Man, there is no denying the significance of the "middle ages" in modern culture. Peep comic con, peep heavy metal, peep... um... harry potter? THE MIDDLE AGES. One of the coolest aspects of the middle ages in my mind were the monks. And I'm not talking about druids here- I'm talking about monks. Christian monks.
The real ill shit when it comes to monks is not the peeps everyone thinks of- the Sean Connery, castle dwelling 14th century Italian monks- no no- those monks are wack. The real monks are the one's from the near east before the adoption of Christianity as the official faith of Rome. They were straight up gangsters- and the practiced a strict, strict version of Christianity that is more like a vibe you would equate with eastern religions today- mediation, self denial- that kind of shit. And they lived in caves in the middle of the desert. Hell yeah.
Why is environmentalism so not fun? Because, at some level, it preaches a message of self denial. Drive less, consume less, change the way you live. In this way, environmentalism and the larger "anti-consumerist" movement represent a modern, non religious variant of the aesthetic of self denial in the West.
I think the weakness of this whole version of the aesthetic of self denial is that it fully enclosed by capitalism. It is, in fact, a critique of the natural and probable results of industrial revolution and as such only retains it power so long as those excesses are present.
Any extension of these idea to the time before the industrial revolution is ridiculous, so that limits the power of the idea as well. But, on the other hand, it's lifestyle is more relevant to the problems of today then sitting in a cave in the Sinai Desert and not eating all day. So it has that going for it.
Book Review: Hold On, I'm Coming: The Independent Record Labels of Memphis, TENN.
 |
| Sun Studio Logo from Memphis Tennessee |
 |
| Stax Records Logo |
It's a sad fact that those who like to wag their gums about what independent musical acts are 'good' or 'bad' are hugely ignorant of the actual history of independent music. Indie music didn't start with punk rock in the 70s- it extends back in time to the beginning of the music industry itself.
I've been reading up on Sun Records and Stax: both from Memphis. Both were true indie record labels. Both had a decade plus long 'hey day' followed by descent to obscurity. And you know what? They had hits- for a time- then they didn't, and they disappeared. But man could they sell records back then.
Take Stax- Stax sold almost entirely through mom and pop record shops located in "urban" neighborhoods- but the records sold. Here are some take aways from both stories: Hit records sell for a long time, a successful artist is someone who can sing a song written by someone else and make it into a hit, easy access to a recording studio is important.
It's funny, because neither Stax or Sun had what you would call a "scene." In fact, if you actually look at the history of the independent music industry, you see that the idea of geographically specific "scene" doesn't reflect the reality of what independent records used to succeed.
You can tell it's not the location that gives rise to the label, because indie labels typically disappear after the cluster of artists that rose to prominence either dies (Otis Redding, Buddy Holly) or is absorbed by the "major" labels of whatever era.
Time and time again, independent record labels release a hit record, have trouble with expanding or being absorbed, fail to maintain their relationship with the artist who had the original hit, fail to duplicate the success with different artists over time and generally lose the personnel who were around during the glory days.
I think the aspect of that is most applicable to the blog rock/indie scene of today is the relationship with the artist who has the original hit. I would hypothesize for the average independent record label starting in 2010 viability is an either/or. You either have an artist who sells or don't. I can't think of a single indie band where I would say it's the record label that "broke" the artist.
Almost every independent label of today wants an artist to "walk in the door" with a finished product. In that sense it is analogous to the 50s-60s Sun/Stax mode of production where artists would come from the surrounding hinterland to record, and the labels would cherry pick the best, and the records would then sell. That is almost exactly what happened with bands like Wavves, Crocodiles and Dum Dum Girls.
Neither Sun nor Stax had anything resembling "A&R": They literally relied on people coming in off the street. Another similarity between then and now is the phenomenon of sales independent of the largest institutional players in the music industry. Perhaps this sounds circular- but all you need to sell records is a place to sell records and a reliable postal service. The places that sell records are always looking for records to sell- it never ends.
I would refer to this phenomenon (then and now) as a "fragmented marketplace." By fragmented marketplace I mean a marketplace geographically dispersed, unclear preference for format, no common sources of information, etc. While the disadvantages of a fragmented marketplace are obvious (Um- no one buys physical media, large sellers of physical media disappear) some of the advantage are less obvious.
For example, one of the advantages of a fragmented marketplace is something I call an "infinite roll out." I'm using "roll out" in it's public relations/advertising period as in
ROLL OUT: The time period in which a new company, service or product is introduced to consumers.
My thesis is that fragmented marketplaces give you basically an infinite amount of time to introduce your product/album/etc to the market place. Independent labels exist in a place that is beyond quantifiable time in that regard. They are not on the schedule, not on the list of "new releases."
Here's the conclusion: In this context the label is just a conduit for the artist- it doesn't extend beyond whatever artist has a hit. But it's the environment provided by the label to the artist that allows the artist to have the hit, in that sense the label is both wholly unnecessary and completely indispensable at the same time.
2/26/10
Book Review:
Land of Desire- Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture
I well and truly believe that consumer capitalism is the most powerful ideology created in the history of the world. I think the major world religions might give it a run: Islam and Christianity in particular, but in my mind I think consumer capitalism is pretty much it. Inveighing against consumer capitalism is useless. Ignoring it is stupid. American invented consumer capitalism, and we do it better then anyone. It's "our thing"- it's what we do.
Land of Desire by William Leach, published in 1994, is an in depth (and often boring) examination of the creation of the culture of consumer capitalism. Leach's thesis is that consumer capitalism was consciously created by urban department store owners in the period between 1880 and 1920. They promoted buying as they promoted their businesses, and they were so successful that the culture they created took root across the entire world.
Of course, we take the department store for granted today, but shops used to be cramped, dingy places, where goods were piled on top of each other and you had to ask someone to retrieve articles from tall shelves. Savvy department store owners, whom Leach profiles in great detail, realized as early as 1880 in places like New York City, and later Philadelphia and Chicago, that they could sell more stuff by making the stuff more appealing.
This meant changing how stores looked- brighter, more color, more spacious. It also meant reaching out to customers through advertising and "public relations" events. And you know what? They killed it. They won. They won so big that it's hard for a contemporary American to even imagine a world where consumer capitalism doesn't rule us with an iron fist.
2/28/10
Book Review:
Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax Records
Stax Records was started by a white banker in the early 60s. Originally, Stax was a recording studio and a record shop (Satellite Records) operating in the black part of Memphis. Stax had early success, and drew early attention. Atlantic records signed them a distribution deal within a year of their operating as a label. Early hits were entirely 45s- in those days "Black" music was sold almost exclusively through the 45 format (the early 60s). Stax sold entirely to mom and pop stores in black neighborhoods. Though they had hits prior to his arrival, Otis Redding was the first star of Stax records. A Stax Revue toured the UK and northern europe in 1967, and that was followed by a headlining performance of Redding at the Monterey Festival. That was the turning point for Stax in terms of viability.
Unfortunately, shortly after that Redding died while piloting his small plane (Musicians- stay away from the small planes!) and after that Stax learned that the "distribution" agreement that they had reached with Atlantic actually had a "sneaky" provision that gave right to all the master recordings to ATLANTIC. Boo-yaaa!!!!
Starting over in the late 60s, Stax scored big with Issac Hayes LP Hot Buttered Soul. Hot Buttered Soul was a sales phenomenon, though it's successs was pre-saged by the fact that Hayes, with writing partner David Porter, actually wrote many of the early Stax hits- including Sam and Dave's "Soul Man" and "Hold on I'm Coming."
The lessons start flowing fast and furious after the release of Hot Buttered Soul. Stax agreed to sell itself to Gulf & Western (Paramount Pictures), Gulf and Western was clueless, so they bought the label back for millions more then what they sold it for, and then reached another distribution with Clive Davis and CBS. Shortly after that, Clive Davis was fired, and the new management didn't understand what they were supposed to do with Stax Records.
By the mid 70s it all ended and tears- and the main players at Stax- Jim Stewart and Al Bell lost everything. EVERYTHING. The only one who got out was Stewarts sister, Estelle Axton- (ST-AX), who had mortgaged her house to pay for the original building. She got out in the late 60s.
This book made me wonder why Stax needed to be so ambitious. They had some hit records, they were making alot of money, but it wasn't enough. They needed to expand, they needed to diversify, they needed to partner with major labels. Why? Because they weren't making enough money- they were. The problem is that they were spending money on huge concerts (Wattstax), movies and gold plated Cadillac's for Issac Hayes.
When people hit the good times, they think the good times will never end- but often times, people who succeed don't really understand how they succeeded, and that causes them to misinterpret the nature of their success. While the music of Stax remains, the label does not, and it's both an enlightening and cautionary tail I saw almost zero logic for every decision they made after mid 1967. All of their business decisions were bad. They were like pro athletes who get their first big contract and spend it all on cars.
They could have stayed smaller and stuck around forever, but it wasn't good enough for Al Bell. They had to go for broke. And now they are all broke.
3/2/10
John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle and the So-Called Aesthetics of DIY
Aesthetics (wiki entry) ("Modern Aesthetics interior section")
John Ruskin (wiki entry) Section 2.1 Art and Design Criticism
Thomas Carlyle (wiki entry) (Sign of the Times essay)
I was reading the Los Angeles Times free weekly the other day and I saw an alternative headline for the "Queens of Lo Fi" article. The alternative headline, used for the cover of the free weekly, but not the newspaper articles was "Lo Fi is DIY"- and then it was the same article inside. That is an equivalence I subscribe too, personally. The essence of whatever you want to call lo fi is homemade, bedroom pop by individuals in non-professional surroundings. As I said before, it is the mode of production, rather then any particular sound that results, which describes "lo fi" and therefore lo fi is simply an update of the familiar diy music phenomenon.
In an attempt to describe a particular SOUND or LOOK or FEEL people will sometimes discuss the "Aesthetics" of a certain category of art. "The aesthetics of diy" for example, though it could be "the aesthetics of heavy metal" or something not involving music at all. Aesthetics has a visual and thematic aspect that recalls it's role in history as the "science of beauty." Beauty takes many forms. Aesthetics is the study and description of beauty.
The first important point to make is that the discussion of aesthetics was not confined to debate over what popular musician is better then another popular musician or the merits of the latest Rodarthe rtw line. In England, in particular, writers like Thomas Carlyle and most importantly, John Ruskin created a comprehensive critique of 19th century industrial age English society by focusing on the ugliness of the environment. These guys were super hoity toity intellectuals, criticizing directly from where they considered themselves "above" i.e., they were into medieval architecture, understood the importance of craftsmanship in production, thought the middle class was stupid, etc.
But when you talk about an aesthetic of diy, you are essentially talking about John Ruskin. His ideas in turn inspired William Morris, who inspired the "Craftsman" movement of the United States in the early 20th century. Perhaps the major difference between the aesthetics of John Ruskin and William Morris vs. the DIY ethic of today is that DIY today is slap dash and amateurish. People aren't even trying for beauty, it is more important to experiment, express raw emotion or simply to exist.
However, the larger audience has been taught by culture to seek beauty from art (see above) so these attempts, however satisfying they may be to the artist, are doomed unless they comport with contemporary ideas of beauty. You might ask yourself, if you are going to make something that people will not consider beautiful, "Why bother?" The value of art absent an audience is dubious. The idea of art or beauty without an audience to perceive it is something that would have been foreign to the ancient Greeks (who invented the science.) On the other hand, it is well in line with the aesthetic theory of the romantics (i.e. wildness, individualism, disregard of the group, etc.)
Ruskin and Carlyle are more in line with the Ancient Greeks- that's something that separates their thought from the larger romantic movement in the UK and Europe. Their whole goal is to persuade society of the rightness of their position, they actually involve out of the passion of romanticism. Romanticism came first, then came the aesthetics of John Ruskin.
Modern DIY is different from all this because the beauty is in the background. It needs to be in the foreground. An Aesthetic that isn't consciously concerned with the description of a particular kind of beauty, is not, in fact, an aesthetic at all, and so to the extent that DIY is not concerned with beauty, it is not an aesthetic at all, but simply a description of a particular form of mass production within consumer capitalist society.
3/6/10
Book Review:
William Morris- From Romantic to Revolutionary
by EP Thompson
William Morris is the British artisan generally credited with inspiring the larger "Craftsman" movement, familiar to many Californians as a style of house architecture popular in the early part of the 20th century ("Craftsman style house"). EP Thompson is a British writer whose "History of the English Working Class" is as seminal a piece of writing as you are ever likely to read. William Morris: From Romantic to Revolutionary is Thompson's biography of Morris-the-socialist.
Like many famous socialist's of the 19th century, Morris came from a privileged background. He never had to work for a living. As a young university student, he fell in with a group of English artists who espoused Romantic believes. During that period, he wrote several pieces of epic poetry that found a huge audience in the UK (though no one reads it today.)
During this same period, he started "The Firm" a full service interior design firm where he actually made all the stuff he sold to rich people. He was also active in the first rumblings of what today we would call the "Historic Preservation" movement. From here, he moved decisively into socialism. This happened during the 1880s, and at the time he was likely the first semi-respectable intellectual in all of England to go all in on socialism. At the time, socialism was a pretty fluid concept, and the border lines between socialism/communism/anarchism were hard to determine.
I found the description of the early period of English socialism to be hilarious, particularly when Thompson describes the realization by the intellectual socialists that at some point, they would actually have to interact with the working classes who they claimed to be speaking for. We all no how that turned out: The Working Classes had no problem working within parliamentary democracy and they were less interested in revolution then an 8 hour day.
Morris was an opponent of "Parliamentary Socialism" preferring instead to wait for some magical transformation from capitalist to socialist paradise. There is some irony in the fact that although he spend most of his passion espousing socialism, he is today remembered more for his aesthetic theory.
In the end, Morris missed the trend which would simultaneously prove to be the death of any broad socialist revolution AND would be key to the rise to prominence of his craftsman aesthetic. And that trend? Why consumer capitalism of course. He missed the boat on that, but you can hardly blame him since he lived in a time where consumer capitalism was in a nascent state. But when capitalist figured out to generate desire in their audience, and then to satisfy that audience with consumer goods. Well, that was all she wrote for socialist revolution in the west. The working class didn't want a revolution, they wanted a television.
At the same time, a level of self consciousness about the artistic process lends itself to art that is more commerce then inspiration. Artistic inspiration is often thought to come from the unconscious part of the brain, and self awareness directly impedes the relationship between artistic inspiration and unconsciousness. This was a conflict that German author Fredrich Schiller made in his essays on Aesthetic Education of Man but Hegel picked up on the same conflict and incorporated it into his philosophy.
The exit point for this dilemma lays in a taste choice of taking repetition over novelty. Those who crave novelty are expressing their own failure as human beings. The desire for newness, for new things, is a flaw in people who do not adequately value repetition in art and in life. If you think about what people are, they see the sun rise and set every day, they sleep every day, they eat every day. Without that routine humanity would not exist. It defines us as a species, and it is at the very center of the earliest religion. A person who denies the rightness of periodicity is a person at war with himself.
Embracing repetition and rejecting novelty is not a simple choice to make, but it does solve the dilemma of artistic self consciousness. If the purpose is to create meaning through the slow accretion of slight variations in the same theme, then there is no issue with spending ALOT of time thinking about one specific subject and teasing out the variabilities.
Here is a pictorial example of what I am talking about:
This is a temple in the southern part of Tamil Nadu, which is itself a southern province of the modern day country of India. You can see the obsessive accretion of detail and geometrical expansion of the architectural forms clearly hear, but this is a style of temple throughtout India. It represents one religious/artistic complex that values repetition over novelty.
Here's another example of a different religious/artistic approach that values repetition over novelty. This photograph shows the interior of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. This building was decorated by Jews working at the behest of Arabs.
These example demonstrate an essential point, that a culture which craves novelty over repetition is something that was created by capitalism, consumerism and is a choice which has overwhelmed residents of countries most affected by consumerism and capitalism. Novelty also triumphs over repetition in places where material well being allows ample choice.
I would suggest that most of the ennui being discussed relative to the explosion of choice in all arenas of life is directly related to a failure to acknowledge the centrality of repetition to human identity.
4/25/10
Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics
2004 Penguin Classics Edition
Bernard Bosanquet, translation
Edited by Michael Inwood
by Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel
I'm writing a review of this book because you can't talk about music criticism without being at least aware of it's existence. It might be the most important book in the history of art criticism.
That said, there is a lot of context that has to be laid down before an ignorant person can understand what I'm talking about. That's fine. To understand the significance of Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics you need to accept the following facts as true, and understand their meaning.
1. Art in the West was dominated by the Church until the 18th century.
2. The first important scene in "modern" Western Philosophy was the generation of Germans that began with Immanuel Kant and ends with Hegel. In between them come Fichte, Schiller and Goethe.
3. The Germans "rediscovered" the classic art of Greece during this same time period.
4. Hegel was the thinker who synthesized a generation of thought over the relationship between art and reason.
Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics is not one of the books Hegel wrote to achieve his lasting place in world history. Rather, his lectures were published after his death based on the classes he taught at Berlin University. Hegel is a proto-type of the hugely succesful university philosopher that dominates three centuries of Western thought, and the relationship between Hegel and the German University system is important to understand. To whit, Hegel was a rock star. He was hugely popular, in his time, and that is significant because it means that people read his books, and tried to understand what they meant, and wrote books based on his thought.
You might imagine Hegel to be the philosophical equivalent of the Beatles in his day and age: He was a great writer, and he synthesized a bunch of disparate influences to great, popular, effect.
Hegel, like many philosophers of his era, was pessimistic about the role of art in society. This pessimism was grounded on the observation that Greek art (Homer) played a much greater role back then then artists like Schiller and Goethe played in contemporary German society. Therefore, Hegel needed to explain "why" and "how" this could be the case. His explanation is that his modernity was a "reflective" period and that reflective periods created shitty art because artists were too self aware of their process to create good art, and patrons were too cynical to allow art to influence their lives in a significant way.
As it turns out, he was simply wrong about his own time period: The late 18th-early 19th century was the high point of classical music in German culture. Unfortunately, Hegel viewed music as an inferior art form because it wasn't representative of anything other then itself. Thus his pessimism was grounded on faulty analysis, but that didn't stop his theories about art from being hugely influential.
Like his German idealist contemporaries, Hegel believed that the path out of the dilemmas presented by modernity involved an elevated roll for artistic endeavor, but at the same time he believed the level of reflectiveness doomed this project to failure. This debate continues to dominate art criticism into the present day, even while the debaters have failed to understand the history of the debate.
Published 5/10/10
Book Review
Rock Music in American Popular Culture
Rock 'n' Roll Resources
by B. Lee Cooper & Wayne S. Haney
published 1995
Harrington Park Press
If you are going to be a successful bargain book buyer, you need to understand that invidiual books are as prone to fashion and trend as children's toys, and that book prices are sometimes low compared to their value, but often high- often very high- in other words, you 'pay a lot for a little useful information.' A lot of the ways major book publishers make their money can be summarized by the series of (popular, expensive) books called "X for Dummies."
One of the categories to search are super cheap used books (.01 + 3.99 for shipping = 4.00) that have great bibliographies. Bibliographies are one area of printed culture that the web has "FAILED" to get right. Books with good bibliographies on specific subjects tend to be expensive, especially when they are "new." On the other hand, a book that may have had a perfectly good bibliography on the date it was published, but be basically "worthless" a decade or two later. Is the bibliographic detail from the timer period now inaccurate? No: It's still accurate, it's just no longer complete. However, when you consider that scholarly perspective takes decades to assemble, it's fair to argue that more recent events simply require maintaining familiarity with current events and that "reading about" subjects currently being bandied about is worthless.
Using that analysis, there is really no need to "keep up" with the flow of current information, since the filtering process takes a decade or longer to even get straight.
This book was only a penny, but it's a great value, since it captures the height of the "rock" era in popular music in pristine, amber quality form. Although the organization is casual (alphabetical by subject) the bibliography is anything but. I'm pretty sure the bibliography contains a reference to 95% of every decent book that was written about rock music between 1950 and 1994 or so.
It's hard to imagine a source book about popular music written before the dawn of electronic music formats, but none the less... here it is. This book has citations to every rock critic book, every 'serious' article about rock music, etc. The writers are intelligent enough to provide commentary on the 'rock star narrative' but too early to witness it's decline as viable market force. This is a book written about Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly, about Michael Jackson and Hall and Oates. It's a book that although written in 1995, literally omits the 'punk era', choosing instead to focus on.... Hall and Oates. In its own blinkered way it is a breathtaking vista, and the verbiage is top rate. The overall tone is "90s American Studies Casual."
It's funny because now people might be interested in this material because it chronicles the music industries success, rather then it's utter demise. At the same time, the perspective of the authors seems to be that of the distracted blackberry owner reading a thought provoking article about the middle east a half second before he gets broad sided by a city bus traveling 35 MPH: You don't get credit for reading the thought provoking article about the middle east if reading it results in you getting hit by a bus and dying.
Same thing with these guys: Great book- but publishing a book about Rock Music in American Popular Culture in 1995 is like writing an encyclopedia of dinosaurs five minutes before the comet drops out of the sky. I encourage readers to create their own analogies: USE YOUR IMAGINATION.
Reading Rock Music in American Popular Culture cover to cover is an exasperating subject "F- songs about food" "C- songs about christmas" but it accurately conveys a sense of the consciousness of intelligent people who cared about rock music in the pre-internet era. It also crystallizes the complete and utter failure of academics to speak intelligently about this subject, let alone divine what the future held vis a vis technology and the listener. There is one interesting chapter in that regard, "B - bootlegging" but the chapter is devoted entirely to discussing the cataloging process for Elvis bootlegs. Interesting of it's own accord? Yes. Relevant 15 years later? Not so much.
5/11/10
Book Review
Zaireeka
by Mark Richardson
33 1/3 vol. 68
Continuum Press
The only other one in the series I've read to this point is no. 44, Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier. I picked that one to start because I literally spent 6 months struggling to give Trout Mask Replica a "fair shot" at convincing me of it's merit, basically by listening to it five time through in a variety of different settings. After that, I thought reading the 33 1/3 might help me articular what exactly I didn't like about Trout Mask Replica, and it did that.
So I thought that by reading Mark Richardson's 33 1/3 volume on the Flaming Lips 4 cd Zaireeka record, I might gain insight on Richardson himself, the band the Flaming Lips, who I have despised for over a decade and maybe a little insight on Pitchfork and their perspective.
After finishing Zaireeka, I can say it is def. worth the effort: Even if you haven't heard the record, reading this book will make you want to do it once at least once. Zaireeka certainly accomplishes what I imagine to be the goal of the Continuum series, bringing context to works of art. In that sense, perhaps it is this exact series of books which provides the rebuttal to the argument "Writing about music, why bother?" I also believe that the techniques that writers have developed writing these volumes really ought to be deeply influencing music writing itself.
Richardson, in the course of writing about an artist I literally can't stand, helps me understand why he is so into them, and why Zaireeka is worth experiencing. He makes his case in convincing fashion, although I still hate the Flaming Lips, I'm willing to purchase this record and set up the ridiculous listening process. I was easily able to disregard my disdain for the sprawling psychedelica of the Flaming Lips and adopt Richardson's thoughtful superlatives about Wayne Coyne and the 13 years he worked at Long John Silver's in between tours. It's hard not admire the persistence and patience of the Flaming Lips in the same way I suppose you could rhapsodize about Green Day. But Green Day doesn't have an entry in the 33 1/3 series, and Flaming Lips does.
5/10/10
Rock Music: Culture Aesthetics and Sociology
by Peter Wicke
translation by Rachel Fogg
originally published in 1987
english translation 1990
Cambridge University Press
The two things to know about this book before reading this review are 1) Originally published in 1987- almost 25 years old. 2) Written by a professor of music at a Berlin University who has a background in Frankfurt School Philosophy. The Frankfurt School has been trying it's hand at cultural studies since the 50s, but they are handicapped by being German. German professors have little feeling for the world of d.i.y. music and this limit decreases their ability to comment intelligently on popular culture.
Rock Music: Culture, Aesthetics and Sociology is half of an amazing book, and half a flaming pile of dog poop. The first half is amazing, the second half, focusing on "case studies" of the British Punk movement in the 70s and synth-pop of the early 80s are so bad that they almost wreck the entire book.
Wicke presents the familiar narrative of rock dressed up with careful language from the cultural studies wing of the Frankfurt school. This approach really nails it on the head for everything before the hippie revolution, and badly misses on everything afterwards, perhaps because Wicke completely ignores the impact that the Love Generation had on the entire music industry. He also badly misses by failing to discuss any aspect of the American DIY scene from 1967 onwards. Hello? British punk did not invent d.i.y. British punk did not invent independent music. Independent record labels and d.i.y. aesthetics existed any american recorded music as early as recorded music itself existed and continued well into the "rock era."
In "Rock Music" Wicke attempts to create a working superstructure to describe the components of rock music. Like other books I've read in this area recently, this book made me want to take parts of it and write a different book, one that focuses more on the emergence of rock music from rhythm and blues and country music in America in late 1940s and early 1950s. One of the points Wicke makes, that successful rock music is based on sounds not song, is something that got me thinking for sure, but it requires more exploration of what came before rock music to really understand that transition.
5/27/10
The Rhetorics of Popular Culture:
Advertising, Advocacy, and Entertainment
Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture, Volume 16
by Robert L. Root, Jr.
p. 1987
Greenwood Press
The great thing about writing a blog is that you are promoting ideas, and ideas are easy to promote. The success of an idea put forth on a blog, like any other idea, is judged by it's ability to attract adopters and then by the ability of the adopters to make the idea a reality. Ideas can't succeed on their own. If you write the most brilliant book about science in the world, and publish it in your own language that you invented (which is also the best language in the world) it won't matter, because no one will read it, an no one will care. However, an idea doesn't need to be popular to succeed. It only takes one really successful adherent to turn an idea from a failure to a success.
Rhetoric is useful because it is an method that is equally useful for any kind of discourse. A discourse is a conversation using a specific technical vocabulary. Using rhetoric involves two steps
1) Identifying a specific discourse Example: television advertisements, album reviews, political speeches, legal argument.
2) Applying rules of rhetoric to examine the message of the Speaker, the the message received by the audience and the truth of the reality being discussed.
That's all that rhetoric can do, but it's a lot, and further more, rhetorical analysis works and is accurate. Rhetoric works because it assumes that discourse can't exist without a conversation between a speaker and an audience.
The Rhetorics of Popular Culture give two examples that are relevant to the subject matter of this blog:
The Rhetoric of Reviewing: Advocacy, Art, and Judgment: Only six pages long, this chapter does more to clarify the discourse of Reviewing specific works then any other source I've ever read:
'Reviewing is a rhetorical act. Whether its subject is a book, a film, a television program, a recordings, a concert, a play, an art exhibit or a dance performance, the critical review always involves a recommendation, whether implicit or explicit, and an attempt to convince readers of the reliability of that recommendation.'
'Description, substantiation, evaluation and recommendation are essential content elements in any good review.'
'As a rhetorical act, criticism attempts to persuade the reader of the validity of the reviewer's opinion; it advocates a specific position on art or ideas. The measure of a good critic may be both flexibility and consistency, that is, the ability to avoid a narrow, dogmatic position at the same time that he establishes a clear continually applied set of values.'
The other example is for writers of popular songs, but I'm going to save that for another post. Suffice it to conclude with the observation that the proliferation of information requires more effective techniques for processing that information. Those techniques are equally applicable to individuals as machines. Use of rhetorical principles is a technique that is useful for individuals seeking to be more effective communicators and filters of information.
6/11/10
Book Review
Africa's Discovery of Europe
1450-1850
second edition
by David Northrup
p. 2009
Oxford University Press
The topic of African history cries out for clarity and insight. As I've mentioned before in this space, the number one attitude of American's towards Africa is "Ignorance" followed closely at number two with "Ignorance." You can't really blame people, finding out the truth about what happened in Africa is a task complicated by contemporary racial politics on three different continents. I know that Africa has lots of social problems and such, but it's hard to look at a continent with more then a billion people (and climbing) and say "Oh- what a disaster." You want to see a disaster? Check out Russia- negative birthrate? That is failure for you. My take is that people just need to chill out about Africa and try to appreciate some of the astonishing diversity and cultural power that comes out of there.
Africa's Discovery of Europe is a good continent wide introduction to the relationship between Africa and Europe. It is, as much as possible, written from the perspective of Africans and comes with ample footnotes for further reading. Northrup's main thesis is to dispel the "ignorant african" stereotype in terms of their trading relationships with Europeans. In the words of Northrup "Africans got what they wanted out of Europeans." During the time period covered in this book, the Europeans are hardly dominant. From the Portugese traders of the 15th century onwards, the Europeans existed on the fringes of a sprawling continent with it's own empires, nations and peoples. Africa was a place where slavery was already existent, and most of the slaves who made it to the New World tended to spend time as the property of other Africans before they were actually sold across the sea. Northrup even notes that many freed slaves remarked that their main issue was not with slavery, but with the fact that their African owners sold them out of Africa.
Whatever your interest level in the subject, Africa's Discovery of Europe is a good starting point for reading about African-European relationships from the beginning.
Published 6/9/10
That Moaning Saxophone
The Six Brown Brothers and the Dawning of a Musical Craze
by Bruce Vermazen
p. 2001
Oxford University Press
It's hard for me to imagine the music industry before recorded music was popular. Popular music and physical media are often treated as one and the same thing, but truth is, many of the characteristics of the modern music industry took shape BEFORE recorded music was a big component of society. The modern music industry was built around the touring circuits established in the post civil war era and the musical theaters of New York City, Chicago and London. Recorded music emerged largely out of the sheet music centered Tin Pan Alley complex of song writers and music publishers. The development of recorded music happened largely in New York City, but the audience/market had been established by close to half a century of Minstrel shows and Vaudeville.
Such a foreign world, it led me to wonder: Who were these people? Well... a good example of what I'm talking about are the Six Brown Brothers and their moaning saxophones. They were huge in the 1910s... washed up by the 1920s. They recorded a few "sides" for music cylinders, a physical format that preceded vinyl records, but recorded music was never their thing. Before the Brown Brothers, saxophones were around, but they weren't a big deal. After, the saxophone became a main stay in jazz etc. Fun fact- the saxophone was invented in France in the 1840s by a cat named Adolphe Saxe (!) and the first fans were the buyers in the French army.
Tom Brown was the head Brown brothers. He came up in rural Canada in the late 19th century. He joined he circus and picked up the saxophone after he had already decided to join circus life. During that time period, the main form of traveling entertainment were circuses and minstrel shows. Minstrel shows consisted of white performers dressing up in black face and pretending to be black. Some of the material was "humorous" and some was musical. Tom Brown's basic act was to get dressed up in black face and then use the saxophone to "talk." People were enthralled with the noises he was able to coax out of the saxophone, and he developed a following.
From there he developed an act that involved bringing in his brothers, who were also circus performers or close to it, and they became the Six Brown Brothers. Their act was paired with other vaudevillian acts, though during their hey-day they headlined or even soloed shows. Their career was based on constant touring on different circuits- one on the east coast, one on the west coast. They recorded a little, but they got paid on a one time basis.
World War I was kind of a bring down for everyone in the entertainment business, and after World War I it was all about movies. Vaudeville couldn't compete with movies. The entire industry was literally crushed beneath the jack boot of Hollywood. It was a brutal raping. The only people who survived were the ones who got out of vaudeville and into film, music or radio. The Brown Brothers, with their black face and novelty sound, did not make the transition. Because the Brown Brothers existed before recorded music was popular, they were not remembered. Today, I would wager that there is not a single person who reads this sentence who had ever heard of the Brown Brothers and their moaning saxophones before two days ago.
We're talking about a popular music act, from America, that introduced the SAXOPHONE to the american public, less then a hundred years ago, totally forgotten. Think about that shit.
6/5/10
Book Review
The Selling Sound:
The Rise of the Country Music Industry
by Diane Pecknold
Refiguring American Music
A Series Edited by Charles McGovern and Ronald Radano
p. 2007
Duke University Press
Diane Pecknold sees the world the same way I do. The Selling Sound leads with a quote from Theordor Adorno about the culture industry... a Frankfurt School reference you almost never see in the Cultural Studies field... and the starting point for a sure fire cultural studies hit about the business of the culture industry.
For Pecknold, the culture industry is represented by music publishers, radio stations, record labels and artists. She is writing specifically about the United States in the 1920s through the 1960s, and about the emergence of Country Music as a huge component of American Popular Music during that time period. However, unlike the millions of writers who pen self delusional valentines filled with romantic archetypes, Pecknold cooly appraises the constituent elements of the Country music and their interaction with each other as well as the audience.
Many of Pecknold's most trenchant observations have to do with the way that the culture industry transformed their audience into consumers using the techniques of mass persuasion and mass media. Pecknold makes a double point about this process: First, that the audience was aware of the attempt of the music industry to transform them from an audience into consumers, and second that they could not stop the process from happening.
Pecknold's history of the Country music business is one that should be on the book shelf of any self respecting critic of culture. Don't let the country music subject dissuade you from reading The Selling Sound. Country music is merely the reference frame for a discussion of the relationship between culture industry and audience that has wide reverberations continuing into today and tomorrow.
Pecknold repeatedly makes the point that fan culture was instrumental to the rise of country music, but that fans were elbowed out of the way to make room for a broader sounding "Nashville" sound. The incorporation of more sophisticated recording techniques in a greater variety of physical locations is something that cut across genres of popular music in the early 1960s, and Country music was no exception. For country music, Nashville was this place, and Pecknold goes so far as to literally end this book with a 10 page exegesis on Robert Altman's "Nashville."
The Selling Sound also does an excellent job of unraveling the etymology of terms like "hillbilly music." Here is a party fact for you hipsters: Country music was originally called "rockabilly music" and Country music wasn't used as a term until the 1960s. Thus, when rock music emerged in the 1950s, the use of the term "rockabilly" was merely the equivalent of saying country-rock or "rock music influenced by country music." Hillbilly music was just the common term for country music in that time period.
In conclusion, this book is amazing and if you've read some of my culture industry posts and kind of taken a pass, this book might be a good way to explore those ideas in a concrete context. And Diane Pecknold- if you're reading this- keep writing books.
Book Review
6/30/10
Sound Effects:
Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock and Roll
by Simon Frith
p 1981
originally published in 1978 as "The Sociology of Rock"
Pantheon Books
Simon Frith is an academic who has melded a love for rock and roll/popular music with an thorough grounding in the vocabulary and concerns of US/UK sociology. The main relevance of this book is grounded in the fact that it was first published in 1978, and that it fully accounts for the emergence of the punk movement. For whatever reason, the American publisher decided to remain it with that terrible, terrible name, but "Sociology of Rock" certainly does describe what Frith expostulates.
Sociology of Rock is dated in the sense that the book is written in leaden, academic prose. On the other hand, it is relevant because the vocabulary that Frith employs continues to be descriptive of the same subjects today. In other words, in the areas where "nothing has changed" Frith is great, in the areas where change is what needs to be explained, Frith is useless. That is one of the bugg a boos about all the social sciences. Good theories either tend to describe a static structure very well or they describe a theory of change, but never both using the same idea.
Frith is at his most accurate when he describes institutions in the language of 70s marxist inspired sociology. For example, it's hard to dispute his description of the role of local musicians:
"As local live performers, musicians remain a part of the community subject to its value and needs, but as recording artists they experience the pressure of the market, they automatically become rock and roll imperialists, pursuing national and international sales. The recording artists' community is defined by purchasing patterns."
Perhaps you don't think of local musicians in the same way, but I can assure you that Frith is accurate. Similarly, his description of the production of recorded music is hard to quarrel with simply because Marxist vocabulary knows how to describe the production of a good.
However, when it comes to audience, Firth shows himself for the leaden 70s era college professor that he is. For example, he cavalierly summarizes fan magazines of the 60s and 70s saying "the essence of fan magazines is that they respond to audience taste." However, in Selling Sound, Diane Peckhold rather conclusively establishes that in Country Music, prior to Rock and Roll, the fan magazines were in fact started by the fans themselves. The music press followed the fan run magazines in the United States.
As you would expect from a 70s Marxist sociologist, his chapters on "Consumption" are weak, weak, weak. This era of sociology did not handle consumption with aplomb. The focus on values as expressed by subcultures is a dead end. Ultimately those values are those of the consumer. At the same time, the late 70s working class cultures of the United Kingdom, where Frith did his highly amusing "field work" to not work as universal stand-in's for "youth culture." Further more, the in depth discussion of "youth culture" hardly reflects the diversity of consumer society as it relates to rock music or any other cultural product.
Selling Sounds:
The Commercial Revolution in American Music
by David Suisman
p. 2009
Boston: Harvard University Press
The strangest fact about this book is that there is another book called The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry (2007) that covers much the same thematic territory. I was also immediately reminded of That Moaning Saxophone: The Six Brown Brothers and the Dawning of a Musical Craze (2004). All three books are an example of a renaissance in academic Interdisciplinary Studies. The back covers of those three books provides an additional ten titles which all proceed from the same cross-disciplinary viewpoint. I don't think ANY of the books or the books listed on the back cover would be considered a "hit" within the publishing world except for Lizabeth Cohen's A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. (2003) All of these titles represent a break down between departments in American Universities as well as a move away from trends in cultural theory during the 1990s. The happy result is the production of relevant knowledge in readable language.
Like the other books listed, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music, selects different strands of music culture in the period between the end of the Civil War and the start of the First World War. Really, the relevant time periods here (time periods are important) are 1880-1917 and 1918-1929 (Great Depression) Like all of the books listed, Selling Sounds focuses wholly on the United States market. Suisman's analysis is strong as far as it goes. He uses the term 'culture industry' with comfort and his opening chapter on Tin Pan Alley is a tour-de-force.
I think... the limits of this book are best expressed in the failure to introduce similar analysis of different groups of ideas that were "out there" at the same time during the course of the time periods here. There was certainly a heavy exchange between Germany, France, The United Kingdom and the United States. Specifically, one of the intellectual ideas that pre-dates the time period covered here is the "Folk Music" movement in EUROPE in the mid 19th century.
I think the influence is especially salient when one considers the role of white European immigrants in the founding of record labels that specialized in African American folk music and jazz influenced popular music. This leads me to the other main omission in Selling Sounds, which is, by the way, an amazing book. The second omission is any treatment of hillbilly music, the analogue to Suisman's focus on "Race Records" in this book. There is hardly any overlap in the time periods covered in this book (1880s-1929ish) and the time period covered in Selling Sounds: The Rise of the Country Music Industry (1920-1970s.) By the way- the overlap is "the invention of broadcast radio."
As Selling Sounds eases into chapters on the recording career of Enrico Caruso and the lost history of the player piano, we move into familiar culture studies territories. However, Suisman writes with a light hand and doesn't engage in debates of interest only to specialists. A strong late chapter is his set piece on The Black Swan, the earliest substantial African American owned record label. It's actually seemed to me that the book emerged out of that chapter, which has a somewhat clunkier theoretical apparatus then the rest of the book. Also is the chunky conclusion, with a 'pointing out paradoxes' hook that left me yawning.
I don't think you can talk about modern music culture without adding in the underlying folk culture. Certainly, it might surprise a trans-Atlantic Professor of History that one would seek to write an account of a specific aspect of American Culture without discussing the impact of ideas generated wholly within Europe or the United Kingdom. Additionally, this is an example of what David Hackett Fischer calls the fallacy of presentism in his book Historians Fallacies: Towards a Logic of Historical Thought. Fischer defines the fallacy of presentism as
"a complex anachronism, in which the antecedent in a narrative series is falsified by being defined or interpreted in terms of the consequent. Sometimes called the fallacy of nunc pro tunc, it is the mistaken idea that the proper way to do history is to prune away the dead branches of the past, and to preserve the green buds and twigs which have grown into the dark forest of our contemporary world." (FISCHER: 135.)
This fallacy is demonstrated in the omissions I just pointed out. African American influenced music dominates the contemporary landscape. Meanwhile, the intellectual discussion over folk music as practiced in Germany and the United Kingdom in the mid 1850s is a footnote to a footnote to a footnote, studied perhaps only in the John Hopkins Department of Comparative Literature.
I don't think you can explain the commercialization of American music in the 20th century without reference to, first, the folk music culture of regular people living outside major cities as it existed before the Civil War, and second, the impact of ideas about Folk Music on the development of ideas about Popular Music in the 20th century. That's a pretty big subject though, so I'm going to give Suisman a pass and instead congratulate him on what is an excellent book, inside or outside the University knowledge production system.
8/2/10
Book Review
Highbrow Lowbrow:
The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America
by Lawrence W. Levine
p. 1990
Harvard University Press
The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization
Once again we can find an elite group with a vested interest- unconscious though it may have been- in welcoming and maintaining the widening cultural gaps that increasingly characterized the United States.
I'm not sure if this is a cut and paste job or whether there is some brilliant anonymous author behind it, and the underlying blog, but this blog post on the aesthetics of popular music is first rate.
1. The melody must be within the average voice of the average singer.
2. The title must be planted throughout the song via use of repetition.
3. The idea and lyric must be appropriate for both sexes...so that both will want to sing it.
4. The song should contain 'heart interest'(pathos) even for a comic song.
5. The song must be original... success is not accomplished...by imitating the hit song of the moment.
6. Your lyric must deal with ideas, objects or emotions known to everyone.
7. The lyric must be euphonious: simple and pleasing to the ear.
8. Your song must be perfectly simple.
9. The songwriter must look upon his work as a business.
"Gesamtkunstwerk" is a German term coined in the 19th century. It roughly means "total art." It's actually a term that extends back in time to the development of Italian Opera, particularly in Venice, where commercial opera originated. It refers to the idea that "modern" Opera represents a combination of all of the Classical Arts. I don't have the list handy, but we're talking: architecture, music, song, dance, plastic arts/sculpture, etc. The productions were elaborate. As Opera spread across Europe, this strong classical artistic pedigree was lessened by independent local traditions. In Germany, musical ensembles and singers were independent entities. England had a strong tradition of theater. Thus, the original Operatic vision was transformed and weakened.
The idea of Gesamtkunstwerk was popularized in the 19th century by Richard Wagner. Quoth the Wikipedia, 'Wagner's own ring cycle represent the closest anyone has come to realizing these ideals."
Gesamtkunstwerk was also an explicit inspiration to the Bauhaus movement in architecture, and you can also detect it in the Craftsman movement in the UK and the US.
Events in the 20th century conspired to discredit "total"-isms in the eyes of all. Wagners Gesamtkunstwerk took on a sinister tinge. No longer would Artists attempt to unify all arts in a single endeavor. In fact, the entire idea of classical art was eclipsed by technological developments in the 19th and 20th centuries that created new fields of art.
Specifically, Film created an entirely new category of art that could make the same kind of attempts at achieving Gestamtkunstwerk as Opera. This comparison has been muted by the lack of common vocabulary to discuss the respective art forms: film scholars don't really write about opera, and opera buffs don't write about film. That such a simple comparison could go largely unremarked upon (Specifically, that opera and film have similar relationships with their respective audiences in their attempt to combine art forms in a single project.)
It should be observed that you can't argue that advancing technology makes the possibility of achieving such an impact in a Film is higher, but it is unclear whether Audiences actually want experience Gestamtkunstwerk at all. Certainly, if you look at the films people pay to see, the tone is short of an all encompassing artistic experience. From an asethetics perspective, I would argue that Gestamtkunstwerk is undesirable to most Audiences.
American Magazine, October 1920.
Discussion is drawn from A Social History of Music: From the Middle Ages to Beethoven by Henry Raynor.
If you want to talk about the "history of music" you are basically talking about "biographies of composers" or, if you want to consider the 20th century, "biographies of musicians." If you want to pull in the most recent output of those who write and read music hisof tory, you could add the "ologization" of music history, where historical subjects are analyzed using non or quasi historical discourses (sociology and anthropology, for example.)
However, I would argue that if you go back to the "biographies of composers" era, another route of analysis exists, namely looking at the environment and human relationships of "famous musicians." This is quite easy to do using the techniques of social history, and it's a wonder that it is such a neglected era of inquiry- almost... not interesting to contemporary intellectuals. I honestly have no idea what Music Professors are doing these days, but they are not writing social histories of music. Also not writing social histories of music: history professors.
In fact, the only comprehensive Social History of Music that I have found is the one by Henry Raynor circa 1978. That is a generation ago. And it's not a popular book, either. I read A Social History of Music back in January and at the time I thought, "there has to be something more recent." BUT- I don't believe there is. And Raynor does a really, really good job of laying out the terrain is his introductory essay, which I am about to quote at length.
Raynor's approach has only one methodological flaw, and unfortunately, it's a whopper. Specifically he is a victim of "Bacon's Fallacy" which is the idea that the investgating intellectual must collect all the facts "as he finds them." I.E. there is a pretense of objectivity in the collection of factual information. Despite the flaw, the Introduction is a ready introduction to a Social Historian perspective on Music. Raynor notes that "music history" consists of two main themes: biographies of composers, story of music styles and their development. From this perspective (the non-Social Historian of Music) the purpose of Music History is to appraise specific Artists and approve their output as being significant. Raynor does not dismiss this approach as irrelevant, in fact, he thoughtfully observes:
"The mutability of stylicistic history does not invalidate what it has to say. A history of historians of music..would demonstrate quite clearly the function of historians as historians of taste."
Obbiously though, Social History takes a different approach in that is starts from the premise that music exists socially:
"It is written down so that people other than its composer can play it. The bulk of it presupposes the creative and interpreative efforts of two, three or up to a hundred performers. Most music presupposes the attention of the audience."
A neglected area of Music History is the attitude of notable Artists towards their Audience (What Mozart, Beethoven and Bach thought about the people who listened to their music) and the views of the Audience itself. A critical shift in this regard is the growth of the University in the 18th and 19th century, which led Artists, Audiences and Intellectuals to be much more detailed about their views regarding music. This shift reached it's apogee with the "neglected genius' Schopenauer, whose legendary contempt for the Audience was a watershed moment for Artist/Audience relationships- not to mention Intellectual ideas about that relationship.
As for an explanation for WHY the social history of music is neglected, Raynor has a clear villain:
"nineteenth century conceptions of art as pure activity, occupying only the higher strata as those which reckon up the bills and consider the possibility of paying them, that we do not consider the Artist's relationship to the musical world in which he must...secure performance and publication."
I would say nothing has changed in that regard 30 years later- that quotation is still perfectly true when it comes to intellectuals and their ideas about music.
Published 4/25/11
Apollo's Angels:
A History of Ballet
by Jennifer Homans
p. 2010
RANDOM HOUSE
Rarely do I buy a book for myself based on a review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, but I'll buy a book for my wife, and such was the case here. As I recall, the reviewer had nothing but kind things to say about Homans' work, and from a certain perspective, I agree. For one, Homans has to be the first ballerina/historian who can both describe the entire history of ballet from a technical/dance standpoint while at the same time adhering to a rigorous scholarly method which includes source materials in six different language. For another, it appears that this book is the first comprehensive "History of Ballet" written in English. Finally, Homans possesses a fluid and readable writing style that makes digesting a technically rich 500+ page history of ballet manageable task.
Those are the positives. On the negative side is Homans lack of any critical historical perspective beyond "describing the history of ballet accurately." In her introduction, Homans says, "I have resisted too the kind of thinking that assumes a dance does not exist until it is seen by an audience- that it is the reception rather the the creation of a work of art that determines it meaning. In this view, all art unstable and changing: its value depends entirely on who is seeing it, not on what the artist intended."
I actually sighed out loud when I read that paragraph, because to me, it is the relationship between Artist and Audience that is worth exploring. I think Homans reluctance to embrace this perspective stems from her experience as a critic ("Currently the dance critic for the New Republic") but at the same time it means that she doesn't really explore why Ballet has lost the hearts and minds of the general public, leaving her to write a "Ballet is Dead/Dying" conclusion without offering any insight as to why other then offering "Artist exhaustion." Oh really?
After reading Apollo's Angels, the history of ballet looks like a three act play: First act, everything up to the Cold War: The French/Italian origins of Ballet in the Court of the French monarch, and the regional ballets of the 18th and 19th century in places like Vienna and Denmark- Ballet takes shape. Second act: The Cold War: between America and Russia and the mass media Ballet has its mass media moment: television, movies, barnstorming world wide tours and state sponsored support. Third act: Creative exhaustion- Ballet gets "too cool for school" and starts thinking that it is bigger than the Audience, leading to literally twenty different ballets featuring "Rape" as a prominent theme.
If there is one thing that I find to be consistent across all art forms it is that artistic avant gardes always think themselves bigger then the audience, and they are always wrong. Ballet is no exception.
In its audience alienating approaches, post Cold War ballet apes other Artistic disciplines. And that is all well and good, but it costs a shit ton of money to do ballet up right, and if you can't sell tickets, then it is going to be tough to stay relevant. In ballet, in any art form, Artists may despise their Audience, but to ignore them is to render the form irrelevant to the very people whose attention makes Art possible.
So tip of the cap to Homans for doing such a bang up job pulling together the sources and possessing the skill set to be able to describe the entire history of ballet in such a way that Random House would publish her book, but did this book spur me to any further interest in Ballet. No. Ballet is dead, Homans says it herself in the conclusion. Sad fact, but true, the end.
Published 11/7/11
Art as Experience
by John Dewey
p. 1934
Perigree/Penguin Press
John Dewey was an American philosopher of the late 19th and 20th century best known for his espousal of a "pragmatic" philosophy and progressive political ideas, but he also wrote about Art. Art as Experience is not a book per se, but rather a rewriting of a series of lectures he gave on the "philosophy of art" at Harvard in 1931.
Dewey's pragmatic philosophy emphasizing social relations between humans was hugely influential in social sciences like sociology, where he clearly inspired writers like Erving Goffman and anthropology (see Roy Rappaport) His influence has been less notable in the field of aesthetics and art theory, and that's a shame, because in my mind, Art as Experience is the best book about the role of Art in human experience ever written.
Art as Experience starts from the observation that there can be no Art without an Audience- the two are intertwined because humans are social creatures and none of us exist in isolation. This statement about the nature of Art stands in direct contradiction to the two main schools of art philosophy: Classicism, which holds that Beauty is an objective truth that exists outside the experience of any single person and Romanticism, which postulates that the Artist stands alone in the world, without reference to his human environment.
Much of the argument of Art as Experience takes the form of the language philosophy strategy of being extremely precise about the terms being used. This gives the actual text of Art as Experience a tedious feel, even as the ideas expressed dance and sparkle with the light of discovery. Dewey works his way through defining, having an experience, the act of expression, the expressive object, substance and form, etc. I won't lie- it's dry. Boring even.
BUT, it's a book that every art critic, blogger, etc should be forced- AT GUN POINT- to read. That's because to read Dewey is to understand that Artists and Critics are on the same side- they both care and appreciate art and artistic products, and they both want to share their love/interest in art with a larger audience.
This idea of critics attacking Artists for some real or perceived "failure" is revealed by Dewey to actually be a failure of the critic- for failing to understand that his or her own experience is intruding on their understanding of the subject of their criticism. It's a wonder to be that Dewey's Art as Experience isn't more commonly read and loved by Artists and Art critics, but I suppose he only has himself to blame- that man was not a prose stylist.
I would say that if you were going to read a single book on the subject of the "Philosophy of Art" it would be this book- and that there isn't another book you need to read after this one. Particularly, while reading Art As Experience I thought of conversations I had with my friend/business partner- Brandon Welchez of the Crocodiles. Brandon often espoused the opinion- common to Artists that "Writing about music is like dancing about Architecture- i.e. pointless" and my response was basically, "Um..." but now I would reply that when a critic really understand the purpose of writing about art- to help clarify, illuminate and publicize worthy artists- and sharing one's interest in a specific art and artists with the wider world- art criticism can help to create an appreciative audience for a specific artist or art product where none existed before.
BOOK REVIEW
The Concept of Cultural Systems:
A Key to Understanding Tribes and Nations
by Leslie A. White
p. 1975
Columbia University Press
The title of this book should actually be "The Concept of Cultural Systems: From The Perspective of An Anthropology Professor." White is a crucial figure in the second generation of American social scientists, who helped elevate the so-called social sciences from rank Darwinian influenced mumbo jumbo to something approaching a useful, non-racist perspective on human society.
Writing in 1975, White was writing as someone who had been rewarded for his progressive views- he was the chair of the Anthropology Department of the University of Michigan after World War II- which was a comfortable place to be. In 1975 the transition from using a metaphor of Darwinian/Biology to using a Systems/Functionalist approach to describe human culture was firmly in effect, and The Concept of Cultural Systems works as a kind of short summary of that specific transition- the how and why of intellectuals ceasing to describe society as a kind of biological organism, and beginning to describe it as an interdependent system.
One distinction is important to maintain if the concept of cultural systems is to be useful: Cultural systems are not people and do not possess morals and ethics like individual humans. Rather, systems are subject to the influence of vectors- which in this book means "groups of people with common interest." White's repeated use of lobbying examples drawn from the Federal Government of the US in the New Deal era to illustrate the impact of vectors on cultural systems is a clear indicator of his perspective.
White's repeated description of a cultural system as an integrated whole stood in opposition to the first generation of American anthropologist- Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict- who were similarly obsessed with the way cultures allegedly transferred traits from one to another.
The transition from biological metaphor to systems metaphor is documented by White but not really examine, however considering the role of technology and business in 20th century life it's easy to see how an anthropologist might spend more time thinking about society as a kind of integrated system.
One later insight that White is either ignoring or did not agree with is the critical role that the State plays in any society that possesses a state- he often alludes to the lobbying of the state by business interests as an example of how "vectors" influence cultural systems, but he fails to acknowledge that the very fact that businesses bother lobbying the state is a testament to the state's importance in their "mind."
White's emphasis on analyzing cultural systems without attaching moral judgments about those systems being good and bad is well taken- and that seems to me to be a foundation of the new social sciences of the late 20th century- analyzing cultural systems and vectors without judging those same systems.
The Concept of Cultural Systems:
A Key to Understanding Tribes and Nations
by Leslie A. White
p. 1975
Columbia University Press
The title of this book should actually be "The Concept of Cultural Systems: From The Perspective of An Anthropology Professor." White is a crucial figure in the second generation of American social scientists, who helped elevate the so-called social sciences from rank Darwinian influenced mumbo jumbo to something approaching a useful, non-racist perspective on human society.
Writing in 1975, White was writing as someone who had been rewarded for his progressive views- he was the chair of the Anthropology Department of the University of Michigan after World War II- which was a comfortable place to be. In 1975 the transition from using a metaphor of Darwinian/Biology to using a Systems/Functionalist approach to describe human culture was firmly in effect, and The Concept of Cultural Systems works as a kind of short summary of that specific transition- the how and why of intellectuals ceasing to describe society as a kind of biological organism, and beginning to describe it as an interdependent system.
One distinction is important to maintain if the concept of cultural systems is to be useful: Cultural systems are not people and do not possess morals and ethics like individual humans. Rather, systems are subject to the influence of vectors- which in this book means "groups of people with common interest." White's repeated use of lobbying examples drawn from the Federal Government of the US in the New Deal era to illustrate the impact of vectors on cultural systems is a clear indicator of his perspective.
White's repeated description of a cultural system as an integrated whole stood in opposition to the first generation of American anthropologist- Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict- who were similarly obsessed with the way cultures allegedly transferred traits from one to another.
The transition from biological metaphor to systems metaphor is documented by White but not really examine, however considering the role of technology and business in 20th century life it's easy to see how an anthropologist might spend more time thinking about society as a kind of integrated system.
One later insight that White is either ignoring or did not agree with is the critical role that the State plays in any society that possesses a state- he often alludes to the lobbying of the state by business interests as an example of how "vectors" influence cultural systems, but he fails to acknowledge that the very fact that businesses bother lobbying the state is a testament to the state's importance in their "mind."
White's emphasis on analyzing cultural systems without attaching moral judgments about those systems being good and bad is well taken- and that seems to me to be a foundation of the new social sciences of the late 20th century- analyzing cultural systems and vectors without judging those same systems.
In Praise of Commercial Culture
by Tyler Cowen
p. 1998
Harvard University Press
Any discussion about "culture" starts with the potential for great confusion. Culture has multiple meanings- most often it is either used in a broad sense- culture as an assortment of believes, customs and shared assumptions that bind a community together in time and space. Or a narrow sense- to refer to Arts. This narrow term is summarized in Cowen's In Praise of Commerical Culture:
I use the terms culture and art interchangeably to cover man-made artifacts or performances that move us and expand our awareness of the world and of ourselves. I have in mind painting, sculpture, music, film architecture, photography, theater, literature and dance.
The broad usage is defined in Eric Jones, Cultures Merging: A Historical and Economic Critique of Culture as, "the pattern of beliefs, habits, and expectations, of values, ideals and preferences, shared by groups of people, large and small."
Much confusion results when writers attempt to talk about both meanings in the same article or how both meanings are manifested in a specific individual. The broad meaning is more methodologically controversial, the narrow meaning is a widely accepted synonym with a 300 year traditions of philosophical debate. The network of concepts that lattices the broader meaning of Culture is essentially specialist only territory, whereas the usage as a synonym for the arts was/is/always will be a topic of great interest to specialists, and non-specialists alike.
In Praise of Commercial Culture- written by a professor of Economics from the United States, is a good example of just how the discussion of culture as arts continues to generate ample debate well into the present. day. Unfortunately, the great majority of this discussion- the nature and quality of culture as arts, is the equivalent of cave dwellers making cave paintings: possessed of their own beauty, certainly, but not particularly technically sophisticated.
That is because even as the Arts themselves develop a larger audience over time, the average interest level of that audience declines. This observation, at the dilution of the attentiveness of the audience as it expands, is itself at the heart of Cowen's great distinction, Cultural Optimists vs. Cultural Pessimists.
This distinction spans time, space and ideology to embrace practically the entire history of ideas that surrounds the Arts. The main school is that of Cultural Pessimism, "Cultural pessimism comes from various points along the political spectrum and transcends traditional left wing/right-wing distinctions. Its roots, in intellectual history, include Plato, Augustine, Rousseau, Pop, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Spengler.
Cultural Pessimism has modern advocates, including Harold Bloom, Neil Postman and a legion of arts critics in every country of the world. For people who actually think about a subject like "the meaning" of the Arts, or a specific Art, this is the "default mode." In other words, if you are reading this and you have an opinion on the subject "Is a specific Art or Art generally getting better or worse over time?" you are likely to answer, "Worse."
Although Cowen does an excellent job in detailing the specific views embodied by the modern advocates of Cultural Pessimism towards the Arts, he doesn't do a very good job of explaining, "Why Cultural Pessimism?" as he purports to do at the end of this book. His answers are illuminating: Old people don't like new things! Artists are alienated by capitalism! Parents don't like new things! Religion is jealous of the power of the Arts! but pretty shallow.
I think a better understanding is reached by looking at the maintenance and generation of ideas about art over time as constituting a cultural(broader sense) system, and thus subject to systemic analysis. Shared ideas have their own force, which tends to grow or diminish over time. The shared idea of Cultural (narrower sense) Pessimism is clearly a winner. Just how strong the playing field favors Cultural Pessimism is demonstrated by the weak, hesitant nature of Cowen's argument, which largely takes the form of a rather timid argument that market capitalism supports, rather then hinders a Culturally Optimistic view point. I agree with what Cowen is arguing, but he doesn't go far enough- and that's by decision.
An Economist, Cowen isn't interested in engaging Plato and T.S. Eliot on their own terms, he is simply summarizing and cataloging their viewpoints. Personally, I think In Praise of Commercial Culture would have been better received. (700k rank in Amazon.com book sales.) Considering that he is specifically seeking to invalidate the ideas of writers of Harold Bloom and Neil Postman, you'd think he would steal some of their better ideas in terms of popularizing an unpopular idea (Cultural Optimism.)
The position of advocating for Cultural Optimism is clearly vacant at the present moment- really, it's not even a debate that exists outside of this book, but personally I think the Cultural Pessimists are simply wrong for a lot of reasons- a lot of the same reasons that caused me to start writing by own book on what is essentially the same subject (former title: False Consciousness: How Intellectuals Misunderstood the Importance of Art) but minus the Cultural Pessimist schematic and the hoary analysis of Cultural Pessimism and its causes.
A significant similarity between the two types is that they are both hyper-conscious of their status vis a vis other people. The "inventor" of the Dandy style- Beau Brummel- was an actual person, who came from an un-gentlemanly background- his father was a merchant- and his inheritance was only 20,000 pounds- a pittance in those days.
To give you a yardstick for measuring how pitiable Brummel's inheritance was, in George Gissing's New Grub Street, an inheritance of 10,000 pounds is tantamount to making a woman "unmarriageable." Brummel compensated for his lack of status by cultivating what today we call "a sense of personal style." Unlike the personal style of the fop, which I will get to in a paragraph, the personal style of the dandy is reasonable congruent to the personal style of a modern man or woman: rigorously hygienic, fastidious attention to matters of dress, sharp witted, careless with money. Part of the "meaning" of Dandy-ism was, ironically, to strip away affectations from personal style. How ironic then that moderns often use the word "Dandy" to mean a surfeit of personal affectations. Really, that person is a Fop.
The Fop precedes the Dandy in time. The Fop is a stereotype of the stylish man about Court from France, interpreted by English men about Court. Unlike the Dandy, who's attributes could find him a men's magazine tomorrow, the Fop was stereotyped by affectations that have not ages as well.
The Fop was characterized by garish white, pan-cake make-up, elaborate wigs, over-dressing and using French styles and vocabulary. In almost every sense, except perhaps in terms of attitude towards money and spending, the Dandy and Fop are opposites- consciously opposed from the perspective of the Dandy. For the Fop, the Dandy is simply an "other"- to be laughed at, until of course, the point in time where all the Fops became Dandies. Ultimately, that eclipse was tied to the decline of the Court itself in the period of Brummel's life- 1778-1840. The court based Fop was replaced by the city based Dandy.
You can easily imagine a young Gentleman coming to London during the period of Brummel's ascendancy and "choosing" to be a Dandy rather then a Fop, while the reverse hardly seems possible. I would argue that the Dandy added a concern with authenticity to the realm of personal style. The Fop, a mincing, french speaking dude wearing a huge wig and pan cake make up, whatever else he may be (dashing, witty.) is not authentic under any circumstance- that's the whole point of being a Fop- to emulate something that nobody is naturally.
Published 1/19/12
From Classic to Romantic: Premises of Taste in Eighteenth Century England
by Walter Jackson Bate
Harper Torchbooks
originally published 1946
this edition 1961
What's amazing about this particular volume is how I acquired it. You see, I went to the once monthly San Diego Public Library book sale at their location in San Carlos. All the action at these sales takes place in the first 5-15 minutes of the sale, so the rule is either get there at the start or forget about it. The way the sale is organized, they have fiction in front and then non-fiction spread out over two rooms in back. I made my way to the Classics section- not immediately, but within the first 10 minutes. There, it looks like they had an English teacher/student's collection of books on 18th century Aesthetics/Poetry. I went easy of the Poetry stuff, but the books on Aesthetics were can't miss classics- like this GEM of a book- From Classic to Romantic: Premises of Taste in Eighteenth Century England by Walter Jackson Bate.
From Classic to Romantic is typical of books about Aesthetics written at a high level BEFORE the 60s: Accurate as far as they go, but oblivious to the impending 60s revival of Romanticism inside and outside the university. I think it's pretty amazing that Harper saw fit to publish, essentially, a mass market paperback of this title in 1961- shows you how awesome 1961 was, for starters- that people were ordering this paperback from Harper Torchbooks. From Classic to Romantic is in perfect condition, as if it had sat on a book shelf for someone's entire life- unread. Condition is always a wild card when you are buying books on Amazon, and the library sale is clearly superior in that regard.
Because from Classic to Romantic is so unpopular on Amazon (Sales rank in two millions'), I doubt I ever would have found it outside of a book store/book sale. I guarantee you 100% I would have bought this title at a used book store for much more then the 50 cents I paid for it.
Bate accomplishes what the title promises: explains the premises of "taste" in eighteenth century England with reference to main bodies of thought: Classicism and Romanticism. One of Bate's main points is that certain aspects of Classicism effectively paved the way for Romantic thought, but that the two school maintained their own disciples, with proponents of Romanticism emerging in the mid to late 18th century, and the proponents of Classicism emerging two to three generations before, as well as co-existing.
Much of what is useful to a modern reader in From Classic to Romantic is Bates lucid explanation of the fundamentals of classical aesthetic theory circa early 18th century England. These are sources that are foreign to the modern reader- most of the books that Bate references are close to impossible to understand for a modern examiner, so it's almost like he's an interpreter of these materials.
I wanted to identify some of the statements Bate makes about principles of classic aesthetics, circa early 18th century England:
The most pervasive single tendency of almost all classicism is, "the idealization of the familiar." The achievement of this goal may utilize various means; but they are in all cases directly related to man, and are based upon man's common intellectual, aesthetic and moral experience and interest."
Classical aesthetic values are unity, simplicity and the natural and harmonious adaptation of parts to the whole- founded on a confidence in truth and the grandeur of ordered generality.
The primary rule of Classical aesthetics is Decorum. Decorum is defined by Aristotle as "preservation and ennobling of the type."
Classical Art seeks to declare the unity, order and law that you find in the interweaving of past, present, and future.
A primary interest to proponents of late 18th century Classicism was the nature of the reasoning and "methodizing" faculty itself...which culminated... an argumentative basis for Romanticism by the middle of the 18th century.
The rest of the book is devoted to demonstrating this transition from Classicism to Romanticism via the tools provided by individual writers like Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds- who share their own chapter. One of the main phenomenons generated by the transition from Classic to Romantic thought was the growth of "sympathy" "sentiment" and empathy among writers and intellectuals. The ability to "feel" was something that initially distinguished forward thinking Romanticists from stuffy old Classicists, but this difference collapsed from the wide spread adoption of the trend outside the originating intellectual class- much the same way a "cool" band will become popular and lose it's original fans- so suffered the role of sympathy/sentiment in 18th century English literary society.
At 99 cents on Amazon, From Classic to Romantic is a steal- and a must read for Artists and Critics alike.
One Classical Aesthetic principle which is often misunderstood is today called, "Nostalgia." Nostalgia is a favorite punching bag for would-be writers about Aesthetic principles. Rarely does one read an essay celebrating or glorifying Nostalgia, rather the intellectual posture is always to attack or question excesses of Nostalgia.
I believe this posture is largely based on a failure to appreciate the Classical aesthetic principle which lays behind "Nostalgia": To celebrate the glory of past achievement of Artistic perfection. I've often had conversations with Mario Orduno, head of Art Fag Recordings, where he and I have agreed that if a specific work of Art has attained it's own state of perfection, that work of Art requires no improvement, and ought to be respected forever.
Exhibit A in this argument is the Supremes, Stop! In The Name of Love:
That's perfect. Glorifying it today isn't "Nostalgia" but a demonstration of good Taste.
The argument against the "danger" of Nostalgia- which is always defined as glorification of past successes or supposed successes, is founded on the Romantic principle of variety for varieties sake and isn't any more "right" than the opposite position. To the extent that a specific writer doesn't understand the two bodies of aesthetic principles and their contrasts, it simply reflects poorly on the writer and publication.
It's certainly appropriate to comment on excesses of reverence for the past, but it's not an idea to abandon in favor of unceasing novelty, particularly when the Artist considers the qualities of the general Audience, and how they prefer the familiar to the novel.
 |
| Matthew Arnold: Critic |
Published 1/23/12
Matthew Arnold and American Culture
by John Henry Raleigh
p. 1957
University of California Press
You could say that Matthew Arnold invented modern literary criticism. He was also the greatest of Victorian critics. His work is a conduit directly between the philosophy of the 18th century and the academia and journalism of today. Arnold is not an author who is read by many today, but his influence on journalists and professors is so profound that it's hard to distinguish any kind of modern literary or artistic criticism that is descended directly- albeit in bastardized form- the intellectual equivalent of cave men living in a post-apocalyptic hell hole trying to piece together theater from a blasted copy of the complete works of William Shakespeare.
That's all modern artistic criticism is- a bunch of monkeys clacking away on typewriters. Arnold was the first critic to castigate a group he called "philistines" but who in later times would be called Babbits, bourgeois, etc: the unlettered middle class and would be middle class. Arnold is also the first English critic to embrace the French style. Considering the direct dominance that Arnoldian disciples had in the literature departments of American private and public universities from their inception, it is not difficult to trace a direct line from Arnold himself and the French theorizing that infected the American academy in disciplines like Literature and Sociology up until the present.
In short, Arnold is as important figure in our current understanding of literature, and the role of literature, and of the significance and importance in Art in life, as exists.
Matthew Arnold and American Culture actually documents the transmission of Arnold's idea to American writers and Professors from about 1850's into the 1950s. The main line of transmission is Henry James, to T.S. Eliot to Lionel Trilling. The main punching bag for the "American Arnoldians" is Edgar Allen Poe and H.L. Mencken. Another favorite target is Emerson- himself a contemporary and fan of Arnold.
Matthew Arnold was a bridge between Classic, Romantic and Modernist thought about Art, Artists, Audiences and their relationships with one another.
It's kind of like... he laid the dinner table and put the food out on the table for modern Artistic criticism, but he wasn't a modern critic himself. In that way, he has little appeal for non-specialists, thought I think critics should at least understand what the phrase "philistine" means as used by Matthew Arnold, and how his ideas about aesthetics combine Classical and Romantic ideas in a way that pre-sages Modern thoughts about aesthetics.
One thing that Arnold doesn't discuss is the economics of Art and Art Production- in that way he is friendlier to the non-economically inclined aesthetes in a way that is utterly charming. Arnold worshipped Beauty and despised the Market.
UNIVERSE
{}
WORK ---- AUDIENCE
{}
ARTIST
ABRAMS ORIENTATION OF CRITICAL THEORIES GOOGLE SEARCH
WHAT SOME BLOGGER WROTE ABOUT ABRAMS ORIENTATION OF CRITICAL THEORIES *
Guide To Aesthetics
by Benedetto Croce
Translated, with an Introduction by
Patrick Romanell
Benedetto Croce is an interesting cat- a guy who had a real 20th century Renaissance live, where he both wrote and acted in fields as diverse as philosophy, aesthetics, history and politics. He lived between 1866 and 1952 and operated in and around Naples. Luckily, Croce was on the right side of World War II- anti-fascist (even though he was on the WRONG side in World War I- opposing Italy joining the "good" guys in that fight.)
I'm warming up to Italian themes and Italian thinkers after seeing the response the Italian market has given to some of my Artist friends. Why, just today I was looking at the listing for the Italian produced Dirty Beaches 7", TARLABASI at the Rough Trade UK Shop website. (DIRTY BEACHES TARLABASI)
Croce was already on my reading list before that single came out- and it just so happened I found a copy of the slim Guide To Aesthetics at a library sale at the beginning of last month. I believe this translation, by Patrick Romanell, is the standard version, but I don't know that.
Croce's Guide To Aesthetics made it onto my reading list. I should mention that the corresponding Italian title is "BREVIARIO DI ESTETICA"- according to the introduction in my copy the name was changed to avoid the exclusively Religious meaning that "Breviary" possesses in the English language. The Italian edition was published in 1912. An important note about the publication history of Guide To Aesthetics is that it was written at the behest of Rice University- in Texas- he was supposed to deliver them in person but couldn't, because he was an Italian Senator and World War I, and things of that nature.
Since it was consciously written for a bunch of Texas students, it is brief, and to the point. Guide To Aesthetics possesses "this is the way it is" perspective on the broader boundaries of Aesthetics as a discipline while putting Aesthetics in relation to other disciplines, especially Philosophy and History.
Croce traces out a century worth of argument (since 1912) in Guide To Aesthetics, beginning with his take on the difference between Romantic and Classic Art:
[The answer to many questions about aesthetics] emerges as a result of examining the greatest contrast of tendencies that has ever obtained in the field of art...the contrast between romanticism and classicism. Romanticism requests of art, above all, a spontaneous and unrestrained outpouring of the passioins- love and hate, anguish and joy, despair and elation. It readily contents itself with, and takes pleasure in, ethereal and indeterminate images, an uneven style and one making allusions to vague suggestions, indefinited phrases, striking and hazy outlines.
In contrast, classicism adores the tranquil mind, the learned style, figures drawn according to their type and definite in their contours, and is fond of deliberation, balance and clarity. Classicism has a decided tendency toward representation, while its counterpoint has it toward emotion. -.p. 23 Lesson One: WHAT IS ART?"
Within 10 pages he's holding up a lamp to another huge 20th-21st century aesthetic issue- the silent but deadly role the discipline of Rhetoric plays in regard to modern criticism.
Croce's third lesson lays out his personal theory of how the essential principle of Artistic appreciation is "Intuition." Croce is best known for being a sponsor of the interpretive, expressionistic style of criticism that is common to readers of 20th century popular critical giants like Greil Marcus or a Lester Bangs.
Guide To Aesthetics is a bridge between the 18th-19th century discussion of these subjects and the "Modern" approach of critical relativism that is embodied at the heart of every critic who cares about such issues. BONUS: THE WHOLE BOOK IS ONLY 80 PAGES.
This book is a must read for Artist and Writers- buy it on your portable reading device- WORTH IT.
Published 3/1/12
I've been listening to two records in my care recently- the new Grimes record Visions and Frankie Rose's immaculate and top-selling Interstellar.
Both records share a baroque sensibility and achieve an impact of sublimity that require comment.
First, on the baroque sensibility. Baroque is a neglected period of pre-modern taste, coinciding with the post-Renaissance era in places ranging from Italy, to Spain, to Eastern Europe, to the new world. In it's initial iteration, Baroque was a description of architectural design, but like other words from architectural criticism (Gothic and Post-Modern to name two), the idea of Baroque style has long transcended the civic and religious Architecture of the 16th and 17th century.
In recent times Baroque used as a description is often a negative, possessing the same negative connotation that you get when you call an institution "Byzantine." Like the Byzantine usage in the context of bureaucracy, the modern meaning of "Baroque" i.e. "usually pejorative, describing [art] that has excessive ornamentation or complexity of line."
That's a shame because I am quite a fan of the Baroque. Really, who doesn't like excessive ornamentation or complexity in works of art? I mean like all different types of music, but calling something Baroque is not an insult for me, quite the opposite.
A key characteristic of Baroque in its original manifestation- the Architecture of the 16th and 17th century- Baroque was a truly international style, with examples all over the world. This is a characteristic that it shares with the Modern style- not limited to specific places.
To listen to Grimes Visions and Frankie Rose Interstellar is to hear the Baroque style manifested in popular music. The Baroque sensibility is inherited separately by each Artist from different sources. In the case of Visions, the proximate inspiration appears to be the Aphex Twin/WARP records canon from the last decade- including Autechre and Boards of Canada as important stylistic reference points.
In the case of Frankie Rose, the source seems to be shared with the more chamber pop oriented sensibilities of Vivian Girls- of whom Rose was a founding member, as well as the advances on the close harmonies and layered vocals made on the Vivian Girls sound by Dum Dum Girls.
Regardless of the various influences, the end result is similar in that both records are Baroque pop classics with their own charm, and more importantly, ENDURING REPLAY-ABILITY. The number one problem I experience with music I buy is that I never want to listen to the record again after hearing it for the first time, and both Visions and Interstellar escape this designation: largely because of the Baroque- interesting- complex- ornamented- nature of the pop music contained.
Both records are also sublime in the original "beautiful/terrifying" mode that was initially described in the late 17th century. Today, sublime just means "super fantastic" but back then, to call something sublime was to comment both on it's beauty and fearfulness. The classic example of the 17th and 18th century meaning of sublime is that expressed by a romantic poet contemplating the Swiss Alps, when he has to cross the Swiss Alps and he's afraid he will die in the crossing.
Both albums create this sublime effect by pairing the Baroque song craft with a lyrical persona that is slightly cold, distant and removed. Both Artists use vocal modification to create different layers of lyrics and effects, using their voice like another instrument. The distance created by the vocal modification works to the benefit of both Artists.
My sense is that contemporary indie Artists to often try to create intimacy with their Audience instead of inspiring fascination. All the social media work creates that intimacy but works against the inspiration of fascination among potential audience members.
Published 3/5/12
Essays and Aphorisms
by Arthur Schopenhauer
translation/adaption by R. J. Hollingdale
Penguin Classics 2004 Edition
Schopenhauer is the essential unrecognized genius of the 19th century. His biography reads like a romantic poem. Schopenhauer's major work, The World as Will and Representation, was published in 1818. Basically ignored at the time, Schopenhauer would live for another 40 plus years, but only find widespread acceptance in the early 1850s. Key to that acceptance was the publication, in two volumes, of Parerga and Paralipomena- the source material for this book- called Essays and Aphorisms in the English translation.
Essays and Aphorisms is not a simple translation, much editing and rearranging has occurred. In this way, Essays and Aphorisms is the functional equivalent of a "SCHOPENHAUER'S GREATEST HITS" LP- with material has been taken out of the original context and re arranged for the convenience of a modern audience.
Schopenhauer is a key figure in the development of 20th century anti-modernism- his work pre-figured many of the concerns with boredom, the autonomy of Art and the deficiencies of reason that characterize much of 20th century anti-modernist thought. He influenced the German Marxists of the Frankfurt School and French post-modern philosophers alike.
He also was influential in the field of Aesthetics. Here's what Essays and Aphorisms has to say about the importance of Music as an art form:
Music is the true universal language which is understood everywhere, so that it is ceaselessly spoken in all countries and throughout all the centuries with great zeal and earnestness, and a significant melody which says a great deal soon makes its way round the entire earth while one poor in meaning which says nothing straighwaway fades and dies: which proves the content of a melody is very well understandable. Yet music speaks not of things but of pure weal and woe, which are the only realities for the will: this is why it speaks so much to the heart, while it has nothing to say directly to the head and it is a misuse of it to demand that it should do so. (pg. 162) (1)
Of course, Schopenhauer wrote about many things besides music- he was a big fan of despair and ennui, a critic of religion. He also likes to write about the meaning of "genius" and it is hard not to see biographical details of failure steeping into his theoretically untrammeled philosophical speculation.
One of the points that R. J. Hollingdale makes in this excellent introduction (which dates from 1970) is that Schopenhauer was a stylist and that much of his success stems from the fact that he had an accessible style that non-specialists were attracted to. That's funny, because much of Essays and Aphorisms is literally devoted to castigating "ordinary" man as a half animal, unthinking brute- he criticizes the masses while writing in an aphoristic style that seems calculated to generate a wider audience for his ideas.
You might say that is Schopenhauer would do such a thing, the Greatest Hits format is a proven market widener for a specific Artist or critic.
His criticism of contemporary society is insightful and far reaching- his big example of how cruel and debasing life is derives from the state of slavery in the American south before the Civil War. Touche, Schopenhauer.
Schopenhauer's own life is as romantic as that of better appreciated contemporary thinkers, but notable mostly for the lack of appreciation that he experienced while alive, and his refusal to compromise belief in his own genius despite a corresponding lack of appreciation from the public.
NOTES
(1) An example of the pieced-together nature of this edition comes in the List of Correspondences that follows the main text- you can see parts have been removed.
Published 3/13/12
Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography, 1945 - 1982
Palm Springs Art Museum
Palm Springs, CA.
Part of the Pacific Standard Time Series of Exhibitions
Runs until May 27th, 2012
It's no secret that my record label involvement is generally inspired by my love for Museums and their conventions rather then a love for Record Labels and their conventions. To be sure the verb "to curate" is used and abused in indie rock circles, but "to curate" is still a classier verb then other ways to express the same concept.
You could say I have a curatorial attitude towards record labels since I care deeply about the Aesthetics of the releases I'm involved with, and since I don't care whether a profit is derived, only that those whose work is essential to the "exhibition" be taken care of.
The Backyard Oasis exhibition is running at the Palm Springs Art Museum until May 27th 2012- as part of the Getty sponsored pan-Southern California Pacific Standard Time series of exhibitions exploring Art in Southern California during the 20th century. Backyard Oasis stood out for two reasons, first, the subject matter is interesting, second the exhibit was mounted in Palm Springs,CA and I spend a good deal of time in that city.
The photographs span the gamut from soft core gay porn of the 50s (embodied by "Physique" style shots of beefcake by the pool) to the skating culture of the 70s-80s (photographs of the Dogtown crew skating empty pools) to high artists musing other pools as their muse- David Hockney is well represented- to an anonymous slide show of pool based photography from non-artists.
Certainly worth a look if you are in Palm Springs for the next three months. The second Sunday of each month is free.
Published 3/15/12
Capturing Sound
How Technology Has Changed Music
by Mark Katz
Published 2004
by University of California Press
An interesting question raised by the generally well reviewed Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music is the question of the subject of Capturing Sound. Is Capturing Sound a history of recording technology? Is it that rarest of things, a contemporary book about Aesthetics (i.e. the "science" of beauty)? The relative rarity of books that take recording technology and it's influence on Art seriously is attributable in the drastic decline in interest in the subject of Aesthetics. Even people who care about Art and take it seriously rarely have a grounding in Aesthetics as a discipline- they are far more likely to be grounded in the tenets of disciplines like history, sociology or anthropology.
One of the characteristics that differentiates Capturing Sound from a predecessor- Evan Eisenberg's, The Recording Angel:Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa, is that Katz is writing after the digital revolution. Eisenberg had nothing to say about the digital revolution in music because he wrote The Recording Angel in the 80s.
Capturing Sound contains both an extended discussion of the use of the vocal sample used by Fat Boy Slim AKA Norman Cook and a pages long break down of the opening 30 seconds of Public Enemy's immortal classic, "Fight The Power." In these sections, and other portions where he describes the work of a "battling" DJ- down to including a sketch of a turn table set up in page- already sound dated.
I think Katz is at his best when he identifies specific phenomenon's and calls them "recording effects." He mentions a couple specific phenomenons- the use of vibrato on violin recordings in the first part of the 20th century is one effect. Another salient recording effect is the "ideal" pop song being 3 minutes long, or the maximum length of a 45/7" record.
As someone who has sold a fair amount of vinyl records, I can attest that the 3 and change song limit is still taken into consideration- since records are still, in fact, being made.
Katz also makes the novel, and well-taken point, that people besides collectors of vinyl have feelings about the physical product of music- even it is a CD they care about.
I though the later chapters on the politics of file sharing and the culture of turntablism were labored, but the early chapters, especially his documentation of The Rise and Fall of Grammophonmusik (Chapter 5) are little masterpieces of the history of culture.
I thought a major weakness in Capturing Sound was Katz's avoidance of an economic aspect, preferring instead to veer towards the minute description common to both "musicology" and the language of modern music criticism. Everywhere Katz is discussing the impact of recording technology- quantifying it in economic terms- but not discussing the way the resulting economics changed the relationship between Artists, Record Companies and the Audience, which is surely the most interesting story in the history of recording technology- that shift.
Katz gets close to grasping this crucial interplay early on- Chapters 2 and 3- concerning the emergence of the high/low culture distinction between classical music and popular song and about early recording of jazz respectively; but he doesn't follow through on the early promise leaving Capturing Sound as a promising addition to the limited number of volumes on this subject, but by no means the only word on the subject of "how technology has changed music."
 |
| Andy Warhol |
One fact that an Artist and their Audience agree upon is the identity of the resulting Art work. The classic exposition of this principle is the hoary old story about Marcel Duchamp displaying a toilet at an art exhibit in New York City in 1917 and having it disqualified by the Judges, but of course, everyone agreed that the toilet was Art, just disagreed on whether it was "good" Art, which is another question entirely.
 |
| Andy Warhol Soup Can |
The agreement between Artist and Audience over the identity of the art work is a given, but nothing about the identity of the Artist is fixed in the same way. The solid feeling critics have at being able to point at an Album, Painting, Sculpture, Building etc. and saying "that is the Art Work." Is only matched by the vaporous fumes that the same critics sniff when trying to explain "that is the Artist." One is a concrete, almost physical description, the other is the most ephemeral of all critical judgments.
A good way to illustrate what I'm talking about is the work and identity of Andy Warhol. Warhol was a prolific studio Artist who made drawings, paintings, prints, silk screens, film, music and sculpture Even though Warhol was a prolific Artist in terms of works, he was even more prolific in terms of establishing and expanding his Artistic identity. With Warhol, this is an easy concept to grasp because one of the characteristics of his Artistic identity was as an apostle of fame and celebrity. This concern is also present of much of Warhol's work itself, but it extended off the canvas, so to speak.
The point I'm trying to make here is that an Artist can create many different kinds of works and have a separate identity as an Artist, independent from any one work. Something that often happens in the more popular Artistic fields is that an Artist becomes tied to one specific work, and that work dwarves the independent identity. Think of Fall Out Boy for a contemporary example of that phenomenon.
 |
| Orpheus descending into the underworld for Eurydice |
Published 6/10/13
Main thing to understand about Orpheus is that he was a mythic musician, the first rock star, as it were.
 |
| Orpheus rescuing Eurydice |
A good reason to derive artistic inspiration from an ancient myth is the fact that a larger portion of the potential audience is familiar with the source material and is therefore more inclined to like the work citing the myth.
This idea of a famous musician going to hell to get back his woman is pretty powerful and resonant material.
 |
| Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland Oregon |
The Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland is a replica of a late period Ming Dynasty Chinese Garden from Suzhou.
I have to say that when it comes to East Asian garden museums in the United States, I think of Japanese Tea Gardens first and Chinese Gardens not at all. But, as I read on the wall of the Portland Art Museum a day earlier, what is Japanese culture but a take on an earlier, more powerful Chinese culture. It's at least comparable to the influence that Greece had on Rome, or England on America, or Persia on Arab- more ancient, better developed, etc. You can certainly make the case that the student has surpassed the master in each case, but the master/student relationship is clear, and such is the relationship between Chinese and Japanese aesthetics.
In another post, I discussed the garden related roots of the Christian concept of "Paradise."
A paradise is a place where "existence is positive, harmonious and timeless." The word "paradise" is from the French word paradis, which itself derives from the Latin and Greek. It's notable that the term does not simply appear in the western Greek/Latin/Romance languages/English wing of the Indo European language family. Old Iranian (Avestan) contains pari-daeza- which literally means walled enclosure. From Old Iranian it was adopted by Aramaic speakers- which is the language of the old testament and therefore the source of the Hebrew/biblical word for paradise.
 |
| Humble Administrators Garden |
"The search for novelty leads in the end to boredom. We are bored when we have run out of "interesting" things to do, or when our own lack of vital energy disgusts us. We are not bored with our personal obsessions, our natural functions, or the periodicity of nature- no matter how familiar to us they may be. The short shortsightedness of the conventional view of repetition as repetitious is evident in the words of our most absurd contemporary politician, "You seen one redwood, you seen em' all."
- Telling it Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and Film by Bruce F. Kawin. (Cornell University Press, 1974.)
If I had to make one specific criticism about the manner in which the internet has harmed aesthetics it is in the utter negation of repetition as a valued aesthetic principle. The best illustration of this impact is in the phenomenon of the "viral video." In this article about Jonah Peretti the demon king of buzz (creator of buzzfeed) the New York Magazine identifies the three underlying principles of virality: "virality depends on novelty, cleverness, and luck." (New York Magazine Profile of Jonah Peretti.)
Really though it's only the first of those three factors that have any meaning in terms of aesthetics, "cleverness" and "luck" being either specious of aesthetically neutral. Novelty though- the pursuit of novelty at all costs means the exclusion of Repetition, the aesthetic opposite of Novelty. The obsession with novelty and the pursuit of virality inevitably relegates Repetition to the cheap seats.
Additionally non-Aesthetic concerns of the Marketplace are natural collaborators with the conditions that support the advancement of Novelty as the ultimate aesthetic principle. It is common knowledge that the largest possible general Audience requires a mixture of novelty and repetition, but that the Market requires new products on a timely basis, creating an endless demand for so-called "Novel" variations on established artistic formulas.
There is no sadder sight in contemporary art criticism then the critic who castigates an Artist for lack of novelty. Such a critic is no better then a kool aid drinking hack for the forces of market capitalism and the internet novelty generating process. Being a critic today, in 2013, requires a deep appreciation of the aesthetic value of Repetition.
Repetition is not boring, it is actually the central fact of human existence, and it has been recognized as such by thousands of years of religious and philosophical, not to mention artistic, thought. Only within the last few centuries has Novelty arisen AT ALL let alone as a directly countering aesthetic principle.
I was driving to and from the California desert yesterday and thinking a whole lot about the relationship between rhetoric and music. For if it is often stated that "music is a language," then surely the discipline of rhetoric applies, since rhetoric involves the understanding of language and its impact on the Audience. This being 2013 I was able to find an article online covering that very topic, and one of the co-authors may actually be someone I know- an attorney in San Diego who left to become a philosophy professor- also a musician/vinyl fan etc. There will be additional posts on this subject.
From Rhetoric and Music by BLAKE WILSON (I, 1), GEORGE J. BUELOW (I, 2–4), PETER A. HOYT (II)
 |
| Lou Reed: a great American songwriter. |
Published 10/29/13
Sado-Masochism, Intoxication & Love:
The Artistic Themes of the Songs of Lou Reed
A thorough understanding of the importance of Lou Reed can only be obtained by understanding the classical and romantic aesthetics which informed his songwriting and gave his most well known songs their lasting impact. A consideration of the secondary qualities of Lou Reed's artistic existence: the LOOK, the collaborations with John Cale (most of all), Nico, Andy Warhol and the other members of the Velvet Underground (Sterling Morrison and Mo Tucker mostly.) And then there are the tertiary characteristics: the legend, the hagiography.
In my opinion, Reed's primary contribution was in introducing previously avant-garde artistic themes into the songwriting of Western pop music. The best single example of this in a specific song is Reed's use of sado-masochism in the well known "hit" song, Venus in Furs. The title of the song is, of course, the name of a famous s&m text Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Sacher-Masosch shares pride of place with the Marquis de Sade in terms of being the "inventors" of sado-masochism, a sexual proclivity that was essentially "discovered" in the aftermath of the enlightenment, and subsequently developed upon multiple lines of discourse simultaneously thereafter.
But not in American Popular Music between the beginnings in the late 18th century and Lou Reed. The explicit sado masochistic lyrics of Venus in Furs are wholly without parallel in the history of the musical forms that Reed was drawing upon. The sheer originality of taking hardcore s&m imagery and pairing it with an essentially "rock" format, on a record that was released by a Major Label in 1967 in the United States.
There was nothing NEW about sado masochism in 1967, but there was certainly something new about a popular musician writing and releasing songs about it and gaining a wide Audience with that material.
Reed's use of intoxication in songs like Heroin were not as novel and noteworthy as his use of s&m imagery in but what was noteworthy was the level of explicitness. Explicit discussions of drug based intoxication were by no means unknown in western culture in the 1960s, but explicit pop songs about the joys of shooting heroin were quite. Drugs are essentially synonymous with American popular music of the 20th century, but at the time Reed wrote Heroin, reference were limited to innuendo, or at the most "soft" drugs like marijuana and cocaine.
Reed was also unusual because his use of intoxication was inward looking and not oriented to the kind of dionysian celebration associated with the artistic theme of intoxication in the wider 60s American popular culture. This was a darker roast, so to speak. It was also a field where Reed was basically on his own at the time.
Reed was closest to the existing themes of american popular songwriting when he wrote about love, but even here he created songs that were novel in thematic content and proved capable of keeping. Here, the best example, and perhaps Reed's best, most popular song, is Walk on the Wild Side. The couplets reference transvestite culture but the lyrics are fairly conventional reference to love and life in the big city. This combination of a fringe culture with the canons of American popular songwriting: rhyming, a "do-do-do" chorus, back up singers, combine to create a new artistic experience essentially without parallel in what comes before.
These three themes run deep and true in the collected work of Reed, and he will surely be remembered for decades on the strength of the embodiment of those themes in his songs.
Novelty is an aesthetic value. In Classical aesthetics, it was seen as a negative, because novelty represented divergence from a universal artistic "ideal." Romantic aesthetics embraced novelty as a value as a by-product of other, more important artistic values like creativity. The difference between novelty and creativity as aesthetic values is grounded on the reception of a specific work by the Audience for that work. Novelty is the perception by the Audience that the work is "new" or "different" than the art products they are presently consuming. This perception may itself be "false" in that something that is perceived as novel can be completely unoriginal/creative in that it can be utterly derivative of some work that has come before.
This distinction is important one for career Artists to grasp, whatever field they may inhabit. Artists are often obsessed with creativity and look down on novelty (if they even have an opinion on the subject of desirable aesthetic values.) But, in fact and in truth, creativity is essentially unimportant while maintaining novelty is perhaps THE crucial value for survival in the market for cultural products among the general population. In the context of popular music, novelty can be introduced into a body of work by a variety of different methods.
The most standard strategy is to incorporate new influences into an existing sound or style of music. This is a simple, obvious, well established, productive way for Artists to prolong their careers in the market for cultural product, but it can be more or less succesful, or not succesful at all. The cliche is of a mid-career shift in sound and style that calls into question the prior work, such as when a dance rock artist becomes a freak folk artist (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.) At the other end of the spectrum is an Artist like Nick Cave or Tom Waits, who incorporate new styles in every production cycle so that each product is unexpected. In the center you have the world of Top 40 where stylistic flourishes and improvements in production technology create a kind of Mannerist sensibility that carefully redesigns the recent past with an eye for the present.
This places the burden for introducing that novelty on the artist themselves. Here are some suggestions that I have for musical/stylistic influences:
1. West African Banjo/Gnawa music: One of the most important elements of popular music is rhythm. In the associated worlds of rock and country music, a common element is the "rhythm guitar." Much Top 40 country music uses an analog: rhythm banjo, which often exists immediately alongside an accompanying guitar, or multiple guitars. Personally, I don't think swiping a country banjo and putting it in a rock/indie tune is a very cool idea, but finding a banjo substitute, which is exactly what you get in Gnawa music. The Banjo is FROM West Africa, so of course, their music is authentic/good/interesting etc.
2. The Classic Age of Berlin Techno: It is clear that there is a vast, overlapping critical/popular Audience for electronic dance music. Whether it be the genre classification for Album Reviews at Pitchfork, or an EDM Artist selling out the Hollywood Bowl in less than an hour, Electronic music is alive on a number of fronts. At the same time, there literally exists DECADES of electronic music that was indie/fringe/not absorbed by the larger general market, even music of the 90s, like Chemical Brothers or The Prodigy are examples of music that would be perceived as "novel" by an overlapping critical/general Audience- potentially- who knows right? But along with "big beat" there is a wealth of Berlin Techno that is magnetic and probably easy enough to reproduce with existing technology- a music that would be both futuristic and nostalgic at the same time.
3. The Cinema of Eastern Europe During the Cold War: Whether it be Czech New Wave, Russian Cinema, Polish Cinema, the films of Eastern Europe/Russia are "cool" and very under appreciated. It is easy to see a vogue for them being established in the same way that the French New Wave is periodically revived by contemporary artists. This is something that could be reference simply by something as simple as a song title or even through artist social media.
4. The Cultural Overlap between the Jazz Age in NYC and surrealism in Europe and the US: Although the beginnings of surrealism stretch back into the 19th and even 18th century, the surrealist "movement" "began in the early 1920s." (Wikipedia) Although neither the surrealist program NOR the jazz age are particularly viable on their own, or rather, they are already incorporated into the taste of a general or critical audience and thus valueless in terms of novelty, there is potential to combine the two things into an influence that might play well.
Published 4/18/14
The Tastemakers - The Shaping of American Popular Taste
by Russell Lynes
originally published 1955
re-published by Dover Press in 1980
I have fair collection of books on taste and aesthetics that I've read for the book (non-fiction) I'm writing that I've never mentioned here because I just don't think they are titles that interest people. Any concentrated consideration of developments in Aesthetics in the mass-communication period needs to consider the influence of other related disciplines in the "social sciences" to the study of aesthetics. Aesthetics in the 20th and 21st century is really about the development of a large, popular audience for works of art. This represents a vast change from the study of Aesthetics in the 18th and 19th century.
Specifically, in the 18th and 19th century, Aesthetics were largely a question of understanding and descriping art as "good" or "bad" within the constraints of "classical" or Greek/Roman Aesthetic principles. This 18th/19th "classical" aesthetics was the dominant taste before everything started to change. Understanding "Classical" and "neo-Classical" Aesthetics is largely a history lesson.
That history lesson includes the development of neo-Classical aesthetics itself but that development is quantitatively and qualitatively different then the dominant aesthetics which followed. How that happened in America during the early/mid 19th century through the development of the mass media of film, recordings and print media is the subject of The Tastemakers- The Shaping of American Taste, by Russell Lynes.
With only a single Amazon review spread between two product pages I am convinced that The Tastemakers is a bit of a forgotten classic in the study of Aesthetics and the broader field of "American Studies." Lynes, though not an Academic, possesses an authoritative background (editor of Harpers), a flowing writing style and a claim to the invention of the idea of highbrow/middlebrow/low brow culture. This distinction is at the very beating heart of American Studies, and Lynes plausible claim that he coined the terms is matched by his accurate description of the terms themselves being problematic.
A key issue in describing the development of aesthetics in America is the manner in which the ideas of early pre-modern thinkers like John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle were imported to the United States. The question is "What was the vehicle for the transmission of these ideas?"
Lynne provides a plausible answer to this question: Alexander Downing, a landscape architect from the Hudson River Valley who published books on landscape and architecture in the 1840s. The likely agent of transmission to Downing, who was raised outside of a formal educational environment, is posited to be "the elderly Baron de Liederer...the Austrian Consul General who was an "amateur naturalist" would likely have been in touch with the major currents of English thought.
Downings program of Gothicly influenced domestic architecture is the first move beyond the "neo Classical revival" period that is so well enshrined in every aspect of the origins of the United States of America. The taste for "carpenter Gothic" reflected the available mass media (printing press) and demand among the prospective Audience (people wanting to build homes in America.)
Thus, from the very beginning, taste reflected the availability of mass media and a large prospective Audience.
The development of taste from the mid 19th century on mirrored the needs and interests of its Audience. In the 20th century the larger Audience for stylish possessions and ideas differentiated and grew. Key events in this growth and differentiation were the invention of new Mass Media, particularly recorded music and film. Lynes' contribution to the discussion of this growth and differentiation is the idea that the Audience was split into thirds "High Brow," "Middle Brow," and "Low Brow." This distinction was never hard and fast, but generally the idea is that High brows despise Middle brows and like Low brows. Middle brows don't care about High brows and think Low brows have bad taste. Low brows keep to themselves and don't care about Middle or High brow.
Lynes also understood that tastes changed over time in predictive repetitive ways. Something that was thought to be "high brow" in one time period (Lynes usually spoke in terms of decades) would become "middle brow" in the next time period and "low brow" the time period after that. Things that BEGAN as low brow in the initial time period would ascend to being "high brow" the next time period, then sink to middle brow.
The Tastemakers includes an afterward which contains a chart that Life magazine prepared for a 1949 issue. In that chart you can see that he has listed "Pulps & comic books" and "jukeboxes" as "Low Brow." In 2014 you could arge that all three of those things are High Brow.
Published 4/25/14
The Gothic Revival
by Kenneth Clark
published 1928, this edition published 1970
This book is critical both as a source for information on the Gothic Revival of the 18th and 19th century AND as a seminal book of criticism about the relationship of culture, art and fashion. The Gothic Revival has value both in terms of its description of the Gothic Revival, it's criticism of the Revivalists and its method for analyzing the subject.
The idea of a cultural "revival" is something that is a common phenomenon of the early 21st century (as well as the mid to late 20th century.) Revivals occur when a cultural subject that has had a peak and valley of Audience interest receives a second peak of interest. Revivals can occur and reoccur or they can be a one time phenomenon. While the description of "new" revivals is a staple of cultural criticism today, attention to the similar structures of revivals across art forms and audiences receives less attention.
The fact is that the revival as a staple of the changes in culture that happen over time is itself indelibly linked to The Gothic Revival of the early 19th century. This was a phenomenon that was largely specific to England and Scotland, though English/Scottish authors drew on examples from outside the British Isles, and The Gothic Revival spread to other territories, specifically North America, where an American Gothic Revival coincided with the later portion of the English Gothic Revival.
Clark elegantly traces the roots of the Gothic Revival to the Romantic movement of the 18th century. A major question for Clark is whether the Gothic Revival of Architecture can or should be linked to the earlier Gothic trend in literature, which preceded the Architectural revival. Clark's position is that the two are obviously linked, but that the literature did not serve as a direct inspiration for the Architecture.
Rather, the Gothic Revival in Architecture sprang from an increase in the number of people who were building "country homes" in rural England and needed design tips for those homes. This preference "trickled up" to public buildings, where a taste for Gothic influenced designs for Churches and Government buildings.
 |
| A larger than human Hello Kitty Pharaoh is the exit piece at the new museum exhibition, Hello! Exploring the Supercute World of Hello Kitty at the Japanese American Museum in Los Angeles, CA between October 11th, 2014 and April 26th, 2015. |
Published 10/25/14
Hello! Exploring the Supercute World of Hello Kitty
@ The Japanese American Museum, Los Angeles, CA.
October 11th, 2014 to April 26th, 2015
(OFFICIAL SITE)
You don't have to be a dedicated Hello! Kitty fan to dig Hello! Exploring the Supercute World of Hello Kitty, now on exhibit at The Japanese American Museum in Los Angeles, CA; but you do need twenty bucks a person for admission. For your twenty bucks you get an intense two level experience. The bottom floor has a wide selection of Hello Kitty material from 40 years of Kitty, accompanied by some extremely mind blowing explantory text that reveals that Hello Kitty is NOT a cat, but rather a small girl, with a family (including a twin sister) and that she lives outside London, England. She also has a pet cat, and the pet cat has a pet hamster AND OH MY GOD IT IS SO MIND BLOWING.
After the introduction to the family and back story, there is a room with some of the more industrial items: the Hello Kitty Humidifier, waffle maker, robot vacuum cleaner, and an actual "life size" talking robot. There is a whole wall of Hello Kitty backpacks, and then a room dedicated to the roots revival of Hello Kitty wherein Sanrio started putting Kitty in more traditionally Japanese setting.
Upstairs features a gallery of contemporary fine artists and their own take on the Hello Kitty look. This section also includes some celebrity worn apparel and an enormous statue of Hello Kitty as an Egyptian Pharaoh (above.) I wasn't overly impressed by the upstairs work, but I did appreciate the attempt to present Hello Kitty in an "adult" context in some of the works, and the display with the "adult" Hello Kitty products (including a Hello Kitty Hooters keyring and the INFAMOUS Hello Kitty vibrator.)
If you are a non-obsessive looking for a reason to go, think about the relevance of Hello Kitty fan culture as a precursor to the "shipping" culture of the internet and the wider world of pop culture and 20th century international cultural transmission across continents.
Published 11/26/14
Sincerity and Authenticity (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)
by Lionel Trilling
Published 1972
Harvard University Press
This slim volume is a must read for anyone interested in literary criticism or aesthetics. A half century after publication, the prose is still fresh and Trilling's arguments are still lucid. In discussing the two terms of the title in a literary and philosophical context, he ranges across a half millennia of thought in several different national traditions (English, French, German.)
Trilling argues that the concern with sincerity emerged as a priority in the 17th and 18th century alongside the development of Protestantism, as "plain spokenness" became a secular value, and Artists and thinkers turned against the flowery descriptives of court culture. The word sincere was first used in the 16th century, but in a physical sense, as a kind of synonym for "pure" or "unspoiled." The motivation behind supporting sincere behavior stemmed from believing that individuals were responsible for living moral lives.
A concern with authenticity developed later, as Artists and thinkers struggled with the influence of money on art. In the original discussion, authenticity was compromised by the influence of money, pure and simple. The emergence of authenticity as an aesthetic value is also tied to the rise of romanticism in the 18th century. As a concept, authenticity is more challenging for the individual than sincerity.
Sincerity simply requires one be honest and forthright in ones relations with others, don't lie, don't scheme, don't be duplicitous. On the other hand, authenticity requires a kind of inner sincerity, and is less evident to an outside viewer.
 |
| Walter Benjamin was a famous Marxist scholar AND did a radio show for children in Germany between World War I and the rise of the Nazis. |
Published 1/5/15
Radio Benjamin
by Walter Benjamin
Verso Press
Published October 28th, 2014
(BUY IT)
Walter Benjamin was a founding member of the "Frankfurt School" a group of left-leaning intellectuals who are best known for their development of "cultural marxism" a brand of socialist sought that took into account recent developments in mass media. Although their body of thought has had a huge influence on the field of "cultural studies" and inspired several generations of critics, their acceptance has been hampered by an almost comical pessimism about the negative influence of popular culture. The irony that the group of intellectuals who have done the most for defining and investigating "popular culture" themselves largely HATED popular culture has not been lost on those who would seek to dismiss the Frankfurt School into the dustbin of history.
Alone (I think) amongst the major Frankfurt School scholars(Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer are the other two of the the "big three.") Walter Benjamin had a lot of positive things to say popular culture. He is best known for his unfinished "Arcades Project" which (I think) largely celebrates the joys of the culture of the (small) market. Radio Benjamin is an important contribution to Benjamin's legacy, even though he famously thought that his radio work was beneath notice.
 |
| Detail of Judith by Gustav Klimt |
Published 4/15/15
by Eric Kandel
Random House, published 2012
The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind & Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present reads something like a 600 page New Yorker article written by a Nobel Prize Winner in neuroscience. The main project of The Age of Insight is to create linkages between the way artists and scientists thought about the unconscious in Vienna around the turn of the century with more recent developments in brain science. Kandel is not the first author to postulate that the mix of Freud, Klimt, Schiele and others represents a critical point in the transition into "Modernity."
In particular, the "art" chapters of this book very much track the ideas developed by historian Peter Gay in his books about Freud and Vienna. For a variety of reasons relating to the type of people and type of society in Vienna in the late 19th and early 20th century, there was fertile cross-pollination between art and science in a way that would become impossible with the increased professionalization of both areas later in the 20th century. Kandel does bring in material on the scientific side that extends beyond the Freud heavy analysis of Peter Gay.
His chapter on the Vienna School of Medicine and the role of Carl von Rokitansky in establishing a scientific basis for medicine after he was appointed the head in 1844 provides a much needed opening chapter for the scientific/artistic revolution to follow. Kandel is up to speed on network theory and the recently popular idea that innovation comes from the interaction of small groups of specific individuals with common interests. In late 19th and early 20th century Vienna, a transitory period where anti-Semitism was unfashionable and many restrictions were lifted on Jewish activity resulted in an influx of wealthy, sophisticated Jews into the Austrian professional and social hierarchy.
Given the lengthy, multi-part title of the book, I was a little surprised that the word "Vision" or "Visual" didn't make it into the mix, since The Age of Insight is equally about sight and vision as it is about the unconscious. After laying out a straight forward description of the expressionist art of Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka, Kandel plunges into a hundred years of neuroscience. This is the area where Kandel spent his career, and the field where he became a Nobel Prize winner...and it shows.
When it comes to the science concepts, Kandel shows an obvious command of the material. His writing isn't dumbed down, but he does a great job of avoiding jargon. Kandel's major concern is to make the case that thinkers like Freud and artists like Klimt and Schiele correctly anticipated deep truths about brain functioning that weren't proven true until the 1990s, when advanced neuroscience made it possible to fully image different parts of the brain and correlate it to particular activities.
His insights are too numerous to catalog, but for anyone with an interest in 20th century art, aesthetics, science and the overlap between those subjects, The Age of Insight is a must read.
Published 4/17/15
Radio Benjamin
Perhaps because of Benjamins objection to the material, the radio talks he gave mostly on a program for Children, which is the bulk of Radio Benjamin, have not been translated into English until the issuance of this book. The essays are about a variety of subjects, but they touch on reoccurring themes in his work, most notably when he delves into the old-timey culture of Germany. The benefit of these essays being radio broadcasts intended for children is apparent, with a level of complexity that opens up Benjamin to a non-specialist who may have only heard of Benjamin (that was me, even though I've read other members of the Frankfurt School and secondary material about Benjamin.
Published 3/29/16
Sturgill Simpson, Margo Price and the Outlaw Country Revival
I recently read an article online in something called Brooklyn Magazine, which I don't think is actually a magazine in the sense that there is no printed version. The article is called Margo Price and the Country Music Purist Problem. I'm going to be honest, I'm a little unclear on the thesis of that article, something about how the idea that Sturgill Simpson or Margo Price somehow represent "Outlaw Country" is either misguided or false. Or maybe that's not the point at all. Author Elias Light says, of the relationship between Outlaw and Mainstream country music,
"This interdependence existed in the halcyon past as well: the original Outlaws formed in opposition to the prevailing Countrypolitan sound in Nashville, a schmaltzy, string-heavy style perfected by producer Billy Sherrill with acts like George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Before he found something to resist, Willie Nelson was a good songwriter with no direction: 1969’s My Own Peculiar Way is remarkable mainly for its lack of peculiarity; there are Christmas records with more guts. And Waylon Jennings took a long time to become a honky tonk hero. In the long run, of course, country found room for both the syrupy mainstream singers and the rugged outsiders. Both are now part of the canon: the Outlaws got the cool name and rebel mystique; George Jones, treacly, over-produced ballads and all, is one of the greatest singers vocalists in popular music, regardless of genre."
The major omission of Light's analysis of the relationship between Outlaw and Mainstream Country is his failure to take into account the importance of place in the creation of Outlaw Country. The Brooklyn Magazine article argues that there is "no real difference" or that the difference is exagerated, but this is fundamentally a view of someone who doesn't know the difference between Nashville, Austin and Bakersfield. In other words, it's the view of someone who writes for Brooklyn Magazine.
Outlaw Country existed not as any aesthetic difference between music played by different country and western artists but as places outside of Nashville, mostly Austin and Bakersfield, and the constellation of institutions that were developed by artists in those places. Let's take Bakersfield. I went to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville in May of 2014, and they had an exhibit on Bakersfield and it's role in the genesis of Outlaw Country. As I said then:
After ending with an exhibit heavy on the roll of television and radio in the rise of Nashville, the second floor is anchored by an excellent exhibit on The Bakersfield Sound, a Country scene that is most typically identified as being part of the "Outlaw Country" movement. The main players are Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, and one of the revelations of the exhibit is that one woman, Bonnie Owens, married them both in succession. I wasn't surprised to learn that many of the exhibits were supplied by Buck Owens' own Crystal Palace, a combination steak house/museum that is devoted to Buck Owens (who is the creator of the Bakersfield sound.)
After ending with an exhibit heavy on the roll of television and radio in the rise of Nashville, the second floor is anchored by an excellent exhibit on The Bakersfield Sound, a Country scene that is most typically identified as being part of the "Outlaw Country" movement. The main players are Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, and one of the revelations of the exhibit is that one woman, Bonnie Owens, married them both in succession. I wasn't surprised to learn that many of the exhibits were supplied by Buck Owens' own Crystal Palace, a combination steak house/museum that is devoted to Buck Owens (who is the creator of the Bakersfield sound.)- Museum Review: Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Nashville, Tenn
This legacy is still present in the city of Bakersfield. In 2011, I went to Bakersfield and ate at the Buck Owens Crystal Palace, which is also a museum that documents the important role Bakersfield played in the development of Outlaw Country:
Dinner was an easy choice: Buck Owens Crystal Palace, a combination Steak house/Hard Rock style museum and music venue started by the legendary country hit-maker in 1995. Buck also owns a country radio station in town, which is located next door to the Crystal Palace. Our dinner at the Crystal Palace was what we expected: A great delight for every sense EXCEPT taste. I'm not complaining, but my advice if you go there is to have a snack at the Brimstone prior, order the smallest thing off the menu at Crystal Palace and "pre-drink": My Budweiser was something like 5.50, and while I'm happy to pay up, I wouldn't want to do extended drinking here. The Museum aspect is incredible, with an actual emphasis on his individual hits with the various costumery he used to promote each hit filling the rest of the display cases. Still, if you have one night in Bakersfield and miss this place, you a sucka. Call ahead for a reservation and get there after 7:30 PM for the band.
- 12 Hours in Bakersfield
The same can be said about Willie Nelson and Austin. Of course, Outlaw Country interacted with Nashville and the Countrypolitan sound, but it was physically located outside of Nashville. So what Elias Leight gets wrong in the Brooklyn Magazine article is a failure to take account on the importance of place. Treating any artistic development simply in aesthetic terms without taking into account the institutions which combine to produce the development is a common critical mistake made by people who don't get out of the city much. It's an avant garde version of the "ivory tower syndrome" where academics fail to take into account real world dynamics in their description of problems.
What is interesting about an artist like Margo Price is that she comes from within Nashville, but the production of her breakthrough LP, Midwest Farmer's Daughter, places itself outside Nashville in terms of the theme (MIDWEST Farmer's Daughter) and the actual production of the record, which took place entirely outside the Nashville cultural-industrial complex. Margo Price and her husband paid for the record itself, did not use outside writers, recorded it in three days, did not have the assistance of a label or publishing company. That is Outlaw Country right there, on it's face. Whether the music is best described as traditional or something else is entirely besides the point.
In conclusion, Elias Leight is wrong, in that there is no "problem" to be identified with the music of Margo Price or Sturgill Simpson. Country music purism is meaningless in the way that he uses the phrase in his article. Margo Price can be squarely located in the Outlaw Country tradition, even though she came from Nashville, because of the means of production of her record outside the Nashville cultural industrial complex.
Her success points to the diversification of Nashville to the point where it can support both the mainstream Nashville complex AND simultaneously support an Outlaw Country scene within it's own borders, call it East Nashville. This East Nashville Outlaw Country scene also functions as a self-supporting "indie rock" scene of the sort which exists in almost every top 50 US market.
When I talk about the Playlist as an Art Form, I am talking about the Spotify playlist. The available library of music on Spotify allows the listener to compose any kind of play list for any kind of music. Spotify itself creates play lists by genre, mood and artist. I would hypothesize that there are essentially three play lists that together constitute the entirety of available music. All music can be divided by tempo (fast, medium, slow) and length (from a few seconds to hours.) The three play lists refer to the three tempos: fast, medium and slow. In developing these three play lists, fast, medium and slow, the listener should be unlimited by time, place and style of music but allowed to sort by secondary considerations that impact the creation of the play list, from an aesthetic stand point.
To take two examples of these secondary considerations which relate to the aesthetic of the play list, the length of the track is significant. Since a play list inevitably contains dozens of songs, length of each is an issue. For my own three play list I target a track length between three minutes and ten minutes. Another secondary consideration is the distribution of sound within the length of the track. For example, a song that starts with 30 seconds of silence, or uses extremely quiet parts followed by extremely loud parts, are less suitable for play list purposes than songs that begin immediately and maintain a similar volume of loudness throughout the length of the track.
These secondary considerations sometimes rightfully impact the ability of the creator to travel, "unlimited by time, place and style of music." To give an example, the symphony is obviously a huge part of any complete play list, at any tempo. Unfortunately, the recording of large scale orchestras is made according to standards different that the world of popular music, and the contrasts in volumes is often jarring. Likewise, the ebb and swell within a typical symphonic track is far beyond that of more recently developed genres of music.
The primary instrument for the development of the three Spotify play list is their interlinked genre play lists, which are interlinked and typically contain 150 to 400 songs.
The Spotify play list for Experimental covers a huge range of artists, from Captain Beefheart to Pere Ubu. and it has 375 tracks and lasts nearly 40 hours.
Some of the genres are quite exotic, Central Asian folk, for example- only 150 songs and 10 hours long, but it shows how far the listener has to travel in time and space to really embrace the fullness of the three play lists.
The key to assembling the three play lists is to draw from the genres like taking ingredients for a recipe. Each composition will be different, the only obligation is for the listener to attempt to embrace all of it to create the fullest possible aesthetic across the three play lists. I have added my three play lists on the side bar.
Published 2/4/17
Principles of Playlist Construction: Length of Playlist
I think there are right and wrong answers when it comes to the principles of playlist construction. It's not something I would discuss in public, but if you take any of the major playlist services: Spotify, Apple Music or Tidal, the principles of the same.
The Right Length of the Playlist:
A playlist needs to be long enough so that you do not grow tired of it before you can naturally find new music for that playlist. For example, a playlist of ten songs, where each song is 3 to 4 minutes long, is too short. Amazingly enough, there are plenty of examples of Spotify ITSELF violating these obvious true/false rules. Spotify often provides playlists of pop songs that are under two hours of length. If an average song on that playlist is three and a half minutes, a ninety minute playlist would have something like 25-30 songs. No human being is going to listen to a playlist that short without tiring of it.
I would argue that the optimum length for a playlist is somewhere between 100 and 200 songs depending on the average length of each song. This should produce a playlist of 10 to 15 hours of music, which I would argue is ideal. The idea of a one to two hour playlist is itself rooted in the recording technology of the 20th century- up to and including the downloading of the mp3 album- but does not take into account the changes wrought by streaming music services.
The idea behind having several (1 to 5) 10 to 15 hour playlist is that you have an adequate selection of music to carry you through days, weeks, or even months when you have little time to identify new music to listen to. For example, a student, trying to get through finals, is likely to need a 10-15 hour playlist to help them study and prepare for test taking. Once these playlists have been developed on one device, they can then follow the user into ambient listening situations: in public, driving in cars, using headphones, etc.
Many people have all are part of the working day where they can't listen to music at all and of course there is some period where you are sleeping, so the playlists have to address major periods outside those zones. However, you don't want the playlist to narrowly tied to one specific purpose, you want it to be broad enough to encompass multiple purposes. To give another Spotify derived example, they have playlists like Morning Commute or Evening Commute- both are too narrow Commute playlists are likely to share songs with larger categories encompassing a greater range of music. As I said before, I think the three major playlists are fast, medium and slow tempos- all other topical playlists can be subsumed into one of these three.
Published 8/26/17
Crime Fiction Canon:
Edward Bunker, Richard Stark & Charle Willeford
Reviewed
No Beast So Fierce ((1972) by Edward Bunker
Cockfighter (1972)by Charles Willeford
I Was Looking for a Street (1968) by Charles Willeford
Point Blank (1963) by Richard Stark
The Outfit (1963) by Richard Stark
A co-worker of my gf- he manages the Kills and PRIESTS, among others- lent me a selection of books from his crime fiction library. It's important to be specific about the genre here- crime fiction arises out of detective fiction. Essentially it works as the dark triplet of private investigator centered detective fiction and police centered detective fiction. Stylistically, crime fiction is directly related to "hard boiled" Detective fiction as well as the cinematic language that was established by classic film noir after World War II. Essentially all crime fiction was published as "pulp fiction"- a status it shares with other genre-canon representatives in science fiction and in detective fiction.
The main difference between private investigator/police detective fiction and crime fiction is, of course, the nature of the protagonist. Crime fiction is about criminals planning and executing crimes, with a side-order of hard boiled/existentialist philosophy. There is a range- Parker, the protagonist of Richard Stark's Point Blank and The Outfit, expresses his personal philosophy entirely through his attitude towards crime.
Parker is the proto-type of the "hard man" of Hollywood action films, cold, unfeeling, amoral. Spells of liability are upset by moments like the one in Point Blank, where Parker accidentally murders an innocent, female officer worker because he wants to use her office to spy on a target. She chokes to death on the gag Parker uses- he later realizes she was asthmatic, but was unable to tell him because of the gag, which also choked her to death. Parker pauses a moment to rue the pointlessness of it all, but he's hardly troubled.
The major action in both Point Blank and The Outfit is Parker's vendetta against the mafia-stand in (called The Outfit.) Except for innocent bystanders like the woman in her office, Parker is entirely concerned with killing other criminals and Point Blank and The Outfit and it is a particularly memorable dynamic for crime fiction.
Charles Willeford is an epochal figure, represented here by his 1972 masterpiece, Cockfighter and his depression era hobo biography, I Was Looking for a Street. Willeford has a semi-canonical status as the favorite crime fiction writer of other crime fiction authors, and Cockfighter is an excellent example of his southern influenced take on crime fiction. Cockfighter is filled with realistic details to the point where the reader is inclined to take it as a kind of semi-documentary of the south east Cockfighting scene circa the late 1960's. This is a scene out of time- illegal in 40 states, but legal and sanctioned in the south east. The action of Cockfighter is enough to make an animal-rights advocate sick, made more so by the grim-matter-of-fact Willeford prose style.
Both I Was Looking for a Street and No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker both escape the narrow boundaries of "straight" crime fiction. I Was Looking for a Street is a hobo memoir by the author Cockfighter. It keeps the style of crime fiction and includes crimes, but youthful hobo type crimes. I Was Looking for a Street is a uniquely hard boiled memoir, and Willeford's description of inter war Los Angeles is haunting.
No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker would be my choice for a canonical title from this era of crime fiction. No Beast So Fierce was written by San Quentin prison inmate Edward Bunker during the mid 1950's, but was considered unpublishable until the early 1970's. This two decade delay in publication is a good explanation for why it remains a "cult" book in 2017. There is a strong argument for canonical status. First, there is the actual merit of the work, which surpasses the "executing a heist" mode of storytelling for a deeper look at a man trying to make a go of it after release from prison. Second, there is it's post-publication history as a stylistic reference point for several generations of Hollywood action films. Bunker memorably portrayed Mr. Blue in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. He was also the inspiration for the Jon Voight character in Heat, and the central heist of Heat bears a strong resemblance to the denouement of No Beast So Fierce. Finally there is the author himself, who acted in multiple films besides Reservoir Dogs up until his death.
No Beast So Fierce has a solid case for canon status and the rest make for pleasant, easy reading on a summer day.
 |
| A Note Taking cabinet from the late Middle Ages. Several of these were created for scholars to keep track of information- none remain. The note taking cabinet is a pre-modern example of the intersection of information and "technology." Here, the technology is the cabinet. |
Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (2010)
by Ann M. Blair
Yale University Press
Here are some of the problems with reading academic subjects like history or philosophy:
1. Much of it is written for specialists, by specialists, and published in journals which are hard to get, even in the internet era.
2. Published books are likely to lag a year or two behind the current discussion between specialists because it exists outside of the conference/journal specialist circuit.
3. When those books are published, they are like to be more expensive than a work of fiction because usually they are printed by specialist, academic publishing houses who make fewer books.
So, identifying the right book in an academic subject is tough- you want something that isn't just for specialist, or of interest to specialist, and on the other hand, you don't want crap. So much non-fiction- I'm thinking of genres like self-help or business tips, is just unadulterated garbage with nary a pretense towards merit. You want an other with a light touch, one confident enough in the subject matter to write a book for general readers without sacrificing the accuracy inherent in academic non-fiction.
The best way to judge is the publishing house- for subjects like history or philosophy, for example. Oxford University, Cambridge University, Harvard, Yale and then the second tier US Publishers- University of California, John Hopkins, Princeton, etc. Commercial publishers can be counted on to publish readable books, but whether they are well written and annotated is unpredictable.
So, the first thing to note about Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age is that is a hit, written by a tenured Professor of History at Harvard University- like right now- as I write this. The best academic non-fiction writing is a kind of alchemy of knowledge- authors gather a million sources that you will never read and create a compelling 300-500 page book that totally revises your opinion about the subject. Here, the opinion that she seeks to revise is the truism that a consequence of the information age is to feel overwhelmed by something called "information overload."
This hypothesis, which is so much a part of conventional wisdom that I doubt you could find anyone to disagree with it if you were trying, is that we are currently overwhelmed by "too much information," typically with a reference to the sheer amount of some information related product- books, television shows, movies. The idea is that only NOW can we "not keep up."
This, Blair persuasively argues, is not, and never has been the case. In fact, the idea of "too much information" is as old as the book itself- and actually have been an opinion that came in to existence the same time as WRITING itself. Blair coins (I think) a term, "info lust" to describe the attitude of certain groups towards the acquisition of knowledge. Info lust is hardly a modern affliction. Like the idea of information overload, Blair shows that as soon as there were manuscripts to acquire, people were greedy to possess them.
In Blair's opinion, the advent of the printing press, while important, did not create any new attitudes towards information, information management and information acquisition, it merely amplified trends that were already present among the audience for printed matter. Much of the meat of Blair's argument concerns the extensive steps that scholars and priests took in the high middle ages to organize the information that they needed. This organization- the most common sort is alphabetical- is not something that simply "always was" - rather it was developed by scholars over time.
A thousand years before people were searching on the internet, they were literally deciding that organizing information by alphabet and subject matter would be useful for readers. Like all first rate scholars, Blair does not elaborate into what she thinks all this means, except for the major thesis that in no way is "information overload" something specific to the internet era. I'm sure it's the kind of book that one would refer to over decades.
Weimar on the Pacific:
German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism (2007)
by Edward Bahr
University of California Press
I like the University of California Press, but I don't love it. It's respectable, particularly when it comes to titles about California but almost everything I read from there is intended for specialists, general readers need not apply. Such is the case with the very interesting Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism, a thorough treatment of the nuts and bolts of the writing and activities of German exiles like Horkheimer and Adorno, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht and others- including non-exile immigrants like architects Neutra and Schindler.
The German exile artists were, to a man, west-siders. Bahr provides a useful list of addresses where the exiles lived, none are further east then Brentwood. As Bahr makes clear, the "Los Angeles" that these leftist intellectuals experienced was the west side. He grounds the book in the study of German "exile literature" and Weimar on the Pacific functions more as a work of literary criticism than the social history one might prefer (though Bahr doesn't skirt concrete details like the address and description of their homes.) With the exception of Thomas Mann, who had already won a Nobel Prize for Literature, none of the profiled exiles were particularly famous or wealthy during their time in Southern California.
Bertolt Brecht comes off as the most entertaining of the big four: Horkheimer, Adorno, Brecht and Thomas Mann. He has an austere reputation, and although he didn't coin the term "culture industry" like Horkheimer and Adorno, he was well aware of their work. Brecht did things like write poetry complaining about the Southern California movie industry. All except Mann had a hugely negative view about the United States. Bahr points out lengthy efforts by Horkheimer and Adorno to equate the market capitalism of America with Nazi Germany. Perhaps they were just anticipating the rise of Donald Trump, but up until last year it seemed like a strange comparison.
There are many moments, large and small, that make for entertaining reading, but there is also much discussion of the actual works that were written while the exiles were in residence. Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann gets particularly lengthy treatment- which is useful for a difficult to understand book, but not really what I was looking for in terms of the social history angle.
This book also has the aforementioned list of addresses and a professional grade bibliography for anyone interested in the subject.
Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (1993)
by Mark Rose
Princeton University Press/Oxford University Press
One of the major things I've learned in the last decade are the many ways that insubstantial, "intellectual property" can be worth as much, if not more, than the real thing (property). The details of the beginnings of treating intellectual property similar to real property is not "the way it has always been." Quite the opposite. Up until the 18th century, artists typically created at the request of royalty or clergy, and any resulting property rights from such works were granted as a "privilege." In other words, you write an Opera for King Charles and he gives you a scroll giving you the exclusive rights to print copies of the score for some period of time.
This was just the way things were until the 18th century, specifically, the 18th century as experienced by the English/Scottish/Irish book selling trade, which was undergoing a rapid expansion as the audience for printed matter grew by leaps and bounds. This set off a struggle over who could print what- typically quite independently of the authors themselves, who would usually simply sell their right in their own work to a publisher for a small sum.
Basically there were the existing Publishers, working under a royal grant that pre-dated the 18th century and stretched by to the London Stationers guild. On the other side, there were rogue publishers- often located in Ireland and Scotland, who would churn out cheaper editions of current titles, and then sell them for much less than the price set by the London based publishers. The London Publishers wanted a tool that allowed them to stop this trade, and that led to the introduction of a Copyright law.
The major issue at the time is whether the copyright would be forever or for a fixed term- and the victory of the fixed terms- typically "the life of the artist" plus some fixed term of years- was a victory for the outsiders. It is also the way copyright continues to function until this day. Rose also points out how much the copyright idea of the author coincides with the 18th century cult of Shakespeare, who became the ideal romantic Artist, despite the fact- as Rose points out- he himself was nothing like the ideal of the Romantic artist- taking all of his plots, and some of his actual language from other sources.
Rose points out that these assumptions about the nature of authorship (a Romantic, creative ideal) remain embedded in the legal system for copyright, even as literary theory has moved far, far beyond 18th century Romantic ideals about artistic creation
Published 9/19/17
American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street (2014)
by Paula Rabinowitz
Princeton University Press/ Princeton and Oxford
If you wanted a capsule summary of 20th century aesthetics, you'd start with the pre-modern "high vs. low culture," where "high culture" is "good" and "low culture is "bad." From there you move into Modernism- High Modernism- in the early 20th century. Modernism had a deep impact on 20th century life and it was a movement driven by artists, rather than academics. Modernism was subject to a virulent critique by artists and academics, particularly in Germany and France, who produced dueling schools of what might be considered "post-modern" aesthetics- the Germans, with the Frankfurt School, produced a critique of the "culture industry" and the resulting products, while the French produced a critique that called into question the ideas at the heart of aesthetics- what is an artist? what is art? who does art serve? These two dueling philosophies fought it out in American Philosophy and Literature departments all over the Western world, where the French wing dominated academic discourse for decades. Most recently however, the highly specialized French vocabulary used to describe art has been largely deposed by fans of the Frankfurt School, and this shift has meant that specialist literature in the fields of art, literature and philosophy have become more accessible to a general audience, because it's just easier to understand.
Rabinowitz persuasively argues her position that the ideas of Modernism were largely introduced to a popular American audience via the medium of of pulp paperbacks- not just via genre fiction, but also through literary fiction and non-fiction. She explores these subjects, as well as the way that pulp indiscriminately mingled high and low culture- which is certainly a point that was largely missed both at the time discussed- early to mid 20th century, and by the French post-modernists, who were largely uninterested in actually, like, doing research instead of making air castles of theory. There are numerous high points, but American Pulp reads more like a bunch of papers grouped together than a stand alone work. She comes close, at times, to articulating a kind of unified field theory of pulp and pulping, but like a good Academic, she stops short of making bold and outrageous claims.
She also cultivated a reputation for bookishness. It’s impossible to read a single page about Desmond without someone (often herself) mentioning Freud and Nietzsche, and that she had read both authors. Timothy Lefler, the author of Mabel Normand: The Life and Career of a Hollywood Madcap seems like a capable “super fan” type, he acknowledges some of the darkness surrounding Normand (because how can you not) but steers away from speculation, let alone any independent research.
 |
| William Desmond Taylor, actor, director..famous Hollywood murder victim. |
Published 1/23/18
The Story Behind the Unsolved Murder of Hollywood Director William Desmond Taylor (1990)
by Robert Giroux
The author of A Deed of Death: The Story Behind the Unsolved Murder of Hollyood Director William Desmond Taylor is none other than THE Robert Giroux, of the publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Giroux was known for being the top literary editor over the court of his career, where he edited the work of seven Nobel Prize in Literature winners and also edited important books like On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
And I guess, when he retired he wrote this book about one of Hollywood's most famous unsolved murder mysteries, an early episode in the toxic mix of fame, power and debauchery which would later coalesce under the guise of "tabloid culture." Taylor was one of silent-era Hollywood's best known directors and at the time of his death he was playing a leading role in the negotiated introduction of censor ship into Hollywood under the Hayes Act.
I read about this murder in the book I just read about Mabel Normand. Normand was the last person to see Taylor alive, and Taylor, it was rumored, was obsessed with "rescuing" Mabel from the evils of drug addiction. Despite his thorough investigation into the facts, Giroux does nothing to combat the perception of Taylor as a famous Hollywood good guy who was likely murdered for his interference with the Hollywood drug trade.
Giroux ultimately concludes that Taylor fell victim to a "hit man" and that the perpetrators, likely Hollywood drug dealers, were protected from investigation by corrupt law enforcement.
Published 7/20/18
Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World
by Josh Freeman
Published February 2018
W.W. Norton
Any thorough understanding of day-to-day economic news requires a background in the industrial revolution, its causes and effects, the basic dates involved, places, some personalities. Historians, Economists and (especially) economic historians have all contributed to the body of knowledge surrounding the industrial revolution, although cutting edge dialogue is often focused on the semantics of the terms involved (was there one Industrial Revolution or were there several interrelated phenomenons interacting over time?) and less on developing themes that might interest a more general audience.
Enter the the writers and artists who are interested in the aesthetics of the industrial revolution. Examples are varied and numerous, from Russian and Italian futurists of the early 20th century, to the large format factory and industrial site photography of Edward Burtynsky. Less common are those who have sought to link the economic historic view to the aesthetic impact, which is why Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World is interesting, because Freeman is attempting to link the two.
Freeman is clearly writing for a general interest audience. Each chapter is like a summary of a different related subject, often an individual- Henry Ford, Margaret Bourke White and architect Louis Kahn each get their own mini-biography. These chapters give way to two larger subjects near the end of the books: the industrial revolution in Communist Russia (which was hugely influenced by American industrialists, if you didn't know that already) and a concluding chapter on the modern factory system of China and South Asia. Since I read this book, I read an article about how the largest factory in the world just opened in India.
One of the major themes of Behemoth is that the size of factories gives rises to oppositional forces, particularly the organization of labor forces at large sites, that reduce the cost savings and favor dispersal, rather than concentration, of factory operations. This observation is perhaps obvious to those who either have directly experienced the phenomenon in places like the American mid-west or those who have studied the subject in school, but for the general reader Behemoth is a welcome introduction to the subject.
 |
| Judith, a painting by Gustav Klimt, plays a prominent role in the exegesis of Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel in his book, The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain |
Published 10/16/18
The Age of Insight:
The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain -
From Vienna 1900 to the Present (2012)
by Eric Kandel
Published by Random House
No country lost more artistic and intellectual firepower as a consequence of Nazism than Austria. As a result, it can be difficult to visualize the degree to which Austria was a thriving, vibrant, cosmopolitan place between the end of the 19th century and the rise of the Nazis. The elements of that fluorescent period in Viennese intellectual history remain familiar subjects today: Freud and the invention of modern psychiatry and the artists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Less familiar are secondary figures like author Arthur Schnitzler, who plays an outsize role in the intellectual history of this period but is less of a popular figure and Oscar Kokoschka- a painter who I'd never heard of before this book, but who plays an equal role with Schiele and Klimt in the mind of Kandel. Kandel, it should be noted, is a Nobel Prize (2000, Psychology or Medicine for work on memory storage in the brain.) The Age of Insight presents a double work of synthesis, first it provides an updated briefing on the key artistic figures: Freud, Schiele, Klimt, and another half dozen lesser known luminaries. Second, it gives an up to date analysis of what science knows about the brain and the perception and appreciation of art.
It might seem obscure, but the thesis that turn of the century in Vienna was a key point in the evolution of the relationship between artist and audience also educates broadly about the constituent elements- the artists and the ways that audiences look at art. Kandel points out that artists like Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka intuitively grasped these ideas in ways that were often more sophisticated than their scientific counter parts, and that if you go back and re evaluate these individuals in light of scientific knowledge about the brain and art circa 2012, it is easy to see how very avant garde they were.
Unfortunately, the scientific parts are technically challenging, and the artist biographies aren't pathbreaking. For example, Kandel's discussion of Freud draws heavily/entirely from the corpus of Freud scholar and fellow Viennese enthusiast Peter Gay. The punchline, if a reader will permit a "spoiler" in the context of a review of a 700 page work of nonfiction published six years ago, is that brain science has shown a demonstrable gap between thought and action- a gap- between when one perceives a phenomenon and when one can act on the perception. That gap is human consciousness and it is that magic moment that great artists of this period targeted.
Instagram
No comments:
Post a Comment