Modern Kicks

homo ludens

I don't follow baseball very closely, at least not through the midseason.  But I can't not note the induction of Ryne Sandberg and Wade Boggs into the Hall of Fame today.  I am first very happy to see that Boggs didn't have any (or enough) residual bitterness over the Margo days to stop him from going in as a Red Sox player (see below.)  I'm also especially pleased as, though I don't go to many games, I had the opportunity to see both men play.  Boggs was the hero of a 1-0 Boston win I attended in 1990, I believe, hitting a rare home run that decided a pitcher's duel between Roger Clemens and David Cone, then of Kansas City, at Fenway Park.  Sandberg I saw toward the end of his career, 1996, during the early months of his comeback, in a game at Wrigley against the Dodgers (with Mike Piazza back then, and Harry Caray was in the booth.)  Not as memorable a game - I think the Dodgers won - but I am pleased now to think of both, and the fact that I've only ever attended major league games at those two parks.  And hey, I lived in Cooperstown for a little while - I'm practically family at this point.

Anyway, well-deserved honors.  And some fine words from Mr. Sandberg:

''A lot of people say this honor validates my career,'' said Sandberg, who wasn't picked until the 20th round of the 1978 amateur draft by the Philadelphia Phillies.  ''But I didn't work hard for validation. I didn't play the game right because I saw a reward at the end of the tunnel. I played it right because that's what you're supposed to do -- play it right and with respect. Turning two is more important than knowing where to find the little red light on the dugout camera.''

Damn straight.  You could apply the same thought to other areas of life, too.  Well, you'd need to change the dugout reference and all that, but you get the idea.

UPDATE: Following a comment by the Cod, I googled around and learned (as noted below) that Boggs didn't have a choice but to go in with a Sox cap, the Hall having deprived players of a say in the matter.  And according to some nerd on the internet, Wade has only himself to blame:

The reason they changed their policy of letting the player decide (it had been that way for 60 years) is because of Wade Boggs. Word got out that part of the contract he signed with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays was that if he were to be inducted into the HOF, he would ask for a Tampa hat instead of a Red Sox or Yankee hat. Worried that this would set an ugly precedent, they changed the rule.

We always hated him, anyway.

ask and ye shall receive

I spent a lot of time earlier this month, and prior to that as well, whining about how much better the David show at the Clark would have been if it been narrowed to portraiture.  I even went as far as this:

The portraits of David and his contemporaries offer a lot of different points of access to the new society of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, with changing fashions, modes of address, and idealized traits of sensibility, to name a few variables, coming into play.  A great deal of this can be seen in the portraits at the Clark's exhibit, but little of it is treated in the catalog, unfortunately.

And it's almost like someone over at Smith was listening.  From their upcoming exhibitions (scroll to the bottom):

The French Portrait: Revolution to Restoration
September 30 - December 11, 2005

The French Portrait: Revolution to Restoration is the first exhibition to explore the broad scope of French portraiture during the Neoclassical era, including painting, drawings, sculpture, and miniatures. A work from the museum’s own collection—a fine Portrait of a Youth, acquired over 75 years ago as a Géricault—inspired the exhibition when the painting was reattributed to Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson by Margaret Oppenheimer, who serves as the show’s guest curator. The museum will also contribute a signed female portrait by Girodet, a Houdon bust of the Abbé Barthélemy, a superb double-portrait drawing by Ingres, a newly-acquired drawing of a young woman by Isabey, and a portrait drawing by Girodet’s student Fanny Robert. Joining these works will be over 50 other portraits by artists such as Augustin, Benoist, Boilly, David, Ducreux, Fabre, Gérard (Marguerite), Laneuville, Lethière, Prud’hon, Villers, Vigée-Lebrun, Wicar, and others.The exhibition will explore artists and the Revolution, government patronage during the Consulate and Empire, private commissions, great men and women (ancient and modern), the portrait-making process, and portrait styles. The show is accompanied by a catalogue, and will be shown concurrently with the exhibition The Empress Josephine: Art and Royal Identity planned by the Mead Art Museum of Amherst College.

Excellent.  And with the Mead's show as well, most excellent.  But can I say: first exhibition?  When I started talking about this last year, I assumed it was a staple topic.  Can Smith's claim be accurate?  Anyway, this is just the sort of thing I'd like to see.  I only hope they're able to get the right loans to make it work as well as it should (which would mean more than a drawing by Ingres, I think.)  The fall schedule's getting busy . . .

Michael Montias

At the end of Gary Schwartz's most recent column - itself a remembrance of a former colleague in the Dutch artworld - comes the news (to me) that Michael Montias has died after his long fight against cancer.  Why does Modern Kicks, a largely art-related site, care about the death of a Yale economist?  As Schwartz writes in a separate article, here's why:

. . . If I am not mistaken, the first table of digested economic data concerning Dutch painting was not printed until 1978, in an article on artists in Delft by the American economist John Michael Montias (born 1928) in the English-language Dutch journal Simiolus. (At the time, I was an editor as well as publisher of Simiolus; when I designed that chart, I had no idea that I was making history.)

What brought Montias to Delft is far from a quiet event. It was nothing less than the impending collapse of the Soviet economy. "I was an expert in the economic reforms of Eastern Europe," he told me, "specifically the interaction between institutions and the market. By the 1970s it was clear to me that the reforms were getting nowhere. I had the feeling the half-hearted moves they called reforms were making things worse rather than better. I saw no possibility for the introduction of the true open-market mechanisms that I thought would help. I found myself losing interest in my field."

In the meanwhile, the Yale professor had begun collecting Dutch paintings, under the guidance of his colleague Egbert Haverkamp Begemann, a Dutch art historian who had moved to America. Out of curiosity he began delving into the literature on painters and when his interest in five-year plans faded he decided to apply his training to the history of Dutch art. His first plan for doing research in the field was to write a comparative study of the guilds in various Dutch cities and their impact on the economy of art. Institutions and the market, one could say, in another form. The main printed source on the guilds was a journal from the 1880s known as Obreens archief. Because the first guild in Obreen was the one in Delft, Montias started in that city, in 1975. In 1982 he published his pioneering study (filled with charts and graphs), Artists and artisans in Delft: a socio-economic study of the seventeenth century, and in 1989 Vermeer and his milieu: a web of social history. The comparative study of the guilds never appeared. [Instead, Montias moved on to Amsterdam, where he continued to reconstruct webs of social-economic-artistic history. See his Art at auction in 17th-century Amsterdam, Amsterdam (Amsterdam University Press) 2002.]

Once Montias began publishing on the economics of Dutch art in the 1970s, it was impossible for anyone else to work in the field without referring to him. Thanks to the man's own lack of professional jealousy, this has not bred resentment. Well, not more than a little. When on 10-12 December [1998] the congress Kunst voor de Markt is held in Middelburg, the first congress ever devoted to the subject, not one of the 25 speakers will have framed their research questions without first having read and taken account of Montias, who is probably the single most frequently quoted authority on Dutch art of the second half of the 20th century. This is an extraordinary achievement for a French-American economist who never studied art history, published his first article in the field at the age of 50 and never mastered either present-day Dutch or the jargon of the dyed-in-the-wool art historian.

That's why.  There's much more in that article, as well as another Schwartz has placed online.   Well worth reading for insight into the man and a development in art historical studies that had influence beyond Netherlandish art. 

I'd be interested to read about the artworks Montias assembled, if anyone were to do a study.  Some months ago I had the opportunity to spend time with a Goltzius painting from his collection, and it testified to the careful attention and taste he brought to bear in his collection.  Having the advisor he did made it easier, I can imagine, but I believe there's probably a good story to be told here.  On a related note, I know there's been some work done on Nelson Goodman, to pick an even more prominent academic and collector (and one-time art dealer!), but it seems to me that the complete story in that case as well isn't known and would be of interest.  But today: sad news of the end of a full life.

totally stoked

This just in, from the Dan Zanes email list:

hello friends,

talk about the last minute: dan zanes and friends on abc’s “nightline” television show tonight!

we were just alerted that our nightline feature will run tonight:

friday, july 29 at approximately 11:45 pm closing the show.

we were filmed in brooklyn and st. paul singing our heads off, playing with gusto, visiting our friends at the strong place day care center, getting instruments repaired at musurgia, laughing at each other's jokes, hanging around the house and everything else that makes up our musical lives. it was a lot of fun filming the segment and i hope that it's as much fun staying up very late to watch it!

love,
dan

Oh yeah.  Friday, approaching midnight, watching children's music performers on the tv.  It doesn't get any better than that, people.

for the record

Holland Cotter is a man of taste, style and distinction, whose prose the angels envy.  He is an adornment to the New York Times, which is lucky to have him.  That is all.

commentariat

If anyone has tried to post a comment in the past few days and not had it go through, please let me know.  Aside from those who already have.  If you can remember, please tell me which post you comment was on, if you bothered with the TypeKey sign-in (or whatever it's called), or any other details you can think of that might be relevant.  Although everything seems to be set up ok, I'm told that stuff isn't getting through; so let me know.  You could even do it as a comment!  Or email, if that doesn't work.

water and sky

Hardly a day goes by when I don't receive a visit from someone googling the late Neil Welliver.  I've just learned that his admirers will be able to take pleasure this fall in an exhibit of his work at the Portland Museum of Art:

Neil Welliver: Water and Sky
September 3, 2005 - November 27, 2005

On April 5, 2005, the Maine art world lost one of its most important and enigmatic figures. For more than 40 years, Neil Welliver created dramatic paintings, watercolors and prints in and around his home and studio near Lincolnville. He lived the life and created the paintings of the archetypal Maine artist: rugged, iconoclastic, in tune with nature. This exhibition pulls together approximately 20 works from the major periods of his career, drawing upon the permanent collection of the Portland Museum of Art as well as several private collections. From psychologically challenging figure studies to monumental landscapes to subtly colored works on paper, the objects on view illustrate the complexity of this quintessential Maine artist.

An admirable gesture and I hope an equally fine exhibit.  I like Portland, its Museum, Neil Welliver and Maine in the fall; sounds like a road trip.

attention, voyeurs

As at least one person has already noticed, I've switched the security settings on my Sitemeter stats from "medium" to "normal".  If you now scroll down to the bottom of the sidebar at right and click on the small square meter there, it should take you to the statistics page for Modern Kicks, where you will be able to view the not-so-richly detailed information offered.  I hope you are amused.

UPDATE: And just as expected, that meter has already become the most used link on the page today.  Vultures.

but white guys drive like this

Via Grammar.police, Slate is now offering a podcast of a Lee Siegel tour of the Met's modern galleries.  As I've written before, I'm not all that keen on the whole podcast museum tour thing, as what it might add in more interesting audio doesn't take away from the fact that we're still talking about wandering around a museum with headphones, wasting some part of one's mind listening instead of looking.  Kriston brings up Siegel's vulgar Cy Twombly comments from a while back, but why stop there?  The podcast offers delights of its own.  OK, I couldn't bring myself to listen to the whole thing.  I got as far as the section on Balthus and had to stop.  Given what I've seen of Siegel's art writing, it was a little hard to take what he saying seriously.

But I did gather a little gem.  I don't take pride in it.  I've recently been looking over the archives and wincing at some entries that criticize, in what seem to me now too harsh terms, this or that writer.  We all have our off days, our blind spots and gaucheries.  A hastily written blog post is the glassiest of glass houses from which to hurl a stone.  And yet, listening to a section of Siegel's introduction on modern art and museum-going, I pretty much gagged.  Go on, take a listen.

What to say?  It's a pathetic attempt at humor, for one.  This is supposed to liven up the museum experience?  Please.  And keep in mind that the artist he follows up that tidbit by discussing is Bonnard.  It's just embarassingly simpleminded, especially at a moment when the relationship between modernist visual art and music lies under public scrutiny (of course, there have been those who paid attention to that topic all along.)  It's curiously anxious as well - I'd imagine that the sort of person who downloads and listens to an alternative museum podcast doesn't need this sort of theoretically soothing gesture.  And, well, to use the word once again, it's just vulgar.  When I broke off listening, Siegel was looking down his nose at Balthus, claiming that he only had been taken seriously because of his connections.  Siegel called the painter vulgar and I think he's way off.  But if we want to descend to the critic's level, let's just say: takes one to know one.

UPDATE: It seems to me, looking the above over this morning, that I overused the word "vulgar" a bit.  Feel free to mentally substitute "fatuous" in its place.

when i get the blues, i get me a rockin' chair

Lately I've been listening to a playlist I have of selections from that phenomenal collection, Atlantic Rhythm and Blues, 1947-1974.  I bought the records when they came out in a series of double albums back in the '80's (I couldn't afford the whole boxed set at once), and some years ago got the cd version.  While I'm grateful for the extra tracks the latter includes, none of them really change the picture laid out in the original, and this is one case where the loss of the cover artwork really hurts.  Like the (unfortunately rather poor) image here, all of the exteriors of the original records consisted of montages of images of the performers, various instruments and sheet music, all keyed to a single dominant hue for each volume.  They were - and are - very cool, and the cds just can't capture it.

Listening to these records was a formative experience for my musical taste - not just the canonical Stax/Volt stuff (though certainly including it) - but the earlier '40's,  '50's, and early '60's material as well.  While in some sense they may have simply confirmed my own inclinations, the values that most of the songs included embodied - strong melodies and rhythms, direct song structures, virtuosity shown through restraint, an emphasis upon gaining the most effect out of each gesture, and never (or rarely) adding more than necessary to create the intended effect - set a standard against which I measured (and measure) most other music, at least within the relevant related genres.  Not to mention a lot of other art.

One of the reviews at Amazon makes the familiar point that Atlantic was a regional operation.  True in a sense, but it misses the real range of the label in its glory days.  Pretty much all of the labels in r'n'b at the time were regional.  It was, to far larger degree than today, a regional music, and it wasn't alone in that regard.  So labels in Memphis and Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans, reflected the different styles, beats, and sounds of their area, with a smattering of whatever else wandered into their purview.  Atlantic was based in New York, and New York sounds - the Drifters, the songs of Leiber and Stoller, just for examples  - make up a crucial part of the label's history.  The crack house band featured on many of the '50's tracks has a characteristically New York combination of power  and ease as well.  But perhaps because of the founders' innate cosmopolitanism and sheer enthusiasm, along with keen business sense, Atlantic went out and grabbed the regional styles of other parts of the country; it was, in a way, a national label, but one built out a quiltwork of regionalism.

Even towards the end, when (as Gerri Hirshey's book, quoted below, tells us, Ahmet Ertegun endured Led Zepplin concerts only by cleansing himself afterwards by listening to B.B. King records), there were different regional styles in Atlantic's repetoire, whether Miami funk or the sound of Philadelphia.  But while regionalism never entirely departed American music, it faded to a great degree, as profitable, established, independent labels like Atlantic became properties of the majors, a phenomenon that would be repeated in various other indie styles.

But enough about that for now.  How about some music?  Two faves from the old days below.

Stick McGhee, "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee"

Chris Kenner, "Land of 1000 Dances"

(Also, an interesting page claiming to explain how the sublime stutter-step of Kenner's original became the flatter "na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na" of Wilson Pickett and garage rock fame.)