Category: The Arts

The list came out quite well:

1. Actress: Jennifer Lopez.  Seriously.  Out of Sight is quite good and the badly misunderstood The Cell makes perfect sense once you realize it is a retelling of parts of Sikh theology.  Rita Moreno gets honorable mention.

2. Cellist: Pablo Casals (his mother was Puerto Rican and he ended up living there).  His Bach Suites, while profound, are largely unlistenable due to the scratching and scraping.  Nonetheless there are still revelations to be found in the trio recordings, Schubert, bits of the Beethoven, etc.

3. Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat.  Sneer if you wish, but his 1982-1984 period is very good, most of all the sketches.  There are many bad Basquiat works, however, and lots of fakes.

4. Economic historian and colleague: Carlos Ramirez.  Don't forget his paper on the bailout.

5. Poet: Juan Ramón Jiménez, who left Spain for Puerto Rico.  Here is his Platero y Yo.  Although he won a Nobel Prize in 1956, this very pure poet remains underrated in the United States.

6. Reggaeton song: Gasolina, by Daddy Yankee; note that reggaeton originated in Panama.

7. Guitarist: Jose Feliciano.  Here is his Star-Spangled Banner (excerpt) and here.  Here is Jose and Johnny Cash.

8. Musical, about: Paul Simon's The Caveman (not WSS, which I actively dislike).

9. Art museum: The two notable collections of pre-Raphelite art in this hemisphere are in Wilmington, Delaware and Ponce, Puerto Rico.  Each is worth a visit.

10. Building: Puerto Rico has many fine homes and a surprising amount of Art Deco, plus the colonial buildings and fortifications in San Juan.  Here is the over the top fire station in Ponce.  But overall I'll pick the metalwork on one of the country homes, somewhere between San Juan and Ponce.

The bottom line: The achievements are strong and varied, noting that I've used a looser notion of affiliation than in some comparisons past.

I was asked to do a radio interview with KPCC while I was at TED.  The interview had just started and I’m talking about organ donation when into the studio walks Robin Williams!  Naturally all chaos ensues and Robin takes over… but not before I manage to squeeze in an economics joke with Robin playing the straight man!  Some kind of first there.  I’m not sure Robin got the joke but I think this made the host laugh all the more. No one can out talk Robin, however, so he riffs on organ donation and fiscal stimulus for some time.  Eventually Robin goes on his merry way and the host and I get back to organ donation, bounty hunters, voting and other cool stuff.  An amazing experience for me.  Real audio here (try here if that doesn’t work)

Here is an obituary.  He was arguably the very finest of the 20th century print makers at creating textures.  Here is one amazing example of his work; even on the internet the talent is evident.  Here is a Terry Winters print with him.  Here is a simple Braque print done with Crommelynck.  Jasper Johns also did fine work with Crommelynck, whose talents he stood in awe of.  Jim Dine benefited greatly from his collaboration; here is Dine's sculptural tribute to Crommelynck.  Crommelynck printed this Picasso etching, as well as doing many other fine Picasso works.  The talents of print makers are very often underappreciated.

If you are curious as to my (generally positive) views on John Updike, see these previous MR posts.

Many organizations that spent years building large endowments to
provide more stable sources of support have seen them decimated. A
number of our most loyal donors have watched their own investment
portfolios be depleted and cannot provide their traditional funding.
Our audience members cannot buy as many tickets as they have in the
past. And our board members are less able to involve friends and
associates in our fundraising galas and other activities.

This perfect storm has already weakened the fabric of our nation’s arts ecology. Over the past several months, the Baltimore Opera Company,
Santa Clarita Symphony, Opera Pacific, the Los Angeles Museum of
Contemporary Art and others have closed or come close to closing. There
probably will be a torrent of additional closures, cancellations and
crises in the coming months.

Of course they want a bailout but this is for me not a priority.  Given the new distribution of wealth, arguably we need more culture for lower-income people and less culture for the rich.  I don’t think the old distribution of wealth is coming back anytime soon.

It’s something to watch when the egalitarian and elitist tendencies of modern liberalism clash so strongly.  When it comes to high culture it’s like this:  "I don’t think they should have so much money, but I sure like what they spend their money on."  Yet if deflationary pressures are going to benefit lower class individuals with jobs, something has to give and that is, in part, the discretionary arts spending of the wealthy.

The longer plea for aid is here.  I thank Christopher Janak for the pointer.

This is from the excellent Seth Roberts, now in Beijing:

The 2008 China International Petroleum Equipment and Technology Exhibition concluded last Friday in the eastern city of Dongying. 3000 guests from over 40 countries attended and everything appeared to run smoothly. Yet the majority of the foreign delegates were hired just to make the event look "international". Among the 200 fake delegates was Jez Webb, The Peking Order‘s energy correspondent.

Most guests had responded to an ad on theBeijinger.com with the curious title: “Free trip to Shandong, 200 foreign visitors invited (Be paid)”. We would, depending on our age, receive between 600 and 700 RMB (£60-70) for two days “work” – two 6 hour bus journeys to and from the city, full board in a luxury hotel and a couple of hours walking round an exhibition, pretending that we were involved in the petroleum industry.

You’ll note the monopsony market structure behind the offer.  The story is full of interesting further detail.

You see a woman after you met her before and say: you are more beautiful than I remember. She should be pleased, right?

Or you say: you are smarter than I remember. Would she be pleased the same way? Or is there a difference and why?

"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?