Category: The Arts

When should we consume culture in small, sequential bits?

by  Tyler Cowen in

I almost always read novels in bits.  That is, I put the book down for a few times before finishing it.

I rarely watch movies in bits.  That just seems wrong.  But, assuming we are watching on DVD, why?  Why do pauses ruin a movie but not a book?  I can think of a few hypotheses:

1. Movies manipulate our neurophysiology over a two-hour time horizon.  If we restart in the middle after a two-day pause, we are not worked up in the right manner.

2. Most books are longer than most movies, but there is otherwise no good reason for the difference in our consumption pattern.

3. We like the idea that we are "reading Camus," and thus we wish to stretch it out.  Few people get comparable status or feel-good values from watching movies and thus there is no need to prolong that experience.

4. We don’t actually like reading enough to keep on paying attention for so many hours in a row.

The ever-wise Natasha notes that we are mostly likely to read action novels — such as The da Vinci Code
— straight through without pause.  But action movies are the easiest to
watch in bits.  Ever try just a half hour of Jackie Chan?  Wonderful.  But breaking up a good drama is criminal.

Your thoughts?

Has serendipity disappeared?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Terry Teachout writes:

I take a look at the financial woes of Tower
Records and the wider implications of music downloading.  One frequently
overlooked effect of downloading on the culture of music is the extent
to which it discourages in-store browsing, and the serendipitous
discoveries that can only be made by wandering at will up and down the
aisles of a deep-catalog record store.

I am (surprise) less pessimistic.  I see one kind of serendipity as replacing another.  The new serendipity relies on Internet browsing.  Which CDs can be described in an intriguing way on a blog or an Amazon listing?  The old serendipity depended more on the quality of the album or CD cover.  I see the new serendipity as favoring the tastes of the highly literate, and as favoring artists with interesting biographies.  Older methods favored groups with good album art, which tends to be correlated with a sense of the unusual or outrageous.  I do not see why the new serendipity should be worse than the old, although admittedly it discriminates against those with Internet connections.

Addendum: Terry Teachout asks that I link to his longer discussion.

Are new concert halls worth it?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is a good NYT article, and here is my favorite part:

“This is all redistributing people’s expenditures from one activity to another,” said David Galenson, an economist at the University of Chicago who focuses on the arts.

Tyler
Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University and the
author of “Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts
Funding,” said there was little solid research measuring the economic
impact of arts centers on a city, although there was for sports
stadiums. Such research shows no benefit for a city’s growth, he said,
adding that he was skeptical about economic claims for new concert
halls.

“The glorious tales are typically exaggerations,” said
Mr. Cowen, who also contributes a monthly economics column to The New
York Times.

Random rants on music and books

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Bob Dylan’s latest has received rave reviews just about everywhere.  Who can doubt an honest effort from the elder statesman?  In reality it is little more than a repackaged version of his last two (superb) albums and thus mostly predictable and mostly boring.  By the way, it is becoming clearer — against all former odds — that he was often a horrible lyricist but he remains, even in his dotage, a remarkable vocalist.

2. I loved the first half of Samuel Beckett’s Watt, but then lost the thread of the book.  Beckett’s fiction remains underread, if only because we’ve yet to figure out just how good it is (or isn’t).  The best parts are astonishing, but at times I feel I am listening to one of those unfunny British radio comedy shows.

3. Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children is a novel about thirty-somethings, in a pre- and post 9-11 NYC, transitioning (or not) into adulthood.  That is a recipe for literary trouble.  But I bought it anyway, trusting Meghan O’Rourke, and yes it deserves the sterling reviews.  I kept expecting Megan McArdle to show up as a character and give them all a good talking-to about microeconomics, which is exactly what the characters need.

4. The best world music release of the last year or so remains Amadou and Mariam, Dimanche a Bamako.  It is also the best pop album of the last year.  The two Mali musicmakers are blind and also married to each other.  I don’t see how anyone could help but love this music.  After a year from its purchase, I’m still listening to it.

5. Steven Slivinki’s Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government is exactly what the subtitle suggests.  How did that happen?  One factor is that the Republicans found Democratic rule too horrible a prospect to bear and they became more populist.  Let’s hope the Democrats don’t make a comparable mistake.

6. Stephen Miller’s Conversation: The History of a Declining Art.  I loved the title, hated the subtitle.  Much of the book, which considers the preconditions of good conversation, is fascinating and, despite its popular level, goes beyond the muddled arguments of Habermas.  It collapses when it argues that the quality of conversation is declining in the modern world.  The evidence consists solely of examples of bad modern conversations.

Lynne Munson reviews my book

by  Tyler Cowen in

She covers Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding, in The Weekly Standard.  Here is the link, which offers only a bit of the review to non-subscribers.  Here is an excerpt from the critical part of her review:

…few critical observers would agree that contemporary American art has put its best work forward in recent decades, when our artists and art institutions have enjoyed more riches than at any other time in history.  Contemporary American artmaking has been monopolized for nearly a half-century by postmodernism, a politics-obsessed formulaic approach that has yielded such shock-art masterpieces as Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (which finds itself in numerous museum collections).  Artists who do not work in the postmodern mode are excluded from museum exhibitions and the best galleries.

Of course, no better can be said of the products of the European art world, whose denizens have, at best, striven to vie with their postmodern American counterparts for the prize of Most Shocking.  But to argue, as Cowen does, that "the American model encourages artistic creativity [and] keeps the politicization of art to a minimum," is to be unaware of how narrow and prescriptive American artmaking has become.  The simple fact is that artmaking in America has been taken over by a single bad idea, despite the ample and diverse funding it receives.

Her last sentence is a good illustration of how two people can look at the same facts and see such very different patterns.

Jeff Koons and the Test of Time

by  Tyler Cowen in

It will be so rich, 200 years from now, to look back at the art that Jeff is creating today. It might all look quite quaint and sweet, and the graphic quality will look retro. And, of course, the vacuum cleaners will look like pieces of a stagecoach. But it will let people know that we did understand the weirdness of our world.

Read more here.  I sympathize with Jeff Koons.  One of my goals in writing this blog is to help people understand the weirdness of our world.  Here is one sculpture by Jeff Koons; try this too.

My favorite things Austrian

by  Tyler Cowen in

I will restrict myself to the current borders:

Novel: Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein’s Nephew.  This book, set in an insane asylum, is hilarious and is perhaps the least known of the Continental masterpiece novels of ideas.  Der Untergeher [The Loser] is another brilliant book by Bernhard.  Yes I will put these over Musil and of course Kafka worked in Prague and doesn’t count.  Broch’s The Death of Virgil is a dark horse pick.

Music: This combination of category and place is a bit ridiculous, no?  Just to mix it up, let’s pick Schoenberg’s Op. 31, Variations for Orchestra, or Webern’s Symphony in C, or Piano Variations, Op. 27, played by Pollini or Uchida.  For Berg I’ll pick the Violin Concerto in A minor, or perhaps "Lyric Suite."

If we must look elsewhere, my favorite Mahler is the 9th, the live Karajan version.  Favorite Bruckner is the 8th, the first Karajan version and the Bruno Walter recording of the 4th.  Capriccio and Metamorphosen might be the most underrated Richard Strauss.  My favorite Schubert CD stars Ely Ameling and Jorg Demus, and then Schnabel or perhaps Clifford Curzon doing the last Piano Sonata in B flat.  The Hollywood does an amazing version of the String Quintet in C.  Britten and Pears recorded the ideal Die Winterreise.  I’ve yet to find the perfect version of Schubert’s 9th but I love Furtwaengler’s interpretation.  Favorite Haydn, if we can count him as Austrian, would be the last six piano sonatas and the String Quartets, Op.76.  Mozart I’ve already blogged.

Book about: How about Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, a beautiful portrait of declining Vienna by a man who killed himself?  Another good pick is Toulmin’s Wittgenstein’s Vienna.  Carl Schorske is not to be forgotten either.

Draftsman: Egon Schiele did incredible drawings.  Try this one.  Here is a beautiful painting by Schiele, who died at age 28.

Movie, set in: It is hard to go against The Third Man, starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.

Movie: What is the best Austrian movie?  Here is a list, good luck.  I’ve never seen one all the way through.

Movie star: Duh.

Here is an impressive list of Austrian scientists, including economists.  Karl Pribram and Rudolf Hilferding remain underrated as economists.  Mises is underrated as a theorist of public choice.  Hayek was arguably the first neuroeconomist.  Wieser anticipated much of modern "social economics."  Freud was a brilliant literary analyst.

The bottom line: There are gobs and gobs and gobs.  We haven’t even touched upon design.  But the overall trajectory is not exactly positive once you crack the mid-1930s.

My favorite things Netherlandish

by  Tyler Cowen in

This has long been one of my favorite countries, but these choices are not so tough.  For most of the categories I have clear first picks.

1. Painter: We’re talking favorite here.  Best goes to Rembrandt, but Mondrian changed my life.  For single painting, I opt for Vermeer’s The Art of Painting.  The map in the background (do you get the implicit political and indeed pre-Westphalian Catholic message?) blows me away.  There is also van Gogh, his best works are the drawings.  de Kooning deserves mention, my favorite picture by him is Excavation, which hangs in Chicago.

2. Movie and Director: Paul Verhoeven is the go-to guy, how about The Fourth Man?  But all of his are worth seeing, at least up until Hollow Man.  Starship Troopers remains one of the most underrated movies; most people didn’t get that it was a critique of militarism and consumer society, all rolled into one.  But you can’t make much money attacking your viewers, at least not in Hollywood.  Verhoeven aside, The Vanishing is a strong entry.  The guy who directed Speed is Dutch as well, I believe.

3. Novel: Harry Mulisch, The Discovery of Heaven.  An underrated Continental novel of ideas, full of metaphysical speculation.  But for such a literate people, this category is surprisingly thin. 

4. Classical Music: Here is a list, take your pick from an undistinguished lot.  It seems they left out Sweelinck, my default choice.  There is more choice if you count the Flems, such as Josquin.

5. Popular music song: "Venus," by The Shocking Blue.  Yes they were Dutch, and yes this is better than the later (non-Dutch) remake.

6. Conductor – Willem Mengelberg or Ton Koopman or Bernard Haitink.  More generally, the Netherlands has been vital to the Early Music movement.

7. Philosophical odds and ends: Erasmus (an important theorist of self-deception), Grotius (better on property than Locke), and Spinoza (sheer genius) remain worth reading.

8. Female spy: Mata Hari.

Here is a Dutch Celebrities Quiz, see how you do!  Hee.

My favorite things Swiss

by  Tyler Cowen in

I am here only briefly, to talk about how America funds the arts.  Of course my favorite thing Swiss is Switzerland itself; in that sense I agree with the natives.  But to get more specific:

1. Sculptor: Alberto Giacometti is the obvious choice, runner-up is Jean Arp.  The smaller the Giaocometti sculpture, the better it is likely to be.  You could say the same for Calder.

2. Drama: I’ll opt for Durrenmatt’s The Visit of the Old Lady or The Physicians, or Max Frisch’s Don Juan, or the Love of Geometry.  I like these better than any Swiss novel.

3. Painter: These days I find Paul Klee repetitive.  Arnold Boecklin and Ferdinand Hodler are both consistently interesting, if not always consistent.  Try this Hodler.  Here is the most famous Boecklin.  Henry Fuseli, who moved to England and became a perverse quasi-Romantic, remains underrated.

4. Novel: I don’t know of a great Swiss novel, unless you count Rousseau’s Heloise for its historical value.  Max Frisch’s Gantenbein is one runner-up.  Robert Walser has his moments.

5. Music: This one gets tough.  Honegger bores me.  I will listen to Frank Martin, though he is not a favorite.  Paul Hindemith was of Swiss-German extraction but born in Germany.  He would otherwise win hands down.  Edwin Fischer was a wonderful Bach pianist.  Swiss popular music is too ghastly to contemplate, as is the folk music.

6. Actress: Can I say Ursula Andress?

7. Movie, set in: I still like George Lazenby’s Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Extra: You’ve also got Saussure, the Bernoullis, and the Eulers, not to mention Le Corbusier.  There is an overall inclination toward the mechanical, the scientific, and the systematizing.  Perhaps that is why music is so weak.

The bottom line: It is not just cuckoo clocks (as Orson Welles had suggested), which in any case do not originate in Switzerland. 

Is art a good investment?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Daniel Gross writes:

…the data shows that art performs well as an asset over time.

He offers plenty of evidence but I am skeptical.  Studies of auction prices are usually biased toward the winners; the losers never go on the block again or are sold quietly at a loss through dealers.  Many pieces turn out to be fakes.  The placement costs in the dealer market can be higher than those at Sotheby’s.  Storage and insurance costs for masterpieces are considerable.  Art is so much fun it can’t earn the same rate of return as equity, otherwise no one would buy stocks.