Song of a Reformed Headhunter

The fourth and final class of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research course took place last night. The course was taught by the historian of philosophy Michael Stevenson. I signed up to learn more about Edmund Husserl, but Husserl led me to the much more interesting figure of Merleau-Ponty. What have I learned? Better understanding of Descartes' method of doubt. Franz Brentano's attempt to distinguish between mental and physical phenomena. Husserl's adoption of one of Brentano's criteria, that of intentionality as the distinguishing mark of consciousness. Consciousness is always the consciousness of something. Husserl's foundationalist attempt to build on Descartes' cogito, ergo sum by innovating the phenomenological reduction, i.e., to treat as irrelevant the "reality" of the outside world and as indubitable the "reality" of the intentional act. Merleau-Ponty's re-interpretation of the phenomenological reduction: the chief lesson of ...

The last three weekends were busy ones. S and R drove up from D.C. to stay with us overnight on September 29. We went up to the roof of the Met and enjoyed the glittering autumnal view there. Then we had a very nice dinner at le Paris , which I strongly recommend. Columbus Day weekend began on Friday with drinks with DW. We hadn't seen each other for a long time, and the time at Suite Bar passed very pleasantly, so pleasantly that we both wondered afterwards why we were not meeting more often. Then on Saturday, dinner with P and J at Spring Natural Kitchen on the UWS because J wanted to try its organic cooking. Dinner was a success. It was so easy to be with them, so relaxing.  On Sunday G and I went to Philly for the day. We both loved the new Barnes Foundation building, designed by Tod Williams. I was mesmerized by the Matisse dance mural but liked "The Joy of Life" much less than I thought I would. I had the unwanted feeling that the Picasso works in the coll...

July 13, Sun Arrived late at Parliament View Apartments, along Albert Embarkment. Danced at Fire, in Vauxhall. July 14, Mon Walked round Westminster and Soho. Watched Billy Eliot the Musical at Victoria Palace Theatre. Drank at Comptons.  July 15, Tue Spent afternoon with Anna and James at Hyde Park. Had dinner with Mary and Derek in Soho. Drank at Comptons and G-A-Y.  July 16, Wed Walked along South Bank. Visited Tate Modern: Bacon and Picasso room; Pollock's Summertime . Watched stand-up comedy at Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Drank at Barcode Vauxhall. July 17, Thu Watched King Lear at Shakespeare's Globe. Dinner at the Box. Drank at Rupert Street and 79 CXR.  July 18, Fri Visited the British Museum: the Parthenon Marbles. Danced at G-A-Y.  July 19, Sat Visited Sir John Soanes Museum: Hogarth's Election and The Rake's Progress . Visited National Gallery: Cezanne's Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses);  Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres;  and Velazquez's The Rokeby Ve...

Paul Cézanne. (French, 1839-1906). The Bather. c. 1885. Oil on canvas, 50 x 38 1/8" (127 x 96.8 cm). Lillie P. Bliss Collection Henri Matisse. (French, 1869-1954). Bather. Cavalière, summer 1909. Oil on canvas, 36 1/2 x 29 1/8" (92.7 x 74 cm). Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. © 2008 Succession H. Matisse, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Pablo Picasso. (Spanish, 1881-1973). Bather. winter 1908-09. Oil on canvas, 51 1/8 x 38 1/8" (129.8 x 96.8 cm). Louise Reinhardt Smith Bequest. © 2008 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York The Cezanne bather is a statue, the Matisse a bear, the Picasso a dancer.

Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594–1666) inspired many painters I admire: Corot, Cezanne, Matisse. When I looked at his paintings at the Met this afternoon, I found myself hunting for signs of these other men, the most obvious of which was his almost-geometric mountains. The paradise he painted was often marked by death and pain. The Arcadian Shepherds , otherwise known as Et in Acadia Ego , stumble on a tomb. Their postures portray dynamically the turning of their bodies towards this unexpected discovery. The green cloak of the river god recalls his watery abode streaming away down the slope, a movement enhanced by the water pouring out of his jar. The figures grow older when seen from left to right, the golden hair of the shepherdess turning into the barren crown of the seated or fallen river god. In other visions of Arcadia, a snake kills a man; Thisbe discovers Pyramus dead while the lion mauls a horse and his rider in an approaching storm; Eve points out the fruit to Adam. In a marvelo...

The Courbet retrospective is wonderful. Some 130 works, giving a good sense of his oeuvre. I came out of it feeling like I met a major major artist. I was struck by the extent to which his subjects affected his admirers like Cezanne: the portraits, the mountains, the female bathers, the apples. The rooms are organized in terms of genres, and Corbert painted in many genres: self-portraits, portraits, large group paintings, landscapes, seascapes (which he called "landscapes of the sea), nudes, still life, hunting scenes. The painting of Jo, Whistler's lover, is a portrait, but is also a genre piece with its suggestion of Pre-Raphaelite maidens. Jo, the Beautiful Irishwoman , 1866 The seascapes are powerful. They threaten with real, primitive force, as if the waves are about the crash over me, and draw me out to the sea. The Wave , 1869 And most moving, in a most precise way, is his painting of the trout, displayed in the last room of the retrospective. You can still see the li...

From the Met website: More than 65 celebrated masterpieces owned by rival brother collectors—Robert Sterling Clark (1877–1956), founder of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Stephen Carlton Clark (1882–1960), a former trustee and illustrious donor to The Metropolitan Museum of Art—are featured in this unprecedented exhibition. Renoir holds pride of place in this exhibition. Both Clark brothers thought highly of him and collected him avidly. Whereas Sterling, the older brother, drew a line at the Post-impressionists, Stephen collected Matisse, Bonnard, Picasso and Braque too. Stephen even hanged Matisse's "The White Plumes" (1919) over his fireplace. Looking at Matisse's "Odalisque with Grey Pants" and Cezanne's "Still Life with a Ginger Pot and Eggplants" makes me think that Matisse paints patterns whereas Cezanne paints planes. Fabrics in Matisse often appear as wall hangings or floor carpets, and...

The last time I visited the Frick was to view the tiny and exquisite Memling exhibition. This time I saw his "Portrait of a Man" again, and still loved it as much. (I have the postcard of the Man stuck to the inside of my locker in school.) It gripped me far more than the Holbein, Gainsborough and Whistler portraits in the same collection. The other portrait that exercised comparable power over me was an Ingres, some noble woman or another, looking pert yet pensive. The mirror behind her displayed the care with which her hair was tied up with ribbon. The highlights of this visit were the Turners: "Antwerp" and "Cologne." The colors are irridescent, whether they are the white surf of waves, or the golden-green sheen of sunlight hitting a river. No wonder the Impressionists pissed their pants when they saw his paintings. But even his calmest paintings convey the force of restrained power, whereas the Impressionists still motion in dabs of paint. The Vermeer...

"Line and colour are not distinct.... When colour is at its richest, form takes on its fullest expression." Cezanne's words gave Matisse the courage to break decisively with the old pictorial language when the latter was painting in Collioure in 1905, the summer before the fauve exhibition. Another rejection slip from POETRY magazine. They did not like the four parts from my book of the body series: "Roof the Mouth, Jaws and the Jaw-hinges," "Eyes," "Finger-nails," and "Nose."

Patrick McCaughey, in his TLS review, inveighed against the Met for enshrining in an exhibition an art dealer who was, in McCaughey’s words, “the reverse of the patron: he was the exploiter of the avant-garde.” When I saw the exhibition yesterday, I read in at least two curator’s notes that Vollard sold the paintings for ten times the meager sum he had paid the artists. The notes made me wonder if the exhibition’s title was not intended as somewhat ironic. Such titles, emblazoned on a huge banner in front of the Met, are not usually ironic but this one might serve the dual purpose of promotion and criticism. I thought the exhibition highlighted the exchange of monies behind these familiar masterpieces. Looking at Cezanne’s “A Basket of Apples,” I was struck by how all the apples had different shapes and colors. Each apple was also presented differently from the others: one showed more stalk; one more tilted; one half-wrapped by the cloth; one almost hidden by the basket. The effect is ...