Category: issues

The bond campaign to renovate and improve a number of cultural landmarks in Denver has been aggressively promoted by those hoping to gain passage, and financial disclosures show that the cultural groups that would benefit the most from the bill have been contributing large sums to the “vote yes” campaign.

“Change is urgently needed in the way Britain sustains its arts and better coordination between government and grant allocators might be a good solution. But what will become of us? wail chamber ensembles, pottery centres and poetry publishers up and down the land. Who in the new structures will understand our traditions and our needs? Have no fear, little ones. Nothing will happen overnight, but what should emerge by the 2012 Olympics is a method of joined-up arts funding that ought to work better for everyone – except, disturbingly, for London.”

“Even if complaints from religious groups are already leading to widespread self-censorship by individuals and organisations who prefer to avoid persecution, and thus help save police time, there will always be some inadvertently offensive work, or more deliberate piece of mischief requiring investigation, prior to the issue of a ban…”

Some famous last words seem too good to be true. “Can we really be sure that, as some collections report, Tasso, Charlemagne, Lady Jane Grey, Christopher Columbus and unspecified others all signed off with the sentiment: ‘Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit’? Or that Beethoven’s very last words, not just words at the very end of his life but his ultimate ones, were ‘I shall hear in heaven’?”

“New legislation threatens to move us further from the dream of free expression in the arts than we were 50 years ago. When the difference between our fantasies and our external actions is elided, we erase a belief in our own reason. This is bad, bad, bad for literature – for what is it but reason that confronts, makes sense of and articulates the mad transgressions of our individual imaginations.”

“Fifty years ago today, a San Francisco Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg’s Beat-era poem ‘Howl’ was not obscene. Yet today, a New York public broadcasting station decided not to air the poem, fearing that the Federal Communications Commission will find it indecent and crush the network with crippling fines.”

The idea that men and women metaphorically “speak different languages” is not, of course, new, but the myth of Mars and Venus has given it new currency and legitimacy. What was once just a metaphor has acquired the status of literal, scientific truth. Today, it is widely believed that misunderstanding between men and women is a widespread and serious problem. But is our concern about it justified by the evidence, or is “male-female miscommunication” a myth?

“Professionals have tried to tackle social problems, meet targets and tick the right boxes, instead of concentrating on their artistic work. Trying to evaluate their results for the funding bureaucrats spawns costly and time-consuming research aiming to prove that their efforts have worked. But the long-term effect has been draining and self-defeating, as the arts bodies seem to have lost sight of the unique qualities and value of culture. Over time, the special case for the arts has been forgotten.”

“Human rights organizations called for the release of Myanmar’s best-known political satirist, film star and poet, fearing he has been tortured since his arrest last week in the middle of the night. Maung Thura, 45, known by the stage and pen name Zargana, was arrested in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, site of the biggest anti-government demonstrations.”

“The new criticism is not emotional or personal but associational. We can say that a bad work of art is much like Alzheimer’s: it is the artist’s failure or inability to make good or new associations. Here is our ground! A work of art is an association. An idea is an association. All is made from associations. We critics can judge every art object on this biological basis and no longer be vulnerable to our enemy’s sole weapon: “this is just an opinion.”