The Deracination of Literature

From Mary Gaitskill, at UnHerd, "We have fallen out of love with good writing":

... More recently, in 2019, Joyce Carol Oates came to Claremont McKenna where I was teaching and did an intimate Q&A. I brought up the writer John Updike; I was teaching a novel by him which was hard for students to read partly because he was sexist and backward in his racial attitudes, but even more because he described his worlds very, very densely. He would spend pages describing what a character sees driving down a country road at night. Students had a hard time even tracking it — they could, but they had to try. (Note: at least one of them, once he got the hang of it, loved it, which was great.)

I wanted to hear what Oates had to say about it because she’s of an older generation; she and Updike were peers. What she said was (paraphrasing again): yes, John could describe anything and everything but no one wants to read that any more, because (directly quoting) “people have moved on”/ I was really surprised by this. “Moved on”? We’ve moved on from the world we live in? How is that possible?

I want to make clear that I absolutely don’t mean any disrespect to Saunders or Oates, both of whom I admire. They were, after all, just talking off the top of their heads in a moment. (It’s possible that George in particular thought I sounded pretentious — and, actually, I can see how my words could sound that way. But these things are very real to me and deserve big earnest words, monster, gesticulating words.) In any case, their comments really stayed in my mind. Both writers are serious and brilliant people with sensibilities very different from mine and… they may be right. Perhaps — let’s face it, probably — literature has moved on. We don’t look at the physical world as we once did, and so we don’t write about it as we once did. And that is just one way it is being taken for granted and abused to the point of destruction.

That may sound rhetorical, but it isn’t. It is remarkable to me, based on the sample of humans that I’ve had in writing classes, both “kids” and adults, how many people: 1) express great concern about climate change and its effects on the planet, 2) are completely uninterested in other humans’ visions of what the planet they want to save looks, feels and sounds like, and 3) are even less interested in writing or just noticing what it looks like to them. Even as a writing exercise it’s hard for them to say, for example, what someone’s face looks like in a fundamental way. Which is not to say that they can’t do it. Some of them do it very well once they try. But it doesn’t occur to them in the way I think it naturally occurred to people of my generation.

Fascinatingly, one student told me that he didn’t like to describe what people look like because he thought it was like staring at someone which was rude. Another remarked in a similar spirit that in describing people you have to assign value to their appearance in terms of conventional beauty standards. This second statement is completely untrue; conventional beauty standards can be made irrelevant when describing a face if you want to focus on how the person’s nature animates that face.

The first concern, about rudeness, makes more sense to me. But it confuses social looking with artistic looking. Artistic looking is about care and respect. It is like saying: I see this human in my mind’s eye and this particular human is worth the most precise attention I can give them. Because they won’t be here forever and they are as amazing as any animal you might see in a documentary devoted to the heart-breaking beauty of endangered animals. That is not just respect, that is reverence. It is a more intense, focused version of reverence that normal, non-writers can experience or at least used to potentially experience all the time.

I am thinking of something I saw on the subway in the early Eighties, perhaps 1982. I was sitting at the end of the last car on an express train and saw three or four boys — in my memory they are 11-13 years old, maybe younger — grouped around the back window, staring out of it with pure absorption. Curious, I stood to look over their shoulders and saw what they were so raptly taking in: the piercing combination of speed and density as the train gathered momentum and hammered through the massive concrete and metal tunnels, our view herking and jerking with the cars, snatching bits of burning light in metal casement, underground signage, the track flashing and going dark as we clangored through stations, past dozens of waiting humans, personalities firing off bodily messages that our eyes saw before our minds could read them. It was beautiful and the boys were radiant with it, this wordless amazement of things.

I think I remember this so vividly so many years later because even though it wasn’t “nature” the boys were looking at, the way they were looking showed natural reverence, something no one had to instruct them about. (Probably I also remember because I was young too, in my 20s, and was unconsciously forming what mattered to me, in life and in the art I was working on.) I’m sure they were not even aware of me but still, witnessing their shared seeing was like a spiritual recognition similar to what I might experience alone in my room, reading the world through the eyes of a great writer.

That may seem an odd comparison, but it makes sense to me because it is a real-life example of what I was talking about at the start of this piece, how the deep nature of stories can be revealed through descriptive imagery of small things irrelevant to the obvious narrative — unexpectedly poignant things we notice intensely or just out the corner of our eye, glimpsed patterns outside the spectrum of our daily lives.

It makes me sad to think that those same boys, if they existed today, wouldn’t be looking out the subway window because they would be staring at a phone. But even so, they would still have that ability to see in them, waiting to come alive...

RTWT. 

White House Defends Hunter Biden's Art Selling Scheme (VIDEO)

Pfft.

Right. Hunter Biden is the next Claude Monet or Pierre-Auguste Renoir --- you gotta be kidding me!

I'm mean the crackhead's work is going on the market for as high as $500,000 for a piece. That's outrageous!

At the New York Times, "White House Sets Ethics Plan for Sales of Hunter Biden’s Art":

WASHINGTON — The White House has helped develop a system for Hunter Biden to sell pieces of his art without him, or anyone in the administration, knowing who bought them, the latest effort to respond to criticism over how President Biden’s son makes his money.

Under the arrangement, a New York City art dealer would sell the paintings, which the dealer has said he is pricing at between $75,000 and $500,000, while keeping secret all information about the sales, according to a person familiar with the plan.

The gallerist, Georges Bergès, has agreed to not share any information about the buyers or prices of Hunter Biden’s work with anyone. Mr. Bergès has also agreed to reject any offer that appears suspicious, such as one well beyond the asking price, the person familiar with the matter said.

Hunter Biden has been under scrutiny for years over business dealings around the world that often intersected with his father’s official duties. His work in Ukraine in particular became a political flash point, helping to lead indirectly to the first impeachment proceedings against President Donald J. Trump, and his business dealings in China became a campaign issue last year.

Hunter Biden is also under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware over his taxes. He has said he is confident he will be cleared of any wrongdoing.

He has taken up painting in recent years, and his efforts to sell his works created a new ethics challenge for the White House, which came under pressure to ensure that buyers would not purchase them in an effort to curry favor with or gain access to the administration.

While some government ethics watchdogs defended the right of the president’s adult son to pursue a career, others raised concerns that the new arrangement lacked sufficient safeguards to prevent improper influence over the administration from potential purchasers.

Virginia Canter, the chief ethics council at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog, questioned what would stop purchasers of the artwork from subsequently making public they had bought a painting by Hunter Biden. “I think it’s creative,” Ms. Canter said. “I guess they want to manage the conflict but the problem will be enforcement. Unless you have the purchaser sign nondisclosure agreements, this information would come out.”

The administration should also specifically prohibit officers of foreign governments from purchasing the pieces of art, she said. The Treasury Department warned last year that the anonymity of high-value art transactions could make the market attractive to those engaging in illegal financial activities or people subject to U.S. sanctions.

Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House, said the arrangement, which was previously reported by The Washington Post, would ensure ethical dealings.

“The president has established the highest ethical standards of any administration in American history, and his family’s commitment to rigorous processes like this is a prime example,” Mr. Bates said in a statement...

 

Prestige Boston Art Museums Will Not Return Objets d'Art Once-Owned by German Collector Curt Glaser

These Nazi art cases are always fascinating to me. 

The Nazis took control of Glaser's collection after persecuting the man for his Jewish faith. The dude must have emigrated to the U.S., as according to Wikipedia he died in 1943, at Lake Placid, New York. 

More than a dozen institutions and collectors have concluded that Curt Glaser sold his art collection in 1933 as a result of Nazi persecution. But the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have rejected his heirs’ claims.

More than a dozen institutions and collectors have concluded that Curt Glaser sold his art collection in 1933 as a result of Nazi persecution. But the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have rejected his heirs’ claims. https://t.co/lzC5gQT4TN

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 6, 2021

July 6, 2021

The Nazi authorities removed Curt Glaser from his post as director of the Berlin State Art Library in April 1933 because he was Jewish. He was also evicted from his home and, the following month, sold most of his art collection at two auctions.

Since 2007, 13 private collectors or institutions — including the Dutch Restitutions Committee, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the city of Basel — have concluded that Glaser sold his collection in May 1933 as a result of Nazi persecution, and agreed to either return or pay some compensation to his heirs for art he sold that wound up in their collections.

But the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have repeatedly rejected the heirs’ claims for paintings that were sold at the same auctions. They argue there is not enough evidence that Glaser sold under duress.

The disparity in the decisions highlights how, 76 years after World War II ended, the criteria for determining whether a work of art that changed hands during the Nazi persecution of Jews should be returned still remains a matter of debate. Both the Met and the Museum of Fine Arts have a record of recognizing claims on art sold under duress. The Met has settled eight claims for art looted by the Nazis or sold under duress since 1998, when the United States endorsed the international Washington Principles, which called for “just and fair” solutions in handling claims for looted art. In 2009, the Terezin Declaration, also approved by the United States, specified that this requirement also applied to sales under duress. The Museum of Fine Arts has previously settled heirs’ claims for 13 objects sold under duress.

But in the cases of two works sold at a May 9, 1933 auction — Abraham Bloemaert’s 1596 painting “Moses Striking the Rock,” which is owned by the Met, and Joachim Anthoniesz Wtewael’s “Actaeon Watching Diana and Her Nymphs Bathing” from 1612, which is owned by the Museum of Fine Arts — the museums have taken a position at odds with other institutions who held Glaser works from that sale.

College Virtual Choir Delivers Beautiful Ensemble Performance

From the performing arts department at my college. 

Wonderful.

Supreme Court to Hear Nazi-Era Art Cases

Background at the Times of Israel, "Heirs seek return of ‘cursed’ $200m golden treasure bought for Hitler: The Guelph collection, a trove of medieval Christian art, was sold to Nazi-run Prussia in 1935. Was the sale fair, or did Goering make its Jewish owners an offer they couldn’t refuse?"

And now at the Los Angeles Times, "Supreme Court weighs heirs’ claims over forced Jewish art sales during Nazi era":

WASHINGTON — Two years after Adolf Hitler took power in Germany, the Nazis achieved one of their cultural goals: the return of the Guelph Treasure, a collection of medieval Christian relics.

Under pressure from Hitler’s deputy Hermann Goering, a consortium of Jewish art dealers agreed to sell the collection to the Prussian State Museum. On June 14, 1935, Saemy Rosenberg signed the sale documents in Berlin on behalf of his partners, receiving about one-third of what they had paid for the items in 1929.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will consider whether Rosenberg’s grandson and heirs to two other art dealers can sue Germany and its state museum to recover the treasure or obtain compensation for the loss.

“This was a forced sale to one of the greatest art thieves of all time. And it was literally a present for Hitler,” said Jed Leiber, a musician and record producer in Los Angeles. He was referring to reports that Goering later presented the treasures to Hitler.

Most of the collection, known as Welfenschatz in Germany, is on display in the Bode Museum in Berlin.

Not long after the sale, Rosenberg and his family left Germany for Amsterdam, where his daughter is said to have been a playmate of Anne Frank’s. From there, they moved to London before finally settling in New York City after the war, where Rosenberg reestablished himself as a prominent art dealer.

In an interview, his grandson remembered the “wise, kind and elegant man” who taught him how to play chess. But he did not learn until decades later, long after Rosenberg’s death in 1971, about his grandfather’s role in the sale of the Guelph Treasure.

It is one of two Holocaust-era cases to be heard by the Supreme Court on Monday, and both turn on whether a foreign state — in this instance Germany or Hungary — may be sued in the United States for “rights in property taken in violation of international law.”

Usually, foreign governments and their agencies are shielded from suits under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. But there is an exception for an “expropriation” that violates international law, and the federal appeals court in Washington last year refused to dismiss the suits against the Hungarian national railroad and the German state museum because the alleged seizures of property were acts of genocide.

“Nowhere was the Holocaust executed with such speed and ferocity as it was in Hungary,” the appeals court said in Simon vs. Hungary. In the summer of 1944, “Hungary rounded up more than 430,000 Jews for deportation to Nazi death camps,” the court noted. Government officials, including agents of the state railroad, organized four daily trains to shuttle victims to their deaths. Before cramming between 70 and 90 people into each freight car, railroad employees robbed them of all of their possessions.

Rosalie Simon and 12 other survivors of the death camps sued Hungary and its railroad, and the D.C. Circuit appeals court, by a 2-1 vote, rejected Hungary’s claim of immunity.

That decision helped clear the way for the suit against Germany over the Guelph Treasure. Before that, Leiber and his two co-plaintiffs, Alan Philipp and Gerald Stiebel, had filed a claim for recovery in Germany with an advisory commission for the Return of Cultural Property Seized as a Result of Nazi Persecution.

The commission, which included several retired German politicians and judges, decided the 1935 sale was the result of a back-and-forth negotiation and “not a compulsory sale due to persecution.” The reduced value reflected the impact of the Great Depression, the commission said.

The heirs then filed suit in federal court in Washington.

“It is beyond serious debate that Nazi Germany took property in violation of international law by systematically targeting its Jewish citizens to make their property vulnerable for seizure,” they argued.

Again, the D.C. Circuit Court agreed and refused Germany’s claim of immunity...

Keep reading.

 

How Sam Mendes Made '1917'

I'd go see this one, but it's in limited release until January.

I love war films.

At NYT:

“We would laugh at him,” the director recalled, “until I asked my dad, ‘Why does Granddad Alfie wash his hands so much?’ And he said, ‘Oh, he remembers the mud of the trenches during the war, and the fact that he could never get clean.’” https://t.co/BC3VWPFnVc

— NYT At War (@NYTimesAtWar) December 24, 2019

When the director Sam Mendes was a young boy, he and his father often traveled to the West Indies to visit his grandfather Alfred Mendes, a novelist. Sam, who had been brought up in North London, found his grandfather to be quite exotic: The small and wiry World War I veteran would sing opera in a booming Trinidadian accent, traipse around his creaky Colonial house in shorts and flip-flops and vigorously greet each morning with a pre-dawn plunge into the sea.

Alfred Mendes also had a tendency to obsessively wash his hands, always for several minutes at a time, to the point where Sam and his cousins noticed that above all his other quirks. “We would laugh at him,” the director recalled, “until I asked my dad, ‘Why does Granddad Alfie wash his hands so much?’ And he said, ‘Oh, he remembers the mud of the trenches during the war, and the fact that he could never get clean.’”

That’s when the boys stopped laughing at their grandfather. It’s also when they began asking what happened when, at age 19, Alfred Mendes enlisted and fought on behalf of Britain in what would become one of the world’s deadliest conflicts.

“We expected, I suppose, conventional stories of heroism and bravery,” Mendes said. “We certainly didn’t expect what he told us, which was unbelievably shocking and quite graphic tales of utter futility and chaos.”

There was the wounded soldier his grandfather carried back to the trench under enemy fire, only to discover once he arrived that the man was dead, his body having absorbed a bullet meant for Alfred. Another story involved a German soldier whose head was lost in an explosion, though his body somehow carried on running.

And then there was the mission that Alfred Mendes volunteered for on Oct. 12, 1917, after nearly a third of the men in his battalion had been killed in the Battle of Poelcappelle. The survivors were stranded across many miles, and Alfred, who had been trained as a signaler, was sent to rescue them and lead them back to his camp.

“That tiny man in the midst of that vast expanse of death, that was the thing I could never get out of my mind,” said Mendes.

It is the image that inspired the new film “1917,” directed and co-written by Mendes, about two British lance corporals who must make their way across miles of battleground to deliver an urgent message that could save 1,600 of their fellow soldiers from a massacre. Still, though the stories his grandfather told him had never been far from Mendes’s mind, that didn’t mean making a movie like this came easily...

Mary Gabriel, Ninth Street Women

At Amazon, Mary Gabriel, Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art.

Rebuilding Notre Dame (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Notre Dame may take decades to fix. The first concerns are water and soot":

Two holes gape where Notre Dame’s vaulted stone ceiling has collapsed. The cathedral’s 19th century timber spire is gone, as is most of its roof. Portions of the interior walls were blackened by the intense heat of Paris’ most consequential fire in centuries.

As the world absorbs the magnitude of devastation wrought by Notre Dame’s inferno, architects and engineers anticipate a decades-long restoration process replete with unprecedented challenges. Designers will need to navigate complicated structural issues and delicate preservation debates to satisfy an array of stakeholders.

They will all be asking the same question: How do you revive an 850-year-old icon?

"The whole world is watching, and everybody has something to say about it,” said Marc Walton, director of Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts at Northwestern University. “It has to be built for the next 1,000 years. It’s going to be a different structure as a result, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

The first order of business is to dry the cathedral out, said John Fidler, who served as conservation director of English Heritage, a government agency that maintains England’s national monuments.

“There are millions of gallons of water poured into the structure that will seep down to the crypt, the basement,” Fidler said. Pumping out that water could take months, and years may pass before the entire building is completely dry.

“It’s easy to make the surface dry because there are large pores on the surface, but deeper in the stone, the pores grow narrower and it’s more difficult to suck that water out,” he said. “When the walls remain damp, you get mildew and mold and fungus and salt crystallization, which can rupture the pores in stone and cause it to deteriorate on the surface.”

Soot is also a particular concern because it’s so oily, said Rosa Lowinger, a conservator of buildings and sculpture based in Los Angeles.

“People’s first instinct is they want to wash it, but that’s the last thing you should do,” she said. The building’s limestone is porous, so soap and water would drive the soot into its pores. Instead, soot must be removed while dry. “The earliest decisions here — the protocols taken — will define how successful a project like this is.”

While conservators tackle those problems, other teams will get started on the greatest engineering challenge of the entire project: the assessment of the cathedral’s structural condition.

Most analysis methods are tailored toward modern buildings, not stone structures, so engineers may struggle to determine the stability of the damaged cathedral, said Matthew DeJong, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley who has worked on historic buildings in Europe.

But Notre Dame is surely damaged, said Frank Escher, an architect and preservationist with Escher GuneWardena Architecture in Los Angeles.

“A fire of this nature can weaken a stone structure. It’s too early to say whether it’s safe or not,” said Escher, who is currently restoring the century-old Church of the Epiphany, the oldest Episcopal church in L.A...

More.

Elizabeth Rowe, Star Flutist at Boston Symphony, Files Suit Over Pay Equity

I played trumpet and French horn in junior high school, in both the concert and marching bands.

My dad, I'm sure, would have loved it had I ended up a jazz virtuoso, but that wasn't to be, heh.

In any case, the Boston symphony has an interesting argument about how oboe-ists are essentially unique, and deserve a higher pay level regardless of sex. On the other hand, if modern society is genuine about erasing gender inequality, shouldn't first chairs be paid the same, regardless of the instrument and regardless of the gender.

At WaPo, "A star flutist is paid $64,451 less than her male counterpart. So she’s suing":

A star flutist is paid $64,451 less than her male counterpart. So she’s suing.

Elizabeth Rowe’s case against the Boston Symphony Orchestra could change how orchestras pay men and women. https://t.co/ajHJpOQxl2 pic.twitter.com/BDQRxAX0IC

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 11, 2018

BOSTON — On a winter day 14 years ago, the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced that it had finally found a new principal flutist. The search had not been easy. Two hundred fifty-one players had applied, 59 were called to Symphony Hall to audition, and when it was over, only one remained.

Elizabeth Rowe, just 29, had landed in one of the country’s “big five” orchestras. And as a principal, she occupied a special seat, the classical musical equivalent of cracking the Yankees’ starting rotation.

“If I could have a dream job, this was it,” Rowe says.

To win the slot, Rowe had taken part in the BSO’s blind auditions, playing her flute onstage behind a brown, 33-foot polyester screen. That way, the orchestra’s 12-member selection committee couldn’t see her and it wouldn’t matter whether she were a man or a woman, black or white. But after Rowe had the job, something important changed. That’s when she believes being a woman hurt her in one key way.

In July, Rowe, 44, filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the BSO seeking $200,000 in back pay. Her lawsuit came after years of appealing privately to management about the roughly $70,000 less a year she is paid than John Ferrillo, 63, the orchestra’s principal oboist. Rowe contends that she should make an equal salary and that her gender is the reason she doesn’t.

The BSO, in a statement, defended its pay structure, saying that the flute and oboe are not comparable, in part because the oboe is more difficult to play and there is a larger pool of flutists. Gender, the statement says, “is not one of the factors in the compensation process at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.”

This week, Rowe will enter mediation with the BSO aimed at resolving the conflict before it goes to court.

Speaking publicly for the first time about the lawsuit, Rowe says her case has far-reaching implications. Her lawsuit will be the first against an orchestra to test Massachusetts’s new equal-pay law, its outcome potentially affecting women across the U.S. workforce who are paid less than their male colleagues.

“Money is the one thing that we can look to to measure people’s value in an organization,” Rowe says. “You look at the number of women that graduate from conservatories and then you look at the number of women in the top leadership positions in orchestras, and it’s not 50-50 still. Women need to see equality, and they need to see fairness in order to believe that that’s possible.”

Ferrillo doesn’t just sit next to Rowe in the woodwind section. They’re musically joined at the hip, whether dancing across Debussy or the second movement of Beethoven’s Sixth. They’re also friends and mutual admirers.

They both know what it takes to earn a prominent spot in such a competitive field. Both attended music school, paid their own way to travel to auditions while in their 20s and dealt with rejection. It took Ferrillo 10 years and 22 tries to earn his first symphony position, as second oboe in the San Francisco Symphony in 1985.

But by the time the BSO approached Ferrillo to fill its oboe vacancy, he was a prized member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In 2001, to lure him away, the BSO paid him twice what the orchestra’s rank-and-file make. The BSO and Ferrillo have a nondisclosure agreement in place, which prohibits disclosure of his salary. But the figure, now $314,600, became public as part of the BSO’s tax filing. (Nonprofit organizations are required to list the top five compensated employees earning more than $100,000.)

Coming into the BSO in 2004, Rowe had done her homework. She asked to be paid the same salary Ferrillo had negotiated. The orchestra turned her down. Rowe says management also would not make her “overscale” — the term for what all principals routinely receive over their base pay — a percentage of her base, which would allow her to avoid asking for a raise every year. Instead, the BSO offered her $750 a week over base the first year, $950 the second and $1,100 once she earned tenure.

Rowe accepted the offer but did not forget. Over the next 14 years, she says, she regularly asked to be paid the same as her male colleague.

For someone who considers herself a private person — Rowe doesn’t use social media or even have a website, as many professional musicians do — going public has been trying, she says. Even when she decided to sue, Rowe had hoped that only her bosses would know. Instead, a Boston Herald reporter stumbled upon the case and published an article. Even though the stress prompted her to ask a doctor for sleep medication, Rowe says, she has no regrets about filing her suit. She says the BSO gave her no other choice.

In her suit, Rowe alleges that the orchestra ignored her and retaliated when she continued to demand a raise, even pulling an invitation to be interviewed by Katie Couric for a National Geographic TV special on gender equality.

It is the orchestra’s argument — in a response filed with the court — that “the flute and the oboe are not comparable.” In the statement to The Washington Post, the BSO also said the oboe is “second only to the concertmaster (first chair violin) in its leadership role” and is “responsible for tuning the orchestra.” The limited pool of great oboists, the BSO said, “gives oboists more leverage when negotiating compensation.”

Although four other principal BSO players — all men — earn more than Rowe, the orchestra notes that she is paid more than nine other principals, of which only one, harpist Jessica Zhou, is a woman. Rowe has been given occasional raises, and her current salary is $250,149 a year...

Keep reading.

Tamara de Lempicka Google Doodle

I don't normally comment on Google Doodles, but this woman is striking, and I love Art Deco.

Meet Tamara de Lempicka, the Polish art deco painter honoured in today's Google Doodle https://t.co/g1MLssSb5x pic.twitter.com/ZYyCE4bdsX

— World Tech News (@TechNewsTWS) May 16, 2018

Today's Google Doodle commemorates Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980), whose glorious portraits include striking interwar fashion images such as 'Young Lady with Gloves (Girl in a Green Dress)', 1930 pic.twitter.com/cR2tjYTuzM

— Jayne Shrimpton (@JayneShrimpton) May 16, 2018

Paintings by Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) #HBD
“I live life in the margins of society, and the rules of normal society don't apply to those who live on the fringe.”

Portrait of Ira
Self Portrait
Portrait of Marquis D’afflitto
Young Girl in Green#tamaradelempicka #artists pic.twitter.com/WCZuDbMd7E

— Guy S. Ricketts (@GuyRicketts) May 16, 2018

Artistic Jack-o'-lanterns

At the O.C. Register, "Incredibly artistic Halloween pumpkins by OCSA students on auction to benefit nonprofits."

Incredibly artistic Halloween pumpkins by OCSA students on auction to benefit nonprofits https://t.co/UUUno5MsxH pic.twitter.com/AOvBvQ9k8y

— O.C. Register (@ocregister) October 25, 2017

'Matilda' Ignites Violent Protests from Russia's Religious Right

At LAT, "A movie about a czar's love affair ignites violent protest from Russia's religious right":

Polish actress Michalina Olszanska plays the role of Matilda Kshesinskaya, a young ballerina in a love affair with future Czar Nicholas II, in Russian director Alexei Uchitel's movie "Matilda."

A movie about a czar's love affair ignites violent protest from Russia's religious right https://t.co/SvcBoRpA3X pic.twitter.com/qtMxhdeQUo

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 29, 2017

Los Angeles Once Teemed with Dozens of Adult Cinemas

Now there's only two porn theaters in town.

At the Los Angeles Times, "The last (porn) picture shows: Once dotted with dozens of adult cinemas, L.A. now has only two":

In 1979, there were an estimated 800 porn theaters across the United States. But video and streaming have rendered them obsolete. The website Cinema Treasures lists fewer than 35 places now operating as adult theaters in the U.S.

In the 1970s, Los Angeles teemed with dozens of porn theaters. Now only two remain: the Studs and the Tiki. They sit at opposite ends of Santa Monica Boulevard — the former in West Hollywood, the latter in East Hollywood, framing the city in an unseen porno-magnetic field. Both beckon with promises of titillation and, in the case of the Studs, a tag line that reads, “Come explore, relax, and take a load off.”

To investigate these last bastions of adult cinema, I enlisted the help of Los Angeles painter Zak Smith.

Smith is a Yale-educated artist who has appeared in more than half a dozen porn films under the name Zak Sabbath. He chronicled his experiences in the 2009 memoir “We Did Porn.” (Original drawings from that project are currently on view at Fabien Castanier Gallery in Culver City.)

He was curious to explore the L.A. theaters, neither of which he had visited.

“They’re vestigial,” he says. “Like with everything else, the old platforms for porn are being phased out. Software adapts fast, hardware adapts slower — and a theater is the ultimate hardware.”

Plus, Smith sees them as symbols of the ways in which sprawling Los Angeles can unwittingly harbor forgotten pockets of history.

“L.A.,” he explains, “is one of those places that always manages to have at least one of something that shouldn’t exist.”

More.

'Untitled' Jean-Michel Basquiat Painting Sells for 'Mind-Blowing' $110.5 Million at Auction

Amazing.

Apparently, the painting "remained in the same private collection since it was bought at auction in 1984 for $19,000."

That's a smart investment.

At the Telegraph U.K., "Basquiat painting fetches record $110.5 million at New York auction."

Basquiat painting fetches record $110.5 million at New York auctionhttps://t.co/ga2IlIw717 pic.twitter.com/W93LhJmmAA

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) May 19, 2017

'The Battle of Algiers' — It's Excellent

I took my older son with me yesterday. He loves hanging out in L.A.

Here're my earlier posts, "Going to See 'The Battle of Algiers' Today," and "At the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles: 'The Battle of Algiers' — 50TH ANNIVERSARY NEW 4K RESTORATION (VIDEO)."

I remember from years ago, although I can't remember where (probably the LGM homos), how leftists praised "Battle of Algiers" as THE cinematic exegesis of the revolutionary experience. It was the radical left's "in" movie.

And I can see why. It's practically a do-it-yourself instructional video on how to mount an insurgency against the hegemonic colonial capitalist ruling classes.

See for example the review, at A.V. Club, from 2004 (when he movie came out on DVD):

In the current political climate, between the war in Iraq and the looming election, topical documentaries and fiction features have flooded the marketplace. But none are more relevant to the times than Gillo Pontecorvo's masterpiece The Battle Of Algiers, which was made nearly four decades ago. Throughout the years, the film has been tagged as a terrorist textbook, an inspiration for the Black Panthers and other radical organizations, yet its startling verity has recently proved useful for Pentagon officials eager to understand how networks like al-Qaeda operate. Still smarting from their moral and tactical failures in colonial Algeria, the French banned the 1965 film for several years, and some countries excised scenes revealing the systemic torture of National Liberation Front (FLN) operatives. But even though The Battle Of Algiers ranks among the great works of revolutionary cinema, Pontecorvo depicts insurgent warfare with a stark, evenhanded realism that feels like history painted on the screen. In fact, many prints actually come with the disclaimer that the film doesn't include a single frame of documentary or newsreel footage. And that's not a boast: It really does seem that real.

 Plus, I missed this earlier, at the New York Times from 1967, "MOVIE REVIEW - Screen: Local Premiere of Pontecorvo's Prize-Winning 'Battle of Algiers': Gripping Re-enactment Opens Film Festival."

And here's a good piece on the conflict altogether, at the World Socialist Web, "Torture in the Algerian war (1954-62)."

More here, from an interesting blog post by a leftist academic, "What was the Algerian War/Why should you care."

Related: James D. Le Sueur, Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics During the Decolonization of Algeria. And, General Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-terrorism in Algeria, 1955-1957.

Going to See 'The Battle of Algiers' Today

"The Battle of Algiers" opens today at the Nuart Theater in West L.A.

I blogged the press release a few weeks ago, "At the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles: 'The Battle of Algiers' — 50TH ANNIVERSARY NEW 4K RESTORATION (VIDEO)."

The L.A. Times posted a write-up, "Once banned, 'Battle of Algiers'' smart, compassionate take on terror and rebellion resonates today."

And here's one from 1993, "'Battle of Algiers' Captures Emotions in Both Camps."

Years ago, when I was an undergrad at Fresno State taking a course on modern France, I read John Talbott's, The War Without a Name: France in Algeria, 1954 - 1962. What I remember most about the book is how much the conflict roiled French society, and how the French military attempted a coup d'etat that led eventually to Charles de Gaulle's return to power with extraordinary constitutional authority under a new regime, the Fifth French Republic. So, it'll be interesting to see "The Battle of Algiers," particularly from the point of view of the revolutionaries who changed the world.

See also, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962.

At the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles: 'The Battle of Algiers' — 50TH ANNIVERSARY NEW 4K RESTORATION (VIDEO)

The film's coming to the Nuart in West L.A. on October 7th. Sounds like something I'd like to attend. We'll see.

In any case, here's the trailer, "The Battle of Algiers."

A history of the three-year Battle of Algiers, chronicling the escalating terrorism and violence between French military forces and the Algerian independence movement, based on the memoirs of Saadi Yacef, a leader of the National Liberation Front. The 50th anniversary restoration opens October 7 at New York's Film Forum, Landmark's Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles, and Landmark's E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C.

*****

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966), Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo’s legendary re-telling of the struggle for Algerian independence from France, on the 50th anniversary of its release, will run at Film Forum in New York in a new 4K restoration from Friday, October 7 through Thursday, October 13.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS is also a selection of the NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2016 and will be released theatrically by Rialto Pictures on October 7 at New York’s Film Forum, Landmark’s Nuart in Los Angeles and E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C., followed by a major city roll-out through the fall.

Algiers, 1957: French paratroopers inch their way through the labyrinthine byways of the Casbah to zero in on the hideout of the last rebel still free in the city. Flashback three years earlier, as the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) decides on urban warfare. Thus begin the provocations, assassinations, hair-breadth escapes, and reprisals; Algerian women — disguised as chic Europeans — depositing bombs at a sidewalk café, a teenagers’ hang-out and an Air France office; and massive, surging crowd scenes unfolding with gripping realism.

Shot in the streets of Algiers, The Battle of Algiers vividly re-creates the tumultuous uprising against the occupying French in the 1950s. As the violence escalates on both sides, the French torture prisoners for information and the Algerians resort to terrorism in their quest for independence.

Battle’s startling relevance to today’s world events motivated the Pentagon to hold a much-discussed private screening for military personnel shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A flyer advertising the screening stated, "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafés. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar?"

One of the most influential films in the history of political cinema, Battle of Algiers won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1966, was nominated for three Academy Awards (Best Foreign Film, Best Director and Best Story and Screenplay), and was ranked as the 26 greatest film of all time in the 2012 Sight and Sound directors’ poll (it was also in the critics’ top 50), though it was long banned in France for its negative depiction of French colonialism.

With the exception of actor Jean Martin, as the French colonel brought in to quell the uprising, the cast is comprised mainly of non-professional actors who’d been involved in the Algerian struggle. Saadi Yacef, who produced Algiers, also stars as one of the leaders of the insurrection – a role he played in life as a general in the National Liberation Front. Yacef wrote the original treatment for the film – adapted from his book Souvenirs de la bataille d’Alger – in jail after he was captured by the French.

The stirring score is by Pontecorvo and the great Ennio Morricone.

Restored by Cineteca di Bologna and Istituto Luce - Cinecittà at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with Surf Film, Casbah Entertainment Inc. and CultFilms

Approx. 121 min. | A Rialto Pictures Release

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo | Screenplay: Franco Solinas,

Based on the book by Saadi Yacef | Cinematography: Marcello Gatti

Music: Gillo Pontecorvo & Ennio Morricone

Special Offers in Fine Arts

At Amazon, Shop Special Offers - 40% Off Fine Art .

Plus, from Mark Bauerlein, ed., The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism.

'Emin advanced her career with media-friendly drunken antics, and by cozying up to power players, rather than making worthwhile art. She made a name for herself by behaving as a kind of pandering clown for the glitterati, a predictable freak show for our would-be ruling class, feeding into the establishment’s most precious clichés...'

This is interesting, at the Remodern Review, "The Doublethink Strategy of the Cultural Elitists":

If you don’t understand the desired outcome, the actions make no sense.

One of the most controversial and least talented artists of the global art scene routinely receives the full force of establishment institutional support, including from a supposedly conservative government.

Tracey Emin is a notorious figure in England. She is an icon of the Conceptual Art movement that has done so much to destroy the credibility of elitist culture for anyone who has a life outside of the Postmodern cocoon.

Emin’s an artist who can’t draw; naturally the powers that be named her Professor of Drawing at London’s prestigious Royal Academy of the Arts.

*****

Once you realize the arrogant ruling class believes tearing down the traditions and standards of Western civilization will cement their grasp on unaccountable power, the promotion of Emin as the pinnacle of artistic achievement becomes understandable. Hyping soulless, unskilled art has a toxic, weakening effect on society as a whole. Conceptual art is a tool of oppression.

RTWT.

Via Instapundit.

Britain is Experiencing Same Decline as Rome in 100 BC

At the Telegraph UK, "Dr Jim Penman believes Britons no longer have the genetic temperament that sparked the Industrial Revolution":

Britain is experiencing the same decline as Rome in 100BC, with the collapse of civilisation inevitable, a scientist has warned.

Dr Jim Penman, of the RMIT University in Melbourne, believes Britons no longer have the genetic temperament to advance because of decades of peace and a high standard of living.

He claims that the huge success of the Victorian era will not be repeated because people in the UK have lost the biological drive for innovation.

Instead, Britain is existing in a period similar to the decades before the fall of the Roman Republic where social tensions were rife, the gap between the rich and poor was increasing and extremism was growing.

And when added to a growing distaste for military action, which has seen huge cuts the armed forces, by the end of the century the UK will no longer have the power, or will, to protect itself against a serious invading force, he predicts.

“There are certainly parallels between 100BC in the Roman Republic where things are starting to get pretty dodgy,” he said.
“It was a time when democracy was moving towards despotism, and in Britain we now see that politics is becoming much more about individuals rather than political parties. It’s about personalities. The two party system has started to break down.

“We live in a golden age where there have been no major wars in Europe for three quarters of a century. But the economy is stagnating and we’re having fewer children.

“And once European countries can no longer defend themselves, the end of national independence cannot be long delayed.”

The U.S. can't be far behind.

RELATED: "The Complexity of American Power."

IMAGE CREDIT: Thomas Cole's "The Destruction of Empire."