[contextly_auto_sidebar] WELL, it's really come to this, hasn't it? Having to defend the very existence of a piece of visual art not against Puritans or Nazis or Southern Fundamentalists or the Taliban but against.... other artists. The story of how the New York art world has been divided between people who think artist Dana Schutz should be able to paint (and exhibit) a picture of Emmett … [Read more...]
Schubert, Meet Beckett
[contextly_auto_sidebar] TONIGHT I am looking forward to going to Disney Hall to see an odd pairing: the songs of Franz Schubert interspersed with the short plays of Samuel Beckett. The recital, put on by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, features several singers and actors including Irish actor Barry McGovern and soprano Julia Bullock. The whole thing springs from the twisted genius Yuval Sharon, … [Read more...]
Arts Journalism and the Culture Crash
[contextly_auto_sidebar] SOME things have gotten a bit better since I published my book two years ago; some have unraveled more or less on schedule. One thing that does not seem to be improving is the state of cultural journalism: Arts critics (and reporters, like yours truly) continue to be laid off as publications scale back and decide -- just as school boards do in lean times -- that … [Read more...]
A Musicologist Muses on John Adams
[contextly_auto_sidebar] One of the most insightful and eclectic thinkers on music I know is UCLA musicologist Robert Fink, who has written a book on minimalism -- Repeating Ourselves -- and both teaches music history and run the school's music-business program. On the occasion of John Adams' 70th birthday, and a series of related events in Los Angeles, I corresponded with Fink about the … [Read more...]
Nixon in China in Los Angeles
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IF you live in LA long enough, you might come to think you've seen John Adams' iconic opera not once but several times. There are few more talked-about or written about works from the last four or five decades; maybe "Einstein on the Beach" or "Angels in America." Adams' music -- his violin concerto, "El Nino," "Naive and Sentimental Music" -- gets performed all the … [Read more...]
Guest Columnist: A Real-Life Maria
[contextly_auto_sidebar] This week I offer our latest column from guest Lawrence Christon, a former Los Angeles Times staff writer on theater and comedy, and a longtime culture freelancer in Southern California. This one needs no further ado. A GIRL NAMED MARIA By Lawrence Christon I’m standing in the deserted home furnishings section of a department store late at night, shopping for … [Read more...]
James Baldwin, Film and the Zeitgeist
[contextly_auto_sidebar] SINCE the summer or fall, it's struck me that a writer long considered the little brother -- perhaps even the gay little brother -- of black literature's Big Three had become the essential artist of our time. Here is my story on him, timed in part to the Oscar-nominated films Moonlight and I Am Not Your Negro, both of which are excellent. Update: Moonlight, of … [Read more...]
Music and Design: “Seeing Noise”
[contextly_auto_sidebar] WHY do we talk about "seeing" bands or orchestral groups? How did album jackets and photography of musicians -- whether Francis Wolff's shadowy shots of jazz musicians smoking in the shadows or Astrid Kirchherr's images of the Beatles in post-industrial cityscapes -- become important parts of music's aura? Is a rock video a betrayal of what music is really about? I … [Read more...]
Snapshots from the Culture Crash: 1
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LONGTIME music journalist Steve Mirkin has been, like a lot of us in the creative class, though a series ups and downs since the Internet remade journalism and the recession undercut the middle class. He appears briefly in my book Culture Crash. Here is an update, which begins around January 1. It was not going to be a happy new year for me. After more than two … [Read more...]
Pres Obama’s cultural policy
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LIKE a lot of Americans, I'm sorry to see President Obama go. But in at least two areas, he was a real disappointment. One was his gutless response -- or lack of response -- to the housing crisis, which involved mostly looking the other way and proposing toothless acronyms while banks crushed homeowners struggling with the Great Recession. His second great failure … [Read more...]