Modern Kicks

long fallen wide

To read C.V. Wedgwood on The Thirty Years War and reflect that she herself had not reached the age of thirty when she completed her astonishing, magisterial volume it is to realize exactly how large a distance separates oneself from greatness.  "Humbling" does not begin to do justice to the feeling.

seen at the mfa

Just inside the Foster Gallery exhibition Contemporary Outlook: Seeing Songs, a Herb Ritts photograph of Michael Jackson.  At the top of the label next to it: "IN MEMORIAM."  'Cause his death, you know, hit the MFA right here.

(That was my favorite moment, as the Italians singing Madonna was my least.  But the exhibit only made me wish I had seen Visual Music a few years back, and that the catalog for it was not out of print.)

UPDATE:  Other museums looking to pay tribute, alert your acquisition committee now.

just so

Culturegrrl gets this exactly right:

It's unthinkable that Boston's premier newspaper could die at the hands of New York's premier paper. Having just heard the NY Times' cultural news editor, Sam Sifton, exult that his paper's financial troubles had not caused any decrease in the space allotted to the arts, and having read Times assistant managing editor Richard Berke's recent boast that the paper possessed sufficient resources to bankroll art critic Michael Kimmelman's farflung peregrinations, I find the Globe's global plight even harder to comprehend.

I'm just trying to get back into this game, and as part of that I've been trying not to dwell on the depressing topics that haven't been helping so much lately.  But perhaps that's wrong, and I should dwell, because to me the thought of Boston without the Globe is like Boston without the Red Line.

the rose

You know, when I sit at the computer to do a last check of email and the headlines before getting ready for bed, I'm not expecting to be punched in the stomach (full story, for the moment, here.)  These days, though, perhaps I should be.  I'm sure in the days to come, starting tomorrow, there will be the usual accounts of ethical and legal wrangling, denunciations and expressions of protest.  And those are all to be expected, even necessary, and perhaps might even do some good.  Perhaps I'll even engage in a bit of them myself.  Right now, though, I'm just numb--numb, and tired of feeling like things are just going to keep getting worse.

i can has different dream?

Keeping Informed in D.C.

Each morning when I break my buttered toast
Across the columns of the Morning Post,
I am astounded by the ways in which
Mankind has managed once again to bitch
Things up to a degree that yesterday
Had looked impossible.  Not far away
From dreams of mine, I read this dream of theirs,
And think: It's true, we are the bankrupt heirs
Of all the ages, history is the bunk.
If you do not believe in all this junk,
If you're not glad things are as they are,
    You can wipe your arse on the Evening Star.

--Howard Nemerov

Ah, a little nostalgia for the days when more towns had multiple newspapers.  While I've had no thoughts in my head worth writing down for months now, it seems, the above has been running through my empty brain.  At first (and even still, at that) it was mostly in reaction to how fitting it seemed, especially in the exasperation of the opening sentence and then the comparison of the unreality of certain types of news coverage--the dominating conventions and frames (to use a different, more contemporary metaphor-)-to the fuzzy otherworld of dreams.  Lately . . . yeah, it keeps coming back to that first sentence.

So what else have I been reading to distract from the slow-motion stomach punch?

- Lots of good stuff at Fugitive Ink, including considerations of Francis Bacon and Hadrian in London.  There's a lot to respond to in both, though unfortunately it's probably beyond me.  Both reviews give a typically vivid (from the author) view of what it's like to be observing these exhibitions now, in London, with a perspective keenly alive to the flare-ups of history--artistic, personal, or otherwise--that happen in doing so.  I'm intrigued by the idea of Bacon as a (my words) minor/major artist, a little master, if you will, or perhaps a hamfisted del Sarto: his reach limited and his grasp not always certain, yet nonetheless capable of shaping vision.  Hadrian is too difficult for me to comment on, I'm afraid; I spent too long living with the subject matter, and even now find the emperor and his age hard to think about without dragging up too many other associations.  Well-worth reading, just the same.

- Colleagues who saw the Louise Bourgeois show in New York found it impressive, and I have to say I rather like the paintings discussed here in the same way I like a number of old school Surrealist paintings (and to the same degree, for that matter.) And yet, while certainly it's not hard to relate to the experience of being taken aback suddenly in an unexpected way by an artwork, I can't help but think that the article doesn't come off so much as testimony in favor of the work as it does a comment on the author.

- Worth reading, worth--if your climate still allows--making.

- Speaking of Hadrian and the like, Roman triumph.  My favorite Roman triumph has to be that of Belisaurius in 534, which the review (and book, apparently) discusses.  How does a late antique general celebrate the honor of a triumph?  By abasing himself in emperor-worship, in the traditional Roman manner, of course.  Another lesson in that, I suppose.

That's it for now.  Except: Tara Donovan opens today at the ICA, and Rachel Whiteread in less than a week at the MFA.  Very different exhibitions in a number of ways, of course, but should make for an interesting crosstown comparison.  Something to keep one's mind busy, at least.

"something is pushing them to the side of their own lives"

Men at Forty

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father's tie there in secret

And the face of the father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

--Donald Justice

cold wind blowing

While I've been out of it, the tough news has continued to mount.  Yesterday I checked in to The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research only to learn that last week my alma mater had, along with other cuts, eliminated its gallery program and laid off its director, Judith Tolnick Champa (Greg Cook has continued to be on top of the story, adding details here and here.)  While I don't mean to minimize the importance of the other affected programs, I have to say that this particular development strikes me as a shortsighted and really damaging development.  Everyone knows about the difficult financial environment, but there's no equivalent for the program in the entire southern part of the state, or indeed within Rhode Island's system of higher education, in terms of range, ambition, and quality.  The Fine Arts Galleries have been a major asset for the University and their loss, along with a superb curator and educator, will have a negative impact on the school and the cultural life of the state.  I admit to being biased, as it was now close to 15 years ago that I first had the opportunity learn art history from Tolnick Champa and have my eyes opened by the exhibitions she curated (I still remember first seeing a Louisa Matthíasdóttir landscape in a show she curated; I also know I've written about at least one exhibition at URI, but can't find it now to link.)  My own experiences aside, however, this is a major blow.

Slightly further afield, Boston's Museum of Science also is cutting back, in a move that no doubt sent shudders throughout the Hub's non-profit world.  The Museum emphasizes in the article that these are not entirely budget-driven but strategic cuts (small comfort, I'm sure, to the newly jobless), and I do wonder how much they reflect a certain retrenchment after what seems like a period of rather heady growth.  Still, the Museum of Science has long been a powerhouse in its field, so when it catches a cold . . . you can fill in the rest.

let's stay together

The Author to His Body on Their Fifteenth Birthday, 29 ii 80

“There’s never a dull moment in the human body.”
                                           —The Insight Lady

Dear old equivocal and closest friend,
Grand Vizier to a weak bewildered king,
Now we approach The Ecclesiastean Age
Where the heart is like to go off inside your chest
Like a party favor, or the brain blow a fuse
And the comic-book light-bulb of Idea black out
Forever, the idiot balloon of speech
Go blank, and we shall know, if it be knowing,
The world as it was before language once again;

Mighty Fortress, maybe already mined
And readying to blow up grievances
About the lifetime of your servitude,
The body of this death one talkative saint
Wanted to be delivered of (not yet!),
Aggressively asserting your ancient right
To our humiliation by the bowel
Or the rough justice of the elderly lecher’s
Retiring from this incontinence to that;

Dark horse, it’s you we’ve put the money on
Regardless, the parody and satire and
The nevertheless forgiveness of the soul
Or mind, self, spirit, will or whatever else
The ever-unknowable unknown is calling itself
This time around—shall we renew our vows?
How should we know by now how we might do
Divorced? Homely animal, in sickness and health,
For the duration; buddy, you know the drill.

--Howard Nemerov

never a dull moment

So, about this whole "no posts in weeks" thing.  The usual lassitude is to blame in part, of course, but a few other things have intruded as well.  You know the whole silly "blogging can kill you" thing that went around a few weeks ago?  True, I'm sure, for some tiny number of highly driven people who also take poor care of themselves and possibly have other underlying problems, and not a bad pretext for taking some space back for one's self.  As for me, it's been some time since I've been hell-bent on posting daily, so I've not been facing that kind of pressure--heck, I've been begging for ideas.  Nonetheless, I discovered that when life puts you flat on your back in a hospital bed, as happened to me three weeks ago, it's a good time to focus on things other than what might make a good blog post.  I'm doing well, much better now than then (though it was slightly interesting to have the mundane realization that when tv shows do the cliched first-person angle giving the view of someone looking up from a gurney being wheeled around, showing only bits of hallways and walls and hospital staff looking down--yup, it's pretty much like that), but still can't say that writing here has emerged once more as a priority.  Which isn't to say that I'm not planning to write more, or that I'm not reading, thinking, and (when opportunities arise) looking, but I'm trying to balance those aspects of life with a greater focus on the whole staying out of the hospital thing.  I owe emails to several people, which I hope to get to soon, as well as posts on various books, more thoughts on Pompeo Batoni and 18th century painting in Rome, and who knows? Perhaps I'll make to the MFA's El Greco/Velázquez show.

For now, though, I'll leave you with an update and a quick link: first, as many of you no doubt have already seen, Geoff Edgers had a recent follow-up article in the Globe on the MFA's fight over its Kokoschka painting.  In brief, his piece presents arguments from some disputing the museum's attempt to claim title to the painting on the grounds that its late 1930's sale by the then-owner, an Austrian Jew, was not a forced sale.  Criticisms by historians of the museum's stance and perceived lack of forthcoming regarding all details also figure in as well.  I'm simply noting the article right now, as I blogged about previous coverage, arguing (with reservations) in favor of the museum's position.  Obviously I know nothing of the exact facts of the case beyond what's been published, and reserve the right to change my mind about the case, as I indicated I might in previous posts.  Still, while I'm not going to go into detail at this time--I haven't read carefully enough--I remain concerned about what the exact standards are for determining whether a work should be restituted and how they apply here even as the public case for the museum has taken some hits.  More, perhaps, later.  On a different note, the quick link I mentioned is to the blog of The New Courtauld Mafia, bring you "cultural coverage from the students of the Courtauld Institute of Art.  They're just getting started, and could post more frequently (though I shouldn't talk of course), but I'm thinking it's a site worth watching, even if I admit to a certain bias in favor of almost anything Courtauld-related.  Check it out, and I'll be back when I can.

Updating on preview: whoa, the Courtauld Mafia site informs me that Anne d'Harnoncourt has died.  Terrible news that puts my experiences in perspective.  I second their post.

like that

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

--Rainer Maria Rilke