Category: The Arts

"Damn it, Dagny! I need the government to get out of the way and let me do my job!"

She sat across the desk from him. She appeared casual but confident, a slim body with rounded shoulders like an exquisitely engineered truss. How he hated his debased need for her, he who loathed self-sacrifice but would give up everything he valued to get in her pants … Did she know?

"I heard the thugs in Washington were trying to take your Rearden metal at the point of a gun," she said. "Don’t let them, Hank. With your advanced alloy and my high-tech railroad, we’ll revitalize our country’s failing infrastructure and make big, virtuous profits."

"Oh, no, I got out of that suckers’ game. I now run my own hedge-fund firm, Rearden Capital Management."

"What?"

The story, which is awesome, continues here.  A big hat tip to Phil Izzo at WSJ’s Real Time Economics.

For the first time in history, the Grand Canal and St. Mark’s Square are carrying huge advertisements

Deutsche Bank offers 600 major post-war works cut-price…

Christie’s has "worst Islamic sale in 17 years"

Contemporary Chinese art levels off

This year’s Sao Paulo Bienal shows almost no art; is this conceptual choice or just lack of funding?

Here’s a great little video from PBS (!) featuring Gordon Tullock on why he doesn’t vote and why you shouldn’t either.  (Andrew Gelman and Noah Kaplan beg to differ in this article, but their theory applies only to altruists – not to Gordon!).

And from The Teaching Company here is a free video on voting theory, i.e. Arrow’s theorem, the Borda count and all that other good stuff.

DonorsChoose is one of more than 200 nonprofits that Lehman
aids each year. Through corporate contributions and grants from
its U.S. and European foundations, it [Lehman Foundation] distributed $39 million in
the 12 months ended in November 2007, according to Lehman’s Web
site.    

Melissa Berman, chief executive of Rockefeller Philanthropy
Advisors, which advises individuals and corporations about giving
away money, said the [Lehman] foundation must close — eventually —
because it no longer has a corporation sustaining it. Yet its
assets are protected from creditors, she said.   

Here is the story.  Here is a story on the Lehman art collection.  Here are articles about how Lehman has several times won the Credit Derivatives House of the Year Award, including the Asia version of the award in 2008.

A sale of pickled sharks, butterfly paintings and other pieces by the
provocative British artist [Damien Hirst] has raised more than US$125 million – a
record for an auction of works by a single artist. And there is more to
come Tuesday.

Here is the story and I thank Chris F. Masse for the pointer.  Here are previous installments in the series, including dirt for dinner in Haiti.

1. The new Pamuk novel, right now in German and Turkish only.

2. The new Miyazaki movie: Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.  Trailer (sort of) here.  It’s at film festivals now, the full U.S. release date is 2009.

3. The next Malcolm Gladwell book.

4. Jose Saramago, Death at Intervals (the other title is Death With Interruptions).  I snagged an advance copy from the UK; sadly he is past his vital powers.

5. Here is a broader fall books preview.

6. The Clash Live at Shea Stadium, coming on disc.  I am lucky enough to have seen them at the Passaic Theatre before they became truly famous.

7. Ashes of Time Redux, due out October 10th.  Maybe the re-edited version of this classic (but in my view unwatchable) Wong Kar-Wai film will finally make sense.

What am I missing?

All this attention is being devoted to Alaska, so I thought I should do my own evaluation.  Note in advance that politicians don’t usually make these lists, they’re not "favorite" enough for me.  And enough about her for now anyway (though I’ll note in passing, in response to Andrew Sullivan and others, that if voters want to like her, they’ll simply refuse to see McCain in the properly cynical light); but no more comments on this issue for now as I want the blogosphere back!

1. Novel, set in: Jack London’s Call of the Wild or White Fang are the obvious choices.  Did you know that London’s fiction was very widely read in the former Soviet Union?

2. Music: There’s Jewel and Bette Midler and maybe you’re all wondering which one I will pick.  But the excellent Kevin Johansen, also associated with Buenos Aires I might add, is the proverbial rabbit from the hat.  Ha! 

3. Movie, set in: Both Never Cry Wolf and Grizzly Man are very good; the former had a lead character named Tyler before the name became fashionable.  And isn’t Nanook of the North set in Alaska?  Into the Wild is another pick and I doubt if I have exhausted the list.

4. Basketball player: Carlos Boozer is from Juneau.

5. Sculpture: Alaska is probably #1 in the entire United States once you consider the indigenous peoples.  The best works are from the 1950s and 60s and they are not always attributable.  My personal favorite is Thomassie Annanok but of course that is a matter of taste.  Ingo Hessel’s book on Inuit Art is a favorite of mine, noting that it focuses more on Canada than Alaska.

6. Other arts: The Tlingit (some of whom live in Canada) have excellent totem poles, boxes, and carvings.  The Haida are another rich artistic tradition.

7. Novel, set in: Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union is the obvious pick plus I hear The Cloud Atlas (The Liam Callanan book, not the David Mitchell one, which is very good but not connected to Alaska) is good.

8. Travel book, set in: Jonathan Raban’s Passage to Juneau: A Sea and its Meanings is lovely.  I’ve never read John Muir’s Travels in Alaska but it is likely a contender.

9. Blogger: Hail Ben Muse of Alaska, advocate of free trade!

The bottom line: It relies too much on "set in," but overall the list is better than I had been expecting.  Sadly, Alaska is the one American state I have yet to visit.

1. Fiction: I’ve already covered Roberto Bolaño plenty on MR; The Savage Detectives is his masterpiece but it’s all worth reading.  The massive 2666 is due out later this year.  José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of Night, while hardly read in the U.S., seems to me one of the most gripping novels of the 20th century.  If you read the Amazon reviews you’ll that others who have read it agree.  This is one of the least read first-rate novels I know.  It’s not easy going, however, and it’s taking me a long time to read through a mish-mash of the English and Spanish-language texts.  To top it all off, Isabel Allende has many fun books, most notably The House of the Spirits, which almost everyone will enjoy.  Chile is much stronger in literature than most people think.

2. Popular music: Ricardo Villalobos is the lead figure of Chilean techno, which is now I hear quite a vibrant genre; Taka Taka is quite a good mix album.  What else can you point me to?

3. Poetry: My favorite Neruda is Canto General, his retelling of Whitman’s America but covering the entire hemisphere.  A masterpiece.  Estravagario is excellent and while I haven’t read Residencia de la Tierra, it is considered another one of his classics.  The love poems are very nice though perhaps not his best material.  In any case he is one of the three or four best poets of the twentieth century.  Gabriela Mistral is talented but I cannot say I love her work.

4. Playwright: Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden is good.

5. Favorite small town: There are so many, but how about Villarica, Punta Arenas, or that small port place next to La Serena whose name I cannot remember?  Chile is one of the world’s best countries for lovely small towns.

6. Movie, set in or made in: Sorry folks, but I can’t think of a single one.  What am I missing?

7. Seafood dish: Curantos.

8. Pianist: It’s hard not to pick Claudio Arrau, but, despite his musical intelligence, I don’t actually enjoy most of his (to me) lugubrious recordings.  I have heard he was much better live in concert.

9. Painter: Roberto Matta is the obvious choice.

The bottom line: Writing, writing, and more writing.  More generally, Chile is one of the very nicest countries on Earth.  The key is to get around to those small towns.

Asher has no dealer; his work is not generally for sale.  When I ask the artist whether he resists the art market, he says dryly: "I don’t avoid commodity forms.  In 1966 I made these plastic bubbles.  They were shaped like paint blisters that came an inch off the wall.  I sold one of those."

That is from the very fun Seven Days in the Art World, by Sarah Thornton.  Here is Felix Salmon on the book.  How about this part?:

The artist Keith Tyson admits that he had a gambling problem when he was a nominee in 2002.  "I had an intellectual interest in chance as well as a fantasy of beating the laws of mathematics," he said.  "The Turner Prize was my first opportunity to bet when I could have an effect.  My odds were seven to two.  In a four-horse race, that is an insult.  I had absolutely no choice.  I’m sure it is solely because of the bets I put on myself that I went from being the underdog to the favorite.  I won’t say how much I took home, but won more from betting than I did from winning what was then a twenty-thousand pound prize."

In other words, prizes, plus a betting market on the prize winner, create especially strong incentives.

Ask David Galenson to name the single greatest work of art from the 20th century, and he unhesitatingly answers “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” a 1907 painting by Picasso.

He can then tell you with certainty Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on, as well.

…His statistical approach has led to what he says is a radically new interpretation of 20th-century art, one he is certain art historians will hate. It is based in part on how frequently an illustration of a work appears in textbooks.

Here is the full profile.  Here are previous MR posts on David Galenson.  Here is Galenson’s home page.

I’m hardly here for long, so here goes:

1. Author: There’s Sherwood Anderson and William Dean Howells and Toni Morrison; I’ll pick the latter though none are true favorites of mine.   

2. Director: Wes Craven remains underrated; I still like his The Serpent and the Rainbow, among others.  I can’t think of a notable movie set in Ohio, can you?

3. Painter: George Bellows’s reputation has shot up in the last twenty years; here’s an unusual Bellows print.  I very much like the botanical paintings and prints of Jim Dine, although I can’t find a good one on-line.

4. Popular music: I can’t think of much…Boz Scaggs doesn’t count nor does Peter Frampton.  Lonnie Mack’s The Wham of That Memphis Man! is one of the least known great albums.  Doris Day is a very good singer and do see Pillow Talk if you don’t already know it.

5. Jazz: There is Art Tatum, especially the early Capitol work, not so much the later Pablo recordings.  Billy Strayhorn was often behind the best Duke Ellington arrangements.

6. Classical music recording: George Szell’s Beethoven’s 3rd remains a landmark recording, or try his Piano Concerti set with Leon Fleisher.

7. Philosopher: Willard van Orman Quine. most of all Word and Object.  Now that’s a favorite.

8. Sculptor: Maya Lin did the Vietnam Memorial though she hasn’t had much of a second act.

The bottom line: The achievement from this state is remarkably well-distributed across different artistic fields and genres.  Why?  Is it because the state has so many different cities of at least middling size?  Or is it because the state straddles the East and the Midwest?  Sadly there is no Cincinnati chili for me this time.

Addendum: Angus of Ohio comments.

A small menagerie of new Damien Hirst pickled animals took a bow yesterday, including a new shark, a zebra, a calf with solid gold horns and hoofs valued at up to £12m, and even a unicorn – a white foal fitted with a resin horn, rather than an apparition from a fairytale.

All have been churned out by his small army of assistants this year for an auction at Sotheby’s in September which will sell more than 200 pieces. The auction is predicted to raise £65m, comfortably setting a new world record for the artist, and blazing a trail which other artists will watch with interest, of bypassing the gallery and dealer system and going straight to auction.

Both the Gagosian Gallery, and Jay Jopling’s White Cube, his American and British dealers, have given the auction their blessing, possibly through gritted teeth…

If you are a dealer this is big news and indeed bad news.  But why not?  Hirst doesn’t need gallery publicity or buyer recruitment.  Since galleries tend to sell their best works to loyal repeat buyers ("why?" is a good question), this implies that "seniority" will matter less and less for assembling a good collection.  That favors foreign buyers and hedge fund types.  Here is the link.  Here is Felix Salmon’s very good post on the economics of contemporary art.

In case you did not know.  Here is one example of a fool:

It was only after Mr. Maldonado landed back in California that he did
some research on his purchases. Including the buyer’s premium, he had
paid $24,265 for a 1964 “Clown” print by Picasso. He found that
Sotheby’s had sold the exact same print (also numbered 132 of 200) in
London for about $6,150 in 2004.

Of course the corruption and foolishness runs deeper than the article lets on.  If you shop for contemporary prints in entirely "reputable" Georgetown galleries, they will charge about twice the going auction rate for the prints.  They might tell you that the prints are "hard to find" when in fact usually they are not.  A good New York dealer, used to dealing with well-informed customers, might charge only 10-15 percent above auction (full price including buyer’s premium).  The bottom line is that you should never spend more than $1500 on art unless you know at least roughly what it is worth at auction.  One of life’s good rules of thumb.