A savvy assessment of how artists can, and should, function in the marketplace.
In defense of artists of all varieties, most of whom face daunting challenges in making a living.
Cultural critic Deresiewicz astutely examines the state of the arts in contemporary culture, arguing convincingly that to be an artist is not to be a practitioner of a “secular religion” but instead a producer within a market economy. His book, he writes, “attempts to make visible…the two things that the arts have long concealed about themselves: work and money.” Drawing on articles, books, and essays by artists, scholars, and critics as well as 140 lengthy phone interviews with artists who work in music, writing, visual art, film, and TV—he profiles 25 in detail—the author paints a vivid picture of the challenges involved in making art, finding an audience, and being self-supporting as an artist. Noting that the term “fine arts” dates to 1767, he traces the cultural identity of artists from Renaissance artisans supported by patrons to Enlightenment creators of art “as an autonomous realm of expression” to bohemians who defiantly rejected the marketplace, as if the very idea of money tainted the purity of their endeavors. Today, artists working in every genre must be constantly aware, self-marketing to audiences or finding intermediaries, such as agents, to market them. Most artists, Deresiewicz shows, earn subsistence incomes, with their biggest financial pressure coming from rent, both for living, working, and performing. The author examines a wide range of topics relevant to artists’ lives, including MFA programs; the rise of Amazon and possibility for self-publishing; opportunities in TV, which is “rolling in cash”; the dearth of philanthropic support of the arts in favor of projects with social impact; and the internet, which has made art accessible, offering “unmediated access to the audience” but also putting artists in competition with many others.
A savvy assessment of how artists can, and should, function in the marketplace.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12551-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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