The Saunterer

Susan Sontag on art

    Susan Sontag used the films of Leni Riefenstahl to argue that significant form in art is an absolute that cannot be destroyed by objectionable content:

    To call Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will and The Olympiad masterpieces is not to gloss over Nazi propaganda with aesthetic lenience. The Nazi propaganda is there. But something else is there, too, which we reject at our loss. Because they project the complex movements of intelligence and grace and sensuousness, these two films of Riefenstahl (unique among works of Nazi artists) transcend the categories of propaganda or even reportage. And we find ourselves – to be sure, rather uncomfortably – seeing “Hitler” and not Hitler, the “1936 Olympics” and not the 1936 Olympics. Through Riefenstahl’s genius as a film-maker, the “content” has – let us even assume, against her intentions – come to play a purely formal role.
   
    To watch Leni Riefenstahl’s short film, Olympia Diving Sequence, and judge for yourself, click here.

    (The above is quoted from pages 25-26 of Susan Sontag: Against interpretation, and other essays, by Susan Sontag. Macmillan, 1966.)
    For a brief biography of Susan Sontag, click here. For images of or relating to Susan Sontag, click here.
    For a brief biography of Leni Riefenstahl, click here. For images of or relating to Leni Riefenstahl, click here.

Leonardo da Vinci’s advice to the young

    Leonardo da Vinci gets full marks for saying this:   

    In youth acquire that which may requite you for the deprivations of old age; and if you are mindful that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so erect yourself in youth, that your old age will not lack sustenance.

    (Quoted from page 251 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001)
    For a brief biography of Leonardo da Vinci, click here. For images of or relating to Leonardo da Vinci, click here.

Dylan Thomas on how to cheat death

    Good things done live on, and Dylan Thomas lives on through his good lines (proving the truth):

Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

    (Quoted from page 199 of Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig, by Steven Heller and Elaine Lustig Cohen. Chronicle Books, 2010.)

    For a brief biography of Dylan Thomas, click here. For images of or relating to Dylan Thomas, click here.
    For a brief biography of Alvin Lustig (who lives on through his art), click here. For images of or relating to Alvin Lustig, click here.
    For a brief biography of Steven Heller, click here.
    For a brief biography of Elaine Lustig Cohen, click here.

Ben Coke on God

    Sauntering in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth last spring, seeing Domenichino’s 1601 painting, Abraham Leading Isaac to Sacrifice –- which depicts the result of God’s command to Abraham (Genesis 22: 1-14) to take up his sword to kill his son Isaac –- we learned from the guidebook that at the last moment an angel stopped him, indicating a ram as a substitute. Killing a harmless ram when it was enjoying its life, all for pleasing this thing called God, is evil, we thought, meaning God is evil.
    Last week, Ben Coke, writing in City Weekly, January 19, 2012, page 6, a Salt Lake City newspaper, backed the idea, saying:

If the god of Abraham exists, this evil should be fought and not worshiped, for this god and his goons have caused far more suffering than Hitler and his goons, by many orders of magnitude. This evil god has exterminated more than 98 percent of species (dinosaurs, etc.) and continues to torture us with disease, predation, earthquakes, old age, etc. And his goons have caused immense suffering by their jihads, fatwas, suicide bombings, crusades, inquisitions and subjugation of the New World. And his goons continue to cause suffering even today with their opposition to choosing euthanasia for oneself, opposition to stem-cell research and opposition to birth control. Any moral person would choose to burn in hell rather than worship such a monster.

    For a brief biography of Domenichino, click here. For the image of Abraham Leading Isaac to Sacrifice (a comforting pastoral scene ruined by putting in it the evil Abraham), click here.

Edward Jay Epstein on data

    There is nothing great about great amounts of data. Foremost, Edward Jay Epstein reminds us, is making sense of it:

    The critical problem in government investigations is inherent in the evaluation, not the accumulation, of data. The fact that the government can amass a virtually unlimited amount of information on any given subject only intensifies the problem.

    (Quoted on pages 31 of Head Shot: The Science behind the JFK Assassination, by G. Paul Chambers. Prometheus Books, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Edward Jay Epstein, click here. For images of or relating to Edward Jay Epstein, click here.
    For a partial resume of G. Paul Chambers and the gist of Head Shot, click here. For images of or relating to G. Paul Chambers, click here.

John Barth on life

    With a snail parable, John Barth reveals living one’s life:

    “My project,” he told us, “is to learn where to go by discovering where I am by reviewing where I’ve been – where we’ve all been. There’s a kind of snail in the Maryland marshes – perhaps I invented him – that makes his shell as he goes along out of whatever he comes across, cementing it with his own juices, and at the same time makes his path instinctively toward the best available material for his shell; he carries his history on his back, living in it, adding new and larger spirals to it from the present as it grows.”

    (Quoted from page 10 of Chimera, by John Barth. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of John Barth, click here. For images of or relating to John Barth, click here.

Arthur Schopenhauer on life

    If there is a more revealing analogy of life than Schopenhauer’s, we have yet to see it:

    Life may be compared to a piece of embroidery, of which, during the first half of his time, a man gets a sight of the right side, and during the second half, of the wrong. The wrong side is not so pretty as the right, but it is more instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have been worked together.

    (Quoted on page 102 of Parerga and Paralipomena: A Collection of Philosophical Essays, by Arthur Schopenhauer. Cosimo Classics, 2007)
    For a brief biography of Arthur Schopenhauer, click here. For images of or relating to Arthur Schopenhauer, click here.

Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg) on distance and the romantic

    Your distance from a thing can, Novalis was among the first to say, stir your romantic imagination:

    Everything at a distance turns into poetry: distant mountains, distant people, distant events; all become romantic.

    (Quoted on page 286 of “The Open Window and the Storm-Tossed Boat: An Essay in the Iconography of Romanticism,” by Lorenz Eitner. Pages 281-290 in The Art Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 4, Dec. 1955.)
    For a brief biography of Novalis, click here. For images of or relating to Novalis, click here.
    For a brief biography of Lorenz Eitner, click here. For images of or relating to Lorenz Eitner, click here.

The Laura Marling test to see if there is a generation gap

    My Sauntering habit led the other day to Laura Marling, songwriter and singer. I wanted to see if someone raised with songs of an older generation would be open to songs of today’s. She’s a good test. Try taking it. It will tell you something about you.
    First read the lines from her song “New Romantic,” and then watch a video of her performing it:

I know I said I loved you but I'm thinking I was wrong,
I'm the first to admit that I'm still pretty young,
and I never meant to hurt you when I wrote you ten love songs.
but a guy that I could never get 'cause his girlfriend was pretty fit
and everyone who knew her loves her so.
and I made you leave her for me and now I'm feeling pretty mean,
but my mind has fucked me over more times than any man could ever know.

Maybe I should give up, give in,
give up trying to be thin,
give up and turn into my mother,
god knows I love her.

and I'm sorry to which ever man should meet my sorry state,
watch my steady lonesome gait and beware.
I would never love a man 'cause love and pain go hand in hand
and I can't do it again.

So we stayed up late one night to try and get our problems right,
but I couldn't get into his head just what was going through my mind,
and I think he knew where I was going
he put Ryan Adams on
I think he thinks it makes me weak
it only ever makes me strong.
I've got this friend who sounds just like him,
he's the man I'd leave you for, the man that I just adore like you.
The same man, he turns to me he said "I've got to tell you how I feel,
if god could make the perfect girl for me it would be you"
my god told me not tell about how much do you love your fella.
I don't know more everyday
not in this new romantic way.

    For a video of Laura Marling singing “New Romantic,” click here.
    For a brief biography of Laura Marling, click here. For images of or relating to Laura Marling, click here.

C. L. R. James on the influence of sports in society

    Because sports keep male minds filled does not prove sports are a greater cultural influence than the arts, which don’t. So we disagree with C. L. R. James’ remark:

I believe and hope to prove that cricket and football were the greatest cultural influences in nineteenth-century Britain, leaving far behind Tennyson’s poems, Beardsley’s drawings and concerts of the Philharmonic Society. These filled space in print but not in minds.

    (Quoted from page 24 of Race, Sport and Politics, by Ben Carrington. Sage, 2010)
    For a brief biography of C. L. R. James, click here. For images of or relating to C. L. R. James, click here.
        For a brief biography of Ben Carrington, click here. For images of or relating to Ben Carrington, click here.