Everyone is offering his Christopher Hitchens memories today. I had only one face-to-face encounter, after he gave a lecture at the Greek embassy about the Elgin Marbles (he argued passionately for their return to Greece). Some of us retired to a restaurant afterward, and the proprietors must have known him well because an enormous tumbler of Scotch, filled to the brim, arrived as if by magic, before the menus, water and the bread basket. It disappeared almost as quickly and was replaced at least once more and probably twice (I don’t remember very well). He spoke of the novels of Mary Renault, which I said I loved, and he said deserved a better reputation and wider audience. At one point he was trying to remember the name of a critical battle between Ancient Greece and Persia and I tentatively offered an answer, Salamis, which unfortunately I pronounced a bit too much like the Italian meat product. He raised his hand, and said impatiently, “No, no, no.” He thought for a moment, and then said, “sal-uh-MEES.” He was right, of course.
A minor Hitch anecdote having nothing to do with salami
Filed under Culture, Feuilleton, Uncategorized
The “exploding” towers controversy
If you’re following the ginned up controversy over a proposal, by the Dutch architecture firm MVRDV, to build twin towers that appear to be “exploding,” I gave my short take on the Post’s “Arts Post” website. Here’s the crux of it:
The controversy seems part of a larger cultural effort to make the events of September 11, 2001 somehow sacred, to use the meaning of the terrorist attack for larger, more overbearing cultural control. So now it is being deployed against contemporary architecture, not because there is anything inherently offensive in this design (which may or may not be an intentional reference to 9/11), but because the emotions generated by the attack have been co-opted by one part of the political and cultural spectrum.
Architects have long been exploring ways to turn buildings inside out, to peel away their external skin, to represent them as if melting or hurtling through space. The metaphor to “explode” a building might well be used as a positive architectural value, to open up space, break down formal strictures, allow multiple points of access. So even if the Dutch design firm, MVRDV, intended a reference to 9/11, there’s no reason that reference should be read as mocking or ironic. It might easily be seen as an effort to freeze frame a traumatic event, in architectural form, and neutralize its shock and pain.
Update: On second and third thought, it’s remarkable how old-hat the idea is. A vertically uplifted edition of Habitat 67?
Filed under Architecture, Culture
Top Ten for 2011
The Washington Post critics published their top ten picks for the past year in today’s edition, including my Art and Architecture list. The online format is a slide show, which means clicking through, and the order of the selections isn’t hierarchical. But it’s nice to look at.
Filed under Architecture, Art
Gingrich the Entrepreneur
Republicans may be refining the idea of what business competence means. The party has long cherished expertise gathered in the marketplace over mere political skill or experience. But there was an interesting nuance introduced in a Washington Post article about Newt Gingrich, published today, which suggests that the ideal of the man of commerce may not be monolithic.
In an article exploring concerns about Gingrich’s leadership during his years a Speaker of the House, former Congressman Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) praised the fast-rising presidential contender for getting “a plane that hadn’t flown in 40 years to fly.” But he went on to say that the plane then flew erratically, up, down, left, right, raising questions about Gingrich’s leadership skills.
“Newt is an entrepreneur more than he’s a manager,” says Shays.
Interesting. Is there a distinction forming between the self-made man (entrepreneurial skill) and the technocratic leader (managerial expertise)? The former implies risk taking, vision and a willingness to fail; the latter suggests steadiness, competence and professionalism.
Genuine success in business no doubt requires both skill sets, and there are many cases in which the entrepreneurial founder of a corporation eventually finds himself sidelined by business-school types after the start up grows bigger than the founder’s ability to manage it.
Both skill sets are idealized by the political parties that dominate U.S. politics, but the Democratic Party, of late, has stressed managerial competence while the Republican Party idealizes the self-made man. The rise of candidates such as Herman Cain (which skill set was primary on his résumé?) and Gingrich may require more subtle thinking about just exactly what the Republican Party wants to valorize in the commercial sector. And that will give importance clues about how it conceives of the presidency.
Filed under Culture, Feuilleton
You Nero, Big Zero
Arena Stage’s new comedy, “You, Nero,” feels like an over-extended T.V. comedy sketch. After watching it last night, I went home and enjoyed a Netflix episode of the Catherine Tate show…and I think Tate’s comedy better fun and better written than Amy Freed’s attempt to write a satirical romp through the ancient Rome of crazy Nero.
It’s bracing to watch a two-hour-plus piece of theater simply fall flat, raising questions about how it got so far, with so much investment of talent (Danny Scheie as Nero is good fun) and money, without someone simply saying: There’s nothing here. The humor is derived from two unrelated premises: The play of anachronism between ancient Rome and contemporary life, and inside, meta-jokes aimed at people who care about theater. So we get a playwright struggling to please Nero with a script he pecks out on a typewriter; and Nero imagining an Ancient Roman version of “A Chorus Line.”
There are a few laughs, but lightly scattered, and most of the slapstick is comically inert. There does seem to be an attempt to say something deeper about the role theater plays in forming audiences and reforming politics. Freed suggests we get the theater we deserve. But these themes feel grafted on, a belated attempt to give the show heft. But it doesn’t quite work and you wish, in the end, that rather than strain at seriousness, the creative team had simply opted for shorter and sillier.
Newt Gingrich: Opera Lover
As Newt Gingrich rises in the polls, it’s worth putting one little item on the table of public discourse: He loves opera. In Washington, lots of people love opera, but it’s rare for politicians with national ambitions to love it so publicly and openly as Gingrich has in the past. As anyone who attends the Washington National Opera–now the official opera company of the Kennedy Center for the Arts–can attest, he’s often there, especially on big gala occasions. That puts him in company with several Supreme Court justices, including Antonin Scalia and Ruther Bader Ginsburg. But Supremes have lifetime appointments, which makes it considerably safer to love opera in the open. Gingrich is still looking for benediction from the national electorate, which makes his embrace of the Irrational Art Form all the more daring. How will it play out? When someone asks the inevitable question about what kind of music he likes, will Gingrich say Verdi, Puccini and Mozart? Or will he and his people attempt to sequester the opera lovin’ data point in the same category as the former Speaker’s taste for big ticket items at Tiffanys?
It’s also possible that his love of opera could reinforce his public persona as an intellectual. Opera is for smart people, of course. Not likely. The base probably doesn’t much care about Rigoletto, Rheingold or Radamisto, and there’s a difference between seeming smart (having ideas) and seeming cultured.
The real question, for opera lovers, is what kind of opera does Gingrich love. Italian? German? French? Early Instruments? Regietheatre? Or classic old-guard production? Is he a soprano man? Or more inclined to the bass and baritone roles? These questions matter.
Filed under Culture, Music, Opera, Uncategorized
Index on Censorship
I was asked by the U.K.-based Index on Censorship to contribute an article about the Smithsonian Hide/Seek controversy to the Art issue they published in September (Volume 40, Issue 3, September 2011). They don’t post the entire contents of the journal on line, but kindly gave me permission to link to a pdf of it here. It’s a longish read but lays out in greater depth and with more historical background why I think G. Wayne Clough’s decision to censor his own curators was so disastrous for the Institution and for American culture. And some links to previous Hide/Seek coverage including this one from when the flap was at its most contentious and another post from New York when the curators address an audience at the New York Public Library.
Filed under Art, Culture, Exhibitions, Museums, Uncategorized
Yo-Yo Ma, Kennedy Center Honoree
With my colleague Anne Midgette on leave, it fell to me to interview and profile cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who is one of this year’s winners of the Kennedy Center Honors. The Honors are held tonight and then broadcast nationally on December 27.
Hide/Seek
It’s not just the subject of my Sunday story, it’s the problem afflicting too many Sunday stories, alas. Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes sent a message saying he might have linked to the piece I wrote about the year anniversary of the National Portrait Gallery exhibition… but he couldn’t find it in time for his weekend round up. Not the first time. Fortunately, Tyler did post it for his Tuesday links). The Post doesn’t have an “arts tab” on its web page, so it’s understandable why readers might be somewhat confused where such a story would land on the internet. Is it entertainment? Or lifestyle? Or national news? Or opinion? A bit of all them. And now it’s very difficult to find my stories through Google News, unless my name appears in the body of the text or you type in author:”Philip Kennicott.” Searching with just the name or byline through Google news, the old reliable method, no longer works for reasons that elude me. The best hope of finding Washington Post arts coverage is to put the writer’s name into the Washington Post homepage search box. That usually works, but not always. I’ll try to do better posting my work here, as soon as it’s available on the web.
Update: ART INFO now links to the piece, and Tim Graham at NewsBusters takes me to task for it.
Filed under Uncategorized
Pepper Spray… bad plan.
I recently wrote another installment of the Images series, this one devoted to the videos that came out of the University of California Davis campus during the pepper spray incident. The video and various riffs on it have gone viral. The real question is whether this incident inspires a genuine rethinking of how “compliance” techniques, including pepper spray and Tasers, are used. Do we need a federal policy on these things? Based on the more than 3000 comments appended to the story I wrote on Sunday, I sense a shift on the subject of police behavior and brutality.
Filed under Uncategorized
