Anchorage Daily News Arts and Entertainment Editor Mike Dunham wrote a column today for the newspaper's print edition. It is titled Want more arts? You've got it with a click. In the column, Mike briefly observes difficulties of entertainment, art and fine arts coverage, as southcentral Alaska's arts communities slowly expand, and the local traditional media rapidly shrink. He then goes on to extoll the advantages of the ADN's Art Snob blog, as opposed to the old ways at the paper:
The main plus of the blog for me has been the ability to post reviews of events almost as soon as they happen. Instead of waiting two or three days to print a review, we can tell readers about it within two or three hours. This is particularly good when a show will run for only two days.Mike is right that the speed arts information sometimes get up on the ADN web site is a very major plus. And it is certainly convenient for reviewers to get their impressions onto the web far more quickly than through the traditional process of mailing in, phoning in, dropping finished reviews by the ADN offices, or going directly to the ADN after a concert, play or event, to type a review out on the ADN terminals.We've been diligent about getting these overnight Web reviews posted for the past few years and edified by indications that some of you find our efforts useful.
But there's another plus. It may be the most important benefit, yet it is hardly used: The ability for any reader with an Internet connection to comment on a show as fast as we do and to report on shows that we can't get to.
I got reviews into the ADN from 1993 to 2001 through all those means, including using a dial-up modem attached to my first Mac. I even dropped one by, written out in long-hand, when my computer was on the Fritz.
Mike goes on to note that people who attend a local arts event that blows them away or pisses them off, can write about it at the ADN niche, You Be The Critic. To me, it is a great niche.
Like Mike, I feel it is sad that You Be the Critic isn't used more often. I've commented at Art Snob blog a few times, but not often. Mike notes further:
I've noticed that when Progressive Alaska has covered local arts, whether I was observing somebody else's work or commenting on art I had participated in or created, the number of comments here have almost always been quite small. Or non-existent.Artsnob is not the only Web site in town inviting people to chat up the arts. One dedicated to theater, The Greenroom, is also hosted at the adn site. But all of us involved in this brave new world of e-arts are concerned by a lack of two-way Internet interaction with local fans.
I can't say why people are so reluctant to comment on an art installation or concert. But I will say this: If you're among those who crave more arts coverage, you have the solution in your own hands -- or your own laptop
I'm one of the few "classical" musicians in the USA very interested and engaged in progressive politics. There may be another classical composer who is as involved in organizational politics as I am, but I don't know who that person is.
I'm appalled at how apolitical many fine arts musicians are. Even sadder is how afraid those traditional musicians who are concerned about the course our planet is taking seem to be, to take a more active role in change.
There's another side of that coin. Very few people interested in the systemic changes needed to enact truly progressive politics are as interested in "classical" music as they are in other genres.
Back in 1992 and 1993, when I first considered going onto the new worldwide web, it was to create a set of inter-connected web pages dealing with artists' whose output was based on ecological concerns. I even developed an unfulfilled Masters Degree thesis project around it. It took me 15 years to get onto the web. But that initial early 90s germ, inspired by the sculptors and conceptual geniuses James L. Acord and Peter Bevis, never happened.
Instead, I'm here, writing a blog that seems to get the most comments and hits when I talk about a person who I really wish would go back to her level of competence, or when I compare a courageous Alaska Native woman positively to the existing Democratic Party paradigm. Writing about the arts here, like at the ADN, isn't going to lead anywhere. At least it hasn't yet.
I'm ready for a break......
image - the Kannah Creek at Pete's Point, Bering River - watercolor, 1978 - Philip Munger
5 comments:
I love the arts and music. However, I do not enjoy them for the artist's political perspectives. Actors who politically postulate are off putting, as are musicians, at least to me. I'm interested in why/how they ACT/play.
Why would a fellow artist/musician be more interesting discussing their politics? Why does it bother you so that fellow classical musicians are apolitical in your eyes? Maybe, their music is just that, their music. They probably discuss their politics in the appropriate forum, which perhaps is not intertwined with their music and/or during their performances.
Sing us a song, you're the piano man. Don't tell me who you voted for...
Perhaps you blog about that person knowing you'll bring hits and comments. Bashing and funning on SP over and over will lead to small blips of 'here, here' or 'oh, no you didn't!' from ALL over the web.
anon @ #1 -
Why does it bother you so that fellow classical musicians are apolitical in your eyes?
because this is too important a time in human history to spend it doing nothing about it
They probably discuss their politics in the appropriate forum, which perhaps is not intertwined with their music and/or during their performances
so you don't appreciate it when Bob Dylan or Pablo Picasso or Dmitri Shostakovich intertwine their art and their political views?
When historians look back at the demise of the United States, they will probably note how the quest for Louis-The-Fourteenth- style personal enrichment (what the Republican Party calls "The American Dream") overcame previous civilized standards as America's ultimate measure of human identity, status, and accomplishment.
Phil, I think the reason you, (even as an excellent artist), find yourself so engaged in political discussion is because politics has replaced arts as the most visible, observed, primary form of human communication and expression in our contemporary civilization (a.k.a. the United States of America).
Arts blogs don't get much attention because politics is where the big show (personality, influence, money) is. People have replaced art as icons. Some performing artists are still easily recognized but many find themselves identified with political messages.
Art has become a blue-collar sideshow which usually pays less than flipping burgers at McDonald's. Most folks who make money in arts prove themselves first as artists, then with M.F.A. degrees, and finally as teachers so they can sustain themselves with reasonable income. (Don't get me wrong; I have high regards for arts faculty).
I know I'm a pretty good visual artist. I've done enough. Yet people usually don't come to my art openings, and the local newspaper usually doesn't mention my shows (ironically while the local media ignored my shows I've been mentioned nationally) . . . . I've gotten used to it. My shows usually sell out after a very long time. I've sold paintings for more than ten thousand bucks (sometimes they've been rolled in tubes fore more than a decade)-- I'll get email inquiries and find myself delivering art to Aspen Colorado, Connecticut, etc.
But my professional activities and "footprint" are virtually invisible here. Alaska's politics are far noisier and observed than music, art, opera, etc. Our society is migrating from arts appreciation to political emotionalism. Our country has lost its pride and identity, and our leaders have become intoxicated with themselves and their biased messages over all else. Ambition, noisy messages, and attention grabbing is what literally enriches politicians and their friends and consumes our contemporary media's communication channels. Politics have crowded out the good part of our humanity.
Ironically my naturalist art is often regarded as political because I love untouched pristine landscapes-- sometimes artists can't avoid integrating political messages with their human expression. But most politicians sure as hell have nothing to do with aesthetics.
It is ironic-- politicians enjoy influence, fame, and wealth while they are active. Afterwards some of them become lobbyists but most are soon forgotten-- I don't even know if Jan Faiks is still alive. On the other hand, artists are often more valued as human beings after their lives have ended.
Gee, aren't I in a good mood?
-JB
'so you don't appreciate it when Bob Dylan or Pablo Picasso or Dmitri Shostakovich intertwine their art and their political views?'
Not exactly. I enjoy art because I enjoy it for MY reasons. Show me/let me hear your art, but do not 'insist' I interpret it your way, politically or otherwise. Art is subjective, art is evocative, art is political, art is A LOT of things, but internally processed by every individual in an individual way.
'It is ironic-- politicians enjoy influence, fame, and wealth while they are active. Afterwards some of them become lobbyists but most are soon forgotten-- I don't even know if Jan Faiks is still alive. On the other hand, artists are often more valued as human beings after their lives have ended.'
I wholeheartedly agree, but not completely necessarily because of the artists’ political views.
You can lead a horse to politically artistic waters. The horse may take a deep gulp, get it completely, go in for more and love it. Or the horse may take a gulp, spit out the politics and enjoy. Or the damn horse make snort, and refuse to drink at all.
I’m trying here, not trying to troll. New to this blog commenting thang!
I'm not a true 'artist' in the medium that most people have made my acquaintance through, by my lights...But I would opine that there are precious few artists (be they deployed in the visual, musical or allied disciplines) that can transmogrify personal knowledge of corruption, mendacity, and other states in the vast pantheon of reasons for Empire's collapse into something that resonates with the audience in an uplifting fashion, while fostering an awareness of deeper realities.
It's a neat trick, and my hat is off to any that accomplish or even dare it.
Now, 'classical' (denoting to some a whiff of bewigged fops dashing off sonatas as the tallow drips) might be the word in and of itself that creates the ambivalence that you referenced.
Of course, such a visualization is a cliche, and a incomplete assessment of what the act of composition can consist of. Additionally, few may want to appear ill-informed by commenting on works forged in areas that so evidently lay beyond their mental capacity to process them.
It is a battle - a sacred war that the creative can never cease or slacken their efforts over, lest the barbarians of conformity storm the gates and sack the castle.
;>)
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