mills

My name is Mills Baker; I write about love, culture, art, religion, mental illness, philosophy, memory, politics and the rather random.

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My parents just returned from Spain, and my father wrote to me about the magic square on Josep Subirachs’ Passion Facade of the Sagrada Familia, the amazing Cathedral by Antonio Gaudí still under construction in Barcelona. I was there more than ten years ago, but I don’t recall noticing the square. Magic squares are mathematical puzzles; all rows and all columns add up to the same sum, in this case 33, the age of Jesus at his death. This is not a true magic square, as some numbers are duplicated. Readers of Steve Martin’s wonderful novel The Pleasure of My Company might recall that magic squares have an interesting history, and were evidently enjoyed by Albrecht Dürer, among others. The presence of one on the Passion Facade is perhaps interesting, or is perhaps reflective of the sort of aesthetic and philosophical ideas that made Subirachs’ additions so controversial; my father, for example, detests them. I don’t like that he ignored Gaudí’s vision and I suspect his work will not endure: its style seems to me preoccupied with its own revolt against tradition; it is indifferent to its audience. Here is the Nativity Facade (photo by Brian Colson; more photos of this facade are here): Although radical, its quality is primarily organic; it seems to me as though it is carved on the inside of a cave. What is remarkable is that it remains extravagantly ornate, but is not ostentatious in its ornateness; that is an achievement. Here is the Passion Facade, made many years later by Subirachs, shot by the same photographer (more here): Details are particularly revealing of the differences, the former as lush as stone can be, alive, corporeal, the latter austere, severe, modernist, angular. See details here and here, for a good encapsulation of the differences. Cathedrals once, and evidently still, take centuries to build, and styles changed as they were constructed, although with less speed than is presently the case. The incorporation of many styles and subsequent additions generally delights us now, and perhaps this will as well someday. But, to be very simple about it, I find Subirachs’ work ugly and dispiriting.

My parents just returned from Spain, and my father wrote to me about the magic square on Josep Subirachs’ Passion Facade of the Sagrada Familia, the amazing Cathedral by Antonio Gaudí still under construction in Barcelona. I was there more than ten years ago, but I don’t recall noticing the square.

Magic squares are mathematical puzzles; all rows and all columns add up to the same sum, in this case 33, the age of Jesus at his death. This is not a true magic square, as some numbers are duplicated.

Readers of Steve Martin’s wonderful novel The Pleasure of My Company might recall that magic squares have an interesting history, and were evidently enjoyed by Albrecht Dürer, among others. The presence of one on the Passion Facade is perhaps interesting, or is perhaps reflective of the sort of aesthetic and philosophical ideas that made Subirachs’ additions so controversial; my father, for example, detests them. I don’t like that he ignored Gaudí’s vision and I suspect his work will not endure: its style seems to me preoccupied with its own revolt against tradition; it is indifferent to its audience.

Here is the Nativity Facade (photo by Brian Colson; more photos of this facade are here):

Although radical, its quality is primarily organic; it seems to me as though it is carved on the inside of a cave. What is remarkable is that it remains extravagantly ornate, but is not ostentatious in its ornateness; that is an achievement. Here is the Passion Facade, made many years later by Subirachs, shot by the same photographer (more here):

Details are particularly revealing of the differences, the former as lush as stone can be, alive, corporeal, the latter austere, severe, modernist, angular. See details here and here, for a good encapsulation of the differences.

Cathedrals once, and evidently still, take centuries to build, and styles changed as they were constructed, although with less speed than is presently the case. The incorporation of many styles and subsequent additions generally delights us now, and perhaps this will as well someday. But, to be very simple about it, I find Subirachs’ work ugly and dispiriting.

Tags: art magic squares architecture antonio gaudi steve martin albrecht durer josep subirachs
One of the most famous of E.J. Bellocq’s photographs of prostitutes in New Orleans’ Storyville district, where sex work was legal from 1897-1917. See below for more.

One of the most famous of E.J. Bellocq’s photographs of prostitutes in New Orleans’ Storyville district, where sex work was legal from 1897-1917. See below for more.

Tags: ej bellocq art photography history
Ernest Belloch Photographing a Prostitute, George Schmidt. When Abby was last in town, she, Will, and I visited the gallery of George Schmidt, a New Orleans artist, to deliver a canvas stretcher. He treated us to a polymathic and monological tour de force as we wandered around his building, discussing the very high and the very low with equal enthusiasm. He laughed at his own constant and usually ribald jokes while showing us a work in progress I’d give my car for. The painting above is of a man more commonly known as E. J. Bellocq, well-known for his photographs of prostitutes in Storyville, a district in which New Orleans legalized prostitution from 1897 through 1917 (as is always the case, the goddamn Feds eventually interfered for their own selfish reasons). His photographs are amazing; this is from 1912: Bellocq and Schmidt are both part of and concerned with the idiosyncratic and unusual side of New Orleans that is inimitable; Schmidt’s current painting treats in a manner both comic and reverential -the archetypal New Orleans Catholic stance- of the city’s four holy figures in a scene I can scarcely describe. Hopefully I’ll be able to share more on both of them in the future.

Ernest Belloch Photographing a Prostitute, George Schmidt.

When Abby was last in town, she, Will, and I visited the gallery of George Schmidt, a New Orleans artist, to deliver a canvas stretcher. He treated us to a polymathic and monological tour de force as we wandered around his building, discussing the very high and the very low with equal enthusiasm. He laughed at his own constant and usually ribald jokes while showing us a work in progress I’d give my car for.

The painting above is of a man more commonly known as E. J. Bellocq, well-known for his photographs of prostitutes in Storyville, a district in which New Orleans legalized prostitution from 1897 through 1917 (as is always the case, the goddamn Feds eventually interfered for their own selfish reasons).

His photographs are amazing; this is from 1912:

Bellocq and Schmidt are both part of and concerned with the idiosyncratic and unusual side of New Orleans that is inimitable; Schmidt’s current painting treats in a manner both comic and reverential -the archetypal New Orleans Catholic stance- of the city’s four holy figures in a scene I can scarcely describe. Hopefully I’ll be able to share more on both of them in the future.

Tags: art new orleans abby ej bellocq
Detail of The Dog, as it’s called, by Francisco Goya.

Detail of The Dog, as it’s called, by Francisco Goya.

Tags: art francisco goya dogs
Leonard Knight’s recliner at Salvation Mountain; see Been Thinking’s wonderful post and Flickr set for more. I love Knight’s work, and that of his fellow amateur builders in Zack Godshall’s documentary on them. One need not resent the preening textuality of much contemporary art -which as often as not needs an essay to explain its purpose, a quality which has the admirable effect of keeping employed many thousands of otherwise useless, overeducated pedants like me- to adore folk art. But perhaps it helps. As is the case with popular music or regularly intelligible jazz, it is a pleasure to experience visual art that requires no curatorial explanation. This is not to say, of course, that there are clear distinctions between the straightforward, the complex, and the overly-obscure (if there is such a thing); all of us have our own thresholds of comprehension, and what is difficult is often rewarding. But the immediacy and power and vitality of, say, Howard Finster, thrills me. I bet that it’s quite nice to sit in that chair.

Leonard Knight’s recliner at Salvation Mountain; see Been Thinking’s wonderful post and Flickr set for more.

I love Knight’s work, and that of his fellow amateur builders in Zack Godshall’s documentary on them. One need not resent the preening textuality of much contemporary art -which as often as not needs an essay to explain its purpose, a quality which has the admirable effect of keeping employed many thousands of otherwise useless, overeducated pedants like me- to adore folk art. But perhaps it helps.

As is the case with popular music or regularly intelligible jazz, it is a pleasure to experience visual art that requires no curatorial explanation. This is not to say, of course, that there are clear distinctions between the straightforward, the complex, and the overly-obscure (if there is such a thing); all of us have our own thresholds of comprehension, and what is difficult is often rewarding. But the immediacy and power and vitality of, say, Howard Finster, thrills me.

I bet that it’s quite nice to sit in that chair.

Tags: folk art howard finster leonard knight art

"Art is truth"; but can truth be political?

Andy Sturdevant of South 12th posted an excellent essay about John F. Kennedy’s assertion that “art is truth,” which comes from a speech Sturdevant excerpts, compares to Glenn Beck’s remarks on art, and partially disputes.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth… In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society—in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may.

Kennedy was likely contrasting the art of the West with Socialist Realism in particular, the Russian movement directed by the Soviet government to support official party policy. Art that didn’t directly support Communist principles or “inspire” the “workers” was considered not merely useless but bourgeoisie and reactionary. What was personal, individual, interior was deplored: “The private life is dead in Russia for a man with any manhood,” and this was true for the scribe as well as the soldier.

To be preoccupied with such a scale of life -love, death, family- in a time of global proletarian struggle was clearly anti-social solipsism, and therefore anti-Socialist sabotage. So Bulgakov is censored while Gorky thrives.

For many, particularly survivors of Soviet domination like Milan Kundera, the idea that politics is incompatible with art is axiomatic. But Sturdevant notes several artists, and there are many, who exemplify his claim that “Art canbe an ideological weapon in a free society, obviously, and there have been plenty of times in American history where it has been used as such.”

While I tend to dislike political art -which is not exploratory but expository, which does not seek truth but rather tells us where to find it, which is not existential but teleological (and therefore often dull and dated)- I am interested in what seems to follow from Kennedy’s claim. If art is truth and art cannot be political, is it fair to say that what is political is necessarily untrue?

I think it perhaps is, since what is political is aggregatory, reductive, and systematic, all qualities I associate with the subtle falsity of reason run amok. Kennedy seems to suggest as much when he says that truth emerges when the artist “remain[s] true to himself and… let[s] the chips fall where they may.”

That is: undirected fidelity to the individual, concern with the human, yields meaningful artistic truth. As all politics are teleological and subordinate the individual to theory, the chips cannot fall where they may. Their artificial arrangment may be moving, moralistically affecting, beautiful, but tied to the moment it won’t be enduring.

But that is just one view, and the point is: Sturdevant’s post is awesome.

Tags: art culture philosophy politics milan kundera socialist realism
“Oppenheimer, they tell me you are writing poetry. I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition. In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say something that everybody knows already in words that nobody can understand.”
The brilliant physicist Paul Dirac, who seems not to have understood poetry, in a remark to Robert Oppenheimer. Thanks, dad!
Tags: paul dirac robert oppenheimer science art
“Film is twenty-four lies per second at the service of truth…”

Michael Haneke. This recalls the beautiful Julian Barnes line I quoted here.

The relationship of falsity and truth in art fascinates me. We exempt art from our age’s obsessive ‘scientism’ for good reason: human truths, fragile and elusive, are not always captured in realist exposition. Though we’ve decided that only what is isomorphic to reality is intellectually acceptable, story, enactment, myth, deceit, allusion, and provocation all remain not merely preferable to the ordinary world but indeed the only means of understanding it.

Tags: art julian barnes michael haneke film

That Fear of the False

“Janine had taken an intense personal interest in the scruples which dogged Flaubert’s writing, that fear of the false which, she said, sometimes kept him confined to his couch for weeks or months on end in the dread that he would never be able to write another word without compromising himself in the most grievous of ways. Moreover, Janine said, he was convinced that everything he had written hitherto consisted solely in a string of the most abysmal errors and lies, the consequences of which were immeasurable. Janine maintained that the source of Flaubert’s scruples was to be found in the relentless spread of stupidity which he had observed everywhere, and which he believed had already invaded his own head.”

-W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn. (See also: authorial shame, childhood shame, Sebald).

Tags: art gustav flaubert shame wg sebald literature
“…all literature, highbrow or low, from Aeneid onward, is fan fiction. That is why Harold Bloom’s notion of the anxiety of influence has always rung so hollow to me … All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.”
Michael Chabon, quoted by Alan Jacobs in this excellent piece: Choose Your Own Adventure: Jews with Swords.
Tags: alan jacobs ayjay michael chabon harold bloom anxiety of influence literature art
“…these philosophies have their perverse charms. If you look at it in the right way, it’s liberating that, as Derrida believes, there is no experience that precedes language, or that poems, as de Man says, are just persistant namings of the void, or that knowledge, as Foucault argues, is a function of a diffuse and vaguely malevolent ‘power.’… From the point of view of an english major, it was intoxicating because it promised to replace art. Why was that attractive? I think because I was impatient. Art was messy and small, reeking of lies and mistakes and humanity. Theory was clean and huge, like a memory, like heaven. Theory was power. Theory was war. And theory exalted the critic. No longer was I a lowly grad student parasite clinging desperately to Joyce’s belly fur; now I was a carnivore, hunting down the text and killing it. It was kind of like making art yourself, except you didn’t.”

Gary Kamiya, quoted by Little Potato. I am hostile towards theory for many reasons, not least being its unintelligibility and its falsity, but I think this precisely exposes what is worst about it: it exists as a means for the suppression of the artist by those who claim to love art.

Indeed, I think most theory serves this role: masses of gnostic, oppressive, symmetrical, self-referential language smothering whatever natural and human life exists beneath it. Political theory: a means of subordinating the individual to the striking diagrams of some universal set of ideas and logic. Literary theory: a means for denying the import of the author (through the absurd ‘intentional fallacy’) and establishing narcissistic “readings” of “texts” that “explode” meanings and position the tracer of lexical lines as some kind of creator. Explode is a nicely violent word for it, too.

The very clever resent art just as we resent the world; we want to control it, reduce it, bring it to heel with our fine phrases and semicolons and footnotes. Thus we must establish that art isn’t what it claims to be but some secret cipher only we can decode, a hidden message about the sexual anguish of the painter or the unreconstructed bourgeosie sentimentality of the composer or the imperialism of the poet; just as we say to the world: you’re not really happy, with your false consciousnesses!

“Theory was clean and huge, like a memory, like heaven. Theory was power. Theory was war. And theory exalted the critic.” When reading Chomsky’s infamous assessment of literary theory -that it is all idiotic- one might wonder: how did it come to dominate our intellectual landscape? I agree with Kamiya: what exalts will win favor, and in a world dense with people eager to be involved with art but, unfortunately and undemocratically, without talent, there existed this need: to justify the labors of the academic and critical class.

Now we have an unending rain of essays on how Kafka’s Odradek is about sodomy and need of an army of graduate students to parse and respond to them in their own jargon. This is part of the academic-industrial complex! Complexity of language is their technique for obscuring how little is really being said, and I think many of the participants can even recognize how astray we’ve gone; but just as with the military-industrial complex, there are forces at work here that none can contain: ego, pride, student loan debt, etc.

Update: with apologies for the polemical nature of this post, I want to note that this is what I did with most of my education. I don’t mean to offend.

Tags: academia art culture literature criticism
You might consider reading Maira Kalman’s “I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door,” an illustrated narrative of life on Earth -from dinosaurs to motorcycles- and the United States, culminating in some reflections on immigration and beauty. I saw it thanks to Ayjay. Freud makes an appearance, as do the Native Americans, the Europeans, the residents of the primordial soup, and some striking photographs. If you do read it, I would be interested: what did you think of it? Was it too political? Too personal? Silly? Sweet?

You might consider reading Maira Kalman’s “I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door,” an illustrated narrative of life on Earth -from dinosaurs to motorcycles- and the United States, culminating in some reflections on immigration and beauty. I saw it thanks to Ayjay.

Freud makes an appearance, as do the Native Americans, the Europeans, the residents of the primordial soup, and some striking photographs.

If you do read it, I would be interested: what did you think of it? Was it too political? Too personal? Silly? Sweet?

Tags: freud maira kalman new york times art
“You can’t steal a gift. Bird gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can have it.”
Dizzy Gillespie defending another musician from accusations that he stole Charlie Parker’s style, quoted by Jonathan Lethem in an essay on the effect very contemporary ideas like copyright and plagiarism have on creative culture. Jazz is an excellent example of an artistic form that depended on free exchange of styles and ideas; it would have been killed by what Lethem rechristens copyright: usemonopoly.
Tags: jazz music art dizzy gillespie charlie parker jonathan lethem
The Christ of the Abyss, off the Italian coast at San Fruttuoso some fifty five feet below the surface. Commemorating a diver who perished near the spot, the statue has many iterations around the world, one of which was, according to Italian police, vandalized by Satanists who removed its arms. More photos on Flickr.

The Christ of the Abyss, off the Italian coast at San Fruttuoso some fifty five feet below the surface. Commemorating a diver who perished near the spot, the statue has many iterations around the world, one of which was, according to Italian police, vandalized by Satanists who removed its arms.

More photos on Flickr.

Tags: art religion culture sculpture
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Duke Ellington - Bluebird of Delhi

I admire successful efforts to fuse straightforward symbolism with rigorous aesthetic development in music. Symbolism is challenging: sometimes performing a bluebird’s song before dissolving into the cacophony of Delhi works. Sometimes, trying to make train sounds with your snare drum sounds like you don’t know how to speak a foreign language and are trying to draw what you mean.

More on Ellington, whose Far East Suite is among the best albums ever made, can be found here.

Tags: art duke ellington far east suite jazz music symbolism music