As Rupert Brooke, a very different kind of sensibility, put it, many artists welcomed the onset of war “as swimmers into cleanness leaping”. A short and sharply brutal conflict was just what art needed finally to euthanise the past and slough off the fusty clutter of landscapes, nudes and the strictures of the academy. A new and modern art lay just on the other side. Of course, as it turned out, these brave new movements turned out to be just another casualty of the trenches.
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Bayreuth Has Outlived Its Usefulness
Volker Hagedorn: “You might think you’re just there for the music, but the fact is that you are still participating in an entirely invented, cultish religion. … For me, Bayreuth nowadays is more of a curiosity than anything else. A gigantic hamster wheel, with directors racing each other to prove their relevance; an exhausted Dracula, sucking the lifeblood from artists from outside the music scene; a museum of local history, starring an international elite of singers, who appear to be of the opinion that no one needs to understand the words.”
‘Vanessa’ and ‘The Cradle Will Rock’: middle-aged operas speak to current ills
This summer’s Glyndebourne production of Samuel Barber’s reveals that this 1958 opera piece wasn’t a Romantic throwback – it was ahead of its time. A recent recording of Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 agitprop shows how clearly it speaks to The Age of The 1%.
Back to school – a cultural planning syllabus
So after a stretch in university administration, I am back full-time in the classroom this fall. One of my classes is in Cultural Planning and Community Development – i.e. “place-based” cultural policy. So, this is what I’ve put together.
Correspondence: About Jimmy Rowles
Vibraphonist, pianist and bandleader Charlie Shoemake wrote the other day to relate an experience involving pianist Jimmy Rowles (1918-1996).
Study: Progress Being Made In Portrayal Of Women In Movies
An analysis of 50 of the top-grossing films of 2016 finds females make up only one-third of all characters. But that’s a significant improvement over the last such survey, which looked at films released in 2002. And, perhaps more importantly, it reports females are now far more likely to be depicted in positions of power.
From Meme To Movies To Attempted Murder: A Brief History Of Slender Man
“Slender Man is scary not because of what you know about him but because of what you don’t know. … The character is a blank canvas for our fears but also for online storytelling. Now the namesake of a new horror film, Slender Man started to take shape in an online forum nearly a decade ago, at a time when daily life was shifting to social media and the border between the online world and the real one was starting to blur. Here’s a look at Slender Man’s evolution.”
How Poetry Constructs A Way Of Navigating The World
“In my view, poetry is the most organic art form; it does not require money or physical labor. A poem doesn’t need to follow any particular grammar rules; it is the record of one’s own experience of the singular mind and/or body, a singular voice. For many of us, it is also a way of “being in the world,” a world that in many ways was not made for us and actively resists our participation. Through poetry, we are able to remake and reinvent that world.”
People Are Still Playing Those Pixelated Old ’80s Video Games
“Older games feature pixel-based graphics that can look fuzzy on modern televisions and can be frustrating to play for even experienced gamers. Yet in 2016, Nintendo released a NES Classic Edition console and sold out all 2.3 million of them in just three months. The company made more and began selling them in June 2018.” A pair of media psychologists explain why Gen-Xers in particular remain so fond of dear old Mario and Sonic.
Of Course Librarians Have The Answer To Everything
Some people act as though librarians have (or should have) the answers to everything. As in – do you have: The book with the blue cover, the book with the red cover, the book with the green cover…The book that’s about horses . . . but not like about, horses, you know?… Breath mints (cinnamon preferred)