When one hears the word "disruption" these days, it is generally in the economic context -- venture capitalists searching for the next big high-tech startup capable of upsetting traditional means of doing business and reaping billions of dollars in profits by so doing.
But according the editor of T, the New York Times Style Magazine, disruption is just as important as a means of advancing the arts. The Oct. 22, 2017 edition of T is devoted to "the greats" -- seven living persons chosen collectively by the publication's staff as being exceptional in their fields for arguably bringing about fundamental change.
This, one might argue, is classic magazine fare: list journalism and a focus on, or the creation of, celebrities.
Nonetheless, here's how Hanya Yanagihara, editor of T since last April, justified it.
"This is a magazine that traffics in the subjective. The people we've included here are not, and can never be, best in their respective fields because in art, there is never such a thing as the best. There are only the people who merely contribute to their medium (which is hard enough) and those who, in some way, change it -- change it so completely that we being to categorize art or theater or music or design by what existed before them, and what existed after."
In other words, they were profoundly disruptive of the status quo -- in the eyes of T's staff at any rate.
Who are the current batch (this is apparently an annual endeavor by the magazine)?
Claes Oldenberg, the well-known sculptor of often large and soft renditions of pop-art objects;
Stephen Sondheim, the renown Broadway composer and lyricist;
Amy Adams, an American actress;
Dries Van Noten, the well-established Belgian fashion designer;
Park Chan-Wook, a South Korean film director;
Nicki Minaj, the American rapper, singer, songwriter and model, and
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian writer.
These people see the world "fundamentally differently than we do," Yanagihara claimed.
Check it out if you are interested,
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