Monday, March 31, 2003


Lucian Freud on Tape
Michael: After months of shilly-shallying, I finally took a few hours, drove downtown to Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, plunked down my eight bucks and saw the Lucian Freud retrospective. As an experiment, I took along a tape recorder and mumbled notes into it. Since I clearly ended up looking even more eccentric than I normally do at an art exhibit, I’ve decided that I’m entitled to skip trying to write up something and just share some of my incredibly insightful on-the-spot comments: *** Freud’s early work is intriguing, off-beat, modestly original etc., etc., but it doesn’t look like highly saleable art. I wonder how he paid the bills during, say, the first ten years of his career? Family money? Rich girlfriends? L. Freud, Woman with a Daffodil, 1945; L. Freud, Girl by the Sea, 1956 *** Okay, okay, I’ve got to confess: I do wonder how good the likenesses in Freud’s portraits really are. L. Freud, Head of the Big Man, 1975 *** The reclining figures seem to have been an attempt to extend his treatment of flesh into space, as opposed to his early portraits, which are just three-dimensionally modeled heads against a blank ground. L. Freud, John Deakin, 1963-4; L. Freud, Naked Girl Asleep, 1968 Idea for a piece: From the Famous Painter’s School, Lucian Freud shows you how to paint a reclining nude! *** The funny thing is, along with his distortions, he achieves some marvelous anatomical drawing and modeling. L. Freud, Guy and Speck, 1980-1 *** I understood Lucian is a rather slow worker. I’m fascinated that he can get the damn dog to lie still for so long. L. Freud, Double Portrait, 1985-6 (Detail) *** “Leigh Bowery Seated,” 1990, makes you wonder if Freud was looking at Jusepe de Ribera. The painting must be 8 feet, maybe 10 feet high. The figure is well over life size. He’s sitting, looking directly up at you, which gives the sense that you’re interrogating him. Ribera’s paintings often show saints being worked over by a gang of highly amused thugs, and convey the insinuation that you—the viewer—are among the rotten scum enjoying the spectacle. Freud’s painting has a little of this complicit cruelty. *** Freud has, in his own way, resuscitated the heroic nude. *** His stuff of the last ten years or so feels like history painting with no “overt” history. I guess we supply the history. He’s giving us hints, of course. There’s an extremely long-haired guy in one picture who looks like Jesus being mocked, all he needs is a crown of thorns. (Umm, let’s see, the painting is called “Freddy Standing.”) L. Freud, Freddy Standing, 2001; M. Caravaggio, Ecce Homo The painting “And the Bridegroom” could just as easily be titled “Samson and Delilah.” L. Freud, And the Bridegroom, 1993 (Detail); A. Van Dyck, Samson and Delilah, 1630-2 “Sunny Morning, Eight Legs” could be “St. Paul on the Road to Damascus Holding a Dog” (although the two legs sticking out from under... posted by Friedrich at March 31, 2003 | perma-link | (10) comments

Friday, March 28, 2003


Schiele, Fashion...Feminism?
Michael: A few weeks ago I got a picture from Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue via email from a friend. I was reminded of an Egon Schiele drawing I’ve had stashed on my hard drive for a while. I pulled it up and was struck by the similarities between two images which were created almost a century apart. E. Schiele, Female Nude, 1910; E. Badulescu, Photo of Anna Beatriz Barros, 2002 Since that time, I’ve spent a few hours reading about Schiele and wondering about the following questions: Schiele’s brief career as an artist (and his equally brief life) seem to have revolved around issues of sexuality. One discussion, which you can read here, touches on the following subjects: incest, narcissism, homosexuality, masturbation, androgyny, pedophilia and veneral disease. The biographies of Schiele explain this artistic focus on sexuality as a reaction to late Victorian sexual immorality and dishonesty. However, this type of sexual “immorality”—by which writers seem to be alluding to the double standard of married men having extramarital sex with prostitutes or lower-class women—hardly seems to have been a phenomena unique to the early 20th century. (The 18th century comes to mind as another era in which the double standard was triumphant and yet sexual anguish was not particularly visible). What would seem to set Schiele's era far apart from its many predecessor eras, for me anyway, was the presence of feminism as a social trend. Was there a connection between the sudden interest in “anguished” adolescent sexuality in the early 1900s and feminism? Was Schiele struggling to grow up in a world in which masculinity had suddenly been called into question? What is the connection between Schiele’s focus on adolescent (and pre-adolescent) bodies and fashion’s (currently) similar focus? The slender adolescent body is both sexualized (body hair, breasts) and androgenous (models of both sexes are generally selected with similar builds—long limbs, small hips). Does image making around adolescent sexuality suggest an essentially auto-erotic view of sex? Ads for Calvin Klein As much as I regret it, I can’t provide anything like definitive answers to these questions. Have you got any answers? How about our readers? Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at March 28, 2003 | perma-link | (14) comments

Artchat Survival Guide 3 -- The Word "Art"
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- In middle age I find that I have much less interest in aesthetic theory than I once did, and much more interest in general rules of thumb -- survival guides, tips that help get me into the ball park. Just about anything that's based in practical experience, in fact. The word "art," unsurprisingly, is one of those words I've had to learn to be very careful around. "Is it art?" "But it's not really art?" "Who are you to say it's art?" Etc., etc. I was thinking about how I think of the word these days as opposed to how I thought of the word back in our days at our Lousy Ivy College. And I realized that, without having given it much systematic thought, I've evolved some strategies for dealing with the word -- ways of dodging pointless arguments as well as making what for me is good use of the word. I scratched my chin, I made a few notes, and came up with this: my rough guide to the word "art." I find it useful to think of the word as having three main meanings. 1) Small-a "art." It's a technical term, nothing more than a description of a certain class of activity.This is very evo-bio: art is anything above and beyond pure functionality. (I'm deliberately ignoring here any and all muddyings of form and function. It doesn't make serious sense to do so, but, hey, I'm trying to draw a useful distinction here...) In this meaning, "art" has nothing to do with indicating quality and everything to do with the kind of activity it describes. Think of the word "sport" for a comparison. It describes a certain kind of activity without telling you how good any example of such an activity is. Playing marbles or recreational waterskiing are examples of "sport" every bit as much as an NBA playoff game is. The same with this use of the word "art." Every society sings, dances, decorates, and tells stories. And it's all small-a art. This jug isn't just a container for water. It's blue, it's shaped like a duck, and it has feather patterns on it -- that's the art. People decorate themselves, they stitch and dye cloth, they put colored mud on their animal-skin huts. They get dressed up nice for rituals where they dance, make noise, and eat specially-prepared food -- it's all art. All societies (except those entirely caught up in a battle for survival) have and make art in this sense. Fun consequence: look around you. Art is everywhere! Your wife's earrings are small-a art. Your shoes are small-a art. The design of that brochure is art. If you think they aren't, ask yourself why the Met Museum is full of cups, saucers, fabrics, rugs, knives, etc. Why do we accept that a fork from Malawi is art, but think that the fork in our own kitchen drawer isn't? 2) Big-A "Art." As technical a term as... posted by Michael at March 28, 2003 | perma-link | (14) comments

Thursday, March 27, 2003


Consumer Reports, TQM and Educational Theology Redux
Michael: In my earlier post on Consumer Reports, TQM and Educational Theology I made some rather scattershot observations regarding educational paradigms. Scattershot or not, they stirred up some comments, and looking at the comments I realized that each addressed an issue that would help to clarify what I was originally driving at. So here’s my clarification: My original piece was aimed at what I consider a lack of seriousness on the part of the education establishment. Education plays a very significant role in either allowing or disallowing people in our society access to a variety of opportunities. Employers and all sorts of other authority figures look at how much and what type of education a person has received as a proxy for what kind of training, skills and basic aptitude a person possesses. As a result of the education establishment’s sloppy approach to teaching and evaluation, however, the amount and type of a person’s education is a poor predictive indicator. Why? Because when you “measure” something for purposes of comparison, you need certain prerequisites. If you want to compare “lengths” of two objects that aren’t side by side, you need (1) an agreement on what is to be measured (longest dimension? shortest dimension? circumference?) and (2) rulers marked off in identical units. However, a standard educational course, whether in junior high school or in graduate school, lacks both of these pre-requisites. There is no standard definition of what is being measured, and it’s not clear what units are being used to do the measuring. That is to say, each teacher or professor gets to define what gets taught and what constitutes the measure of success. As a practical result, getting a “C” in one course in differential equations may indicate vastly more or vastly less mastery of differential equations than getting a “C” in another. The downsides of our current system are quite visible. People graduate from high school without being able to read and write. Before the advent of spell- and grammar-checkers, I used to routinely get resumes from college graduates full of misspelled words and ungrammatical language. Some of my employees have been intelligent, hardworking and organized but absolutely unable to write even a simple business letter. Ultimately, the educational establishment is not solely to blame for this state of affairs. The larger fault lies with society (or, to be more precise, government) for not clarifying the purposes of education far more precisely, and then taking responsibility for making sure that these purposes are met. If we decide that all citizens need to be able to read, write, spell and understand a specific vocabulary of, say, 1000 words, do basic arithmetic and read street signs, then we need to put people through a training program to provide training in these skills and keep them at it until they really possess this combination of skills and knowledge. Some people may master these skills and obtain this knowledge in a few years; others may take decades. Some advanced skills, such... posted by Friedrich at March 27, 2003 | perma-link | (3) comments

Wednesday, March 26, 2003


Joke
Friedrich -- A friend who works in advertising passes along a joke some German clients told him: "You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the US of arrogance and Germany doesn't want to go to war." Best, Michael... posted by Michael at March 26, 2003 | perma-link | (3) comments

Web Surfing
Friedrich -- Chris Bertram (here) recommends some books on political philosophy. Eddie Thomas (here) and Aaron Haspel (here) analyze the lyrics of a song by the Derailers, a honky-tonk band. Jim Miller (here) argues that a big majority of Iraqis want Saddam gone. Polly Frost (here) writes about the upside and the downside of  William Gibson's new novel "Pattern Recognition." Christopher Caldwell claims here that the only way to explain Jacques Chirac's refusal to join the anti-Saddam coalition  is that he's pandering to, er, catering to his own country's poor and disaffected Muslims. Alexandra Ceely (here, though you have to scroll down about six postings) has an art-history lesson about Caravaggio's Judith and Holofernes. Jim Ryan (here)  wonders whether to reduce his blogging schedule or to quit blogging completely, while Andrea Harris (here) spells out, in no uncertain terms, what the rules for taking part in the "comments" section of her blog now are. A few years back, I stumbled across Timothy Taylor's audiotaped lecture series "Legacies of Great Economists" and found it a great help. It's beginning econ for those who fall asleep at the sight of an equation or a graph -- economics as seen through the lives and works of Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Schumpeter, etc. Taylor explains it all in straightforward English and his enthusiasm never flags. I notice that the Teaching Company is currently offering the package for sale here at the really amazing price of $15.95. A new find: I stumbled across Charlie B's blog Here Inside (here) about a week ago and took to it instantly. It's everything a gayblog should be and more -- witty, cheerfully perverse, moving. Charlie rhapsodizes about classical music, gardening, and cute soccer players; reviews movies and books; makes observations about this and that; relishes what turns him on; and doesn't shy from the earnest and sincere when the moment calls for it. He also turns a heckuva blog posting -- he's one of the slyest and most stylish writers in the blogoverse. And here's another interactive drawing/animation thingee. Impossible to describe, a lot of fun to play with, completely disruptive of all previous concepts of "drawing." Best, Michael... posted by Michael at March 26, 2003 | perma-link | (2) comments

Book Review -- "The Year 1000"
Friedrich -- In my better-late-than-never campaign to learn a bit about British history, I just finished an excellent and entertaining book, Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger's The Year 1000, buyable here and rentable on audio here. It's inventive and vivid popular history -- a horizontal slice through time, a look at  what life was like at the turn of the first millennium, an evocative  bit of this and an incisive bit of that. The reader learns about late Anglo-Saxon medicine (such as it was); the way Christianity was mopping up after its conquest of paganism (the authors compare the mania for Christianity to today's lust for inclusion in the European Economic Union); about food, drink, farming, coinage, and ways of doing battle. The authors have a lot of flair for the telling detail and the comparison that drives a point home. Opposing armies at this time, for instance, didn't wear distinctive outfits, so battle was like "a rugby scrum conducted without benefit of different-colored uniforms." They compare the politics of the time to to Chicago in the 1930s. I'd certainly never really registered that monks were bossed by abbesses -- ie., women -- before. Fans of the topic of global-warming (pro or con) will be interested to learn that the first millennium was a time when average temperatures were several degrees above what they are today, and that this wasn't a terrible thing for British agriculture. The authors are also good on the topic of slavery,  a phenomenon that interests the crank in me because of my annoyance with the reverent (and misguided) way so many people treat American slavery as though it was unique in the world.  (In fact, the word "slave" comes from "Slav"; the Slavic lands for centuries supplied easy pickings for slave-traders.) They don't shy from other gruesome daily realities either. Flies were everywhere and people were riddled with tapeworm and fleas, though teeth and jaws weren't in bad shape; honey, the only sweetener available, was a luxury. Bathing? Perhaps a few times a year. You're left on your own to imagine the dandruff, lumps, crud, pimples, bumps, scaley patches, and stink that must have been routine. I marvel, not for the first time, that such unappetizing creatures managed to procreate. All very enjoyable and informative. And, since I'm an arty-farty guy who tends to respond to almost everything in primarily literary and artistic ways, I'm also struck by the writing, and by the way the book is put together. Brit writers often have a flair for intelligent, informative history; keeping things fast, informal-seeming, and amusing seems to be a point of pride, and god bless 'em for it. "The Year 1000" is erudite yet, sentence by sentence, is presented in a tone of casual conversation; reading the book is like listening to friends talk wittily about a fascinating recent vacation. (Some excerpts from the book can be read here.) As a piece of book-making (ie., as idea and structure),  it's also impressive -- prismatic, searching,... posted by Michael at March 26, 2003 | perma-link | (5) comments

Forms of Self-Expression I Will Never, Ever Make Use Of
Friedrich -- Yikes. And double-yikes. Best, Michael DO NOT OPEN AT WORK UPDATE: Yahmdallah rightly points out that, hey, many blogsurfers do their surfing at work, if you know what I mean. So, everyone, before you click on the above links, consider yourself warned. 2Blowhards will not be held responsible for fainting co-workers, let alone wrathful bosses.... posted by Michael at March 26, 2003 | perma-link | (10) comments

Free Reads -- Saddam's Painter
Friedrich -- Those giant images of Saddam? The heroic, neo-Stalinist ones that hang apparently everywhere in Iraq? They had to have been made by someone, right? But who? The Financial Times' Roula Khalaf had the wit to track down Salam Abed, a painter whose work has contributed much to the Saddam myth. The piece can be read here. Best Michael... posted by Michael at March 26, 2003 | perma-link | (1) comments

Guest Posting -- Yahmdallah
Friedrich -- I recently swapped some emails with our favorite commenter, the guy who goes by the online handle Yahmdallah, and wound up asking if I could use a few passages from his notes in a posting here on the blog. They were memories of life in the Minneapolis art scene and reflections about staying involved in the arts once equipped with job and family -- too interesting not to pass along to the rest of our readers. After an "aw shucks" or two, he agreed, so I'm pleased to pass these Yahmdallah observations along: After a romance squashed my heart flat, a buddy in Minneapolis told me to come crash with him till I picked myself up. He was an artist deeply enmeshed in the art and music scene of the "Miniapple" (their cute little moniker for themselves). So, by default, I ended up in the scene, too. This is back when Husker Du, the Replacements, Soul Asylum, and Prince were all getting started or were firmly established. Minneapolis was THE music scene in America a few years before it moved to Seattle. I mostly helped with a lot of gallery installations. Attended a lot of openings and house parties where some of the bands listed above played along with the ones who never made it. We also lived next door to a design genius who literally won every design contest he entered. So just by association to him we met some superstars. The Minneapolis art scene was actually very un-P.C. and vibrant. Strand a bunch of Swedes, Norwegians, and Germans in the middle of a winter wasteland, close the liquor stores at 8 P.M. and Sundays, and you get some pretty interesting stuff. In my opinion, the only places in America where the galleries and the openings rival Minneapolis are New York/Boston and San Francisco. The only odd-ball thing about the Miniapple art scene was a quirk that drove us to create a game we called "find the fish." Most of the artists who came down from the iron range and all the little Garrison Keillor ("Prairie Home Companion") towns around the 10,000 lakes had Christian, particularly Lutheran, backgrounds, so every show by a new artist would somehow have a fish in it somewhere. Sometimes it was in honor of the faith, but often it was, of course, for degradation and mocking. Still, it was something to do if the box wine was gone, and if you'd already completely checked out all the goths, punks, and weird art chicks' costumes. (Why do so many art chicks look exactly like what Picasso painted? -- that weird disjointed countenance and that face with those freaky eyes?) My participation in the art scene these days is almost entirely via the web and the odd movie about an artist's life. The major city I live near now has an art scene that's truly abysmal. Many little towns in Michigan's wine country have better galleries and showings. I think James Lileks is correct... posted by Michael at March 26, 2003 | perma-link | (0) comments

Tuesday, March 25, 2003


Sisterhood is Forever
Michael: In researching some aspects of my postings on Impressionism, I have entered new territory (for me, anyway): women’s studies. I went looking for a history of feminism in the 19th century. At least as far as the “Women’s Studies” shelves at my local Barnes and Noble went, I noticed that there weren’t a whole lot of studies present, at least not in my sense of the word. I was looking forward to thick analyses of the demographics, education, employment, reproductive activities, political positions, etc., etc., of women during the 1840s, the 1850s, etc. In short, ahem, facts. Fat chance, buster. At least as far as the titles on these shelves went, what I found were a series of book-length polemics—e.g., “Sisterhood is Forever.” Forever, huh? I pondered, I wonder how they know that? However, I’m a Blowhard and I take my responsibilities as an informed windbag seriously, so I didn’t abandon ship. I finally found one volume that seemed like it might do the trick: “A History of Women, Volume IV, Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War.” It was edited by Georges Duby, (a member of the Academie Francaise), Michelle Perrot (Professor of Contemporary History, University of Paris) and Genevieve Fraisse (Research Associate in Philosophy, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris), all of whom seemed pretty respectable. And, the clincher, was that it was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University. So I plunked my $19.45 down and bought the book. And, it’s true, there are some interesting and rather valuable facts scattered about in the book. (I plan to use some of them in my posting.) But in what I had assumed was the pure temple of objective scholarly research, I found what I would have to describe as a remarkably high incidence of outright opinion, wild overgeneralization and anachronistic reading of past behavior by today’s standards. Let me give you an example from the chapter “Bodies and Hearts” by Yvonne Knibiehler: The French term for unwed mother, fille mere, first entered the language during the Revolution and is only now disappearing. For two centuries it connoted an affront to the very logic of patriarchy. At this point, I start looking around for a footnote—after all, such an affront must have been noted by some of those darn patriarchs over two full centuries. No dice. I skip down a few lines: To be sure, illegitimate births were not unknown in previous centuries. But between 1750 and 1850 their status changed, as it were. There were a variety of reasons for this: the number of illegitimate births increased, “seducers” were denounced as irresponsible, and the authorities became increasingly concerned about the problem. The number of unwed mothers increased everywhere [footnote 50], although not always at the same pace. In France the illegitimacy rate rose from 3.3 percent of all births in 1790 to 7.4 percent in 1840, stabilizing at between 7 and 8 percent by the turn of the twentieth century. In Paris, however, a destination... posted by Friedrich at March 25, 2003 | perma-link | (3) comments

Monday, March 24, 2003


Consumer Reports, TQM and Educational Theology
Michael: It continues to baffle me why society places such an emphasis on the subtleties of where one goes to college and what grades one got there. Presumably, this is because these two pieces of data give potential employers (and potential spouses) an idea of the contribution a person can make to their respective enterprises. But how good are these two data points? Recent coverage of affirmative action lawsuits has revealed the incredible vagarieties of the university admission process. Clearly, the bar one must jump to be admitted to a selective university is far lower if one is a student athlete or a “legacy” than if one is an ordinary mortal. And a story in the New York Times of March 24 reveals the ludicrous nature of grades as a measure of accomplishment or learning. This story, which you can read here, discusses an online service called Pick-a-Prof, which provides a “Consumer Reports”-like analysis of professors at public universities. Not only does Pick-a-Prof allow a prospective student to scrutinize comments and ratings for a professor from previous students, but it also allows students to study the grade distributions handed out by that professor in previous semesters. This latter capability has made professors and administrations nervous. Apparently some are worried that …increased emphasis on ratings would lead professors to focus more on popularity than on substance and to forgo complex and subtle instruction for what was easily accessible. Dr. William T. Stuart, the director of undergraduate studies in the anthropology department at the University of Maryland, is concerned that: I'm not saying the sky is falling, or that it's a crisis, but I do believe that if you start orienting your work to the applause of the audience, that has unfortunate effects. I’m a little confused by Dr. Stuart's reasoning. Presumably, a college student wants to pick the professor who will teach them the most. The explicit evaluation of how much a student has learned is, of course, the student’s course grade. Therefore, it would appear obvious that the professor with the highest percentage of high grades is doing the best job teaching his or her class. Right? For teachers to imply that students are doing something improper by choosing a teacher with higher grades is to admit just how completely broken the grading mechanism is—how little grades are comparable from one instructor to the next, and from one subject to the next—without, of course, teachers actually having to come right out and admit that their grading system is so out of touch with reality that it encourages gamesmanship far more than actual learning. But it’s not unusual for college professors, like other instructors, to “blame the victim”—in this case, the student—for their pedagogic failures. The psychological model of school grading seems to derive from the theological concept of Protestant predestination, in which the elect—those who get good grades—go to school in order to be separated out from the damned—those who will not do well at school or life. The instructor,... posted by Friedrich at March 24, 2003 | perma-link | (5) comments

Saturday, March 22, 2003


Genghis Khan, America, and "Fine Art"
Friedrich -- The Wife and I recently saw the Genghis Khan art exhibit at the Met. (Here's a good Web representation of the show).) A dazzler, focusing on the impact of the Mongol invasions on Iranian art circa 1300. (Did you know that Mongols had made it to Iran? I certainly didn't.) Chinese and Islamic art all swirled up together, in a word. But, "art"? Well, this was the Met, so everything was under glass, in cases and on walls, and there were labels. Yet what was on display were combs, rugs, belt buckles, pages from books -- high end consumer goods, really. There wasn't an item of what we would today consider "fine art" to be seen. Yet there The Wife and I were, along with hundreds of other art fans, oohing and aahhing over these treasures. Mongol saddle circa 1300: Fine art? Or fancy saddle? Which makes me wonder why we modern Americans don't give our own high-end consumer goods as much respect. Is it because of the antiquity of the Mongol/Persian objects? I don't think that fully explains it. I think it also has something to do with our attachment to "fine art." An Audi or a fine meal at a chic restaurant are marvelous things, yet when pushed we're prone to say "But of course they aren't art." Art is that ... other thing. Higher. Hushed. More rewarding. High-art fan though I am, I can't help but suspect that many people use the "but it's not art" objection to make themselves feel, if not miserable, then perpetually spiritually hungry. It's something that almost never quite happens. We think, yeah, that may be nice, but it isn't art. To which I now reply: Hey, a swatch of Mongolian/Persian fabric isn't fine art either, yet there we Manhattanites were, oohing and ahhing at the Met over it. All of which got me thinking one of those thoughts-that-are-so-basic-you-can't-believe-you-never-had-it-before. This one's about that perennial "America and the fine arts" question: why are the fine arts always so embattled and imperiled in this country? Commercialism vs. ideals, the bad taste of New-World rubes vs the strivings of the cultured, etc etc. Is it because, as many fine-arts people like to believe, we're just a bunch of coarse, money-centric vulgarians? Or is it because, as many mainstream people feel, American fine artists so often carry on like a bunch of shrill adolescents? These battles go on and on throughout American art history with only the occasional break -- Beaux-Arts architecture, for instance, or the Arts and Crafts movement, a few moments when artists found a semi-popular groove and the public saw fit to spend a few extra bucks on aesthetic and quality-of-life items. Otherwise it's one wild mood swing after another. Here's the obvious thing that finally struck me: what's often forgotten is that part of what distinguishes America from Europe where art is concerned is that IN AMERICA FINE ART IS ALWAYS OPTIONAL. In Europe, this isn't the case. You're surrounded... posted by Michael at March 22, 2003 | perma-link | (7) comments

Web Surfing
Friedrich -- James Q. Wilson, reviewing David Frum's new book about George W. for Commentary, here, and Richard Brookhiser, in a q&a about George W. with the Atlantic Online here, both have sensible things to say about brains and leadership. Has feminism destroyed a Frenchman's pleasure in being a Frenchman? Charles Bremner, writing for the London Times (here), suspects so. The Wife, looking disapprovingly over my shoulder, says that she for one is glad to hear that French male egos are being beaten down: "I wish I was a French feminist," she says. (Link thanks to View from the Right, here.) I'm coming to this late due to a media-free vacation, but it was good to catch up with Blair Kamin's report (here) in the Chicago Tribune (registration required) that the great Leon Krier will be the first recipient of the new Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. This is, IMHO, part of what the strategy of traditionalists should be -- not just to gripe about the lefty/modernist stranglehold on discussion about the arts, but also to set up their own, more sensible and appealing, universe of publicity, awards, and journalism. Readers wanting to learn more about Krier, a brilliant thinker and writer as well as a witty and provocative designer, can start here and here. The Teaching Company, whose ads you've probably semi-noticed in highbrow magazines, offers lecture series by mostly American profs on audio (tape or CD). Avid audiobook listener that I am, I've tried a number of their packages, and have hit about .250  -- not great, but a far better batting average than I managed at our Lousy Ivy College. Some of the Teaching Company profs I can recommend are Timothy Taylor on economics, Jeremy Shearmur on politics, Robert Greenberg on Western classical music, Robert Sapolsky on neurophysiology, and John Searle on the philosophy of mind. Hint: unless you have big bucks, never buy from the Teaching Company at list price -- they put all their courses on sale at least once or twice a year. Here's a page listing courses they currently offer on sale, and, at these prices, these courses are a steal. Er, deal. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at March 22, 2003 | perma-link | (0) comments

Friday, March 21, 2003


When will Lewis H. Lapham Learn to Count?
Michael: I just don’t know how Lewis H. Lapham does it. By “it,” I mean, act as the editor of a magazine. Let me give some small examples from his latest screed, um, essay in the April 2003 issue of Harper’s Magazine: His essay is entitled “Cause for Dissent: Ten Questions for the Bush Regime [emphasis added.]” It has ten numbered sections. Oddly, however, at least three of the sections contain no questions. As best I can tell, having gone over the essay roughly four times, there are only eight questions in the text, one section having two. Still, it ain’t ten. The essay is advertised to page-flipping readers via large type excerpts. These excerpts turn out not to be excerpts, exactly. The differences are telling: Large Type Excerpt: Tyranny never has much trouble drumming up prompt agreement. Democracy stands in need of as many questions as its citizens can ask. Actual Copy: Tyranny never has much troubled drumming up the smiles of prompt agreement, but a democracy stands in need of as many questions as its citizens can ask of their own stupidity and fear. [emphasis added] Did some vestigal commercial sense persuade Mr. Lapham to shift the wording to avoid alienating the legions of the stupid and fearful who actually shell out for his magazine? Or was he—gasp—edited by someone else? The essay is utterly without a central thought, other than Mr. Lapham’s constant whine that he knows better than the Bush Administration, goddammit, and if the American people were so f---ing stupid as to elect George W. Bush then they should get smarter and vote for Lewis H. Lapham next time around. His individual points are, however, as follows: Lewis H. Lapham is too smart to fall for Bush Administration agitprop about the risk posed by Saddam Hussein. Secretary of State Powell can wave little jars of pseudo-anthrax around all he wants to, but Lewis H. Lapham is not going to accept any proof of Saddam’s bad intentions short of, one presumes, a video tape of Saddam personally infecting Americans with anthrax. Lewis H. Lapham is too smart to believe Bush Administration rhetoric about its own “moral clarity” and “principled resolve.” He noticed right away that the Bush Administration does not appear to be ready to invade North Korea, explaining this failure of moral courage on the fact that Pyongyang has 3 nuclear weapons and Baghdad none (hopefully). Living, as he does, in a wonderful world untroubled by practicality, Lewis H. Lapham can spot a moral evasion like the “Koren Exception” when he sees one, by God, and he’s not going to pass over it in silence. Lewis H. Lapham is too smart to take seriously the Bush Administration’s public resolve to not live in fear. He notes that the Bush Administration has issued many warnings of terrorism—which Lewis H. Lapham is smart enough to realize, could make people afraid. Obviously, according to Citizen Lapham, the real purpose of these warnings is to prevent smart guys like... posted by Friedrich at March 21, 2003 | perma-link | (9) comments

Ignored no more
Michael: In 2blowhard’s eternal quest to poke into the nooks and corners of the arts, fearlessly setting aside blinkered prejudice and received dogma, I would like to announce the first public recognition of an entirely (heretofore) ignored genre of painting: the art-instruction-book illustration. As you know, these proletarian products of the art publishing industry are ubiquitous. Just about anywhere books on art are sold, books on the technique of art crop up. They crowd the shelves of book stores, libraries and art supply shops. And yet, to date, they have been the Rodney Dangerfield of the art world, getting no respect. Well, by God, I’m here to change that. Granted, their careful, step-by-step illustrations often look better at step #2 (the rough blocking-in) than at step #6 (the finished composition, with all the wood-grain of barns, trees or tabletops fetishistically rendered). Granted, they often have strange ellipses from one step to another in which simple egg-shaped heads miraculously transform themselves into recognizable likenesses. Granted, even the more accomplished artists in this tradition have generally worked up their way through the history of art no farther than a sort of shadowy Baroque Realism (with a heavy emphasis on dark brown backgrounds) or to a sort of relaxed Impressionism. Nonetheless, at times the illustrations have a genuine charm, or at least oddity, that makes them worth looking at. For example, Joseph Sheppard manages to highlight the spatial contradictions of the “free floating” or context-less nude in a demonstration from his book, “How to Paint Like the Old Masters.” J. Sheppard, How to Paint Like The Old Masters, 1983 While the rather silvery young lady in his illustration appears, at first glance, as a sort of bas-relief against the picture plane, closer inspection reveals that she’s not “glued on” to a horizontal background but rather slightly “sunk into” a substance below her, even though I can’t make myself read the orange-brown background as a receding horizontal plane. So an intellectual food fight occurs, in which part of my brain says “no, the background is perpendicular to my line of sight and thus vertical” and in which another part of my brain says “it must be horizontal because it’s holding up her obviously volumetric mass” and another says “I wonder if I could get my wife to look into silvery body makeup for special occasions.” And as we all know, such unresolved contradictions are the heart and soul of the true artistic experience. In another example, Charles Sovek in his book, “Catching Light in Your Paintings” wins my plaudits for his still life illustrating the impact of reflected light off of highly colored substances. C. Sovek, Catching Light In Your Paintings, 1984 First, Mr. Sovek rather wittily points out the significant stylistic continuities between Impressionism and Rococo painting (and does so while managing an overall cool color scheme, always one of my favorites.) Second, his bravura brush treatment adds to the spatial ambiguities of the right-hand portion of the picture, in which the red... posted by Friedrich at March 21, 2003 | perma-link | (0) comments

Thursday, March 20, 2003


Guest Posting -- Tim Hulsey on Western Novels
Friedrich -- Once again we're (or at least I'm) being humbled, upstaged and enlightened by one of our visitors, and, as usual, what a pleasure that is. Tim Hulsey -- reluctant commenter, virtuoso Amazon consumer-reviewer, and all-around arts fan -- sent me an email after looking at my recent posting about Western novels. Here's what he had to say: I used to teach a course on the American West in literature, called "How the West Was Written." I tended to stop the course at WWII, because that's where my sense of literary history sort of falls off -- and also when writing about the West became more a case of nostalgia (or anti-nostalgia, in the case of the revisionist Western) than a contemporaneous event. At any rate, what constitutes a Western? As classifications go, this one is pretty easy; it's certainly easier to define a Western than it is to define a Novel (although most Westerns in print are Novels, too). I'd tend to define the subgenre of Western primarily by theme and setting -- although in the case of a Western, the two are so closely related as to make their separation more useful for critics than readers. The setting of the Western is, on some level, the frontier -- and I mean that as the "edge of settlement," in the classic Frederick Jackson Turner mode. The central theme of the Western usually involves a sense of human beings having to carve out their place within the immensity of this setting, a setting where civilization has just begun, however tentatively, to establish itself. It is a situation in which, Western writers usually claim, human nature is revealed in its barest form; it is certainly a situation in which governmental intrusion is minimized (the Law being either absent or ineffective), and individuals must thus resolve conflicts on their own. Reading a Western can often feel like reading Conrad -- there is the same sense of European Man overwhelmed by the immense void of frontier wilderness, and trying to work out a reasonable coexistence with it. Of course, unlike Conrad, the Western tends to record success rather than failure: Conrad's stories deal with individuals who try to conquer the Heart of Darkness and fail, but Westerns offer at least the promise of success, at least for those willing to make compromises and adapt to their land. Westerns may not look to Europe very much -- and the West Coast doesn't seem to look so much to Europe now. (If anything, it looks the other way, to China and Japan.) The historical West, however, looked to Europe very closely, so that colonists from the Eastern United States could preserve what remnants of that culture they could. If you ever tour Western homes, you'll be amazed at how many of them have the Complete Works of Charles Dickens lined up on the bookshelves. Not until fairly late in the nineteenth century did Westerners start to value artifacts of their regional culture -- which... posted by Michael at March 20, 2003 | perma-link | (0) comments

Pic of the Day
Michael: In researching material for my series of postings on Impressionism, I must say that French painting of the second half of the 19th century is truly remarkable stuff. Yes, it was made up of various rather politicized and contending schools, but I'll let you in on a little secret--more or less every approach (hyper innovative to ultra-conservative) yielded its share of pretty fantastic imagery. Today's image is by a painter--Henri Fantin-Latour--who is by no means unrepresented in art museums. Still, he always feels a bit marginalized in curatorial presentation. His work is not in step with the radical experiments of his friends the New Painters (whose works are always the real point of the rooms in which his paintings hang.) Still lifes and portraits by Fantin-Latour lack any of the blunt, manifesto-like quality so highly valued by the museum mandarinate. They hang back, full of modesty and unobtrusive good taste, like well-bred guests. They are almost nothing but exhilations of aesthetic sensibility, offered with no armor plating of significance or theory. And yet, how terrific they are. H. Fantin-Latour, Still Life with Flowers, 1881 I cannot resist including a small anecdote about the painter. To appreciate it, you must understand that Fantin-Latour hung out as a student at the Cafe Moliere with a crew of exiled Irish Nationalists in the 1850s, attended the Lesjosnes Salon with its marked republican atmosphere in the 1860s, was an intimate of the most famous bohemians of his day, including Rimbaud and Verlaine, in the 1870s, and a supporter of Dreyfus in the 1890s--in short, someone with a full artistic and political life. Nonetheless, after witnessing a discussion between Manet and Felix Bracquemond on the relationship between art and politics, he wrote to a friend: I share none of these ideas and I say that Art has nothing to do with such matters. Perhaps we should enlist him in your legion of not-primarily-political individuals. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at March 20, 2003 | perma-link | (1) comments

AK -- Your 15 minutes may be up
Friedrich -- Hey, isn't that Martina's old doubles partner? Is it only me, or did the world just this minute lose interest in Anna Kournikova? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at March 20, 2003 | perma-link | (1) comments

Wednesday, March 19, 2003


Web Surfing
Friedrich -- John Zmirak, an inspired conservative/reactionary, has started a new blog here. He’s using it mainly as a portal to his professional writing, and it’s a good way to sample a very interesting mind. (Link thanks to Steve Sailer, here.) Robert Birnbaum interviews the novelist and screenwriter (and very amusing interviewee) Richard Price here. I’ve just discovered that Tim Hulsey -- a topflight arts buff and occasional visitor to 2Blowhards -- is an avid consumer-reviewer of books, CDs and DVDs at Amazon. (Beware the reach of the Blowhards.) Find out whether that new DVD of “Metropolis” is really worth owning. Tim has a couple of hundred reviews to explore here. In his new book “Diversity: The Invention of a Concept,” Peter Wood argues that -- almost without anyone looking -- “diversity” has become a fullblown ideology, although one with little actual meaning. I haven’t read the book, but Stanley Kurtz’s review at National Review Online (here) and John Derbyshire’s at the New Criterion (here) make it sound like a gem. Felicity McCarthy, the hostess of the wonderfully freewheeling blog Goliard Dream (here), has put up a couple of short postings about how working as a professional musician affected her pleasure in attending concerts. (Hint: not for the better.) The postings are here and here. "The process of severe self-examination in the pursuit of one's art serves also to burn away one's innocent love -- probably the very same love that brought one to the field in the first place," Felicity writes, and has it ever been put better? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at March 19, 2003 | perma-link | (0) comments

Reading the West
Friedrich -- As you know, I'm just back East after a couple of weeks in Arizona and California. Visiting the West always makes me feel freed but ashamed at the same time. Why freed? Because the West is its own culture (or many cultures, really), and because it doesn't look to Europe -- what a relief. Why ashamed? Because I know so little about the West. Given the couple of years I've spent on the west coast and my marriage to a gorgeous, free-associating, horse-loving, rangy blonde 6-foot-tall Californian (they don't grow them like that on the east coast, at least they didn't in our generation), I know a lot more about the West than do most of my fellow northeasterners. But there's so much I don't know. Which is shameful but also wonderful. I also feel more than a bit of the usual indignation about the pathetic education (or "education") we got at our Lousy Ivy College. How can our lit classes have so completely overlooked the Western, for instance? I'm on semi-firm footing where movie Westerns are concerned, but (despite fancy Eng-lit degrees) I've only read a handful of Westerns, and know little about the form's history. Why do you suppose the poobahs of the East are so content to overlook the Western? Ignorance? Snobbery? It's not as though the Western is historically insignificant. I wonder if the poohbahs have even looked into the form -- its conventions, its influence, etc. Or perhaps they're simply content to sneer at it as trash without ever giving it a whirl. I suspect the latter explanation is the closest to the truth. Ah, the power of received opinion. I wish I had tons to report where the Western is concerned. Not much, alas. I once tried a couple of Louis L'Amours and couldn't get through them, but I can recommend Evan Connell's Son of the Morning Star (innovative nonfiction about Custer and the Little Big Horn -- Connell's an amazing writer generally, by the way); and Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage, an impressive and enjoyable piece of storytelling. (Here's a link to the Zane Grey Society, and here's Bill Hillman's Zane Grey Tribute site.) Did I ever pass along to you the amusing remark a book critic friend once made? He and I were talking about how great a book Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? is. Have you ever read it? Fab and essential, as taut, tense and compact as a good James M. Cain. And amazing in the way it nails once and for all a particular character type -- "Sammy Glick," the unprincipled, asslicking, domineering, will-do-anything-to-succeed Hollywood hustler. (Here's the official "What Makes Sammy Run?" site -- every great book should have its own site.) Once and for all: Budd Schulberg We were wondering why the book is seldom if ever taught in college lit classes. I came up with some unsatisfying possible explanations, then my friend came up with one that was much better. It... posted by Michael at March 19, 2003 | perma-link | (14) comments

Policy Break--The Curious Death of Human Rights
Michael: One of the better things about crises is that they often clarify things intellectually. One such moment of clarity seems to have descended on the Left in recent months regarding the whole concept of human rights. To wit: when push comes to shove, the Left doesn’t care about ‘em. The plight of oppressed and terrorized Iraqis counts for, well, nothing, since their oppression doesn’t serve any left-wing political agenda. I quote the ad for Tom Paine on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times: Go ahead [and invade Iraq]. Saddam will quickly fall, but that won’t make the world safer or more secure. Hmmm. No discussion of average-Joe Iraqis at all. However, it’s only one ad, and they don’t have room for a lot of copy because they need a big picture of Osama Bin Laden pointing his finger at us like Uncle Sam. The ad, however suggests that one go to www.tompaine.com to read analyses and alternatives. Okey dokey. Well the first such analysis is by Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies, entitled "Understanding The U.S.-Iraq Crisis: A Primer." In it Ms. Bennis admits that the Iraqi government has long been “brutally repressive towards its own people…” The primer even asks if the Bush administrations concerns over Iraq are valid, including Administration concerns over Iraq’s human rights violations. However, when you read it looking for an answer, it dawns on you that the primer palms this card without providing the obvious answer (an unequivocal “yes,”) and then quickly moves off this subject, never to return. (Rather ironically, the Institute for Policy Studies website has a page for the Letellier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards, which memorializes the murder of two of their staff members at the hands of Chile’s government in the 1970s). There is also a page about the Institute’s long running attempts to bring Augusto Pinochet to justice. The corresponding lack of interest in bringing Saddam Hussein to justice doesn’t appear to trouble the IPS. Jeeze, if I didn’t know better, I’d conclude that the only way to get yourself on the bad side of these guys—human rights-wise—is to actually bump off some of their staffers. While an understandable attitude, it seems to lack something as a moral principle.) Well, on to the next link provided by the folks at Tom Paine: "The Thirty-Year Itch," an article by Robert Dreyfuss in Mother Jones, March/April 2003. Perhaps I missed something in this article, devoted to the idea that war with Iraq is the culmination of a 30-year-old conspiracy to seize Middle Eastern oil, but the concerns of brutalized Iraqi citizens didn’t seem nearly as exciting to Mr. Dreyfuss as the machinations of the evil clique running the American (oops, sorry, the Amerikan) Empire. So I turned to "President Bush's February 26 Speech On The Future of Iraq: A Critique" by Stephen Zunes in Foreign Policy in Focus, March 7, 2003. Here the human rights concerns raised by President Bush are noted, but are rather cleverly sidestepped... posted by Friedrich at March 19, 2003 | perma-link | (4) comments

Tuesday, March 18, 2003


Artistic Quote of the Day
Michael: As you recall, we were laughing at a statement by Degas yesterday during our West Coast Blowhards Seminar, conducted at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. Given your enjoyment of Degas' cranky pith, I thought you'd get a kick out of an (apparently approving) remark he made in his 80s, regarding Cubism: ..[I]t seems even more difficult than painting. If I could be sure of finding such wit, I'd start my own damn salon. Cheers, Friedrich P.S.--Exclusive photo documentation of this great inaugural Blowhard Seminar will be forthcoming as soon as we Blowhards get our acts together. (Hey, we're working on it.)... posted by Friedrich at March 18, 2003 | perma-link | (1) comments

Monday, March 17, 2003


Snob Quotient in Sports
Michael: On several occasions you’ve indicated that you are a women’s tennis fan. You share this interest with my wife, who is an avid tennis player and spectator. In fact, my wife takes her tennis so seriously that she just spent the weekend in Palm Springs watching a professional tournament and, weather permitting, attending a tennis camp with one of her girlfriends (leaving me with the kids for the weekend, but that’s another story.) Anyway, owing to the kindness of strangers, my wife, her girlfriend and my in-laws ended up watching the tournament from a “skybox.” While the physical environment was great, when she got home she had to share a dark secret. The tennis fans with whom she shared the skybox were not nice people. “Very snobby and snotty, if you know what I mean.” In your opinion, did my wife just have poor luck in running into some jerks, or is there something of a systematic phenomenon here? Which sports attract the nicest fans, and which ones the biggest losers? Is there a "likeability" gradient between the cheap seats and the expensive ones? Eager to get your input. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at March 17, 2003 | perma-link | (4) comments

Friday, March 14, 2003


Pic of the Day
Michael: We’ve touched on the strange neglect suffered by 19th century academic painting once or twice, but a picture I came across researching material for my series on Impressionism makes me want to beat this horse a few more times. The painter, Paul Baudry (1828-1886), was once a fairly well known academician (he was, in fact, Napoleon III’s favorite painter.) He was primarily a portrait painter, although he essayed mythological scenes as well. Based on the work I’ve seen on Web, he is by no means a member of the Great Painters of History Club—his multifigure compositions are weak and a bit confused, and he frankly doesn’t seem to have an idea in his head. However, at least in this picture, Baudry illustrates how the technical discipline of academic painting can facilitate the expression of a painter’s genuine emotional response to a subject: P. Baudry, The Wrestler Meissonier, 1848 The handling of the fall of light over the figure is simply magnificent, and the harmonization of the light with the shifting of local skin tones from one part of the body to another to create a maximal aesthetic effect is something that requires, I think it’s fair to say, a great deal of practice to deliver. (At least in my experience, nobody picks up a brush for the first time and knocks out something like this.) Academic painting is like a lot of things in life: if you approach it for what it can give you as opposed to being frustrated by what’s not there, you can have a pretty good night on the town. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at March 14, 2003 | perma-link | (4) comments

Free Reads -- Polanski trial testimony
Friedrich -- Ever wonder what exactly went on in that Jacuzzi between Roman Polanski and that underaged girl? Now you can go straight to the source: The Smoking Gun has put on its site a copy of the court transcript of the girl's testimony. It can be read here. Link thanks to Colby Cosh, here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at March 14, 2003 | perma-link | (0) comments

Thursday, March 13, 2003


Department of Male and Female Relations
Michael: I’d like to nominate Kim Cattrall for an award, Most Flamboyant Gesture in Ending a Relationship. The relationship in question is with her 3rd husband, Mark Levinson (the co-author of Ms. Cattrall’s recent book, “Satisfaction: The Art of the Female Orgasm.”) A couple of days ago I happened to glance at the March 17 copy of People Magazine, in which the two are described as “taking a break.” As the story reports: Why? “No exact reason,” says a friend. “No one is dating anyone else. It just happens.” This story of a relatively amicable split was belied the next morning, however, when I was standing in line at the checkout counter of my local 7-11 and caught a glimpse of the cover of FHM (“For Him Magazine”) for April. Who is posing in just a shirt and a pair of underwear? You guessed it, Ms. Cattrall. Before and After But the best part is the quote on the cover from Ms. Cattrall: I prefer younger men. Ouch! I have no idea what really went on here, but based purely on the available evidence it looks like Mr. Levinson must have done something really, really bad. I don't know about you, but I've been dumped once or twice with a certain amount of flair (granted, a quality that is easier to appreciate with the distance of a few years.) Anybody out there got a good dramatic-gesture-in-the-context-of-a-breakup story? Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at March 13, 2003 | perma-link | (1) comments

Bipolar Elvis
Michael: As you know, I’m both a big Elvis fan and a depressive personality. I always thought these were unrelated phenomena, but I’m beginning to wonder. This line of speculation derives from driving around in my car, listening to a CD of Elvis’ number one hits that I received at my company’s Christmas party (my musical tastes are no secret, obviously). As a result of repeat listening, I’ve begun to appreciate the Elvis song released at the same time as his death, “Way on Down.” It’s impossible—for me anyway—to avoid thinking about Elvis’ death when listening to the song. The title, with its double (triple?) entendre reference to dying, is only the start. The song also includes lyrics about “lying on the floor” and something about what the doctor could prescribe. One could go on in this vein. Is the final result morbid? Oddly enough, no. Apparently Elvis had stared into the abyss long enough that he could derive a certain entertainment value out of it. I recall seeing some extreme close up shots of “fat” Elvis performing in a film documentary, and being struck by (1) the cosmic extent of Elvis’ alienation and (2) the way he seemed to find his own alienation amusing. All his life, Elvis seemed to be enjoying a private joke, which he was willing to let the world about halfway in on. Apparently his impending death struck him the same way his ridiculous stardom had struck him two decades before—as a goofy joke. If it turned out to be a joke on him, well, that was okay too. The King's Sense of Humor in Action However, listening to the song, it did suddenly dawn on me that the way Elvis’ periods of extremely high energy—creatively, career-wise, in his personal life—alternated with periods of extreme passivity, secrecy and “ah, screw it”-ism suggested attacks of depression or, possibly, manic depression. So I did a google search to see if anyone else had voiced thoughts along these lines. As it turns out, within a minute or two I found a conversation between Time Magazine and Vernon Chadwick, the chairman of the fourth annual “Conference on Elvis Presley” which occurred in 1998. It included the following quote: This morning one of our speakers, a therapist from Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey, advanced the thesis that Elvis suffered bipolar disorder, which is a more technical name for manic depression. And that Elvis' substance abuse, eating disorders, and chronic depression should be placed in the larger context of a personality disorder. I guess all this should get filed in preparation for my ultimate tract, “Mental Health and Creativity: Is It Possible to Have Both?” A hunk a hunk of burning cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at March 13, 2003 | perma-link | (7) comments

DVD Journal: "Enigma"
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- Hey, a quick and happy movie (er, DVD) recommendation: Enigma. Have you caught it? A thoughtful and grownup British thriller -- "speculative history" (I believe that's the correct name for the genre) from a Robert Harris novel about codebreaking, love, trust and betrayal in WW2 England. Military guys, nerd-genius code-breakers, an early computer, stockings and lipstick, Dougray Smith as a nerd with a broken heart, Jeremy Northam hilariously suave and sinister as a government investigator, fleets of merchant ships on the high seas, wolf packs of German U-boats. That Obscure Object of Desire: The Enigma Machine Kate Winslet plays a bespectacled, mousey and brainy office gal. Are you a Kate groupie? I am. The whole package appeals: the frown-that's-a-smile and the smile-that's-a-frown; the mixture of dowdiness and beauty, of innocence, mischief and lewdness; the fleshiness and stickiness; the just-passable-but-hopeful acting; the real-life tabloid troubles; the weight battles and marriage travails -- everything about her says "life is tragedy and mess, but why not live it with gusto?" And says so with a juicy combination of reluctance and urgency. This isn't a great film for Kate fans, but, heck, she's there, she's in a chubby phase, she's playing "wallflower," and she's as full of doubts and overheatedness as ever. Kate Winslet, Overheated in Enigma The film itself is intricate, lowkey and tense, and it's Michael Apted's best recent movie -- though I say this all too breezily, having seen almost nothing of his recent work. I do retain good memories of Blink, his 1994 thriller starring Madeleine Stowe at her most beautiful. ("Enigma" was co-produced by Mick Jagger, by the way.) The Tom Stoppard screenplay is beyond fabulous. How do you react to Stoppard's work? I'm a weird one about it. I don't care for the plays of his I've seen and read, which so many people adore. For all his talent, dazzle, brains and energy, it seems to me there's a manic quality to his showboating (and "showing-off while playing with ideas" seems to be what his idea of the theater is), and although I don't find it dislikable, I do find it exhausting. But I'm a huge fan of his work as a screenwriter / adapter of other people's writing -- for my money he's one of the very best. "Billy Bathgate," (lousy movie, but a fab screenplay), "The Russia House" (a fave of mine), this one, some others that aren't occurring to me just now -- great stuff, worthy of close study yet easy to enjoy. When he adapts for the screen, he seems to relax and let himself sink into the material; the human values take precedence, and the virtuosity is put to work serving the material. Plus, he's perceptive and humane about love and politics in ways I find moving. I'll spare you the usual feeble attempts at evocative film-crit and just say that if you're in the mood for a newish movie-movie that's classical-but-not-stodgy (ie., not a media-blitz experience);... posted by Michael at March 13, 2003 | perma-link | (12) comments

Wednesday, March 12, 2003


Throw the Rulebook Out
Michael: In the aftermath of the Enron/Worldcom/Tyco scandals there has been a call for switching financial accounting from a "detailed rules" approach to a more "general principles" approach. The idea is that ultra-precise rules can always be gotten around, while general principles demand that deals must always pass a “good judgment” test. I could argue both sides of this position as regards financial accounting, but I must say that the “general principles” advocates have a strong case in at least one other aspect of human life. That’s the regulation of teen sexuality. When I drop my daughter off at her high school every morning, I am exposed to a number of young women in tight fitting jeans, midriff-baring tops, and the occasional plunging neckline. Still, while dressing a bit more blatantly than their mothers did in my own high school days, these young women are only making a display of their burgeoning fertility—which no one could miss unless they went around in burlap sacks. On the other hand, on my way to work I pass a nearby private high school that has attempted to deal with this issue by instituting school uniforms. This attempt to control sexual display has however, caused an Enron-like result: young women have obviously studied the rulebook carefully to see how it can be subverted. One common strategy is to wear the apparently required plaid skirt as an ultra mini. Because of traffic congestion, many of these young women are dropped off nearby and have to cross several streets to get to school; seeing them standing at the street corners, I have several times found myself thinking: Geeze, this is a nice suburban neighborhood, what’s with the hookers? All this amounts to something of an exercise in institutional cowardice. I understand that it’s awkward to have to confront young women growing up fast and order them to dress in ways that an adult finds appropriate rather than in ways that maximize the amount of peer attention they get. But ducking the face-to-face confrontations by issuing “rules” has only ended up encouraging these girls to dress like objects in some cheesy sex fantasy. A peculiar choice of outcomes. Cheers, Freidrich... posted by Friedrich at March 12, 2003 | perma-link | (5) comments

Free Reads -- Denis Dutton
Friedrich -- Did you know that Denis Dutton, the very brilliant and resourceful philosophy professor who's also the publisher of Arts & Letters Daily, writes a semi-regular column for the New Zealand Herald? I didn't either until recently. He's terrific. Here's a sample passage from a recent piece about Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist": Lomborg also analysed trade-offs that have to be faced in dealing with environmental problems. Suppose, for example, that pesticides hypothetically cause a handful of cancers in countries the size of the United States or Britain every year. If, as many Greens advocate, we ban pesticides, we will inevitably drive up the price of the fruits and vegetables that have the property of warding off cancer. This, in turn, will cause a decrease in consumption, especially among the less well-off, and hence force a corresponding rise in cancer incidence. In fact, banning pesticides may end up causing perhaps a thousand times more cancer than it cures. The piece can be read in its entirety here. He has also written recently on terrorism (here), Saddam Hussein (here), and copyright and the internet (here). Although they were written for a New Zealand audience, the pieces are all bracingly good reads because Dutton is a rare (if very robust) bird: someone with tons of intellectual sophistication but also a down to earth temperament. A philosopher who respects common sense and common experience -- good grief! Which raises a question: Why hasn't one of the publications with a world-scale brand name -- the NYT, the London Times, The Economist -- given Dutton a regular column? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at March 12, 2003 | perma-link | (3) comments

Tuesday, March 11, 2003


Newer and Older Horror Movies
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friedrich -- By chance over the last couple of days, I watched a couple of horror movies from different eras and got a chance to compare their styles. The first was The Serpent and the Rainbow from 1987; the second was Stigmata, from about a year ago. Styles have certainly changed. "The Serpent and the Rainbow" was directed by the horror vet Wes Craven and stars Bill Pullman as a gloomy Indiana Jones sent to Haiti by a pharmaceutical company to look into the zombie phenomenon. It's seedy, set to jungle drums, and is full of writhing and sweating people and B-movie shocks. "Stigmata" stars Patricia Arquette as a Pittsburgh punkette through whom Catholic spirits are trying to speak, and Gabriel Byrne as a sexily tormented scientist-priest who's sent by the Vatican to Pittsburgh to see whether a genuine miracle is occurring: mist and smoke, MTV lighting, 72 shots where only one is needed, strobing lights, thunderous and crashing sound effects -- it's like a Ridley Scott movie made by a hyper-active kid. The Serpent and the Rainbow: As Seething, Sexy-Madhouse Zombie Thrillers Go, Not Bad What do I have to report? First, that "The Serpent and the Rainbow" turned out to be the only Wes Craven movie I've ever really enjoyed. Despite problems (the biggest one being Bill Pullman, who's terrible), it's a trippy and very effective "is he inside my head or am I having a nightmare" thriller. It's more than decent. The black actors (including Zakes Mokae and Cathy Tyson) are phenomenal; and there's a little Carlos Castaneda in the film, and a little "Apocalypse Now" too. Craven uses a traditional trash-horror esthetic, and though the movie is nothing but a seething, sexy-madhouse zombie thriller with a pinch of politics, it has some real hypnotic power, and I liked it better than "Apocalypse Now" (although, hold my horses, it strikes me as I type these words that I didn't much enjoy "Apocalypse Now"). Patricia Arquette in Stigmata: Revelation as Special Effect Second, that I had an experience watching "Stigmata" that I often have watching the do-all-the-work-for-you, image-processed and hyper-Dolbyized new films. Here, the script was functional enough, the actors were fine, the photography and set design were slick. But the effects (of which there were tons) seemed to be only loosely attached to what I was watching. They were churning away very competently and doing all the reacting for me (as they will these days), but they somehow seemed mistimed -- just a little bit off. I had the feeling that on one track was the story, the actors, the drama, the moment, that on another one entirely were the production values and tech effects, and that these two tracks were never in quite the right synch. I often have this out-of-synch sensation at the new made-for-MTV-babies movies. Do you? I wonder why. Could it be because the effects aren't made to grow out of the moment but are instead ladled on? Or... posted by Michael at March 11, 2003 | perma-link | (11) comments

Two or Three Things I Learned About Impressionism, Part VII
Michael: This is the next in a series of my postings on what Impressionism meant to its contemporaries and creators. Having disposed of what I’ve described as the Standard Account of Impressionism in my previous posts, let’s move on to what I think is a more accurate explanation of the phenomenon known as the New Painting (a term that, like its synonym, the jeune ecole, subsumes the Impressionists along with fellow-travellers like Manet, Fantin-Latour and others): In the 1860s, the urban bourgeoisie were political underdogs to the rural landowning class, who were the key supporters and beneficiaries of both the 2nd Empire of Napoleon III and the authoritarian governments of the 1870s. Frustrated by a slowing economy and their subordinate political position, the urban bourgeoisie began trying to gain power by pushing a capitalist-republican political “uprising.” This uprising was encouraged by the “railroad revolution” of the previous decade that had encouraged a general belief in the virtues of technology and commercial progress, convincing the urban bourgeoisie that history was on their side. At the same time, there was a significant oversupply of artists and paintings in the French art industry. This led to a greater diversification of subject matter by artists, as they attempted to sell into the genre, landscape and still life niche art markets where growing numbers of bourgeois art buyers had unmet demands. This effort was de-legitimized by the Academy because it would reduce painting to mere craftwork (unlike the Academic specialty, history painting, which by theory and tradition possessed an elevated intellectual dimension.) This was accomplished by denying such paintings opportunities to be seen at the Salon, and by denying any that did get seen any official recognition. Because the Academy and the Salon were government institutions, the battle between artists eager to tap new niche art markets and the Academicians who were working to deny them artistic legitimacy in this effort became politicized. This intensified as republican journalists used the issue to attack Napoleon III’s regime at the end of the 1860s. The Impressionists, as ambitious painter-businessmen with chiefly urban bourgeois backgrounds and sympathies, recognized that there was a market for pictures of the environment and daily life of the urban bourgeoisie, and wanted to tap it. Finding the Academy was blocking their efforts to supply this market, they set out—with help from critics and dealers—to break the commercial monopoly enjoyed by the governmentally organized Salon. Their eventual success created the modern art market. The last paragraph provides a nice climax to my version of events. The only question (all the other paragraphs having been addressed in my previous posts) is: do the facts support this last paragraph? Well, let’s see. Did the Impressionists have chiefly urban bourgeois backgrounds and republican political sympathies? As far as background goes, calling the Impressionists urban bourgeoisie was a pretty fair statement. Edouard Manet’s father was a wealthy Parisian judge. Berthe Morisot father was a well-to-do official at the Cour des Comptes (the financial agency auditing public expenditures) in... posted by Friedrich at March 11, 2003 | perma-link | (1) comments

Monday, March 10, 2003


Fiction Books -- Taste Triangulating redux
Michael: In reading your posting, Fiction Books -- Taste Triangulating, I realized in scanning your list of authors that I have read books by only two of them—Mssrs. Westlake and Kundera. That got me to thinking about why I don’t read more contemporary fiction. Partly, it is a result of a shift in my taste over the years. Today, I simply prefer the mysteries of fact to those of fiction, the ungainly shape of true stories to the smoother shape of made-up stories. These true stories reach me largely via biographies and works of history (and very occasionally from the pens of “fiction writers” like Saul Bellow who seem, at least today, to be writing ultra-thinly fictionalized versions of real-life family history). This shift seems to have occurred about the time I had children—I don’t know whether that timing amounts to coincidence or causation. Thinking back, however, I realize that since childhood I’ve preferred older fiction to contemporary fiction—by “older” I can mean writing that is a mere 10 or 20 years old at the time I read it. Truly contemporary fiction—especially if it in any way is making claims for its artistic merits—has way too much anxiety and ambition floating around in it. (Joyce Carol Oates? No thanks.) I find those qualities to be like static in a radio broadcast, preventing me from hearing the music being played. I also find that the sheer volume of contemporary fiction writing gives me unpleasant intimations of mortality. Given my limited time and resources for reading, why not utilize the inexorable friction of history to grind away the mud and leave the diamonds? I would bet that any fiction you could actually lay your hands on that's 150 or more years old would be of markedly higher quality than whatever is on the new fiction shelf at your local bookstore. I have never read Racine, but if I had to chose between his collected works and those of Rushdie, Morrison, DeLillo, Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace or Thomas Pynchon, I’d head for Racine every day of the week. I would certainly prefer to read everything I’ve never gotten around to reading by say, Stendahl--no matter how minor--to a “greatest hits” collection of the above contemporary writers. In what may be a connected issue, I’ve always found it extremely irritating when writers (or artists, for that matter) are dismissed for not being sufficiently “of their time” or praised for possessing this same quality (as if they could be anything else.) Virtually every time I can detect someone as being “of” an era--at least one that I’ve actually lived through--I regard it as a sign of artistic weakness rather than strength—since to me such era-specificity almost always means incorporating a contemporary cliché in place of an original thought. A few years ago it dawned on me, glancing through the New York Times Review of Books at tale after tale of violence, rape, child molestation, et al, that this fiction wasn't the product of the... posted by Friedrich at March 10, 2003 | perma-link | (3) comments

Sunday, March 9, 2003


Why Don't You Know What I'm Thinking?
Friedrich – Why does a woman expect her man to be able to read her mind? And why does she feel perfectly entitled to act indignant when it turns out he can’t? I’m going to assume this holds roughly true (many exceptions allowed for) across cultures and across time. By the way, have studies been done of this? And if not, why not? What might be a plausible evo-bio explanation for this tendency? I’ll (bravely and stupidly) try to get the ball rolling here. A woman is hyper-focused and aware of her inner life (her feelings, her body, her urges and needs). When it turns out that her man hasn’t got a clue what the hell she’s talking about, let alone feeling, it’s quite simply a rude awakening, and rude awakenings make everyone feel irritable. So, two questions: why are women so hyper-focused on their inner lives? What evolutionary advantage does this confer? Question two? Well, what is a man’s role in all this? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at March 9, 2003 | perma-link | (22) comments

Fiction Books -- Taste Triangulating
Friedrich – I haven’t blogged much about books, lit and writing, which along with movies is the current artform I know best. Why? Because I covered the field professionally for 15 years, and I just have too damn much to say, much of which runs counter to conventional lit-world wisdom. Where to start? And how to avoid being knocked over by the sheer pressure of what wants to be said? But, gotta start somewhere, and it’s about time, or so says some inner voice of mine. Why not start by triangulating my peculiar taste set in contempo fiction-book writing? Some of the usual major suspects: I read Rushdie and Morrison thinking “bullshit bullshit bullshit.” DeLillo? I read two of his books, and that’ll last me my next ten lifetimes. Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon? Brilliant, sure, but when I want ideas, I prefer to turn to actual philosophers, and besides, I’m a couple of decades out of grad school. The “what’s great” sweepstakes: Reluctantly, I place my votes for three or four Garcia Marquez books, a couple of books each from Josef Skvorecky (“The Bass Saxophone” and “Dvorak in Love”) and Milan Kundera (but early Kundera, please), two novels (start with “Season of the Jew” -- better than Hemingway) by the almost-completely-unknown-in-America New Zealander Maurice Shadbolt, and four or five of Alice Munro’s books. But, to be honest, those are conversations that I’m not much interested in taking part in. Age and fatigue probably explain this. But also, there are plenty of people clamoring to fight these fights and I’m happy to leave the brawling to them. Me, I’d rather explore pleasure, personal responses, and enjoyment, and do my best to be honest about my reactions. (And I love comparing notes with people I respect and enjoy who are also willing to let go of the damn “what’s great” argument.) I’ll take a pass on arguing over who should win the next Nobel and choose instead to admit that I was surprised to discover that I enjoyed reading Terry McMillan’s “Waiting to Exhale” and Jackie Collins’ “Hollywood Wives” much more than I did “Cold Mountain” or “All the Pretty Horses.” How about you? The genres. I tend to respond most happily to erotic-philosophical novellas, to mystery, to comedy and humor, and probably best to psychological suspense. Straightforward horror doesn’t mean much to me; neither do political thrillers, sci-fi, or straightforward spy novels. The current lit genres (and, despite the pretences of the lit crowd, there are genres in lit writing just as there are in commercial writing) leave me cold -- the family-dysfunctional, the pinwheeling multicultural extravaganza, the austere farm-based tragedy. My personal faves: So, wading through the thicket of my own rants, I arrive at the currently-active fiction-book writers (and I specify “book” because I also like the work of some screenwriters and TV writers) whose work I most happily look forward to, and most happily abandon myself to. Ruth Rendell, an English specialist in mystery and... posted by Michael at March 9, 2003 | perma-link | (14) comments

Friday, March 7, 2003


Money Where Your Mouth Is
Michael: I don't often find myself laughing out loud at much on the NY Times' op-ed page, but I can't help but quote from one rather interesting piece by Michael Walzer, "What a Little War in Iraq Could Do." Mr. Walzer's basic premise is that the U.S. could steer a middle course between full-scale invasion or backing down in the face of Iraqi-French-Russian intransigence by using a little war strategy: extending the no-fly zone to the entirety of Iraq, guarding once-inspected Iraqi premises with U.N. troops to ensure no return to WMD production, putting in place "smart sanctions" unilaterally and retaliating against countries that violate them, and insisting that France, in particular, show that it is serious by sending troops to the Gulf. Otherwise, what [the French] are saying is that if things get very bad, they will unleash the American army. I'm not sure Mr. Walzer is being intentionally witty, but he hit the nail of French self-centeredness on the head with that stroke. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at March 7, 2003 | perma-link | (3) comments

Free Views -- Ken Kewley
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- For all the bitching I do, and enjoy doing, about the carrying-on of the self-proclaimed art world, I nonetheless fairly often run across current artists whose work I enjoy. (My batting average may be lousy, but I do occasionally connect.) Surprise: they often aren't artists whom the critics or profs take much -- or any -- note of, which sometimes makes me wonder if my real complaint isn't so much with the art world itself as with the opinion-making class. But -- hurried, cowardly and lazy soul that I am -- I'm not going to wrestle with that question now. Back to the talent. Ken Kewley is one of my recent finds. I saw one of his shows about a year ago. Here's a decent selection of his work; here's his own website, also featuring a good selection. These are pop-up images, so be sure to click on them to see larger versions of these images. But the pictures in real life are also very small -- about three by five inches. Kewley reminds me, in a good way, of the Bloomsbury painters -- modest, yet saturated and aglow with pattern and color. He cuts so directly to what's pleasing and interesting that it's easy to ignore how good he is at dodging and avoiding self-importance and would-be momentousness. He seems to want nothing to do with the "gotta be great" game, and intead seems to want to work some early-modernist turf -- ie., to approach his art not as breakthrough or liberation but as style and exploration. Which strikes me as a daring and witty choice in itself. Modernism has so often made itself out to be -- has made art itself out to be -- a matter of anxieties, breakthroughs and innovations (and baloney to that, is my view) that it comes as a luscious suprise to see it treated as a given, an established style as open to being mined for pleasure as, say, classicism. To my mind, this is terrific. It's like accepting and working with a movie genre -- occupying your imagination and skills with finding ways of making it yield something fresh and vivid, rather with than (yawn) undermining and subverting it. Anyway, fancy blah-blah to one side: a luscious and pleasing clarity of color and idea! Witty formats! A serene and poised yet alert gestalt! Nice balance between abstraction and representation! The beauty of early modernism minus the stress and bombast! I'm probably missing a lot of what's there -- but that's great too. Words now fail me -- but I'm happy to report that I get a lot out of looking and re-looking at Kewley's paintings and collages, and that I'd love to live with a bunch of them. Any current artists you're crazy about? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at March 7, 2003 | perma-link | (3) comments

Postmodern Fairy Tales
Michael: My almost-two-year-old son is fixated on “The Three Little Pigs.” He walks around growling and making blowing sounds, and then doing cute little pig grunts while wrinkling his nose. Clearly something about the danger and violence first set into motion by the Big Bad Wolf (and his house-destroying breath) and then resolved by the triumphant if deadly cunning of the last Little Pig is clicking with his emotions. He has made my wife go over the story over and over with him for the past week. Thinking to help resolve his issues with the story, my wife made a trip to the book store and picked up a handsomely illustrated volume by a D. Wiesner, entitled “The Three Pigs.” When she got home and read it to him, she was startled to find that rather than the standard version of the story, she had picked up a Postmodern fairy tale. The Pigs Exit the Story In this version, the Wolf’s breath is so fierce that the first Little Pig is blown clean out of the story—thus saving his life. Said pig scurries ahead of the wolf and convinces his brethren to exit the tale as well. They end up in a sort of meta-museum of illustrated children’s stories, which they can enter and exit at will, wandering through “Hey Diddle Diddle” and some medieval adventure story, in the course of which they recruit both the Cat (and the fiddle) and a dragon to their story-hopping crew. Finally they decide to return to their own narrative, where the dragon makes quick work of the extremely surprised wolf. Everyone, except the wolf, lives happily ever after in the cosy brick pig house. All fairly amusing, but I must report that my son was having none of this. Not only did he find this version confusing, but it quickly became apparent to him that whatever emotional juice he was looking for in the story had apparently leaked out with the punctured narrative. He shortly pushed “The Three Pigs” aside and has steadfastly ignored it since, preferring a crudely illustrated version of the original (which I have now read to him at least 100 times.) Apparently when confronting primal fears and fundamental questions, it’s better to take your medicine straight. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at March 7, 2003 | perma-link | (2) comments

Wednesday, March 5, 2003


A Rising Vote of Thanks
Michael: Lavrenti P. Beria, top spymaster for Joseph Stalin, was not a nice man. He rose through the ranks of various Soviet secret police agencies by using married women to seduce his bosses, then threatening to expose the illicit relationships. If his bosses didn’t fall for this routine, he killed them, either personally or via his underlings. Having performed many murders for Stalin as well as the ones on his own behalf, he was named head of Soviet intelligence in 1921, and became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1934, where he again busied himself with eliminating Stalin’s foes. He carried on his murderous ways through World War II, for example personally ordering the machine-gunning of ten thousand political opponents of the Soviet regime in a detention camp who were at risk of falling into the hands of the invading Nazis. Despite all this, however, it’s possible that Beria is owed a vote of thanks by citizens of the United States. That’s because he apparently murdered Stalin (hip, hip, hooray) and thereby prevented World War III. According to a story in the NY Times of March 5, Vladimir P. Naumov, a Russian historian and Johnathan Brent, a Yale University professor will publish a book, “Stalin’s Last Crime” later this month laying out the evidence suggesting that Beria did in fact bump off the leading contender for the much-contested Worst Person of the 20th Century award. Nikita Krushchev’s memoirs of 1970 recall Beria boasting of having poisoned Stalin on May Day 1953, two months after the tyrant’s death: “I did him in! I saved all of you.” While this account has been disputed for years, it was powerfully reinforced by the official medical report that was only dug out of the Soviet archives recently by Mssrs. Nauman and Brent. This report was obviously doctored, since it reported Stalin’s illness as having begun a full 24-hours after it really did, which would give the impression that doctors had been called immediately. In fact, of course, apparently Beria and several other senior Communists had waited to call doctors until it was too late for medical intervention to have any effect. And how about the claim that the death of Stalin avoided World War III? Apparently the famous “Doctor’s Plot” that Stalin publicized in January 1953—a non-existent conspiracy (cooked up by the Kremlin) of Jewish doctors, supposedly acting on the orders of the U.S. government, to poison senior Communist leaders—was only the opening round in what Stalin intended as a major political campaign. In February he ordered the construction of huge prison camps in Siberia in preparation for another round of purges, this time aimed at Soviet Jews. And apparently he intended to crank up the accusations (based on a single interrogration of a suspected Russian traitor) of an American plot to destroy Moscow with nuclear weapons and invade Siberia via the Chinese border. (What the Chinese were supposed to be doing while this was going on is an... posted by Friedrich at March 5, 2003 | perma-link | (0) comments

David Frum and Richard Skinner on George W.
Friedrich -- I got fascinated by this thoughtful q&a at The Atlantic's website (here) with David Frum, author of a new book about George W. Bush. I've got my reservations about George W., god knows, but he's clearly an effective leader of some sort, as well as a man who has a few convictions. On the other hand – hey, Republicans – I haven’t exactly seen the size of the government shrinking. Worth thinking about, in any case. As a precaution – what do I really know about any of this? -- I swapped a few emails with Prof. Richard Skinner, a political-scientist friend of mine who teaches at SUNY Geneseo. Here’s how our conversation went. Does the substance of the Frum interview ring true to you? Pretty much. Especially the stuff about Bush’s religiosity -- which is probably his strongest appeal to his political base, although it just confuses Europeans. I think Frum underplays how polarizing Bush is -- he really is intensely unpopular among hard-core Democrats. But, on the other hand, he is incredibly popular with Republicans. He regularly gets 95 percent approval among them. That's even higher than Reagan got. It’s as though urban-media Democrats can’t get over the idea that there are still people who attend church and have traditional religious convictions. It's not just that. There's a regional, denominational line, too. My sister (hardly a media type) once told me that she has never met a white Baptist or a white born-again Christian. We just don't have them in the Northeast. By comparison, a friend of mine grew up in a small town in Arkansas where everyone is a Baptist. At his alma mater in Oklahoma, drinking a beer marked you as a liberal, since it meant you weren’t a hardshell, teetotaling Baptist. At my alma mater upstate, not drinking a beer marked you as a lunatic. Our strongest religious group was the Newman Council, which was more of a social club than anything else; the five people who belonged to the Christian Fellowship were considered freaks. When I first heard Bush talking about God, I thought, "no one I know talks this way." Not a negative judgement, just bafflement. I’ve read pieces arguing that the main political divide in the country is no longer between Democrats and Republicans, or even lefties and righties, but between secular and religious people. Does that argument have any validity? It certainly is one of the strongest dividing lines in politics, whether in determining voting or party preference, or opinions of leading politicians. (The academic favorites of race, class and gender are still very important, too). Both religiosity (extent of religious observance) and religious denomination matter: the more religious you are, the more Republican you’re like to be (if you’re white). And evangelical Protestants are much more heavily Republican and socially conservative than other Christian groups. And, just to be clear, my comments about Bush weren't meant as a criticism. His faith is genuine and is a political plus... posted by Michael at March 5, 2003 | perma-link | (15) comments

Tuesday, March 4, 2003


Modern Architecture and Sexual Anxiety
Michael: Perhaps you recognize the author of the following quote: The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects. It was of course Adolf Loos, Viennese architect and architectural theorist who uttered those words. Through his 1908 article, “Ornament and Crime,” (which is almost certainly the most influential piece of architectural writing ever) this anti-ornamental bias became embedded in Modern architecture and in the buildings we see around us every day. A book which I read recently, “The Evolution of Allure” by George L. Hersey, points out that the actual source of Loos’ concept (which was by no means merely aesthetic) was the writings of Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909.) Lombroso was one of the pieces of flotsam and jetsam tossed up by the tidal wave of Darwinian thought in the latter 19th century. His concern, which was by no means unique to him personally, was with the downside of evolution. If species could evolve and thrive, they could also devolve, degenerate and become extinct. And of course the fossil record of vast numbers of now extinct species suggested that such would almost certainly be humanity’s fate. Unless, of course, humanity followed the eugenic advice of the good Dr. Lombroso, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pavia, professor of forensic medicine, hygiene, psychiatry and criminal anthropology at the University of Turin and director of a mental asylum in Pesaro, Italy. Lombroso’s starting place was the concept put forth in the 1870s by the embryologist Haekel: that just as each embryo recapitulated its evolutionary history in utero, that each human being’s life recapitulated its genetic past. Those (like criminals) with poor breeding which either conserved or advanced their atavistic features would never reach the evolutionary stage where they could participate in civilized life. Fortunately for civilization however, Lombroso was on the case, as Mr. Hersey notes: Thanks to Lombroso’s research these antievolutionary types could easily be spotted…Lombroso’s “atavists,” as he calls them, meaning evolutionary throwbacks, reproduced in their persons the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and of the inferior animals who lie behind them in the evolutionary cladogram. And humanity’s upward climb is not just threatened by the genetic heritage of the “atavistically criminal”—it was also threatened by, well, women. As Mr. Hersey notes: La donna delinquente, first published by Lombroso and G. Ferrero in 1893, deals with sexual selection from a potential husband’s point of view. The authors’ purpose is to establish that women are biologically inferior to men, and this must be taken into account whenever sexual selection, or rejection, occur…[T]he lower in the evolutionary ladder a species is, the less dominant are its males, and vice versa; so that male dominance is, again, the sign of humanity’s more evolved state. The authors also cite Darwin and the French biologist Milne Edwards to the effect that in the higher species the “atavistic force,” that is, the conservative tendency to keep things as they are and avoid progress, is stronger in females than in males. That is... posted by Friedrich at March 4, 2003 | perma-link | (3) comments

Free Reads -- Caitlin Flanagan on Sexless Marriages
Friedrich -- The personalities of some of some young people these days seem as freakish to me as the bodies of weightlifters and silicone babes do -- overdeveloped where pumpy media delights and career dynamism are concerned, yet completely atrophied in the inner-oomph (ie., spiritual, erotic, artistic, just-living, "character") department. What’s going to become of these kids when the pizzaz of youth passes and it comes time to start drawing on deeper resources? Reviewing in The Atlantic some new books about sex and marriage (especially the new two-career marriages), Caitlin Flanagan seems struck by the same question. When I was a teenager, in the 1970s, I was always quite happy to accept a baby-sitting job, because I knew that once I got the kids to sleep, I could read The Joy of Sex for an hour or two; I don't think I baby-sat for a single family that didn't have a copy. There was a sense that young parents of that generation-granted, I grew up in Berkeley, which may have skewed the sample considerably-were still getting it on. Similarly, the characters one encounters in Cheever and Updike, with their cocktails and cigarettes and affairs, seem at once infinitely more dissolute and more adult than most of the young parents I know. Nowadays, American parents of a certain social class seem squeaky clean, high-achieving, flush with cash, relatively exhausted, obsessed with their children, and somehow -- how to pinpoint this? -- undersexed. She’s perceptive and funny, and she’s certainly describing some of what I see going on around me. How about you? The piece is readable here. Best, Michael UPDATE: A little birdie tells me that this piece was already highlighted on Arts & Letters Daily, so I can’t pat myself on the back for having made a pioneering find. Damn.... posted by Michael at March 4, 2003 | perma-link | (3) comments

Monday, March 3, 2003


A Modest Proposal Regarding Taxes
Michael: As we are coming up on tax time, and I’m going to be paying a bundle this year (having stupidly sold some real estate and ostensibly—but not really—made some money on the deal) I thought I’d psych myself up for writing that check by researching the virtues of the progressive income tax on the Internet. Yes, there are websites and documents devoted to this topic (the Internet, as I have often noted, surpasseth all understanding.) One document that caught my roving eye was an essay by Richard A. Musgrave, self-described dean of public finance economists. It had been written presciently in 1989—back when the top tax rate was a lowly 28% —and not only had defended the institution of a progressive income tax but urged that the top rate be raised to 40%. Apparently some sort of black magician, Mr. Musgrave had to wait only four years to see his proposal raising taxes on high income individuals come to pass--and at almost exactly the number he suggested. (Jeeze, kind of makes you glad his fingers didn’t slip and type 50%, or maybe 80%, huh?) In any event, since I’m quite scared of irritating Mr. Musgrave—who, among his other accomplishments, is still with us despite being born in 1910 (more evidence of Satanic powers, in my book)—I want to proceed to gently suggest an amplification of his undoubtedly completely and utterly correct views. He describes the key virtue of income tax as follows: The income tax as a direct and personal tax permits tax liabilities to be adjusted to the taxpayer’s ability to pay. That ability is fairly measured by a comprehensive definition of income…The income tax as a direct tax is highly visible to the taxpayer and hence a steady reminder of the quality of public service that should be provided in return. It thus promotes an efficient public sector, unlike “invisible” product taxes such as a value added tax. Here, while duly noting the godlike genius of Mr. Musgrave, I must ask if he hasn’t skipped past a key point. Does income actually measure ability to pay?. Even if it does, it certainly doesn't measure ability to earn. Perhaps because at the very moment I was reading this I was slacking off, noodling on the Internet, rather than going out and taking that night shift job at McDonalds (which I will undoubtedly need to pay my tax bill this year), I became conscious of the possibility that people may selfishly choose to make less money than they could! I understand that economists pretty much assume that human beings are profit-maximizing entities, and I wonder if that may have led even such cosmically gifted (and evidently foresighted) individuals like Mr. Musgrave astray. I’ve recently read studies that suggest that people’s income correlates positively with the number of hours they work, which would tend to suggest that to the extent that such work is discretionary, some people who could be pulling down heavy bread may be choosing not to do... posted by Friedrich at March 3, 2003 | perma-link | (5) comments

Pic of the Day
Michael: About 20 years ago I stumbled across the work of photographer Darius Kinsey in a beautifully printed paperback edition of his photos. He was a commercial photographer in Washington State (headquartered out of Sedro-Woolley, about 50 miles north of Seattle) in the early years of the 20th century. In addition to all types of conventional subject matter, he made apparently endless trips to the logging camps. Hauling his collection of very large glass plate cameras up into the woods, he took remarkable group portrait shots of the loggers and other workers, taking orders which were then mailed out by his long-suffering wife, who did the darkroom work back at home. According to a website (which you can visit here) Kinsey routinely carried in excess of one hundred pounds of photographic equipment, often traveling with 2 cameras, and occasionally three, which meant a lot of moving around via horse and buggy or pack mules in the woods. By 1902 he was working with a camera utilizing enormous 20” by 24” glass plates. Despite the fact that his lenses were primitive, the size of the resulting negatives allowed him to produce images that combined panoramic views with extraordinary detail. Regrettably, the reproductions of his work I’ve seen since my encounter with that paperback edition (a library book) have not done justice to the beauty and delicacy of the photos. To me, his work has always been special in that it breaks through the tendency of “fine art” photography to focus on creating beautiful photo-objects as an end in itself and manages to show an interest in the real people he was photographing in a real (work) situation. Because of his slow exposures he requires everyone to stop what they’re doing and pose, which his loggers, cooks and railroad crew members do with a mixture of stoicism, dignity and—occasionally—goofiness. (There’s no trickiness about his methodology here; it’s formal portrait photography of people who know they’re posing for a camera.) The ultra-fine detail in many of his prints allows us to take in the astonishingly varied and interesting faces on view in the midst of their work environment. In short, he somehow transcended many of the technical restrictions of photography and made it serve of an extraordinarily humanistic vision of mankind. His subjects aren’t being anatomized by their profession, or condescended to, or used as subjects a visual essay on the heroic working class—they have the dignity of being themselves. Which seems to be all they need. D. Kinsey, Loggers Posing with Big Wheels, date unknown Anyway, here is one of his pictures (and it is a thumbnail--you won't get the real impact without clicking on it); sorry that the enormous finesse and beauty of his original prints doesn’t come through, but maybe you can imagine it. Cheers, Friedrich... posted by Friedrich at March 3, 2003 | perma-link | (1) comments

Saturday, March 1, 2003


Web Folk Art
Friedrich -- Internet folk art, gotta love it. At least I do. * Here you'll find a musical-animal charmer. Be sure to click on the horses. A Blowhardy Award to anyone who manages to refrain from saying "Awww" or "Too cute!" * Brace yourself for some gangsta Hobbits here. * Completely independent of any political preferences I might have, I'm often delighted by the inventiveness of home Photoshoppers. Here are a couple of recent creations (no idea by whom) that made me laugh. Both are pop-ups, so be sure to click on them and enjoy a more fullblown experience. The artistic power of the people, unleashed at last! What do you suppose the Marxists will make of this? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at March 1, 2003 | perma-link | (8) comments

Bad Meditator
Friedrich -- Have you ever been a meditator? I've had stretches when I've done it regularly. I get a lot out of it, though saying that apparently makes me a bad meditator -- a true Zen type doesn't have reasons to meditate, he just meditates. Me, I meditate for more than a few reasons, and probably wouldn't meditate at all if I didn't have them. Nonetheless, I've still managed to have the occasional meditation-bestowed moment of revelation. The latest: that, while I'll certainly never reach enlightenment in this lifetime (because I meditate for reasons), maybe that's OK. Well, anyway, in Michael Blowhard-land, that's the kind of thing I choose to regard as a revelation. Superficial soul that I am, I meditate because, when I do, I'm a little happier, a little more resilient, a little less bugged by ego-nagging; I'm probably a little nicer to other people, too. Those are the main benefits. Another benefit -- much more minor, but one that I still appreciate -- is the way it helps me deal with dead time. A meeting has gotten boring? The subway is taking its time showing up? A friend is late for lunch? Instead of tapping my foot and nursing a feeling of annoyance, I'll try to pay attention to my breath. Which is still, admittedly, a very boring way to spend time. But it's something to do that's presumably worthwhile, and it's not boring/boring. It's interesting/boring. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at March 1, 2003 | perma-link | (4) comments