperors in the Forbidden City, were left red faced after several items loaned from a Hong Kong museum were stolen in May.

"People who have been lured by the high profits attained through the theft and smuggling of ancient relics tend to set their targets on various museums," state news agency Xinhua cited a notice from Ministry of Public Security and State Administration of Cultural Heritage as saying.

"Police and cultural authorities should examine museum security systems and improve training for museum guards. Museums should make emergency response plans and conduct emergency drills every six months to improve their ability to handle thefts."

Museums which don't improve their security before the end of the year will be closed until they can take steps to convince the government they have no loopholes or flaws a thief could exploit, Xinhua said.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie)

London Shakespeare fest for "world's playwright"

By Alice Baghdjian

LONDON | Tue Sep 6, 2011 2:46pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - All the world's a stage in Shakespeare's home country as organizers announced the launch of the World Shakespeare Festival in London on Tuesday.

The April 23 to November 2012 festival, conceived as part of London 2012 Festival and described as an "unprecedented and outrageous collaboration" by organizers, is set to unite Shakespeare fans from across the globe in a multicultural and polyglot appreciation of the Bard in a technological age.

"Previous festivals of Shakespeare have been an old kind of festival, but this World Shakespeare Festival is for a new era," Deborah Shaw, World Shakespeare Festival Director.

A "World Wide Classroom," allowing teachers and pupils around the world to share information about Shakespeare in their culture, as well as the launch of specially commissioned digital materials for schools called "Shakespeare Unlocked," means that participation in the festival is not limited to the people of Britain.

"Four years ago, we began conversations with artists, producers, educationalists and curators from across the UK and the World, to seed and shape a festival that celebrates Shakespeare and redefines what a festival can be in this era of globalization," Shaw said.

"Anyone in the world can take part in this Shakespeare festival through its digital projects," she said.

The launch comes as the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the British Council revealed that 50 percent of the world's children study Shakespeare in school.

The more traditional festival staple of performances of the Bard's works will include a lineup of all 37 of his plays in 37 languages at Shakespeare's Globe Theater on the banks of the river Thames in London. One million tickets will be on sale from Oct 10.

Theater goers can expect performances in Xhosa and Swahili, as well as theater companies from Turkey, Greece, Albania, and even a group from New Zealand performing in Maori.

WORLD'S PLAYWRIGHT

The festival program will also feature 23 brand new productions across Britain, most of which were commissioned specially for the festival.

"The festival will be a carnival of stories - we have theater companies from warzones as well as underground theater companies participating," said Dominic Dromgoole, Artistic Director at the Globe.

"A Globe by the Thames is where the wonderful cultural and imaginative journey of these plays began. Another Globe by the Thames is honored to be inviting Shakespeare back home, dressed in the clothes of many different people," he said.

It is Shakespeare's depiction of human qualities which lends to the success and resonance of his works in other cultures, making him "the world's playwright," organizers say.

"Shakespeare is no longer English property. He is the favorite playwright and artist of the whole world. People of all races, creeds and continents have chosen to gather around his work to share stories of what it is like to be human," said Michael Boyd, artistic director of the RSC.

"Shakespeare is a lingua franca deeper than just any language. It can help us to talk about autocracy and civil war -- his works are a brilliant Trojan horse," he said.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Favorite Barnes makes Booker shortlist of 6 author

By Alice Baghdjian

LONDON | Tue Sep 6, 2011 2:20pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - English author Julian Barnes was one of six authors shortlisted for the coveted Man Booker Prize for Fiction on Tuesday, and is the bookmakers' favorite to win the award when it is announced in October.

Barnes's novel "The Sense of an Ending," about an ordinary man who muses on the absence of drama in his life, was praised as "technically marvelous" by the panel of five judges, chaired by British spymaster-turned-writer Dame Stella Rimington.

It marks Barnes's fourth appearance on the shortlist following "Flaubert's Parrot" (1984), "England, England" (1998) and "Arthur and George" (2005). He has not won so far.

"Julian Barnes's book is the most obvious novel on the shortlist and perhaps the most expected as it was well reviewed," Gaby Wood, judge and head of books at Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper told reporters at the unveiling of the list.

"It's a small, quiet book and is not only surprising but actively shocking. In purely technical terms it is the most marvelous distillation of the ideas (Barnes) has been rehearsing over the course of his life. It makes something familiar both strange and shiveringly awkward."

Barnes's relationship with the Man Booker Prize, one of the world's most important awards for English language fiction, has not always been easy.

He once referred to it as "posh bingo" and berated judges for being "inflated by their brief celebrity."

Also on the shortlist this year are two first-time novelists -- Stephen Kelman ("Pigeon English") and A.D. Miller ("Snowdrops") -- and two Canadians -- Patrick deWitt ("The Sisters Brothers") and Esi Edugyan ("Half Blood Blues"). Rounding out nominees is Carol Birch with "Jamrach's Menagerie."

The six books were whittled down from a longlist of 13 books. The award, worth 50,000 pounds ($80,530) to the winner as well as the likelihood of a huge boost in sales of the winning book, will be handed out on October 18.

Bookmakers Ladbrokes have named Barnes as favorite at 13/8 odds, while Birch and Miller are the joint 7/2 second favorites to win the prize.

Two novels were singled out for their linguistic dexterity; for the aural quality of jazz music in the writing of "Half Blood Blues," and for Kelman's innovative narration using hybrid dialect in "Pigeon English."

Susan Hill, judge and award winning author, said "Half Blood Blues," the tale of the mysterious disappearance of a rising, black jazz star, Hieronymous Falk in 1940, was not initially a novel she would have picked from a bookshelf.

However, she described it as the one of the most "original, assured and moving" novels she had read.

"It's quite unlike any other novel - it's a vibrant and tense work about war and its aftermath, and what it means to betray," she said.

" doesn't put a foot wrong. She writes about music so we can hear it - not just read the words but we hear it and tap out its rhythm."

"Pigeon English," compared by the judges to Burgess's cult classic "A Clockwork Orange" due to its mix of southeast London English and Ghanaian patois, was described by the panel as "magnificent" and a "linguistic triumph."

Hype surrounding the publication of the novel has compared the story to the case of Damilola Taylor, a high profile British case of the murder of a 10 year-old boy on an impoverished estate in London in 2000.

But focusing on these similarities undersells the novel dramatically, the judges said.

"What the novel depicts is a young boy's wonder and disillusionment with a society that is both welcoming and hostile, but the hostility does not come from the forces you would expect," said judge Matthew d'Ancona, a writer and political columnist.

D'Ancona, who described Kelman as a novelist in the prime of his writing said the novel had the "capacity to endure."

"It's a series of revelations about the world in which we live. It fizzes with doubts and anxieties about the way we live now and in some ways was a grim prophecy the London riots," he said.

Last year's winner was Howard Jacobsen's "The Finkler Question," which was described as the first comic novel to win the award and has sold over 250,000 copies in the UK alone.

Writers take time to absorb September 11 impact

A woman takes a picture in a bookstore in this file photo.

Credit: Reuters/Rafael Marchante

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK | Wed Sep 7, 2011 2:35am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Norman Mailer once advised another author to wait 10 years before writing about the attacks of September 11 because "it will take that long for you to make sense of it."

The estimate by the prominent New York novelist and journalist, who died in 2007, may have been premature. As the world marks a decade since the attacks, literary circles are still waiting for a definitive work on the topic.

"The world has changed since 9/11 and our culture has changed but I haven't yet seen the book or the movie or the poem or the song that captures the people we are now and helps us redefine who we are in this new post 9/11 world," journalist Lawrence Wright told Reuters.

Wright wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning account entitled "The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11".

While publishers are bringing out a slew of new works, reruns of memoirs, survivor tales, Iraq war stories and fiction books tackling September 11 and its aftermath, writers are still making sense of an altered era.

Movies and television are often inspired by playwrights and novelists. But Broadway has yet to produce a significant play directly about September 11 and no novel dealing with the attacks has been a top bestseller or come to redefine a changed collective psyche.

Celebrated names such as John Updike, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Don DeLillo have all produced fiction stories. Many have written from either the militant's perspective or painted the post-September 11 era with a broad apocalyptic brush.

KISS OF DEATH

Amis' "The Last Days of Muhammad Atta," (2006) imagined the last days of one Sept 11 hijacker while Updike's "Terrorist," (2006) centered on a U.S.-born Muslim teenager set in a decaying New Jersey. Neither won major awards.

DeLillo's "Falling Man" (2007) concerned a World Trade Center survivor and included several chapters told from the perspective of one of the hijackers. While applauded for its descriptions of the attacks, it received mixed reactions.

Non-American writers have also weighed in: H.M. Naqvi's "Home Boy," (2009), Chris Cleave's "Incendiary" (2005), Joseph O'Neill's "Netherland" (2009), Salman Rushdie's "Shalimar the Clown" (2005) and Mohsin Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist". Some were heralded for challenging orthodox interpretations of terrorism and of the attacks.

But writers admit the process is slow. McEwan, whose novel "Saturday" (2005) reflected what he has called "a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the ... attacks", told Reuters back then it could be years until a definitive post September 11 novel was written.

Others, such as Florida author Andre Dubus III, whose novel "The Garden of Last Days" was critically well received but sold sluggishly, told Reuters the public wasn't ready to embrace such tales.

"My novel did very well until the word got out that it had something to do with 9/11 then it kind of fell off the radar," he chuckled. "It was like the kiss of death, it was like, 'Oh I am not reading about 9/11'-- and I can understand that."

Dubus said he never set out to write "a 9/11 novel," and even cut his ending of the hijacker inevitably slamming into the twin towers for "treading on really sacred ground."

"Were we ready to write about this? I don't think anyone was ready to read about it," he said. "As we get to the 10th anniversary, I have a hunch Norman Mailer was right. We are just at the cusp of being ready to look back with any degree of perspective, that we need emotionally, to see it more clearly."

TOLL ON CULTURE

Some believe authors were subject to harsher reviews due to the sensitivity of the topic. Others, such as Amy Waldman, a former New York Times reporter whose new novel "The Submission" imagines a jury that chooses a Muslim-American architect to design a September 11 memorial, think it foolish to expect a single novel to capture the era.

"Why should we expect one novel to capture an experience that was so diverse in both its facets and how people experienced it and the way it affected America? That is a lot of pressure to put on a single novelist," she said.

Nonfiction books, especially straight after the attacks, were easier to digest by readers hungry for information. Official and non-official accounts, even with dry titles like "The 9/11 Commission Report," were bestsellers.

History has shown that traumatic events can take decades to process, said ACLU president Susan Herman. It took decades for the United States to officially apologize for the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War Two, a theme dealt perhaps most poignantly in David Guterson's 1994 novel "Snow Falling on Cedars."

Journalists, she said, immediately had to address the post September 11 era effects such as the Patriot Act, an October 2001 law that gave expanded powers to U.S. law enforcement agencies, but "individuals who are writing books, stories, plays, poems don't really have the same ethical obligation."

Wright said Americans were still trying to come to terms with September 11 and its impact on their lives.

"We are not comfortable with who we are. We are still in a period of discovery. Certainly 9/11 was a shock and there was bound to be a lag before people were able to address it in a cogent way," Wright said.

"In terms of post 9/11 artistic production, the escapist factor has far outweighed the enlightenment factor. And maybe it indicates a longing to retreat from the confrontation with the complexities of the new world that we find ourselves in."

(Editing by Arlene Getz and David Storey)