Category Archives: art

Christmas Around the World

Every year during my childhood, our post box was graced with an 80 page volume of one of the World Book’s Christmas Around the World series, a gift, I think, from my globetrotting grandparents. Although somewhat dated and with some breathlessly misleading information (the Spain entry insists that Spaniards eat loads of turkey for Navidad, but that it’s stuffed with garlic and glazed with olive oil, and the Washington volume seems to describe a city that hasn’t existed for a good century or so, and possibly never did), they’re still wonderful glimpses into the habits of other countries at Yuletide. At the very least they inspire curiosity, which I’d like to think has something to do with why I can vouch for how Christmas is passed in the locales of at least five of the books on the below list. I hunted in vain for a decent list online, and failing to find one, decided to post the below, which I’ve verified with family members who still have the books. I have a few of them in my possession myself (pictured).  It seems the series went on for another decade, till at least 2003, when probably — like so many other good things in the past — someone decided that the internet did a better job with “information.” But those who had these colorful volumes know the truth. A reader who knows the series very well writes in to note that the books “also arrived with an advent calendar, small ornament, and recipe cards. A family could celebrate Christmas around the world!”

  • 1993 — Germany
  • 1992 — Russia
  • 1991 — Brazil
  • 1990 — The Philippines
  • 1989 — Poland 
  • 1988 — Washington, D.C.
  • 1987 — The Holy Land
  • 1986 — Denmark
  • 1985 — Ireland 
  • 1984 — New England
  • 1983 — Spain
  • 1982 — Austria
  • 1981 — The Netherlands
  • 1980 — France
  • 1979 — Italy
  • 1977 — Scandinavia 
  • 1978 — Britain
  • 1976 — Mexico 

Given the paucity of information out there about the series in general, for the completist I’ll add the below list. I don’t actually own any of these (although I wish I had the Belgium one, at least), but these are the fruits of the some internet labor, mainly thanks to ThriftBooks.com. There appear to be a couple of duplicates, or possibly some of the copyright dates are wrong.

  • 2003 — Puerto Rico 
  • 2002 — Belgium
  • 2001 — Scotland
  • 2000 — Greece
  • 1999 — Finland
  • 1999 — Australia
  • 1998 — The Phillipines
  • 1997 — Ukraine
  • 1997 — Colonial and Early America 
  • 1996 — American Southwest
  • 1995 — ?
  • 1994 — Switzerland 
  • 1994 — Canada

Goodbye, Jason Noble

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaQtK74sF5Q

I knew Jason Noble was sick about two years ago, and I knew it was a nasty cancer, and I knew he’d beaten it for the moment. I didn’t know he was sick again so I was surprised this morning when a fellow refugee from Louisville told me that he’d passed. Jason, along with his musical cohorts at the Rocket House and at ear X-tacy made being a teen in a city where open-mindedness did not come easily a lot more palatable.

It’s rare in the narcissistic, instant gratification-fueled world of 21st-century communications that a person with a public persona passes and is genuinely mourned. To a geeky, bored, often angry kid seeking any kind of interaction beyond teachers and churches, Jason was a kind, gentle and open soul. His art — from post-rock epics to simple sketches — made perfect sense to those who grew up in the same fishbowl. He clarified the distortions and gave voice to the frustrations.

RIP, Jason Noble. As a writer greater than this scribbler once said, his spirit shines through him.

On the Last Rock Star

Weather Changes Moods

On a hot August evening, the sun was setting over Barricata beach out on the Po Delta. The beach bar was deserted and the lifeguard-cum-barman started up his tractor and began to pick up the sunbeds. To do his work he put on the sound system and turned it up, loud. Sandwiched between the usual forgettable pop, the opening chords of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” rang out.

Twenty years later after Nirvana blew apart the stilted, machine-produced world of pop music, the commentariat is busy trying to answer a question first posed by fellow travelers Sonic Youth: Nevermind — what was it anyway?  Interpretations range from the interesting — Nirvana burying rock machismo, for a bit anyway, to the blatantly commercial and sentimental.

I bought the record the week it came out — convinced by a friend to pick up the new one when I had my eye on Bleach for pure street cred — and spent the next few weeks learning most of the songs.  The prevailing order of the day — sarcasm and apathy — meant that I had to act completely blasé about Nirvana’s successes. It wasn’t purely baseless: it would have been hard to be a stranger to the independent record label world that begat Nirvana in the home of Squirrel Bait, Slint and Kinghorse. And our “little group” quietly celebrated the mainstreaming of our underground: what else could get a gang of teenage boys to rush home on a Saturday night to watch TV? In this way, Cobain succeeded where our parents did not.

The 1990s were the era that birthed the sensitive man, for a variety of cultural reasons beyond the purview of this post. This new-found sensibility bore heavily on Cobain, who rejected fame’s embrace and embraced the rejected, using his celebrity to openly discuss gayness, feminism, domestic strife, drug use, and depression — conditions that pop culture accepts as part of its landscape now. Because of this, grunge had a gravity that escaped the happy nihilism of most of the first wave of punk bands.

Contrast Cobain’s desperate howl with the gleeful madness of Johnny Rotten telling listeners he’s going over the Berlin Wall.  Cobain mumbles along for most of Nirvana’s hit before exploding in yawps of “a denial” — of what, exactly, it’s never said. Pleasure? Pain? Fame? Life itself? A few years later the man himself exploded tragically, while today, most first-wave punk bands have been able to soldier on, either for lucre (Sex Pistols), pleasure (Buzzcocks) or sheer cussedness (the Fall).

Just as Michael Jackson was the last great pop star, Cobain was the last great rock star. He presented himself as an iconoclast, who stood for ideals and ideas that he thought were greater and better than the dreck that brought him up and enveloped him. It’s unlikely in today’s atomized world of pop music, with its countless sub-genres, that there will never be another. The songwriting, which could appeal to the most craft-oriented REM fans or to the most noise-devoted Albini enthusiasts, reflected this completeness of vision as well.

Nirvana’s meaning and accomplishment will continue to be discussed, debated and exploited.  If they did nothing else, the fact that two decades later in an isolated place far away from Aberdeen, Washington, one can hear a song written by a real human being and not manufactured by a profit-driven industry is no small feat.

On the Artistic Theater of the Cenacolo

Jesus' 15 minutes of fame

A trip to Lugano reminds one of what Italy is missing, and what would make it better — courteous drivers, spotlessly clean streets, apartments and offices free of the suspicious layers of security ones finds in Italy. But in contrast, a trip to the Cenacolo, aside from being a moving experience in itself that should inspire all kinds of questions about permanence and meaning, also reminds one that Italians, diabolical intentions aside, are wonderful at creating a sense of mystery.

You show your ticket, and then everyone is hurried down a short hallway where the temperature drops noticeable. Then everyone crams into an airlock-like chamber, huddled in front of the door to the refractory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The attendents let the tension build. The chatter dies down to silence. Looking at our reflections in the one-way glass, I counted thirteen of us. One can see, at the bottom, a few feet marching somewhere. Then, the curtain — in the form of noiseless, remotely-controlled doors, pulls back, revealing — darkness. Empty space. On a sunny August morning, it takes some time for the eyes to adjust. You look left, but that’s not the right mural, then right, and there it is. The moths are drawn to the flame, and it’s well worth it.

Italian Switzerland is well-worth one’s time, but the Italian arts of surprise and showing off have their moments to shine as well.

Friday AM Roundup

What’s great about Friday morning?  Having the Economist placed at your feet.  And even though this is a blog, sometimes it takes having the paper placed in your hands to do a good scan.

Tying together all the threads

Premesso’s not-quite week in review, drawn from the weekly of record:

1. On February 15, La Padania interviewed Pier Luigi Bersani, PD secretary.  (Shown elsewhere on this blog with his sleeves rolled up.)

Salient quote: Va anche bene che il governo rimanga nell’ambito del centrodestra. “It’s also all right if the government stays center-right.”

Is el Senatur sharpening the knife?

English language coverage.

2. As the holes in the immigration walls get harder to plug, shifting from Ceuta and Melilla to Lampedusa to the Greece-Turkey land border, Greece talks of suspending the Dublin Convention for asylum seekers.  The Economist’s Charlemagne comes out with the following sound idea: “A painful compromise might be tried: if Greece wants to suspend Dublin II, it should accept a temporary suspension of Schengen and the return of border controls.”  Me likey.

3. The Oscars: “this year’s awards are less relevant than ever.”  More need not be said, except that Hollywood need to keep looking to that export market.

4.  In Lexington, Obama’s handling of Egypt gets a look.  Much howling and gnashing of teeth from John Bolton, Niall Ferguson and Michael Scheuer, among others.  But maybe No-Drama Obama was the Decider?

Obama is said to have been more certain in private that Mr Mubarak’s jig was up than America’s public pronouncements (especially those of Hillary Clinton, his sometimes behind-message secretary of state) let on. He flatly rejected the Israelis’ analysis that the Egyptian president could hang on and that America should do everything to help him. Mr Obama’s conversation with Mr Mubarak on the evening of February 1st is said to have been the toughest between an American president and an ally since Ronald Reagan’s scolding of Menachem Begin during Israel’s bombing of Beirut in August 1982.

5. In Schumpter, the uneasy art-business axis is examined.  Damien Hirst is one shrewd businessman.

Damien Hirst was even more audacious. He not only realised that nouveau-riche collectors would pay extraordinary sums for dead cows and jewel-encrusted skulls. He upturned the art world by selling his work directly through Sotheby’s, an auction house. Whatever they think of his work, businesspeople cannot help admiring a man who parted art-lovers from £70.5m ($126.5m) on the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed.

And following in his footsteps in Venice, perhaps the Zero Group?  Stay tuned.

On Wrestling with Angels

No Need to Reinvent the Wheel

Have you ever wanted to do something difficult, perhaps out of frustration, or to beat fear?  Maybe you ran a marathon, or took up biking, or read a long book or worked out a difficult puzzle.  What you in all likelihood did not do was have men ten years your junior punch you in the face and break some of your bones, while you — of course — were trying to do the same to them.

But this is precisely what J.D. Daniels — pictured dragging a tire to train — did for over two years, and he writes about it in the fall edition (not the winter edition, which is just on the stands) of the Paris Review.  His account, with the decidedly understated title of “Letter from Cambridge” is well worth your time, and I’ll break my non-commercial policy to encourage you to buy the magazine.  As Lorin Stein somewhat refreshingly reminds us, it is not meant to be surfed.  Daniels’ piece you’ll have to shell out for.  You can get a Houellebecq interview for your dozen clams, too.

But most importantly, you will get the sense that you are at home, instead of having someone who puts “Big” in front of his name with zero sense of irony dislocate your shoulder, break your nose and arm-triangle you into submission.  You might be relieved about this at first, but then you might wonder what it means that you are sitting at home.  You may find yourself pondering the words of the Brazilian dojo-master who asks Daniels in one of several explanatory asides, “without fighting, when you feel this in your life?  […]  Two, three times?  It make you a more major person.”

Some people wrestle with their demons.  By his own admission, Daniels wrestles with angels.

The Artist is Presented

It’s voting season. And this year in the US, it will be important to vote. But that’s not what I’m pushing here.  You need to go here and vote for Igor Tosevski for Wooloo’s artist of the month.

The Piano Has Been Drinkin' (Not Him)

When I lived in Macedonia, I met one Igor Tosevski through a series of mutual acquaintances. After long periods in rustic and rural places, going for a coffee or a meal with Igor and his longtime parter, Tanya, was always a breath of life. Conversation was never limited. Their horizons seemed to be continually broadening at a time when mental space in Skopje was continually shrinking. No mean feat, that.

In addition, I got an education in situational art beyond the passing acquaintance I’d had with pompous and effete fops in the US.   Sure, guerrilla art has been the provenance of a certain urban class of elites since its inception. But what does it mean to do this in the former Yugoslavia and in Macedonia, especially during the nineties, when it was prudent to keep one’s views to oneself? What does it mean to do this during times of nationalism and small-mindedness? The stakes are much higher than what they might be in Milan or New York.

In 2004, I had the good luck to see Process at a time when the Macedonian government’s inability to regulate or commodifiy any kind of production — much less art production — was making the lives of most people a bureaucratic hell. The use of a rubber stamp to create a giant self-portrait in a room festooned with the actual legal text stipulating that artists must register as ‘traders’ was a biting commentary on the attempts of post-socialist bureaucrats to privatize virtually everything.

In the same year, I had the even better luck to go with Igor on some of his missions to paint occupied Territories at various sites around the country.  Macedonia had just narrowly avoided the kind of senseless violence and partition that still plagues places like Kosovo and Bosnia today, so the act of painting arbitrary (or, sometimes not-so-arbitrary) lines in the people’s common spaces, delimiting them for obscure motives, was even more trenchant.  The looks on people’s faces ranged from apathy to disgust to — rarely — joy.  It was a project that bound the absurd with the deadly serious in an active, physical, even fun way.

Igor’s art is compelling and actually makes one question what is going on in one’s surroundings. It accomplishes that very rare thing of succeeding where so many others have failed miserably.  (In that way it reminds me of another artist from the same country that once upon a time, there was.)  It is timely; never hectoring, always thoughtful, with a keen eye to the political but not overtly so. It’s good art. That’s uncommon.

And after two and half decades of work he’s finally getting some recognition, so go over to Wooloo and vote for him. With any luck, you may be seeing him somewhere familiar soon.

The Bird is the Most Popular Finger

Giving or receiving?

Riding my bike home from work I decided to go through Piazza Affari to check out the Borsa. I was left gape-mouthed by a gigantic middle finger. I wasn’t sure if it was an accident or not. It’s not. By Cattelan, and mild by his standards — recall the infamous Hitler piece of a few years ago, and his hanging children. I’m all for eye-turning pulbic art, but one must wonder — who’s getting the gesture here, and who is giving it? Or is that the tantalizing ambiguity? I’ll ponder…