Category: issues

“From declaring that one should interrogate one’s musical tastes for classism to fretting about yellow face in opera to musing as to whether a man can write a novel about rape culture, in the hands of the social justice warriors, artistic and cultural criticism is increasingly less about aesthetics and more about virtue signaling by the critic. Like all other fundamentalists, these secular descendants of the Puritans are so preoccupied with enforcing their rigid morality that they’ve forgotten the importance of beauty and creativity.”

As for this year’s finalists for ArtPlace grants, 34 percent hailed from rural areas. ArtPlace says it’s noticed an “increase in regional projects; many working collaboratively across adjacent rural communities.” It also said that proposed projects reflected a “sustained interest in water projects that, this year, focused on its use and preservation,” and requests for improving or introducing broadband access to rural communities to “increase economic opportunity.”

“They’re taking cues from some of fiction’s friendlier robots – think the droids in Star Wars, or Wall-E – and blending it with the latest thinking on how our own brains work to create real-life robots that may make us more inclined to accept these technologies into our lives…. This cottage industry of bot-makers are concerned with what the machines look like, how they sound, and what kind of personalities they have.”

“With the continent sweltering under a heatwave nicknamed Lucifer, tempers have been boiling over, too, as a wave of anti-tourism protests take place in some of Europe’s most popular destinations.” Demonstrations have taken place from Dubrovnik to Barcelona and beyond, with cruise ships and Airbnb being particular targets of anger.

“The systematic eradication of arts education in schools, sky-high drama school audition fees, chronic low pay and a lack of diversity behind the scenes are all contributing to a diversity crisis on our stages and screens.”

Ben Davis: “How many people out there still care about the implosion of the Blouin organization as we know it and its hail-mary mutation into an e-commerce hub? Not that many, it seems. And no one has done more than Louise Blouin herself when it comes to transforming her once formidable enterprise into a punch line. To measure the magnitude of her fall from grace, maybe it’s worth going back 10 years. Then, Louise Blouin – at the time, still Louise Blouin MacBain – was the toast of the art world, a fearsome new contender whose media ambitions were set to shake things up.”

“Could it be that the populist anger that put President Trump in the White House will trigger a 21st-century culture war? It’s certainly possible. But to ask that question is to overlook the fact that such a war is already being waged. The difference is that it’s a civil war—one that’s taking place not on the right, but on the left.”

Okay, almost no one argues that we should continue to permit trade in new ivory. Yet, argues John Frederick Walker, blocking all sales of older, already-sculpted ivory – and (as is happening now) burning or crushing existing pieces, even certified antiques – will simply increase scarcity and add glamor (and cash value) to the material. And we’ll lose some marvelous historic art as well.

The Origen Festival has built a red tower, housing a 250-seat in-the-round theater lit by windows on all sides, on a 7,500-foot-high pass in the Swiss Alps. “Built at a cost of two million francs, it weighs 410 tons and can withstand winds of up to 240km/hr.” The plan is to present world theater and other forms there year-round (though they need another million francs to winterize the building).