“Lamar’s historic win figures in the grander, affected consecration of blackness within élite spaces—exemplified, I think, by the “thousand flowers of expectation” blooming in Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of Barack Obama. It was Obama, with his caucuses of rappers in the White House, who accelerated the conclusion that hip-hop had earned a prestige as a great American art. In its long and perplexing lurch toward acclaim, did hip-hop sacrifice its edge? Lamar is a fascinating and brilliant non-answer.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Kendrick Lamar Did The Pulitzer A Favor By Winning
The music Pulitzer was an obscure bauble coveted only by the people who cared about it, of which there were not many. Forget the big reporting and magazine awards; even the poetry Pulitzer mattered more than music. Grammys are the awards that count most in music, and given that Kendrick is already loaded with golden gramophones — though the Album of the Year continues, unconscionably, to elude him — the Pulitzer is just a feather in his Dodgers fitted cap.
So… Blame Humanities For Today’s Bad Politics?
“The midcentury ideal — of literature as an aesthetically and philosophically complex activity, and of criticism as its engaged and admiring decoding — is gone. In its place stands the idea that our capacity to shape our protean selves is the capacity most worth exercising, the thing to be defended at all costs, and the good that a literary inclination best serves. Democratizing the canon did not have to mean abdicating authority over it, but this was how it played out.”
The Internet Has Grown Toxic, Say The Guys Who Built It
“To understand what went wrong — how the Silicon Valley dream of building a networked utopia turned into a globalized strip-mall casino overrun by pop-up ads and cyberbullies and Vladimir Putin — we spoke to more than a dozen architects of our digital present. If the tech industry likes to assume the trappings of a religion, complete with a quasi-messianic story of progress, the Church of Tech is now giving rise to a new sect of apostates, feverishly confessing their own sins. And the internet’s original sin, as these programmers and investors and CEOs make clear, was its business model.”
MoviePass Is Growing Crazy Fast. But Can It Survive?
Since MoviePass slashed its monthly subscription costs last August from $50 to $9.95, its user base has exploded from roughly 20,000 to more than 2 million. In the process, it’s become the fastest-growing paid-entertainment subscription service in history, signing people at a greater clip than Netflix or Spotify. All that disruption in the movie theater business has created enemies and fueled skeptics, but whether MoviePass survives or dies, it has undeniably shaken up an industry that hasn’t changed much since the silent era.
What George Lucas’ Museum Of Narrative Art Will Be
“In their daily lives, people interact with all kinds of popular storytelling visual forms, most of which are maybe not what we have historically called fine art. Our purpose as a museum is to highlight and explore and celebrate the best of these forms, and to really unpack the way in which they work. We’re really interested in this through-line of narrative, the fact that so many artists in so many cultures, times, and places have been compelled to tell stories in different mediums. Why do we have this drive and how does it work?”
How Art Was (Mostly) Protected During World War II
In London, the Elgin Marbles were hidden in Aldwych tube station – although, alarmingly, it was later revealed it wouldn’t have withstood a direct hit. In Paris, the Louvre was emptied out in 1939, with 3,600 paintings packed off to safe houses. The Mona Lisa – now considered too fragile to be moved – was shuttled round the country five times, moving from chateau to abbey to chateau, to keep her one step ahead of the Nazis.
The Art Of Nairobi’s Dancing Buses
Matatu are the privately owned buses that have transported at least 60 percent of Nairobi’s population since the early ’60s. The word matatu comes from the Kikuyu word for “three,” referring to the three ten-cent coins used to pay for a ride to the city when matatus first started operating.
Collecting: Why Canada’s National Gallery Is Selling A Chagall To Get A David
There will, no doubt, be many who oppose the decision. Chagall’s lofty position in the pantheon of Modern art is equalled by few, and bested by maybe only two: Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. David, a towering figure in French neo-classical painting, is no less important, an art historian would tell you, though in another era and for different reasons.
Neuroscience Research: Best Friends Share Brain Waves
New research suggests the roots of friendship extend even deeper than previously suspected. Scientists have found that the brains of close friends respond in remarkably similar ways as they view a series of short videos: the same ebbs and swells of attention and distraction, the same peaking of reward processing here, boredom alerts there.