Category: issues

Don’t be: “Isn’t vanity a defense against death? And isn’t dismissing a selfie as purely ‘vain’ also dismissing this form of nascent inquiry and self-preservation?”

“Incredibly, the situation is worse today than it was a century ago. In the 1920s, there were almost as many female screenwriters in Hollywood as male ones. Writers such as Frances Marion and Anita Loos were among the most revered in the industry, and brought a raft of complex, multi-dimensional female characters to the big screen.”

“The internet and social media have trapped the scribbler-in-the-dark in a pincer movement. The former has pushed newspapers into such penury that editors increasingly see their arts desks as luxuries.”

“Was the regional arts movement of the second half of the twentieth century just a transition phase for the arts in America? Will the Baby Boom generation be the last one to routinely attend live, fully professional performances?”

“The Weills will pay 80 percent of Mr. Mehta’s $300,000 annual salary to the university [in Sonoma, CA], which will cover the rest — an unconventional arrangement for an arts organization. What’s also unusual is that Mr. Mehta does not plan to move to California.”

“Many, if not most, of the venues and the institutions that we now take for granted were established by visionaries who, in marked contrast to the prevailing political and social preoccupations of today, were thinking beyond the fleeting moment of their present.”

“The document, called Rebalancing our Cultural Capital, says that the funding body allocated £320 million to the arts last year, with £20 per capita going to London, while just £3.60 per head went to the rest of England.”

“Vine is an invitation-only club for the retail giant’s top customer reviewers–those whose advice has been rated the most helpful by other shoppers. Once invited, reviewers are allowed to choose twice monthly from a list of free products that Amazon hopes to bolster the sales of by generating more reviews.”

“Marketing is now part of what artists do. They “play” with the market; their lifestyles and rebellions key into the corporate world. Art about art, art about money and value is now familiar. It was easy enough to walk around Damien Hirst’s big retrospective and see precisely the point at which the money becomes both subject and object.”

“Few of us would deny that culture has a relationship to creative activity. But politicians and many in the cultural sector have entangled culture with ideas of artistic ‘specialness’ or uniqueness and packaged that entanglement into an apple pie and motherhood discourse of creativity.”