“Embedded in the premise that art in New York is dead is often a fetishized nostalgia for the 1970s and early ’80s, a cheaper, more chaotic time when high crime, civic neglect and the threat of bankruptcy opened whole neighborhoods to artists.”
Category: issues
In Praise Of Know-Nothing Criticism
“The problem with demanding a certain kind of knowledge or a certain kind of expertise in criticism, then, is that it can end up presupposing, or insisting upon, a certain kind of conversation. And often that seems like the point: expertise is used as an excuse to silence critics — and especially negative critics.”
“Creative Entrepreneur” Or No, The Artist Is Definitely Not Dead Yet
Robinson Meyer hits back at William Deresiewicz’s jeremiad: “His reading suffers a tremendous flaw: Deresiewicz cannot discriminate the substantial from the faddish. What’s more, his historical work is incomplete – he mistakes a very new idea for a very old one. Deresiewicz’s artistic philosophy aspires to timelessness, but it’s younger than most of his Millennial subjects.”
Is Social Media Killing The Professional Critic?
Mmmm-maybe …
Study: Internet Tops Friends, Family As Sources Of Information
“In a report we issued this afternoon, we found that for a cluster of problems with government connections more people turn to the internet than to experts or family members. This preference for the internet isn’t the case for every person’s every problem. But it was interesting to see how much the internet has moved from the periphery of people’s lives a decade ago to the center of their information environment now.”
The “Culture” Problem (What Is It?)
It goes without saying that “culture” is a confusing word, this year or any year. Merriam-Webster offers six definitions for it (including the biological one, as in “bacterial culture”). The problem is that “culture” is more than the sum of its definitions. If anything, its value as a word depends on the tension between them.
The Death of the Artist – And the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur
“Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional – the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it?” William Deresiewicz, who caused a stir this past summer with an essay arguing that Ivy League colleges were overrated and their undergrads were timid “sheep”, lays out the problem as he sees it.
Why Uber – The Idea, Not The Actual Car Service – Crossed A Cultural Barrier In 2014
‘”Like an Uber for’ is shorthand for describing an item or service delivered wherever you are and whenever you want it, but the phrase also hints at a much larger shift in people’s expectations about their interactions with the world. It turns out one of the most hackneyed phrases in tech this year may also be one of the most profound.”
Cuban And U.S. Artists Have Always Found Ways To Collaborate Around The Embargo
“The announcements by Obama and Castro won’t affect the particulars of any of these projects in progress. But the move does have many people in the cultural sphere considering what might be artistically possible between the two countries down the line.”
How Democracy Spreads (And Why That Spread Sometimes Fails)
“For Fukuyama, the great challenge of state-building is creating and sustaining an institution of collective rule that cuts against the grain of human nature: we are designed to favour friends and family, and a patrimonial tribal order is ‘hard-wired,’ he argues, into our neural circuitry.”