Moreover

A note to our readers

Robert Cottrell — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:29:55 +0000

As of October 15th 2007, This blog is no longer being updated. Books and arts writing now appears on the
front page of our web site, www.moreintelligentlife.com, and in the
single RSS feed serving the whole of the site, http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoreintelligentlifeTotal.

Amis and his ilk

Robert Cottrell — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:39:24 +0000

Literary London is enjoying an exhibition-quality row between the veteran Marxist bore and critic, Terry Eagleton, and the novelist, Martin Amis (pictured). Eagleton started it, says the Daily Telegraph:

In an introduction to the 2007 edition of his classic book, "Ideology: An Introduction", Prof Eagleton attacks the views of "Amis and his ilk" for taking up cudgels against Islam instead of propounding tolerance and understanding. The attack also extends to Amis's novelist father, the late Kingsley Amis. Prof Eagleton calls Kingsley Amis "a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals". He adds: "Amis fils has clearly learnt more from him than how to turn a shapely phrase".

Happily, the things Amis learned from his father included the conduct of shapely literary feuds (and, I trust, the correct use of the word "ilk"). Here he is, replying, in a letter to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown:

Eagleton ... is a man of a redundant but familiar type: an ideological relict, unable to get out of bed in the morning without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx. More remarkably, he combines a cruising hostility with an almost neurotic indifference to truth; on the matter of checking his facts, he is, to be frank, an embarrassment to the academic profession. But his human need is simple enough: he wants attention to be paid to his self-righteousness â€“ righteousness being his particular brand of vanity.

Both Amis and Eagleton have chairs at Manchester University: physical proximity surely increases the chance that some snippet of this might some day make YouTube. Is violence in the SCR very far awayâ€”or is this a professional wrestling-type grudge match, in which the spitting faces are put on for public performance?

News: Religion, Art, A Nobel winner, I'm all ears

Tatiana_Lau — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:37:08 +0000

Today's arts news and gossip

The Vatican will publish trial documents of the Order of the Knights Templar, a medieval military group associated with the Crusades and mentioned in The Da Vinci Code. Leather bound copies of the minutes of the proceedings will sell for â‚¬5900 ($8333). The Order, which was founded in 1099 to protect those on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, was disbanded and its leaders burned at stake for heresy in 1314.Â

Since then, the Knights Templar have been regarded as heretics, but in 2001, a professor found a misplaced parchment in the Vatican's archives in which the Order received Papal absolution of heresies at the conclusion of the trial. Reuters has compiled a list of things Knights Templar hopefuls must do. Included is visiting the website of supposedly the largest Knights Templar order in the world.

Though Damien Hirst has made headlines recently for his diamond-crusted skull, he does not hold as much power as Francois Pinault. The French billionaire has again been named the most powerful man in the contemporary art world in ArtReview's "Power 100." Mr Hirst, on the other hand, has jumped up five spots this year to number six. Mr Pinault, the owner of Christie's auctioneers and several brand name labels, made news earlier this year when he succesfully fought the Guggenheim for the plans to transform the Dogana, a Renaissance building in Venice, into a museum by 2009.

Doris Lessing has won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. The English author, most known for her novel, The Golden Notebook, was described by the Swedish Academy as "epicist of the female experience, who
with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided
civilization to scrutiny." In an interview with Newsday, she refused to attribute the success of Notebook to its feminist themes by placing the emphasis on its "energy." Ms Lessing, 87, is the oldest recipient of the literature award in its history.

An Australian artist has implanted a third ear
into his arm. Stelios Arcadious hopes to soon have a microphone
implanted in the ear, which was grown from cells in a lab. The
microphone will be connected to a bluetooth device so "you can listen
to what my ear is hearing," Mr Arcadious said. He had searched 10 years
for a surgeon willing to perform the operation. He originally had hoped
to have the ear implanted on his head, he added. That plan was scrapped when it was deemed too dangerous.

News: Art fair opens, Acts of love and hate, Arrests, Damaged film

Tatiana_Lau — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:46:13 +0000

THE Frieze Art Fair opens today in London. Though Russian art collectors and museums have already bought some pieces at VIP previews, visitors can still see contemporary art exhibits, including "French Horns: Unwound and Entwined," by Claus Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen,Â and life-size statues of street performers dressed as Che Guevara.

A French woman faces a fine of â‚¬4,500 ($6400) and a class in good citizenship after she kissed a $2.8m piece of art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon. The kiss has left a permanent smudge on the canvas. Since July, employees have unsuccessfully used 30 different products to remove the smudge. "When I kissed it, I thought the artist would have understood," the woman said before the court. The owner of the all-white Cy Twombly painting is asking for $2,878,000, which will cover the cost of the painting and restoration costs. Defense lawyers have said the kiss was "a pure, intense act of love." A lawyer for the owner has said that such an act would require the consent of both parties.

A video documenting the vandalisation of several erotic works of art has been posted on YouTube. Four masked figures are shown destroying photographs from Andres Serrano's exhibition, "A History of Sex." As the vandals use crowbars to smash the glass protecting the photographs, the video cuts to lettered commentary asking, "This is art?" before returning to the destruction of the exhibit. The video is no longer available online.

Police arrested five youths (four men and one woman) for damaging a Monet piece after illegally entering the MusÃ©e d'Orsay on Sunday. One of the five turned himself in and named the others after being frightened by the media frenzy surrounding the attack. Police statements indicate the teenagers wereÂ drunk. One of the detainees knew how to enter the museum for job-related reasons.

A key scene of Tom Cruise's problem-plagued film, "The Valkyrie", will have to be re-shot after the film was damaged in a German lab. The film has already hit some controversial snags for its Hollywood treatment of a German hero: Germans are huffy about Mr Cruise acting as Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, largely because of his belief in Scientology. But the production company doubts sabotage was involved.

When adverbs aren't adverbs, and swearing isn't language

Robert Lane Greene — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:21:57 +0000

WHY do we say "fuck you", and not "fuck
yourself"? What exactly makes certain excretions more linguistically
taboo (shit) than others (snot)? Is "fucking" really an adverb
in the phrase "fucking brilliant"? Steven Pinker, a linguist
and cognitive scientist and one of the most masterful popularisers of science
writing today, answers all in a long article
on profanity in the New Republic.

Swearing, it turns out, has its own part of the brain. Well, not exactly, but
when you spill hot coffee on your crotch and expel a salty Anglo-Saxon term for
sex or feces, the brain's limbic system--involved in instinctive raw emotions
like fear and disgust--is activated in a way that it isn't when you proclaim
your love for Rimbaud, using the main language engine seated chiefly in the
brain's neocortex. This is probably why, no matter your mastery of and immersion
in another language, when that coffee hits its mark you will almost always
swear in your mother tongue. Swearing goes deep.

Serious writing about profanity is hardly new, but Mr Pinker manages
to air a few fresh ideas. There are three universal sources for swear
words--sex, religion and excretion--and Mr Pinker has hypotheses for all three.
Religious swears cannot survive secularisation, he argues (quoting G.K.
Chesterton: â€œtry to blaspheme Odinâ€). But sex retains its taboo
power: despite sexual liberation, the many serious things that can
accompany sex (disease, pregnancy, rape, betrayal) mean that humans may never
talk about it with the breeziness with which we discuss the weather or sports.
The revulsion from certain excretions may seem obvious, but Mr Pinker
explains their taboo with a bit of hard biology.

Alongside biology and
neuroscience, Mr Pinker touches on politics and society too. He gleefully
refers to the â€œfilthiest piece of legislation ever considered by Congressâ€â€”the
one that had to refer explicitly to â€œcock suckerâ€ and â€œmother fuckerâ€ in order
to ban them from the airwaves. He thinks it silly that the New York Times
cannot review Harry Frankfurterâ€™s book On Bullshit without asterisks.
(So were the New Republicâ€™s editors being clever,
or squeamish themselves, when they titled this piece What the F***?)
A good liberal (â€œlibertarianâ€, in American parlance), Mr Pinker thinks it
should be up to parents' and broadcastersâ€™ good sense, not to government, to
keep profanity away from the young and the sensitive.

The piece meanders a bit, and may function mainly as an
advertisement for his new book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window
Into Human Nature. The Economist said
that book had a "bitty, cobbled-together feel", and so does the
article here. But our review also said that "Mr Pinker is incapable of
being dull for very long." True enough, by God. Iâ€™m adding The
Stuff of Thought to the reading list. Mr Pinker at his worst is still
smarter, funnier and more provocative than most writers at their best.

Sasha Waltz in Paris

James Woodall — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:56:52 +0000

â€œBEAU spectacle!â€ reports Franceâ€™s Le MondeÂ of a new production at Parisâ€™s Bastille Opera. The choreographer inspiring this plaudit is called Waltz.Â Yes, thatâ€™s her real family name.

Sasha Waltz has beenÂ the toast-of-town in Berlin's dance worldÂ for a decade. Many of her shows, including perhaps her most famous, â€œKÃ¶rperâ€ (Bodies), have toured the world. Breaching the formidable walls of the Bastille is the 44-year-old Germanâ€™s version of Berliozâ€™s â€œRomeo and Julietâ€. It opened on October 5^th to extravagant applause, with another Paris daily, LibÃ©ration, citing its â€œsuperb, fluid, aerial pas de deuxâ€, performed by the Paris balletâ€™s stars, AurÃ©lie Dupont and HervÃ© Dupont, as the star-crossed lovers.

At the post-premiere soirÃ©e, Ms Waltz herself could be seen in a twirl or two to the upbeat strains of a Russian folk combo. But how does a foreigner end up with the directorial reins at so revered a house? Its director, GÃ©rard Mortier, has an internationally roving eye--and he loves quirkiness. Waltz caught his attention with her last big operatic foray: a staging of Purcellâ€™s â€œDido and Aeneasâ€. That opened with dancers plunging half naked into a huge water-tank.

Waltz revels in the elements. Her last show, â€œMedeaâ€, featured a gale-force wind blown across stage by vast propellers. In an earlier Waltz piece, â€œTidesâ€, a wall goes up in flames. And here? In her grave, asleep, not dead, Julie is covered, spectacularly, with piles and piles of pebbles. Call it: choreography going back to basics.

News: Graffiti or art in Brighton, Middle East International Film Festival, Zaha Hadid, Stephen Colbert's new book

Sana_Munasifi — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:06:31 +0000

Today's arts news and gossip.

AN ADVERTISEMENT outside the Ink-D Gallery in Brighton, England, for James Cauty's exhibit "The Rise and Fall of Portslade Massif", has been scrubbed away by the city's graffiti team, apparently by accident. The words "Portslade Massif" had been written in white emulsion paint on the outside wall and window of the gallery, which is private property. The incidentÂ prompted the gallery's director, Dan Hipkin, to ask, "Who holds the right to say what is and isn't a form of expression?"

The first Middle East International Film Festival will be held in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, next week. The festival, held at the Emirates Palace, the city's $1 billion hotel, will screen films from around the world, concentrating onÂ work from the Gulf statesÂ and by female, Arab directors.

Zaha Hadid has unveiled her plans for the relatively deserted Zorrozaurre peninsula of Bilbao. Ms Hadid intends to turn the peninsula into an island, connect it with the mainland with eight bridges andÂ build 6,000 new houses, all of which will sit nearly 5 metres above sea level (in case of flooding). The island will includeÂ two technology centres and a park. Developers hope the project willÂ reinvigorate the area, which now houses only 450 residents. Ms Hadid's island is slated to be ready by 2025.

Stephen Colbert, host of the "Colbert Report", has released "The Honest Untruth", a book in which his character, a satirically conservative presenter modelled onÂ Bill O'Reilly from Fox news, gives his views on topics ranging from religion to sports. For example, a woman who works outside the home "might as well bring coconut arsenic squares to the school bake sale." But critics claim the book lacks the bite of his live performances, like his bracingly scathing speech at the White House Press Correspondent's Dinner in 2006.

Vienna-Paris: Austro-French Art

James Woodall — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:50:42 +0000

EXCITING times at Vienna's Belvedere, home of Austria's greatest art collection. The Lower Belvedere has just been restored to its early 18^th-century glory, reopening with "Vienna-Paris: Van Gogh, CÃ©zanne and Austria's Modernists", a richly varied exhibition of Austrian and French paintings.

There was aÂ smell of fresh paint on the wallsÂ on October 3rd, and bare wiring straggled from the ceiling. But little could steal away fromÂ the canvases, a remarkableÂ group of French Impressionists, Klimts and Kokoschkas. The opening is a triumph for Agnes Husslein-Arco, the relatively new director of the Belvedere. She assumed her post in January, shortly after her predecessor, Gerbert Frodl, stepped down in the wake of the Belvedereâ€™s shattering loss ofÂ five Klimts,Â restored to the original ownersâ€™ heir last year.

Are there any paintings with a dodgy history in this hang? Ms Husslein-Arco says that while some minor worksÂ in the collection could be Nazi spoils, none of these will be exhibited. â€œWhen I see a painting,â€ she says, â€œthe first thing I do is turn it round to see whatâ€™s on the back.â€ Viennaâ€™s big state museums are sensitised to possible Nazi loot in their collections, but in the Austrian provinces, different laws apply. At Linzâ€™s Lentos Museum, for instance, a Klimt and an Emil Nolde are now the subject of restitution claims by the heirs of former Jewish owners. Proof of ownership is key, but documentation is scant, according to Sophie Lillie, a Vienna-based historian.

"It might be thought that after the Blochbauer-Altmann case, Austria could reach closure in this area,â€ says Ms Lillie. â€œIn fact we are years and years away from that.â€

News: Vandals at the Orsay, A Crack at the Tate Modern, Damien Hirst skull in St Petersburg

Sana_Munasifi — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 20:45:46 +0000

Today's arts news and gossip.

VANDALS broke into the MusÃ©e d'Orsay on Sunday and damaged Monet's "The Argenteuil Bridge", creating a four-inch tear in the painting. This was just one in a series of ugly incidents at museums throughout France, including an attack last year on Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" by a self-proclaimed performance artist. (Though perhaps Duchamp would've been more amused.)

A new work by Doris Salcedo, a Columbian sculptor, which features a 167-metre crack in the floor, has been installed in the main hall of the Tate Modern in London. According to the artist, the crack, which will remain as a scar on the museum's floor after it is filled in the spring, represents borders and racial division. The work took five weeks to install and over a year to create.

Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God", a diamond and platinum skull that was recently sold to a group of investors for $100m, will go on display at the State Heritage Museum in St Petersburg in May as part of the museum's international contemporary-art project. The investors who bought the skull have already announced that they will re-sell the work, though they have yet announce a date.

Poetic license and poetic influence

Ariel Ramchandani — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:48:03 +0000

AWARDINGÂ the Frost Medal to John Hollander earlier this year has hadÂ poets up in proverbial arms. In the New York Times Book Review Motoko Rich described both the drama of the appointment andÂ the ethics of judging "artistic merit" against "unsavory opinions or actions of the artist". Hollander isÂ a prolific and well-regarded poet, but he has angered many with hisÂ references to "societies without cultures", by which he means those of West Africa and Central America. His appointment has precipitated a flurry of resignations at the Poetry Society of America, including the president, William Louis-Dreyfus,Â who complained that the protests were reactionary, and by other board members, including Walter Mosley, a novelist who has criticised theÂ lack of diversity among award recipients. (Only three of 38 previous winners have been not white, which is indeed disgraceful.)

Quite a bit of sturm und drang, to be sure. But let's actually consider the poetry of John Hollander.

Scanning a poet's work in search of his politics is a worse offence, in a way,Â than judging a poet's politics before his work. (Though judging a person who judges a poet by his politics may still rank as the worst offence.)Â I am not the first to say it: Hollander's poetry is of a very high quality. It is also at times thoroughly and terrifyingly Western. His enemies and influences seem to be Western philosophical greats, English literary tropes, and classic formal patterns and constructions. For me, the poems' point of interest is how they operate within these patterns, andÂ fight against their boundaries.

Boundaries are literally explored in the poem "Policing the Yard", in which Hollander uses rhyme and repetition to create a prison of a poem:

This will return to haunt them--all the moreÂ
For its low hopelessness as well as forÂ
All their conclusions being quite unsound.Â
Picking up what they'd dropped too long before:Â
That will return to haunt them all the more.Â

The circuitry and the heavy, un-droppable burden create uneasiness, a fight aginst the heaviness of the past. Similarly, in the poem "The Night Mirror" from Selected Poetry 1993, Hollander's mirror reflects

...a horrible bit of movement
At the edge of knowledge, overhanging
The canyons of nightmare.

Something new is threatening to get out, but the stuffiness of the poem, the heaviness of the scene he has set, withÂ grandmother in "her Windsor chair in the warm lamplight", barely constrains it.

It is a great wonder then, or no wonder at all, that his contested review of Jay Wright's collected poems in January 2001 was a positive one. Hollander proclaims Wright's poetry to "give evidence of a bookish and extremely thoughtful life while encountering the forms and rituals of cultures without literatures..." The second half of his remarkÂ is clearlyÂ nonsensical and obviously inaccurate. But the poetry of these two "extreme thoughtful" menÂ begs comparison. Hollander called his review "Poems That Walk Anywhere", capturing Wright's fluidity, his seemingly endless movement, his ability to float in the realm of the spiritual or be grounded in the soil. In this way, his poems are all that Hollander's are not. They represent a completely different style and approach.

Wright's work moves in a way that one could be tricked into thinking it had no legacy or cultural past. But I don't believe it to be a traditionless approach.Â In his poem "Those who Thoroughly Bed the Estuary", Wright ends by saying

It is too soon to say
Â Â Â Â Â if blindness
is the innocent gift
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â of strangers.Â Â

Cultural blindness is rarely an "innocent gift". If there is anything to be gained from the controversy over the Frost Medal, it is an understanding that there we have much to learn when we cast a wider net.