Fwd: An American passion for tyrants, brilliant Charles Ives, irresistible El Greco

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: The New York Review of Books <newsletters@nybooks.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 11:30 PM
Subject: An American passion for tyrants, brilliant Charles Ives, irresistible El Greco
To: Pascal Alter <pascal.alter@gmail.com>

New on nybooks.com: The case against international development, rhetoric and reality in Ukraine, irresistible El Greco, Nazi art, Charles Ives, Karlheinz Stockhausen, the continuing Tiananmen crackdown, and an exchange on brains and minds.   This issue sponsored by Royal Collection Trust   An American Passion for Tyrants David Rieff William Easterly, a former World Bank economist, argues that international development aid has not only failed since its inception to deliver on its promises, but is actually a trap for the world's poor, whom he sees as the victims of those he calls "planners."   advertisement   Ives Wins! Jeremy Denk Charles Ives, the crazy and brilliant patriarch of American music, loved a good cacophony. In the public imagination he is associated with collisions of marching bands in different keys and other sorts of acoustical suffering. But his real impulse was affection for the past, and for the joys and possibilities of music-making.   Looking for Ukraine Tim Judah When we come to look back on the Ukrainian conflict, it will be hard, if it moves from its current low-level state to a full-blown war, to say that such-and-such a date marked its beginning. Since both sides are lying and distorting slivers of truth, it is not surprising that people are being dragged down into a vortex of war.   advertisement   Of Brains & Minds: An Exchange Patrica Churchland: In Neurophilosophy I made the point that if you want to understand the mind, you need to understand the brain. In his review of my recent book Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain, Colin McGinn gibbles up this simple message. Colin McGinn: It is just possible to discern some points beneath the heated rhetoric in which Patricia Churchland indulges. But none of these points is right.   The Art Hitler Hated Michael Kimmelman Seeing the exhibition "Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937" at the Neue Galerie, you can recover a sense of what was once radical and thrilling about pictures by Expressionists like Beckmann, Grosz, and Kirchner. A debased term, the avant-garde gets its jive back. Art matters again.   Irresistible El Greco Ingrid D. Rowland A man who spent the first half of his life on Crete could never erase the memory of the sun-saturated colors of the Greek islands, and they recur in his work: the aquamarine of Aegean waters, the incandescent yellow of the wild daisies that carpet Cretan fields in early summer, the ravishing delicate violet of crown anemones.   More in the June 19 issue: David Cole on the NSA, Jonathan Galassi on Italian Futurism, Martin Filler on zombie offices, Margaret MacMillan on Woodrow Wilson, Sanford Schwartz on Sigmar Polke, Michael Tomasky on the Koch brothers, Helen Vendler on Mark Ford   A Moment for Stockhausen Tim Page The "score" for one movement of a 1968 conceptual piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen began with the following instruction:      play a sound      play it for so long      until you feel      that you should stop   'You Won't Get Near Tiananmen!' An Interview with Hu Jia Ian Johnson: What do you think of the idea that China is going through a spiritual crisis? Hu Jia: After being in power for sixty-five years, the worst thing the CCP has done is create a sense of spiritual confusion. We have no belief or faith. Instead we have brutal competition and treating people brutally.   Subscribe to The New York Review of Books and save 50% off the cover price!   advertisement   The New York Review of Books 435 Hudson Street, Suite 300, New York, NY 10014 Forward to a friend |  (.....)