Items of Interest, Reactance Edition
"To watch the great fall, to say goodbye to Alexandria, to accept that nothing gold can stay: this is the task of people who find themselves living through the falling years."
Julia Friedman, Boring Art, Impotent Politics. “All this criticism arises from the simple fact that the monument is visually unintelligible. While Thomas’s 2019 ‘Unity’ benefits from the intrinsic likeness of a vertically placed human limb to the time-honored obelisk shape, ‘The Embrace’ is fundamentally confusing. It is not easily legible, forcing the viewer to deduce meaning in the absence of relevant components (such trifles as heads and faces). Its references are muddled. It takes for granted the premise of Gestalt psychology, which states that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. ‘The Embrace’ certainly does not make it easy to get past the parts.”
James Panero, Carpaccio by the slice. “Carpaccio was the opposite of groundbreaking. In his compositional structuring, he was fortifying. His imaginative worlds were perfected 3D environments, premium-engineered with all Venetian-made parts. Into his spaces he arranged numerous figures far more occupied with one another than with our own subjective point of view. Unlike the later artists of the Venetian cinquecento, with Carpaccio there is no heavy artistic hand to draw us in. We instead get a self-contained universe, a sim-Serenissima where the activities exhibit the same ordered rules as the compositions’ single-point perspectives.”
Jeff Cieslikowski and Sean Stevens, Emotional intelligence, cognitive ability may predict support for free speech. “Those higher in cognitive ability and emotional intelligence - the ability to recognize emotions in oneself and others, and to use this emotional information to productively and positively guide one’s actions - were more supportive of freedom of speech and less concerned with appearing ‘politically correct,’ which the researchers define as ‘using language (or behavior) to seem sensitive to others’ feelings, especially those others who seem socially disadvantaged.’ The researchers suggest that those high in emotional intelligence favor free speech because the former correlates positively with psychological reactance - the tendency for people to experience anxiety or distress when they perceive their freedom is threatened.”
Michael Lind, The Power-Mad Utopians. “The immediate necessity in American politics is to reject partisan and ideological purity tests in order to form the largest possible anti-progressive front—one that will include militant Enlightenment atheists and Orthodox Jews and Ayn Rand libertarians and Trad Caths, pre-2010 neoliberals and old-fashioned labor liberals and reactionary paleoconservatives, small businesses and big businesses threatened by harmful Green New Deal energy policies, left-liberal professors who do not want to sign diversity statements and nuns in Catholic hospitals who refuse to pretend that men are women and women are men.”
Rikki Schlott, How Ideologues Infiltrated the Arts. “That bargain—pledge allegiance to the new orthodoxy or stick to your mission and risk your career—is one now faced by many in the world of American fine arts.”
, Watch the Great Fall. “The theologies of Zen, Orthodoxy, Mark Anthony and Robinson Jeffers differ wildly, and yet they alight, all of them, on this same reality. So does every other religious tradition I know of. To watch the great fall, to say goodbye to Alexandria, to accept that nothing gold can stay: this is the task of people who find themselves living through the falling years. It is the prelude to doing anything useful with our time. If we spend that time lamenting the fall, or trying to prevent it, or stewing in bitterness at those we believe responsible, we will find ourselves cast into darkness. If we ‘degrade ourselves with empty hopes’ of some form of technological or political salvation yet to come, the darkness will be just as deep.”Caroll Michels and Ranulph Redlin: Gallerists: The Good, The Bad, and Pants on Fire.
Forthcoming: Benjamin Riley, The Bridges of Robert Adam: A Fanciful and Picturesque Tour.
Newly released: Ted Reichman, Orgelwerke.
Current earworm: M.I.A., Bring the Noize (Matangi Street Edition).
On now: “Pieces of the Landscape: Regina Jestrow” at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Skolnick Surgical Tower, Miami Beach, through June 11.
Items of Interest, Reactance Edition
Calling "The Embrace" confusing is accurate but too polite. I'd call it visually clumsy, awkward and, frankly, schlocky. It kind of reminds me of cheesy 1950s horror movies like "The Blob," only those movies were neither pretentious nor self-important. This thing isn't so much boring as cringeworthy.
Here's a rather more successful embrace (photograph by Jean-Pol Grandmont):
https://bit.ly/3X1J24P
And yes, the Canova is late 18th century, but it worked then and it works now. That clunky bronze in Boston doesn't work, period.
My current earworm: Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli singing the lament of a spurned wife who still loves her husband. It is an exquisitely sensitive performance, showcasing how Baroque music can make grief beautiful and dignified, without sentimentality or excess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_2VS4NFAXU