In Friday’s (6/30) Chicago Tribune, Chris Jones describes what he terms a revolution “going on right now … about the radical democratization of American life. And the new battlefields are culture and story.… Who is writing [reviews] is just as important—perhaps more important—than what is being reviewed…. Critics are part and parcel of the professionalism of the arts, which was a 20th century phenomenon…. In the first half of the 19th century, the arts were something you more likely did yourself. You sang around the piano at home. … You were not up for review. You were not charging money. You were expressing yourself. Welcome back…. People are doing art themselves again… Half of 18- to 22-year-olds have made their own music.… Everyone has an opinion, and social media and cheap technology now has provided the last piece: an egalitarian megaphone…. One problem is that professionalism provides income for both artist and critic.… Everyone working in culture, and hoping to survive, has to provide much more opportunity for engagement than now is the case…. Young people don’t just want to talk about our culture, they want to be engaged in the storytelling and, most definitely, in the process of judgment.”
Posted July 5, 2017
