Category: issues

“Over the past century, Rorschach would have seen his inkblots morph from an obscure therapeutic instrument into a nearly universal cultural meme, at once a familiar touchstone for art, music, film, and fashion, and a controversial test for assessing job applicants and prosecuting criminal defendants. Perhaps he would have wondered why his inkblots, once reserved for the assessment of patients with serious mental illnesses, should have emerged as the preeminent metaphor for the relativity of all acts of perception and the flexibility of all personalities.”

Thomas P. Campbell: “I fear that this current call to abolish the N.E.A. is the beginning of a new assault on artistic activity. Arts and cultural programming challenges, provokes and entertains; it enhances our lives. Eliminating the N.E.A. would in essence eliminate investment by the American government in the curiosity and intelligence of its citizens.”

There are obvious answers to that of course – experience is a great teacher. But what accounts for the sometime enormous turns in style and thought that some artists undergo?

There was even more backstage drama than usual at Russia’s flagship opera and ballet theater earlier this decade – most famously, the acid attack on former ballet director Sergei Filin, but also on the opera side. Vladimir Urin was hired in 2013 to bring order to the house, and the President seems pleased with how Urin has done it.

“The budget disaster in Rio could be attributed to many factors, such as the fall in the oil prices, the expansion of the government payroll and the general recession. But there’s no doubt that reckless spending on the World Cup and the Olympics played a role. The city of Rio will be paying off the debts it amassed for years, while it also now has to maintain the arenas it built.”

“We still cling to the notion that groundbreaking creative work happens in isolation. And there’s no shortage of productivity experts who will rush to point out that the toughest, most high-value work takes mastery and deep focus—that distractions are bad, and that most distractions result from other people, all being forced to collaborate and failing miserably at it.”

“So how does it happen — how can someone on the order of Voltaire (we can insert many other illustrious names here) end up missing the mark so completely? We first need to dispense with the most obvious and least savory explanation, that the nasty judgment is directed more toward the writer than his or her work.”

Equity says, “The council has committed an act of cultural vandalism in Bath that will result in a new dark age for arts and culture in the region.”

Canadian filmmaker Amber Fares: “There are so many films that deal with the politics of Palestine/Israel, but we didn’t want to get into the details of that; it just plays out naturally through their lives. It’s politically important that we see more diversity in our media, full stop.”