Modern Kicks

weddings, parties, anything, and bongo jams a speciality

What I'm reading: Hogarth: A Life and a World.  'Sgood.  Also big, and I'm only in the early chapters, so not much to say.  I will note that it gives a better picture of eighteenth century London than Peter Ackroyd's book, which I found rather tiresome and didn't finish.  Better maps, too.

What you should be reading: this marvellous review of Pompeo Batoni at the National Gallery.  Follow the links in it, too, they're eye-opening.  I'd always had a liking for Batoni and his milieu, so I had no idea that others would be so dismissive.  I'll grant that British art critics might be forgiven a little impatience when faced with familiar fare, much as I might feel when hearing that the MFA has another Impressionist show planned.  Still, that's no excuse for an exhibition review that apparently bores of its subject after a few paragraphs and simply wanders off.  In any event, the review at Fugitive Ink does the work of recapturing Batoni from unsympathetic critics, in part by embracing (if I may say so--the terminology is not the author's) a sort of hermeneutic consciousness.  If that doesn't make you want to read, perhaps the good humor in the early paragraphs and the lovely grace note at the end will.

I've been wondering ever since, and hope to comment over at the site, about Batoni.  One of the criticisms made of him is of a certain self-effacing quality in his work, a combination of deference to his sitters and apparent natural inclination, that can lead to a sort of blandness.  I don't think this is imagined, and in his lesser paintings can be a fault.  But we don't judge painters by their least efforts, even if we do acknowledge them, and so I'm continuing to wonder in what ways Batoni's achievement distinguishes him from his contemporaries--how would one compare him to other eighteenth century painters and how would he rate?  What, with some degree of specificity, is his place?  The more I think this over, the more I reflect that it's a shame that eighteenth century art often doesn't get the same respect as that of periods before and after it.

Anyway, now that there's nobody here but us chickens, I have a proposal.  It should be no secret to regular readers of this site, if any remain, that content has . . . lagged a bit.  In part that's because I've been busy, in part because I haven't been up to much, and in part because of a lack of ideas.  But if you're still reading, I must assume you want me to keep writing, if only to amuse yourself by laughing at my ignorance and poor command of the language.  So then: give me something to write about.  Give me an assignment, tell me to write about something (reasonably accessible, please), and I'll do my best to do it.  And now that I'm making this suggestion, don't let the comments continue to sit there with a big fat goose egg, it'll be embarrassing for the blog.  And you don't want to let the blog down, do you?  Me neither.  So for the love of god, tell me what to do.  Will blog for food free.

surfacing

Despite this site giving the appearance, the past few weeks, of my having fallen into a jar of Massic wine myself, I've merely been too busy and preoccupied by the disaster unfolding around us to think up thoughts about the art I've not been viewing.  I have some hope that the situation will change, so keep an eye out.  In the meantime, I've been reading.  January and early February found me happily gliding through all of A Dance to the Music of Time, about which I really should have had more to say at the time but found it too difficult to write of such a large work in the way it deserved.

So a few odd notes now, on the novels and some other things:

the only way to go

"I was turning the pages that evening with the sense--essential to mature enjoyment of any classic--of being entirely free from responsibility to pause for a second over anything that threatened the least sign of tedium."

--Anthony Powell, Hearing Secret Harmonies

sign of the times

No doubt it was a thought inspired more by the fact that I am rapidly reaching the end of the final volume of A Dance to the Music of Time than anything else, but I was recently in a small independent bookstore, the sort of place that has enough ambition to stock serious titles but must make its way by prominently featuring the current bestsellers.  On a rack near the front of the store multiple copies of Allan Greenspan's recent apologia pro sua vita were displayed, row after row showing his face peering out, asking, one last time, for one's confidence.  I've always wondered who buys these kinds of books.  That they provide grist for the book pages' mills is clear enough, with reviews in every newspaper, literary supplement, and political magazine offering opportunities to discuss a given figure's political or economic legacy as a way of advancing larger arguments.  But who actually pays money for the books themselves?  As I wondered, I couldn't help but think of piles of remaindered books bearing the face of "the maestro" getting packed up, remaindered and sent away, just like old Louis.

the loot

Not a bad haul at all, not at all.  Told people I wanted books and they came through.  New additions to the library:

Look at all the colors, children!

Used to be funny.

"Had people ever been as nasty, as self-indulgent, as dull, as miserable, as cocksure, as bad at art, as dismally ludicrous, or as wrong as they'd been in the Middle Age?"

A gold light.

Dance, 1, 2, 3, 4!

I must confess that I feel a little nervous (though excited) about the last group.  I barely read a novel a year--what possessed me to say I wanted a series of 12 novels split into four fat volumes?  I know what: like Laura, I was entranced by the University of Chicago edition when it came out a little over a decade ago, though I didn't buy it then.  I remember wandering the aisles of the Seminary Co-op Bookstore, a heady enough experience, seeing the poster with the title painting on the wall and thinking that this was it, the thing to do was to read and study with François Furet and throw oneself into works of literature of Proustian range.  I did the former, but not the latter, and now those four big books sit before me, offering their challenge.  It's not so much the length--I've read the Decline and Fall more than once, after all, and these are no longer than that (and, truth be told, for all of Gibbon's great stuff, there's a lot of interminable parts  about monks and various heresies in his book, not to mention the long slog through the later Byzantine empire--it's not easy.)  It's the whole novel thing--I tend to resist, and sometimes resent, narratives.  I'm hoping that the range of the works will put me in a mind like I get from reading Balzac, where the sheer scope of ambition in rendering an entire society carries me along.  What I really can't decide, though, is whether to read my other, shorter, new acquisitions before diving in.  I don't want to put them off--I'm eager to read them all, and they promise to be far easier commitments to keep that the novels.  But each time I think of starting one of them, I feel like I'm keeping my eyes from the elephant in the room--and that the elephant is mocking me.  Oh well; I think the problem calls for another helping of leftover trifle, and perhaps some chocolate.  Regular posting to resume soon.

all there is?

Dave Hickey's been receiving some discussion due to the talk he gave last month at the Frieze Art Fair entitled "Schoolyard Art: Playing Fair Without the Referee" (text of it here, podcast here, Callen Bair wrote on it just after it happened, while Ed was on it  last week.)  I don't have much to say about it, and haven't ever had much to say about Hickey, as I must confess that until last, week, I had never knowingly read anything by him.  I had heard a great deal, of course, enough so that when I found myself in late October out in Williamstown to see the Clark's new Fragonard exhibition (about which more to come), I took the opportunity to pick up his well-known and, I gather, highly regarded collection of essays, Air Guitar from the museum's excellent bookstore.  I haven't finished it, so no final discussion from me, and I won't deny I've found some things of interest.  Hickey certainly writes well, if in a style that's a bit dated.  He has a taste for the audacious that, while not as charming as he seems to think it is, does lead him to some fresh takes, as in his essay on Liberace and his museum.  But man . . . the endless namedropping, the straw men, the conflation of culture and society, the tiresome populist posturing--are people impressed by all this, or just willing to overlook it?  Because while I'm not going to say the book's totally worthless, it's not really grabbing me.  I know the essays are a decade or more old now, but c'mon: embracing Las Vegas as a way to kid on the squares was tired even then.  I do give him some credit for acknowledging in the book's title essay that it's all basically wanking, but still: please try to be less of a wanker.

I admit that I might feel differently if I picked up something else by Hickey (I'd like to see his essays on beauty in The Invisible Dragon, for instance.)  And maybe I'll change my mind by the time I finish the book.  We shall see.  I should note that anyone who has a chance to get to the Clark in the coming week should do so, as they seem to have extended the run of the exhibition of their large recent gift of British art to November 11.  I was a little tired by the time I got to it--I've decided for the future that Williamstown is definitely not a day trip--but there's a number of wonderful things, including several Constable cloud studies and other sketches, plus some excellent watercolors by lesser known (at least by me) artists from the same time.  I have to say, however, that viewing the exhibition only edged me along further in the view that the only Turner I like to look at is early Turner.  All those lurid marshmallow smears of later years move me less and less.  Anyway, I should probably listen to the Hickey podcast; hearing his tone might give me a better sense of him . . . or not.

The Big RED and Shiny Annual est arrivé!

Or it will arrivé soon, at least.  The details:

Packed with essays by Jane Hudson, James Nadeau, Marrikka Trotter, Meg Rotzel, Heidi Aishman, Matthew Gamber, Steve Aishman and Matthew Nash, our new book brings all of the great writing about art and culture you have come to expect from our website to your coffee table. And, it's a steal at only $12.

There are two ways you can get your hands on your very own copy:

The most enjoyable is to join us on September 7th, from 6-9, at Axiom Gallery in Jamaica Plain for our release party. Books will be on sale, and you can meet the writers, talk about the great art you've seen over the summer, and check out the Collision Collective exhibition.

-or-

You can order yours online by going to our books page. We're taking pre-orders now, and books will be available after our release party on the 7th.

12 bucks is cheap.  Even I can afford that.  And it should be good reading, with lots of stuff of interest to readers in Boston and beyond.  So go on and order a copy; I just did.  And then you can go check out the new issue.

cultural workers of the world, unite!

"Ours is the first cultural epoch in which many men aspire to high achievement in the arts and, in their frustration, form a dispossessed class which cuts across the conventional class lines, making a proletariat of the spirit."

--Lionel Trilling

noted

- A. O. Scott writes that the new biography of Kingsley Amis offers "tasteful catnip for high-minded voyeurs."

- Porter Wagoner is back, baby.

- Because I didn't link to it the other day, part 4 of Christoph Büchel's statement to the Globe.

- Ken Johnson on what the soaring art market means for public collections.

- Louise Bourgeois interviewed in the LA Times.

Given that Dolly's career had moved on to a very different place by the time I was listening to music (i.e., halfway toward being a joke), I never realized how much Emmylou Harris sounded like the young Parton.

wish i'd thought of that

Like I've always said, you can't be too careful:

"It would be pleasant to follow in greater detail than is possible here the steps of the Greek History toward popularity and authority.  There is for instance a letter by Auguste Comte promising to read it in order to find confirmation of his own theories, though in obedience to mental hygiene he was no longer reading books."

--Arnaldo Momigliano