[contextly_auto_sidebar id="L8uqg7ERM237iPSVXdaL6TdXt2SjQlsL"] AFTER a while, I get tired of all the jive around certain terms. "Disruption" is one; "empowerment," another. ("Innovate" seems to be headed for corporate sponsorship.) The latest infuriating one is the way the word "subversive" has been turned into a marketing strategy and a straight-faced description of Lady Gaga and Jeff Koons. … [Read more...]
The Artist in the 21st Century
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="PVd8mrLaWjsXaMaGJ86HIjTmHjDjQjiA"] WHAT has art -- and the artist as its maker -- come to mean after postmodernism and four decades after Warhol's emergence? That's a question Sarah Thornton -- a very sharp British sociologist with an interest in visual art -- asks in her newish book 33 Artists in 3 Acts. I'm only partway through Thornton's book, which is full of … [Read more...]
David Byrne: Big Money is Killing Art
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="3o2cCBB8Yl5GOjG7dvH1Nruy0D97g8pq"] THE ravages of the one percent -- and what their surge has done to culture -- is one of my abiding concerns on the blog. Now the Talking Heads frontman, who's been quite outspoken lately on the politics of culture, weighs in on what the plutocracy has done to visual art. A New York Times post looks at his complaint as well as the … [Read more...]
When Music Sounds Like a Cash Register: Taylor Swift
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="z9vqtTIKWYYE4qjmn9I73sMygRd2LrTi"] WHAT happens when a society gets obsessed with those who win at the capitalist game, when marketing becomes the new religion, and the gatekeepers of art and music stop caring ab0ut the fields in which they labor but get hypnotized by the machinery of star-making? We get "artists" like Jeff Koons or Taylor Swift. The onetime … [Read more...]
What Do Brunch and Jeff Koons Have in Common?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="R4kldjR8qVAyVN11JBzIOTVFaYGRTE3D"] THE current backlash against mimosa-drenched Sunday meals is not a central concern of this blog. But I cannot resist posting part of a New York Times story (already denounced by some in my circle) which connects the rise of brunch with skyrocketing rents and the rise of the 1 percent. (Both, incidentally, major concerns … [Read more...]