{"id":830,"date":"2016-04-03T15:48:55","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T22:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/?p=830"},"modified":"2016-09-24T00:50:11","modified_gmt":"2016-09-24T07:50:11","slug":"what-is-greatness-this-weeks-five-artsjournal-highlights-04-03-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/04\/what-is-greatness-this-weeks-five-artsjournal-highlights-04-03-16.html","title":{"rendered":"What Is Greatness? – Six Highlights From This Week’s ArtsJournal 04.03.16"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"zaha-hadid-images-slide-BOCD-master1050\"<\/a>A number of stories this week tackled the meaning of greatness in art (even if they didn’t explicitly frame it that way). A changing culture requires changing definitions of greatness, but defining “great” has often been problematic.<\/p>\n

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  1. Wealthy patrons have funded great art throughout history.<\/strong> And of course the wealthy have had many different reasons for their patronage. One of the strongest was an appeal to having a hand in Great Art. But is the Great Art argument losing its appeal to today’s wealthy? <\/a>\u00a0\u201cClassics and antiquity have lost cultural cache in the age of disruption, and there is no longer an aristocratic imperative to support noble projects of lofty ambition. Today we\u2019ve neither dutiful Kings, Vaticans, or robber barons to seduce the hoi polloi into complicity with visions of the transplendent. Nor do the experiments in democracy we deem \u201cstates\u201d seem to be doing much better, having withdrawn much of the already measly funding available for highbrow cultural endeavors.\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. What makes a play great, and how do we get them produced?<\/strong>\u00a0Michael Feingold tackles the question:<\/a> \u201cI had better try to explain what I mean by greatness. It isn\u2019t simply a matter of choosing a big ponderous theme, and spouting a lot of abstractions that will make academics write learned articles about your work. Nor is it a matter of an old play\u2019s having survived long enough to become a \u2018classic,\u2019 a term we use far too loosely.\u201d He suggests New York isn’t set up structurally to produce great theatre:<\/a>\u00a0\u201cOne problem that New York has always had with greatness is that our mainstream theater is a commercial theater, and what\u2019s great does not always make money: Sometimes, especially when it comes in a new form, the disruption it causes actively drives the pleasure-seeking, affluent crowds away.\u201d<\/li>\n
  3. A great architect dies suddenly at 65 and leaves a (great) mixed legacy:<\/strong> Zaha Hadid’s kinetic career was cut short at a young age for an architect of greatness. Phil Kennicott: “Hadid embodied what many felt were the worst impulses of the most recent age of architectural exuberance<\/a>: designs that indulged sculptural excess over logic and efficiency and the cultivation of celebrity status, which often seemed to insulate her from constructive criticism. She spoke the airy language of architectural theory, with all its utopian overtones, but she vigorously branded consumer products from candles to tableware to neckties. She worked regularly, and enthusiastically, in countries with authoritarian governments, designing them spectacular and expensive cultural centers and other vanity projects. Here are seven of her iconic buildings<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  4. So what makes great art? A timeless (and cliched) question to be sure.<\/strong> Many have stepped forward to give their answer. Of all those who attempt to answer, museums have some standing here. But have museums lost confidence in their role?<\/a>\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s a real lack of faith in both the meaning and power of cultural artefacts and their history. Because many museums are not interested in that anymore. They\u2019re far more interested in making themselves feel better about a past they had nothing to do with.\u201d And perhaps the question is getting more complicated. Google’s intelligent machines are now making art, and it’s no longer a stretch to wonder if machines might begin competing with humans in their ability to produce great art<\/a>. Then who defines greatness? And how might our notions of art change as machines take us in different directions?<\/li>\n
  5. JK Rowling is a masterful storyteller, a great author.<\/strong> But by whose definition? Because she wrote books that sold millions of copies? She wanted to find out, wrote under a pseudonym, and submitted her post-Harry book to several publishers. And got rejected. <\/a>She was even advised by one editor to try a writing class. Of course the book (under pseudonym) eventually got published and sold reasonably well. But not nearly so well as when the real author was discovered and it became a huge bestseller. For fun, she has now posted her rejection letters as “a source of inspiration” to other writers who are struggling to get published.<\/li>\n
  6. How do you compete with the great Metropolitan Opera?<\/strong> Why, offer something different, of course, writes Alex Ross<\/a>. But different doesn’t necessarily mean worse – or better. And different can work. So what, exactly is the essential opera experience or “great” opera?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n