[contextly_auto_sidebar id="fhqVn6TOLjpnLFsHnV7qvLOILjagWywW"] A NEW book of poems, Monetized, looks at our new Gilded Age, with its staggering extremes of wealth and poverty. The book is written by the New York journalist Alissa Quart, who has written three books, the most recent of which is Republic of Outsiders. The New Yorker's Joshua Rothman has a smart profile of Quart on the … [Read more...]
Art For the Rich — Only
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="CSqzCJ4xE7EHbdXINKB6lexVqcruUcQp"] GOOD news! Queens has gotten an enormous art space in Long Island City. Says the New York Times The modern-looking facility, built from the ground up at a cost of $70 million, is set to span 280,000 square feet when an adjacent building opens this spring. The complex will be packed with thousands of works of art, from old masters … [Read more...]
The Ballad of Alejandro Escovedo
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="CCAh4bKVUCAChyU9848GkcdsXhxXqV12"] ABOUT a week ago, I caught the Austin, TX, troubadour at City Winery in New York. Great show -- one of my musical heroes -- thoughts will follow. Sheesh busy few days hope to post on this tonight if I can. Everyone needs to pick up his records Thirteen Years and live chronicle More Miles Than Money if they are curious. He's … [Read more...]
Brooklyn’s Warehouse Clubs Crumble
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9ZrmYtTcEkAZeeiJjqnX9vpz85XUHyUt"] TECHNO-utopians, heartless neoliberals and market-worshipping optimists will tell you that when creative destruction hits, it's only weeding out the losers, casting off the dead wood, allowing the invisible hand -- which works in mysterious ways -- to do its work. And it's easy to imagine, say, an acoustic folk club or a jazz cellar … [Read more...]
Culture Crash The Book Hits NYC
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="XmMqM0QnhXqGOSqUzhLut0F2n8ftDdRV"] OUR Department of Self-Promotion is happy to announce an event at McNally Jackson in SoHo on Weds. January 21. Sponsored by Salon, the evening will involve me discussing Culture Crash alongside author Elizabeth Wurtzel (pictured), whose upcoming book, Creatocracy: How the Constitution Invented Hollywood, shares some concerns with … [Read more...]
The Big Lie of Jeff Koons
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="vgKZ6xRHRblYrS2DIdm6RSmRakPmvRv4"] IS it possible that the most characteristic artist of our time could also be almost entirely full of b.s.? From what I can tell, that's exactly what we've got. Over the last week or so I've been underlining lines from Jed Perl's New York Review of Books piece on the art world's Gilded boy, thinking and talking about Perl's argument, … [Read more...]
German Writers Stand Up to Amazon
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hPvvYov9l3ydhtOyPeAaXmviWmWA6lEM"] WHETHER opposition to the online octopus is growing and spreading is hard to tell, but some of the anger we've seen in the US literary community seems to be driving authors in the German-speaking world as well. A New York Times story reports that more than a thousand German-language authors have written a letter of protest. The … [Read more...]
The Trouble With Opera
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="wZSGDJOmSbhvFKacaUaPFIlOS5DNnjBE"] IS it more prominent than ever, or disappearing from American eyes and ears? It may be some of both, in a time in which opera is played in movie theaters and opera companies struggle to survive. An aptly ambivalent story by Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times looks at the strange predicament of American opera in 2014. Things were … [Read more...]
Amazon vs. Hachette Fatal to Non-Superstar Authors
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="8GbWVEDH47AifqGz31d8Z6pNMkmzPLRY"] SO far most of the coverage of the battle between Amazon and the Hachette publishers has looked at the impact on bestselling authors like James Patterson and J.K. Rowling, whose work becomes harder to get or impossible to pre-order during the current feud. But a new story argues that the writers really hurt by this are lesser known … [Read more...]
Housing for Artists, Upcoming Doc and What Twain Tells Us
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hLRQi16APGHGAa7vr6agsGJdgdO8X6ef"] IT’S taken a while, but as rents and real estate prices have surged over the last few years, the issue of living space for artists has started to get the attention it deserves; David Byrne and Patti Smith have helped shine a light on the plight of creative folk in New York. A new story by fiction writer Catherine Lacey highlights … [Read more...]