The Arts Fuse Newsletter, December 11
The Winter Appeal in its Second Week -- Feed the Fuse! Also, Coming Attractions along with reviews of Yiddish "Desires", "Flow," and albums featuring Sun Ra, Joni Mitchell, and Bill Evans.
From The Editor's Desk:
My thanks to all those who have contributed to the magazine’s Winter Appeal. Those who haven’t yet, please consider going here to help us raise the $500 needed to make the $3000 match. Feed the Fuse’s scrappy writers, veterans and well as newbies, who are finding that fewer and fewer sites are willing to post -- or to pay for -- their good work. When journalists can do their jobs, everyone in the arts world is nourished. Jazz pianist Laszlo Gardony put it well: “The Arts Fuse helps us, artists and audiences alike, to better appreciate ourselves as a community as it enriches us culturally. The magazine's support for artists' careers is invaluable.”
We are not resting on our laurels: with sufficient funds we will move forward with plans to expand the publication’s arts coverage, including a new feature that will recommend works in translation. Also, given the rapid rate of change — political, cultural, and technological — our commitment to independent criticism is more important than ever. It puzzles me that so little has been written about looming challenges to arts coverage. The recent New Republic confab Culture in the Next Trump Era didn’t say much about critics, though Osita Nwanevu, a contributing editor to The New Republic, alluded to the ongoing degradation of “culture workers”. Too much time was spent lambasting the homogenizing power of mass culture, too little on the ways that arts sections can resist the sugary appeal of corporate candy by spotlighting alternatives, pointing to what one speaker called the “anomalies that go beyond the mainstream.”
Laura Marsh, literary editor of The New Republic, suggested what resistance might be: “What could happen, in the best case scenario, is that people who are in the position to promote culture and to shepard other people's work will become more confident in their sense of what is interesting and what is worthwhile. Instead of reacting to which Facebook algorithm will promote more or what people will share on Twitter. Both of which are completely irrelevant now.” In the battle against the pernicious forces of social media and AI, arts critics will play a crucial role: to turn people away from the faux — in art and arts coverage — and toward the real thing.
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Archive: From the Editor's Desk
Coming Attractions: Through December 23 — What Will Light Your Fire
Compiled by Arts Fuse Editor
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Book Review: Yiddish Writer Celia Dropkin’s Rediscovered “Desires” — Yiddishe Erotics
By Debra Cash
Yiddish writer Celia Dropkin wrote not only of romantic love — a topic deemed quite suitable to women writers — but also of lust, anger, abasement, and violence.
Box Set Album Review: “Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 4” — At the Peak of Her Powers
By Paul Robicheau
“Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 4” is rich in what too many box sets skimp on: a wide-ranging spread of live recordings. In this case, they demonstrate how Mitchell’s songs evolved on stage as well as in the studio, documenting a genius at work.
Film Review: “Oh, Canada” — Remembrance of Uncertainty Past
By Steve Erickson
The aim is to evoke, critically, a period when adventure, for men, was about running away to Cuba or going on Kerouac-inspired road trips.
Visual Arts Review: At the Danforth Art Museum — Strong Exhibitions That will Get You Thinking
By Lauren Kaufmann
A look at three exhibitions by New England artists who are concerned about climate change and gun violence.
Jazz Album Reviews: Sun Ra and Bill Evans — Two Superb Sets of Previously Unavailable Live Music
By Michael Ullman
As usual, Elemental’s pressings are pristine and the packaging is artful and informative, with new photos.
Film Review: Go With the “Flow”
By Peter Keough
Few filmmakers have been able to capture the essence of water in its most intimate and destructive aspects.
Help Keep The Arts Fuse Lit!
Precious few independent online arts publications make it to double digits. Please give us the resources the magazine needs to persevere at an essential cultural task.
Keep the Fuse lit and support our 70+ writers by making a donation.
The Arts Fuse also needs underwriting for the magazine to continue to grow.
And…tell your friends about the in-depth arts coverage you can’t get anywhere else.
Questions, comments, concerns?
Editor-in-Chief
Bill Marx
wmarx103@gmail.com
