Monday, December 23, 2002


Holiday Hiatus
2Blowhards is taking a break. We'll be back and ranting on January 2nd. Best wishes and happy holidays to all of you. Friedrich and Michael... posted by Michael at December 23, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Artistic Temperaments
Michael— Sorry about being missing in action for the last little bit. I’m afraid real life—in the form of my daughter’s birthday, my wedding anniversary and shopping for a new car—intervened. (Having a real life is a terrible obstacle to ‘blog production.) Anyway, I’m back to continue my noodlings about Myers-Briggs personality types and artists. To simplify, the 16 Myers Briggs categories are often combined into 4 main temperaments. (The descriptions that follow are from the “Temperament: Different Drums, Different Drummers” website which you can see here.) Just to start thinking about how these personality categories might function in terms of the arts I had a go at putting a few prominent artists into each of the four main groupings: RATIONAL NTs [are] ABSTRACT in communicating and UTILITARIAN in implementing goals…Thus their most practiced and developed intelligent operations tend to be marshalling and planning (NTJ organizing), or inventing and configuring (NTP engineering)…They are proud of themselves in the degree they are competent in action, respect themselves in the degree they are autonomous, and feel confident of themselves in the degree they are strong willed...[T]his is the "Knowledge Seeking Personality" -- trusting in reason and hungering for achievement. They are usually pragmatic about the present, skeptical about the future, solipsistic about the past, and their preferred time and place are the interval and the intersection. Rationals: Picasso, Degas, Da Vinci, Delacroix IDEALIST NFs [are] ABSTRACT in communicating and COOPERATIVE in implementing goals…Thus their most practiced and developed intelligent operations are usually teaching and counseling…or conferring and tutoring…The Idealist temperament have an instinct for interpersonal integration, learn ethics with ever increasing zeal, sometimes become diplomatic leaders, and often speak interpretively and metaphorically of the abstract world of their imagination. They are proud of themselves in the degree they are empathic in action, respect themselves in the degree they are benevolent, and feel confident of themselves in the degree they are authentic. Idealist types search for their unique identity, hunger for deep and meaningful relationships, wish for a little romance each day, trust their intuitive feelings implicitly, aspire for profundity. This is the "Identity Seeking Personality" -- credulous about the future, mystical about the past, and their preferred time and place are the future and the pathway. Idealists: Kandinsky, Mondrian, Friedrich, David ARTISAN SPs [are] CONCRETE in communicating and UTILITARIAN in implementing goals…Thus their most practiced and developed intelligent operations are usually promoting and operating…or displaying and composing…Artisans are proud of themselves in the degree they are graceful in action, respect themselves in the degree they are daring, and feel confident of themselves in the degree they are adaptable. This is the "Sensation Seeking Personality" -- trusting in spontaniety and hungering for impact on others. They are usually hedonic about the present, optimistic about the future, cynical about the past, and their preferred time and place is the here and now… Artisans: Pollock, Rubens, Raphael, Renoir GUARDIAN SJs [are] CONCRETE in communicating and COOPERATIVE in implementing goals…Thus their most practiced and developed intelligent... posted by Friedrich at December 23, 2002 | perma-link | (3) comments

Saturday, December 21, 2002


WTC Plans Redux
Friedrich -- I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't --- OK, I will, but just for a few paragraphs. Sigh. Our resident provocateur, Felix Salmon, had a go at me in the comments section of my posting about the design proposals for the rebuilding of the WTC site. As always, I enjoyed Felix's brains, his writing and his hotheadedness. The easiest stuff first: At one moment Felix is sarcastic about me supposedly being a man of the people (me? living a Greenwich Village life surrounded by artists and intellectuals?); at another he's speaking in the voice of the people himself, letting me know that "New Yorkers" demand gigantic buildings. I'll let that go with a "Huh?" Next, Felix jumps on me for writing a review of the WTC proposals without having plunged as deep into the design briefs as he has. He also seems to feel that since I wasn't at the presentation of the designs, my opinion is invalid. But it was part of my posting to argue that it's irresponsible for anyone to write architecture reviews (except from a forthrightly strictly-design point of view) without having spent some serious time in and around the building or neighborhood under consideration. As for my utter unfamiliarity with the design specs and briefs and my non-attendance at the proposals' presentation: I don't have to have met the chef, reviewed his lease, interviewed his investors or scrutinized his recipes to know whether or not I like the food his restaurant serves. Felix may object that I'm simply excusing my own laziness, and he certainly has me there. But to my mind, it's often wise to avoid too much immersion in the artist/entertainer/architect's point of view. While it can be interesting to see what the people involved are contending with, you can also lose your grip on your reactions as a user/consumer/spectator. I don't doubt that Felix's reactions to the work presented are his own reactions -- which he does a brilliant job of spelling out on his own blog, here. Felix, like AC Douglas (who writes enthusiastically about some of the proposals at his blog, here), really does seem to have a taste for this kind of building. Hey, some people do, though I suspect that most people would admit they don't if they were pressed. But I think Felix might give a moment's reflection to the similarity between architectural presentations and movie junkets. In the movie biz, studios sometimes fly critics and reporters to glamorous places, hand out glossy production information, allow the journalists access to stars, serve up snazzily-catered food, and present their movies in luxurious conditions. Hey, Felix! Movie junkets, architects' presentations? They're trying to buy positive press! Bigshot architects, like film directors and producers, are among the world's best salesmen. Let me spell that out: S-A-L-E-S-M-E-N. They have to be great salesmen; they're trying to inspire someone to give them tens of millions of dollars. So they're putting the best face on everything, they're avoiding... posted by Michael at December 21, 2002 | perma-link | (11) comments

Thursday, December 19, 2002


Guest posting -- Chris Bertram
Friedrich -- Chris Bertram, whose classy blog Junius can be read here, emailed me an especially interesting note about my earlier posting "Art is Not Science." I asked for permission to reprint it here, and he gave me permission. So 2Blowhards is pleased to present the words and thoughts of Chris Bertram: Dear Michael I very much enjoyed your recent post on taste and the differences between science and art. I was surprised to find one of the commenters recommending Feyerabend: you had me scurrying off to consult David Hume's "Of the Standard of Taste". In particular, I was drawn to this paragraph, where Hume makes a nice point which is somewhat spoilt for us by his choice of poets: "Though in speculation, we may readily avow a certain criterion in science and deny it in sentiment, the matter is found in practice to be much more hard to ascertain in the former case than in the latter. Theories of abstract philosophy, systems of profound theology, have prevailed during one age: In a successive period, these have been universally exploded: Their absurdity has been detected: Other theories and systems have supplied their place, which again gave place to their successors: And nothing has been experienced more liable to the revolutions of chance and fashion than these pretended decisions of science. The case is not the same with the beauties of eloquence and poetry. Just expressions of passion and nature are sure, after a little time, to gain public applause, which they maintain for ever. ARISTOTLE, and PLATO, and EPICURUS, and DESCARTES, may successively yield to each other: But TERENCE and VIRGIL maintain an universal, undisputed empire over the minds of men. The abstract philosophy of CICERO has lost its credit: The vehemence of his oratory is still the object of our admiration." There is, as you probably know, much much more in there. No doubt you attribute your not getting Mahler and Dostoyevsky to what Hume calls "the different humours of particular men". I think there's still something to the idea that you are missing out on something when you don't appreciate, say, Mahler or Dostoyevsky and that comes out in the language we employ to persuade one another of the merits of some artwork. An interesting question - at least I think so! - is this: are there necessarily limitations of our sensibilities such that receptivity to some types of artwork precludes "getting" some others, and vice versa? Are there people who "get" both David Hockney (YUK!) and Burne-Jones (HOORAY)? Maybe, and maybe these aren't good examples, but I hope you can see my point. Best wishes Chris For what it's worth, I second Chris's high opinion of the Hume essay. I asked Chris to elaborate a bit on what he meant by the language question, and got back this reply: On the language thing I was thinking of a terrific paper I read this year by a philosopher called Mark Johnston. The paper, entitled "The Authority of Affect"... posted by Michael at December 19, 2002 | perma-link | (3) comments

Free Reads -- Kevin Michael Grace
Friedrich -- Have you ever marveled at how little conventional singing gal pop singers do these days? And how much outright whooping, trilling, sliding and warbling they do? I sure have. "What is this? A contest to see how many notes can be hit, and how many vocal effects can be shown off?" -- that's how I tend to react. Kevin Michael Grace marvels at it too, and does so much more amusingly and articulately. Sample passage: Remember that woman who suffered seizures whenever she heard Mary Hart’s voice? I get like that whenever I hear any of the Melismatics—Christina, Céline, Whitney, Mariah. (When did emotion get conflated with trying to cough up a lung, anyway? I blame Barbra Streisand.) I don’t black out; I just want to vomit or howl like a beaten dog. (Much as Christina, Céline, Whitney and Mariah do, come to think of it.) Let's hear it for intelligent, amusingly grumpy conservative cultural commentary. (Which isn't, of course, to say that we shouldn't also cheer for amusing and intelligent lefty cultural commentary. Hey, this is the arts. Disagreements should be fun and enlightening.) Kevin's blog The Ambler can be read here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 19, 2002 | perma-link | (9) comments

One Size Doesn't Fit All
Michael— Going through the deluge of comments on my recent posting on Photography and Painting, what struck me most, other than the degree of passion aroused by the discussion, was the way in which many of the comments restated the drawing vs. color debates of the French Academy of the 18th and 19th centuries. (To ultra-briefly recapitulate the war of the Rubenistes and the Poussinistes: does color make a shoddy appeal to our base, sensual natures while drawing speaks to our nobler, intellectual selves, or is color a critical artistic means of avoiding our overly rational intellects and communicating directly with our deeper emotions? In actuality, this discussion was by no means new even three hundred years ago: I recall a remark by Tintoretto to his son in the 16th century: “While beautiful color may sell paintings down by the Grand Canal, great art is made by strong drawing, which can only be learned by laboring deep into the night.”) It was one of those great controversies that can go on forever—and will, because both positions are right, or can be for different people. There is a line of dialogue from Pulp Fiction which goes (more or less): “Which do you like better, Elvis or the Beatles? A lot of people like both, but nobody ever liked them exactly the same.” In the film two people who had been thrown together were using this distinction as a useful shortcut to learn more about each other. Elvis people, in other words, are a different subspecies from Beatles people. The same could be said about the two camps in the centuries-old Raphael vs. Michelangelo debate. I remember following one critic who was obviously intelligent, broadly knowledgeable about art and in love with the subject, and being puzzled because I never once agreed with his opinion over many years. It was all explained one day when he admitted to an instinctive preference for Raphael over Michelangelo (the reverse of my instinctive preference.) Eureka! I thought. He belongs to the other tribe of humanity! This principle is by no means limited to art. The Myers-Briggs personality test, for example, sorts people into some 16 different categories as a result of four polarities (introvert-extrovert, sensory-intuitive, thinking-feeling, judgmental-pragmatic.) What’s interesting is exactly how different, in terms of social behavior and motivations, the people in these different categories are. One of those ideas I’ve always wanted to pursue-–but never quite got around to—was figuring out if artistic taste corresponds to these Myers-Briggs categories. (I have a sneaking suspicion that some graduate student wrote his Ph.D. thesis on this subject back in 1958, but I can dream of having an original thought, can’t I?) It would make sense to extend this idea to politics. For a large chunk of humanity, the main motivation in their work life is a desire for security—beginning, middle and end. Others are driven to make their own ideas and thoughts (good or bad) a reality. Is it wise to have one “welfare state”... posted by Friedrich at December 19, 2002 | perma-link | (4) comments

WTC Candidates
Friedrich -- Have you looked at the new set of proposals for the WTC site? Viewable here. As for my opinion, I'll say "Ahem," lift an eyebrow, give modest voice to the question "Whatever happened to such values as neighborhood, human-scaled streets and workable office buildings?" And I'll leave it at that. And, leaving it at that, I decided to bypass the critic/intellectual/elite class and go directly, man, right to the people. Ie., I skipped away from the opinion-makers and content folks here where I work and went to hang out for a while with the production people. They were leafing through the local papers and eyeballing the WTC proposals. Here's some of what they said: "That's just goofy!" "It's horrible! Horrible!" "Can you imagine asking someone to go work in a place like that every day?" "This is what happens when too much money and too much self-consciousness come together on the same project." "They want us to choose between those?" "Hmm, let's see. A bullshit 'pound' sign. A bullshit bunch of twisted glass. A bullshit bunch of ropes of Christmas lights ... " "Oh, yeah, and I'll just bet you can really open those windows!" The conviction that the money/ego/avant (ha-ha) garde/intellectual classes are once again on their narcissistic way to putting over yet another outrage was unanimous. And, hey, the following question, which has popped up in my mind many times over the years, pops up again. Semi-unrelated, I know, because the WTC proposals are proposals and not actual buildings, but even so: Isn't it plain weird that architectural reviewers and critics feel that it's OK to review a building without a) talking to people who work or live in it, b) talking with people who work or live near it, and c) spending serious time living and/or working in and near the building themselves? I do understand writing about buildings entirely from the point of view of "the building as free-standing aesthetic statement" -- but only for limited-audience, specialist design publications. When writing for the general public, doesn't it seem not just key but absolutely essential to discuss such topics as the building's functionality, its civility (or lack thereof) to its neighbors, and whether or not the windows can be opened? How would a newspaper's readers react if they noticed that the newspaper's car reviewer wasn't taking the car under review for lots of test drives, was concerned only with discussing the car's aesthetic qualities, and looked down on the rest of us for not "getting" his judgments? Yet we let writers about buildings and architecture get away with something exactly analogous. Outraged, sputtering and overcaffeinated, though doing my best to regain my usual worldly Zen detachment, Michael... posted by Michael at December 19, 2002 | perma-link | (10) comments

Wednesday, December 18, 2002


Modern Art 101
Friedrich -- Modern Art, in a very cute Flash nutshell, here. Link thanks to Velvet Hammers, here. Best, Michael Update on Thursday afternoon: The people sponsoring the animation seem to have taken down everything but a few screen captures. Nice while it lasted...... posted by Michael at December 18, 2002 | perma-link | (4) comments

Tuesday, December 17, 2002


Progress
Michael— I see from the NY Times of December 17 that one of my pet theories is being empirically validated: Dr. [Severino] Antinori, [an Italian fertility doctor] who became famous in 1994 for helping a 62-year-old woman become pregnant by implanting a donor’s fertilized egg in her uterus, says he has a clone pregnancy under way in an undisclosed country. The clone, he says, is a boy, due in early January. Panayiotis Michael Zavos in Kentucky, Dr. Antinori’s onetime partner and now his bitter enemy, says he does not believe Dr. Antinori, and anyway he is working on something even better. Dr. Zavos, an embryologist, says he has collected cells from seven people who want to be cloned, and in the first two weeks of January he will insert the cells’ nuclei into donated human eggs. He promises that, unlike his rival, he will offer DNA evidence that each of the babies born of this adventure is an exact genetic replica of its parent. And to add a little spice, there are the Raelians, members of a religious cult who believe the first humans were cloned by space aliens 25,000 years ago and who have taken on human cloning as a sacred mission. Acoording to their chief scientist, Brigitte Boisselier, the Raelians now have five clone pregnancies under way, the first of which is to be delivered by the end of this month. My pet theory? That no amount of banning or regulation is going to stop the more science-fiction-y outcomes of biotechnology and reproductive science from coming to pass. Before this is all over, you’ll see not only designer babies--genetically engineered athletes, scholars and fashion models--but cloning with the goal of harvesting the clone for, er, spare parts. If you can think such a possibility up, I suspect that somewhere, in the not-too-distant future it will happen. Dr. Antinori--What Kind of Future Does He See, Exactly? I am not an advocate of any of this stuff—to say I prefer making children the old-fashioned way is an understatement. But if people think buying a few score genes from Cindy Crawford will make their daughter more popular in high school, or buying some from Barry Bonds will make their son more athletic, they may well do it. (Think of it as throwing a few of your genes overboard to make the rest more reproductively successful.) And as for the more gruesome outcomes, human beings have long demonstrated that if they can get the upside of things without personally suffering from the downside they will rationalize their behavior one way or another. Fasten your safety belts, kids--we're in for a very weird ride. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at December 17, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

10-Best Lists
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- Do you enjoy end-of-the-year best-of lists? I do. I have plenty of dignified intellectual and critic friends who disapprove of them. Their argument generally seems to be that such lists are (surprise!) undignified. For me, that's a good reason to like them; making one up, and making it public, humanizes the person behind it. Why? Because of the clip-and-save aspect, for one thing. But also because it gives the public such a good, terse look at the critic's tastes. There are people out there you're semi-aware of and willing to feel semi-respectful towards. But what if, say, Louis Menand made up an end-of-the-year 10-best list? You could look at it and decide very quickly whether he's a guy for you. You might think, hmm, yes, yes, very good. But you might equally as well think, Lordy, why was I paying attention to this idiot? Or: What a priss! So I approve of these lists. But there's something about the typical 10-best list that has always bugged me, and I think I've finally figured it out. It boils down to this: "'Best' as in what exactly?" Using movies as an example, here are some possibilities: "Best" as in "my personal favorite"? "Best" as in, "in my professional opinion this is likely to be remembered as influential"? "Best" as in, "in 50 years, there will be a get-together of all the best taste-makers, and they will vote on the best movies of this year. And with this list, I'm predicting the results of their poll"? Which is it, critics? Why is this a problem? Because, if a critic were to make up all three of these lists, and do so in all sincerity, it's quite possible that there would be no overlap between them at all. Perhaps the critic has a hunch that a certain movie will prove influential -- but didn't enjoy it personally. Perhaps a critic has the feeling that a given picture will one day be viewed as important, yet it put this critic to sleep. Perhaps the critic loved some oddball movie, yet it's already been forgotten. So which one is it that your typical movie reviewer is giving you when he supplies his year-end 10-best list? 2Blowhards, or at least this half of 2Blowhards, wants to know. My fear (conviction, actually) is that what we're getting from the typical reviewer is a list that combines all these elements and more. Something along the lines of: Here are some movies I enjoyed personally; here are some movies I guess I gotta resign myself to giving a nod to because everyone thinks they're important; here's a few respectable big-pop entertainments, because my bosses would kill me if I appeared too snobbish; here's a couple of difficult movies I include to impress my critic colleagues ... I don't find the kind of list that results from such calculations very satisfying. I want something cleaner, and more revealing. What I'm most interested in finding out... posted by Michael at December 17, 2002 | perma-link | (3) comments

Monday, December 16, 2002


Free Reads -- Wendy Perriam on erotic books
Friedrich -- Have you ever run across the Bad Sex Award? It's a competition (for the worst passage about sex in a new novel) run by the British magazine the Literary Review, and it's apparently done very (or at least semi) straight-faced. There are judges, nominees, a final award dinner, and lots of press coverage. I sometimes wonder how I'd react if I were given such an award. Would I have enough toughness, bemusement and irony to triumph over the humiliation? I doubt it. I'd pout, my lip would start to tremble, I'd be fighting tears. I'd be a perfectly lousy sport, I'm afraid. In any case, this year's winner, Wendy Perriam (nominated three years running and finally making off with the prize) seems to be handling the honor nicely. She's written a short column for the Guardian where she recommends ten books about sex. It's readable here. Sample passage (about "Portnoy's Complaint"): The irrepressible sexuality of the theme is echoed in the exuberantly potent language, which seems to surge up and spill over on the page. And Portnoy's raging sexual desire is paralleled by the rage he feels towards his Jewish mother and the whole of Jewish culture. Roth has been called 'the historian of modern eroticism.' He's also hysterically funny. Link thanks to the blog Daze Reader (here), the best source I've found online for news about sex. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 16, 2002 | perma-link | (2) comments

Free Reads -- Velvet Crypt
Friedrich -- A delightful new participant in the culture-blogosphere -- Polly Frost's Notes from the Velvet Crypt, readable here. Polly's focusing mainly on sci-fi and horror, though she promises to make occasional excursions into other interests too. So far, she's put up postings about such topics as Bruce Lee, Japanimation, and Philip K. Dick, and she's wondered out loud about such key questions as "Do you have to be Catholic to love horror," and "Where has the eroticism in mainstream fiction gone." Judging from what's on her blog, she has a remarkably free-ranging, insightful and intuitive mind. Sample passage: I found Philip K. Dick's “Ubik” spiritual and moving -- it’s spiritual standup. Like Terry Southern, he’s a romantic cynic -- a bebop nihilist, really. Admittedly, Southern is body-centric, pop, and Rabelaisian where Dick is mind-gamey. Dick's universe is so cerebral. It’s about the disembodied consciousness of our time, and people striving for that. He’s prescient -- he got virtual reality ‘way before it existed. You can see the freak show. And, like Anthony Burgess, he paints a world that’s very Jacobean. But it’s not a sensual world. I notice that Polly runs some other websites too -- she seems to be in the midst of a right little creative explosion these days. At Tantric Afterlife (here), she's writing and publishing erotic horror and sci-fi stories. Hot stuff! And at Scorpio Visions (here), she has some information about a play she's written on the theme of "a woman's obsessive love affair with her cell phone." That sounds like hot stuff too. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 16, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Art is Not Science
Friedrich -- I was kicking around a few notions for the last week or so. Then this morning they came into focus and spilled out of me in the form of a kinda-essay. Ever have that happen? Strange, but fun. Rather than re-jigger it into a piece of correspondence, I thought I'd just run it as is. Forgive the length -- this morning I was too-much-coffee-man. Very curious to know your thoughts about it. In this country, many of us come to the arts through school. Thank heavens for the opportunity -- but there are downsides to this too. One is that we’re often left with an academic/professorial view of the arts that it can take years to shake. Another is that too many of us wind up feeling too deferential to the academic/professorial class. They were in charge when we learned about the field; why shouldn’t they continue to be in charge now? I take it that part of the mission (if you’ll forgive the term) of 2Blowhards is to contribute in some small way to the busting-up of the modernist/academic mafia. A quick aside to readers: you’re likely to encounter something called “postmodernism” being offered as a remedy. It doesn’t hurt to be wary of the claims made for it, because in practice postmodernism is too often just another academic theory. It bears the same relationship to actual freedom as a theory of humor does to a joke. One of the ways in which the taste mafia (the academics, the foundation people, the gallery owners, magazine editors, publishers, collectors and more) maintains its control is to present the arts as something like science -- deeply serious and very complex, and with a linear history leading to present-day theories and concerns. Their goal is to make contemporary art seem not just exciting, difficult and advanced (and thus in need of explicating and promoting by -- you guessed it -- the taste mafia), but also the inevitable consequence of a long and complicated history. We have no choice but to accept this vision -- to grovel, agree, and try to live up to its demands. We can be forgiven, I think, if we suspect that one of the arts mafia’s real goals is to maintain its own monopoly on taste. In fact, art and science have little in common. However much science is influenced by such factors as personality and culture, it’s empirically based; it’s testable. The powder goes ka-boom when a match is touched to it or it doesn’t. Actual progress is made; disputes between rival views are finally adjudicated. If you understand the science of today, you basically understand all of science. (And let’s set aside for the moment the kind of babble about “uncertainty” and “chaos” that art intellectuals love to indulge in. As far as I can tell, they’ve got no better a grasp on the scientific meaning of those terms than I do.) In art, none of this is the case. Testable? Well, the success... posted by Michael at December 16, 2002 | perma-link | (17) comments

New Ideas: Drawing Blind, Cheap Movies, Evo Lit Crit
Michael— About once a month I seem to spend a sleepless night caused by middle-aged problems too mundane to mention here. While this is a bit of a problem on several fronts, it does allow me to get some reading done. As a result I went rummaging through the Sunday New York Times about 3 a.m. last night looking for something to read in a hot bath, and was grateful to come across their magazine, which this week is given over to “The Second Annual Year in Ideas.” Several of their stories would seem to be of interest to our readers: The first story “Even Blind People Can Draw,” showcases the work of Professor John M. Kennedy of the University of Toronto, who has been asking blind people to make drawings. (The blind people in question have been blind from infancy, so they’re not relying on skills developed during a period of sightedness.) Interestingly, from the standpoint of various artistic arguments that have been waged over the years, they make line drawings. The lines are of two types—lines separating figure/ground interfaces (outlines) and “axial” lines where two planes come together (contour). Very interestingly, they also make drawings in perspective! I believe some blind people are better at this than others, but the same could be said about the sighted. As Professor Kennedy notes: Can blind people draw, using outline? Yes, often somewhat recognizably and at times quite well. Further, occasionally vantage points are explicitly noted. Familiar complex objects such as dogs are difficult for the blind—but they are for the sighted too. And at least one person can draw such objects quite competently. Granted, mathematical perspective isn’t technically dependent on vision, but it does require knowing where items are in three dimensions—the surprise here is that blind people are capable of determining such coordinates quite accurately by touch, something that appears to have caught the cognitive science community by surprise. For the comfort of the non-academic draftsmen among us, the blind are also capable of deliberate distortion, if they are trying to emphasize some element of the drawing (for example, by putting it in another location than it is “in nature”or to make it larger or smaller relative to the rest of the drawing.) You can read the NY Times article here and an excerpt from Professor Kennedy’s “Drawing and the Blind” here. The second story concerned the rise of digital filmmaking, headlined “Escape from Turnaround, The.” Of course, the chief attraction of such digital productions currently is their low cost, but—putting my business hat on—low cost is low risk, and low risk allows for a lot more experimentation. One firm profiled briefly in this story is InDigEnt, which produces digital films. Apparently their most successful production was “Tadpole,” which was made for $250,000, shown successfully at a film festival, and then sold to Miramax, which spent $5 million distributing the “film” to theaters. I never saw “Tadpole” and probably never will—for all I know it could be the worst... posted by Friedrich at December 16, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

TV Alert
Friedrich -- This week as usual, cable brings us more good movies and promising TV shows than a single Tivo can handle. First, our 2Blowhards Pick of the TV Week: The Bicycle Thief (TCM 2 am Saturday morning). In the middle and late ‘40s, some Italian film writers and directors abandoned spectacle, found their stories among real people, and created the style that has became known as Italian neo-realism. Emphasizing simplicity, directness and respect for lives as they’re actually lived, it has been one of the most influential movements in film history. Written by Cesare Zavattini and directed by Vittorio de Sica, this simple story concerns a poor man, his son, and their quest to find a stolen bicycle, and it's one of neo-realism's three or four peaks. And here’s just a little of what else a TV user can tune into this week: TV shows Intimate Portrait: Diane Lane (Lifetime, Monday at 7 pm). The “Intimate Portrait” series never fails to deliver estrogen overload -- feelings feelings feelings, relationships relationships relationships. And how do you reconcile a glamorous career with a satisfying personal life? But how often does a Diane Lane fan get a chance to see her profiled? Human Instinct (TLC, Monday 9-11 pm, and Tuesday 9-11 pm). The Learning Channel’s four-hour look at our deeper drives. I'm eager to see whether the show will dare to refer to them as "built-in," or "in the genes." The E! True Hollywood Story: Winona Ryder (E!, Tuesday at 8 pm). This glitzy, tabloid-style series has a surprisingly good batting average. Most of the episodes seem responsibly researched, the producers are tenacious and successful in getting key sources to talk, and, as for the brassy style... Well, do you really want to watch something sober on a topic like Winona Ryder and her shoplifting escapades? Movies The Five Senses (HBO, 2:15 am Tuesday morning). A child’s disappearance sets off quiet chain reactions in this meditative, Toronto-set film, the first film to be directed by Atom Egoyan’s producer. Organized thematically rather than narratively, lusciously photographed and recorded, it’s like “Short Cuts” done as an exquisite miniature. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (Cinemax, Wednesday at 3:30). The role that made Jim Carrey a star. Daring and far-out – Ace Ventura for me is as first-rate a comic creation as Groucho, Woody, and Curly. Speed (Cinemax, Thursday at 1 pm and 10 pm). Some people bemoan the fact that Hollywood isn’t making risky, character-driven movies any more. I bemoan the fact that the big corporate product that they do make -- with these budgets, how can they be expected to make anything else? -- is so seldom as good as it should be. But this bomb’s-about-to-go-off thriller shows the industry doing itself proud. With Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, a bus that can’t slow down, and just the right scrappy tone. Martin Scorsese on American Movies (TCM, Friday from 8 pm till midnight). Four hours of Martin Scorsese playing show and tell. Little of... posted by Michael at December 16, 2002 | perma-link | (3) comments

Sunday, December 15, 2002


Guest Posting -- Yvonne Harrison
Friedrich -- Yvonne Harrison, who lives in New Zealand and makes a living as a technical writer, got in touch a few weeks back. I asked her what it's like to work in her field, and I asked for her reflections about how it affects her experience of (and pleasure in) writing. She wrote a wonderful and informative note back, which she's agreed to let me reprint here. So, a guest posting, by Yvonne Harrison: Every writer dreams of earning their living as a writer. Getting paid for their prose is up there with the thrill of getting published for the first time. For many the lifestyle of the writer holds much appeal as well. The prospect of never setting foot in an office, of being able to set up your own writing schedule, of having your very own writer's study usually occupies a considerable chunk of the writer's romantic and long-held dreams about writing. If they're anything like me they discover that it's not that hard to make a good living out of writing. The only problem is that it's not creative writing. There are a myriad of jobs out there that involve stringing words together to form a sentence but as many a (non-creative) writer learns, the job of being a writer can quickly kill any ambitions to be another type of writer. Unfortunately being a non-creative writer also tends to scupper any illusions about living the solitary writer's life of writing for four hours in the morning at the local cafe while nursing a latte. The problem is that earning a living as a writer usually involves office politics, and a nine-to-five day in a Dilbert like cubicle all of your very own... Just take my career (job) for instance. I'm a technical writer. There are many good points to this job. I'm a contractor so I can happily pay my mortgage, buy food and other essentials of life as well as save for holidays or the new computer. I've just started working from home for a lot of my contracts, so I really am living the writer's dream of typing away within my very own writer's study. A big component of technical writing is analysis, so it forces me to think logically and clearly so this helps with plot construction in stories. Additionally, users don't have time to wade through stylish prose or convoluted sentences so it teaches writers to get to the point. Quickly. With as few words as possible. Unfortunately the big down side to the job is that it makes creative writing a tough challenge. I wrote a novel while I worked as a technical writer. The technical writing project was under some tight deadlines. So I would get to work at 5.30 am in the morning, write all day until about 3.00 pm then get home and try to work on my novel until about 8.00 pm. Quite frankly it was an idea born of stupidity. By the time I finished the... posted by Michael at December 15, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Free Reads -- Reclining Nudes
Friedrich -- Are you fascinated by the way art and pornography quarrel, feud, and occasionally make nice? I am, so much so that I sometimes wonder how much of an art fan I'd be if it weren't for the dicey relations between and art and porn. I mean, a still life can be a mighty pretty thing, but even so ... The Guardian recently ran a crisp and helpful introduction to the history of the reclining-nude genre by Frances Borzello, readable here. Bizarrely, the online version of Borzello's piece is unillustrated. 2Blowhards is more than happy to correct that oversight. (These images are pop-ups, so click on them and treat yourself to bigger versions.) Giorgione's elegance sets the pattern; Manet and his riot grrrl break the fourth wall Sample passage: Its own set of conventions: historically, reclining nudes are presented in the guise of a classical goddess. Its own poses: she tends to lie with her eyes turned from the spectator, or even closed, offering no obstacle to his free-ranging glances over her body. Its own compositional devices: an impish figure may hold aside the drapery to frame the body and create a display for the viewer's delectation. Its own set of similes: she often stretches out in a landscape whose hummocks and valleys metaphorically echo her curves. Photography carried this to extremes in the 20th century by depicting female bodies as smooth-surfaced boulders in a landscape. And its own taboos: pubic hair stays resolutely out of the picture because it signified the woman's own demanding sexuality, which could be felt as threatening. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 15, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Friday, December 13, 2002


Photography and Painting
Michael— Steve Sailer, in a comment on my posting “The Hudson River School, Part II” suggested that readers who enjoy 19th century landscape painting, might well get a kick out of the mountain photographs of Galen Rowell. Mr. Rowell and his photographer wife, Barbara Cushman Rowell, tragically died in a plane accident this last August, but they left behind hundreds of thousands of photographs. Here is one that set me musing about the whole art/nature who-is-imitating-who question. G. Rowell, Untitled (AA957), date unknown This image immediately reminded me of one of my favorite landscapes, “Large Enclosure” (by one of my favorite artists, Caspar David Friedrich.) While these images are actually responses to two very different landscapes, the parallels are too numerous to ignore (for me, anyway): the crack-of-dawn lighting, the vertical dark oblong masses pushing up above the horizon, the compositional scheme of two “mirrored” arcs in place of a simple horizon line, one pointing down and enclosing the earth and one pointing up to enclose the sky, the patchy foreground “immersed” in water or mist, etc. Of course, I have no idea if Mr. Rowell, about whom I know almost nothing, ever saw the C. D. Friedrich painting. But assuming he did, it gets me wondering: does the photograph then serve to “document” the objectivity of the artist’s vision? ("See, this isn't a fantasy, this is the way it REALLY LOOKS!") Or has the photographer been so taken with the artist’s “subjective” image that he makes choices to deliberately override the so-called objectivity of the camera? ("Wouldn't it be cool to arrange things so my photograph will look like a famous old painting?") C. D. Friedrich, Large Enclosure, 1832 Other photographs on Mr. Rowell’s website, which you can visit here, got me to pondering your comment on the “borderline overripe palette” of Frederick Church. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a painting with color effects as strong as those common in nature photography. Does that mean painters are too timid with color? Or that photographers deliberately use the technical limitations or effects of photography to pander to our lascivious desire for ever-more voluptuous color effects? Or that painters using restrained colors are really playing it smart, because they know our visual memory corrects for over-saturated color (that's why green trees in the sunset--which aren't really green, but brown--still look green) and this mentally corrected vision is what they want to replicate? Or...? Interesting questions which I’ve never been able to fully resolve. Any thoughts? Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at December 13, 2002 | perma-link | (25) comments

Free Reads -- Fred Reed
Friedrich -- However inclined I may be to libertarianism, I still can't help wincing at a lot of what tends to happen when business and money values trump all others. Economic efficiency is a good thing in many cases -- but in all cases? Where family life is concerned? Where friends are concerned? Where art is concerned? And I do know that libertarianism isn't just about economic efficiency, and yes, I'm all for freedom and choice. But isn't it remarkable how often arguments made in the name of libertarianism turn out to really concern economic efficiency? Hmmmm. Given my suspicion that I'm not alone in wondering about this kind of thing, I also wonder: Why are so many libertarians such eager-beaver, everything's-always-for-the-better-when-the-market-takes-over, Pangloss types? Optimism is good; idiotic optimism is idiotic. It might be a sensible and necessary thing to argue that some things that are ugly (strip malls, etc) can be a sign of economic vitality. But it's absurd to argue that blatantly ugly things aren't ugly. (Although, come to think of it, much of the official -- ie., avant-garde -- art world has been getting away with this for years.) But there are some ugly things that everyone knows are ugly. Ask random people if they'd ever, given a choice, choose to live or work in a strip mall. Despite this, some libertarians continue to insist on arguing that pigs are gazelles. After all, they have good scientific proof, or at least a wonderful theory, that predicts that even if the pig's looking a trifle piggy today, by tomorrow it'll be a thing of wealth, elegance, etc. Meanwhile, anyone who happens to be listening takes a good look, thinks, "That's a pig if I ever saw one," and leaves. So a few questions arise: do the hyper libertarians know they look like, and are behaving like, aliens? Perhaps they are aliens -- or possibly Arizona used-car salesmen. If this is indeed what they are (aliens/used-car salesman), why do they think anyone else would ever trust them, or their arguments? I mean, don't they have any audience sense? Of course, there's always the chance that the hard-core libertarians don't actually want to win people over -- that what they really enjoy is hanging with fellow-aliens and griping about what irrational idiots the rest of us are. I say all this as someone whose temperament tends to anti-statism, or at least strongly-suspicious-of-statism. It also tends, however, to adore friendship, love, art, and beauty. A long prologue to a link -- Fred Reed, having some fun with freedom and how it so often seems to play out, here. Sample passage: [Wal-Mart} puts most of the stores in the country seat out of business. With them go the restaurants, which no longer have the walk-by traffic previously generated by the stores. With the restaurants goes the sense of community that flourishes in a town with eateries and stores and a town square. But this is granola philosophy, appealing only to meddlesome lefties.... posted by Michael at December 13, 2002 | perma-link | (16) comments

Thursday, December 12, 2002


Free Reads -- Alexandra Ceely
Friedrich -- Alexandra Ceely, who runs Out of Lascaux (here), has been on a cultureblogging tear, showing how to do it with class. She reflects about working as a kind of teacher's assistant, muses about how reading books as an adult is different than it is when you're a kid, and provides a first-class illustrated introduction to the Candle Light Painters. De La Tour wasn't alone -- who knew? She also reminisces about visiting Cairo -- not a happy experience, apparently. Sample passage: My advice about seeing Egypt: if you want to see pyramids, go to Vegas. If you want to see the tombs of Saqqhara, go to the Field Museum in Chicago. They have an exact replica of the paintings and carvings. So exact, I stepped inside and realized I had been there before. I still enjoy the Ancient Egypt shows on TV. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 12, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Investigative Reporting
Michael— You’ll be thrilled to hear that 2blowhards has a new investigative reporting scoop! According to a highly placed source in the custodial department of the SEC, an investigation is being launched into the accounting for Vivendi Universal’s modern art collection. Tipped off by a report in the New York Times--which you can read here--that the evil Franco-American conglomerate (oops, I guess that’s a bit redundant) plans to auction off the collection housed in the Seagram’s building, the watchdog agency has some tough questions to ask. According to our source, the whole deal smells fishy. “This whole deal smells fishy,” says this highly placed but anonymous official, leaning on his broom. “I mean, according to my dictionary, a corporation is not a person! What the heck does it need with an art collection, anyway?” Another anonymous sources with no particular axe to grind—you can trust us on that—speculated wildly that the art collection was a cleverly disguised accounting reserve that could be used to bolster Vivendi Universal’s corporate earnings in case of, as he put it: “a rainy day.” This extremely anonymous but fair-minded source cackled with delight: “And have you gotten a look at Vivendi’s finances lately? Let me tell you, we’re going to see Noah come paddling through here any minute now!” Yet other sources, who do nothing all day but check up obsessively on the Enron corporate scandal, have noticed a sinister link between Vivendi’s activities and a failed attempt by the evil Texas conglomerate (darn, more redundancy) to set up an art futures trading desk. Although described in the business press as an innovative attempt to create liquidity in an inefficient commodity market, according to our eyeball-rolling source, “it was really an attempt to completely corner the market in conceptual art! They were either going to force prices up by 500% or pull the plug on Soho.” When asked for comment, a corporate spokesperson said, “Since I have no idea what Vivendi Universal actually does to make money, I can only assume that this transaction is a well-thought out, strategic move by our firm. As I understand it, our next move will be to auction our underwear on eBay.” Of course, I'm paraphrasing here. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at December 12, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Milton Glaser on art
Friedrich -- Have you ever read an interview with the ad guy/illustrator Milton Glaser? I talked to him once and found him amazingly thoughtful and insightful, and far more cultured than most fine-arts people I've run into. I was just reading a q&a with him in the March-April 2002 issue of the magazine Step-by-Step Graphics, and he said something that reaffirms the gist of what I was saying in my previous posting, about art and making a living. Attaboy, Milton. He says it better, of course. He's asked about the Van Gogh model of painting, and says this: Unfortunately it's a very self-centered model. It says, "Do your work and you will convince the world to love you, pay you a lot of money, and make you famous. All you've got to do is stick to it and wait to be discovered." This is a total delusion about what really happens in the world. Unfortunately, this idea of the primacy of self-expression has infected the schools, which continue this myth. It's such a total, miserable lie. Perhaps it's perpetuated by frustrated academics who encourage the innocent to think it's true so they have the strength to go on themselves. But all it produces is a generation of bitter people who can't figure out why they can't make a living. There is something fundamentally wrong about this way of creating expectations. He's then asked about whether he ever wanted to get out of commercial art. No, I had no other ambitions. But I never fully understood the distinction between being a painter and an applied artist. Admittedly, you more often have to deal with criteria that make it hard to create a work of emotional or aesthetic significance. But once in a while, you do a book jacket, an album cover, an illustration that isn't compromised by its purpose. Some people use commercial considerations as an excuse not to do good work. They say, "Well, we're not really free." But as you know, meaningful work happens as you press through, regardless of the constraints. In fact, for many people constraints make good work possible. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 12, 2002 | perma-link | (2) comments

Writing for a Living
Friedrich -- I'm always pleased to see people taking writing classes, music instruction, art classes. It's a great way to enhance your involvement in the arts, and it can refine and civilize your perceptual and critical apparatus in the most pleasing ways. Plus, it's wonderful fun to make art things. The vibe in an intro-to-oil-painting classroom, in my experience, is very enjoyable and unlike what most people remember of being in class. In school, you were -- to some extent -- there merely because you had to be. In oil-painting class, everyone's there because they want to be. At the same time, it can drive me nuts that so many Americans are prone to base their involvement in the arts on the fantasy of having an arts career. Readers seem to love imagining that they too could score big. If you look at hobbyist magazines, it's incredible how much of what's published caters to (I'll just say it: exploits) the fantasy that there's a career to be had here, and maybe even a killing to be made. I've noticed that English dabbling-in-the-arts magazines don't seem to sell this fantasy quite as hard -- they're straightforwardly publications for amateurs who follow the field because they love it. Are the English more commonsensical and down-to-earth than we are? I've been lucky enough to follow the business of some of the arts pretty closely. (More closely than I ever wanted to, to be truthful.) So I'm going to use this blog occasionally to get down some of what I learned. Today: writing. The boiled-down executive-summary version of what I have to say: writing books as a "career"? Hah. The slightly longer version: English-major rube that I used to be, I early on imagined that the country was awash in busy writers, busily making livings. Then I began to wonder. Finally, I called an acquaintance who runs an authors organization and asked him flat out: how many writers in this country actually make a living at it? We backed and forth-ed a bit. Was I including writers of technical manuals? Sit-com writers? Ad copywriters? Journalists? We finally decided to focus on something along the lines of "authors who write the kinds of books you think of when you think 'books' -- ie., the kinds of books you take out of a library intending to read." So how many of them actually make a living at it? Oh, my friend said, certainly fewer than 200. Like I say: "Career"? Hah. I remember one study that showed that most authors of checking-it-out-from-the-library nonfiction actually lose money on the books they write. Why? Because they pay their own expenses, and books almost always wind up taking more time and research than an author anticipates. And fiction? I just bumped into a friend who's published a couple of books. He's about to finish the first draft of a novel. Unprompted he sighed, "I'll be happy to get $3000 dollars for it." Out of that he'll have to pay... posted by Michael at December 12, 2002 | perma-link | (7) comments

Short Stuff
Michael-- Perhaps you caught this headline from the Wall Street Journal of December 12: Europe's Space Effort is Hurt As Rocket Explodes on Launch Gee, you think? Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at December 12, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Hudson River School, Part II
Michael— As promised, I am continuing with the history of the Hudson River School as the torch was passed from Thomas Cole to the second generation. But before discussing the specific artists, I wanted to sketch out some of the cultural issues that affected their work. The settling (and exploitation) of the West was the great American project of this era. However, the relationship between the wealthy patrons of the Hudson River School—who virtually all lived in the urban East—and the rural or wilderness parts of the country were complex. The landscapes of the Hudson River were originally chosen as motifs because they were easily accessible to New York City-based artists; they are, in essence, tourist vistas. (It’s no accident that commercial tourism and the Hudson River school sprang up at roughly the same time, the 1820s, or that the geographical range of the Hudson River school expanded along with the growth of the railroads and steamship lines.) These paintings embodied the only personal relationship the Eastern urban elite was likely to have with undeveloped nature, i.e., that of a tourist. The Hudson River landscapes also addressed a more general cultural problem of the wealthy, urbanized Eastern elite. For generations European settlers had been used to an essentially practical or “business” relationship with North America—it was a good place to live and extract cash. But now this more leisured elite wanted to find an aesthetic relationship to this vast territory, and their cultural apparatus, oriented towards European models, wasn’t helping. As Rebecca Bedell in her book, “The Anatomy of Nature” notes: Americans had long suffered from an inferiority complex about their continent. It had been stigmatized as “The New World,” a savage place devoid of historical associations and bereft of intellectual and aesthetic stimuli. In…the American landscape many found answers to these accusations…In the great falls of Niagara and in the sculptured towers and ravines of the Southwest, Americans found substitutes for the castles and cathedrals of Europe. They could take pride in the sublimity, vastness and beauty of their country’s natural wonders. More generally still, Americans of this era, being an intensely religious people as well as very interested in science and technology, were seeking to reconcile these two belief systems, an attempt that generated an intense interest in geology. Religion and geology were involved in an exciting dialogue at this time, as Rebecca Bedell points out: …in the early 1820s, it was still widely believed that the earth was approximately six thousand years old, formed, as the Archbishop Ussher of Ireland had calculated, on 26 October 4004 B.C…By the 1830s, however, this view of the earth’s history no longer seemed tenable. In that decade Charles Lyell, in his extraordinarily influential Principles of Geology (1830-33), argued compelling for an earth of immense antiquity, a structurally dynamic earth whose surface had undergone slow but continual transformations since its origins in the almost incalculable depths of the past. Whether or not this new geologic worldview was compatible or incompatible with revealed... posted by Friedrich at December 12, 2002 | perma-link | (4) comments

Wednesday, December 11, 2002


PBS Responses
Friedrich -- As you remember, a few weeks ago we were lucky enough to be the first blog linked to by the great Arts & Letters Daily, for a posting griping about how boring PBS documentaries can be. What an honor! And what a treat, too: we got as much traffic over the next 3 days as we usually get over the course of about 25 days. A number of visitors emailed to let us know what they thought of the posting; amazingly, an email or two on the subject is still coming in every few days. But I thought now would be a good time to go back and sum up the response. A total of 64 emails so far. Pro-2Blowhards or anti-PBS: 51. Pro-PBS or anti-2Blowhards: 5. Miscellaneous: 8. Feelin’ good! [Dances end-zone victory dance.] A few comments from the badly outnumbered pro-PBS or anti-2Blowhards faction: At the risk of being labelled by you as some kind of PC ex hippie or the like, I confess to not watching any of the sitcom rubbish churned out by the commercial interests of the US TV industry, and to being a great fan of Ken Burns, and PBS in general. The essay seemed like it was written by an 11th grader who procrastinated too long, and had to finish the 8 page essay before bedtime. I am one of the silent army of PBS viewers who stick with it all, good and bad, because the commercial alternatives are so horrible. Better any amount (well, almost any) of guitar twanging and sepia photos ... than 2 minutes of the Network Horror being shown at the same time. Sorry you were bored, but mayhaps you care not for education, information, or learning in general? Unless it's presented with flashy/speedy/graphics or other computer-generated illusions? PBS is the only channel TV worth watching. (This woman’s email signature included a quote from Gandhi) As a matter of fact, I do enjoy the pace's contrast to commercial TV's rat-a-tat-tat. Also, I can putter on my computer and housework without missing much if I step away from the program. Some comments from the triumphant anti-PBS or pro-2Blowhards faction: They have certainly lost their former hard-core audience, who have fled in disgust from their PBS channels for better fare elsewhere - and it is not difficult to find. At the same time, they have not attracted new audiences simply because their programs are BAD, and no one wants to watch bad and boring programs. I saw this show (the documentary about Stephen Foster we were griping about) quite some time ago. I was amazed at how they got away with running interminable shots of windows and mirrors. Thank you for voicing an opinion many of us keep quietly to ourselves.  I thought I was the only one who thought the same way. I haven't been able to watch any of those documentaries on PBS for years, I have felt that way about PBS for years, but I thought the... posted by Michael at December 11, 2002 | perma-link | (3) comments

Monday, December 9, 2002


American Art, All Wild and Wooly
Friedrich -- Perhaps we ought to come right out and say it: American culture and art are strange and wild. What's best in this culture, and what has the most vitality, often doesn't come in traditional packages -- a fact that can drive people crazy with annoyance and perplexity. American culture can be very hard to comprehend, particuarly for people who yearn for something more respectable, or more Euro-style. But there's another way of viewing this fact, and that's as something marvelous, rich, and forever surprising. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that part of what we're both getting at in our postings about 19th century American art is how far-out and deeply moving that art can be. It's a case that isn't often argued these days. 19th century American art is an era that's frequently looked down on, and even dismissed, by those with modernist and post-modernist educations. It's seen as a matter of lousy imitations of European art. Judged by traditional Euro standards, much of it certainly does look hick. How typical is this attitude? Just yesterday, out for lunch in Chelsea, the Wife and I were seated a few feet away from a couple of women artists. Midway through dessert, I overheard one of them say, "Well, until the '20s and '30s, when we finally got some real art in this country..." It's a common belief among educated people that America just didn't get it until the arrival of modernism. Before the Armory Show, our art was clueless crap; before the Method, our actors were grandstanding naifs. Well, balls to all that. Take a look at pre-modernist American art without the academic and Euro blinders on, and what you discover is a lot of freewheeling and very strange art. It was, it seems to me, a great and adventurous era, many-sided, experimental, democratic, and unself-conscious. The genteel and the rudely populist coexisted in ways that post-modernists can only dream about. It seems to me that Felix (writing a comment in reply to your recent posting on the Hudson River School) falls into the trap of seeing Cole's work, for instance, through academic (ie., "avant-garde") eyes. Felix finds "Victorian kitsch" in Coles' work; he describes Cole as an "autodidact," and a "slightly mad historical curiosity." I think he's being quite perceptive. Where I part company with him is when he concludes that because of this, Cole was a bad artist. The fact has always been that much of the best American art has had elements of kitsch and the sentimental, and many of our best artists could be accurately described as "autodidacts," and "slightly mad historical curiosities." He's the top: Bojangles None of this makes Cole a good artist -- but none of it disqualifies him from being a good artist either. Much of the best American art has always been hard to respect, and hard to rank highly (let alone enjoy), if what you're applying are traditional European terms. The oddballness of much American art... posted by Michael at December 9, 2002 | perma-link | (14) comments

Hudson River School, Part I
Michael— I assume you remember a few weeks ago one of our devoted readers, Felix Salmon, dismissed the Hudson River School as: …a derivative and parochial set of painters taken seriously by almost nobody outside the NE of the US and who have shown their lasting influence precisely nowhere. Not content with that blast, he described the accomplishment of the primary founder of the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole, as being limited to: …taking Netherlandish landscape painting, blowing it up a bit in size, and painting medium-sized mountains instead of fields with cows. I’d like to thank Felix for his comment, because it resulted in my spending a lot of time looking at, and reading about, the Hudson River School painters, which I found extremely rewarding. Nonetheless, while Felix will have to make up his own mind about the Hudson River School, I’m not sure his comments constitute the last word on the accomplishments of this group of artists. If Felix had confined his remarks solely to the eldest and least inspired of the Hudson River painters, Thomas Doughty (1793-1856), there wouldn’t be a great deal for me to take issue with. While I would be rather slow to dismiss the human accomplishment involved in making a career as a self-taught painter in America in the first few decades of the nineteenth century—especially as a pioneer in what was at the time a virtually nonexistent genre, landscape—it must be admitted that Doughty was a derivative painter. His work utilizes formulas developed by the Dutch--such as low, rounded hills near water surmounted by large, clear skies--although it owes even more to the works of Claude Lorrain, as the following example will make fairly clear. (As always, these are thumbnails and I would urge you to click on them to see the "big picture.") T. Doughty, Farmstead in the Valley, 1820; Claude,Idyllic Landscape, c. 1663 However, when we get to Thomas Cole (1801-1848), Felix’s description simply won’t do: we’re dealing with a far more ambitious and inventive artist. Cole was born in the English Midlands, in a well-to-do family of textile manufacturers, but his father’s business failed. Cole had to leave school, and was apprenticed to a calico designer and wood engraver in a textile factory, a humiliating and terrifying experience that left him with a life-long horror of sliding into the working class. He migrated to the United States with his family in 1818, where he settled in Philadelphia and worked as an engraver. As Robert Hughes notes: [Cole] saw, in Philadelphia, works by portraitists Gilbert Stuart and Thomas Sully, whose names “came to my ears like the titles of great conquerors.”…Without formal training, he learned the rudiments of oil painting from a traveling portrait limner. But they were only rudiments. Without access to life classes or any intensive advice, he never learned to draw the human face or body competently. (Neither could his hero, Claude Lorrain.) Nonetheless, Cole found in landscape painting an arena for his artistic energies. At the... posted by Friedrich at December 9, 2002 | perma-link | (8) comments

Nikos Salingaros, Christopher Alexander
Friedrich -- In my usual wooly-headedness, I overlooked a note left for us a couple of weeks back by Nikos Salingaros, the University of Texas physicist who has been doing such fascinating work on cities, buildings, beauty, and ratios, sometimes in collaboration with Christopher ("A Pattern Language") Alexander. Here's what he wrote: Distinguished colleagues, I read some of the comments about Christopher Alexander, and also on my paper with Bruce West. I'm very pleased to see an interest in these topics. As to Christopher's work, let me give a link to one of my papers on Pattern Languages: http://applied.math.utsa.edu/~salingar/StructurePattern.html It is important to let your group of readers know that a significant convergence is now taking place in our view of the world. Christopher's new book "The Nature of Order" will soon be out (check with natureoforder.com), which will set the tone for an overhaul of current thinking about art, architecture, urbanism, aesthetics, and many other human endeavors. I am pleased to be a part in all of this, having prepared the way with some publications linking human creations to scientific laws. Some of my papers are mentioned occasionally on this site. Let me also mention the forthcoming issue of the webzine Katarxis, which will be released in January (http://luciensteil.tripod.com/katarxis02-1/id51.html), and of which I happen to be co-editor. Best wishes to all, Nikos Salingaros I second, and very loudly, Salingaros' enthusiasm for the webzine Katarxis (readable here), and for Alexander's A Pattern Language (buyable here), which thousands of people have found is capable of blowing open their aesthetic thinking; just as great, it seems to me, is Alexander's The Timeless Way of Building. Alexander is a gigantic, almost mythical figure -- I've had architects tell me they didn't really get architecture until they read his work. And his thinking resonates in many directions. As Michael Snider pointed out in a comment, there are software developers who are devoted to, and making use of, Alexander's concept of patterns. But I also urge any and all readers interested in such questions as patterns, genetics, beauty, the relationships between chaos theory and art, pleasure, evolved systems, etc, to take a look around Prof. Salingaros' own website, here. His pathbreaking research and thinking will give anyone's brain a firm, enlightening and pleasurable rattle. As for Christopher Alexander's The Nature of Order, I got a look at a bootleg copy some years ago -- Alexander has been said to be on the verge of publishing the book for a quite a while now, and copies have been circulating. The version I saw was about 1000 pages long. It struck me as very brilliant, quite mad, and possibly a classic -- in its all-encompassing, visionary-oracle, responding-to-everything, once-and-for-all fervor, it put me in mind of Hegel, or of "The City of God." I can't wait to see the version he decides to publish. An interview by Wendy Kohn with Alexander about "The Nature of Order" can be read here. Sample passage: Wendy Kohn: You know, we didn’t... posted by Michael at December 9, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Saturday, December 7, 2002


TV Alert
Friedrich -- It doesn't surprise me that complaining about television is such a beloved ritual -- so much TV really is crap. What does surprise me is how many people let themselves stop there. Are they unaware of how much that's worth watching can be found on cable? As in all things, you just have to go to a little trouble. Such as reading 2Blowhards, for instance, and eyeballing our weekly TV Alert. As far as this film buff is concerned, Turner Classic Movies alone justifies the cost of a cable subscription: miraculously good prints that are far better than what most movie rep houses come up with; no commercial interruptions; an extensive library. They even schedule the occasional silent movie. Is it to Ted Turner that we owe thanks for this? Then: thanks, Ted! Which leads to my Blowhard Pick of the TV Week: The Scarlet Letter (TCM; the midnight between Sunday and Monday). Silent movies were their own art form, somewhat distinct from what we're now used to thinking of as narrative audiovisual entertainment. Speaking super-generally, they were more akin to opera or narrative ballet than to talking pictures; if you think of them as a combination of movement, pantomime, and pictorial material that has been set to music, you'll start to get in the ballpark. If you've never quite found the silent-movie groove, this early adaptation of the Hawthorne novel might help you along. Lillian Gish, a frail, Victorian-tulip type, is surprisingly powerful as Hester; Lars Hanson partners her beautifully. The director, Victor Sjostrom (sometimes spelled Seastrom), was one of the greats of early film -- a precursor of such talents as Bergman, Bresson, and Tarkovsky; his work was spare and intense, yet sensual and mystical. Critics complain about the way the film alters the book's ending, and I know it should have bugged me. But, honestly, it didn't. A fabulous movie. Programs and documentaries Ian McKellan on Inside the Actors Studio (Bravo; Sunday at 8 pm ). Frankly gay, rail-thin, articulate and perverse, McKellan might make a witty and insightful guest. What do you mean, you haven't seen Gods and Monsters? That's the film in which McKellan gave a brilliant performance as the horror-movie director James Whale. Go rent it right now. The movie itself is a gem, fully the equal of a good small literary novel. (To my shame, I haven't read the novel the film is based on.) Rumrunners, Moonshiners and Bootleggers (History Channel, 9 pm Monday, and 2 am Tuesday morning). A 2-hour documentary about Prohibition. I haven't seen it, but I have been having good luck recently with History Channel documentaries, which tend to be crisp and efficient. The E! True Hollywood Story: Whitney Houston (E!, 8 pm Wednesday). This showbiz-documentary series flaunts a trashy, National-Enquirer style but often delivers solid goods. And, you know, ahem, this kind of style isn't all that inappropriate for showbiz subjects... Biography: Billy Barty (A&E, 8 pm Thursday). This episode promises to be an especially fascinating... posted by Michael at December 7, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Friday, December 6, 2002


Writing Software
Friedrich -- Do you dislike Word as much as I do? I suppose it's an OK piece of software, and using it to write certainly beats longhand or a typewriter. But I'm offended by it. It's really a tool for making documents, optimized more for memos and reports than for helping you get your thoughts down. As a tool for writing, it's a lumbering beast determined to inflict on me its rather sinister desire to do favors. (Why do so many Microsoft products want to do me favors? I feel the way a restaurauteur does when the Mob offers to do him a favor.) My copy has to be actively stopped -- apparently at the end of a gun barrel -- from turning asterisks into bullets, for instance, and from underlining grammar and spelling it doesn't approve of. I don't care if there are ways of stopping this behavior, I don't want it starting in the first place. Feeling offended isn't a good mental state to be writing in. And, besides, writing and document-making are two different activities, darn it. I'd prefer to have a separate program for each. But the problem, as I see it, also boils down to something that isn't specific to Word. It's the nature of the word-processor itself. A word processor sure beats a typewriter -- but by all that much? Maybe it's just me, but once I got past the "I never have to retype again" exhilaration, I started wondering: Gee, aren't there better things computers can do to help with writing? The main job/task/challenge/fun of writing, it seems to me, is to take a vague and cloudy (ie., nonlinear) notion -- something that exists only in your mental space -- and translate it into linearly-arranged strings of concrete words on a real page. No one has ever asked me for this, but here's the way Michael Blowhard breaks down the act of writing, plus bonus tips. Four steps, as I see it: 1) Collecting data -- whether research, notes, thoughts, or ideas. It's best at this stage to keep things nonlinear. Avoid turning your hunches and notions into anything polished or grammatical. Just note it all down telegraphically. It's important to keep the writing project, however tiny, open-ended even as you begin to give it some definition. 2) Organizing the material sequentially. Imagine how you'd present your material to to a bright friend who's interested in what you have to say. Line your research, ideas and information up in the way your friend would find most helpful and entertaining. 3) Writing your way all the way through. Even now it's best to avoid being too linear. Write a passage at the end of the piece first. Write something from the middle. Do a little work on the second paragraph. Move around inside the piece, and when you get stuck, drop the problem and go to work elsewhere in the piece. The problem will probably solve itself. Painters often work this way -- a... posted by Michael at December 6, 2002 | perma-link | (11) comments

Blogging Bliss
Friedrich -- Do you carry a cafe conversation around in your head? I do. What I mean is that some part of my brain is home to an ongoing bull session.Voices gather to compare notes about all kinds of topics -- occasionally politics and econ, most of the time art and philosophy. (Many detours into sex, of course.) It's Les Deux Magots, open and busy 24/7 in some seedy Montparnasse quartier of my brain, and I'm the grizzled old owner hurrying about with wine and bread, sometimes taking part in the disputes, sometimes watching benevolently out over the excitement ... Where do these voices come from? Given how hard it is to rustle up good in-person art chat once you're out of college, most of them show up from what I've been reading. I go around thinking about what I've read -- in my mind, quarreling/arguing/discussing/comparing-notes with authors of books and articles. It's all very real to me -- smoke, coffee, lots of intellectual ooo-la-la. It's also all very absorbing, fun, and exciting. So much so that when I surface back into everyday life and start talking to The Wife about the discussions that have been buzzing in my mind, she looks at me (fondly, I hope) like I'm insane. I raise this because something interesting has happened to this imaginary scene of mine in the last few months. The people taking part have changed -- there's been some turnover in the clientele. Most used to be magazine writers, artists, critics, academics, newspaper people -- professionals. Lately, many of the voices taking part have belonged to bloggers, and fewer voices have come from the familiar old professional crowd (and most of them have been culled from Arts and Letters Daily, here, a kind of meta-proto-blog). The people I'm talking with in my head as I make my way through my daily rounds are as likely to be bloggers like Glenn Frazier, Alexandra Ceely, Aaron Haspel, Sasha Castel, Scott Chaffin, Peter Briffa, Jason Soon, Alice Bacchini, Chris Bertram, Lynn Sislo and many others as they are to be such pros as (god forbid) Paul Krugman and Susan Sontag. I'm much happier for the change. The conversation is more freewheeling and spirited. There are fresh faces, and lots of new points of view. For every asshole who can't seem to understand that he's addressing another human being, there's a dozen charmers who are funny, loose, wry and civil. Some human element has returned into my life that I hadn't realized was missing. The bloggers have more sides to them than the pros, their talk isn't tainted by careerism, and they by and large seem to share a respect for life as it's actually experienced. I like the makeup of my new clientele. They strike me as a bunch of rough-edged, three-dimensional people rather than a bunch of disembodied, streamlined egos. I wonder if my experience reflects the experience of other bloggers and blog-surfers. If so, I think there may be something important... posted by Michael at December 6, 2002 | perma-link | (4) comments

Free Reads -- Digital Movie Theaters
Friedrich -- P.J. Hufstutter reports in the L.A. Times that the Regal movie theater chain will be outfitting all its California theaters to project movies digitally. They're hoping to complete the job by the end of next year, though they won't be showing features digitally, at least not quite yet. Short films only. Still. People in the business have been waiting for theater chains to commit to digital projection. This is the biggest commercial step that has been taken in that direction yet, and it could be what finally gets the digital-projection ball rolling. I say "finally," even though I wish the industry would hold off for another year or two. Movie buff wants more pixels, please! But technology and money march on... Sample passage: "Whenever film goes away forever, we'll be ready," Marks said. Regal's system "is designed to allow us to unplug any piece of the hardware in the system and plug in new ones when digital cinema standards are established." Hufstutter's story can be read here. Link thanks to CalPundit, here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 6, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Thursday, December 5, 2002


Continuing Ed -- Architecture Critique
Friedrich -- A game. Guess the political orientation of the British architecture critic who wrote the following: We all like old towns and villages with the continuous street facade and its comfortable sense of enclosure. It was not the perversity of architects that made it impossible in new residential areas to have the same quality, but the fact that the environment in Britain is over-regulated by every kind of authority ... As for the opinions of residents: the most-loved and the least-lovely housing I have ever visited in a New Town were at Runcorn. The least-loved was designed by a world-famous architect, Jim Stirling, the most-loved was by the anonymous architectural staff of the Runcorn Development Corporation. Hmmm. OK, what's your guess? A libertarian? A Prince-of-Wales conservative? Wrong. It's a passage from Talking to Architects, a fab book of lectures on towns and buildings by the British anarchist Colin Ward. I'll repeat that: he's an anarchist. Ward, several of whose books I've read, is a brainy guy with a humane and rumpled soul. And isn't it interesting how his observations about conventional architectural processes come so close to those of such people as Jane Jacobs and Leon Krier? Maybe they're all onto something. The book can be bought here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 5, 2002 | perma-link | (2) comments

Art Critics -- What Are They Like?
Friedrich -- The National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University just released the results of a study they did of art critics. My favorite fact: of the 169 writers they looked at, only 3 claim to be politically conservative. The report goes on: In fact, art critics were more likely to vote for the Green Party in the 2000 presidential election than to vote Republican. Progressive political dispositions underlie art critics' positions on several issues in the visual arts today, including government arts funding and freedom of speech. Time to call in the Diversity Police? Asked whether they agree with the statement "Postmodernist theory has a strong influence on the art being made today," 84% of the critics said they somewhat or strongly agree. Asked whether they agree with the statement "Multiculturalism has a strong influence in today's art world," 96% said they somewhat or strongly agree. 61% of the critics agree that "the federal government should make the support of individual artists a policy priority," and 75% "strongly disagree" with the placing of any constraints on publicly funded art. The writers picked favorites from a limited list of living artists. Their top ten faves from this list are, in this order: Jasper Johns Robert Rauschenberg Claes Oldenburg Maya Lin Louise Bourgeois Chuck Close Ed Ruscha Gerhard Richter Cindy Sherman Frank Stella Their least favorite living artists, also drawn from a prepared list: LeRoy Neiman Thomas Kinkade Julian Schnabel Jeff Koons Dale Chihuly Yoko Ono David Salle William Wegman Damien Hirst Tracey Emin The report can be looked at more closely here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 5, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Wednesday, December 4, 2002


Flash New Urbanism
Friedrich -- National Geographic online has created a Flash animation that provides an introduction to some of the principles of the New Urbanism. It's not that good, honestly, unless you're either about 14 years old and expected to turn in a short paper on the subject, or you're a fretful soccer mom. But I appreciated the effort and enjoy Flash animations generally, so what the heck. It's watchable here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 4, 2002 | perma-link | (5) comments

Funky Chickens
Friedrich -- Music has been found have a fast and dramatic impact on the moods of very young chickens, reports Larry O'Hanlon for Discovery News online (readable here). Sample passage: In the study, briefly isolated chicks — who quickly cry out in distress — were exposed to music. Their distress calls dropped and they showed other physical signs that the music had quelled their anxiety, apparently making them feel better. They seemed most soothed by a range of pop music, and calmed less by Mozart's Kronungconzert, said Panksepp. But there's no saying for certain, because chicks can't explain how they feel, he cautioned. Gotta admire that scientific caution. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 4, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

The New Advertising
Friedrich I love paying the occasional little bit of attention to advertising. So what if it's all about selling goods: there's lots of eye and brain food there to enjoy, as well as sometimes to be dazzled by. Self-protectively, let me say that I'm sure there are writers and thinkers out there who look at and analyze ads far better than I do. And I'm just as certain that I'm years behind on noticing what I'm noticing. Ad people, and the people who write and think about them, are nothing if not quick and clever. Still and all, I can't resist. Exhibit 1: Old vs. New. A fairly traditional ad for Newport cigarettes, and a new-style ad for ... well, for what, exactly? Rope? Wrapping material? The Newport ad has a little designed-on-the-computer jazziness to it: the abruptness in the way the elements are juxtaposed, the way the photo falls so quickly into a space of its own, the brightness and flatness of the green, the way the cigarette boxes really pop, and then the copy really-really pops on top of that. But it's a pretty traditional ad, basically: product, people enjoying it, ad copy, product name. All of it arranged in swooping diagonals that converge on the product itself. The other ad (for Gaultier sunglasses, as it turns out) is another thing entirely -- and entirely, it seems to me, of our new Quark 'n' Photoshop age. For one thing, what's being sold? Maybe the post-MTV generation gets these things instantly, but it took this geezer a couple of seconds even to figure out that what he was looking at was an ad. The Gaultier label being sewn into the fabric is a clever and effective way of achieving so-recessive-it-calls-attention-to-itself-ness. The ad also displays what I've come to think of as a "scanner aesthetic" -- the way what's on the page seems to be pressing up against a lens, or a sheet of glass. And that's it for the ad: a bunch of things brought together in a seemingly casual way on top of a scanner, with an i.d. carelessly dropped into the background of the mix. It's both a cool gesture and pure evidence of coolness, like a head of hair that's rumpled just so. Exhibit 2: Coolness sponsorship. For a geezer, both these ads rely partly on the "huh?" or "what the hell?" factor. What are they advertising? The left-hand ad is for Perrier; as for the right-hand ad, beats me. A clothing line? What I notice about both of them, and what moves me to place them side by side, is a conceptual similarity. Both are 99% made up of a very cool photo. A great big one, in both cases -- and, by traditional standards, a rather odd one too. Not only is the question "what's being advertised?" an issue; the question "what the hell's this a picture of exactly? and why are we being shown it?" is being asked, at least by my arthritic... posted by Michael at December 4, 2002 | perma-link | (4) comments

Free Reads -- Salmon on Bond
Friedrich -- One of the deftest and funniest (in a low-key way) things I've ever read on the Bond movies is Felix Salmon's posting on Die Another Day, readable here. Sample passage: Brosnan, for his part, is at this point a master of the Less Is More school of acting. When he finds a Chinese secret agent in his hotel room, he merely hints at what he would do if he could be bothered to act: he knows that what we're doing is remembering Connery do the same thing, so he more or less fades into the background and lets our nostalgia take over. Anthony Lane, look out. Felix is also remarkably good on the new Mike Leigh film, but since I dislike most of Leigh's movies, plan never to watch another one, and wish the whole Mike Leigh thing would just go away, I'm going to be sulky and not provide a link. Take that, Mike Leigh. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 4, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Economics and Art Appreciation Redux
Michael— In your posting, “Economics and Art Appreciation,” you ask if my study of economics has had an impact on my appreciation of art. The impact, I would say, has been more on my view of intellectual “fashions.” When I was a junior at our Lousy Ivy College, I took an introductory economics class from a rather famous professor. In the middle of one of his lectures, the professor—a dedicated Keynesian, as were virtually all the academic economists of the mid-1970s—mentioned Milton Friedman’s book: “A Monetary History of the United States” (co-authored with Anna J. Schwartz). The prof pointed out that Friedman’s data suggested that the unusual severity of the Great Depression was linked to the tremendous contraction of the money supply from 1929 to 1933. I sat there thinking: Uh, wait a minute, isn’t the money supply the responsibility of the Federal Reserve? Meanwhile, the prof went on to note that when economic factor data was plugged into Friedman’s monetarist equations, they provided estimates of GNP that were more accurate than those of the then-most-sophisticated Keynesian model—the one the Fed itself used. I must say I sat up straight at that. You mean, I thought hesitantly, that the government—specifically, the Federal Reserve system—screwed up big time back in the Thirties? And even now they aren’t using the best econometric model? And Friedman’s book was published over a decade ago, in 1963? Hey, wait a minute, I’m counting on these guys to keep the economy on an even keel! Well, let’s just say that as the decade of the 1970s continued, I wasn’t provided a whole lot of reassurance that the powers-that-be had the whole economic situation under perfect control. To be fair, a stint of working on an advertising account for one of the Big Three automakers just as quickly deflated any notions that I had of great—and infallible—minds guiding the fortunes of Big Business. But the advantage of starting my adult life in the 1970s was that I got “wised up” regarding the likelihood of authority figures making my life a paradise—i.e., don’t count on it. However, as I went on to start my own business and began hiring employees in the 1980s, I noticed that most people I knew were still quite content with the notion of authority figures—whether in either the public or private sectors—making decisions for them. And while they might grumble about the President’s economic performance, they all, to a person, worshipped the Federal Reserve and its chairman. Every so often I would ask them about the role of the Federal Reserve in the Great Depression, just to tweak them about their “Fed” idolatry. I never got anything but blank looks. Nobody—and they were all intelligent, college educated people—had ever heard of the “Great Contraction” of the money supply in the Depression, or even the failure of the Federal Reserve to act as a lender of last resort to the 5,000 banks that collapsed in the first few years of that lovely era. It... posted by Friedrich at December 4, 2002 | perma-link | (2) comments

Tuesday, December 3, 2002


Free Viewings -- Elka Krajewska
Friedrich -- A couple of years ago, when I first heard that it had become possible to make movies on a home computer, I was stunned and excited. Imagine! Then I learned what was meant by "movies" -- tiny, short things with awful visual qualities. My excitement waned. Movies? Those aren't movies. It's possible today to make much better-looking computer-video than it was a few years ago. But I've changed too. These days, I'm thinking: Why shouldn't a movie be a short, tiny thingee? Or, even if it's better to reserve the word "movie" for long-form celluloid narratives, what's wrong with making and enjoying tiny, short computer-video thingees? The form (if I can use the word form here) suits home computers, the current size of hard drives, the current speed of the Internet, as well as the contemporary (ie., chopped-up) schedule. And, given how expensive narrative movies have become, the tiny computer-video thingee might be a sensible medium for people interested in personal expression to take advantage of. Hey, these things could be audiovisual poetry for the computer age! Thank heavens for my theory that a few people seem to be approaching the medium in that spirit. Here's one whose work I enjoy: Elka Krajewska, who evidently mixes together photos, scanned images, and footage from a webcam. She seems to be a born miniaturist. Most of her thingees are less than a minute long, and most of them run in frames that are considerably smaller than a 3x5 card. But I find them to be rich little aesthetic experiences -- miniature landscapes of the mind. What are those rocks that you crack open, and then inside you find that they're full of crystals? Well, that's what Krajewska's little thingees are like. You can watch them here. Very interested to learn how you react to her work. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 3, 2002 | perma-link | (3) comments

1000 Words -- John La Farge
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- Many thanks for the informative (and beautifully laid-out) excursions into art history. Like you, I've come to understand what a straitjacket the usual academic art-history view of art is -- the one that teaches us that it all leads to the Impressionists, the Cubists, through Abstract Expressionism and to the postmodernism of the present day. It's certainly one take on the history of art, and it can be a helpful one. As the only view of art history, though, it can be maddeningly confining. John La Farge, for instance. How bizarre that many art fans don't know who John La Farge was. You've told me that you don't; the Wife tells me she doesn't. Yet he was one of the stars of one of the biggest, brawniest eras in all of American art. (The images in this posting are mostly pop-ups, so be sure to click on them.) Self-portrait; Studio nude The era was the one generally known as the American Renaissance -- the period from the Civil War to the First World War. Robber baron money; the Newport mansions of Richard Morris Hunt; the churches and houses of Stanford White; the sculpture of Augustus Saint-Gaudens; the time when American artists first learned about Impressionism and Japanese art. It was during these years that America first got interested in its own history, and its artists and architects deliberately set out to create an American public art -- many of our triumphal arches, war memorials, and public sculptures were created during this period. The Beaux-Arts buildings -- the city halls, mansions and courthouses -- that still make so many city neighborhoods so city-like were built during this period. It's one of the most dynamic, exciting, and productive eras in the history of American art, yet one that many arts fans don't know much about. Why? I suspect it's because we've learned to see this work as pompous, sentimental, and imperialistic. (And who taught us to see it that way? Conventional academic art history.) Yet much of the work is still treasured; imagine our cities without these buildings, monuments, churches, and sculptures. It's fascinating to learn that architects and artists -- muralists, painters, mosaicists, sculptors -- collaborated frequently during this era, often on huge projects, and did so in a spirit of enthusiasm and cooperation. I can't, in fact, think of another era when America's art and architecture worlds were so healthy. John La Farge (1835-1910) was one of the era's giants. Of French descent, he grew up in New York City, studied in Paris, trained in the law, then decided to become an artist; he married, moved to Newport, and had nine kids. During his career, he worked on many scales, and in a wide range of media. Many of his buddies were the era's other greats: he collaborated with Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White, traveled to Japan with Henry Adams, visited Tahiti, was buddies with Henry and William James, and was known as a terrific... posted by Michael at December 3, 2002 | perma-link | (4) comments

TV Alert
Friedrich -- Forgive my tardiness in delivering this guide to some of this week's worthwhile TV viewing. I'm still groggy from Thanksgiving. Tuesday at 2:45 pm, Cinemax: Moulin Rouge. The end of civilization as we know it -- Nicole Kidman and Ewan MacGregor in a Paris-set, postcamp musical so hyperactive it’s like an animated picture. Why watch? Because movies are likely to be evolving in this direction, and it doesn’t hurt to get ready for the horrors to come. Tuesday at 8 pm, E!: The E! True Hollywood Story: Pia Zadora. The tiny blonde Polish-American singer-actress with the tycoon hubby became a national joke back in the late '70s. This documentary surprises in two ways: by winning sympathy for Pia, and by revealing her to be a thoughtful, talented woman. Tuesday at 11 pm, also Wednesday at 6 am, IFC: Metroland. I don’t remember much about this English movie, taken from a Graham Swift novel -- except that it’s one of the rare chances Americans have had to watch an elegantly idiosyncratic French charmer, Elsa Zylberstein. Wednesday at 2 pm, IFC: Night of the Living Dead. Crummy black and white zombie horror movie, the source of many of the last few decades’ most common horror tropes. Wednesday evening, TCM: a bunch of Orson Welles movies. At 8 pm: Touch of Evil. At 10 pm: The Stranger. At midnight: Citizen Kane. At 2:15 am (Thursday morning): The Magnificent Ambersons. At 4 a.m. (Thursday morning): The Trial. All of them worth seeing, of course. My tip? Don’t miss Ambersons, from a good Booth Tarkington novel: the rare Welles film that has something like real emotion in it. Thursday at 8 am at 2:45 pm, IFC: Solaris. The Soviet version of Stanislaw Lem’s sci-fi novel, not the new Steven Soderburgh/George Clooney version. Andrei Tarkovsky, who directed, was a modern master -- but of the slow-moving, intensely-spiritual kind. Imagine “2001” as directed by Ingmar Bergman... Thursday at 3:15, Cinemax: 2 Days in the Valley. Offbeat, violent, comic noir starring the enjoyably self-pleased James Spader, cherished by buffs as the movie that introduced -- and how! -- the lanky blonde bad-girl Charlize Theron. Thursday at 8 pm, TCM: Forever Ealing, a documentary about the British film studio, known for its eccentric comedies. Followed at 9 pm by one of the best of them, Kind Hearts and Coronets, perhaps the wittiest black comedy ever made. Friday at 7 pm, TCM: The Men Who Made the Movies -- Sam Fuller. A cigar-chomping, bang-it-out, low-budget tabloid specialist, Fuller is a hero to many hipsters and critics. I’ve never enjoyed his movies much, but I’ll watch this documentary because Fuller himself was a great character. Saturday morning at 3:50 am, Cinemax: Mandingo. Masters, slaves, and hanky-panky on a Southern plantation. Coarse, vulgar, florid, exploitative -- and if that isn’t enough, featuring a strong attraction between Ken Norton (taking a break from his boxing career) and ‘70s sex icon Susan (“Straw Dogs”) George. Saturday at noon, TCM: The Naked Spur.... posted by Michael at December 3, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Monday, December 2, 2002


Digital Dreams
Michael— You’ve touched on the topic of digital photography, both still and movie version, commenting on the perceptual differences between pixels and film. I noticed a story in the L.A. Times (which you can read here) dealing with what appears to be another step along this path: Now, [Robert] Zemeckis is threatening to go further still [than in his films “Roger Rabbit” or “Forrest Gump”], changing the very core of the moviemaking process in a little-known project called “The Polar Express.” The plan this time is to create a live-action movie without filming any true “live” action. All of the scenes in “The Polar Express” will be shot with digital cameras in front of a blank screen, with sets to be filled in later by computers. The actors will be covered in motion-capture sensors so that each move of an arm, each flicker of an eyelid and each wrinkle of a lip will be stored on a computer and used as guide for the digital animators who will create the actual movie footage…Unlike digitally animated movies such as “Final Fantasy” and “Shrek,” which relied heavily on motion-capture technology to create fictitious characters, the team behind “Polar Express” is striving to create images that actually look like the well-known actors who will “star” in the film. I presume that the effort to animate real actors (who could far more easily and cheaply step in front of a movie camera) is the result of a desire to integrate recognizable actors into the graphic style of “Polar Express” author and illustrator, Chris Van Allsburg. C. Van Allsburg, Jumanji (details) I have no idea how successful this effort will be—the story mentions that some of the high tech tools needed to pull this off are still under development with filming less than three months away—but I’ve decided to take a wait and see attitude here. This requires some self-control on my part. My first reaction was a rather dyspeptic voice in my head: All this digital special effects stuff is just a way for studios to keep raising the ante as their business position is being undercut by the spread of cheap digital technology. The competitive advantage Hollywood studios bring to making movies is financial—they can afford a $200 million budget, unlike most folks—and they want to keep cineplex audiences used to complex effects like this in order to wall out the more sparsely financed competition. But my second thought was a memory of how intrigued I was by the backgrounds in “Snow White” which, unlike most other animated films I’ve seen, were done in a watercolor style that emphasized their artificiality, their incorporeality, their—for want of a better word—watercoloriness. Think what that film might have been like (as a visual experience, anyway) if the same technique could have been applied to the figures as well. And then I remembered a conversation I’d had talking about aircraft simulators, of all things, with a colleague who was also an art buff. He’d started riffing on... posted by Friedrich at December 2, 2002 | perma-link | (2) comments

Rewriting (Art) History
Michael As you know, I’m a bit critical of the standard-issue histories of Modern Art that we were force-fed back in the 1970s. Just to see if they were still peddling the same old stories, I picked up, essentially at random, “Modern Art 1851-1929” by Richard R. Brettell, which is part of the Oxford History of Art series. I must say, I was pleasantly impressed: the art historical community, if accurately represented by Dr. Brettell (a professor at the University of Texas), has managed to overthrow a few idols since I checked in last. The first, and most immediately shocking change I noted was the shift away from a rigidly Franco-centric view of Modern Art. While there are still plenty of the French (and German and Spanish) artists you would expect to find in the book, just thumbing through the illustrations lets you see work by artists from Britain, Poland, Sweden, Romania, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Finland and Canada. I mean, when’s the last time you saw a brief history of modern art that even mentioned Canada? And he admits that his account is probably still too oriented toward Western Europe: The recent opening-up of Russia and central Europe has coincided with a massive attempt to redescribe modernism in western Europe, the Americas, and Australia. This has resulted in a data-glut of proportions for which all of us are unprepared. Few historians of modern art, trained in the West during the last generation, even know the names of the major figures in eastern European or Latin American modernism, in either the nineteenth or the twentieth century. And the national histories of art kept so faithfully by historians and museum curators in Russia and eastern Europe have not been linked to the truly international and cosmopolitan art history to which they belong. The second change was the shift away from the parade of “-isms” (ah, you know: “Realism begat Impressionism which begat Post-Impressionism which begat Synthetism which begat the Nabis…etc., etc.”) We must still be in a transitional period regarding the parade of “-isms” because Prof. Brettell was forced to traverse them at a quick march at the start of the book; you gotta congratulate him, though, he actually does a reasonable job on 18 separate “-isms” in a mere 31 pages. Unmediated Cezanne vs. Image/Modernist Picabia However, he then moves on to his preferred two-part classification: artists who dreamed up their own images—in many cases before the motif—which he calls “unmediated modernism,” and artists who primarily juggled existing images, which he calls “image/modernism.” (No, I have no idea why he uses the slash between image and modernism.) This may seem like a matter of “you say tomato, I say tomahto” but he uses these categories rather slyly to dethrone the myth that art was on a straight runway from Impressionism to Cubism, and then achieved liftoff into the Empyrean regions of Abstraction. According to the good professor, analytic Cubism is an “unmediated modernist” phenomenon… …in looking at analytic Cubist paintings and in... posted by Friedrich at December 2, 2002 | perma-link | (1) comments

Free Reads -- Bachini on Modernist Architecture
Friedrich -- Alice Bachini, whose blog is A Libertarian Parent in the Countryside, here, has a gaily-mocking tone that often gives me the giggles, and a searching and open mind that often gets my sorry noggin thinking. The other day she had some fun with a BBC documentary about modernist architecture. Here, she's semi-pretending to speak in the voice of the show's narrator: This tower-block, in (a now-posh part of) London, for example. Whateverhisnamewas imagined housewives hanging their washing on the (rat-infested, graffiti-covered) stairwells, and chatting over cups of sugar about the weather! It was a future of friendliness, niceness, big views of the sky, and above all, Clean Lines. This entirely-artificially-constructed-town in the middle of nowhere, Scotland, was imagined in the shape of a kind of giant, futuristic spider, by its architect Mr Doodah. Cleverly, and with a view to entire forced reconstruction of society, right down to the tiniest details of people's lives, according to his own unique magical inspiration, he did things that were new, unheard of, and completely and utterly silly. Does anything more ever need to be said about modernist architecture? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 2, 2002 | perma-link | (0) comments

Economics and Art Appreciation
Friedrich -- This is a culture blog (generally, anyway), so it might seem strange for me to write about economics, and God knows I’m barely competent to talk on the subject at all. But a few years ago something funny happened: I got econ. It suddenly made sense: hey, it’s a way of seeing the world! But the really funny thing is that getting econ has enhanced my enjoyment and appreciation of the arts. To back up for a second: finally learning how to see and interpret behavior in the light of such forces as “limited resources” and “incentives” has been a tremendous help. (Worth, it occurs to me, many years of therapy.) The world seemed to open up; it seems much less mystifying these days than it once did. So that’s what people are up to! So that’s why so much behavior takes on the forms it does! This is all very basic, I’m sure, and I’m happy to be laughed at for my former naivete. But back in college I tried econ and never got it, despite OK grades in Econ 101 and 102. I wonder why. Because of the JFK-era Keynesianism that was still in vogue in the mid-’70s at our Lousy Ivy College? It seemed to make no sense. Or was it simply because I don’t have a math brain, and the damn textbooks were full of equations and charts? Not a challenge for engineering-brain you, but anything resembling a math symbol puts English-major me straight to sleep. What enabled me to get econ in recent years was finding a handful of resources that present the subject in plain English. No math, no charts -- just crystal-clear explanations and examples. (Plain, clear English: one of my favorite things.) Even better, especially at the outset, was discovering works that explained not econ itself so much as the history of economic thought. Quick explanations and examples; personalities; a sense of the field growing and evolving over time .... How did getting economics help me enjoy the arts even more than I generally tend to? It’s had a variety of effects. It’s helped me put the arts in context. Living an arts life can be like getting lost in a dream -- this is what Schnabel’s movie “Basquiat” is so good at suggesting. That kind of dreamlife has its erotic upside, but it can also feel like going insane. What getting econ did for me was set the dreamlife in perspective. The arts are many things, of course, but one of them is “a worldly activity like any other” -- and getting econ has helped me see that side of them for what it is. Artsies, of course, have a notoriously strong aversion to thinking sensibly about economics. I find when I talk to arts people that the subject of econ is so misunderstood it’s almost comic. Isn't it all about predicting stock prices? And look how bad they are at that! And what’s this awful “self-interest” that’s always... posted by Michael at December 2, 2002 | perma-link | (9) comments