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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…
Read Moreby 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…
Read MoreJust 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…
Read MoreBy 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…
Read Moreby 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,…
Read MoreOnly 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…
Read MoreWar 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…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreThe New York Times broke nearly eight months of silence in its Nov. 29 issue to report on a symposium, “Are They Pollocks? What Science Tells Us About the Matter Paintings,” presented the previous night under the sponsorship of the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR). Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock doing his thing
Read MoreAccording to a report in ScienceDaily, more surprises may be in store for those following the Pollock-Matter controversies. The award-winning website, which specializes in breaking developments in scientific research, has announced that Case Western Reserve University physicist Lawrence Krauss will be among the invited guests to a New York symposium this week on scientific studies…
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Music Review: The Beatles are Still Here, There, and Everywhere