Category: The Arts

No, I am not there, but I am catching up on requests from loyal MR readers.  Today I will set this one right:

Pianist: Oscar Peterson.  His best albums are The Trio and the set with Joe Pass at Salle Pleyel.  For all his talent, many of his CDs are quite boring.  On another front, I usually don’t like Marc-Andre Hamelin.  Despite the critical raves, I find him icy cold, enjoying only his rendition of the Scriabin sonatas.

William Shatner performance: I will opt for "City on the Edge of Forever."  (NB: I haven’t yet seen "Incubus".)

Actress:  Genevieve Bujold, most of all in Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers.

Popular music: I don’t much like Leonard Cohen or Celine Dion.  Rufus Wainwright is OK.  Arcade Fire is OK.  Help me out here people…

Author: Saul Bellow wins hands down, though he is not a personal favorite.

Philosopher: Charles Taylor.  There is also G.A Cohen, though I have to put him on my "totally wrong about everything" list.

Linguist: Steven Pinker.

Movie Director: Mack Sennett, and yes I used Google/Wikipedia to find that one.

Painter: This guy would be the mainstream pick.  I’m holding out for one of the strange naives, but the name escapes me.

The bottom line: I must be linguistically limited, because most of these names come from English-speaking families.  It is also striking how many thorough web sites exist, dedicated to nothing but listing the many famous and meritorious Quebecois.

Hieronymous Bosch action figures (scroll down to see them), via Brad DeLong.

The Sunday NY Times has a big article on Sigmar Polke, who is being featured at the upcoming Venice Biennale art show. His new work is intriguing and uses exotic materials.

However, I’ve always thought that Polke comes out second best when compared (as he often is) to Gerhard Richter, who is, to my mind, the greatest living painter.

Anselm Keifer and Joseph Beuys are the quintessential artists who reflect the aftereffects of the war on modern Germany. Keifer’s work is so elegiac and decayed and somber and sad, while Bueys (to me) is about the frailty and ridiculousness of the human body.

One thing I really miss about living in the DC area is getting to see works like this Kiefer (here’s another) and these Richters (#1, #2) for FREE.

1. Film: The 1989 Pathfinder is one of the best "unknown" movies, why is there no DVD reissue? 

2. Classical music.  My favorite Grieg recording is Lyric Pieces, by Emil Gilels.  Mostly the composer bores me, but if you get the piano concerto try Dinu Lipatti.  Peer Gynt reminds me of a bad coffee commercial, which in fact it once was.  For contemporary composers, Arne Nordheim is consistently interesting.

3. Jazz: Norway is now a world leader in this field; start with the Tord Gustavsen Trio, Changing Places.  Here are more resources.  That said, Jan Garbarek has never thrilled me.

4. Playwright: Almost everything by Ibsen is superb, and yes it does repay a rereading.  Too many smart people had A Doll’s House forced on them in high school and then take him for granted.  His fantasy piece Peer Gynt is one of the most imaginative literary creations, period.

5. Novels: Knut Hamsun was a fascist, still Hunger holds the reader’s attention.  My favorite is Sigrid Undset; Kristin Lavransdatter is long but a must-read.  Ole Rolvaag’s tales of the American frontier often have interesting property rights themes.

6. Pianist: Leif Ove Andsnes is remarkably consistent and tasteful.  HÃ¥kon Austbø is a strong and underrated runner-up, I love his Messiaen on Naxos.

7. Soprano: Kirsten Flagstad, anything by Wagner.

8. Economist: You’ve got Trygve Haavelmo and Finn Kydland, both Nobel Laureates, plus Ragnar Frisch; the overall slant here is technical.  I also enjoy the social science books of Jon Elster, a political scientist by training but a polymath by nature.

The bottom line: In almost every category the top offerings of Norway are underrated or at least underexplored.

1. Movie: A strong category for this country.  Babette’s Feast used to be one of my favorite movies, though it now strikes me as sentimental.  I much prefer The Celebration, or the recent After the Wedding.  The Best Intentions, with a Bergman screenplay, is directed by Dane Billie August.  Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is technically a French movie but the director is Danish, in any case it is one of cinema’s greatest achievements.  Ordet has splendid shots but I can’t bear the ending.  I don’t rate Lars von Trier with these other creators though I did like his recent The Boss of it All, a study in the social construction of leadership.

2. Short story: "The Caryatids, An Unfinished Tale," by Karen Blixen [Isak Dinesen], in Last Tales.  This one shows the influence of the now-sadly-taken-for-granted Hans Christian Andersen; read it.

3. Novel: Smilla’s Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg; lovely and mysterious, yet driven by plot.  His History of Danish Dreams I find too baroque.

4. Composer: Poul Ruders, one of the most listenable contemporary composers, writes compelling melodies and offers a broad palate of sound colors.  I most prefer his Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Concerto in Pieces, the guitar music, Tundra, and Gong.  His major influences are Brahms, Berg, Sibelius, and Hindemith.  I’ll buy anything by him, though I’ve never much enjoyed his operas.

5. Popular music: Help!

6. Philosopher: Kierkegaard’s Either/Or is the place to start, and don’t skip over "Diary of a Seducer" or the discussion of Don Giovanni.  There are few philosophers who think more like an economist, or who use more metaphors from economic life.

7. Painting: Danish Impressionism is one of the most underrated fields in art, noting that the subtle textures and colors do not reproduce well on the web.  Try this picture.  Here is a nice landscape, here is a nice door.  This one is lots of fun, too.

1. Music: Opt for Taarab, the Arabic style from Zanzibar, start here.  Bongo Flava: Swahili Rap from Tanzania is above average for its genre.  By the way, the Rough Guide Tanzania music CD is a bit lame.

Then there is Freddie Mercury, who was born in Zanzibar.  Right now I’d rate "Killer Queen" and the "Bicycle/Fat Bottomed Girls" medley as my favorites.  The Manichean element (Mercury’s parents were Parsees) is evident in "Bohemian Rhapsody," among other songs.  Queen remains underrated, and I never tire of listening.

2. Cinema: This movie comes recommended, I’ve never seen it.  Darwin’s Nightmare is set in the country, I haven’t seen it.

3. Film, set in: Hatari!, with John Wayne, isn’t bad in a jokey sort of way.  It is, after all, directed by Howard Hawks.  Hatari, by the way, means "danger" in Swahili.

4. Sculpture: Makonde is the dominant style.  Try this older one.

5. Painting: The best-known naive style is Tingatinga.  Here is one of the better pieces.  It doesn’t compare to Haiti.  Here is more.  The leading Tanzanian naive painter was — can you guess? — E.S. Tingatinga.

6. Fiction?  Ask me again once I’ve learned Swahili.

The bottom line: Freddy is long gone, and they play Congolese "lingala" music in the clubs, so it’s culturally a little dull here; in any case I am working on a micro-credit project with Karol Boudreaux.

1. Classical music recording is bigger than ever

2. Profile of Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño

3. Markets in everything: durians that don’t smell

4. Virginia Postrel’s next book, on glamour, an outline

5. It seems that fascist Lawrence Dennis was actually black

6. History’s 100 most influential people, as selected by the Japanese

1. Painting.  This is, of course, a bit ridiculous.  Three is gobs and gobs and gobs, but I have to opt for late Titian as the peak of painting, ever, by anyone.  Except for Velazquez.  Here is one image, here is another.  Moving past the Renaissance, Tiepolo remains underrated; visit Wurzburg for one of Europe’s best artistic thrills.  Rosalbe Carriera portraits are underrated.

2. Work of fiction, set in: Death in Venice, Thomas Mann, is the obvious pick, here is a long list of fiction set in Venice.  There is Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and Henry James, The Aspern Papers, I’ll give the nod to the latter, unless we can count bits of Proust.

3. Movie, set in: Scroll down for a list.  I love the best parts of From Russia with Love, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (really), but the clear winner is Orson Welles’s Othello.

4. Play, set in: Duh.

5. Techno group, named after: Venetian Snares, juicy stuff, high information content.  Not for the faint hearted.

6. Music: Monteverdi will get his own post, Vivaldi bores me, Gabrieli is OK.  Luigi Nono comes next, I like the Pollini recording of his work for piano and tape.  There is Bruno Maderna as well.

7. Theatre: Carlo Goldoni, I once saw The Stag Hunt and loved it.

8. Writer: Casanova is fun to browse, more conceptual than you might think.

9. Librettist: Lorenzo da Ponte, who wrote Don Giovanni for Mozart.

The bottom line: Making this list was more interesting than I had expected.  I have never felt "near" to Venice, but perhaps this trip — for a UNESCO conference — will change that.

Sitting here in the Frankfurt Airport, on my way, I’m not going to rehash the Ghiberti-Brunelleschi feud, so let’s stick to the twentieth century:

Painter/artist: There is Morandi, Lucio Fontana, and the Arte Povera group, all of whom remain underrated.  The Futurists are dated, but early de Chirico hits the spot.  This category is strong.  For sculptors throw in Manzu, Burri, Merz, Marini, and many others.

Composer: Puccini I’ve never loved.  Scelsi is an acquired taste but for me his drones hold up.  Busoni bores me once you get past the Bach transcriptions.  I’ll opt for Berio, most of all the songs, Sinfonia, and Points on the Curve to Find, all excellent and surprisingly accessible.

Pianist: Maurizio Pollini started steely and evolved to poetic; try his Stravinsky/Webern disc, and his Chopin Nocturnes.  Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli is pure rippling glitter, try his Ravel/Rachmaninoff disc.

Conductor: Only rarely is Toscanini’s stuttering whiplash listenable, try his Tchaikovsky #1 with his then son-in-law Vladimir Horowitz.  Abbado wins this category, his Beethoven symphonies are the best available.

Maria Callas performance: I am torn between Norma and Barber of Seville, the latter with Tito Gobbi, another notable Italian.

Author: Baron in the Trees and Invisible Cities are my favorite Italo Calvino.  When I courted Natasha, she was impressed that I had a working knowledge of The Cloven Viscount at my disposal.  Alberto Moravia has compelling psychological portraits, Eco’s The Name of the Rose is fun.

Playwright: Pirandello and Dario Fo.

Film: Most of neo-realist cinema bores me.  I do admire Umberto D, most of Pasolini (Arabian Nights as my favorite), and I’ll pick Visconti’s The Leopard as my favorite, with Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns a close second.  Satyricon is my favorite Fellini, but otherwise he leaves me cold.  Sadly Italian cinema has been getting worse for thirty years.

The bottom line: The twentieth century brought a remarkable cultural renaissance in Italy.  This is not as widely recognized as it ought to be.

Should we refrain from consuming the cultural products of those producers who hold morally objectionable views, when our consumption of such products will benefit said producers?

I think of this as a Ramsey tax problem: we are willing to sacrifice a certain amount of goods and services to do the world some good, how can we do so at minimum damage to our utility?

Just as lump sum taxation is efficient, so should we give away money, rather than distort the MB=MC ratios on our consumption decisions.  So my inclination is to avoid boycotts.  It is better to just send money to the people or groups you wish to help. 

Sometimes boycotts are motivated by the wish to hurt other people  — the target of the boycott – rather than by desires to help some oppressed group.  Or punishing  a group’s critics may be the best way to help that group.  Then boycotts make more instrumental sense, especially if the target of your hate has a declining MC curve, as would a movie star or music star with an easily reproducible product.  There is less point in boycotting someone in a relatively competitive industry, who is earning little on selling extra units of the product.

Note that if you are facing a monopolist with a durable good, boycotts can make that monopolist better off by helping him to restrict quantity.  In other words, boycott rock stars, not painters or sculptors.

A boycott also might be preferable to sending money if your action has a snowball effect on the behavior of others, but that will not be the general case.  In fact boycotts often give more publicity to the person or cause you are trying to oppose.   "You opposing X" is not, in the eyes of the world, always a negative signal about X.

Sorry.

#21 in a series of 50.

Addendum: See also my post on fair trade.

Being from New Jersey, this is a tough post for me to write, but I recognize many virtues in our mirror enemy to the north:

Composer: Charles Ives, most of all Central Park in the Dark and The Unanswered Question, plus some of the piano music.  The Concord Sonata is wonderful to hear live, but he often loses his bearings in the longer pieces.  Bernstein or Michael Tilson Thomas are the best conductors for his music.

Popular music: There is Moby (the early stuff), Liz Phair (more consistent than her reputation), and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth ("Daydream Nation" is amazing, but most of their CDs leave me cold), and that’s not counting the rich rock stars who have moved in, like Keith Richards or Diana Ross.

Poet: Wallace Stevens worked for an insurance company in Hartford for many years, but the people in his office did not know he was a poet.  "He was an imaginative claims man," later opined one colleague.

Artist: Chuck Close (here is the portrait of Philip Glass), honorary mention to Maya Lin.

Writer: I enjoyed Philip Roth when I read him, but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.  Mark Twain lived in Hartford a while, but that answer doesn’t feel right.  Harriet Beecher Stowe I could not finish.

Food: CT has the best pizza in the USA, most of all in New Haven but not only.

Movie, set in: I hated Mystic Pizza, nor can I imagine Christmas in Connecticut could have been any good.  Help!

The bottom line: The state is close to having a Grand Slam.

While I am here, I hope to see the new Howard Hodgkin exhibit, there is an excellent slide show within the link.

Donne and Marvell get the beloved into bed, but lavish all their lyricism on reassuring her that she remains as attractive as she was when she played it coy.

That is from Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts, a series of fascinating biographical vignettes.  Thanks to Slate.com for the pointer to this book.

David Galenson gets out his measuring stick:

A survey of the illustrations of the work of women artists contained in
textbooks of art history reveals that art historians judge Cindy
Sherman to be the greatest woman artist of the twentieth century,
followed in order by Georgia O’Keeffe, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and
Frida Kahlo.

We need to distinguish between fame in books and fame in the art world, not to mention fame with the general public.  Textbooks pass through a "least common denominator" filter, which includes the need to appear balanced and representative.  Cindy Sherman is unique and memorable, and her work reproduces well on the printed page.  Frida Kahlo was of course Latina.  O’Keeffe, Hesse, and Susan Rothenberg are better candidates for the top slots., with the German Hesse as my personal favorite  I’m also a fan of Rachel Whiteread, Agnes Martin, and Kiki Smith (this one too).  Quiltmakers, as a category, deserve top recognition, although there is no dominant name linked to the field.  If we are talking about the general public, Grandma Moses (overrated), Yoko Ono, O’Keeffe and Kahlo all do well.

Perhaps the more important observation is that women have done best in the arts (and, for that matter, in economics) precisely when we left the era of "The Great Artist."

My column from today offers my latest thoughts on globalization and culture, drawing on the very interesting work of Omar Lizardo, a sociologist at Notre Dame.  We are often interested in culture for its symbolic value, and its ability to signal where we stand in local hierarchies.  The more egalitarian a society, the less important this signaling function becomes.  Here is one bit:

Hollywood movies are popular in Europe in part because of the successes
of European welfare states and of European economic integration. 
Western Europe has become more equal in its treatment of citizens, it
has moved away from an aristocratic class society, and it has strong
global connections.  All those factors favor an interest in American and
global popular culture; Hollywood movies often capture 70 percent or
more of a typical European cinematic market.  Social democracy, which
the Europeans often hold up in opposition to the American model, in
fact aided this cultural invasion by making Europe more egalitarian.

Here is Omar’s home page.  Here is Omar’s essay which I drew upon.  Here is one further bit:

…the data supplied by Professor Lizardo show that the poorer a country,
the more likely it will buy and listen to its own domestic music.  This
makes sense given that music is a form of social networking and the
relevant networks are primarily local.