“In the pursuit of cultural hegemony, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz government has carried out a full-scale assault on the Hungarian cultural establishment, taking over funding bodies, defaming critics and putting loyalists in positions of influence. The result today is almost total conformity to the Hungarian nationalism of Fidesz and the sidelining of independent culture.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Here’s a contrast
Here’s a typical example of a classical group’s description of the program it’s performing, alongside some (rough) equivalents from popular music (the arty branch of it), and what the former might learn from the latter.
Hoaxer Alan Abel Gets His Second New York Times Obit (And This Time He’s Really Dead)
“A master psychologist, keen strategist and possessor of an enviable deadpan and a string of handy aliases, Mr. Abel had an almost unrivaled ability to divine exactly what a harried news media wanted to hear and then give it to them, irresistibly gift-wrapped. … He was, the news media conceded with a kind of irritated admiration, an American original in the mold of P. T. Barnum, a role model whom Mr. Abel reverently acknowledged.”
‘Quantum Blue’, A New High-Tech Azure Pigment, Is On Its Way To Market
“The new color uses nanotechnology to achieve an exceptionally pure hue of blue that is best seen under ultraviolet (UV) light, which gives it an otherworldly, radioactive glow. (Without UV lighting, it has an unremarkable off-white appearance.) The key components of the futuristic blue are quantum dots: tiny semiconductor particles usually measuring no more than one millionth of an inch in size.”
In Search Of The Pigment Described In The Bible As The Most Perfect Blue
“Forty-nine times the Bible mentions a perfect, pure blue, a color so magnificent and transcendent that it was all but impossible to describe. Yet, for most of the last 2,000 years, nobody has known exactly what ‘biblical blue’ — called tekhelet in Hebrew — actually looked like or how it could be re-created.” Writer Noga Tarnopolsky tells the story of the team who figured it out.
Shan Tianfang, Master Traditional Storyteller And Chinese Radio Superstar, Dead At 83
“Bothered by what he felt were the many historical inaccuracies and superstitious fantasies found in the classical epics [of the pingshu storytelling artform], Mr. Shan, who had studied history, soon began performing his own interpretations based on his meticulous historical research,” for which he became celebrated. In the years after the Cultural Revolution, he brought pingshu to the radio waves, where hundreds of millions listened.
Vulture’s ‘Premature Attempt’ At A 21st-Century Literary Canon
“A couple of months ago, we reached out to dozens of critics and authors — well-established voices (Michiko Kakutani, Luc Sante), more radical thinkers (Eileen Myles), younger reviewers for outlets like n+1, and some of our best-read contributors, too. We asked each of them to name several books that belong among the most important 100 works of fiction, memoir, poetry, and essays since 2000 and tallied the results. The purpose was not to build a fixed library but to take a blurry selfie of a cultural moment.”
‘Mr. Balanchine’s Stage Is Now Filled With Rot’, Writes Former New York City Ballet Dancer In New York Times Op-Ed
Toni Bentley: “The company has now formally hit its nadir after 35 years under the direction of Peter Martins, who succeeded Mr. Balanchine. As a lead dancer for Mr. Balanchine, Mr. Martins embodied a singular purity that made him one of the great male dancers of the 20th century. But the company, under his guidance, is now proffering vulgarity, narcissism and amorality … [and] this descent into moral vacuity has been in the works for decades.”
Audiences And Donors Should Insist On Answers For The Scandals At New York City Ballet: Sarah Kaufman
“With the company’s fall season at New York’s Lincoln Center starting Tuesday, audiences must decide whether buying a ballet ticket means checking their consciences at the door. This is because [Alexandra] Waterbury’s lawsuit goes beyond blaming specific dancers — it accuses the entire institution.”
Responses From All Over To The New York City Ballet Firings
Jennifer Stahl reports on the statements released by the two fired dancers, how the dancers’ union is handling the dismissals, reactions on social media, and one way in which this scandal is affecting City Ballet’s search for a new artistic director.