[contextly_auto_sidebar id="C9J6uLN8DJGJrhAieA8jJpyWE47Vp38G"] IT’s always healthy going into Oscar weekend angry about something, usually a good film that you feel has been ripped off by not being nominated. For me, that’s Sarah Polley’s ingenious and deeply felt documentary, Stories We Tell. The movie follows the Canadian actress/director into some odd family history; saying any more will … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2014
Scorning the Great American Novel, and The Return of Beck
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Jai56XiddmTkDBhUq1fwtKRmcQk3eCCw"] WHO wrote the Great American Novel? Does such a category make any sense? Did it ever? A provocative essay argues that we've outgrown the term, and that it was wrong to begin with. Whether we're talking about Melville's Moby Dick or Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, my old colleague David Ulin writes, we're missing the real point of … [Read more...]
Celebrating Eric Dolphy, and the Threat of Spotify
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="xOdJRgN2pWgbTiyFwQwSUxKpJatgoqCK"] THESE posts have become fairly grim lately, so I'm pleased to be able to offer some unqualified praise. Eric Dolphy's LP Out to Lunch now marks its 50th anniversary, and the record remains both radical and, I think, oddly accessible. Dolphy is perhaps my favorite avant-garde jazz player. Kevin Whitehead says on NPR: 1964 was a … [Read more...]
New Group Fights for Artists
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="NvvIzO2UWJlX4uUIoRf2LjL4Y3FqhcNC"] TODAY I have an interview in Salon with rock musician John McCrea, who is announcing a group he's helped assemble, Content Creators Coalition. The group, which puts on a free rally tonight in New York that will include David Byrne, aims to bring artists and artisans of all kinds together as a way of making the creative life less … [Read more...]
Artists in the Digital Age, and Falling in Love with Technology
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="qC3vge9cgA87c22YRZr5Mjkjf9EcoUPy"] HOW will the digital age shape the livelihood of artists, writers and musicians? There’s a new story in The New York Times that everyone who cares about the subject should read. It’s by Robert H. Frank, one of my favorite economists and the sharpest observer of the winner-take-all phenomenon, which may seem to have little to do with … [Read more...]
Are Artists Really Eccentric?, and Forgetting the Beatles
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="K7jgN35EvK3IGRvlOHBgaw79mmby3Zkj"] ARTISTS, writers and musicians have been considered "eccentric" for hundreds of years, at least since the Renaissance and perhaps as long ago as the prehistoric age of the shaman. What's behind it? Is it just a narrow-minded stereotype? Are crazy artists better than sane, conventional ones? Whether artists really are eccentric, … [Read more...]
The Corcoran Gallery, and Help for Indie Bookstores
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="7mQJ6eVfmMvVhLp6vBoK3Zj91LEskmke"] THE big news in the culture world right now is the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and its new, uh arrangement. There are several ways to look at this, but I'm persuaded by a strong piece that calls this the effective end of an institution that was the city's first art museum (founded 1869.) This from Philip … [Read more...]
The Past and Future of Jazz, and “Writing From California”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="5JaPY4EuOTgKJQzRDmJq9iKTEWZtZtT7"] SHE's not just my favorite new jazz singer in many moons, but someone who points the way forward for the music. That's the sense I've gotten from the young, classically trained vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant, who played the other night at Catalina's and whose album, WomanChild, is a knockout. Part of what I like about her is the … [Read more...]
The Invasion of San Francisco, and Intellectual Property
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="HKpgUBHFGiXW1ahrZaq596c8kILm1OXt"] FEW scribes write more eloquently than Rebecca Solnit about sense of place, especially San Francisco's. She’s got a very fine piece in the London Review of Books today about the way the tech boom is remaking the Bay Area. Cities and the arts have a long and fruitful relationship, so this has serious consequences for the creative … [Read more...]
The High Cost of Theater, and Defending Gatekeepers
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="qToyX6SJ454AKU5ZAPxUoStd2PThtZQi"] THE high cost of culture is an important topic these days; steep ticket prices keep a broad swath of the nation away from visual art, classical music, historic architecture and, often, theater. I once spoke to playwright Donald Margulies (Sight Unseen, Dinner With Friends) about his parents – who I take to be lower middle-class … [Read more...]