Category: The Arts

My list will not be so informed as one of Tyler’s but I was pleasantly surprised to find that with a little thought I could come up with some credible items.

Literature: Mario Vargas Llosa – an easy pick.  The War of the End of the World is his masterpiece – an epic in the style of Hugo and Tolstoy, filled with religion, fanaticism, obsession and violence.  If Vargas Llosa were a leftist he would have won the Nobel by now but he is a classical liberal.  For lighter reading try Aunt Julia and the ScriptWriter or his tale of running for the Peruvian presidency, A Fish in the Water.

Movie: Motorcycle Diaries has some great shots of Machu Picchu and is not without interest but even if it didn’t romanticize an authoritarian it is too slow and unsophisticated to be a great film.  Thus, I am going to cheat a little and go with Touching the Void which takes place in the Peruvian Andes.  As I wrote earlier it is "a harrowing, awe-inspiring, true-story of two climbers made into a great movie/documentary. Aside from the sheer entertainment value, very sheer in this case, the move has a lot to say about the diversity of preferences, the will to survive and believe it or not, how to achieve goals."

Music: Susana Baca, the best of black Peruvian music.  Once nearly lost, this music is now popular in Peru and is earnings worldwide recognition, in part due to the promotional efforts of David Byrne and his LuAka Bop label.

Art: I confess to liking the amazing sex pots (nsfw) of the Moche.  Produced some 1500 years ago by the Moche civilization these erotic ceramics depict all manner of sexual act including oral sex, anal sex, threesomes, homosexuality and more – a real sextravaganza.  Many were destroyed when the Spanish inquisition came to Peru.  Others were hidden away in the basement of museums as objects not fit to be shown or even acknowledged. 

Alfred Kinsey introduced the sex pots to the West in 1954 writing that the Moche artifacts were "the most frank and detailed document of sexual customs ever left by an ancient people.”  Hilariously, quite a few archaeologists at the time argued that the pots were symbolic warnings about what not to do!

Aside from prurient interest, I think the pottery is a fascinating demonstration of how variable are society’s sexual conventions yet how immutable is human nature – tell me, for example, that this guy ain’t proud!

Read here, with photo, and did I mention it is eleven by eight inches?

Addendum: Here is a good film made for $218.

See the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal:

Since his schizophrenia was diagnosed in 1991, Alfonso Lorenzo Santos has divided his time between a psychiatric clinic in Cuernavaca and his tiny lime-green house in this remote mountain village. At home, he often gets so violent his neighbors chain him to a wall.  Yet despite his anger and terrifying delusions, Mr. Lorenzo has become one of Mexico’s most innovative folk painters, piling points upon points of paint on paper, like tiny tiles in a mosaic.

Mr. Lorenzo, now around 54 years old — he was orphaned and doesn’t know his age exactly — is part of a generation of Mexican-Indian artists from the Balsas river region, about 75 miles from Acapulco. These artists started painting in the 1960s for tourist dollars on bark paper, called amate in the Nahuatl language.

One group of amate painters moved to Cuernavaca in the 1970s to live with Edmond Rabkin, a New York expatriate who introduced them to Western literature and music. Those artists, especially Marcial Camilo Ayala, whose work is now displayed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, often paint romantic visions of village life.

Some Ameyaltepec artists developed a harder edge, especially Mr. Lorenzo, whose figures rarely smile and whose birds have menacing claws. In the 1970s, Mr. Lorenzo moved to Mexico City, where an art dealer promoted him as the descendant of Aztec princes, and where he had his first psychotic episode, says Gobi Stromberg, a Cuernavaca art patron. Complaining to friends that his heart was exploding, he returned to Ameyaltepec around 1980, wandered the arid mountains, cursed at neighbors and flung stones at them. Barely 5 feet tall, but stocky, Mr. Lorenzo became a threatening figure. After villagers decided he had to be restrained, several volunteers wrestled him to the ground and chained him to a wall in his house, where he remained for several years…

"He likes the goriness of Catholicism because it depicts a kind of scary world he lives in," says George Mason University professor Tyler Cowen, who has written a book on amate paintings.

Here is the story (WSJ password required, so just buy the paper, and note that the above links are mine, not theirs).  I am pleased to have served as translator for much of the work behind this article.  Here is my previous post on Alfonso, and an extensive link to photos.

Music: How about Blind Willie Johnson, a pinnacle of the blues tradition?  Buy it here.  Can I overlook Scott Joplin and his "Euphonic Sounds"?  Lightnin’ Hopkins?  Woody Guthrie (if only he had read Economics in One Lesson…)?  Leadbelly?  Janis Joplin?  Roy Orbison?  Jimmie Rodgers?  Charlie Christian?  Ornette Coleman?  Buddy Holly?  Here is a longer list.

Painting: Robert Rauschenberg?  Look at this one with the goat, I believe it is in Stockholm.  I bet you, like I, say naaaah, but the field is thin.  I’ll opt for his "Bed" as an important work, however.

Literature: Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is the obvious choice, or try Katherine Anne Porter.

Food: Texas barbecue has a strong influence (sausage!) from German migrants.  That is also why Tejano music has so much accordion, with a hat tip to Poland as well.

Comedian: Steve Martin.  All of Me and Planes, Trains and Automobiles both make me laugh.

The bottom line: I love Texas, but I am surprised that the weight of achievement is so unbalanced toward music and food.  By the way, I’m in El Paso, doing research for my next book.

Addendum: Several readers write to tell me Guthrie is not a Texan…

Or is this item another reason for vouchers?  I think it is sad, but then again I sell the contents of my brain so who am I to object?

Thanks to Chris Rasch for the heads up.

South Korea, historically more worried about fending off cultural domination by China and Japan than spreading its own culture abroad, is emerging as the pop culture leader of Asia. From well-packaged television dramas to slick movies, from pop music to online games, South Korean companies and stars are increasingly defining what the disparate people in East Asia watch, listen to and play.

The size of South Korea’s entertainment industry, which began attracting heavy government investment only in the late 1990’s, jumped from $8.5 billion in 1999 to $43.5 billion in 2003. In 2003, South Korea exported $650 million in cultural products; the amount was so insignificant before 1998 that the government could not provide figures.

But the figures tell only part of the story. The booming South Korean presence on television and in the movies has spurred Asians to buy up South Korean goods and to travel to South Korea, traditionally not a popular tourist destination. The images that Asians traditionally have associated with the country – violent student marches, the demilitarized zone, division – have given way to trendy entertainers and cutting-edge technology.

Here is the full story, and yes some of the material is getting to North Korea as well.

Last weekend I visited Alfonso Lorenzo — one of the greatest of the amate painters — in a Cuernavaca mental hospital.  Life in rural Mexico can be tough.  Did you know that Alfonso spent several years of his life chained to a wall, and by his relatives?  I asked one compatriot what he thought of this, and received (roughly) the following answer:

Yes, it is sad.  But we have people chained to the wall in most of our villages.

In fairness, if he were not chained to the wall he might well be in jail.  Did I mention that your relatives have to bring your food and the jail is several hours away?

Here are his unique amates.  Yes one is of a naked woman but rest assured it is true art, I believe it is office-safe.  My favorite is the stations of the cross picture.  You’ll be hearing more about Alfonso soon.

Tyler’s artful reading of Star Wars inspires my own Straussian reading.

The Star Wars saga consists of 6 chapters.  Six equals 2 times 3. Three is now and for
quite sometime has been considered a good number, as in the holy trinity, but in former
times it was also and even primarily considered an evil number, as in three makes a crowd. So
‘twice 3’ might mean both good and evil, and hence
altogether; a balance of good and evil, surely the central theme of the entire saga.

The state that is, not the country.

Music: I’ll go with Otis Redding, who was born in Georgia and played in Macon early in his career.  Favorite song: Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song).  Here is the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.   Most underrated might be the acoustic bluesman Pink Anderson.  And I still have guilty sympathies for pop musician Tommy Roe ("Dizzy," "Sweet Pea," "Sheila").

Literature: Here is a list, I will go with Flannery O’Connor or the poetry of James Dickey.

Cinema: Speaking of James Dickey, this one is a no-brainer, I can’t believe my parents let me see this when I was eleven or so, but I thank them.

Artist: No, Georgia O’Keefe doesn’t count.  Most of the ouevre of Outsider Artist Howard Finster is churned-out junk, but his early work was excellent.  This painting isn’t bad either, or try here.  It was, however, a mistake when he finished 67 paintings in one weekend while visiting Wake Forest University.

Architecture: I am very fond of this kind of Savannah house, if only because it reminds me of Haiti.  For my modernist readers, this is from Atlanta.

Addendum: Hey, did I forget James Brown?  The hotel TV in the background notes he is from Augusta…

Brancusi’s "Bird in Space" went yesterday for $27.45 million, plus of course buyer’s premium.  It beats giving money to your alma mater, no?  Here is the image and story.

Arts and business, once parallel worlds in Europe, are
merging as never before. More companies than ever back the visual
arts: Patronage has more than doubled in the past 15 years in the
U.K. and more than tripled in France.  The difference is that, where once companies funded the arts
selflessly and on a whim — the chairman’s, or his wife’s — they
now seek bang for their buck: their name in the show’s title, free
museum access for staff and client parties, the right to advertise
their sponsorship, and the right to run spinoff educational and
social programs. And when all is said and done, they conduct
studies to make sure it was worth it.      

European nations find themselves so upset by U.S. influence, in part, because they are being drawn inexorably toward our economic model; read more here.  And by the way:

Surveys show that only 4 to 7 percent
of consumers see sponsorship as a betrayal of the art, according
to Angela Diakopoulou, managing director of Marketlink Research,
which conducts sponsorship evaluation studies on behalf of
customers such as UBS, Unilever and the National Gallery.

I am in Palm Beach for a few days, so here goes:

Film: The classic is Key Largo; Bogie’s speech about Edward G. ("more, you want more…") is a (the?) classic statement of behavioral economics.  An honorable mention goes to Wild Things, a hot and underrated work of teen film noir.  Of course Body Heat was set in Florida as well.  As for comedy, Jim Carrey’s debut feature Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, set in Miami and environs, was made before his brilliant comic talents ossified. 

Literature: I’ll pick Zora Neale Hurston, with my favorite work as her memoir Their Eyes Were Watching God.  She is also quite a libertarian thinker in many ways.

Music: The Allman Brothers, Ray Charles, and Tom Petty are the only competitors I can think of.  They are all overrated, but I will opt for Charles’s "What’d I Say?"  Tampa Red was pretty good, but often he is attributed to Georgia.

Art: Many notable Americans painted Florida, but how about an artist who is truly of Florida?  I’ll opt for the Haitian Edouard Duval-Carrie, here are a few good paintings by him.  And here is Kevin Grier’s favorite Duval-Carrie, scroll down to the bottom.

The bottom line: I love Miami Art Deco and roadside architecture, but doesn’t Florida feel just a wee bit underrepresented on the lists of artistic greats?

Addendum: A number of readers argue persuasively that the Allman Brothers should belong to Georgia, not Florida. 

Given the recent brouhaha over Larry Summers, I have posted my 1996 essay "Why Women Succeed, and Fail, in the Arts."  Here is one brief excerpt:

Eleanor Tufts (1974), in her highly regarded book on women artists, presented biographies of 22 of the most prominent female artists in Western history.  Biographical research reveals that of the first 14 painters surveyed, 12 had artist fathers.

Women with artists in the family had opportunities to receive training, critical feedback, artistic materials, and studio space.  Without strong family connections, women had few means of painting at all…Male artists, who had superior resources and superior access to outside training, were not generally sons of artists…most prominent male artists received formal instruction from an art school or a private teacher.  If the development of male artists had been restricted to those who had learned from their families, the artistic record of males would be far poorer than what we observe.

The likelihood of having an artist father, however, declines precisely when training opportunities open up; women then achieve greater success in the nineteenth century art world.  The paper also finds that women have achieved much greater representation in "Naive art," (which does not require formal training), watercolors (which involve lower capital costs), and that women have done far better in painting and photography than in sculpture or architecture (the latter two involve higher capital costs and require more cooperation from other people).  Leading female painters tend to have been childless, although the remarkable Rachel Ruysch had ten kids.  In the textile arts, which are often complements to child-rearing, women have a superior record to that of men.

Read the whole thing; I am arguing that remediable external obstacles have prevented women from achieving close to their maximum potential.  I am not trying to argue there are no intrinsic differences between the sexes.