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… If a clodbe washed awayby the sea,Europeis the lessas well as ifa promontory were,as well as ifa manor of thy friendsor thine ownwere… In free verse, are line breaks the product of daemonic possession? Sovereign whim? Delphic insight into … Continue reading
If there’s something that can be called a Beethovian gravitas assumable by a sculptor who is female, artist Maggi Hambling is a contender. That’s by way of an admiring aside to the topic of this article.
“Luxuriantly bushed,” “obligingly passive,” “implausibly perky” are phrases that Stuart Jeffries brings to bear on Hambling’s recently unveiled statue of a naked Mary Wollstonecraft, author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” in Newington Green, north London.
“Instant furore” around an art work almost always argues in its creative favor. There’s stolid momentum in all ages behind making only what middling palates want to taste. Hambling flouts it with style and fervor.
Bee Rowlatt, author of “In Search of Mary” and advocate for a statue of Wollstonecraft, states a useful slant to the case:
The idea, as Rowlatt explained, was to represent the birth of a movement, rather than Wollstonecraft herself. The hope, too, was to get away from putting people on pedestals.
(Stuart Jeffries, ‘There are plenty of schlongs in art’ — Maggi Hambling defends her nude sculpture of Mary Wollstonecraft,” theguardian.com, 12-16-20)
Footnote
This article corroborates the vitality of salty parlance around genitalia. I first heard the Yiddish slang for “penis” spoken to a national public when candidate Trump said, in 2015, that Hilary Clinton “got schlonged” by Barack Obama. “She lost, I mean she lost,” he added helpfully (cnn.com, 12-22-15). This was roughly a year before his earlier “pussy” remark came to light — another milestone. History will credit Trump with forcing journalism to flex its criteria for what’s printable.
(c) 2020 JMN
[XCVI]
Pienso, esta época en que tú me amaste
I think this epoch in which you loved me
se irá por otra azul sustituida,
will go away, replaced by a blue one,
será otra piel sobre los mismos huesos,
it will be another skin on the same bones,
otros ojos verán la primavera.
other eyes will see the Spring.
Nadie de los que ataron esta hora,
Not one of those who tied this hour,
de los que conversaron con el humo,
of those who conversed with smoke,
gobiernos, traficantes, transeúntes,
governments, traffickers, transients,
continuarán moviéndose en sus hilos.
will continue moving in its threads.
Se irán los crueles dioses con anteojos,
The cruel, bespectacled gods will go away,
los peludos carnívoros con libro,
the hirsute carnivores with books,
los pulgones y los pipipasseyros.
the plant lice and the pipipasseyros.*
Y cuando esté recién lavado el mundo
And when the world is freshly washed
nacerán otros ojos en el agua
other eyes will be born in the water
y crecerá sin lágrimas el trigo.
and wheat will grow without tears.
*Reference to Ricardo Paseyro (1925-2009), Uruguayan poet-diplomat who lived in France and was a “bitter enemy of leftist intellectuals” such as Neruda.
Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada. Cien sonetos de amor
1924, Pablo Neruda y Herederos de Pablo Neruda
1994, Random House Mondadori
Cuarta edición en U.S.A: febrero 2004
[English translation is mine.]
(c) 2020 JMN
For me, what elevates irony over sarcasm is a dose of humor.
I like to imagine each member of this crew, sporting the same scruffy costume, doing the swivel-hip runway strut, flaunting a thousand-yard stare behind their John Lennon shades — just like the best models. An elegant crowd watches appraisingly; curated music pipes ambiently; a silken voice intones presidingly.
It has a delicious pointlessness to it. It’s ironic!
(“3 Art Gallery Shows to See,” NYTimes, 12-2-20)
(c) 2020 JMN
EthicalDative must have a focus to offset my wandering attention. I try with mixed results to blog about art and language, and respond elsewhere and otherwise to the rest.
An October 6th article about an appalling event has stayed in my suspense file of quotable specimens because of the phrase “not objectionably reasonable” occurring in a statement issued by the Texas Rangers:
“The preliminary investigation indicates that the actions of Officer Lucas were not objectionably reasonable,” the statement said.
(“Texas police officer charged with murder over killing of black man,” theguardian.com, 10-6-20)
The actions in question include the fatal shooting on October 3rd, 2020, of a 31-year-old man by a 22-year-old police officer in Wolfe City, Texas.
Wisdom says surround quotations with your own thoughts. I’m too prone to assume that what strikes me somehow in the words I cite speaks for itself. I try to correct that here.
“Not objectionably reasonable” says, as far as I can tell: “not reasonable to a degree that would cause objection; not excessively reasonable; just reasonable enough.” Or something like that.
I can’t make sense of “not objectionably reasonable” in its current context or any other. And when language breaks down at crucial and suspiciously convenient moments, paralleling breakdowns in the real world, it seems to me to add spurious, malignant insult to already grave injury.
(c) 2020 JMN
Roberta Smith writes of the Rothko painting that it “presents a glowing stack in brown, red and black on a red ground.”
She describes the Church painting as “an expanse of shockingly deep red sky with a little sun peeping over a choppy black sea tossing a dark ship.”
Smith describes the colors of both paintings as “blunt” and compares them as follows:
Unburdened by representation, Rothko’s suspended blocks of autonomous color accentuate the strangeness of Church’s palette, especially the array of lavenders, pinks and yellows in his skies.
I always profit from Roberta Smith’s art criticism by feeling that I’ve seen art works (even those I like such as these two) a little more clearly after reading her comments. Her phrase “burden of representation” is striking. In my own modest easel practice, the greater challenge would be to paint non-representationally. In those territories, truly, there be dragons.
(c) 2020 JMN
Wrangling among logocrats in the Anglo-Empyrean over how to pronounce something in the common language that separates us is good for a brief detox from the trumpical pandemia.
In August a Twitter-turd toss from Down Under landed on National Public Radio for pronouncing “emu” to rhyme with “poo” instead of “pew.”
(A few Texans have imported this native Australian and tried to reimagine it as a monetizable meat-bird. I don’t know that the enterprise has prospered.)
“Emu” is said to be an anglicised-Portuguese name in the first place. Who needs it?
According to reporting from NITV, the Warlpiri mob call emus “yankirri”, and the people of both the Gamilaraay and Wiradjuri nations referred to the bird as “thinawan” or “dinawan”.
(Matilda Boseley, “Ee-moo?! NPR’s ‘absurd’ pronunciation starts new emu war in Australia,” theguardian.com, 8-24-20)
I say let the native nations have the last word. It’s their bird.
(c) 2020 JMN
Beatification occurs when the Pope declares a dead person to be in a state of bliss. It permits public veneration and is the first step towards canonization.
Canonization occurs when the Roman Catholic Church officially admits a dead person into sainthood.
[Pope John Paul II] knocked down the criteria for beatification from two miracles to one, and did the same for canonization. In 1983, he reduced the amount of time required between a person’s death and the start of their canonization process to five years from 50… He produced more than 480 saints, and put enough into the pipeline that Benedict XVI was able to canonize scores more.
(Jason Horowitz, “Sainted Too Soon? Vatican Report Cast John Paul II in Harsh New Light,” NYTimes, 11-14-20)
(c) 2020 JMN
[XCXVII]
Hay que volar en este tiempo, ¿a dónde?
One must fly at this time, to where?
Sin alas, sin avión, volar sin duda:
With no wings, no airplane, fly without doubt:
ya los pasos pasaron sin remedio,
already the footsteps passed by irredeemably,
no elevaron los pies del pasajero.
they did not raise the passenger’s feet.
Hay que volar a cada instante como
One must fly at each instant like
las águilas, las moscas y los días,
the eagles, the flies and the days,
hay que vencer los ojos de Saturno
one must conquer the eyes of Saturn
y establecer allí nuevas campanas.
and establish there new bells.
Ya no bastan zapatos ni caminos,
Neither shoes nor roads suffice now,
ya no sirve la tierra a los errantes,
earth no longer serves the wanderers,
ya cruzaron la noche las raíces,
already roots crossed the night,
y tú aparecerás en otra estrella,
and you will appear on another star
determinadamente transitoria
determinedly transitory,
convertida por fin en amapola.
changed at last into a poppy.
Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada. Cien sonetos de amor
1924, Pablo Neruda y Herederos de Pablo Neruda
1994, Random House Mondadori
Cuarta edición en U.S.A: febrero 2004
[English translation is mine.]
(c) 2020 JMN
EthicalDative 
Beyond Noise
The painter William Bailey died in April, 2020, aged 89. He taught for many years at the Yale School of Art, and is said to have influenced generations of students.
In 2010, Bailey decried the amount of “noise” present in contemporary art. “So much gesture,” he said.
The comments about Bailey’s work make a certain amount of noise themselves, having in common a perception of complexity lurking beneath the silent surfaces.
He swathed simple objects “in a breathless, deceptively serene atmosphere heavy with mystery.”
He conjured a “timeless world inhabited by Platonic forms, recognizable but uncanny…”
“They are at once vividly real and objects in dream…” (Hilton Kramer, 1979).
His female figures… “are disconcertingly impassive, implacable and unreadable, fleshly presences breathing an otherworldly air.”
His apparent traditionalism was entirely idiosyncratic, “‘a modernism so contrarian,’ the artist Alexi Worth wrote…, ‘that it feels… almost like a brand of outsider art.”
My ten cents is that he ventured devoutly into the realm of the exquisitely plain, but Mr. Bailey has the last word:
“I admire painters who can work directly from nature, but for me that seems to lead to anecdotal painting… Realism is about interpreting daily life in the world around us. I’m trying to paint a world that’s not around us.”
(William Grimes, “William Bailey, Modernist Figurative Painter, Dies at 89,” NYTimes, 4-18-20)
(c) 2020 JMN