by Bill Marx A recent report from the Boston Foundation helpfully advises that if a small arts group’s vision “either dissipated or lost its resonance with its audience or supporters” the troupe should either die quietly or merge with other struggling companies, apparently so they can vanish in bulk more efficiently. But what about larger […]
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Short Fuse: Diana Thater — Chess and Chelsea
by Harvey Blume Marcel Duchamp famously tweaked art for being inferior to chess, saying: “From my close contact with artists and chess players I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” Duchamp backed this opinion up by abandoning art for years to pursue […]
The Dutch Identity Crisis
By Gary Schwartz Is there or is there not such a thing as “the Dutchman?” My fellow immigrant Princess Maxima thinks there is not, but since she dared express that opinion in public last September, she has been subjected to an ongoing barrage of reprimands. Indeed, since the brief era of Pim Fortuyn, public discourse […]
The Collective Stupidity: The X-Box War
by Peter Walsh “Collective intelligence has no relationship to the stupidity of crowd behavior.” — Pierre Lévy, The Collective Intelligence The day before the New Hampshire primary, I went with a friend to hear George Packer, author of The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq, speak at Dartmouth College. I knew George twenty years ago, when […]
Fuse Flash: Anybody See the Fat Lady? Pollock Matter Affair Still Gropes for that Final Act
Just over a month ago, conventional wisdom had it that the long-running Pollock Matter Affair, one of the most contentious art controversies in living memory (see past posts in Arts Fuse and Anonymous Sources), had finally ground to a halt. Oops. As predicted in The Arts Fuse in November, the debate has found some more […]
Book Review: “Zugzwang”and the Pleasures of Chess Noir
By Harvey Blume Zugzwang,by Ronan Bennett (Bloomsbury USA, 288 pages) It’s an understatement to say chess has been good for literature; the game has even inspired people not known for the written word to produce memorable prose. Consider the following, for example, by composer Sergey Prokofiev apropos a game he witnessed in pre-World War I […]
Theater Commentary: Who’s Afraid of the Antiwar Play?
by Bill Marx What particularly disappointed Boston Globe theater critic Louise Kennedy about the Huntington Theatre Company’s recent production of David Rabe’s Streamers was that it lacked the emotional impact of the 1976 staging of the script. She found it “painful because that earlier production clearly resonated with its audiences as a powerful antiwar statement, […]
Fuse Flash: Cabal? What Cabal? Pollock Experts Move in Small Circles
Only months ago, developments in the Pollock Matter controversies made news around the world (See past Fuse Flash and Anonymous Sources). But the Nov. 28 International Foundation for Art Research [IFAR] symposium, “Are They Pollocks? What Science Tells Us About the Matter Paintings,” drew relatively scant media notice, even though it had been billed by […]
Stage Review: “Streamers” and Imagining Violence
War is hell, as the Boston Phoenix theater critic Carolyn Clay would have it, but she doesn’t seem to realize that the inferno is a moving target. And it is the diminishing capacity of contemporary American theater to imagine violence and its effects that interests me most about the Huntington Theater Company’s current revival of […]
Fuse Flash: The Sun Sheds More Light on “Suspenseful, Comic, Odd” Pollock Event
The New York Sun’s Kate Taylor sheds more light on the Nov. 29 symposium, “Are They Pollocks? What Science Tells Us About the Matter Paintings,” sponsored by the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR). Perhaps less pressed by deadlines, Taylor’s Nov. 30 article provides a more complete summary of the event than reporter Randy Kennedy […]