Author: Douglas McLennan

First Half Of 2017 Sets Streaming Music Records

“Nielsen released its latest annual midyear music report, and thus far in 2017, on-demand audio streams topped 184 billion, up 62.4% over the same time period last year. When video streams are added to the equation, the total soars to 284 billion streams, an increase of 36.4% versus the first half of 2016. The gains in streaming have been more than enough to offset the continued decline of physical and digital sales: overall audio consumption has grown 8.9% despite a 17% dip in the former and a 19.9% drop in the latter.”

Solving Problems Through Art – Peter Schjeldahl On Agnes Gund’s Sale Of A Lichtenstein To Fund Social Justice

Roy Lichtenstein died in 1997. What might he think of all this, if he were alive today? He was a Democrat; he created prints in support of Dukakis, in 1988, and of Clinton-Gore, in 1992. But his overriding drive was to bring qualities of high art into taut accord with motifs from commercial mass culture. There is a term for that kind of aspiration: American.

Someone’s Always Announcing The Death Of The Short Story. Don’t Believe Them

“While bitter experience has shown poetry exactly where it stands in the marketplace, and the novel has shrugged off multiple reports of its death and maintained pre-eminence, the short story is continually characterised as the neglected form that will be great again. The funny thing is, when you explore its history you find the perception of a distant golden age, an undistinguished present and a return to glory has always been around: the short story has a problem with reality.”

In The Age Of The Curator, Are Degrees In Curatorship Worth Anything?

“Though it was originally an occupation that kept one behind the scenes, the appointment of curatorial posts is now fodder for news headlines, particularly when it comes to events like documenta or the Venice Biennale. More and more frequently, critics evaluate exhibitions based on how they are developed or formulated—thereby placing the responsibility of a show’s success directly upon the curator’s shoulders, and proving that they are no longer considered merely an overseer of collections or exhibitions. As the position becomes more high-profile, the crop of those aspiring to be curators grows, with more universities offering specialized programs in the field.”

The Role Of Laughter In Our Culture

Laughter is no different than political systems, commercial relations or artistic practices: it evolves over time, the result and cause of material and social transformations. For medieval man, laughter was the great leveller. Preceding Martin Luther’s priesthood of all believers was Rabelais’s priesthood of all belly-laughers. Inclusive and communal, laughter left no one untouched; no less universal than faith, it was a bit more subversive. In fact, as Bakhtin notes, late-medieval laughter marked a victory, albeit temporary, not just over the sacred and even over death; it also signalled ‘the defeat of power, of earthly kings, of the earthly upper classes, of all that represses and restricts’.

Music Academy Of The West Returns To Business – Music Of Our Time

“We have started to make music of today part of our normal way of doing business. We’re not restricting music of living composers to a far corner of the summer and calling it ‘new music week.’ That sort of new-music ghetto is, to me, not the best way to present it. It suggests that new music is its own thing, and not connected with anything else. We think this music belongs on the same concert as Beethoven, Dvorak, and Stravinsky.”