Yesterday I put my old Moroccan travel skills to the test by taking a day trip to Boston. Yes, that would be four to four and a half hours both ways for a total of about nine hours on a bus. Don't feel sorry for me though; it was a very fancy bus with leather seats, wireless internet and lots of leg room (not that I need that). Those things, along with my awesome ability to sleep anywhere and the company of my friend Nicole, made for a pleasant trip. No chickens or sheep were on the bus and no one called out for a mika bag.
Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice, a special exhibition at the Museum of Fine Art, was what had drawn us to the city. Matthew, who biked in from Cambridge, joined us. At first, I bought the whole call and response premise that the curators had carefully constructed. Titian paints a sacre conversazione, then Tintoretto (his younger rival) paints a more dynamic (some might even say "extreme") one. Some of the more compelling visual arguments involved a room full of nudes (appropriately hidden behind red velvet curtains), the Supper at Emmaus, and Saints Anthony and Jerome (in a separate room of course, though the Temptation of Saint Anthony could have been worked into the room of nudes, I'm sure). The argument began to lose steam for me, however, when the wall-texts/curators started making tenuous connections amongst the size and shape of rivals' canvases and their choice of extremely common subjects. I have a hard time believing that Tintoretto was hunting down Titian's canvases in private collections so that he could compete with the older man. Also, some of those objects were sent to Spain, where Titian had an important patron in the King, but Tintoretto did not. The need for competition isn't immediately apparent, but the power of the male ego may be a factor here, too.
One theme that kept popping up throughout the exhibition was the influence of Michelangelo on the Venetian painters. Michelangelo's reach is something that I haven't studied at all. Though it makes sense that his studio assistants would go on to have workshops of their own, and for his works to be seen by his contemporaries, I've always studied him in such a vacuum that I have no conception of him as a best amongst many, only as a singular star that outshone all. Now that I think about that I'm remembering that the younger Raphael was a rising star whose tranquil, orderly style, threatened the older, more tempestuous master. This, of course, may be a Hollywood construction. And by "Hollywood" I mean "art historical." Rivalries create drama which in turn brings in crowds and/or sells books. Wonderful. Maybe in three hundred years there will be an exhibition called Duchamp/Picasso/Pollock: Modern Master Catfight. I, of course, will write an MA thesis entitled, Hannah Höch: I Will Cut You. (Sorry, I might be the only one who thinks that's funny. It really is, you know.)
And now I'm very tired. Noon is a bit early to consider a nap, but you can only study so much German on four hours of sleep. Also, even though I only spent a a few hours in Boston, I accomplished a lot - I met a fellow writer; I doled out love advice; I walked from Copley Square to Cambridge; I doled out living-in-Brooklyn advice; and I reviewed weak masculine nouns. Every weekend should be so productive.
July 26, 2009
July 8, 2009
Glorification
If you haven't been thinking about Michael Jackson, you haven't been outside in the last week and a half. Without a television or regular newspaper subscription I've avoided a vast majority of the coverage, or what Jon Stewart calls "obitutainment" - the fine media art of obituaries as entertainment.
And a large part of me wants to be above caring about the death of a celebrity. I didn't know him personally (though every reporter on CNN seems to), and perhaps more than any other star I'd like to keep Jackson's music separate from what I (think I) know about his personal life. It's disturbing to think that he could use the same voice both to entertain in dazzling ways and manipulate in a purely pernicious manner, and that I carry it around in my purse on my IPod.
There are two things I'm mulling over in my mind.
The mundane: In listening and relistening to his music over the last week I've become enthralled with just how mundane most of his lyrics really are. They aren't particularly poetic, and they seem to dwell on basic male anxieties about love, sexual prowess, violence, power and the intersections amongst them. He talks about the grind of the 9-5, like he ever actually knew what that was. For a very long time he didn't allow his songs to overlap with his celebrity. He was the biggest star in the world and yet he resisted releasing songs like Lindsay Lohan's treasure, Rumors, or Britney Spears's, Lucky. And when he did point out the troubles with the paparazzi it was usually an angry take, not an "oh-feel-sorry-for-me" whine. There was a tenuous fantasy that his talent existed apart from his life, though the latter would never have been possible without the former.
The glorification: In watching his videos on YouTube for the first time in years, I'm also really struck by his ability, as a skinny kid from the Midwest, to glorify gang culture in New York. This isn't a very well thought out thesis, but in at least two videos, Bad and Beat It, he plays to the old Hollywood conceit that New York street gangs were actually just groups of disgruntled yet very lithe Broadway dancers. Maybe he was trying to distance himself from his slightly disco-esque beginnings and make himself seem a little more testosterone producing, but he also tapped into a strong source of fear and made it look really cool. And no one gets shot nine times. There are definitely some ties to race and expectations of what a Black man would be doing with his evenings in the '80s, but he makes it so palpable. And, well, he seems fully aware of the exploitation.
I'm a little confused by the outright worship of MJ, but hope that our culture will eventually learn how to embrace ambiguities and account for flaws in its icons. Mostly though I'm having my first real case of nostalgia, remembering staying up late to see the premiere of Black or White on MTV and trying to do the Moonwalk until at least the fifth grade. And there was that short time ago in 2007 when I tried to learn the entire Thriller dance because it felt like a piece of bonafied American culture in under fifteen minutes. That's what escape is about and that seems to be what he was best at.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Rippy Awards - Celebrity Crypts | ||||
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And a large part of me wants to be above caring about the death of a celebrity. I didn't know him personally (though every reporter on CNN seems to), and perhaps more than any other star I'd like to keep Jackson's music separate from what I (think I) know about his personal life. It's disturbing to think that he could use the same voice both to entertain in dazzling ways and manipulate in a purely pernicious manner, and that I carry it around in my purse on my IPod.
There are two things I'm mulling over in my mind.
The mundane: In listening and relistening to his music over the last week I've become enthralled with just how mundane most of his lyrics really are. They aren't particularly poetic, and they seem to dwell on basic male anxieties about love, sexual prowess, violence, power and the intersections amongst them. He talks about the grind of the 9-5, like he ever actually knew what that was. For a very long time he didn't allow his songs to overlap with his celebrity. He was the biggest star in the world and yet he resisted releasing songs like Lindsay Lohan's treasure, Rumors, or Britney Spears's, Lucky. And when he did point out the troubles with the paparazzi it was usually an angry take, not an "oh-feel-sorry-for-me" whine. There was a tenuous fantasy that his talent existed apart from his life, though the latter would never have been possible without the former.
The glorification: In watching his videos on YouTube for the first time in years, I'm also really struck by his ability, as a skinny kid from the Midwest, to glorify gang culture in New York. This isn't a very well thought out thesis, but in at least two videos, Bad and Beat It, he plays to the old Hollywood conceit that New York street gangs were actually just groups of disgruntled yet very lithe Broadway dancers. Maybe he was trying to distance himself from his slightly disco-esque beginnings and make himself seem a little more testosterone producing, but he also tapped into a strong source of fear and made it look really cool. And no one gets shot nine times. There are definitely some ties to race and expectations of what a Black man would be doing with his evenings in the '80s, but he makes it so palpable. And, well, he seems fully aware of the exploitation.
I'm a little confused by the outright worship of MJ, but hope that our culture will eventually learn how to embrace ambiguities and account for flaws in its icons. Mostly though I'm having my first real case of nostalgia, remembering staying up late to see the premiere of Black or White on MTV and trying to do the Moonwalk until at least the fifth grade. And there was that short time ago in 2007 when I tried to learn the entire Thriller dance because it felt like a piece of bonafied American culture in under fifteen minutes. That's what escape is about and that seems to be what he was best at.
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