If you happened to have found interesting the essays and life philosophy of Michel de Montaigne that I fell into last August with Sarah Bakewell’s How To Live, you might want to read Adam Gopnik’s “Montaigne on Trial” in the January 16, 2017 issue of The New Yorker.
Bonus (unrelated): A Cartoon from The New Yorker
Just as we are about to retire our 2016 National Geographic calendar with its Route 66 theme, old friend Herman happens to send along this reminiscence of iconic, historic Route 66 as published by Al Jezeera, with excellent photography by Gabriela Campos.
Krampus … sounds about right. Kim reports that the Seattle Immersive Theatre — previously noted in these pages — is featuring performances around Krampus, the evil Saint Nick alter-ego, for its holiday fare.
Friend John refers me to a Los Angeles Magazine piece that asks which iconic photo would best define L.A. Find several candidates here:
www.lamag.com/culturefiles/
And here is one, not necessarily my favorite, but is the work of a street photographer, Gary Winogrand, one of my heroes in the 60s, on Hollywood Boulevard where I myself spent hours and hours walking and talking and photographing back in that era.
W. Eugene Smith was already acknowledged as an all-time master photojournalist by the time I was starting photography in the 60s. Here, from Life Magazine archives is one of the photo essays, including several images that I had never before seen, that made Smith famous: “Country Doctor”, 1948.
(And the link to the full essay again, in case you missed it:
Worth chasing down from many internet sources would be Smith’s other work such as that from his time as a World War II combat photographer, his investigation into mercury poisioning in Minamata, Japan, the Spanish village essay and his Jazz Loft Project. And Smith’s most celebrated photo (of his young children, taken while he was recovering from WWII wounds) is probably this one, “The Walk to Paradise Garden” from the mid-40s:
For those of us stuck in the outback, TV and Internet provide much of our art exposure. I just discovered that one of my old favorites, Art21 (Art in the Twenty-First Century) is now into its 8th season. Watching online is the alternative of choice for me, as it is broadcast by our local PBS affiliate only late at night. So far I have seen Los Angeles, Vancouver and Chicago from this season.
Mentioned almost as a brief aside in the subject book (see original post here), in connection with the famous Apollo Belvedere sculpture, is a 1796 painting by Hubert Robert entitled, “Imaginary View of the Grand Gallery of the Louvre as a Ruin”. Being unfamiliar with this painting, I tracked it down and see that it is a rather crazy-radical-apocalyptic thing, showing the Apollo as just about the only intact piece amid the fantasized destruction, being calmly sketched by a seated artist. Half the fun of this book, which is utterly dense with historical notes and arcane and unfamiliar (to me) references, is chasing after the subjects of the author’s observations and comparisons and mentions. Of course, that means that — together with its small type which quickly exhausts my eyes — it will take forever to get through the book. Here’s a look at the “…Ruin” (click image for expanded view):
The title is actually “Famous Works of Art and How They Got That Way“. Of the book in question, that is.
I don’t even know how the general topic came up in a recent conversation with Janet*, but it led to my memory of how a freshman college philosophy course (one of my very favorites, and one of my most memorable courses, ever) dealt with the “big questions” in philosophy. One was Art: What is it? What does it mean? Etc. And I told Janet that from that time on in 1959, I continued to ask myself such questions, and have repeatedly discussed the topic with friends and artists and others over many years.
Anyway. My latest read, retrieved from the local library, is the book mentioned above, authored by Queens College (New York) professor of art history, John B. Nici. The thing is turning out to be a fun, informative and entertaining page-turner that should appeal to anyone, whether the interest level is casual or serious, amateur or professional, or even almost absent. My only issue with the book is that it is printed in extremely small type (cramming a lot into just under 300 pages) and is not exactly senior-eye-friendly. A Kindle version is available for sale, but not yet through the library.
Here’s a quote from the book’s introduction:
Why do certain works of art sustain or lose their fame? Become chucked or embraced? Be heralded for eternity, or flagged for immediate dismissal, only to float in the trash heap of the misbegotten forgotten, but then resurface to plaudits and near-universal acclaim? These are the central questions and preoccupations of this book.
*Oh, yeah … now I sort of remember. I walked in, as usual, carrying a camera. Janet was asking me about my photography and photographs and that somehow triggered the question about whether photography could be considered “art”. Whereupon I said that photography could be thought of (in terms of the activity) as simply a possible tool for making art, that (in terms of the product or even process) it might depend on the creator’s intention. And then there is the whole business about process, let alone the separate questions of what is “good” art and what is “bad” art — and that got us into waxing philosophical …
Recommended: Saw this Netflix documentary tonight on the “explosive” work of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang.
Also see the artist’s website at
Nice break after watching a couple of hours of news tonight …
Photographer friend John turns my attention to a recent showing of some 1940s and 1950s work of San Francisco legend Fred Lyon, documenting his home town in the 1940s and 1950s. This post was originally intended for just my photoblog, but this stuff is too great to not share more widely, starting with this, a personal favorite for me:
See the exhibition’s website here.