Author Archives: JMN
“What you see is what you see” (Frank Stella)
Explaining the works he has amassed, Mr. Stella said, “Artists collect differently from other people… I wouldn’t bother making art if I didn’t like what the people around me were doing, too. It wouldn’t be any fun.” (Ted Loos, “The … Continue reading
Decree 349
The decree requires artists to obtain government approval before performing or displaying their work, while also regulating the artwork itself. For example, it prohibits audiovisual content that contains “sexist, vulgar and obscene language” or that uses “national symbols” in ways … Continue reading
Massive Attack
“Gigs have become very formulaic these days,” adds [Adam] Curtis. “Not just gigs but all of culture – and that’s the challenge. The way you make people look again is by finding a different sort of image. And so the … Continue reading
“Stubbies” Defined
Laconic residents [of Queensland, Australia] are interviewed every wet season standing in the debris of their cyclone-battered homes, clad in Stubbies (shapeless gabardine shorts that expose bum-cracks and, on a bad day, drooping genitals), drinking stubbies (small brown bottles of … Continue reading
This Is America, Too
Since 1991, the Bronx Conservatory of Music, a nonprofit arts organization, has provided low-cost education in classical music to a constituency that has been historically underexposed to the tradition. And at a time when music classes are being cut from … Continue reading
“Moral Multiplier”
… The effects of individual lifestyle choices are ultimately trivial compared with what politics can achieve… Buying an electric car is a drop in the bucket compared with raising fuel-efficiency standards sharply… That is what is meant when politics is … Continue reading
Maurice Sendak’s Allure
“Reaching the kids is important, but secondary,” Sendak once said. “First, always, I have to reach and keep hold of the child in me…” With their flattened perspective, the book’s pages have the allure of the poster, brazen, sleek and … Continue reading
