"Staying Up Too Late: Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and the Dark Side of the American Psyche" by Gordon Theisen

In 2008, I wrote a blog entry about Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks," the iconic painting of the late night diner and the characters inhabiting it.  I wrote my entry mainly directed at the composition of the painting rather than its overall symbolic meaning.  I've always felt lacking in my art appreciation skills; what little I can summon to make cross-examinations between literature and philosophy, I cannot translate to my interpretation of art.  I am not sure why this is so, since I have been widely accused of having a "gift for gab" when it comes to academic topics.  Nevertheless, I love visual art in all of its forms and writing about it here is a good exercise.

Back in 2008, when I was still within the safe confines of academia, a colleague found out I was writing an entry on "Nighthawks" and recommended a relatively "new" book on the matter.  I did not go out and purchase the book right away, but I read some reviews online and made a note to find it and read it eventually.  Fast forward to 2015... out of academia and slumming around used bookstores, I come across a hardcover copy of Gordon Theisen's "Staying Up Too Late: Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and the Dark Side of the American Psyche" for a mere $1.  The book was heavily annotated by someone who had obviously enjoyed it, and I took that as a good sign.  I found the book informative and passionately written.  The volume occupies itself with its title subject, but also delves into the works and lives of many other artists--it also covers a variety of overlapping topics, a broad swat of ambitious intellectual composition.  This, I respectfully believe, is what dooms parts of the book.

The introduction's pace is furious.  Theisen writes intelligently about American culture, history and folkore.  The problem stems from the fact that the author cannot conceal his politics (not that he is obligated to) and shows his bias a bit too forcefully.  Some of this authoritative bias is understandable enough--it is his book, after all, but at times even the most subtle instances of it strike the reader as obnoxious.  The fact that Hopper was "staunch Republican" strikes the author as odd, but it comes across as if Hopper, being an artist, was suffering from a type of intellectual or political leprosy.  I think Theisen's interpretation here is unfounded.  The so-called Republican Party "intolerance" of liberal arts, arts in general, etc. is a modern caricature conceived by pundits and political "experts."  Back in the late 1920s and 1930s, the Republican Party was not the iconic intolerant, conservative, super-religious, backward organization it is represented as today.  Both parties during the lifespan of Hopper's life had bigger "fishes to fry" other than engaging in petty "culture wars."  The fact that Hopper grew up in a conservative household may have more to do with his reserved, painfully conservative politics and ideas, not simply the fact that he "carried the label" of the Republican Party.  I am not defending a political ideology or even a party, but this type of what one can only assume to be "unintended bias" seems to have run its course during the Bush, Jr. years and now it sounds tiresome and only alienates those who see it for what it actually is.

I am sure Theisen did not set out to make it so, but the introduction is alarmingly depressing.  His treatment of American optimism from a historical perspective also shows his bias.  Our religious heritage has been damaging to American history; the Founding Fathers were blindly optimistic while ignoring the plight of non-white peoples; our economic system is based on optimism composed of thinly veiled lies, and so forth and on.

Once the book returns to the title subject, the core of its content is both entertaining and educational.  Biographical details about Hopper are well-researched and presented here clearly, and the non-chronology meshes well with the analysis of Hopper's work.  For the most part, the analysis of the art work is clear and informative; only in a few places does the language turn esoteric, and the analysis seems more like a stretch than insight.

I enjoyed the book tremendously.  Perhaps my negative comments come from the fact that life outside academia is different; one doesn't have the luxury anymore to believe that analysis and interpretation "matter."  Out here, a painting is just a painting and a late night diner just a late night diner.

Pablo Picasso "La Vie" -- When Art is Really Blue

The first time I saw "La Vie" by Pablo Picasso was at an exhibition at the Washington DC Museum of Modern Art in 1996.  It was an expo of Picasso's early works titled "Picasso: The Early Years."  I believe you can still get the book and other merchandise from the exhibit at the museum's website store.  I enjoyed this exhibition very much, and that is the reason why I am returning to it here, after so many years.

The main subject of the painting is Picasso's friend, Carlos Casagemas, a close friend who had accompanied Picasso on their very first trip to Paris and who committed suicide shortly after being rejected by a lover.  The painting is clearly allegorical, as well as unusually complex and obscure for Picasso's early work.  Set in what appears to be an artist's studio the arch and accompanying ceiling behind the male figure, the central drawing of a woman consoling a man (on paper) and a more tragically posed man alone at the bottom (drawn on the wall and appears as a fresco of sorts).  The main figures two women, a baby and a male figure strikingly alike Casagemas form the theme of the painting.  Although interpretations vary, the woman to the right holding the baby might be intended to be Casagemas' mother holding him as a child.  Casagemas points to the cloaked woman holding the baby while the other woman, resting on his neck and nude appears to be the lover that rejected Casagemas and led to his suicide.  The thematic ideation here might be that of Biblical intonations--that is to say, man will leave his mother to join a woman and make his life (paraphrased).  The nudity of the woman Casagemas joins might indicate the intimacy relationship not present, of course, with the mother figure.

There are, however, a number of interpretations based on X-ray photography taken at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1976.  While those discoveries were made by art experts more informed than I am about the history of the painting and Picasso in general, it is my personal opinion that interpretations or explanations of "mysteries" in the painting should not be derived from such methods.  In vernacular non-expert language, I suppose, we could say Picasso "changed his mind" as he composed the outline and subsequent painting.  The figures found behind the present image of the painting (a priest, a woman in a bed, a night stand and some winged creature in the foreground) might elude to a "lost" effort in the composition of another painting he abandoned before Casagemas' suicide.

What can be said for certain about "La Vie" is that it gave birth to an elaborate series of paintings holding the thematic Casagema suicide as a central topic, and, more conventionally, it is seen as Picasso's initiation into the so-called "Blue" period from which he would later move into more non-traditional, anti-establishment techniques.  "La Vie" gave Picasso an opportunity to defy convention without going too far, yet enabling him to explore an initial aspect to the abstract recklessly and with abandon.

Not much is known about Carlos Casagemas, at least not as an artist.  Post-modern interpretations of "La Vie" insist that Picasso's devastation after the suicide is linked to possible homosexual theories (but then again what isn't tied to that nowadays).  At any rate, this is a painting that brings great memories to me and the idea that a single interpretation is better than another one is simply false.  Art, in the end, is really blue.

Roll Over "Mahler" and Tell the Intellectuals the News

I am not quite sure how to articulate this post, and I know I am taking some serious chances here--but what the heck, you only live once.  I feel I am becoming Isherwood by way of "bitchiness" and criticism of my associates.  What I mean to say is that there is a dispirited type of negative energy hovering over most scholarly circles.  In various conversations I've had with college and university professors, it has become apparent to me that those residing in the upper echelon of academia abide by a code of "royal" artistic enjoyment versus the "commoner" appreciation.  Case in point: One mustn't dare (especially during the refreshment part of the after-lecture setting) to argue, even for one second, that the music of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven is not blasé compared to that of Gustav Mahler or Richard Wagner.  At the mere mention of Van Gogh or any of the Impressionists, people around me cringe with displeasure while they almost whisper to me, "Oh, but you haven't heard of Gerhard Richter, or Jean-Michel Basquiat."  And of course, no matter how many times I try to defend my preferences to more traditional expression of art (both in visual art and music), they promptly sail away seeking another, more artistically sophisticated conversation partner.  This has happened to me several times, and, just recently, with a very tall level of displeasure.  Perhaps I should stick to topics more mundane, such as the quality and preference of one cat litter brand to another. (Yes, I realize I work with strange people... or perhaps I am the strange one).

I am not here to pass judgment but rather to try and come to terms with an idea that has been stabbing my side since I was in high school.  If it really is like Harold Bloom states ("Shakespeare is beyond criticism") who then decides when art becomes blase or commoner?  Borges also chimed in years ago regarding that "what is good in literature belongs to no one."  I've played both Mahler and (by way of comparison) Rachmaninoff (with the Washington Symphony), and both express those sweeping waves of strings instruments consistently throughout their pieces.  Mahler prefers a bit more brass than Rachmaninoff, but why do so many people prefer Mahler?  Is it more a sophisticated taste?  Is baroque music really as one of my most recent colleagues argued that it was "bah-roke" and couldn't be fixed.  (Yes, I also shunned at the joke).  I don't say this to take away from Mahler's music--as a matter of fact, playing a Mahler symphony (the 4th or the 5th especially) can take the air out of any of the top orchestras in the world.  I remember finishing rehearsals for both of these Mahler symphonies and feeling like I'd just finished a five hour work out at my local Bally's Fitness.  Is it really that difficult to understand that Mahler is Mahler and Bach is Bach?

Is it part of the discourse, or how people like to listen to themselves sound at such gatherings?  The phonetically deficiencies of "J.S. Bach" as opposed to "Gustav Mahler," or "Van Gogh" not as smooth a pronunciation as "Basquiat?"  I really don't know what to make of it.  I find myself perhaps a stranger in a strange land among these academics.  Funny world we inhabit.  Next thing you know, we'll be arguing that art is not really blue.

Patti Smith's "Just Kids" - One of the Best Retrospectives and Studies (not to mention Love Story) of the late 1960s

This book addresses quite a few questions regarding the process of creation and artistry in general. The fact that these two--Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe managed to accomplish all they did together (and separately) during the most challenging times in this country is a testimony of their collective commitment to art. This narrative of two lives destined to shine is blindingly beautiful prose, difficult to identify to anyone else but the author. It is obvious that Patti Smith put her soul and heart into this book; to do anything else would have been insulting to Robert and all the other great artists, poets, and musicians with whom she shares the stage of the narrative. I really didn't think personal accounts of this sort could ever reach a more poetic and musical form with words--Patti Smith is a poet, an artist, and a great musician. Her development as all of the aforementioned is neatly detailed with each passing page, and, more importantly, not losing the larger picture of her wonderful and loving relationship with Mapplethorpe. "Just Kids" is a wonder to read, and a lesson of love and art.

What impressed me the most was the wonderful pattern the book followed regarding Smith's lyrical style. Every single part of the narrative (not chapters, but simple breaks) ended with a wonderful poetic line(s) that invite the reader to continue reading and reading and reading. Some of the one's that really got to me were: "I wondered why he devoted so much time to me. I reasoned it was because we were both wearing long coats in July, the brotherhood of La Boheme..." and "There was something of us that he saw in a movie but I wasn't certain what. I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know." and "... I would someday hold his ashes in my hand" and "There was something about that jar. The shards of heavy glass seemed to foreshadow the deepening of our days; we didn't speak of it but each of us seemed inflicted with a vague internal restlessness." and "David Flavin had conceived his installation in response to the mounting death toll of the war in Vietnam. No one in the back room was slated to die in Vietnam, though a few would survive the cruel plagues of a generation." There many more I cannot continue to write here--go get the book and read it.

The books is peppered with photographs taken by Mapplethorpe. One thing that this book is full of is hope. It's amazing to me how confident of his (their) success Robert Mapplethorpe was. I think it does hold water that common dictum of dream big... but to have so much hope in an era of so much confusion and destruction is really a testimony to all Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe achieved together and in their own right.

There are mentions of the entire famous (infamous) crowd at the Chelsea Hotel in New York from 1968 to the latter stages of the decade and into the 1970s when the hotel lost its luster of artists and Bohemia. Nevertheless, those who are mentioned appear like a list of "Who's Who" in the late 1960s. Of particular interest to me was the person of Maxime de la Fallaise, a French model and later New York socialite whose photograph I first saw in an early issue of "At Random," a photograph I cut off and hung in my college dorm room because she looked exactly as my mother looked in her early 20s. Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan appear, but Patti Smith does a great job of not making it sound like a name-dropping episode in the narrative. One humorous story is that of how Allen Ginsburg bought Patti Smith lunch on account that she looked like "an attractive young boy," to the poet of the generation.

I got this book because, aside from being reviewed in the NYT, I felt I could learn quite a bit from it about the creative process. The book did not disappoint when it came to its didactic qualities. Again, how these two managed to be so assured of success, supporting each other through one of the most turbulent of ages of our nation is a testimony to the power of art, literature and music to overcome all.

Octavio Paz' "Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature" part 001

The shame of having hold on to a book for this long without reading it finally took a toll on my emotions this week. Just like Zbigniew Herbert's "Still Life with a Bridle," which took me about 10 years to get to it (and I devoured this little book, a delicious combination of essays and apocryphas), Octavio Paz' book "Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature" gathered dust on top of my book shelve for nearly 15 years. I've had a series of false starts with it, never going through the first essay as a whole, and putting it down in favor of something more "digestible." Well, sometimes that's all it takes because, as T.S. Eliot indicated early on, "time is an enzyme," and now I am fully enjoying this book.

Paz' ideas of translation strike me as ironic (all of these essays are originally in Spanish... the praised translation comes from Helen Lane). He problematizes translation in literature as paradoxical at best, and, through a series of historical and self-interpretations he devices a theory that begins in Babel and ends within the enclosure of a New Guinea pygmy community listening to a Edith Piaf song on a record player. First, Octavio Paz takes on the diversity of language and its origins. He doesn't just cite the Biblical principle of Babel as an example--he always had a way of commencing with metaphysics and somehow still be able to explain the concrete. But he uses Babel to expose the idea of unity and diversity. The unity of all humanity under one language led to an extravagant God-like and arrogant pursuit. As a result, Paz holds, the Spirit scattered the language into a million traditions. This diversity of language is "an attack on the unity of the mind," and in the same token a challenge to the idea of God as supreme--if humans fail to comprehend unity in language, how then, Paz asserts, would they be able to conceive of a supreme, unified idea of God? All of this, however, is based on an examination of language; this is where Octavio Paz perhaps develop the rank of ideas that led to a Nobel Prize in Literature. "Plurality is universally taken to be a curse and a condemnation: it is the consequence of a transgression against the Spirit," a statement that, for all intent and purposes, has a blend of the metaphysical and modern interpretation of a multiplicity of languages. Being bilingual or even trilingual begins the to reverse this process, for, as Paz states, "To speak a foreign tongue, understand it, and translate it into one's own is to restore the unity of the beginning." No, Paz is not playing with the circular reasoning of the Russian Deconstructionists, but rather taking on translation as a tool of understanding. He does play a back and forth game, but as confusing as it seemingly is, Paz eventually wraps it all up in a way we can understand: some translations work and some others do not. Pushing the argument to the very limit, he uses a word most of those do not know, or perhaps have never encountered before, but we all know what it is once he explains it.

Speaking in tongues, Paz is quick to introduce, "was not exclusive to early Christian communities. It antedates them and appears in a great many Oriental and Mediterranean cults going back to earliest antiquity." It is important to mention that Paz recognizes the paradox: this "speaking in tongues" has been recognized as holy and evil at the same time; the more conventional the Medieval Church became, the more ostracized speakers of this unknown ejaculations became. Their refuge, as an act of subversion and submission at the same time, became the Protestant Reformation. Even to this day, the Catholic Church discourages this kind of practice, while churches of other denominations embrace it as it takes place spontaneously without regard to rank or title (perhaps this is why the Catholics "dislike" this practice--they have been obsessed with rank and file since the very start). But, if the practice has been present since very early on, why the push and pull controversy of it? It is unifying, Paz states, rather than divisive: "The universality of the phenomenon, and its persistence among historical changes and the extreme diversity of cultures, languages, and societies, incline me to think that we are once more in the presence of a human constant." The official term for this manifestation/behavior is "glossolalia."

Glossolalia is not exclusive to religion. As a matter of fact, poets of the Modernist movement (especially in Latin America) played with similar "artistic" tools. Early in the 20th century, there was a movement of "creationist" poetry--Huidobro being the most extensive practitioner of this method--which used "real" language words and mixed them with spontaneous prefixes and suffixes that made them border on glossolalia. For example, (and even though these are in Spanish, I'll include the translation after each word), "unipacio" (one space), "monlutrella" (a combination of the Spanish words mountain, moon and star). Paz includes--to the delight of those who want to keep the argument on this side of the Modern--James Joyce's 101 letter word from Finnegans Wake, (a word I am not going to include here, not because it is not important, but rather because I am of a divided mind when it comes to Joyce). At any rate, the word can be considered glossolalia because it bespeaks of Adam's and Eve's fall from grace, a Spirit manifestation if there was ever one. Unfortunately, this 101 letter word has to be taken with a grain of sand when it comes to meaningfulness. Joyce came out clean and stated in a little known quotation, that, for the sake of disclosure, I have included here: "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it [Ulysses] will keep the professors busy for centuries over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality." There's much in "Ulysses" that can be considered glossolalia, but a quote such as the one here makes on think about the purposes or legitimacy of literary tricks and games. Could glossolalia then be some sort of physical manifestation, a sort of "you-ate-too-much-chocolate-therefore-you-are-hyper" type of thing? But such an idea would be a social convention, wouldn't it? Octavio Paz, perhaps already predicting such an argument, clarifies this type of interpretation, "If the relationship between the signifier and the signified depends on a convention, how could such convention come home without the consent of the speakers? Who is the author of this convention--language itself? In that case, what was there before language and where did it come from? In a word, if the origin of the so-called linguistic pact does not lie in human will, how does one explain the dual relation between language and society?" This quote, of course, sounds like one of those graduate school discussion one tends to try and forget. However, there is something significant (no pun intended) about this argument. Let me put it in context. If I am to speak to a room full of people--about one third of the audience speaks a variety of languages that are not Romantic or even close to a Western-type language--and they are all standing, would I be able to convey the meaning of chair (signified) by using gesticulations, etc.? Here I am trying to educate them about the functions and benefits of a chair, yet every person in the room is standing. Must I have a chair with me in order to get my point across? In a nation-wide tour of my lectures on the benefits of chairs, must I carry one with me from lecture hall to lecture hall? The object is the signified (chair), the word chair is the signifier. In my lecture, I have replaced the word (signifier) with gesticulations and body movements in order to get the point across to that part of the audience that does not speak English, am I breaking the covenant of subject and object? am I, in some sense, by means of my movements to carry meaning across engaged in some different type of glossolalia? There may never be an answer to this, but it's worthwhile to analyze and see the argument for what it is: the space between object and subject--the hidden kingdom, as Paz puts it, that awaits on the other side of things.

Well, this is a bit too complicated, and I think I might have done a terrible job at explaining it. I am, however, enjoying the book very much. Whatever was there at the start 15 years ago that forced me to put this book down is now officially scratched from my list of excuses. The second part of this posting will deal with the relation of taste and sex/eroticism, craftsmanship vs. art, analogies between political preferences and cultural culinary conventions. Don't ask me, really, if you must ask, ask Octavio Paz himself (he's dead, so you may have to buy the book and read it).