[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9cukHwn37jIza9qSYJkcWoPfxa124uvq"] DESPITE the struggles of many visual artists, not to mention the stagnant middle class in the Anglo-American world, art's auction market continues to boom. The latest story from the New York Times, on the London auction season, has some interesting details. “The sleepy days of collecting are over,” said Amy Cappellazzo, the … [Read more...]
Publishing’s Shrinking Attention Span
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="CAxR2RewOYpbx08DLip9Jb3pvG0eQ2Sw"] THE Scottish novelist Val McDermid, who has sold 10 million books, says she wouldn't have a career in today's relentless marketplace. One of the things the Internet and the superstar economy have done is to shrink our already shrunken attention spans further, and that's doubly true in the culture industries. Crime writer … [Read more...]
Q & A with Nightmares on Wax
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="uIm5M387lh0ylXERBBwGP7PyQjBb5NZx"] NIGHTMARES on Wax is not a horror movie, but one of the best electronica bands too many people have never heard of. A collage of dub, R&B, and trip hop, mixing recorded beats with live instruments, the British collective headed by George Evelyn is somewhere between '70s Curtis Mayfield and Massive Attack. They've covered a lot … [Read more...]
Art Critic Kenneth Clark: Savior or Snob?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="2JRpGl1G6WEGCmBeZpJ8hGQwTyo0KCNg"] IT'S always easy to look back at cultural figures from earlier eras and denounce them as "elitists," and that's clearly what's happened to the great British art critic and interpreter Kenneth Clark. Through books on landscape and the nude, and his BBC television documentary series from 1969, Civilisation, Clark exposed an enormous … [Read more...]
Roots of a Great English Band: The Clientele
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="dzt0X2rINHchc2UlFWD4AkubWFuBi9up"] TODAY sees the reissue of the debut LP by one of Britain’s best rock bands: The Clientele’s Suburban Light. Fans of the Clientele know that this group took bits of ‘60s British folk, the Byrds, and Velvet Underground, jacked up the tremolo, and produced succinct and chiming pop songs that become hard to forget. (Here is the album's … [Read more...]
Magazines in the Digital Age, and Artist Documentaries
THERE'S a long, vivid and often fascinating story in Politico magazine about Tina Brown, Newsweek and The Daily Beast. The article includes a memorable scene: "It was right around this time that Brown, forever in high heels, stood to make her way to the bathroom. As she crossed Diller’s marble floor, she wiped out and smacked her face on the ground, according to a source who was not involved in … [Read more...]
Is the Novel Dead? Plus, Art Auctions and Green Composer
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="crb2maHtqit51P5E7CQQCJm9upqvoZsh"] TODAY in Oxford, Will Self gives a speech about the death of the novel that many of my friends and colleagues have responded to with hostility and disbelief. Self's piece is at times over the top, and his persona is that of an ornery crank, but his speech -- reprinted here in the Guardian -- is essential reading. The story's … [Read more...]
Can Impulse Records Come Back? Plus, Shakespeare’s Acting
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="BkttmRWC0b2xNNu3idGGaZviRdyibZxn"] ONE of the most storied of all jazz labels, Impulse -- "The House Trane Built" -- may provide that rarest of things: Good news for the jazz world. In hibernation for a while, and decades from its leadership of the avant-garde in the '60s, Impulse is being revived and will begin releasing new music. Now part of Universal Music … [Read more...]
Novelists in the New Economy, and a National-ist Goes Classical
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hPd2FVtPIrH02PAHBYXfxFyuIQJdbTd3"] HOW are novelists doing in the post-recession, Internet-besotted world? In Britain, apparently, even purportedly successful and well-reputed writers are hanging on by their fingernails. That's the conclusion of a nuanced and well-reported piece by Robert McCrum in the Observer. The story starts by describing Rupert Thomson, an … [Read more...]
Prog Rock Tales
YOU would have to look long and hard to find someone who felt less warmly about the movement known as progressive rock as your humble blogger. (If the genre was bad in its original appearance, it seemed doubly awful in its ‘80s AOR rebirth.) I expect a lot of us who came of age in the years after punk feel the same way, and preferred the concision of college radio or “modern rock” acts like R.E.M. … [Read more...]