arts-criticism

Fuse Commentary: Arts Criticism Isn’t Free — Support The Arts Fuse!

July 8, 2015
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Those who care about the future of American arts and culture should financially support this magazine and other valiant efforts to articulate the significance of the arts.

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Critical Commentary: But Can You Relate?

August 13, 2014
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Fighting for the intellectual integrity and independence of arts reviews means demanding more analysis and less sales talk.

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CriticIsm Commentary: The Welcome Buccaneers of Arts Criticism

January 13, 2014
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“Criticism will always have the force of the child in the story about the emperor’s new clothes, because there will always be naked emperors who everybody says are wearing today’s Crown Jewels.” — Eric Bentley

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Fuse Commentary: Arts, Criticism, and the Search for a Serious Space

May 3, 2013
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Criticism is vital to our time because it is a form of witnessing, testimony to the possibility that the richness and joy of the arts can be articulated in ways that invite intellectual contentiousness in the midst of community.

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Critical Commentary: Speaking Truth to Waning Power

April 24, 2013
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Nowhere do I say in the piece that The Arts Fuse is all good and everyone else is all bad.

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Cultural Commentary: Why is Boston’s Arts Coverage So Bland?

April 22, 2013
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According to our docile mainstream media, Boston enjoys a perpetual Renaissance — the merchandise in the cultural window is always worth buying. And that predictability makes for very boring journalism.

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Arts Commentary: “The New York Times” — Shouldn’t It Know the Purpose of Arts Criticism?

July 17, 2012
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Based on Public Editor Arthur S. Brisbane’s recent New York Times column on arts criticism, he and others at the newspaper haven’t much of a clue regarding what a serious arts review is supposed to be.

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Book Review/Commentary: Why Lionel Trilling — and Serious Criticism — Matters

January 1, 2012
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The essential task of the critic is not to like or dislike the arts or to push bromides, such as to celebrate the “power of reading.” Despite some troublesome modifications, Lionel Trilling carries on the mission of E.A. Poe and Henry James: he articulates the value of the serious act of judgment in a culture hostile to it.

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Book Commentary: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Jonathan Lethem’s Influences

December 16, 2011
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For all of his claims to being a subversive termite, Jonathan Lethem the puffy white elephant appears more often in this collection, trudging down a much safer, much happier road — leave the negativity to the snotty aristocrats.

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Arts Commentary: The End (?) of Ignoring the Death of Arts Criticism

November 14, 2011
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Essentially, Kaiser’s plaint about the vanishing critic is useless because he, and so many other cultural kingpins worried about the end of professional criticism, offer no solutions.

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