Do We Need Arts Reviewers?

Isaac Butler (Parabasis) asks:

What if the major newspapers and magazines didn't have critics at all? What if instead they printed excerpts of the art critics used to cover?

It's an interesting hypothetical. I responded in the comments section:



I believe excerpts would wind up hurting some forms of art. Sometimes its hard to understand the whole from the part (like a movie trailer that ruins a movie--I've heard good things about Revolutionary Road but I HATE the trailer so much that I'm never, ever going to see it).

Take a play, for instance. Sometimes its very hard to imagine a play on its feet. I wrote a mostly silent, movement based play recently. Clips from a film of the production might work(although expensive to do well and unilluminating if done cheap), but the script would have left out the contributions of the choreographer (which were extensive and crucial to the success of the play).

Some texts are very dead on the page, but when acted by the right actor can leap alive. Things that sound undynamic, things that might be awkward. Literary departments/agents or directors/actors might be good at reading a script and imagining it in its fully realized form, but the public may not have that.

Photography? That might work. After all, each image usually stands alone and speaks for itself, and it can do that in the newspaper (maybe not in Black and White if it's a color photo).

If you have an online publication, movie trailers are quite acceptable! But a critic still gives a lot of context outside of the trailer, about (for instance) whether it's too long or short (there's no such thing as a trailer that's too long or too short, since the length is standardized).

In short: you can get a good look at a bit of the work, but sometimes the critic is there to tell you how the whole works together. There might be an argument for this in fields like sculpture, photography, etc. I don't work in those fields so I hesitate to pass judgment.

This is all, of course, separate from the role that criticism plays within an industry--for investors, for other creators, for the future of the art as a form. But that's often more high-brow publications or theoretical journals, which are sometimes less threatened than the art correspondent on a big city paper.


Still, I do like the hypothetical. I like thinking about it.

Israeli Elections

Not much to say on the subject, except my worst fears are slowly becoming realized. In mounting degrees since the 2006 Lebanon War that crippled Ehud Olmert's political capital (which I would point to as the moment that Kadima ceded any possibility of following up the Gaza Withdrawal with a West Bank withdrawal), I've slowly started to fear that Israeli frustration with the lack of progress towards a two state solution would lead them towards more and more extreme reactions--a belief that if they could just hit them harder, do more damage, they'd break the Palestinian will to fight back.

My theory about terrorism is this: if you make the conditions for peace no violence, terrorism will always win. After all, if twenty angry Palestinians with rockets are enough to force the peace process to square one, there will never be peace. Because there will always be twenty angry Palestinians with rockets. Think about how poor arms control is throughout the world. And think about how few the number 20 is next to 1.5 million.

I've advocated Israel ignoring violence within reasonable limits (the death toll from the rockets being not even remotely comparable to car accidents). Of course, from an "honor" or "justice" perspective, this is a grossly unfair suggestion, and emotionally it's impossible to convince any Israelis (even my fairly moderate parents) of this fact.

So if violence must be met with violence, and violence fails to stop violence, clearly the cycle of violence will only increase. Palestinian violence, actually, has decreased since the height of carbombings, and the imposition of blockades and extreme security measures. But on the other hand, even maintaining this status quo is leading to an increase in frustration in Israel.

Israel says its attempting to minimize civillian casualties. That's a silly, hubristic thing to say, but it's probably accurate. But that sentiment is already slipping. Many government officials are saying things between the lines, around the edges, that start to indicate that they want an all-out war, no holds barred, where they can really hit the Palestinians until they win. Like Ariel Sharon did in Lebanon (by the way, that didn't work out--they did warcrimes on the level of mass murders, and it didn't create peace with Lebanon).

If the trend continues, each war will wreak more damage on the enemy. It will fail to break Hamas' wind. Slowly, a delusion will grow in the minds of Israelis. There will be no rest unless Palestinians are gone. All of them. I've heard it said amongst some Israelis (not representative of their nation) that Palestinians are animals and there can be no peace with them. That's the genocidal mindset. And Israel has the strength and position for genocide.

Certainly, Israel isn't in the position to actually wreak genocide. America's position as an independent arbiter is somewhat restored with the incoming Obama Administration, and Europe wields enough of a cudgel to protect Palestine against genocide.

But the desire is clearly there. And now we've reached the recent elections, in which the right wing coalition gained a slight majority over the left wing coalition, even though the centrist party Kadima won the most number of seats for a single party (which is in the left-wing coalition, despite being a thoroughly centrist party formed of as many ex-right-wingers as ex-left-wingers). Likud, the major right wing party, seems set to form the coalition, and its biggest partner is the party that sums up my fears: Yisrael Beiteinu.

Yisrael Beiteinu. They are a party founded out of fear of the "rising Arab demographic" that threatens to wipe out the Jewish majority. (Think Lou Dobbs, only insane).

I can't even bring myself to keep typing the things I've found out about them. Olmert wanted to put Avigdor Lieberman (their head) as Minister of Internal Security. The way that the Communists were given Internal Security portfolios in Eastern Europe, right before the coups. Lieberman thinks that Arab-Israeli ministers are traitors--he led the bill that passed that barred Israeli-Arabs from participating in the last election. It was overturned by the Supreme Court. Lieberman wants to end the power of judicial review in the courts--effectively ending the judicial branch of government as a separate branch. In other words, he wants to end representative, constitutional democracy.

And he thinks that the growing number of Muslims (Arabs/Palestinians) is a problem. I wonder what his ideal solution would be, if he could come up with a final solution to end the problem.

Geithner's Bank Plan... Or Lack Thereof?

A lot of debate on the blogosphere about the bank plan (or bank "plan") that Timothy Geithner rolled out. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to the Administration. Mainly, it seems to me the hesitation of the Administration is belied by the debate between a "solvency crisis" and a "liquidity crisis," and how much of the banks fall into one or the other.

It's unfortunate, however, that Geithner didn't present that honestly and forthrightly, in a way that could still give some confidence to investors. Presenting both possibilities, for instance. Giving a window into their thought process. Leaving us in the cold, playing Treasury-ology, is not very productive. I have faith, as other bloggers do, that Obama and Geithner are privately contemplating nationalization in some places, recapitalization in other places (after all--banks that bust get nationalized whether we want to or not). But the strategy, the philosophy, is unclear.

Shepard Fairey And "Added Value"

Excuse me for a moment, but doesn't Shepard Fairey's poster prove its own added value by the fact that it became a historical and cultural symbol for our generation? I mean, I'm not talking about the work of art itself--let's put aside the art critic hat for long enough to just look on its impact. I have a button with Shepard Fairey's image on my hat (bootlegged, Mr. Fairey! I apologize! I'm one of the generation of criminals...). I would not have the AP photo on a button on my hat (bootlegged or otherwise). Would TIME have done its post-election cover in the style of that AP Photo? Probably. But they didn't. They wanted Mr. Fairey's image because it came to define that entire election. That's added value. Don't look at the photo, look at its impact. It took AP months to realize it was their photo that Fairey had used!

The whole notion is irritating.

Coburn Amendment

As an artist, the unified agreement around the Coburn Amendment, to guarantee that we greedy artists don't get a cent of the stimulus money, is a slap in the face to us. I mean, we're already a fairly disregarded and rudely treated bunch. Now that our industry is in trouble, don't we get any help? Parabasis has some excellent columns on the subject.

This morning, I took up a letter writing campaign. I wrote a short note to Obama (they have a 500 character limit, which is unfair). Then I wrote the following to Senator Feinstein:

Dear Senator Feinstein,

I'm a 20 year old student of theater in America. I've always had to struggle with the fact that we are not well supported in America. My hope was that, coming from college, I'd have the chance to change that. I knew it would be difficult: the Department of Labor forecasts that the average actor has poor job security and earns a medium pay of $23,400. This, despite the fact that non-profit arts create 5.7 million jobs and $9.1 billion in state tax revenues, according to HUD.

I saw in the paper that you decided to vote on behalf of the Coburn Amendment to the stimulus package bill. Reading the support for the vote, and listening to the rhetoric of its proponents, I became very afraid. I'm afraid for my future. Because if the leaders of this country treat our almost 6 million jobs and our 12 billion in Federal Tax revenues as nothing more than "pork," as a useless expenditure that's unimportant, then what chance am I or my friends going to have? The signal our Congress is sending to America is that the arts are a waste, the arts are useless.

I was not surprised, for instance, that the little bubbles in this submission form don't have a space for "Arts." It's barely a topic to begin with. But it's an important part of the economy. I work full-time, I pay taxes, and yet every week I hear another non-profit theater is going bankrupt, because the money that should be coming from the government to help support it is being cut, being diverted to more "important" job-creating ventures. Because clearly a job in alternative energies, or a job working on highways is far more important than the work I do.

I'm afraid. Are there any further cuts that are coming to the arts? Will you continue to advocate to cuts to the NEA, to state arts funding, to bailouts for museums and cultural organizations like theaters?

Your constituent,
Guy Yedwab

I will update you in a week when I get a response, I'm sure.

Burning Question of the Day

Is there ANYONE who pays their taxes correctly?

Seriously, can we do a study and see how many people in this country have unpaid or incorrectly filed taxes? How can it be that FOUR of Obama's nominees have tax problems? What the hell is this! Geithner, Daschle, that person from OPM, and Solis (well, her husband)? Come on people!

Then again, taxes are complicated as all hill-el. It's these darn TurboTax people.