Delibes is Da Best (Sort of)

I almost never go to ballet. Fundamentally, it's pantomime set to music, and I have little use for pantomime (though yes, I played charades a few times when I was young).

But there is something I do like about ballet: the music. One of my favorite ballets music-wise is Coppélia by Léo Delibes. I'm especially fond of the mazurka from the first act.

My wife wanted to see Coppélia, so we went last Sunday even though I was worried about going. Why was I worried? I was afraid that viewing the dancing might interfere with future enjoyment of the music that heretofore had no images associated with it. I worried that the next time I heard Coppélia, I'd conjure up my memory of the dancing and scenery and that would dilute the music's impact.

In any case I was committed. We went, we sat through it. We returned home. The house is disrupted due to painting, so I haven't located and played my Coppélia CD, but my guess is that I'm not likely to get much image pollution thanks in part to the ballet's length.

The production was one created by the Pacific Northwest Ballet featuring the choreography of George Balanchine. So it could be expected to be a good version of Coppélia, and probably was. (I have no background for judging which ballet productions are excellent as opposed to being just average. Same goes for opera.)

My reactions?

I liked the first act which takes place in a town square in Galicia, the part of Poland ruled by Austria-Hungary. It has most of the best music. That compensated for a fair amount of activity that didn't advance the plot (such as it was). The second act, set in the digs of toymaker Coppélius, was just okay. The third act, a town festival, was a dud so far as I was concerned. It was essentially a string of set-piece dances that were probably fine for ballet fans, but lacked any plot advancement to hold my interest.

The fault, if I can call it that, lies in the "book" of the ballet that allowed the third act to be what it was. Delibes' music for the act wasn't all that great either -- nothing like the great stuff in the first act.

Given that I'm way, way out of my league when it comes to ballet, take my comments with as much salt as you can find.

Taurus Style: Alignment and Surfaces

And just what is that dinky side crease doing on that 2010 Ford Taurus pictured below?

2010 Ford Taurus

It's that little horizontal dash along the side above and to the right of the rear wheel well. It's actually a time-honored automobile styling element: the interrupted line. The concept is to have a line continuing across a surface of a car to provide visual continuity and, usually, the optical effects of lengthening and/or lowering the appearance of the vehicle.

What is usually avoided are out-of-alignment lines. These tend to kill any attempt to lengthen or lower the appearance and usually make the design seem somewhat incoherent.

First, Let me add two more views so that we have a better sense of the styling before I deal with what's wrong with the interrupted line along the side of the new Taurus.


Side view

Three-quarter rear view

The side view shows the continuation of the interrupted line more clearly. It begins at a tiny, current-styling-cliche vent to the upper-right of the front wheel well and ends a few inches from the tail light housing. The interruption is caused by a subtle body side flare related to the raised rear wheel well surrounds. Had the flare been steeper and narrower, the line would not have been interrupted.

The problem? The rear continuation is too short to be read as the extension of the main line. Solution? One solution would be to alter that shaping of the wheel well flare so that the leading segment of the line would end two or three inches farther back and the continuation would start a similar distance farther forward. Another would be to leave the flare alone and extend the continuation line to the tail light. But that would not align with the tail light housing which, in turn, would need modification to create the alignment.

What the Taurus now has is this small, seemingly isolated crease that simply clutters the appearance of the car.

Now look at the rear 3/4 view. Here, aside from convex-concave elements along the lower part of the bumper panel that extend around to the sides, there is no continuation with side styling elements. Such continuation is less vital because we are dealing with different body planes, so a certain amount of discontinuity can be tolerated. Nevertheless, I think the Taurus could use a bit more integration here.

Note the positions of the top and bottom edges of the tail light housings along with the horizontal chrome strip on the trunk. None align with the side accent we've been discussing, and I think that at least one of these should do so. Why? Because cars aren't always seen purely from the front, sides or rear. Usually we view them from other than a 90-degree angle from a surface, so a certain amount of visual integration is useful. The Taurus is simply under-integrated at the rear.

The same might be said for the front which, just possibly aside from the lower lip of the opening below the headlamp housing and its relationship to the raised panel below the doors along the side, there is no continuation. Note especially the lack of alignment between the top line of the headlamp housing and the side crease. They are almost aligned, but not quite -- and that adds to the styling confusion. (Actually, the lower line of the housing is closer in alignment to the side crease, but its upward kick at the rear sends the viewer's eye off in a different direction. Sigh.)

The 2011 Tauruses will be coming off the assembly lines in the next month or so, and it will be interesting to learn if Ford was willing to invest some money to tidy up Taurus styling.

The City that Almost Became

It grew like fury along with the automobile industry. Then it stopped in the Crash of 1929 before it had fully gelled.

I'm speaking of Detroit.

Towards the end of the 1920s some of the largest skyscrapers in the country were being built. Not far away was an art museum, a major library and a concert hall. Farther out along Woodward Avenue was a secondary office complex, the home of General Motors. But the Great Depression halted the formation of a central urban structure along Woodward. What there is, 80 years later, are the scattered bits of what might have been a truly great city.

In this post I want to focus on those skyscrapers that are unknown to all but Detroiters and architecture buffs. In particular, I'm featuring the skyscraper style dominant from around 1925 till the very early 1930s, when construction essentially ceased. (An exception was New York's Radio City that, thanks to Rockefeller money, carried that style through the decade.)

Let's take a look:


Downtown Detroit from an autogyro - 1931

First National Building - 1930

Book Tower - 1926

Guardian Building - 1929

David Stott Building - 1929

Fisher Building - 1928

Penobscot Building - 1928


Four of the six buildings shown were completed in 1928 and 1929 so it's possible that there would have been a glut of office space for a few years, absent the Depression. But if 1929 had brought simply an ordinary recession (which was possible, absent anti-trade legislation) the Woodward corridor would have continued its growth during the 30s. Skyscraper architecture probably would have tended toward the Moderne, following in the path of New York's new Daily News and McGraw-Hill buildings.

Lovis Corinth, Before and After

For a case in point about the notion that "timing is everything," consider the German painter Lovis Corinth (1858-1925 -- Wikipedia entry here).

He suffered a stroke 11 December 1911 at age 53. Before the stroke, his paintings tended to be bold and sometimes outrageous in terms of subject matter. Afterward, stylistically they appeared more "modern" and the subjects were more conventional.

Modernism had been making inroads in the painting scene, strongly in the previous decade. So by the time Corinth had recovered enough to resume work, his new style was acceptable -- something that would not have been the case 50 years earlier.

This recent book was created in conjunction with an exhibit in Vienna's Belvedere museum, possessor of ten paintings by Corinth. One chapter deals with Corinth's stroke and its likely effect on his ability to paint. Apparently some observers believe that he would have changed in style to follow the new, modernist trend. But the chapter's author, Hansjörg Bäzner, a medical specialist, presents evidence that Corinth indeed was impaired, especially for the first few years of his recovery.

The name "Lovis" is unusual, and it happens that it was not his given name, but one he assumed later. His actual name is Franz Heinrich Louis Corinth. Where did "Lovis" come from? I haven't been able to find out from sources handy to me, though I understand that he wrote autobiographical works which might offer an explanation. So let me propose an hypothesis. In Latin, the letter "U" was often carved as "V" and "v"s were pronounced as "u" or "w." So it's possible that Corinth simply took his given name "Louis" and substituted a Roman "v" for the "u" for something distinctive. And had he been Swedish, the change in letter wouldn't have altered the pronunciation much.

To illustrate the change in Corinth's style, I present some self-portraits from before and after the stroke. The painting at the top of this article is his Salome for 1900 that helped launch his career in Berlin.


Self-Portrait with skull - 1896
Corinth was a modernist even in pre-stroke times when it came to subjects. Inclusion of the skull might have been Symbolic -- or perhaps simply an attention-getting ploy.

Self-Portrait with Model - 1903
The same might be said for this unusual pose.

Self-Portrait in armor - 1911
Completed the same year as his stroke, this painting shows little sign of modernist style.

Self-Portrait - 1918
This was done six or seven years after the stroke, by which time he had recovered considerably, but not fully. Note the bushy eyebrows and compare to those of the executioner in Salome, above. Was Salome's executioner a sly self-portrait?

Self-Portrait - 1924
One of Corinth's last self-portraits.


[text cross-posted at 2Blowhards]

The Salvador Takes on St. Paul

There are actually times when Salvador Dalí's statements should be taken seriously. More accurately, taken as intended to be serious.

Such, I believe, is his take on Paul Cézanne, a painter taken in great seriousness by art historians as well as modernist painters in his own time and thereafter.

The safe stance for Dalí would have been to go along with the crowd. But then, Dalí thrived on controversy and grandstanding, which is why it can be tricky trying to separate outrageous statements from those that truly reflected his mind.

However, Dalí went after Cézanne on more than one occasion, which is why I'm inclined to think he really had it in for Aix-en-Provence's alternate claim to fame besides the Cours Mirabeau.

For instance, on pages 51 and 53 of the Dover edition of Dalí on Modern Art, he states:

Paul Cézanne -- one of the most marvelously reactionary painters of all time -- was also one of the most "imperialistic," since he wanted to redo Poussin "from nature".... It is unfortunate that his Apollonian impulse was betrayed by his fatal clumsiness. His awkwardness can be compared only to the delirious virtuosity of Velasquez. It should have been Velasquez who, like Bonaparte, poured the anarchy of orgiac painting into the Caesarian empire of forms, adding that notion of discontinuous nature that Poussin lacked.

But, however touching it may be, never did Cézanne succeed in painting a single round apple capable of holding -- monarchically -- the five regular [geometrical] bodies within its absolute volume.

The dithyrambic critics, completely in line with the mediocrity of Cézannian paintings, were only able to set up as categorical imperatives the catastrophic deficiencies, clumsinesses and awkwardnesses of the master. Before this total rout of means of expression it was believed that a step had been taken toward the liberation of pictorial technique.

And on pages 15-16 of his 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship [Dover, again], he says:

"Post -Cézannism" has erected into a system every one of the clumsinesses and deficiencies of Cézanne and painted square mile after square mile of canvasses with these defects. The defects of Cézanne, in his fundamentally honest character, were often consequences of his very virtues; but defects are never virtues! I can imagine the profound melancholy of the master of Aix-en-Provence, Paul Cézanne, when after having struggled so long to build a well-constructed apple on his canvas, possessed like a demon by the problem of relief, he had succeeded on the contrary only in painting it concave! And instead of keeping, as was his ambition, the "intact continuity" of the surface of his canvas, without making any concession to the illusory friviolities of verisimilitude, he finds himself in the end with a canvas frightfully lacking in consistency and filled with holes! With each new apple there is a new hole! Which, as the immortal Michel de Montaigne said in another connection, "chier dans le panier et se le mettre sur la tête."

I never understood Cézanne and so take some comfort that my position is supported, even if by somewhat odd company.

[Cross-posted at 2Blowhards.]

Death of a Directive

The Weekly Standard is a journal of politics and political opinion, though it does retain space for art and book reviews. The current (31 May 2010) issue veers off-character in that it contains an unusually long (for the magazine) article about the Barnes collection that's on its way from Merion, PA to downtown Philadelphia. It's "No Museum Left Behind" by Lance Esplund, and a link is here.

I'm puzzled why the article even appeared in The Weekly Standard, given that's it's neither a political piece nor a book review. But it got published and it's worthy of comment.

Being long, it manages to touch on several themes. One deals with Albert Barnes and his take on art, especially the progression of traditional painting to modernism via French Impressionism. He tended to consider all of this part of a greater whole rather than distinct aspects, according to the article. This is why he mixed paintings of different vintages on the walls of his museum.

Esplund also discusses Impressionist and modernist artists -- Cézanne, Matisse and Renoir especially -- at some length.

Then he reacts in horror to the moving of the collection from the suburbs to Franklin Parkway -- this in total contradiction to Barnes' wishes and directives. To me, this is a regrettable fate suffered by most charitable foundations -- a conservative or traditionalist sets aside money that eventually funds projects that would totally repel him (think Ford Foundation, Pew, etc.).

Finally, Esplund riffs on what he considers the self-destruction of art museums in their seeming goal of maximizing attendance.

So many themes are touched on, I find it hard to comment. I'll note that I lived in the Philadelphia area for the better part of three years while at Dear Old Penn and knew of the Barnes collection. At the time (late 60s) it was difficult for people to view the collection; limited numbers allowed in, red tape of other sorts perhaps -- I forget. In any case, I had dropped my interest in art to the level that visiting the Merion facility seemed more trouble than worth, and I never went there.

I do think that putting the collection near downtown Philly makes the art far more accessible than it was. On the other hand, I don't like the business of contradicting the intent of the benefactor. So, on balance, I think the move is a mistake though I'm not as upset about it as Esplund seems to be.

The world is filled with ambiguous situations, isn't it?

[Cross-posted at 2 Blowhards]

Used Art Books

I seldom buy used books. My book-buying sweet-spot is a remaindered book at a nice discount from the original suggested price. Still, from time to time I feel that I really need to possess a book that's been out of print so long that new copies are non-existent and the chance of a new edition seems close to nil.

Examples are the two editions of Frank Wootton's "How to Draw Cars" from the early 1950s. I never bought them when I was young, finally indulging myself last year with used copies shipped from Australia and England.

This was fine because the Wootton books were illustrated in black-and-white. Old books about painting are another matter because paintings are in color and it's important for apprentice-painter me to view another artist's color usage as accurately as possible. The problem here is that color reproductions from 15-20 years ago and before had what I consider iffy quality.

This means that while I can locate on the Internet some pre-1990 books about obscure artists that interest me, I'm not willing to buy them because I'm unsure if the reproductions will be helpful.

Now that we're in the age of digital photography, it's possible to visit museums friendly to non-flash picture-taking and get needed details to store on one's computer -- the main problem being to get to the desired museums.

The Internet is rapidly becoming a useful source for viewing reproductions, but matters of copyright, the fame of the artist and policies of museums and galleries have kept it in mixed-bag status.

Despite the problems and limitation noted above, art students and fans are vastly better off than they would have been 150 years ago when just about the only source of information regarding distant paintings consisted of engravings.

As for old art books, I'll probably buy one from time to time. But only when the text is important or the art was monochrome in the original.

[Cross-posted at 2Blowhards.]