March 07, 2005

An excellent suggestion

Posted by Chris

Mad Melanie Phillips has started using the subject-line “Weimar Broadcasting Corporation” for her rants against the BBC. I have to say, it sounds rather a good idea. How about these guys for a new board of governors:

Weimar is one of the great cultural sites of Europe, since it was the home to such luminaries as Bach, Goethe, Schiller, and Herder. It has been a site of pilgrimage for the German intelligentsia since Goethe first moved to Weimar in the late 18th century. The tombs of Goethe, Schiller, and Nietzsche may be found in the city, as may the archives of Goethe and Schiller.

And we’d still be able to turn over to Channel 4 for Wifeswap …..

January 22, 2005

Cupla Focal

Posted by Henry

I saw Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby last night - an extraordinary, savage little film - but there was one element that left me puzzled. When I read the Washington Post’s review of the film a couple of weeks ago, I’d been amused by the reviewer’s description of Eastwood’s character, Frankie, as someone with ‘hidden depths,’ who “reads Yeats in Gaelic.” I’d assumed that this was a mistake made by the reviewer - Yeats didn’t write in the Irish language, and if my memory is correct, his ability even to read in the language was scanty to non-existent (unlike his friend, Lady Gregory, whose translations of Irish myths Yeats relied upon). But the reviewer was correct - the film does depict Frankie as reading what seems to be an Irish language book of poetry, including Yeat’s “The Lake-Isle of Innisfree.” The film leaves the viewer with the very strong impression that the Irish language version of the poem is the original - Frankie starts reading it in Irish, and then gives the English language version for the benefit of his non Irish speaking audience. I’d put this down to traditional Hollywood ignorance except that Eastwood is a careful film maker, and the meaning of another Irish phrase is at the heart of the film. So what’s going on? A little bit of dramatic license (the most probable explanation - but a bit disappointing)? Or is Frankie a little bit of a fraud (certainly when he reads the Irish language aloud, it’s almost unrecognizable - he doesn’t know how to pronounce it at all)? Or is there something else going on entirely?

Update: some spoilers in the comments thread below.

December 28, 2004

Death of Susan Sontag

Posted by Henry

Susan Sontag is dead from leukaemia; the New York Times has an obituary here.

August 27, 2004

Taking out the trash

Posted by Chris

A cleaner at Tate Britain has taken a work of art that takes the form of a bag of rubbish, and thrown it away.

August 24, 2004

Blackwell

Posted by Chris

greylake.jpg

This is a colour photograph of Lake Windermere last Thursday afternoon! Fortunately there were other things to do and among them was a visit to Blackwell , the masterpiece of Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott. It is a wonderful example of the Arts and Crafts Style, brilliantly conceived and stunningly decorated. It also incorporates work by other leading designers of the period, most notably William de Morgan. It is, I think, worth a very long drive to visit. We also caught the Sickert and Freud exhibitions at Abbot House in Kendal before a much sunnier trip up to Scotland. Normal blogging will resume shortly.

July 13, 2004

The Right Time

Posted by Harry

The tragic aspect of my migration to the US is this. I was born middle-aged, in a country where middle-age was considered something of an achievement. I used to look forward to the time when I’d be able to complain with my peers abut the state of today’s youth, and not be complaining about them. But then, at 22, I moved to a country in which nobody is middle-aged — even old people pretend to be young, until they are so doolally that the game is up. And I only truly settled in this country around the time that my chronological age caught up with my natural inclinations. So here I am, a genuinely middle aged in a culture that doesn’t even recognise, let alone celebrate, the phenomenon.

Here’s a show about what is now regarded as middle-age but used to be old age. I especially recommend it to Ophelia Benson, and invite private emails from anyone, including her, to explain why I particularly recommend it to her. The prize is….

the satisfaction of knowing that you are a CT cognoscentus/a. Sorry.

July 06, 2004

Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index

Posted by Chris

The latest parlour game , via both Norm and Chris Brooke .

1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? Astaire.
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? Gatsby
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington? Ellington, by far.
4. Cats or dogs? Cats and I get on so much better.
5. Matisse or Picasso? Picasso, by a long long way.
6. Yeats or Eliot? Yeats, definitely.
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? A tie.
8. Flannery O’Connor or John Updike? Don’t know O’Connor …
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? Casablanca.
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning? Pollock.
11. The Who or the Stones? The Stones - no question.
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath? I find I have more and more in common with gloomy dirty old men…
13. Trollope or Dickens? Dickens.
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald? Has to be Billie.
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy? A real divider of people this one: Dostoyevsky!
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair? The End of the Affair.
17. George Balanchine or Martha Graham? Pass.
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? Hamburgers, but either with enough mustard.
19. Letterman or Leno? Pass
20. Wilco or Cat Power? Pass
21. Verdi or Wagner? Wagner, by a country mile.
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? Kelly.
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash? Cash.
24. Kingsley or Martin Amis? I was going to go for Kingsley on the same basis as Larkin, but the way Martin’s going, I have to declare a tie.
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando? Brando.
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp? Pass.
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt? Vermeer.
28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin? Tchaikovsky, for the Pathetique.
29. Red wine or white? Rouge.
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde? Come on! Oscar of course.
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? Haven’t seen GPB, found the film annoying after the book.
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev? Shostakovich! The 8th String Quartet gets onto my desert island some days.
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov or Rudolf Nureyev? Don’t know enough here.
34. Constable or Turner? Turner.
35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo? Pass.
36. Comedy or tragedy? Hard, but in Shakespeare, the latter, certainly.
37. Fall or spring? Spring.
38. Manet or Monet? Monet. In reproductions, Manet, but the distance between a reproduction of a Monet and the real thing is so huge.
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons? Sopranos.
40. Rodgers and Hart or Gershwin and Gershwin? Gershwins.
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James? Conrad.
42. Sunset or sunrise? Sunset.
43. Johnny Mercer or Cole Porter? Porter.
44. Mac or PC? I’ve never owned a Mac, though I’ve coveted them. But honesty has to say PC, for now.
45. New York or Los Angeles? New York (though I’ve never visited LA).
46. Partisan Review or Horizon? Partisan.
47. Stax or Motown? Stax
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin? Van Gogh.
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello? Elvis by a mile.
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? Depends on the blog ….
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? Olivier.
52. Only the Lonely or Songs for Swingin’ Lovers? Pass.
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde? Pass.
54. Ghost World or Election? Pass.
55. Minimalism or conceptual art? Minimalism.
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny? Bugs.
57. Modernism or postmodernism? Modernism, of course.
58. Batman or Spider-Man? Batman.
59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams? Pass.
60. Johnson or Boswell? Johnson, especially if played by Robbie Coltrane.
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? Come on! Gimme a break. There’s only one winner here: JA.
62. The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show? Anything’s better than DVD.
63. An Eames chair or a Noguchi table? Like Eames, don’t know Noguchi.
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity? DI.
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni? Depends on my mood, probably Figaro though.
66. Blue or green? Blue.
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It? AYLI
68. Ballet or opera? Opera!
69. Film or live theater? Film, usually.
70. Acoustic or electric? If Dylan then electric.
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo? Really really hard. Saw NBNW most recently and was really knocked out by it, but a viewing of Vertigo might cause a switch.
72. Sargent or Whistler? Whistler.
73. V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera? Naipaul.
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma? Pass.
75. Sushi, yes or no? Yes.
76. The New Yorker under Ross or Shawn? DK.
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee? Williams.
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove? Portrait.
79. Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham? Pass.
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe? Mies, I think.
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones? Pass.
82. Watercolor or pastel? Watercolour.
83. Bus or subway? Subway.
84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg? Schoenberg (early post-Wagnerian S though).
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter? Smooth.
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser? Pass.
87. Schubert or Mozart? Schubert.
88. The Fifties or the Twenties? 20s.
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick? Moby Dick.
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce? Mann.
91. Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins? Hawkins.
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? Whitman.
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? Lincoln.
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann? Pass.
95. Italian or French cooking? Italian.
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord? Piano!
97. Anchovies, yes or no? Yes yes yes.
98. Short novels or long ones? Some short ones can be awfully long and some long ones can be very short.
99. Swing or bebop? Bebop.
100. “The Last Judgment” or “The Last Supper”? Which?

June 03, 2004

Obscenity

Posted by Chris

Check out the speech made by art critic Robert Hughes at Burlington House last night, and note the following judgment:

I don’t want to disparage dealers, collectors or museum directors, by the way. But I don’t think there is any doubt that the present commercialisation of the art world, at its top end, is a cultural obscenity. When you have the super-rich paying $104m for an immature Rose Period Picasso - close to the GNP of some Caribbean or African states - something is very rotten. Such gestures do no honour to art: they debase it by making the desire for it pathological. As Picasso’s biographer John Richardson said to a reporter on that night of embarrassment at Sotheby’s, no painting is worth a hundred million dollars.

I wonder what they’ll make of that over at Marginal Revolution ?

May 31, 2004

The perils of knowledge

Posted by Chris

On Saturday night we went to a performance of Sheridan’s The Rivals at Bristol’s Old Vic , which has some claim to being the oldest working theatre in Britain (a claim that is carefully qualified to exlude some rivals, though). A very enjoyable evening, complete with a reminder that anxieties about the corrupting effects of new media (internet, the telephone etc) had been fully awakened by the 18th century. Libraries were identified as the cause of moral decline in this exchange between Mrs Malaprop and Sir Anthony Absolute:

Mrs. Mal. There’s a little intricate hussy for you!

Sir Anth. It is not to be wondered at, ma’am,—all this is the natural consequence of teaching girls to read. Had I a thousand daughters, by Heaven! I’d as soon have them taught the black art as their alphabet!

Mrs. Mal. Nay, nay, Sir Anthony, you are an absolute misanthropy.

Sir Anth. In my way hither, Mrs. Malaprop, I observed your niece’s maid coming forth from a circulating library!—She had a book in each hand—they were half-bound volumes, with marble covers!—From that moment I guessed how full of duty I should see her mistress!

Mrs. Mal. Those are vile places, indeed!

Sir Anth. Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge! It blossoms through the year!—And depend on it, Mrs. Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last.

March 23, 2004

Kitsch rubbish

Posted by Chris

The Guardian leader today is about Jack Vettriano “the self-taught Scottish painter of melancholily erotic encounters laced with a subliminal narratives”. Vettriano was the subject of an over-respectful treatment by Melvyn Bragg on British TV the other day. Pointing out the Mr V is now very rich (£500,000) and that the public buys posters of his work in large numbers, the leader-writer asks:

Why is the most popular artist in Britain still shunned by its publicly funded galleries?

To which the answer is, simply and obviously, that his work is kitsch rubbish and that the curators of galleries have an elite function of educating the public and shouldn’t pander to their prejudices. (On this anti-democratic note, I’m off to New York for a week, where I’m sure that neither the Metropolitan nor MOMA have sunk so low as to be hanging Vettriano.)

March 22, 2004

Dr. Who

Posted by Harry

Not bad. Not my choice though.

March 21, 2004

Unfortunate symbol

Posted by Chris

Dan Dennett has an example somewhere where he imagines that someone discovers the score of a hitherto lost Bach cantata. But by an unfortunate co-incidence, the first few notes are identical to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” thus preventing us from ever having the experience eighteenth-century Leipzigers had of the music. Pauline and I have an interest in Art Nouveau, and, surfing ebay to see what there was for sale, she stumbled on an exquisite brooch designed by Charles Horner of Chester in 1895 or 6. From the description:

The brooch is decorated with a flyfot symbol. In Western traditions, the flyfots arms each represent one of the four elements, and the extention symbolizes that element in motion; thus representing life and movement. It was also used by the Maya, Navajo, Jains and Buddhists. In Scandinavia mythology it represents Thor’s hammer.

Did you know what a flyfot is? No, neither did I.

March 02, 2004

Passion(ate?) discussion

Posted by Eszter

There will be a panel discussion this afternoon at Princeton (4:30pm EST) about the Passion movie (see live Webcast). My good friend, the very smart Steven Tepper will be on the panel as will some other interesting Princeton academics plus representatives of national Catholic and Jewish organizations. Steve studies controversies over art and culture so it should be interesting to hear his take on the reactions to this movie.

February 28, 2004

Something new at the Oscars

Posted by Eszter

I don’t usually watch the Oscars but I hope to tune in this weekend. A friend of mine, a frequent visitor of CT - comments by “laura” - will be performing at the event.

So how does a Sociology PhD student make it to the Oscars? Certainly not by planning for it. Laura’s dissertation is on Sacred Harp singing. It’s not something most of us know anything about. I’ve learned from her that it’s an a capella four-part harmony style that’s been a living tradition in the South for over 150 years and has undergone something of a folk revival in the Northeast, Midwest, and West coast over the past 20-30 years. It is participatory singing, not usually performed in this way so the Oscar performance will be a bit artificial. But anything is possible in Hollywood, as we know.

Laura is studying communities that form around Sacred Harp singing so she has become quite connected with people who are involved in these communities. The movie Cold Mountain featured some Sacred Harp songs. It turns out that those songs were the hit of the movie’s soundtrack. And although they are not eligible to be nominated in the song category because they are old songs not “original song” (?), a Sacred Harp song is attached to the song sung by Alison Krauss that has been nominated. So that’s where a group of Sacred Harp singers, including Laura, will be participating in the Oscars. It should be about an hour into the show.

February 25, 2004

Pseudopodium: putting the 'great' back into 'great life if you don't weaken'

Posted by John Holbo

With great power comes a little responsibility. As guest timberwossname, I inform you the best lit/film/culture online journal is Pseudopodium - formerly, Bellona Times. I wandered in one night by accident, while making my drunken way home. Well, it felt more like I fell through the roof, as Indiana Jones might find himself suddenly amongst the treasures of an ancient temple. For, you see, it’s one of those serially updated personal sites/online journals that goes back so far that it’s … older than blogging. Damn, you think, running a fingertrack through the dusty HTML. Place is old. 1999; 1997, even. Crap, some of this stuff was written in 1990. Frankly, it spooked me how good - smart and winning and heartfelt and erudite. Hazlitt and Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray and Ruskin. I felt about uncertainly in this marvelous terrain, then with increasing delight; finally I was cramming my pockets with treasure to call my own ever after. I have returned regularly and very lately entered into edifying correspondence with its ten-times admirable demiurge, Ray Davis.

Now go and don’t come back until you have read for an hour. I could tell you which are my favorites, but I want you to have your own, that you found yourself.

Here’s the song that gave my title. Hope Ray doesn’t mind me provoking you all to strain his bandwidth.

UPDATE: Just to explain the joke, the connection between the two is, via the world, ‘with a kick to it’.

February 13, 2004

You Old Romantic, Me

Posted by Kieran

Until this afternoon, a Google search for the phrase ‘Valentine Poem’ promptly returned this elegaic masterpiece high on the first page of results. (I know this because its been the most popular search referrer to my website for each of the past ten days.) Written last year by one of the leading poetic talents of his generation, I think it’s a lot better than the crap that appears to have displaced it — but whoever said democracy makes the best choices?

January 23, 2004

Noise and nonsense

Posted by Chris

The “Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy” is organizing a conference with the nonsense title of NOISETHEORYNOISE#1 although NONSENSETHEORYNONSENSE might be more appropriate. The “theme” of the conference is described thus:

Noise is an unprecedented harbinger of aesthetic radicality: no-one yet knows what it is or what it means. This non-significance is its strength rather than its weakness. Noise is ‘non-music’ not because it negates music but because it affirms a previously unimaginable continuum of sonic intensities in which music becomes incorporated as a mere material.

And further elaborations include:

Where a ‘new aestheticism’ might present itself as a resistance to pragmatic instrumentality, postmodern academicism continues to adopt theory as ballast: works are mere pretexts for ostentatious displays of theoretical chic. But in what way could noise change the conditions of theoretical possibility, not to say intelligibility or even sensibility?

In what way indeed? Explanations on a postcard please …. (or in comments).

January 01, 2004

The Weather Project

Posted by Chris

We don’t often have photographs on Crooked Timber, but I though it worth making an exception in this case. I spent the afternoon at London’s Tate Modern where an installation by Olafur Eliasson entitles The Weather Project currently dominates the Turbine Hall through which one enters the gallery. The “sun” bathes everyone in yellow light, figures are reflected in mirrors on the ceiling and steam jets create an atmosphere of shimmering mystery appropriate for an operatic stage set. It is as if we are in the dying days of an aged planet. Go and see it if you can.


sun.jpg

December 28, 2003

Sixty years in two hours

Posted by Eszter

I saw a play last night (in Budapest) in which no one said anything. Everything was conveyed through music and dancing. It wasn’t a musical as none of the actors sang at all. They moved and danced. The set changed a bit, but most events took place in a café. The play portrayed Hungary’s history from the 1930s through the 1990s. [If you’re getting sick of Hungary-related writing this week, don’t give up on this post just yet, I’m aiming at something hopefully with a bit more general appeal.:)]

I thought it was fascinating to watch what events of those 60 years the writer decided to portray and what music was matched with them. I think it’s an interesting exercise to pick a country whose (recent) history you know fairly well and see what events you may choose to portray it and with what music and dances.

This play had the following (I may be missing a couple) as per my interpretation of the dances and music:

1930s – start of the play with much good-spirited dancing
early 1940s – half the dancers suddenly appear with yellow stars, they are taken away and gassed
1945 – end-of-the-war celebrations then suddenly many men are taken away by the Russians for labor
1956 – uprising, which is followed by tanks and squelching of the uprising; many emigrate
1958/9 – a mother receives word that her son was killed (young people who were underage in 1956 were held in jail until old enough to be killed a few years later)
1960s – influence of the West - this was the only time in the play the music playing was not in Hungarian, rather it was in English (Rock Around the Clock and The Beatles’ Michele); there is also much euphoria over a Coca-Cola bottle
1980s – young people dressed in jeans organizing secretly get hauled away by the police
1990s – Hungarian pop/rap to signal the many changes (political, cultural) and a young man gets beaten up (I think this was meant as sign of some general level of chaos and rise of racism and xenophobia)

As I think about it, I’m not sure what else I would have included. I thought the play did quite a good job of capturing a ton of history in just two short hours. The original play, by the way, is French from Theatre du Campagnol and was directed by Jean-Claude Penchenat. I wonder what events were portrayed in that one and with what music.

September 11, 2003

Live from New York

Posted by Ted

I’ve posted this before, but indulge me (or skip it). This is the monologue from the Late Show with David Letterman on September 17, 2001, his first night back on the air after September 11th.

(cold opening and applause)

Thank you very much.

Welcome to the Late Show. This is our first show on the air since New York and Washington were attacked, and I need to ask your patience and indulgence here because I want to say a few things, and believe me, sadly, I’m not going to be saying anything new, and in the past week others have said what I will be saying here tonight far more eloquently than I’m equipped to do.

But, if we are going to continue to do shows, I just need to hear myself talk for a couple of minutes, and so that’s what I’m going to do here.

It’s terribly sad here in New York City. We’ve lost five thousand fellow New Yorkers, and you can feel it. You can feel it. You can see it. It’s terribly sad. Terribly, terribly sad. And watching all of this, I wasn’t sure that I should be doing a television show, because for twenty years we’ve been in the city, making fun of everything, making fun of the city, making fun of my hair, making fun of Paul… well…

So, to come to this circumstance that is so desperately sad, I don’t trust my judgment in matters like this, but I’ll tell you the reason that I am doing a show and the reason I am back to work is because of Mayor Giuliani.

Very early on, after the attack, and how strange does it sound to invoke that phrase, “after the attack?”, Mayor Giuliani encouraged us — and here lately implored us — to go back to our lives, go on living, continue trying to make New York City the place that it should be. And because of him, I’m here tonight.

And I just want to say one other thing about Mayor Giuliani: As this began, and if you were like me, and in many respects, God, I hope you’re not. But in this one small measure, if you’re like me, and you’re watching and you’re confused and depressed and irritated and angry and full of grief, and you don’t know how to behave and you’re not sure what to do and you don’t really… because we’ve never been through this before… all you had to do at any moment was watch the Mayor. Watch how this guy behaved. Watch how this guy conducted himself. Watch what this guy did. Listen to what this guy said. Rudolph Giuliani is the personification of courage.

(applause)

And it’s very simple… there is only one requirement for any of us, and that is to be courageous, because courage, as you might know, defines all other human behavior. And I believe, because I’ve done a little of this myself, pretending to be courageous is just as good as the real thing. He’s an amazing man, and far, far better than we could have hoped for. To run the city in the midst of this obscene chaos and attack, and also demonstrate human dignity… my God… who can do that? That’s a pretty short list.

The twenty years we’ve been here in New York City, we’ve worked closely with police officers and the fire fighters and…

(applause)

…and fortunately, most of us don’t really have to think too much about what these men and women do on a daily basis, and the phrase New York’s finest and New York’s bravest, you know, did it mean anything to us personally, firsthand? Well, maybe, hopefully, but probably not. But boy, it means something now, doesn’t it? They put themselves in harm’s way to protect people like us, and the men and women, the fire fighters and the police department who are lost are going to be missed by this city for a very, very long time. And I, and my hope for myself and everybody else, not only in New York but everywhere, is that we never, ever take these people for granted… absolutely never take them for granted.

(applause)

I just want to go through this, and again, forgive me if this is more for me than it is for people watching, I’m sorry, but uh, I just, I have to go through this, I’m…

The reason we were attacked, the reason these people are dead, these people are missing and dead, and they weren’t doing anything wrong, they were living their lives, they were going to work, they were traveling, they were doing what they normally do. As I understand it (and my understanding of this is vague at best), another smaller group of people stole some airplanes and crashed them into buildings. And we’re told that they were zealots, fueled by religious fervor… religious fervor. And if you live to be a thousand years old, will that make any sense to you? Will that make any Goddamned sense? Whew.

I’ll tell you about a thing that happened last night. There’s a town in Montana by the name of Choteau. It’s about a hundred miles south of the Canadian border. And I know a little something about this town. It’s 1,600 people. 1,600 people. And it’s an ag-business community, which means farming and ranching. And Montana’s been in the middle of a drought for… I don’t know… three years? And if you’ve got no rain, you can’t grow anything. And if you can’t grow anything, you can’t farm, and if you can’t grow anything, you can’t ranch, because the cattle don’t have anything to eat, and that’s the way life is in a small town. 1,600 people.

Last night at the high school auditorium in Choteau, Montana, they had a rally, home of the Bulldogs, by the way… they had a rally for New York City. And not just a rally for New York City, but a rally to raise money… to raise money for New York City. And if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the… the spirit of the United States, then I can’t help you. I’m sorry.

(applause)

And I have one more thing to say, and then, thank God, Regis is here, so we have something to make fun of.

If you didn’t believe it before, and it’s easy to understand how you might have been skeptical on this point, if you didn’t believe it before, you can absolutely believe it now… New York City is the greatest city in the world.

(lengthy applause)

We’re going to try and feel our way through this, and we’ll just see how it goes… take it a day at a time. We’re lucky enough tonight to have two fantastic representatives of this town, Dan Rather and Regis Philbin, and we’ll be right back.

(to commercial)

August 11, 2003

Ars brevis

Posted by Henry

Tyler Cowen has a nice, short piece on art and Western civilization, which gently takes a forthcoming Charles Murray book to task. The Murray book, by Cowen’s account, concludes that Western civilization has an overwhelming advantage over its non Western equivalents in music and the arts. As Cowen says, it’s hard to sustain this argument with great confidence, because the surviving evidence is grossly skewed. Since many forms of non-Western art haven’t survived, or went unrecorded until very recently, we can’t say with any degree of certainty that, say, John Dowland was any better than his Gabonese equivalents.

But there’s a second issue, which is very nearly as important - a version of what anthropologists refer to as Galton’s problem. The quick and dirty version of Galton’s argument is that there’s something very iffy about the assumption that cultures are self-referential, coherent wholes, which are absolutely isolated from each other. Western art didn’t evolve in isolation from its non-Western equivalents : at crucial points in its history, encounters with non-Western art drove it in new directions. Peter Conrad’s definitive study of 20th century art, Modern Times, Modern Places has an entire chapter on how African art deeply influenced various modern greats. Conrad claims, and I have no reason to doubt him, that it’s simply impossible to understand Picasso without taking account of the influence of African mask art from Congo and the Gabon.

August 02, 2003

Art, doodling, whatever

Posted by Chris

Thanks to Michael Blowhard I’ve just wasted loads of time at Yugo Nakamura’s site. Is it art? I’ve no idea, but it is certainly compulsive and fun (broadband connection needed).

August 01, 2003

The end of the single

Posted by Chris

I’m going to get a reputation as CT’s resident wistful nostalgic if I’m not careful (what with my posts on “real” sausages and what have you). Still I couldn’t help getting a Proustian rush on reading Paul Morley’s funeral oration for the single in today’s Guardian:

The first single I ever bought was Ride a White Swan by T Rex. It was the first thing I had ever got for myself that wasn’t a toy or a comic. I was 13 years old and it was like buying a piece of magic. It was as if I could begin to understand what I was living for. I would slide the mysterious black disc out of its paper sleeve. I would put it with unlikely care on to a soft rubbery turntable. I would nervously drop the needle on to the edge of the disc and hear the tantalising crackle and pop that seemed to last an eternity before Marc Bolan, as if from space, as if for me only, began singing his electric folk song that seemed to be all about swans, sex and the strangeness and tender brilliance of being a teenager.

July 25, 2003

Orwell on food technology and modernity

Posted by Chris

I posted a pointed to to a moderately pro-GM report the other day. But in the comments section I got pretty revolted by the suggestion that one day we might synthesize all our food. As I said there, I want my potatoes from the earth and my apples from a tree. I don’t think there’s anything especially “green” about feeling this and I’m somewhat embarassed, as someone who is supposed to live by good arguments, by how hard I find it to get beyond the raw data of feeling, intuition and emotion when I try to think about what is of value.

The best I can do, is, I think to notice how much of that is of value in human life has to do with an engagement with the natural world and a recognition of the uniqueness and (sorry about this word) the ‘otherness’ of the world beyond the human. I’m not just thinking about raw untamed nature here (Lear on the heath) but also about the way in which an artist has to work with the natural properties of pigments, a gardener has to work with plants and their distinctive characteristics, and a cook has to work with ingredients. Architects too have to work with materials, with stone, wood and so on.

Contrast this with an attitude that sees the non-human world as merely an instrument for or an obstacle to the realization of human designs and intentions. On this view what is out there has no intrinsic value that we ought to respond to and respect. (And perhaps when we think that it does, we are just engaged in a projection of our concerns onto the world.)

As I’ve suggested, I’m not really sure how to think in this area (is this ethics, aesthetics or what?). And I’m alive to the danger that I’m running together a whole range of different issues that ought, properly, to be distinguished from one another. While worrying about all this, Orwell came into my head. I’m thinking partly of the Orwell of The Road to Wigan Pier who is revolted at technology-freak socialists of his day and who observes that the tendency of of modern development is to turn us all into brains on the end of wires. But a famous passage from Coming Up for Air also came to mind: the one where Bowling bites into a sausage:

The frankfurter had a rubber skin, of course, and my temporary teeth weren’t much of a fit. I had to do a kind of sawing movement before I could get my teeth through the skin. And then suddenly—pop! The thing burst in my mouth like a rotten pear. A sort of horrible soft stuff was oozing all over my tongue. But the taste! For a moment I just couldn’t believe it. Then I rolled my tongue round it again and had another try. It was FISH! A sausage, a thing calling itself a frankfurter, filled with fish! I got up and walked straight out without touching my coffee. God knows what that might have tasted of.

Outside the newsboy shoved the Standard into my face and yelled, ‘Legs! ‘Orrible revelations! All the winners! Legs! Legs!’ I was still rolling the stuff round my tongue, wondering where I could spit it out. I remembered a bit I’d read in the paper somewhere about these food-factories in Germany where everything’s made out of something else. Ersatz, they call it. I remembered reading that THEY were making sausages out of fish, and fish, no doubt, out of something different. It gave me the feeling that I’d bitten into the modern world and discovered what it was really made of. That’s the way we’re going nowadays. Everything slick and streamlined, everything made out of something else. Celluloid, rubber, chromium-steel everywhere, arc-lamps blazing all night, glass roofs over your head, radios all playing the same tune, no vegetation left, everything cemented over, mock-turtles grazing under the neutral fruit-trees. But when you come down to brass tacks and get your teeth into something solid, a sausage for instance, that’s what you get. Rotten fish in a rubber skin. Bombs of filth bursting inside your mouth.

The attitudes Orwell’s character is repelled by are now found less on the left and more in parts of the right (especially the libertarian right). TechCentralStation is a good place to observe them. But this clearly isn’t a left-right thing. Nor is it straightforwardly a matter of modernism versus anti-modernism. I also want to be alive to and to respond to the excitement and fluidity of the modern world - driven, in parts by markets and technological developement. Nevertheless, Orwell (together here with Rousseau, and Wordsworth, and …) is onto something important, I just wish I could better articulate exactly what it is.

July 23, 2003

How do they do that!

Posted by Chris

I took the day off today for a trip to London (free lift from a mate who is a sales rep). The main thing I wanted to do was to go to the National Gallery. I’d been bowled over by a Bellini triptych I’d seen in the church of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice recently and planned to look through the Bellinis in the Sainsbury Wing with the aid of the little MP3-player guide they loan you these days. Very useful, except when the number displayed next to the painting fails to correspond with the commentary (the gallery’s only Giotto linked to a commentary on Duccio). Anyway, my attention was drawn to something I’d never noticed before: a number of paintings, originally painted on wood panels, had been transferred at some time in their history to canvas, and in one case to a “synthetic panel”. Probably this is just everyday stuff for art conservators, but it struck me that it was amazing that a whole painting could be lifted off the surface on which it was originally painted and transferred to a new one. How?