temporary

temporarily this is serving as a research log

dismal thoughts about current news cycle.

Tyler Hicks in NYTimes, from 'Scenes from Libya'. 6 March 2011. My comment: A jarring confluence of familiarity and remoteness.

Being ill, I spent the weekend sequestered at home, no international growth groups, no Sunday School, no St. Helen’s. Instead, I’ve been almost obsessively following news coming out of Japan. The earthquake and tsunami struck on Friday morning. I woke up just after they struck. At the time, it was fascinating to watch live footage of the tsunami and quake. At the time also, very few people were estimated to have died. Even later that afternoon, hours later, the death toll had been raised to ‘only’ 200 or so. I was impressed by Japan’s preparation, the durability and solid construction of its buildings, and the calmness of the Japanese people. When I left home in the morning, there was yet no mention of Daiichi or Daiini nuclear power plants.

Prior to this, I had been following news of Libya. The New York Times had continuous photo updates; I had been especially struck by pictures of young men and boys in jeans and t-shirts, button-downs, or polos sitting on tanks or holding guns and celebrating rebel victory in Benghazi. At the moment, I had been so struck by the normalcy and relatibility of those pictures–they looked like anyone I’d see walking down the street, except for the guns.

This weekend has been both encouraging, and disheartening. So relieved that Makiko, my Japanese friend from Paris is safe in Tokyo with her family, and three days later learned that all Hatsumoris are fine.  Thank God for their safety!! We were worried about them, because their home is in Sendai…Also was relieved to know for certain that Tiff was still in Taipei. Thankfully Tokyo is ok– Japanese buildings codes are incredible.

Spent the weekend listening to YokosoNews, a live English-language broadcast from Japan, where Katz-san and Ema translate Japanese news for listeners, while also answering questions sent via Facebook and Twitter. Appreciate very much the level-headed, calm perspective. Also followed Kyodo News, NHK and NYTimes (which has some fantastic, helpful graphics). Basically news from Japan has deteriorated quickly. First NYTimes pictures showed the extent of damage of coastal towns–everything decimated. The numbers are incomprehensible, predictions of 10,000 deaths out of 17,000 residents in one town.. Initially it seemed that life would resume quickly and normally in Tokyo; then the nuclear reactors started to explode, to overheat, the pumps failed, containment vessel breached, suppression pool contaminated, radiation released, readings went up then down…basically complete uncertainty. 1/3 of Japan’s power source disabled; planned power cuts in the northeast- transportation disrupted due to the power cuts, food shortages resulting from people stocking up on supplies. To top it all off, another large earthquake may happen in the same area, while Shizuoka area around Mount Fuji was hit by a magnitude 6.4 quake, and temperatures around the north will drop in the coming days, with snow possible; there are over 400,000 people out of their homes.

I think about the workers who are scrambling to keep the nuclear reactors from total meltdown, at huge, huge risk to their own health. Already 3 workers suffer from radiation sickness, and 11 were injured in one of the hydrogen explosions. Of the 800 working to maintain the water pumps, all but 50 were evacuated when radiation levels spiked; journalists asked about the 50 during a TEPCO press conference, but the question was left unanswered.

And in Libya, the opposition were pushed back and back and back. Last I saw, they will soon be pushed back to Benghazi, the centre of opposition control in the east. I don’t know, the stickiness of the political situation suggests to me that sans external support, Benghazi will fall. And it will be so, so brutal. People are going to be arrested, disappeared, executed…I think about those NYTimes pictures–how easy it will be for those people to be named, identified, and arrested. Needless to say, the thought of that is stomach-churnning. As an aside, in Bahrain the Saudis entered the country to put down protesters. Someone tweeted:

@NickKristof It’s a curse being a Shia from #Bahrain or #Saudi. Hated by Arabs for being Shia, Iranis for being Arab, and the West for both.

In short, news is so bleak, the world is so broken.

Art lovers, connoisseurs, kunstliefhebbers.

Daumier_art lovers

Daumier’s portrayal of amateur French art lovers (collectors? connoisseurs?) very careful peering at a small frame / picture. Is Haecht’s depictions of art lovers (kunstliefhebbers) comparable, assuming that Daumier’s isn’t exactly flattering? Note man peering closely, on bended knees before picture of hunt. Kneeling being a not very dignified, gentlemanly position.

Willem II Haecht_Kunstkammer of Cornelis van der Geest_1628, from wga.hu

Pleasure of old books.

While I am quite aware that “we have become accustomed to the irrelevance of the artist’s intentions or the inaccessibility of the artist’s experience in our aesthetic response,” (Joel Black review of Greenblatt’s Allegory and Representation) and even though historians like David Freedberg or Hans Belting question the categories of high art and low art, still, it’s hard to not be a bit in awe when one comes across the works of a ‘famous’ painter. Even knowing that that fame is built-up, constructed, and changeable.

Hence despite it all, I must say that I had the incredible pleasure of handling and reading a book printed in 1627 (English edition) with an engraved title-page that was designed by Rubens.

Rubens_title page to Obsidio Bredana by H. Hugo, from Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, 1994,0514.45

A few iPhone photos of the book (something could be said about new technology meeting new technology!):

photo from Warburg_English edition of H. Hugo's Obsidio Bredana.

Now I’ve got to write a paper about it. Not so pleasurable. More about the readings in a bit (for my own reference in the future).

Unrelatedly, just ran into this in a reading about allegory and representation, which amused me:

“Characteristically, Courbet expected to draw vast crowds and, at twenty sous a head, to make a financial killing while embarrassing the government. In these expectations he was of course disappointed…”

from Michael Fried, “Representing Representation: On the central group in Courbet’s Studio,” Allegory and Representation, ed. Stephen J. Greenblatt (Johns Hopkins UP: Baltimore) 94.

Here’s the painting:

Courbet, The Painter's Studio, 1854-55. Paris, Louvre.

Daylight savings time ends.

Makes me want to hug a Percival.

Another Election Day is soon upon us!

I won’t believe the Democratic majority will be utterly demolished until it happens. I won’t I won’t I won’t.

One of my favorite posts, from just before the inauguration (has nothing to do with politics or elections, I just wanted an excuse to dig this bit up):

Call me a damned sap, but my favorite piece is “Parenthesis” (the 1/2 chapter…what makes a chapter half a chapter?).  This is Barnes’s essay on love.

On the expression “I love you”, Barnes says of the French version, “Je t’aime”: “The grammar is also one of reassurance: with the object positioned second, the beloved isn’t suddenly going to turn out to be someone different.”  So true!  What sensible fellows those Frenchmen are.

This, I think, is my favorite metaphor (for the ephemeral nature of love) because it’s not only so true, but so unexpected.  Bleak.

A photograph develops in a tray of liquid…  We slide the photo quickly into the tray of fixer to secure that clear, vulnerable moment, to make the image harder, unchippable, solid for at least a few years.  But what if you plunge it into the fixer and the chemical doesn’t work?  This progress, this amorous motion you feel, might refuse to stabilize.  Have you seen a picture go on relentlessly developing until its whole surface is black, its celebratory moment obliterated?

Finally, a discussion of the brain v. the heart (rationality v. sentimentality):

Put the heart beside the brain and see the difference…  The brain looks sensible…  You can deal with the brain, as I say; it looks sensible.  Whereas the heart, the human heart, I’m afraid, looks a fucking mess.

How art ought to be written.

Writing about the man in the back of the picture:

Even so, there is a difference [between him and the figures reflected in the mirror]: he is there in flesh and blood; he has appeared from the outside, on the threshold of the area represented; he is indubitable–not a probable reflection but an irruption. The mirror, by making visible, beyond even the walls of the studio itself, what is happening in front of the picture, creates, in its sagittal dimension, an oscillation between the interior and the exterior. One foot only on the lower step, his body entirely in profile, the ambiguous visitor is coming in and going out at the same time, like a pendulum caught at the bottom of its swing. He repeats on the spot, but in the dark reality of his body, the instantaneous movement of those images flashing across the room, plunging into the mirror, being reflected there, and springing out from it again like visible, new, and identical species. Pale, miniscule, those silhouetted figures in the mirror are challenged by the tall, solid stature of the man appearing in the doorway.