Items of Interest, Turbulent Times Edition
"The aesthetic order of a work of art grants it such complexity that grows too unruly for the empire of ideology."
Walter Robinson, rest in peace.
George Case, Peanuts in Perspective. “Peanuts thus has the same quality someone once ascribed to the Concorde aeroplane and the Rolling Stones: “obsolete without being outclassed.” Charlie Brown and his friends will never be displaced as the most famous cast of comic strip characters ever, because no one is trying to claim their throne; the throne no longer exists.”
, Public Art Captured. “Art isn’t chosen—it’s screened. Museums, galleries, and grant committees no longer ask whether a work is excellent, but whether it is ideologically correct. Public funding, once meant to support artistic achievement, now enforces compliance.”Izabella Tabarovsky, Canceled ... in Finland. “For us, Soviet Jews, the state’s obsession with Zionism led to relentless discrimination, barring us from certain universities, careers, and professions. This lived experience taught us that while ‘anti-Zionism’ doesn’t have to be antisemitic in theory, it inevitably produces antisemitic outcomes in real life. In the wake of Oct. 7, Jews around the world are learning what we knew decades ago: Whether school bullies call us ‘kikes’ or ‘Zios,’ the outcome is the same.”
, Ideology v. Art. “Art’s richness can’t be reduced to a single discursive ‘message.’ The aesthetic order of a work of art grants it such complexity that grows too unruly for the empire of ideology. That’s perhaps one of the reasons why reductive accounts of a work of literature or art—ones that seek to diagnose it as only a product of “power relations”—are so often dissatisfying.” , The Future of American Arts & Culture: Where do we go from here?Nick Cave on Kanye West. “When I make a song, I do not draw from a pocket of purity isolated from the rest of me; a song is torn from all of me, the mess of me, becoming the best of me on its alchemical journey to its realisation. This is the very definition of hope – that we are not prisoners of our flawed nature but can transcend it. We look to artists and their art to convey this exact thing. In his brokenness, Kanye is an exemplar par excellence of this notion, the braided dance between sin, transcendence and genius.”
, Who Killed the Oscars? “[Hollywood] walling themselves from half the country has done enormous damage to the Oscar brand, as well as to the movie business as a whole. Even now, their movies seem only able to conjure up one enemy: Trump, a story they’ll tell again and again not just in movies but in late-night comedy and in literature, testifying to Hollywood’s own special, sacred virtue and the accompanying evil of the audience outside its walls. The problem with this story, of course, is that it isn’t true. The Hollywood left and the Democratic Party as a whole were never the ‘resistance’ to anything. We were always the empire.”Jeff Bezos on The Washington Post. “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. … I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical—it minimizes coercion—and practical—it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.”
, Art in Turbulent Times. “When an arts organization wants to speak to our moment, to whom is it speaking? … Who is this for? The answer is that it is meant for people who do not like Trump at all, who voted the other way and are upset about it. But I am one of those people, I think Trump, Musk, and their enablers are ghastly. But I do not want my local symphony, or theatre company, or art museum, to ask itself ‘what are works that speak to anti-Trump values?’ Such efforts range from the patronizing to the simply cheesy, and in political terms accomplish nothing except for self-congratulation amongst the liberal progressives, who (most of) those in the art world think of as ‘their people.’” , ‘Hate Speech’ Bans Become a Weapon of the Powerful. “One person’s hate speech (for instance, calling the president an ‘idiot’) is another person’s righteous truth-telling. So every time a ban against so-called hate speech is passed, we should ask ourselves: who will get to decide what qualifies as hate speech? Invariably, the answer to that question is: the wealthy and powerful, because they’re the ones who write and enforce the laws.”FIRE demands Fort Worth police return artwork confiscated from museum. “The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, National Coalition Against Censorship, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas are joining forces to demand the return of several pieces of art by Sally Mann, a renowned photographer with accolades from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation.”
Out now: Kyoko Wada, Ryoko Matsuba, and Katsushika Hokusai, Hokusai’s Method.
Closing soon: “Janice Nowinski: Mirrors” at Thomas Erben Gallery through March 1.
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Our current title in the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is What Is Art? by Leo Tolstoy. For more information, see the ASBC homepage.
The current exhibition in the Dissident Museum is David Curcio: The Point of the Needle.
Thanks for sharing my piece <3
Ironic that Bezos, a man whose wealth would bring Croesus to tears, derives his fortune from an online retail monopoly that routinely engages in the kind of anti-competitive practices that stifle the free and fair markets he suddenly claims to extol the virtues of. I suppose "me first" is the only ideological consistency one should expect.
Lately, I am reminded of a wonderful episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (or TNG to those in the know) where Picard, captured and tortured by a Cardassian Gul is repeatedly brought into a room and asked how many lights he sees. There are only four lights and Picard says so, but the Gul replies that there are in actuality five, and so our dear Captain is taken away to endure yet more pain. Television being television, Picard never breaks, though he gets close, and in the penultimate scene he musters his last bit of strength, barely able to stand, and tells Gul Madred that "there are four lights."
I never ceased to be amazed by how people (of all political persuasions) willingly see five lights.