[contextly_auto_sidebar id="WjZxcPtWCK6ExlRGkfHJTGqGfWWntSeY"] RECENTLY your humble blogger was able to connect the current situation in the world of technology -- the money, the power, the self-deception -- with the history of the arts. Specifically, I'm talking about cultural patronage, and I take it back to Haydn, Moneverdi and Velazquez. This piece of mine from Salon may interest Arts … [Read more...]
“Sleeping Through a Revolution”: Technology and Culture
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="ywu4fbbeaZ4xnIPum8dfcpIbDyG5zWSP"] ONE of the clearest and most powerful descriptions I've seen about the place where technology, culture and economic forces meet is in a lecture USC's Jonathan Taplin gave not long ago. He's transposed the speech into a piece for Medium called "Sleeping Through a Revolution." Taplin is especially good on the big picture, and on … [Read more...]
The Horatio Alger Myth: Amanda Palmer
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="81zgKnkFndNWR6ZZyt0SEf1pDSPSHyWh"] DO musicians and artists need an equitable structure around them, or can they make it by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps? The latter point of view has been promoted -- perhaps incessantly -- by onetime Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer, a talented musician and canny businesswoman who has become a Horatio Alger hero for the … [Read more...]
“In Praise of Difficulty”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="b8rJJnGCXKiH3M8zWOVGbX2BXfYXXJBs"] DO we need cultural seriousness, intellectual contemplation, works of depth and complexity? I've been hearing for most of my life -- I came of age in the '80s -- that we don't. Just asking the question got you branded, when I was a kid, a sissy or a bookworm; now it gets you called a snob. But a very fine, reasonably long … [Read more...]
Dueling With the Dean: Rock Crit Robert Christgau
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="yBD4c5vb8BM1hc18kDjMHHcBiA2hrCio"] ON the occasion of his new memoir, Going Into the City, which chronicles the roots of a rock critic and in some ways an entire generation of American pop-culture journalists, I spoke to Christgau about childhood, politics, fellow scribe Ellen Willis, pop, and the lost promise of the '60s. He's the author of immortal line, in his … [Read more...]
The Future of the Arts
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="oNW8dK0FCdGFSKqGQqeHclNNxOzhoCM1"] OKAY, nobody really knows what's coming. But a pretty good stab comes in a new book by veteran arts manager Michael M. Kaiser (Alvin Ailey, Kennedy Center, etc) , who is both hopeful and brutally honest. His opening section on the building of an arts infrastructure (including an audience) in the postwar U.S. is as clear and succinct … [Read more...]
What Is a “Subversive” Artist, Anyway?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="L8uqg7ERM237iPSVXdaL6TdXt2SjQlsL"] AFTER a while, I get tired of all the jive around certain terms. "Disruption" is one; "empowerment," another. ("Innovate" seems to be headed for corporate sponsorship.) The latest infuriating one is the way the word "subversive" has been turned into a marketing strategy and a straight-faced description of Lady Gaga and Jeff Koons. … [Read more...]
Introducing The 21st Century Musician
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9QYXBUzJHimvnKsbZ6oLELXVvjWIavAs"] OVER the last few years I've been diving into the breakdown of the old 20th century creative economy and assessing as best I can the crisis we're in now. But I've also been asking myself -- and everybody I know -- how we might move forward. Part of the answer comes from work I've been doing for a new online magazine called the 21st … [Read more...]
The Death of a Great Video Store
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Xk6JC31DMBzwhIx8HqWSAUMhlvPf4tdk"] LOS Angeles is the capital of the film world, but it is about to lose one of its last great shops that rents movies: Vidiots in Santa Monica. I got to know this place about a decade ago, as well as a store made up of some of its alums, CineFile in West LA. A little later, I frequented Rocket Video, which closed a few years ago and … [Read more...]
Culture Crash on the Road
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="I6HdN5b3gj1Ofnif6g564Xjc8xXJLg7S"] For the last two weeks my book and I have been on the East Coast barnstorming for artists's rights, the middle class, an honest discussion about digital technology and other subjects. It's been a blast, I am still reasonably healthy, and I look forward to returning home to California later... today. Thanks to everyone I've met … [Read more...]