[contextly_auto_sidebar id="lgir0rOvQFYZoxYQdc3socyTbOjSL7EA"] Gang, I've been AWOL from the blog lately because of my new job at Salon and a trip last week to Toronto for Canadian Music Week, where I spoke on artists' rights. I expect to have some fresh, uh, content for CultureCrash one of these days. For now, here is new piece by our steady guest columnist, who like me writes about the … [Read more...]
Poetry and Plutocracy
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="fhqVn6TOLjpnLFsHnV7qvLOILjagWywW"] A NEW book of poems, Monetized, looks at our new Gilded Age, with its staggering extremes of wealth and poverty. The book is written by the New York journalist Alissa Quart, who has written three books, the most recent of which is Republic of Outsiders. The New Yorker's Joshua Rothman has a smart profile of Quart on the … [Read more...]
“How the 1 Percent Always Wins”: Interview
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="TzbKntNFyZcSQHgIrdjr9IhXNfnnrZ7q"] A timely and engaging new book by the labor historian Steve Fraser, The Age of Acquiescence, contrasts the way Americans responded to the first Gilded Age -- with protests, class rhetoric, even violence -- to the situation today, where movements like Occupy come and go and populist energy is directed not against capital but … [Read more...]
Art For the Rich — Only
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="CSqzCJ4xE7EHbdXINKB6lexVqcruUcQp"] GOOD news! Queens has gotten an enormous art space in Long Island City. Says the New York Times The modern-looking facility, built from the ground up at a cost of $70 million, is set to span 280,000 square feet when an adjacent building opens this spring. The complex will be packed with thousands of works of art, from old masters … [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...]
Art for the Uber-rich
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9cukHwn37jIza9qSYJkcWoPfxa124uvq"] DESPITE the struggles of many visual artists, not to mention the stagnant middle class in the Anglo-American world, art's auction market continues to boom. The latest story from the New York Times, on the London auction season, has some interesting details. “The sleepy days of collecting are over,” said Amy Cappellazzo, the … [Read more...]