The next batch:
An obituary of the painter Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski) the maestro of the hiked skirt, the akimbo legs and the bared pudendum. Illustrations accompanying are by the decedent.
An article on 200 Afghani refugees wandering the mountainous wilderness: During the night the people on the outer edges of the sleeping pile rotated inward, and the people in the middle were spun outward. In this way no one froze to death.
An incisive description by Kevin Kelly of the way recording technology influenced the shape of music:
There is no music made today that has not been shaped by the fact of recording and duplication. In fact, the ability to copy music has been deeply disruptive ever since the invention of the gramophone. When John D. Smoot, an engineer for the European company Odeon, carted primitive recording equipment to the Indonesian archipelago in 1904 to record the gamelan orchestras, local musicians were perplexed. Why copy a performance? The popular local tunes that circulated in their villages had a half-life of a few weeks. Why would anyone want to listen to a stale rendition of an obsolete piece when it was so easy to get fresh music?
As phonographs spread throughout the world, they had a surprising effect: folk tunes, which had always been malleable, changing with each performer and in each performance, were transformed by the advent of recording into fixed songs that could be endlessly and exactly repeated. Music became shorter, more melodic and more precise.
Early equipment could make recordings that contained no more than four and a half minutes, so musicians truncated old works to fit and created new music abbreviated to adapt to the phonograph. Because the first sound recordings were of unamplified music, recording emphasized the loud sounds of singers and de-emphasized quiet instrumentals. The musicologist Timothy Day notes that once pianists began recording they tried, for the first time, to ''distinguish carefully between every quaver and semiquaver -- eighth note and sixteenth note -- throughout the piece.'' Musicians played the way technology listened. When the legendary recordist Frederick Gaisberg arrived in Calcutta in 1902, only two decades after the phonograph was invented, he found that Indian musicians were already learning to imitate recorded music and lamented that there was ''no traditional music left to record.''
As the technologies of reproduction bloomed in the last century, consumerism boomed. What consumers consumed -- whether in the form of a book, a CD or a can of Coke -- were exact copies. The ability to make copies in mind-boggling quantities, ceaselessly and perfectly, was the chief ingredient of mass culture. Music rapidly adapted to the culture of the copy. Reproductions were made exact, while copies were multiplied vigorously. Music lived in its constant reproduction
A marvelous and important article on the authenticity of 20th century "antiques":
The market for modernist furniture, once young, fun and inexpensive, is superheating. But it's also getting uncomfortably hot. As Richard Wright, a co-owner of Wright, a Chicago auction house that specializes in modernism, put it, now that big money is involved, ''people have the incentive to cheat.''
As is advisable with fine 18th-century furniture, an unspoken rule has become advisable with modern design: let the buyer beware.
Authenticity, the issue that defines mature antiques markets, is being called into question as objects by the most fashionable names in the business, like Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Chareau and Jean Prouvé, become the newest blue chips of decorative arts. As pieces are rebuilt, repainted, reproduced and newly assembled, or as hybrids of new and old come to market, assumptions about what is original or real are being redefined as rapidly as the prices.
Does refurbishment respect or disguise a designer's intentions? Shortly before the Christie's sale, Ms. Grajales explained that for each of her clients, authenticity was very personal. For some, only a piece without restoration, even if its condition was poor, would carry rarity and value, as is true for traditional antiques. For others, a reconditioned piece, with obvious work, recalled and revalidated the strength of the design.
That Prouvé cabinet, bright red and factory-fresh-looking, in its 50's and still sexy? Read the condition report. It's had more work than Catherine Deneuve. But hey, the loft needs a star for the dining room wall. Would Prouvé be proud?
James Zemaitis, the head of 20th-century design at Sotheby's, which sold the cabinet described above last Wednesday for $78,000 (above its estimate of $30,000 to $50,000), said he thought that modern furniture buyers were savvy and aware of distinctions in condition, which differ by designer.
''If you're seduced by the aura of Prouvé or Perriand, you have to accept the prevailing market realities of condition,'' Mr. Zemaitis said. ''The entire Prouvé market is built on things being refinished and rebuilt. I don't think collectors are being duped. They're completely understanding of this.''
The entire article is here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D05E2DB163BF935A25755C0A9639C8B63
