TINA MODOTTI, VIEWER AND VIEWED
Devotees of communism evoke a grim picture of stern and ascetic men and women in sparsely furnished rooms, free of bourgeois luxuries. And then there is the glamorous Tina Modotti, an Italian photographer and political revolutionary. An exhibition of 35 of her photographs now on at New York's Throckmorton Fine Art gallery, "Tina Modotti: Under the Mexican Sky", recalls the life and talent of this rare seductress.
Modotti was 16 when she left Italy for California, where she began her transformation from factory worker to bohemian ingénue. In Los Angeles, she met and modelled for Edward Weston, a pioneer of photography, who soon became her lover and mentor. He left his wife to be with Modotti, and in the early 1920s they ventured to Mexico, a country then brimming with artistic and political excitement.
Still reeling from a decade-long revolution, Mexico's politics were volatile. Painters and muralists such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros had joined with a host of radicalised expatriates to help lead the struggle for political and social reform. Modotti embraced this fusion of art and politics, and collaborated with the muralists in creating work with political intent. But Weston had little time for art in the service of politics. He rejected what he described as “too much sentimentality over the proletariat. Too much deification of the Indian.”
Taken between 1923 and 1930, Modotti’s sepia-tinted portraits of Mexican workers and expatriate revolutionaries are indeed romantic—beautiful, sturdy and idealistic. Yet we get the sense that her subjects aren't merely symbols—vacant and projection-ready—but real people. These photographs feel intimate and real. read more »
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THE FEED: FEB 8TH
Today's links:
An infuriating case for Mr Good Enough (Salon)
The Stonehenge saga (Guardian)
George Packer v Twitter (New Yorker)
The e-book price experiment (Wired)
Today's quote:
"I’m starting to wonder if pop culture is in its dying days, because everyone is able to customize their own lives with the images they want to see and the words they want to read and the music they listen to. You don’t have the broader trends like you used to." ~ Douglas Coupland, interviewed by Deborah Solomon (New York Times Magazine)
(Via The Economist)
Picture credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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THE Q&A: ROB WALKER, CONSUMER, THINGAMABOB CONNOISSEUR
Remember burying a time-capsule as a kid? These care packages to our future selves usually included a letter and any valuable possessions we could bear to part with: stickers, a mood ring, a key chain. How much would you pay for that mossy stuff now, and the letter explaining them? How much would those objects be worth to a stranger? The value of such things is complicated, and largely subjective. This is why I still have my Breyer horse collection, and why I would pay real money to have any of those time-capsules back. read more »
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THE FEED: FEB 5TH
Today's links:
Alan Lomax's Haiti (WSJ)
The dying market for classical music (New Yorker)
Kids don't tweet (Washington Post)
Today's quote:
"I had specific instructions. I had been given, along with my first batch of letters, a yellowing carbon of a standard form letter…At first, I dutifully retyped this form, over and over again, uncomfortably scrawling my own name at the bottom, as instructed, then tossing the letters in the trash, also per office protocol. But as the months wore on, I found myself increasingly unable to ignore the raw emotion of the letters." ~ Joanna Smith Rakoff, "My adventures answering J.D. Salinger's mail" (Slate)
(Via The Economist)
Picture credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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300 YEARS OF MEISSEN
"What comes to your mind when you think of Meissen porcelain?" asked Christian Kurtzke, the young, charismatic CEO of the Meissen porcelain manufactory near Dresden. Addressing a group of journalists on the eve of the company's 300th anniversary celebrations, he swiftly answered his own question: prim cups and plates covered in a flowery blue pattern (ie, the Blue Onion design, also known as Zwiebelmuster or "Saxon design", which the company invented in 1739). When I asked my son, his reply was more direct: "Porcelain? For grandmothers."
The formula for the first European hard porcelain was founded in January 1708 by a team of chemists and mining experts headed by Johann Friedrich Böttger working for the King of Poland, the Electoral Prince of Saxony. They were commanded to recreate what the Chinese had originated centuries before. The Meissen Porcelain Manufactory opened its doors on January 23rd 1710, and has since survived several wars, various owners, communism and financial crises. (The latest hasn't had too dramatic effect on Meissen's bottom line, Kurtzke insists, even though the export market to Russia collapsed by two thirds.)
Three centuries on, the state-owned Meissen factory employs 800 skilled workers-potters, designers, painters-and continues to mine its own kaolin, quartz and feldspar. The formulas for its porcelain and paints remain top secret. Meissen table services are sold in limited editions, and its figurines are still popular gifts (the pug is the big hit among British customers; Italians prefer the harlequins). read more »
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THE FEED: FEB 4TH
Today's links:
James Rosenquist's lessons for life and art (More Intelligent Life)
In defence of Tiger, the "sex addict" (Slate)
Sotheby's sells Giacometti for record $104.3m (Wall Street Journal)
The neuroscience of humour (New Scientist)
Today's quote:
"It’s time for journalists to stop participating in their own exploitation by working for a pittance – or, worse, giving away their valuable services for free... The reason is simple: If they don’t put a value on what they do, then no one else will, either." ~ Reflections of a Newsosaur, "Stop the exploitation of journalists"
(Via The Economist)
Picture credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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THE Q&A: DAN CHIASSON, POET
Dan Chiasson’s poetry is “unsettled and unsettling,” wrote Kay Ryan in the New York Times. “So much in Chiasson is uncomfortable and misproportioned. So much suffers. At the same time, his poetry is mischievous and meant to be understood playfully.” Ryan made those observations in 2005, just after the release of Chiasson’s second collection of poetry, “Natural History”. But her description remains apt. In “Where’s the Moon, There’s the Moon”, published by Knopf on February 2nd (and out in Britain later this year), Chiasson applies his analytical, nervous, literary and often playful sensibility to the poignancy of parenthood.
"It's very easy to identify with your child," Chiasson says over the phone from his home in Sudbury, Massachusetts. "It's also very weird because there are things about your child that you'll envy in a way. So there's a split consciousness. You can see yourself as the child and you can see yourself as the father."
In new poems, such as "Man and Derailment" and the multi-part "Swifts", Chiasson juxtaposes childhood memories of his own father with a decidedly adult consciousness. (In the former, a man takes his son to a ravine to view a train crash; the child internalises the scene by wondering "how he would remember the scene / and, once he knew his father better, later, / and later, knew himself better, what it would mean.") read more »
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A TEMPESTUOUS TOLSTOY BIOPIC
The director Michael Hoffman is a master at embellishing stories with period trappings; he has proved as much with films like "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Restoration". "The Last Station", based upon Jay Parini’s 1990 biographical novel of the same name, recounts the final, tempestuous months of the life of Leo Tolstoy, incarnated on screen by Christopher Plummer. Hoffman endows this adaptation with misty steppes, waxed moustaches, peasants bundled in swaths of linen and an ample supply of those droshkies without which no character from any of Tolstoy’s own novels would have gotten very far.
Trappings aside, the plot itself is a knotted one, with almost enough characters to warrant one of those genealogical charts that Tolstoy himself so often provided. We gain access to the writer’s private life by way of Valentin Bulgakov, a naïve young scholar (played by a baby-faced James McAvoy), who is hired on as Tolstoy’s secretary. In contrast with Valentin’s vulnerability (he’s a virgin with a nervous cough), Tolstoy appears luminous, his greatness blinding, complete with a biblical white beard and gauzy robes. Upon arrival at the estate, Valentin is immediately pulled into a venomous struggle between Tolstoy’s wife, Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren), and the author's scheming disciple, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti). The two vie for the rights to Tolstoy’s work: the countess is wary of seeming greedy as she grasps for her inheritance, while Vladimir, a commune leader, conspires to transform Tolstoy into an icon. read more »
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THE FEED: FEB 3RD
Today's links:
But wait: art is recession proof (The New Republic)
Is "Fela!" on Broadway a bit minstrelsy? (The New York Times)
Phew, content is king (Wired)
Today's quote:
"My day starts at 8 in the morning. I have meetings through the day into the evening and very often dinners and benefits at night. This is nonstop. You go for every half hour, every 15 minutes, from one curator coming in to talk about an exhibition or an acquisition to one or two people discussing a donor issue or a fund-raising issue... It's like a marathon." ~ Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on his first year (Wall Street Journal)
(Via The Economist)
Picture credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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RAE OF LIGHT
When a pop star dies an untimely death, the audience knows what to do: weep, gnash teeth, and buy their records. We’ve had too much practice, most recently with Michael Jackson and Stephen Gately. But when a star is bereaved, there are no conventions to fall back on.
Corinne Bailey Rae was still basking in the success of her debut album, which sold an estimated 4m copies and won no fewer than ten awards, when she lost her husband, the jazz saxophonist Jason Rae, to a suspected overdose. That was nearly two years ago. The difficult second album could have become impossible, but here she is returning with “The Sea”. Her palette has moved on from light retro soul to something darker and heavier, drawing on her background in a hard rock band. But you know instantly that it’s her, because the songs are still lit up by that radiant voice: gentle, involving, never overdone. It could become the template we need for converting grief into pleasure.
"The Sea" (Virgin) by Corinne Bailey Rae, out now
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