[contextly_auto_sidebar] AS recently as a few years back, it would have been hard to predict that controversial art dealer Jeffrey Deitch would have any reason to come back to Los Angeles for anything more complicated than a French Dip at Cole's. But now the man pushed out of the Museum of Contemporary Art -- and for a while, synonymous with faux-sensational, shallow Warholism -- is one his way … [Read more...]
Archives for 2018
The Strange Death of the Alternative Press
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR the last few months I've been meaning to revisit some of the abiding concerns of this blog and the book that inspired it. Mostly, I'm talking about what we used to call the press and now typically describe as the news media. My overall sense is that some parts of the creative economy have healed since I began writing my book in the teeth of the recession and … [Read more...]
Reading With Aimee Mann
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LAST week I took a wild guess and approached singer/songwriter Aimee Mann for my musicians-on-writing column, All the Poets. As a longtime fan I had a vague sense that she was literary -- whatever that means -- but could not recall a specific reference to a novel or poem in any of her songs. Nor had we talked about books of any kind across the several interviews we'd … [Read more...]
Guest Columnist: Empty Room at the Top
[contextly_auto_sidebar] Here is the latest piece by CultureCrash's regular guest columnist, Lawrence Christon. Christopher O'Riley, of course, is best known to some of us for his classical-piano interpretations of Radiohead, Nick Drake and Elliott Smith. EMPTY ROOM AT THE TOP By Lawrence Christon For years it’s been routine, whenever possible, for me to make … [Read more...]
Indie Publishing With Hat & Beard
[contextly_auto_sidebar] ONE of the things I'm most interested is how non-corporate, non-mainstream culture can survive after the 2008 crash. My conversations with J.C. Gabel -- the intense, passionate publisher of a small LA press called Hat & Beard -- give us all a glimpse of both the challenges to independent culture merchants as well as the possibilities. Hat & Beard is about to … [Read more...]
Max Richter and Classical Minimalism
[contextly_auto_sidebar] When it comes to a classical concert, how long is too long? What do you do when you get restless? And what state -- one of heightened curiosity? a sharpened intellectual edge? greater empathy? physical relaxation? -- should a piece of art music put its audience members? In what way is art meant to be transformative? These are all questions addressed, implicitly, at … [Read more...]
The Music of Inequality
[contextly_auto_sidebar] Remember the recession? A lot of Americans had their lives turned upside down by it. But popular music -- however you define the term -- never really engaged with the crash itself, or the widespread suffering and steep inequality that followed. In a new story for Vox, I looked at a wide range of American music released over the last decade, since the stock market crash … [Read more...]
Ayn Rand and Libertarianism
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR most of my life -- I was a kid during the Reagan Revolution -- I've been puzzled by otherwise smart people falling for Libertarianism and Ayn Rand's brand of freedom snake oil. Everybody likes the idea of freedom, but for the Fountainhead crowd, the notion acquires cartoonish dimensions, and their definition of the term seems to tilt toward rich businessmen and … [Read more...]
Guest Columnist: Mr. Rogers, and America
[contextly_auto_sidebar] I'M hardly the only Gen Xer to grow up on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, a show that first aired about a year before I was born. Part of me thinks that my fondness for the program comes from the fact that my frequent viewing companion -- my maternal grandmother -- was, like Rogers, a Pittsburgh Presbyterian. But Rogers and his show imprinted itself on all kinds of people, … [Read more...]
The Dark Magic of Ottessa Moshfegh
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IT's not often that I pick up a book and get a new favorite writer. But that's pretty close to what happened when a story collection called Homesick For Another World, by a young author I'd not heard of, arrived in the mail one day. I read a few dark, alienated short stories, some of which were set in a dreary, bleached-out, dingbat-lined Los Angeles. I found a noirish … [Read more...]