“Television companies are looking for ways to build hype for their new shows and make them stand out amid a glut of high-quality original programs. This year there could be as many as 500 scripted shows on TV and streaming services, compared with about 300 in 2015, according to estimates from the cable network FX. Theater owners, meanwhile, are eager to fill seats during slow periods including the autumn months, and hoping to diversify their businesses as the box office becomes increasingly unpredictable.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
The Visual Art World Is Shedding Expertise At A Dangerous Rate
“It is not just that it appears impossible to reach a consensus on important artists such as Modigliani. Nor is it the way the auction houses are discarding specialists at an alarming rate. Nor even the fact that key artistic Foundations (Warhol, Pollock and Lichtenstein) no longer provide an authenticating service. It is all this and more.”
If The Great Geniuses Hadn’t Made Their Great Discoveries Would Others Have Made Them?
“For one thing, the most obvious candidate to replace one genius seems to be another genius. No surprise, maybe, but it makes you wonder whether the much-derided “great man” view of history, which ascribes historical trajectories to the actions and decisions of individuals, might not have some validity in science. You might wonder whether there’s some selection effect here: We overlook lesser-known candidates precisely because they weren’t discoverers, even though they could have been. But it seems entirely possible that, on the contrary, greatness always emerges, if not in one direction then another.”
Dividing Movie Types Between “Coastal Elites” And “Ordinary Americans” Is Tempting But Dangerous
Thoughts of “the bubble,” and of its rhetorical cousin “real America” kept coming up as I tried to organize my feelings about the year’s movies. The phrases are both booby traps—labels that, when applied to culture, seek to impose a divide between art that is oblivious and art that is aware, or between movies that are about and for honest plain-spoken Americans (current example: Patriots Day) and movies that are for “coastal elites” who think rural white dudes are scary as hell (I don’t know … Nocturnal Animals?
The Internet Hasn’t Democratized Music As Promised
“As music discovery becomes more concentrated and consolidated (goodbye, Vine) thanks to Spotify recs and Tidal-only exclusives (my New Year’s resolution: cancel Tidal) and Beats 1 premieres that one feels obligated to indulge for the sake of relevancy, the free-for-all that once was a deep-dive internet search for a weird track has dissipated a bit, in lieu of streaming services handing you what you want on a platter. ‘Discovery’ features feel like an exercise in marketed groupthink, even when they occasionally do yield new music.”
How A Building Shaped The Magazine The Economist Became
“Just as the design of prisons can make rehabilitation easier or harder, and as school buildings influence how children learn, so offices mould the people who work in them. They make some kinds of interaction easy and others hard, which shapes the way of working. Over the years the building has shaped The Economist in several ways, some good, some less so.”
The Upstart Companies Making Opera Hip In LA
New opera companies are everywhere, and springing up in unexpected places and in unusual formats. And there’s a lot more coming in 2017.
A Practical Real-World Debate About Public Money And The Role Of Artists
Ohio’s Cuyahoga County voters approved a cigarette tax to fund artists. So the question was how to allocate those funds. The country’s arts commission decided that the program would
emphasize community engagement over studio practice. Originally, the proposal was to have a Washington DC-based nonprofit organization replace the Cleveland-based group that had administered the individual artist grant program since its inception in 2008.
But artists got upset that criteria emphasized change over artistic merit.
Artists who work at making art in their studios and exhibiting it in galleries—as opposed to creating community engagement programs, seeking partners, and other social practices—feel like that kind of guideline writes them out. It pits one type of artist against another. And it feels not like public support, but like government direction.
The protests led to a community meeting at which there seemed to be broad agreement that the arts should advance racial equity and be a force for reflecting and improving the community. But where does the quality of art factor in, and who defines it? With voter-approved money on the table and a need to show that the money is being spent effectively, agreeing on how that happens is both a practical question but also a philosophical debate about the role of art and artists in their community.
Today’s AJBlog Highlights 01.02.17
Monday Recommendation: Andrew Cyrille Andrew Cyrille Quartet, The Declaration Of Musical Independence (ECM) Andrew Cyrille, a bold drummer, long since established his audacity and the independence underscored in the album title. This collection is notable for subtlety and daring … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-01-02
12 Plays of Xmas: 7 Egor Bulychev by Gorky I’ve seen a lot of Chekhov. I mean, a lot. Last year, I marvelled at Vanya at the Almeida and spent a day with the National Theatre’s Young Chekhov trilogy. I can almost sing … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2017-01-02
Patti Smith’s New Year’s Eve vow: “We must not behave!” Patti Smith, Dec 31 2016, Park West Chicago. Photo by Lauren Deutsch. Ushering in 2017 with Patti Smith and band at Chicago’s Park West New Year’s Eve was inspiriting for us of a certain age and … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2017-01-01
7 Audience Development Resolutions for 2017 “Your beliefs become your thoughts; Your thoughts become your words; Your words become your actions; Your actions become your habits; Your habits become your values; Your values become your destiny.” – Mahatma Gandhi Together, let’s make these resolutions for 2017: I … read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2017-01-01
Bill Marshall, 77, Founder Of The Toronto Film Festival
“He was a pioneer in the Canadian film industry,” said TIFF director and CEO Piers Handling, in a press release announcing Marshall’s death. “His vision of creating a public festival that would bring the world to Toronto through the transformative power of cinema stands today as one of his most significant legacies.”