Up, up, up . . .

Wolf of Wall Street

I rate it slightly above average.

Susan and I saw this movie this afternoon. I think she liked it better than I did. It's long, and eventually for me tedious. Being subjected to three hours of depiction of boundless hedonism, gross consumption, and dishonesty maybe doesn't do it for me like it used to. Of course it's Scorsese, so you're going to have it in your face throughout. And there's a serious intent behind the film. I guess you can encapsulate the movie's plot by: "the rise and fall of an unscrupulous Wall Street trader." That would be Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, assisted by a whole bevy of talented actors.

I'm sure Scorsese's intention was to lance the boil of the corruption of the financial system and let it run all over the screen. Well, he succeeded for me. And I'm sure there must be some subtleties that escaped me. I never pretended to be an incisive movie critic, but I know what I like. And to tell the truth, I would have liked to have been able to like any of the people in this movie. But it's hard to cut through the opulence, booze, dope, sex, and orgies to get to the point where you care much for any of these people.

It was indeed a pleasure to watch DiCaprio and the rest of the cast, especially Jonah Hill, display their talent. It is amazing what these people can do, and it's amazing to see what Hollywood can do. For some, that would simply be enough. The spectacle, the verisimilitude reproduced. And I cannot deny some genuinely funny moments. But on the whole, it didn't work for me. I give it about a 5 1/2. 

Maybe Too Far Out

This Sunday is the last day of my modern poetry course. I've thoroughly enjoyed being exposed to poetry I would have never in a million years read voluntarily. And there's no likelihood that I'm going to be gravitating automatically to avant-garde poetry once the course is over and done with. I'm perfectly happy with my Thomas Lux, Tony Hoagland, Bob Hicok, Stephen Dunn, et al. I'm not sure I want to be setting myself a task every time I read a poem, which is what it is with a lot of the poets I've encountered in the course.

And then there are the ancillary things you run across while reading the assigned critical essays. Such as the work below. This is a piece of art (and I'm afraid I use the term advisedly here) by Martin Creed. Here is the title and decription.

Martin Creed: Work No. 79

Work No. 79
Some Blu-Tack kneaded, rolled into a ball, and depressed against a wall
1993
Blu-Tack
Approximately 1 in / 2.5 cm diameter

You know that stuff you use to hang pictures or other things on walls without nails? (Susan and I call it "ticky-tacky.") Well, this is piece of it rolled into a ball and stuck on a wall. Now, admittedly the color coordination is nice. And I'm advanced and enlightened enough to know not to dismiss this out of hand as "not art." But, and here comes the confession, I do confess to requiring some learned critic explain to me why this is art. It's perhaps a bridge too far for me . . . maybe too far out. Maybe along with the other baleful effects of aging, one loses one's facility for refined discernment. For I suspect that about 99.78 percent of the people in the world, finding this on your wall would wonder what in the hell you've got a glob of ticky-tacky just sticking there for.

Related articles

• Join a free poetry class! (rhymeetreason.com)
• The Pit of Poetry (thereadingworkshop.com)
• Poetry Questions (poetrycurator.wordpress.com)

Horseshoes

Some people have them; some people don't. Take, for example, a woman in Virginia who doesn't want anybody to know her name discovers in a box of two-bit trash she bought for a pittance at a flea market--including a plastic cow and a Paul Bunyan doll--a genuine Renoir. Yep. Six-and-a-half inches by five-and-a-half. A Seine River scene.  Now think about the fact that since she didn't really like the damn thing--it was one of those impressionistic "modern" things, ya know--she was ready to shred it. But her Mama noticing the signature "Renoir" on it--duh!!--advised her daughter go get it appraised. It's expected to sell for somewhere between $75,000 and $100,000.

I don't have horseshoes . . . at least ones that could fit Paul Bunyan's horse.

Source here.

Just Cool as Hell

I thought this was just too cool for words. Don't ask me why. Some things just grab you. I found it at this website.

Art is For the Smart

I couldn't stop watching this.

Art Museums

Writing about that trip we took to Europe last year, I was reminded that when we were in Madrid we visited two world class art museums. (Did not visit any museums in Ireland, but Ireland came out way ahead on pubs over Spain.) The first was of course The Prado, Museo de Prado, one of the greatest art museums in the world. Going to The Prado was my only must-do thing on the whole trip. I've wanted to go there for years. It was fabulous. The paintings of Goya alone are worth the trip. Throw in Velazquez, Titian, and Bosch and you are into major overkill. The other museum, which was devoted primarily to Spanish artists, was the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, which has only 20th century art inside. It is a relatively new museum; it just opened in 1992.

OK, I'll be right up front here. I love modern art. Places like these art museums draw me in because such places, chock full of celebrated art, pulls me into a world that seems much more human and empathetic than the very real world in which it was created and in which it now stands long after its creator has passed into a world beyond this one. It's almost as if great art lifts you out of the so-called "real world" and shows you another one, the real "real world". Perhaps that's what draws us to it.

Take this wonderful interplay of shapes and colors in this Joan Miro work from 1938, for example. This piece is in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, the Queen Sofia Museum. I'm not certain how many by Miro the museum holds. For some reason, I did not purchase the museum book that you can always find in the gift shop. Maybe that was a low euro day, because I usually make a point of buying the book. This one is called Retrato II.

Looking up the piece above to show you whetted my appetite for some more. So I went and checked on the Miro pieces Susan and I have seen in other places. We saw this one spring last year in the MOMA. It's called A Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers. This is actually a drawing in goache and charcoal on paper from the early World War II years.

Joan Miro, goache & charcoal on paper, 1941

It's difficult to stop once you get started trying chasing these things down these things down. Here's another Miro we saw at the MOMA. This is The Birth of the World. 

Joan Miro, oil on canvas, 1925

I would not pretend to say anything about these pieces other than they spur in me a welter of thoughts about the nature of human beings, our understanding of beauty and truth and the world around us. And they stir in me feelings that I can get only in the presence of great art . . . the kind of feelings you can't hang words on.

To my delight I found a short little YouTube video that lets you look at a bunch more of Miro's works. So if you have not had enough to this point, there's more. And of course, if you have had enough, it's likely you never read down this far anyway. After fiddling awhile with it, I could not get the video to embed in this write-up. But if you want to watch it, you can find it here. Enjoy!

Related articles

• Joan Miró's art is more alive than ever (guardian.co.uk)
• Revisiting Miro's art and life on a Spanish island (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

And so . . .

. . . another week begins. I wish I could say I have a raft of good news to report.

Some might consider the fact that Gadhafi's rule in Libya is coming to a close some good news (here's a challenge: what's the right way to spell this guy's name? I have seen about four different ways.), but I will reserve judgment on that until we see what that gumbo of elements that toppled him will do now that they're in power. These rebels don't have any model to go by. Gaddafi has ruled that country as dictator for over 40 years. Governmental institutions will have to be built almost from scratch.

Would MLK have liked this memorial
to him? Not if he had any artistic
sensibilities, I'll bet.

The Martin Luther King memorial opened on the Washington DC mall. I don't know about you, but I think the thing is ugly. I suppose there's an argument to be made by portraying him as a 90-ton colossus, but I think the argument for understatement is stronger. This is an Ozymandias figure.

James Kuntsler reminds us in his usual acerbic fashion that nobody out there, especially politicians "can really articulate the direction in which history is propelling us. This 'recession-depression' narrative doesn't even adequately capture it. This is the end of a certain way of doing things - the industrial growth-spurt fiesta. We're in permanent contraction now." I have to agree with him when he avers that "History is not your therapist. This is the New Age you never expected." Right. We have no idea where we're going. About all we do know is we don't want to go there.

My fantasy baseball team, the Creaky Geezers, have gone into a weeks-long swoon after leading the league for most of the season. I lost three top starters, all of them of the do-not-trade type to the DL at the same time. Two are still there, probably till the beginning of September. This happened when the starting pitching stopped producing wins and quality starts. So with home runs, hits, RBIs plummeting as well, the team has sunk to 8th in the 10-team league. This, to be honest, really pisses me off because now I'm viewing the asses of some really dog teams.

On the other hand, the real life Rangers took the first game of a four-game series from the Boston Red Sox 4-0 behind strong pitching by C.J. Wilson. They still lead the AL West by 4 games.  Baseball keeps me sane.

Goog Lab Tools -- Chapter 2

I can't drift away from this topic without sharing a couple of other things with you. I sent this site, Art Project, to my artsy daughter a few days ago and she never responded. She's a busy person, so perhaps she hasn't gotten to it yet. This site lets you tour 17 of the world's most famous museums--Van Gogh in Amsterdam; Met, Frick, & Moma in NYC, Uffizi in Florence, for example--and examine art works really up close if you want, much closer than you would be allowed to approach in many of these museums. I've always been a sucker for sites like this. In fact, there is an incredible amount of art you can look at on the Internet. Just for starters, try this.

This little program called Google City Tours is kinda neat for those of us who want to hit the high points and avoid all that tiring research. Just type in the name of a place, click, and presto! you've got a little walking tour mapped out, complete with suggested time to spend at the attraction site and the travel time (on foot) to get there. Be advised, though, Google CT is picky about the cities it will tour in. Oklahoma City and Norman didn't rate in OK, and Baton Rouge didn't make it in Louisiana. But Cairo works, and Portland OR, and New Orleans, and Dallas+Ft Worth and Cleveland, and Mainz, Germany, and St Petersburg, Russia, and finally, Basel, Switzerland. I wore out about 15 minutes just playing around at these places.

Finally, let me suggest you take a look at "Google Reader - Play," that's what they call it. It's just a place that throws a potpourri of various stories at you, somewhat like their Fast Flip, only my little test, hardly scientific, I thought the stories on the former were more interesting and catchy, but that's only a matter of opinion.

Have fun, y'all!

Art Interlude

Look closely. This amazing thing is carved out of an old book. The artist is Brian Dettmer, and you can find his web page here. Created by the same animal that gives you war crimes, pedophilia, and porn.

An interesting read indeed

Klee's Angel

Paul Klee's Angelus Novus (1920)

I came across this art while I was reading a lengthy piece on Truthout by Henry A. Giroux called "In the Twilight of the Social State: Rethinking Walter Benjamin's Angel of History." (It's quite good and it makes the point that you already have observed. I will summarize: a market-driven society is a heartless and cruel one. You can find the article here.) I was drawn to it by the overall thesis of the piece, which began like this:

By eviscerating public services and reducing them to a network of farmed-out private providers, we have begun to dismantle the fabric of the state. As for the dust and powder of individuality: it resembles nothing so much as Hobbes's war of all against all, in which life for many people has once again become solitary, poor and more than a little nasty.

But then Giroux shifts to a discussion of the German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin who wrote a "now famous" book, Thesis on the Philosophy of History. Are you wondering when I'm going to get to the angel? Here it comes.

In Benjamin's ninth thesis he comments Klee's angel. Thus:

"Angelus Novus" shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The Angel would like to stay, awaken the dead and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

 I thought this was a really fascinating interpretation of this work. And that's why I'm sharing it with you. By the way, I went looking on the Net for additional interpretations, and after about five tries I gave it up. Everybody cites Benjamin.

Burn Baby Burn

Have you all heard that in the name of political correctness and trendy sensitivity, the word "nigger" is going to be taken out of Mark Twain's classics Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Read the story here. It will be replaced by the word "slave." This is the modern-day equivalent of the Puritanical/Victorian practice of covering innumerable marble and stone penises with fig leaves, in my humble opinion. Listen, there is always going to be somebody offended by great art. It's quite inevitable. Great art doesn't care. People with little bitty narrow minds care. Salacious, vulgar, and obscene material is one thing: society has the right to protect itself from these things in certain cases. But should censorship be imposed on writing because it contains words that the purveyors of taste consider offensive? I don't think so.

Ray Bradbury, the sf writer, who penned one of the most memorable works in that genre, Fahrenheit 451, which was about a society that ordered all books burned had this to say when he was asked whether his book should be sanitized so as not to offend the young readers of today. Here's part of his response:

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian/ Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist/ Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist/ Women’s Lib/ Republican/  Mattachine/ Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

This is what any author would say, isn't it? Tart, but true. Oh, Lord, preserve us from the True Believers who are bound and determined to make us all holy, even if it kills us.

UPDATE I: Here is another good article on this whole subject of bowdlerizing Huck Finn and other classics.

Related articles

• Why Jim Needs to Remain Huck Finn's "Nigger" (alternet.org)
• Early Morning Swim: Keith Olbermann and Melissa Harris-Perry Discuss Mark Twain Censorship Controversy (firedoglake.com)
• Uproar over removal of racial epithets just the latest adventure for Huckleberry Finn (arts.nationalpost.com)
• Fahrenheit 451 Review (bookstove.com)

Moonshine

It's gonna be a kick-ass moon tonight. A gift from Heaven at Christmas time.
Perfectly timed, as you would expect.

Tomorrow morning, early, for the first time in 372 years, since 1638, a total lunar eclipse will fall on the winter solstice. The eclipse begins at 2:32 a.m. (CST) and it will be total from 3:41 a.m. until 4:53 a.m.--a really long time, 72 minutes. (Story here and here.) And the show will be spectacular because the moon will take on a hue, anywhere from bright orange to red, depending the state of the Earth's atmosphere at the time. I'm gonna be up and so is my dearest spouse, somewhat of a surprise, actually. But I'll be delighted to share this with her. There's lots of good stuff on the Web about this, and if you're clouded over, you can watch the whole thing live via Google Earth.

Being a crazed historian, I got to thinking what was going on in the world in 1638, the last time this happened. So for your edification, a partial list:

• Dutch settle in Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
• Welsh Puritan Roger Williams banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony; establishes Providence, RI, and proclaims complete religious freedom
• Tea appeared for the first time in Paris
• Manchus proclaims the Ch'ing Dynasty at Mukden
• Harvard College founded in Cambridge, MA
• Rembrandt: "Portrait of an 83-year-old Woman"//Van Dyck: "Charles I on Horseback"//Velazquez: "Prince Baltasar Carlos as a Hunter"

Portrait of an 83-year-old Woman

Charles I on Horseback

Prince Baltasar Carlos as a Hunter

This Is One of Those Only-in-America Stories

Here's the gist of the story, but you can read all about it here. Dateline Prescott, Arizona, where the ongoing civic project at the Miller Valley Elementary School is the painting of a "Go on Green" mural which covers the sides of two buildings. The point of the mural is to promote environmentally benign methods of transportation. The mural features pictures of four children, with a Hispanic child being the prominent one.

Are you ready for this? The group of artists painting the mural have been told by the school principal to lighten the faces of the non-Caucasian children. The principal, Jeff Lane, claims that his request has nothing whatever to do with race. "We asked them to fix the shading of the children's faces," he said. "We were looking at it from an artistic view. Nothing at all to do with race." Yeah, right. And polar bears can be found at the equator.

The project director, however, says that for two months he and the other artists on the project were subjected to a constant stream of racial slander from the vehicles of people passing through one of the busiest intersections in town. So the kids from the school helping to paint got to hear the grown-ups yelling all these hateful things.

The local yahoo city councilman campaigned to have the mural removed altogether, claiming it wasn't an accurate depiction of the realities in Prescott. You know, he's probably right: the reality of life and attitudes in Prescott emanate from the mouths of its sterling citizens yelling about "niggers" and "spics" at a group of artists and children.

And you wonder why I don't have much faith in this country.

Thirst

Thirst by Wheeler

One of several outstanding photos at Breathtaking Masterpieces of Creative Photography. Check it out.

The End of Civilization as We Know It

McDonald's is establishing a burger bar and McCafe in the Carrousel du Louvre, the underground entrance to the most famous art museum in the world. Does anyone who has risen above the level of Philistine need to say more?

God Talk

It somehow seems fitting that at the milestone of my 300th blog entry on Powderfinger, the subject that intrigues me today is God, religion, spirituality. For two reasons. The first, a movie--the first I've been to in a while--my spouse and I saw last evening, The Soloist with Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. I won't dilate on the story any; you can look it up in IMDB. Wasn't all that great a movie, actually, but that's not the point. What was striking to me was the vivid reminder of how intertwined human beings are with artistic expression. The music of the movie was heavily Beethoven. There was a sizeable chunk of Symphony No. 3, part of the "Emperor Concerto," some Beethoven cello music, and also some Bach, from the unaccompanied cello suites. Which is to say the music was gorgeous. Out of this world.
And that's my point here: to say that music is gorgeous doesn't fully plumb what the music is to us. Music as transfixing as Beethoven's says something about who we are as human beings. What is this power of music over us? Indeed, why is it that art exerts such a powerful influence over us? People will pay millions for a single painting or sculpture. Why does it grip us, hold us, ensnare us? Why are we driven to create it? Why do we visit great art again and again? Who thinks a single view of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel or "Winged Victory" is enough? I've heard Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 at least a hundred times. But its power is not diminished in the slightest by that, in fact, the symphony becomes more entrancing the more it's heard. Examples could be strung out endlessly. Quite simply, although the assertion requires book-length exploration, art opens a window on our origins, our destiny, the shaper of our souls. It shows us who we are--this need to create the beautiful, this drive to drink it all in.

We are spiritual creatures, fashioned in some way, I believe, by a power far beyond our ability to grasp. We try to do explain and probe this mysterious ever-present power in our holy books, our many religious expressions, even our creedal formuations and rituals. But in the end, it's only art that comes close to shutting our mouths in the sheer awe of this power. We know, we sense how subtle, yet how strong, it is, how transformative in its beauty, how awesome in its mystery. It's that power, I believe, that's revealed to us in the arts, and in music especially, that finest of the arts. And it's that power that resides in us that drives humans to make art, to crave art. It's not something they choose, like being an engineer. It's something humans have to do. Like breathing.

Oh, and the second reason for the God talk I mentioned up above? Well, that will have to wait till tomorrow.

Tennessee Outrage

To the left is part of a display of would-be public art in, of all places, a neighborhood in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The resident of the duplex where this and a number of other exhibits appear is Ms Chaya Anavi. She maintains that she is working on an art project. The display of her art has--and I'm sure this will surprise you--upset the neighbors. The police have been called. Along with city zoning officials and city inspectors. The city council has been alerted, and a grave councilman named Jack Benson has personally inspected the site. Can we all guess what he thought of it? He found the display "frightening and grotesque," and continued that it could be "very traumatic" for young children who saw "these heads that appear to be buried bodies." Does this sound ominously to you like Chattanooga is going to find some way to make Ms Anavi take down the art? Yes, you are correct. And I quote: "Councilman Benson said the city attorney's office is researching what charges can be brought against Ms. Anavi, including a charge of littering and creating a public nuisance." You can read all about it and the corncob vibrator and find several more pictures here.

The Big Four

The big four--Love, Sex, Death, and God--are really the only things worth talking about eventually when you come right down to it. I say eventually because all kinds of distractions intervene before one comes to realize that the big four are what matter. In the interim other lesser subjects--business, politics, academic subjects, sports, hobbies, and so forth--intrude. But even these subjects, if you're creative and honest in seeing it, wend their way back to one or more of the big four. Love, Sex, Death, and God: it's the stuff of all art, and therefore the stuff of everything that makes us human. Think about opera: all opera is concerned with at least three of the big four, and sometimes about God, too; someone once said that all poetry is about death. I'm not necessarily going to argue. Music is a spiritual language . . . who will say that Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven don't speak from another realm? Why do we hear these voices so clearly? And why do they so transport us?

Reason these thoughts are on my mind today is because this evening I visit again a longtime friend who is dying. He has, I'd guess, only a few more days left in this sphere of existence. And his existence at this moment is unswervingly focused, as focused as it will ever be, on Love, Death, and God. He believes in God, as do I, but this doesn't answer anything, does it? Or perhaps it answers everything. Who is to say? So proximate, Death drags with it all the questions that ultimately matter. He's been in love and married to the same woman for 43 years. How does one measure the depth and extent of the love that move her to say about her life with this dying man: "I would not change a thing."?

I think my friend is already half gone. At times it's perfectly obvious that he's not here, but elsewhere. Elsewhere, embracing his destiny. It's my privilege and a blessing to stand with him and this close to the mystery of our existence. It's my friend's final gift to me. Go in peace, Jim. I'll be along after a while.

The Divine Spark Visible

If there's anything to soothe the savage breast and give pause before wholesale damnation of the entire human species, it's the fact that the tribe has produced the likes of Giotto, Beethoven, Wordsworth, Dickinson, Mozart, Van Gogh, and thousands of others. Artists. People who remind us of the divine spark that's lies at the heart of our true nature. Because there's a Beethoven or a Van Gogh is reason enough for me to believe there's more to us than a felicitous combination of chromosomes.

With that in mind, I've installed a reminder of this here on the blog. Right to the left, every time you click onto "What Powderfinger Said," you'll find a magnificent art masterpiece. Click on it for a full and larger rendition. The art work hooks up to the Allpaintings web site, where, if you want you can lose yourself for days in the wondrous world of art. There are over 32,000 images here, and more all the time. The way I figure it, we'll cycle through 32,000 images at one per day in a little over 87 and a half years. I'll be 152 years old at that point, and if I'm still blogging, my guess is there will be at least another 32,000 images that will have been added to the queue by then. We ain't gonna run out of beautiful art any time soon. And this is a good thing considering all the other awful stuff that's happening.