It all depends on how you experienced the holiday as a child, apparently. (Also, it depends on whether you’re trapped working in a retail environment where Christmas music plays endlessly, and on repeat.)
Why Does The Art Of Criticism Seem So Far Removed From The Judgments Everyone Makes Daily?
What is it that makes the artfulness of critical writing illegible to so many? Why do so many self-identified artists imagine that the creative practice of critical writing is so far removed from their own? The cliché “everyone’s a critic” is a truism. There is criticism — judgment — implicit in every decision we make.
The Most-Anticipated New Opera Of The Year Faces Backlash
The piece has “taken many aback with some startlingly negative reviews as well as bending-over-backward attempts to find some value in a work by a team that has given us operatic masterpieces in the past. Without question, the most highly anticipated new opera of the year — a year in which John Adams turned 70 and Peter Sellars, 60 — “Girls” has also been presented as the first opera of Trump times. The populist spirit of the 49ers, the lack of regard for the environment in pursuit of wealth, along with the rampant racism against Latinos, Chinese and black people has created the expectation of the kind of political opera that the lyric stage has historically been very adept at.”
The Art Of The Fake: Forgers Are The Art World’s Folk (Anti-)Heroes
Noah Charney: “There is an element of illusionism to a good forger’s craft, but also a mischievous Loki quality to them, a sense that they are ‘more prankster than gangster,’ and that it is okay to admire them, even cheer for them against the authorities. The tabloid media, in particular, likes to dress up art forgers as working class heroes who are ‘sticking it’ to the elites, showing the emperors that they wear no clothes.”
How One Entrepreneur Is Trying To Make More Affordable Artist Studio Space
“I wanted to make a protected space,” Andrea Woodner offers, “where they don’t have to be completely bare-knuckled about the commercial environment. Here, they can be artists, think about and show their own work, and use the facility as an artist-run project space.”
How Technology Has Liberated Underground Music
Today, the tools have ripened to the point where, if musicians build enough momentum, a record label becomes an indulgence, rather than a necessity. “Technology has democratised creativity,” says Brian Message, a partner at artist management company ATC. “The tools are in everybody’s hands to be able to create and to promote at any level.”
Reading And Comprehension. Are We Teaching Them Wrong?
“Current education practices show that reading comprehension is misunderstood. It’s treated like a general skill that can be applied with equal success to all texts. Rather, comprehension is intimately intertwined with knowledge. That suggests three significant changes in schooling.”
The Trouble With Thinking We’re In A “Golden Age” Of TV
“Television shows function like businesses—they have huge payrolls, with hundreds of people doing hundreds of tasks to make even the most banal sitcom a reality. During the “Golden Age,” the conversation around who made television tended to boil down to one person—the showrunner—and in many ways, we are still living with that legacy. We evaluate television creators as artists, but not often as bosses, which is exactly what most of them are.”
Winners And Losers If Net Neutrality Goes Away
Winners? Big internet providers and marketers. Losers? “You. If you’re a normal person and you want access to the Internet, get ready for all kinds of airline industry-style charges. You’ll either accept a slower connection or pay extra for going over a threshold on your unlimited data plan. In practice, you’re likely to get amazing speed and service for video content you don’t care about and terrible service while trying to use the things you really want. The solution … pay more.”
What Might Happen At This Year’s Oscars, As Parts Of Hollywood (And The Government) Seem To Implode?
It seems almost impossible to predict. Yet “one narrative threatens to overwhelm all others — the Movie That Speaks to Our Present Crisis.” (All eyes are on Get Out.)
Can ‘China’s Tolkien’ Conquer The West?
Hard to say, because the task of translating author Jin Yong’s hugely bestselling Legends of the Condor Heroes defeated many an English translator before a young Scotswoman won through with the first volume in a planned 12-volume series. “Agent Peter Buckman, who sold the rights to the series to the publisher, came across the works almost by chance as he searched the internet for’“bestselling authors’. ‘Jin Yong was in the top 10, though I’d never heard of him; nor did I read Chinese,’ he said.”
Bertha Calloway, Who Founded The Great Plains Black History Museum, Dies At 93
Calloway founded the museum in 1976 as part of the outgrowth both of her activism and of a historical society in Omaha, Nebraska. Her son called her one of the last of the “true icons” of north Omaha. Her museum had been through both good and hard times, but it just reopened in a new facility earlier in the fall.
The Community That Designs Buildings Together Stays Together (And Lives Longer, Too)
We need more “collective efficacy” and “ordered complexity,” or so says one writer. (The writer also claims we need to be able to see long distances, be able to map our terrain, and enjoy patterns that mimic the fractal patterns in our bodies.)
We Have Questions About This U.S. Adaptation Of A Great Chilean Movie About Middle-Aged Women
The original 2013 Gloria was an honest and full-bodied depiction of a woman in her late 50s, still filled with determination and desire. U.S. moviemakers aren’t exactly known for their ability to imagine or understand older women – so maybe it’s good that the Chilean director who made the original is also tasked with the “adaptation” (not remake).
Movies Weren’t Doing So Well This Month, And Then ‘Coco’ Came Around
Yes, yes, a movie about the Day of the Dead rescued the box office from the 2017 graveyard, etc. etc. (This is, of course, what Disney/Pixar movies are supposed to do.)
The Mall, Once A Center Of Shopping, Is Now More Likely To Be Your Gym
Even mall architecture is changing to fit the new concept in a space where retail is on the wane. “Gyms fit into a broader push by mall owners to reinvent themselves as centers of entertainment at a time when so much of apparel sales have moved online. Landlords are adding restaurants, ice-skating rinks, pools and other recreational options to boost sagging foot traffic.”
Top AJBlogs Post From The Week And Weekend Of 11.26.17
The Literary Roots of Lou Reed
Back in the spring, when I pitched the Los Angeles Review of Books on a regular column on musicians and their literary interests, my editor immediately came up with the title All the Poets. … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrashPublished 2017-11-24
Almanac: Henry James on commercial theater
“Then the mixture was to be stirred to the tune of perpetual motion and served, under pain of being rejected with disgust, with the time-honoured bread-sauce of the happy ending.” Henry James, preface to Theatricals: … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2017-11-24
Piano Sonata as Video Game: Anomalies in My Reception of Beethoven’s Music
A transcript of my spoken remarks at Boston University this week, as part of a symposium on piano sonatas by Beethoven. “I’d like to talk about what I would call anomalies in my own reception … read more
AJBlog: PianoMorphosisPublished 2017-11-23
Kehinde Wiley Can’t Tell Us About The Process Of Painting Barack Obama’s Presidential Portrait
But he can talk about painting Michael Jackson: “It was extraordinary. His knowledge of art and art history was much more in-depth than I had imagined. He was talking about the difference between early and late Rubens brushwork. OK, why not? One of the things we talked about was how clothing functions as armour. And if you look at the painting, he’s on horseback in full body armour.”