Category: The Arts

Tyler is in Paris again, a major player in what the NYTimes calls a global cultural war.

The idea of promoting cultural diversity around the world seems reasonable enough. It recognizes that everyone profits from the free flow of ideas, words and images. It encourages preservation of, say, indigenous traditions and minority languages. It treats the cultures of rich and poor countries as equal. And most topically, it offers an antidote to cultural homogeneity.

Try turning this seemingly straightforward idea into an international treaty, though, and things soon become complicated. Since October 2003, Unesco’s 190 members have been working on what is provisionally called the Convention on the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expression. It is intended to be approved by consensus this fall, but don’t count on it. There is still no agreement on its final name.

But that is a minor issue compared with more fundamental differences. Led by France and Canada, a majority of countries are asserting the right of governments to safeguard, promote and even protect their cultures from outside competition. Opposing them, a smaller group led by the United States argues that cultural diversity can best flourish in the freedom of the globalized economy.

A bid to break the deadlock is now under way at the Paris headquarters of Unesco…

Tyler will continue to blog from Paris but we are also pleased to be joined this week by our returning guest, Fabio Rojas.

I do one of these every time I go somewhere.  I’ve held off on France out of fear of excess choice, but here goes:

French opera: Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande is ravishing, try to find the old version conducted by Roger Desormiere.  Messiaen’s St. Francis wins an honorable mention; my favorite piece of French music might be Messiaen’s Vingt Regards.

French restaurant: I’ve yet to get into Pierre Gagnaire, considered the world’s greatest restaurant by many.  For quick notice, I’ve done well at the Michelin two-stars Savoy and Hotel Bristol, the latter is even open for Sunday lunch, a Parisian miracle.

French novel: Proust is the only writer who makes me laugh out loud.

French pianist: Yves Nat has done my favorite set of Beethoven sonatas.  These recordings are brutally frank and direct, and deep like Schnabel, albeit with fewer wrong notes.  Few aficionadoes know this box, but it stands as one of my desert island discs.  Note that French pianists are underrated in general.

French artist: I find much by the Impressionists sickly sweet and overexposed.  I’ll opt for Poussin (this one too), Seurat’s black and whites, and Cezanne watercolors.  Right now I would rather look at Chavannes and Bouguereau than Renoir or Monet.  As for the most underrated French artist, how about Delacroix?  A few years ago some of his small canvases were selling for as little as $60,000.

French popular music: Serge Gainsbourg is often called the "French Bob Dylan," but he is more like "the French Beck."  Buy this set for a truly eclectic mix of styles.

French movies: If you don’t usually like French movies, you still should watch Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped, Jean Pierre Melville’s Bob Le Flambeur (a big influence on John Woo, also try Le Samourai), and Theodor Dreyer’s Joan of Arc.

Here is the story.  Here is his masterpiece, the Crystal Cathedral, located in Orange County, California.  Here is the AT&T building in New York City.  Here is the Transco Tower in Houston.  Here is a directory of images and links.  I admire this image also.

James S. Maroney, former vice-president of American painting at Sotheby’s, has submitted to the court a plan to save the Barnes Foundation’s finances and keep the collection in Merion on the outskirts of Philadelphia.  Mr. Maroney’s plan entails selling life interest in individual paintings: each buyer would pay 10% or more of a painting’s value and would "own" the rights to display the painting for the rest of the buyer’s life.  The Barnes would take the painting back when the buyer died…the revenues would be used for an endowment of some $200 million…

All this could be done without lending out the 100 "most desirable" paintings from the collection.  And if the museum has a lower discount rate for these paintings than do individuals, the trade makes economic sense. There is, however, only one known precedent in the past (the Denver Art Museum), and informed opinion predicts the proposal will not be adopted.  Furthermore the plan fails if it turns out that people buy pictures simply to own them, rather than to look at them.

The quotation is from the December 2003 The Art Newspaper, p.14

I’ve visited the new and expanded Museum of Modern Art twice in the last week.  I am  bowled over.  In essence New York City has created a new modern art museum by doubling the size of the old.  If nothing else, the new museum gives adequate space and attention to prints and drawings.  The paintings have more space, there are more of them out, and each room is beautifully hung.

Some winners: Jackson Pollock, William Kentridge, Donald Judd, Sigmar Polke, Chris Ofili, Jasper Johns, and Monet’s Water Lilies.

Some losers:  David Salle, Eric Fischl, Julian Schnabel, and John Currin, all nowhere to be found.

Whether you agree with the vision or not, this building has just rewritten the history of modern and contemporary art.

Thanks to everyone for reading and supporting MR.  Here, in honor of Canada, is a sleighrace from the 19th Century Dutch-Canadian Nicholas Krieghoff.

One of my favorite contemporary painters, Canadian-born Agnes Martin, just died at the age of 92.  Her soft colors and straight lines did much to bring beauty back into art.  She was no minimalist but most of all a believer in spirituality and the pure aesthetic.  Here is the story.  She lived a secluded life and had expressed a desire for no obituaries, but here is one nice painting by her.  Here is a nice print.

1. What did ancient Greek statues really look like?  Here is one answer, courtesy of Michael at www.2blowhards.com.

2. "[Researchers] found that English had more of a swing than French, a rhythm produced by a tendency in English to cut some vowels short while stressing others. The melodies of the two languages also differed, with pitch varying far more in spoken English than French.

The team then did the same kind of analysis on music, comparing the rhythm and melody of English classical music from composers such as Elgar, Holst and Vaughan Williams, with that of French composers including Debussy, Fauré and Roussel. "The music differs in just the same way as the languages," said Dr Patel. "It is as if the music carries an imprint of the composer’s language.""

Here is the full story.

3. Digital analysis may provide a new and near-certain means of distinguishing real artworks from fakes, story here.

4. The UK music industry is seeing record sales performance; downloads, legal and illegal, do not seem to be hurting the sector.  Sales of music DVDs are especially strong.

5. France is putting on a show of Pakistani truck art.

October 27, 2004: If Dylan Thomas hadn’t drunk himself to death in 1953, he might be celebrating his ninetieth birthday today, perhaps with a successor to the grand and glorious poem he wrote to celebrate his thirtieth.

He left us with a small number of poems so heart-wrenching that I cannot read them, even for the two hundredth time, without all of the symptoms of an emotional crisis. Take In Country Sleep, where a father reassures his daughter that she has nothing to fear from fairy tale villains—but only from the Thief who comes in multiple guises to take her faith and ultimately to leave her “naked and forsaken to grieve he will not come”. In Country Sleep was a standard bedtime poem in our house, and my daughter soon learned to anticipate “the part where Daddy cries”.

Then there’s the prose. Nobody is better at nostalgia and grief for time’s relentlessness:

The lane was always the place to tell your secrets; if you did not have any, you invented them. Occassionally now I dream that I am turning out of school into the lane of confidences when I say to the boys of my class ‘At last, I have a real secret!’

“What is it? What is it?”

“I can fly!”

And when they do not believe me, I flap my arms and slowly leave the ground, only a few inches at first, then gaining air until i fly waving my cap, level with the upper windows of the school, peering in until the mistress at the piano screams, and the metronome falls to the ground and stops, and there is no more time.

And finally there’s the voice, the great booming melliflous irresistible voice lovingly preserved by Caedmon on about a dozen CDs that you will thank yourself for buying. The Caedmon collection includes a performance of the haunting “play for voices” Under Milk Wood narrated by Thomas himself; for an even greater treat, get the BBC Radio version with Richard Burton—or listen to it on the web. (Warning: Do not rent the highly regrettable movie version with Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.)

For a brief 39 years, as Time held him green and dying, Dylan Thomas spun words and images of surpassing beauty that will live as long as the English language. May he rest in peace.

Channel 4 viewers will be asked to identify Britain’s worst building in a new four-part reality series which will culminate in a live broadcast of the building’s destruction.
The series, Demolition, beginning in 2005, will attempt to build on the success of BBC’s popular series Restoration, which was based around a contest to find the historic building that viewers most wanted to see restored.

But in Demolition, which is being supported by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), viewers will nominate the buildings they want to see destroyed rather than saved.

Nominations for Britain’s worst eyesore will be judged by a panel of experts, who will then decide the building’s fate.

The series will conclude with a kind of real-time architectural snuff movie – the live broadcast of the demolition of the building which the judges have condemned.

Surely I am missing something, presumably the TV station is unlikely to own the chosen building. Get this:

A spokeswoman for the RIBA said the logistics of the programme were unclear at this stage. But she added: “We would not have embarked on this if we did not think it was possible to demolish a building.”

Asked if the choice of building would be fixed, she said: “We are going to demolish a building.”

Here is the full story.

How do all you libertarians out there feel about cultural exchange programs? I know you don’t like government funding of the arts, but can this count as a legitimate tool of foreign policy? I am willing to favor these programs if they are applied in a revenue-neutral manner. American libraries abroad and musical performance exports have carried ideas of liberty and free expression across the world. Furthermore the arts programs themselves tend to be vital and customer-oriented, albeit for propagandistic motives.

But sadly cultural exchanges have been sinking in scope and importance:

…a new study, “Cultural Diplomacy: Recommendations and Research,” concludes that U.S. cultural diplomacy — the notion that by exporting American artists, we burnish our image around the world — has become a neglected facet of foreign and domestic policy, too.

Beginning in 2002, the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Arts and Culture, working with the Coalition for American Leadership Abroad, also headquartered in the nation’s capital, set out to assess the state of cultural exchanges. The study was published in July.

And the bottom line: “The annual number of academic and cultural exchanges has dropped from 45,000 in 1995 to 29,000 in 2001.” This means that far fewer American artists, including performing artists, are being given chances to ply their crafts on foreign soil. The study presumes that those figures have decreased even further in recent years.

Here is the full story. Here is a link to the original study, along with links to related material on the same topic.

The Louvre Museum yesterday swallowed its pride as it welcomed potential American benefactors for an inaugural official tour of paintings featured in Dan Brown’s best-selling thriller, The Da Vinci Code.

It is a telling concession to popular culture that reflects the intense financial pressure facing l’exception culturelle, the idea that France and the French language can hold their own against Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism. Until now, the Louvre’s official position on The Da Vinci Code had been disdainful. “None of our curators will talk about the book. It’s a work of fiction and we don’t see it as our job to discuss it,” a press officer said last week.

Like many French museums, the Louvre, which only started seeking sponsorship last year, is running to catch up with its global rivals as it weans itself off state subsidies. Private sponsorship funds just 10-15 per cent of the Louvre’s €150m ($184m, £102m) annual budget.

As last year’s crisis in the system that funds France’s subsidised performing artists showed, the days of lavish state funding of the arts are over. The Louvre, on any given day, has to close up to 15 per cent of its display space for lack of staff…

Hosting yesterday’s Da Vinci Code tour for the American Friends of the Louvre, a new fund-raising body, Henri Loyrette, the museum’s director, said he wanted to dispel a reputation for “arrogance” and offer a warmer welcome to US tourists.

And get this:

“The big US museums have been able to build up huge endowments over the years, which allow them to fund virtually all their operating costs from the interest,” says Christophe Monin, head of fund-raising at the Louvre. “We are not so lucky [sic].”

The ever-insightful James Twitchell offers a list:

1. The Mona Lisa

2. Grant Wood’s American Gothic

3. Washington Crossing the Delaware

4. Whistler’s Mother

5. Munch’s The Scream (we will see whether its theft resurrects its aesthetic oomph)

I’ll add Gilbert Stuart’s portraits of George Washington to the list. Nor am I happy about the “Mondrian bag” and “Mondrian shampoo.” Twitchell continues: “Monet, Picasso, Degas, Cezanne, Gauguin, and van Gogh are just on the edge of becoming cliches.” And you’ll have to Google those images yourself, I won’t add to the problem!

We have a classic tragedy of the commons. I like surprise and power in art, but many different suppliers of images wish to be the ones who deliver the effect. The end result is that the surprise is used up too quickly; the images then bore rather than delight. Many of the most serious public goods problems are embedded in the neuroeconomy of the human mind.

The Test of Time is so difficult to predict in art. A given image can appear powerful in 2004 but by 2030 it is trite. Sitting in 2004, it is hard to imagine how the power might go away.

The same is less true for music, which taps into our nervous systems more directly and is more universal. But still there are examples:

…who can ever listen again to Sousa’s “Liberty Bell March” without seeing that giant foot come down from above, squashing the cartoon figures from Monty Python’s Flying Circus [TC: could this be an improvement?], or hear Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody no.2 without seeing that great piano virtuouso Bugs Bunny pounding it out with such wabbit aplomb?

Not to mention Rossini’s William Tell Overture, better known as the theme song for The Lone Ranger. Thomas Schelling once told me that he refused to listen to Bach every day because he wanted to keep those delights for his old age.

The material is from Twitchell’s new and excellent Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld.