Archives for November 2003

I’ll have much more to say about “Sargent’s Women” after I see it again, but in the meantime I urge you to go straight to this eye-popping exhibition of portaits by John Singer Sargent, which just went up at Adelson Galleries (Mark Hotel, 25 E. 77th St., through Dec. 23).

Aside from being gorgeous to behold, “Sargent’s Women” sheds light on the inner life of an artist who is widely thought not to have had one. Next to nothing is known of Sargent’s romantic entanglements (if any), and as a result contemporary opinion seems to be divided between those who think him to have been asexual and those certain that he was homosexual. Be all that as it may, you can’t spend ten minutes walking through “Sargent’s Women” without feeling the fascination that women exerted on him–not just the darkly exotic ladies of Capri, but his own sisters as well.

For reasons all too obvious, at least to me, Sargent continues to be dismissed by many critics as a lightweight virtuoso who specialized in portraits of the haut monde at the expense of serious work. He was, in fact, an extraordinarily gifted painter who did far more than merely capture the pretty-pretty surfaces of his well-heeled subjects, and even if he hadn’t devoted at least as much time and energy to the watercolor landscapes that may well prove in the end to have been his supreme achievement, Sargent’s portraits would still require no apologies. Take a look at “Rosina” and “Head of a Venetian Women” (both of which can be seen on the gallery’s Web site). The artist who painted those canvases may not have been a ladies’ man, but he definitely knew a thing or two about women, and I doubt he learned it just by looking at them.

I want to say a quick word about Adelson Galleries, whose two floors are an eminently civilized place to look at turn-of-the-century American art, about which Warren Adelson knows as much as anybody in the world. He has a knack for putting together museum-quality shows, and “Sargent’s Women,” like “Maurice Prendergast: Painter of America” before it, definitely qualifies. Between this show and “Joseph Cornell: The 100th Birthday,” currently on display at Richard L. Feigen, I’d say it’s time you took a trip to the Upper East Side. Why not make it tomorrow afternoon? Or today, for that matter?

Our old friend Bruce Bawer e-mailed us from Europe this morning, weighing in on the great e-book-vs.-printed-book debate, about which you can read more by going here
and here:

Not to get too lofty about this, but this argument about physical books vs e-books is sort of a variation on the conflict between Hebrew and Greek notions of body and soul. Is the body an essential aspect of human identity or just a container for a soul? For most purposes, reading things on a screen is fine with me. But then I think of my very favorite novel. I used to read it every nine months. Each time I opened it up again, I expected that it wouldn’t have as powerful an effect on me as last time. I was always wrong. I was transported. And when I got to the end, I was always in tears. I would close the paperback and just look at it, in awe that this object in my hand contained these people who were so real to me and whose lives moved me so deeply. It seemed a religious object. Reading that novel on an e-book, I know, would be a very different experience.

That’s beautiful, and I hesitate to disagree, however tentatively…but even so, I do wonder whether a person who grew up with e-books might not be capable of broadly similar, comparably intense feelings. Of course they would assume a different aspect, if only by virtue of the fact that (as Bruce so acutely points out) an e-book has no “body.” But would they be less powerful as a result?

I don’t know, of course. But the thought occurs to me–and I don’t know why it took so long–that some of my own feelings about the body/soul problem may well arise from the fact that music was the first art form in which I became deeply involved as an executant. Sheet music, no matter how handsome the paper and typography, is not an art object in and of itself. Rather, it’s a set of instructions by which humans of flesh and blood may call into evanescent existence the non-corporeal “art object” that is a “piece” of music. Could it be that my early experience as a musician now conditions the way I think about all art? I’m sure, for example, that it made me more open to abstract art and plotless ballet (for what art is so abstract as music?). Perhaps it has also made it easier for me to accept the idea of the “bodiless” book.

On the other hand, here’s a thought experiment: try to imagine a ballet like George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments “performed” on a computer screen by a “company” of articulated stick figures. All the movements, which are the essence of the dance, would be visible–but the viewer would experience them as a three-dimensional geometrical theorem, not an interaction between…well, souls. So long as we are on this earth, there can be no souls without bodies. That’s one of the reasons why I love ballet (it’s the “word” made as flesh), and why synthesizers will never replace live orchestras.

And will any of this stop the e-book from replacing the printed book? Don’t count on it.

A reader from Missouri writes, apropos of yesterday’s letter from the owner of a hand-held e-book reader:

As a literature teacher in a tech-savvy junior high, I wanted to weigh in on the hand-held electronic book issue.

In my literature classes we often discuss the aesthetics of reading a book. Many of my 14- and 15-year-old students are voracious readers who are willing to tackle classics as well as contemporary and young-adult authors. We’ve actually discoursed on the implications of reading a book via the web or electronically versus holding the actual book and flipping the page. Many have commented that they enjoy turning the page of a thriller, or that they sometimes linger over a page when something particularly sad or shocking has happened. I must admit that there are times when I will hold that page between two fingers and dread turning it because I know the character I’m so fond of dies there.

That being said, I’m all for a hand-held electronic revolution if it will influence more of my students to actually read. While the introduction of the net, the web, and the dot-com world was originally touted as the demise of reading, it has actually become an impetus for improving reading skills and arousing interest in reading among my students. I can’t count the number of times we’ve read a short story and students have gone home to research, on their own, an issue that was brought up by the study of the story. Imagine a world where all of my students didn’t have to carry 10-pound literature anthologies and could whip out their e-book without worrying about fumbling to the right page. As well, the e-books would allow them to take notes as they read and to store them for future reference. Today, we have a “Thou Shalt Not Write in the Book” policy. E-books would end that policy and would allow the students to download their notes and comments later. I think many of my students would read more because they would feel less like they have to “read a book” and more like they’re reading a screen. There’s a difference, you know.

Another vivid front-line dispatch, worth a close reading if you’re wondering what the future holds in store. And once again, I was struck by a small detail–what you might call “nostalgia for the page.” I know exactly what my correspondent means when he talks about not wanting to turn a page.

On the other hand, I’m sure that the readers and writers of the future will be conditioned by their experience with computers to respond to the “printed” word in similar ways, only in terms relevant to their new technological environment. No, I don’t find type on a screen to be sensuously appealing, and I don’t like the visual anonymity of e-mail, which comes in a very narrow range of typefaces–but, then, the same thing was true of typewriters, wasn’t it? Nobody in his right mind would type a love letter, but lots of people send love letters via e-mail (usually peppered with emoticons). A couple of years ago, I sent a friend a condolence e-mail, and she was surprised to hear from me via that channel. I doubt she’d be nearly as surprised today.

I don’t believe in what intellectual historians call “the idea of progress,” but I do accept the inevitability of change. We get used to it, and if we don’t, our children will–which doesn’t mean it’s always good, needless to say. As so often, Dostoevsky spoke the last word on this subject: “Man gets used to everything–the beast!”

UPDATE: Brandywine Books is skeptical about my e-book-related speculations: “The weight of the pages, the smell of glue and paper, the look of the printed text, new or fading, these amount to a book’s atmosphere. You can cuddle up with it. You can sink back with it.” Not so the e-book, he claims. (Read the whole thing here.)

Artsjournal.com blogger Greg Sandow and I looked at the same story and drew very different conclusions. We both took note of a Boston Globe editorial occasioned by Joan Kroc’s $200 million bequest to National Public Radio. Here’s what the Globe said NPR should do (among other things) with the money:

Bring back music and culture programming. NPR’s news reports are thoughtful and compelling. Its talk shows are topical and a nice way to bring listeners into conversations. And “Car Talk” is great entertainment. But occasionally all this talk is wearying. Balance could be provided by music shows and radio documentaries.

Here’s what I said in response:

If National Public Radio doesn’t seize this opportunity to restore and revive the cultural programming that once made it genuinely “public” in its appeal, it will prove beyond doubt that it’s no longer a “public” radio network, but the purely commercial, ratings-driven talk-radio shop that many listeners reasonably suspect it of having become–and I don’t see that such an enterprise deserves to be subsidized by public monies. A radio network that does nothing more than follow the ratings should be required to live and die by them.

And here’s what Greg said:

But as anyone who’s actually studied this subject knows, public radio listeners overwhelmingly don’t want music. They want talk. The Globe‘s editors are free to have their own desires, but it’s just silly for them to lecture public radio, as if their own opinion had to be right. At least they should learn why public radio makes the choices that it does.

Greg’s a smart guy. Are our views therefore somehow compatible? Not really–but I’m not so sure we’re talking about the same thing, either.

Greg is writing about NPR from a cultural populist’s point of view. Recognizing that the network’s ratings for music programs have become microscopically small in recent years, he thinks NPR should acknowledge and accept that fact and go from there. If NPR’s listeners want talk, they should have it, and that’s that.

The difference between us–as I understand it, and I may be misinterpreting Greg–is that I don’t start from the assumption that National Public Radio has an a priori obligation to exist, and thus should ensure its survival by any means necessary, even if that means scrapping musical and other cultural programming in favor of Car Talk. NPR is not a profit-making corporation. It is, or claims to be, a “public” entity, and it is subsidized in part by public monies and in-kind equivalents. Public entities exist to serve the public–but not in the same way as commercial corporations. The whole point of subsidizing a radio network is to ensure that it will do things that commercial broadcasters won’t do. In fact, there’s no other point to NPR.

Sir John Reith, the man who for all intents and purposes started the BBC, used to say that its job was to give the public “something a bit better than what it thinks it wants.” (I’m quoting from memory, but that’s fairly close to what he said.) In the case of the BBC–and, once upon a not-so-distant time, NPR and PBS–that meant a significant presence for the fine arts. Now it doesn’t. But in the absence of such programming, how can NPR and PBS justify their public subsidies? I like Car Talk, but in what possible way can it be said to constitute a kind of programming not otherwise available through non-subsidized broadcast outlets?

Here’s where I agree with Greg: if NPR’s listeners won’t listen to the cultural programs it does broadcast, then NPR should change those programs, or create new and better ones. Nor do I think that public radio stations need necessarily broadcast hour upon hour of talk-free music. (I don’t listen to classical music on the radio. That’s why I have a stereo and a large collection of CDs.) But I take it absolutely for granted that a significant part of NPR’s air time–maybe even most of it–should be devoted to cultural programming. Specifically, I think NPR has a far greater responsibility to cover the arts than to cover the news. Other people do that, and do it well. Between them, Big Media and the new media provide 24/7 news coverage in every imaginable flavor. In what way does NPR’s news department do something that isn’t already being done?

Let me be clear about this. I don’t object to the existence of All Things Considered, or even Car Talk, so long as these shows are part of a larger, more varied package of programming that makes a concerted effort to do things the commercial media can’t or won’t do. If nobody listens to fine-arts programs, then of course there’s no point in broadcasting them. But that’s a false alternative, a straw man constructed by NPR to justify the gutting of its cultural programming. Do them creatively, do them imaginatively, do them with an ear toward appealing to more than a handful of listeners–but do them. Sure, some of those shows, maybe most of them, will draw far fewer listeners than All Things Considered and Car Talk. Repeat after me: That’s the point. Such programming is the only thing that justifies the continued existence of NPR as a subsidized public entity.

UPDATE: Felix Salmon
thinks I’m all wet. I think he’s being a little bit too cute–way too cute, actually–in claiming that my criticism of NPR has a hidden ideological agenda. Considering that I’ve done a few gazillion on-air commentaries for NPR’s Performance Today (and would be doing another one tomorrow if my schedule permitted), I think perhaps my motives are rather purer than Felix thinks. But he’s a smart guy, too, so you ought to go see what he says and make up your own mind….

It just hit me that I’d promised to write about the program danced by the Mark Morris Dance Group last weekend at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Instead, I ended up writing–and writing and writing–about the center itself, and the program slipped through the cracks in my head. Since then, I’ve been preoccupied with such urgent matters as the press preview of Taboo, and thus haven’t been posting as much as I’d like. This is to remind myself (and you) that I really am going to blog about Mark’s new dance, not to mention various other stuff. More to come, shortly.

About Our Girl I have no information as of this moment, though I think she’s been preoccupied with life-related activities. For the past few days we’ve been meeting almost exclusively in cyberspace! Are you there, OGIC? Come in, Chicago….

I’m so full of breathless anticipation for Master and Commander, I keep forgetting I haven’t actually read any Patrick O’ Brian novels. It just feels like I have, since they’re so boundlessly adored by people like ODID*, OEIT**, and, of course, OTAY***.

Normally on the eve of the opening of such a movie event, I would be starting to dread the arrival of the reviews. I’m far too much a slave to bad reviews, and I hate it when I let a little faint praise burst my bubble before there’s even a chance to go see for myself. I’m sure I’ve cheated myself out of a lot of enjoyable movies, if not great ones, this way. Also, there is something to be said for being disappointed first-hand. And I always wonder what sort of meaningful relation there is between my experience of a movie in the pursuit of pleasure, and the experience of someone who is at work when they’re at the movies. Remember why Pauline Kael retired? She said she just couldn’t watch all those movies anymore; she was sick of them, or at least the vast mediocre portion of them. If that’s what years of reviewing can do to someone so susceptible to movie love–well, I’m not so sure I should be giving quite so much credence to people undergoing the same week-in, week-out cinematic force feeding that pounded the pleasure out of moviegoing for Kael.

Not to question the whole critical enterprise, or anything. I wouldn’t want to talk myself right out of an arts blogging gig! I just hope that in the future (starting tomorrow) I will not let myself be swayed too easily by a cranky critic or two. It’s beyond my power to not read the reviews, but I hereby resolve to stand up to them. (It’s a bit easier to talk a good game when the trusted Cinetrix has already weighed in positively on the O’Brian. Hooray for sneak previews in Boston that allow her to get the jump on the papers!)

*Our Dad in Detroit

**Our Ex in Texas

***Our Terry and Yours

Apropos of absolutely nothing, you know what I’d most like to see on Broadway right now? Or off Broadway, for that matter? A really good revival of What the Butler Saw, directed by John Rando or Mois

I haven’t done this for ages, so I should. Go here, scroll down to “Dinah,” and click on the song title. If your computer is equipped with a RealAudio player, you will then be treated to three minutes’ worth of pure pleasure, courtesy of Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France.

Which reminds me: I met a dog named Django the other day. Kinda yappy, but also kinda sweet. He belongs to yet another great jazz guitarist, about whom more next week….