Posted January 31, 2008
The Arts | Film &
Television | History | Literature
Under 36: America’s Young Innovators in the Arts and
Sciences
Smithsonian, Special Issue, Fall 2007
“The editors of Smithsonian Magazine have selected a group of
37 up-and-coming young Americans in various fields as some of
the most promising people whose careers are worth watching. Those
being profiled are scholars, singers, writers, scientists, musicians,
painters and activists, and include individuals such as Christina
Galitsky, of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, who developed a
highly-efficient cookstove for refugees in environmentally fragile
areas; Jeremi Suri, a professor of history at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison, who bridges the worlds of social history
and political history by exploring the interaction of ideas, personalities
and institutions; and Internet researcher Jon Kleinberg, who examines
the invisible networks that pervade our lives, in his teaching
and research at Cornell University."
Fulltext G1/07-07
Beyond the Musical Avant-Garde
Teachout, Terry
Commentary, October 2007, v124, #3, pp56-59
Well-known music and drama critic Terry Teachout reviews
a recent book by Alex Ross, the music critic of the New Yorker,
about the history of classical music in the 21st century. In his
new book "The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century,"
Ross points out, that classical music "is reaching far larger
audiences than it has at any time in history," and that the
rise of the new digital media offers classical musicians a new
way to reach out to "subcultures and niche markets."
Terry Teachout is Commentary’s regular music critic and the drama
critic of the Wall Street Journal.
Fulltext G2/07-07
C’mon Everybody:
Will Music Bring Us Together?
Gewen, Barry
Dissent, Winter 2008, online edition
In his new book "The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the
Twentieth Century," Alex Ross looks at twentieth century
music from the perspective of an advocate of modern music in the
classical tradition, arguing that audiences are only now catching
on to the splendors of modern music. Gewen counters these arguments
with a slightly different view of cultural globalization, looking
at modern music through the focus of the aesthetics of rock music.
Barry
Gewen is an editor at the New York Times Book Review. Fulltext
G3/07-07
How
Jeff Koons Became a Superstar
Landi, Ann
ARTnews, November 2007, v106, #10, online
edition
"To stay at the top of the art game today, some would
argue, an artist needs not just talent and a good track record
but also a flair for publicity and the support of a powerful consortium
of dealers and collectors. Even critical opinion may not count
for much, as is amply demonstrated by Jeff Koons, who has been
sharply attacked by some of the most respected names since he
started showing his work in the early 1980s." Ann
Landi is a contributing editor of ARTnews. Fulltext
G4/07-07
The First
Word on Pop
MacAdam,
Barbara A.
ARTnews, November 2007, v106, #10, online edition
In 1963 the young art critic G. R. Swenson set out to define
Pop art through a series of interviews with eight leading artists
associated with the new movement. ARTnews reprinted the interviews
with Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol,
Stephen Durkee, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist, and Tom Wesselmann
as one of their 'TopTen Stories'. Almost 50 years later, although
much has changed, Pop remains. James Rosenquist's comments about
how the "onslaught of media and advertising images made painting
seem very old-fashioned, so digital art and technology have today
rendered all traditional art forms questionable."
Barbara A. MacAdam is deputy editor
of ARTnews. Fulltext G5/07-07
Film & Television
The Road Goes On Forever
Roddick, Nick
Sight & Sound, January 2008
Wim Wenders' early films use the language of American cinema to
express a sensibility that's inescapably European. Wenders' early
work proved that the spirit of the American road movie could be
imported into films that were truly European. It wasn't a case
of pastiche, like Sergio Leone's Westerns - rather, this was a
genuine reinvention, the assimilation of the language of one culture
with the experience of another. Fulltext
G6/07-07
Fast Worker: The Films of Sam Newfield
Dixon, Wheeler Winston
Senses of Cinema, October-December 2007, #45
“Sam Newfield is, in all probability, the most prolific director
in American sound-film history, but very little archival material
survives on his career. The director of more than 250 feature
films, as well as numerous shorts and television series episodes,
in a career that spanned four decades, from 1923 to 1958, Newfield
leaves behind him only his work on the set; next to nothing is
known of his personal life. However, using conversations with
Sigmund Neufeld, Jr., and Stanley Neufeld, the sons of Sam Newfield's
(born Neufeld) brother Sigmund Neufeld, as well as materials from
the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, [the author] was able to piece
together a rough sketch of the man behind such a torrential output
of work.” Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Endowed
Professor of film Studies, Professor of English at the University
of Nebraska, Lincoln, and, with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Editor-in-chief
of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. Fulltext
G7/07-07
Rising Voices: Interview with Denzel Washington
Guerrasio, Jason
Filmmaker Magazine, Web Exclusive, December 21, 2007
"In both Antwone Fisher and The Great Debaters,
Washington took on the films with an interest to only direct them,
not star, and you can see that as there are chunks of time in
both films where Washington is nowhere to be found these aren’t
vanity projects, instead Washington wants to show he can helm
films that can be successful without having to carry the films.
Washington knows that to get what he wants he must first give
the financiers what they need, and that’s his name up on the marquee
as an actor. He talked about this dilemma, along with taking artistic
liberties with this lesser-known historical moment when Filmmaker
interviewed him over the phone a week before the Golden Globe
nominations where announced (the film got a nomination for Best
Picture)." Jason Guerrasio is managing
Editor of the 'Filmmaker Magazine'.
Fulltext G8/07-07
Balance of Terror: How Otto Preminger Made His Movies
Denby, David
The New Yorker, January 14, 2008, pp76-82
“Preminger was perhaps too refined and modulated in his sophistication to achieve more than occasional greatness as a director. He doesn’t compare, for instance, with his fellow-émigrés Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder. It’s hard to think of a heartbreaking or truly exhilarating moment in his work. Yet, at his best, he raised civil discourse to the level of subtle entertainment: one can get caught up in the intricately choreographed give-and-take of “Advise and Consent” without caring whether the nominee gets confirmed or not.” David Denby is an American film critic who writes for The New Yorker.Fulltext G9/07-07
The Big Picture
Garber, Megan
Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 2007
"Gone are the days when a movie journalist—Citizen Kane’s
Thompson, Deadline, USA’s Hutcheson, Bob Woodward, Carl
Bernstein—occupied a black-and-white moral landscape where Right
battled Wrong with the sharp sword of Truth. But gone, too, is
the post-post-Watergate disenchantment that forced celluloid reporters
to fall on that sword through treatments that portrayed them,
as Christopher Hanson pointed out in these pages in 1996, as amoral
(Absence of Malice), callous (The Paper), credulous
(Bob Roberts), cartoonish (I Love Trouble),
sensationalist (Network), ambitious (Broadcast News),
manipulative (Hero), manipulated (Wag the Dog),
murderous (To Die For), or some dastardly fusion thereof...
Journalism is evolving, and Hollywood, cultural mirror that it
is, is reflecting its growth. Today’s celluloid journalists may
not be forged in the stark contrasts of the past, but their complexity
makes them stronger characters, more empathetic and more tantalizingly,
identifiably human—more, in short, like their audiences. On the
big screen, as in life, they’re still worth looking up to."
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at CJR. Fulltext
G10/07-07
History
Looking for Lincoln
Interview with Andrew Ferguson
Humanities Magazine, National Endowment for the Humanities,
November/December 2007, online edition
"Journalist Andrew Ferguson is widely admired as a writer's
writer. Over the years, in magazines from The Weekly Standard
to Reader's Digest to Time and beyond, he has proven himself to
be one of the few genuine stylists in American journalism and
one of the wisest, funniest writers around. No less an authority
on humor and good prose than Christopher Buckley said Ferguson
“just may be the best writer of his generation.” Ferguson's recent
book, Land of Lincoln, “a hilarious, offbeat tour of Lincoln shrines,
statues, cabins, and museums,” according to the New York Times,
explores America's love-hate relationship with our sixteenth president.
He recently sat for an interview discussion with NEH Chairman
Bruce Cole."
Fulltext G11/07-07
The Revolution of 1800
Larson, Edward J.
American History, December 2007, v42, #5, pp26-33
An excerpt from "A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous
Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign":
Less than 20 years after the last guns of the War of Independence
fell silent and 12 years since the adoption of the Constitution,
the young American republic found itself in the midst of a political
crisis that threatened to lead to armed rebellion and disunion.
An extraordinary cascade of events forced the nation's elected
leaders to choose between pursuing their partisan goals and buttressing
constitutional foundations. While the union of the Founders survived,
their vision of a nonpartisan polity was swept away, replaced
with a party system very familiar to us 207 years later."
Edward J.Larson is the author of seven books and the recipient
of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in history for "Summer for the
Gods." Fulltext G12/07-07
Literature
American Arriviste
Gray, Edward G.
Humanities Magazine, National Endowment for the Humanities,
November/December 2007
"John Ledyard (1751-1789) came to be one of the best known
Americans of his time. And yet his life comprised a series of
failures, increasingly grand, but failures all the same... What
set him apart was his deep understanding of the fundamental social
fact of his age: Being somebody in late eighteenth-century America
meant being somebody known to the right kind of people. And Ledyard
rarely failed at gaining the attention of the right kind of people.
The list of famous individuals he came into contact with during
his short life comes straight out of the indexes of history: Captain
James Cook, on whose last voyage he sailed as a lowly marine;
Robert Morris, financier of the American Revolution and Ledyard's
one-time employer; John Paul Jones, with whom he struck up an
acquaintance and tried to raise funding for an ambitious expedition
to the northwest coast of America; Ben Franklin, whom he met in
Paris during Franklin's last days as American ambassador there;
Thomas Jefferson, Franklin's successor, whom Ledyard also met
in Paris... It was in Paris that Ledyard enjoyed his first great
social success, when he was accepted into the famous expatriate
circle surrounding Thomas Jefferson." Edward G. Gray
is associate professor of history at Florida State University
in Tallahassee. Fulltext G13/07-07
The Brief History of a Historical Novel
Byrd, Max
Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 2007, v31 #4, pp25-31
The author chronicles the composition of his historical
novel "Jefferson." He recounts being solicited
by his publisher to write a historical novel about former United
States president Thomas Jefferson. He also discusses the nature
of historical fiction writing and discusses the work of writers
such as Kenneth Roberts and William Styron. Max Byrd is a
professor emeritus of English at the University of California,
Davis and the author of historical novels. Fulltext
G14/07-07
Staying Awake: Notes on the Alleged Decline of Reading
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Harper's, February 2008, v316, #1893, pp33-38
Citing recent studies by the National Endowment for the Arts
about the decline of reading, LeGuin questions the assumption
that books are on the way out. She says, "I think they’re
here to stay. It’s just that not all that many people ever did
read them. Why should we think everybody ought to now?" Ursula
K. Le Guin lives in Portland, Oregon, and has been publishing
prose and verse since 1959. Order
article G15/07-07
The Early American Salon
Shields, David S.
Humanities,
January/February 2008 , v29, #1, online edition
"The
recent publication of the Library of America's American Poetry:
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries reveals a pre-Revolutionary
American literary scene every bit as avid as Great Britain's in
its love of artistic sociability... The very idea of the literary
salon seems mannered and European. But was cultural life in early
British America really so different from that in London, Edinburgh,
and Dublin?" David S. Shields is McClintock Professor
of Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina and editor
of American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
Fulltext G16/07-07
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