Arts

UPDATE: See Phil Ford’s response, on “Hot Pants,” at Dial “M”

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While taking in the news that James Brown has died, I’ve been in transit — far away from my CDs, and unable to celebrate his life in fitting manner. It sounds like a joke in really bad taste, but in fact what I most want to hear is the album called Dead on the Heavy Funk 1974-’76. I used to have it on tape but am not sure if it’s still in print. There’s another compilation with a similar title released as part of what sounds like a worthy archival edition covering Brown’s entire career.
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A casual reference to limerick-writing here last week had the effect of unleashing hitherto unexpected powers of versification among some of Crooked Timber’s readership. Seriously, I had no idea.
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My old friend John Palattella is taking over as poetry editor at The Nation. The news brings to mind an image of him surrounded (menaced, even) by large sacks full of envelopes containing manuscripts that are very earnest indeed. The announcement from the editors notes that, as critic, John has shown “sensitivity to form, historical erudition, and a refusal of the provincial dogmas that so often balkanize the small world of poetry.” Quite right, and it will be interesting to see how he translates personal sensibility into editorial policy.

The fact that I am mentioning this has nothing at all to do with the considerable progress this past year on Nikolai!, my epic about Bukharin, composed entirely in limericks.

Awesome …..

(hat tip JD)

The Guardian has a lovely new arts blog that leads off with a piece about the 20 paintings to see in the flesh before you die:
“van Eyck, The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, c.1435, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Caravaggio, The Burial of St. Lucy (1608), Museo di Palazzo Bellomo, Syracuse, Sicily
Rembrandt, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1654), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
San Rock Art, South African National Museum, Cape Town
Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire from Les Lauves (1904 – 6), Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
Michelangelo, Moses (installed 1545), Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome
Leonardo da Vinci, The Adoration of the Magi, (c. 1481), Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Mark Rothko, The Rothko Chapel (paintings 1965-66; chapel opened 1971), Houston, Texas
Vermeer, View of Delft (c.1660-61), Mauritshuis, The Hague
Matthias Grünewald, The Isenheim Altarpiece (c.1509-15), Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, France
Hans Holbein, The Dead Christ, (1521-2), Kunstmuseum, Basel
Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656), Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Funerary Mask of Tutankhamun (1333-1323BC), Egyptian Museum, Cairo
Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Masaccio, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (c.1427), Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.
Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937), Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid
Titian, Danaë (c. 1544-6), Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples
Raphael, The School of Athens (1510-11), Stanza della Signatura, Vatican Palace, Rome
Parthenon Sculptures (“Elgin Marbles”), c. 444 BC, British Museum, London
Henri Matisse, The Dance (1910), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.”

The comments unfairly criticise Jonathan Jones’ selection as too European, but he says himself it’s a subjective list of paintings so serious or affecting as to be worth travelling to see. And he invites readers to suggest their own. It’s an interesting take in the age of mechanical reproduction. The suggestions so far lean heavily on the 20th century, with the odd old master thrown in. I hope the Guardian’s commenters take up Jones’ challenge to broaden the field.

I’ve seen maybe a quarter of Jones’ list (if we allow ‘seen’ to include works I have shuffled past in the Louvre). But I’d still add to it Chagall’s stained glass windows in the Hadassah Hospital in Israel. They are deeply moving and can only be properly experienced by going there. You haven’t experienced Chagall till you’ve experienced him with light coming through (although the Chagall gallery in Nice comes close). Secondly, I’d add Monet’s Nymphéas which have been specially hung in curved rooms at the Orangerie in Paris. A recently attempted visit confirms the Orangerie is still impossible to get into, so this addition to the list is really wishful thinking.

The Guardian’s arts blog also reminds me to post a link to a wonderful stage interview of Gael Garcia Bernal at the NFT a couple of weeks back. The character GGB most identifies with is the sweet but irresponsible Julio from Y Tu Mamá También, but his thoughtful comments about politics and inequality in Mexico show this actor has more to say for himself than your average horny teenager.

I meant to respond a few weeks ago to Matthew Yglesias’s “complaints about Pitchfork Media”:http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2006/09/a_long_time_ago_we_used_to_be/ and never got around to it thanks to work obligations and the nine month old. But since it’s not a time sensitive topic, here goes. [click to continue…]

Tyler Cowen – _Good & Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding_

Available from “Powells”:http://www.powells.com/partner/29956/s?kw=tyler%20cowen%20good%20and%20plenty, from “Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FGood-Plenty-Creative-Successes-American%2Fdp%2F0691120420%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fqid%3D1159196244%2Fref%3Dpd%5Fbbs%5F1%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&tag=henryfarrell-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325.

There are two, quite different libertarian styles of writing about culture that I enjoy. One is the pop-culture variety, which uses libertarian precepts as the framework for a certain kind of flip, contrarian analysis. This can be quite entertaining, but it usually doesn’t bear up well to close examination. Libertarian nostrums all too frequently substitute for actual thought (granted, much leftist opinionating on culture has similar problems). The second style is that of Tyler Cowen. Cowen writes in an entertaining and straightforward manner. He’s enthusiastic and knowledgeable about both high and low culture. But the fun of his arguments is that they’re serious, interesting, and properly thought through. If they’re hard to fit into conventional frameworks of debate, they aren’t self-consciously contrarian either. Instead, they lead in their own directions, and Cowen isn’t afraid to follow them, even if they lead to unexpected destinations.
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Over the weekend, Political Theory Daily Review linked to a recent essay on the Gang of Four. (The band, that is. Not the group in power in China thirty years ago this month, and in jail thirty years ago next month.) The title indicated it would treat the band’s work as Marxist cultural theory. Not in terms of, mind you, but as. Good call: The Gang’s lyrics were always very explicit about reification, class consciousness, and whatnot. No ex post facto Zizekian-epigone hijinks necessary, thank you very much. Makes its own gravy! A critic who understood that from the start might go far.

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When I was first told by my wife about this story, I expected it would turn out to be an Internet factoid, probably much-circulated, melding the old stories of paintings hung upside down, works painted by ducks and hailed as masterpieces, and so on. But the Independent’s account gives chapter and verse. The Royal Academy, having received a sculpture by one David Hensel with the plinth packed separately, decided to reject the sculpture and exhibit the plinth.

An interesting short film on Barbie, Jews, identity and about a million other topics. It is so packed with material – some of which seems extremely random – that it is hard to know where to even start with any commentary. See what you think.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that BBC7 could have been devised just for me; no news, no music, no sport, no ads, just a lower-middle-brow selection of comedy and drama from the radio archives. I tape the classic comedies for the kids (ISIRTA, The Goons, and, a bit worryingly, Steptoe and Son, are top of the pops in our house, on which more another time) and listen to the dramas myself. The best part of the station finding its feet has been hearing the announcers grow into their material. Initially only Jim Lee seemed to know and love the classic shows (I gather he is considered eccentric for being a Clitheroe Kid enthusiast; I can’t imagine why). My favourite announcer was openly bemused — even a little mocking — when she first started presenting the Paul Temple shows, and it has been a lot of fun hearing her come to love them, a love which is sweetly on display in this interview with Peter Coke (pronounced Cook) who played Temple in the 50’s and 60’s. At 92 Coke is stunningly energetic and on the ball — I caught him misnaming Coronation Scot, but he was otherwise enviously youthful, and obviously delighted to have such a young fan. Example of Coke’s amazing shellwork here (John Q might want to take note); a picture of the great man himself here if you scroll down the page a bit (he was born the same year as Ted Grant!).

BTW, I’ve probably listened to all but one of the extant Paul Temple adventures at least 3 times each, having been introduced to them not by the BBC but by KCRW in the late 1980s. I have only found a couple of the books, neither of which I could struggle through; Durbridge might have been one of our greatest radio writers but it doesn’t work on the page. The quality gap between the books and the radio show is comparable only with the gap between Colin Dexter’s novels and the Morse series.

Update: after some trawling I thought I’d throw in this link to prove that others are nerdier about Paul Temple than I am.

Any of you who wonder what we are going on about when we talk about the Eurovision Song Contest, can spend an hour learning about its complete history here (complete with an interview with the marvelous Dana).

I used to be homesick all the time. Now, it is only when I realise that I cannot watch the greatest living Irishman presenting Eurovision on TV.

I had tickets to “Welsh National Opera”:http://www.wno.org.uk/ ‘s production of “The Flying Dutchman”:http://www.wno.org.uk/what.opera.106.html last night (my second trip in a week, having seen “Figaro”:http://www.wno.org.uk/what.opera.107.html on Wednesday). We Bristolians had been feeling slightly sore, since “Bryn Terfel”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/music/sites/brynterfel/ had sung the lead in Cardiff but had been replaced by Robert Hayward for later dates on the tour. Just before the was due to rise there was an announcement: Hayward was unwell and couldn’t sing. So now we get the third choice….? Not a bit of it! They had located Terfel on a golf course in North Wales that afternoon, put him in a car and rushed him down the M6/M5! Apparently it was touch and go whether he would make it in time. When the announcement was made the audience went wild (which made me feel extra sorry for poor Hayward). Terfel was, naturally, simply fantastic. A great singer with a tremendous presence. And a great guy … thanks for stepping in.

Here’s a lovely little video that, near as I can tell, has not gone nearly so viral as it deserves. "Superman lay broken … La-da-da-da-Daa."

The naive beauty of it – part childcult, part cynicism about fight scenes – is what Daniel Clowes is getting at, I guess, in this interview.

As a kid, I was really attracted to superheroes, but I never read the comics. I’d buy every single comic, and I had some connection to it, but I didn’t like them, really. I remember talking to my other friends who read superhero comics, and they liked them on such a different level than I did. They were like, “Yeah, when Iron Man fights the guy, and punches him in the face, it’s so awesome!” But it had this pop-art iconographic quality to me that was really charming, and I just loved that aspect of it. I always gravitated towards that part of it, and I could never quite get past that, and that’s what I was going for. I wanted to create a story that lived up to the iconography, but also had something else going on.

If you don’t know who Clowes is, you should. (Go read wikipedia or something.)
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