Costumed in Carmel-by-the-Sea

It was a typical foggy morning as we lined up outside the mess-hall door waiting our turn for breakfast. A newsboy hawking San Jose papers moved along the line but got few takers, as usual.

I'm normally a news junkie, but the rigors of Basic Training seem to have killed most of my interest; the Army kept me too occupied to spare the time and effort. But I did scan the headlines if they were large enough. Not long ago there were huge ones about Russia testing a 50-megaton H-bomb.

But today was going to be special. We were more than halfway through the eight-week training cycle, it was Sunday, and this afternoon we were to get our first pass. We could do as we pleased, provided it was legal, from noon till 10 that evening.

Many guys planned to head for the Soldiers' Club, a large, wooden structure near the beach where one might order a real hamburger and down some beer. Others, me included, opted to go off-post for the afternoon. Of course we had to wear uniforms -- our green "bus-driver" style Class-A kit complete with no rank or unit indicators, we being of the lowest class of Private and too temporary to bother having a Sixth Army shoulder patch sewn on.

Where to go? Perhaps to Seaside or Marina, in those days off-post purveyors of booze and other imagined necessities for those who found Fort Ord's Soldiers' or NCO clubs too tame. But we might have been told to keep away from Seaside and Marina; I don't remember, perhaps because they didn't appeal to me in the first place. Otherwise, given that we had to take a bus, the only real possibilities were Monterey and Carmel. I went with the Carmel-bound group, which was a pretty small share of our training company: let's say six of us.

Since then, I've visited Carmel quite a few times and have a rough feel for the place. It's a former art colony that remained pretty arty. Immediately to the northwest is the famous Seventeen-Mile Drive part of the peninsula. It has a number a well-known golf courses including Pebble Beach, Spanish Bay, Spyglass and Cypress Point. Some housing near the north part of the Drive was originally modest, middle-class, but near the west and, especially, the south there are plenty of ritzy digs. To put it another way, the area in and near Carmel is crawling with money. And it probably was when our bus finally dropped us off near Ocean Avenue.

The "downtown" (business district) part of Carmel is small now and about the same size when we set off to explore it. Even the buildings are pretty much the same. Nowadays, there's a small, three-floor open mall at the top end of the Ocean Avenue commercial strip and here and there are other buildings that were added since that Sunday when the Army invaded. One thing that definitely has changed is that Fort Ord is now essentially closed. There are no more young men going through Basic and I haven't seen anyone wearing an army uniform in Carmel in years. The closest I came was when I was chatting with a retired Navy Rear Admiral at my wife's college sorority alumnae club Christmas party in a house near the number two green at Spyglass, and that's not close at all.

Anyway, since we had little money and virtually no place to store any purchases, we simply wandered around, gazing at the storefronts, Spanish-style buildings and the occasional odd Storybook Style structures that can still be found there.

Perhaps we had something to eat and maybe drank a Coke or Pepsi someplace. But after two or three hours, we'd wrung the place dry several times over and caught the bus back to Ord. Once there, we checked out the Soldiers' Club. It featured a big, smokey hall where beer was served, but I'm not sure if I bothered to wait in line to buy a glass. The next day we'd be back to training, so we hiked back to the barracks to get our gear in shape and have some sleep.

Besides the lack of money and storage places, our visit to Carmel was limited psychologically. Yes, were were on pass and off-post, but we weren't really free from the Army thanks to the pass' deadline and the possibility that Military Police might flag us down and offer some hassle (one reason I passed up seeing Monterey, a less classy place than Carmel). We were guys about 20 years old wearing "Army Green" -- not a bit like the older, much richer and better-dressed locals. We eyed them and they eyed us, quite likely gazing down their mental noses in the process.

In a nutshell, I felt out of place and distinctly uncomfortable. I had pretty much the same reactions two years later by the beach at Waikiki on a short pass while our troop ship paused in Pearl Harbor on its way to the Far East.

Watch This Designer Try Too Hard

I really should get around to writing about industrial designer Richard Arbib. But for now, I'll present a couple of his designs for wrist watches and make a few remarks about wrist watch design in general.

I referred to Arbib as an industrial designer. But his work reveals him to have been mostly an industrial decorator ... to be charitable, "industrial stylist" can do.

The period 1945-60 was an odd one in the annals of American design. A case might be made that cars sporting tail fins, Formica kitchen counter tops with squiggly, linear patterns and molded plywood chairs with spindly metal legs represent a daft era where our national characteristics shone through. Or perhaps it was a "whadda we do next?" phase following the design-purity (with lots of streamlining) public relations poses from the generation of industrial design pioneers. Whatever it might have been, Arbib contributed in spades.

A word about wrist watch design (I'll leave digital watches out of the discussion and stick to analog watches -- those with hands). Watch hands sweep in a circular motion, suggesting that the face of the watch should match this. On the other hand wrist bands, especially rugged ones preferred by men, are flat and basically squared off. A watch following that theme would therefore have a square or rectangular case. Between those extremes might be rounded-off rectangles, ovals and so forth.

Arbib, however, tried something very different in his work for the Hamilton watch company. Something very wacky 1950s.

Hamilton Flight II prototype

Hamilton Altair Electric
Arbib's designs are, well, distinctive. But totally at odds with either the hand-sweep or the watchband. He was involved with styling Hamilton watches for the better part of a decade, so presumably sales were acceptable. I think they look awful and apparently others agree because most watchmakers have avoided such styles for the past 50 years.

Cartier Tank Solo
The "tank" design, dating from the Great War, is a popular example of design that favors integration to the band over honoring the sweep.

Movado Men's Museum Watch
Movado made its fame with ultra-purist sweep-oriented designs such as this. Actually, style trumps functionality here too; the absence of hour indicators requires the owner to guess the time -- and often be off by a minute or even more.

Swiss Army "Renegade"
Confession-time. This is the watch I've been wearing for more than 10 years. Not the same one, actually; I buy a new one every three years or so when I figure the battery is about to fail.

Advantages: It's electronic and so keeps good time. It's not very expensive, currently still selling for less than $150. The hands, hour marks and numerals glow in the dark which make it handy for checking the time while in bed at night. The face cover almost never scratches. While it isn't classy like a Rollex, it looks nice. Disadvantage: The band grooves and holes start to clog after a few months use.

Spotted: A Hyper-Fan

I don't know about the rest of you, but the older I get, the less passion I feel about sports and hobbies. I recall pacing back and forth in front of a television set at age 30, agonizing over every play of a playoff or championship football game where one of the teams was a favorite of mine.

As a teenager I went through similar agonies during Gold Cup hydroplane races held in Seattle. The deal at the time was that the winner of the race could choose the site for the following year's race. I and many other locals desperately wanted a "home" boat to win so that Seattle would continue to host the event. It boiled down to a matter of local good-guys versus evil boat owners from Detroit, the other main hub of the sport.

Life went on. I eventually spent about ten years away from the Seattle area, losing touch with hydro racing in the process. Nowadays we sometimes wander down to Lake Washington to catch a few race heats, but I have no special favored boat and don't get cranked up over who wins or loses.

The world is big and not everyone is like me, it seems. From time to time at a place where I occasionally breakfast, I spy this:

It's an old Lincoln sedan with boat wakes painted all over it. On the top is a model hydro complete with simulated "rooster tail" spray. The hood holds models of three hydros -- the pink one is of Edgar Kaiser's "Hawaii Kai" which raced in the late 1950s. Flanking models sport faux-rooster-tails, but have no livery paint-jobs.

The owner of the car is a gent of about my vintage who clearly never let go the passions of his early youth. And he has a truly understanding and supportive wife who's sometimes willing to ride with him in that car on a breakfast jaunt.

Parting thought: I wonder if this is his only car.

Where Do I Find These Artists' Works?

In a couple of weeks I'll be off to Spain, Portugal and Morocco. Of course I'll do my best to hit the Prado and other important Madrid shrines such as the Joaquin Sorolla home/museum. I'll be in Barcelona for a few days towards the end of the trip as well as in-between places such as Toledo, Lisbon, Seville, Granada, Marrakesh and Fez.

Here's a list of a miscellany of late-19th, early-20th century Spanish painters whose work I'm curious to see in person. Has anyone out there been to museums in the cities noted above and noticed any works by these artists?

• Hermenegildo (Hermen) Anglada-Camarasa
  
• Manuel Benedito Vivas
  
• Ramon Casas i Carbo
  
• Raimundo Madrazo y Garrata
  
• Luis Muntane Muns
  
• Antonio Ortiz Echague
  
• Francisco Pons Arnau
  
• Santiago Rusinyol
  

I'm particularly interested in works by Casas. Also of interest are suggestions you might have regarding other not-so-well-known painters whose work can be seen along my itinerary. Expect some reports once I return towards the end of October.

Should the Detroit Symphony Die?

Not being anything close to an expert on such swaths of art as music, drama and literature, I tend to use articles by people who know the stuff as hooks for my posts on these matters. Perhaps my favorite go-to guy is Terry Teachout, who wears many arts hats including that of theater critic for the Wall Street Journal.

In his bi-weekly non-theater "Sightings" column for the Journal's 18 September issue he discusses the plight of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra which is running an operating deficit to the tune of around $9 million this year and facing a strike by musicians unwilling to take a proposed pay cut to help the balance sheet.

He notes

The numbers tell the tale: Nearly two million people lived in Detroit in 1950. The current population is 800,000. Forty of the city's 140 square miles are vacant. Downsizing is the name of the save-Detroit game, and Mayor Dave Bing, who is looking at an $85 million budget deficit, wants to slash civic services drastically and encourage Detroit's remaining residents to cluster in the healthiest of its surviving neighborhoods.

Can a once-great city that is now the size of Austin, Texas, afford a top-rank symphony orchestra with a 52-week season? Does it even want one? The DSO, after all, is not the only one of Detroit's old-line high-culture institutions that is sweating bullets. The Detroit Institute of Arts and the Michigan Opera Theater are also in trouble...

Sorry Terry, but the numbers you're using are misleading. You are citing data for cities based on populations within city limits. But city boundaries define the political city and not the physical city which is best represented by urbanized area or metropolitan area data. For example, the 2000 census had the Detroit metro area with near four million people (Wikipedia link here) -- nothing to sneeze at. It is that population, not just the population within the city limits, which comprises the pool of potential supporters and attendees of the orchestra, art museum and so forth.

Even so, the orchestra is in serious trouble. Terry concludes

But the players' decision to respond to the orchestra's financial crisis by voting to strike is a classic symptom of the cultural-entitlement mentality—the assumption that artists ought to be paid what they "deserve" to make, even when the community in which they live and work places a significantly lower value on their services. Any economist can tell you what has happened: In Detroit, being a classical instrumentalist is no longer an upper-middle-class job.

We like to think that great symphony orchestras and museums are permanent monuments to the enduring power and significance of art, but in the 21st century, we are going to learn the hard way that this is simply not true. Great high-culture institutions reflect the fundamental character of a city. In America, most of these institutions were founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as manifestations of civic pride. But when a city's character undergoes profound changes, as has happened in Detroit, the institutions are bound to reflect that transformation. One way or another, they'll follow the money—and if there is no money to follow, they'll go out of business. The sad truth is that the Detroit Symphony is no more "permanent" than . . . well, your average auto company.

I am with him on this. We have to earn our keep.

Dinnerstein: Long-Haul Realist

Harvey Dinnerstein (born 1928) has been able to carve out a long, New York based painting career without ever compromising his devotion to realism (for a little background on this, click here).

Many of his subjects related to New York City, though there are exceptions. Matthew Innis discusses one, "Parade," at length here.

A 2008 book about Dinnerstein and his art can sometimes be found in bookstores and might be available here.

I respect Dinnerstein's courage and tenacity in not following the New York art market herd. However, I've yet to encounter any of his paintings directly, so will not offer commentary at this time.

Gallery

After winning Portrait Society of America award - Burton Silverman at left and Dinnerstein.

Brownstone - 1958-60

The Wide Swing

Homeless

Sam and Bill - 1997

Sundown, The Crossing - 1999

Underground Together - 1996

Subtle Grille

Some automobile grilles are glorified mesh -- just a little too open to actually keep bugs off the radiator.

Others are sculptural, of a design intended to give the car identification as a specific make or model. Back in the 1950s the goal of design management for most American car companies was to have a grille that would indicate the make for a viewer half a block or more away.

Put another way, subtlety in a grille's close-up view was of almost no importance. So I was a bit surprised when I finally noticed that certain models of the Lexus RX crossover SUV series possessed grilles with features that could only be appreciated at close range.

Consider:

Lexus RX330 ca.2005 - photographed in Australia

RX300 grille closeup view

Note the converging vertical bars and the small insets running up to a point about 40 percent of the height of the grille. Subtle and elegant -- fitting for an upscale car line.