The Arts Fuse Newsletter, November 6
November Short Fuses, Reviews of "Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore" at Boston's MFA, "Frankie Freako," The Dresden Dolls, Maine novelist Shannon Bowring, and who really started World War I?
From The Editor's Desk:
On October 28, The Baltimore Sun announced the newspaper was dissolving, in toto, its features department, reassigning staff to news departments. This was the first time, since at least 1888, the newspaper won’t have even one reporter dedicated to covering the city’s cultural life. There will be no more reviews or features on local theater productions, museum shows, gallerys, etc. This is a shameful development, another step in the dissipation of arts coverage in America’s newspapers and magazine, large and small, that has been going on for the past two decades.
By cutting the independent, reasoned evaluation of arts criticism, the media reduces culture to a consumer good. At their best, features and interviews can be informative. But they are inevitably positive, and homogenized coverage is the result of the media conferring ‘privileged’ access for some rather than generating debate among all. A recent case in point: what I posted above, an item in WBUR’s inane“arts and culture” listicle “8 local events to help decompress from Election Day stress.” Bereft of serious editorial vision, cultural coverage — in the Boston-area and elsewhere — degenerates into cheerleading, marketing fodder whose credibility is ever decreasing because arts journalism questions absolutely nothing. Timidity this consistent would not be tolerated in the sports, commentary, or news pages.
In 1906, one of America’s sharpest critics, H. L. Mencken, began contributing to The Baltimore Sun. His essay “Criticism of Criticism of Criticism” explains that the critic “makes the work of art live for the spectator. He makes the spectator live for the work of art. Out of the process comes understanding, appreciation, intelligent enjoyment — and that is precisely what the artist tried to produce.” That verb ‘live’ suggests what happens after critical perspective gives way to lifestyle reporting. The ignoble results of journalism’s retreat from incisive cultural coverage are increasingly evident — the deadening of the value of the arts in society.
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Archive: From the Editor's Desk
November Short Fuses — Materia Critica
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
Visual Arts Review: Together Again? — O’Keeffe and Moore at the MFA
By Trevor Fairbrother
The MFA’s Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore builds a case for two artists that many are inclined to think of as “unlikely bedfellows.” Brava!
Book Review: Shannon Bowring’s Compellingly Large Visions of Small-Town Life
By Roberta Silman
Shannon Bowring is a wonderfully wise and compassionate writer, exquisitely alert to the varieties of human experience that exist at the end of the 20th century.
Book Review: “Disputing Disaster” — A Fascinating Look at the Search for the Origins of World War I
By Daniel Lazare
In tracing the tortuous path that established historians took in trying to get to the bottom of the war, Perry Anderson doesn’t acknowledge leftwing observers who knew perfectly well what was going on at the time.
Film Review: “Frankie Freako” – For a Good Time, Call …
By Nicole Veneto
Filled with B-movie puppet antics, Frankie Freako is a joyous throwback to the days where you could walk into a video store and rent one of a dozen Gremlins rip-offs about someone’s mundane suburban life being upended by a bunch of little guys.
Classical Music Album Review: Klaus Mäkelä’s Characterless Shostakovich Symphonies Nos. 4-6
By Jonathan Blumhofer
The performances on the recording exhibit no conception of Shostakovich’s style – where is this music’s irony and sarcasm, let alone pathos? – not to mention any sense of how to navigate large-scale forms.
Concert Review: The Dresden Dolls and Gogol Bordello Rage Against the Machine
Saturday’s finale of a two-night Roadrunner stand, the Dresden Dolls’ first Boston shows since 2017, raged as a celebration of camaraderie and catharsis.
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Editor-in-Chief
Bill Marx
wmarx103@gmail.com
