stumbling virtue

Portrait of a Lady

 

(Will try to keep it short...)

I always love a "making of" or "behind the scenes" story, sometimes more than the work itself. I can't tell you how many movies have disappointed me when I finally saw them after reading abou tthem for years.

Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X tells the story of what is probably Sargent's most famous painting (I throw in that "probably" just because I'm not enough of an art historian to make a definitive statement). Nearly seven feet tall, the painting shows a woman with unearthly pale skin, wearing a black dress that appears to be held up by nothing--the thin jeweled straps are merely decorative--stands in a half turn so her body is in full view and her face in profile. She looks distant, both hidden and unseen, coming and going.

Originally titled "Portrait of Mme De...," Singer made the painting his official entry in the 1884 Paris Salon, the biggest art event of the year. Sargent had been exhibiting at the Salon since 1877 and had known nothing but success. The young American artist had been building a lucrative portrait painting business, but the painting of the woman in black nearly destroyed him. From the moment the Salon opened, visitors stood in front of it staring, not because they admired the work, but because they were horrified that any artist would dare exhibit something so awful in public. They hated her ghastly pallor, her barely there (by 19th century standards) and her confident sexuality. The critical reception was just as bad. Sargent was mortified. The mother of the woman in the painting wrote to Sargent demanding that he remove the painting from the Salon, stating that her daughter was in tears, her reputation in shreds.

The Fighters

James Keir Hardie and his impressive Edwardian beard lead a protest against the Great War.

[The first of a promised new leaf turned: short reviews! (At least until I can catch up.) I won't say I'm going Twitter 140 characters short, but maybe 140 words...]

Even the most diehard fan of military intervention would have a hard time defending World War I as a necessary war. When you read about the events that set the war into motion, it seems like nothing more than a group of bored European aristocrats spoiling for a fight until they realized the enormity of what they were doing. By then it was too late.

But Britain was still filled with the spirit of 19th century adventure, where the empire conquered piece after piece of the developing world and grew its own industry by leaps and bounds. Brought up on tales of adventure from Kipling, Stevenson, and Hope, young British men eagerly signed up to fight in Europe, hoping for the kind of military glory they'd always dreamed about, where they'd attack with bold cavalry charges, swords waving, enemies conquered. They may have been too young for the Boer War, but they wouldn't miss out this time.

Of course the world, and the way of fighting a war had changed a lot since the Boer War at the turn of the century. It's an old adage that generals always fight the previous war, and in this case, that would lead to disaster. One of the most fascinating parts of Adam Hochschild's tremendous book To End All Wars" is his examination of how ill-prepared Britain was to fight a modern war, and how their leaders shockingly ignore the facts that lay before them; at an astonishingly late point in the war, some British generals were still insisting that all they needed was one good cavalry charge.

The real focus of Hochschild's book, though, is the people who did not fall for the promises of military glory that were sold to the British people--the pacifists who lobbied against the war. At the time they were persecuted mercilessly, but in retrospect they look like the only ones who had any sanity. It was a hard road for many of them, but they stood their ground.

Even if you think all pacifists are softheaded, softhearted misguided ninnies, I still recommend Hochschild's book for his clear and compelling description of how the war was fought, or more often than not, misfought. It's a great book for fans of military history or just history in general.

(Okay, not 140 words, but I'm getting there...)

Forget It

Move into your memory palace.

Again, I fall behind and am trying to play catch up weeks after finishing books.

I think today people worry about their ability to remember things mostly as a test of whether they're getting old, or more precisely their brains are getting old. Why can't I remember that girl's name? How long did I live there? How old was I when we met? No one wants to lose memories from their own lives because no one else has them. As for every day things, memory isn't really that important. Phone numbers are in your phone, so are important appointments. When you don't have a phone with you, of course you can write information down (and enter it into your phone later). As for memorizing facts and trivia, other than impressing your friends, it's not necessary; it's all someplace, in a book or on a website. If you suddenly find yourself unable to remember the score of an important game played by your favorite team, you don't fear that you'll never be able to find it--that's what Google is for. However, if you find you can't remember that, you wonder what else you might not be able to remember.

The ability to remember personal history is all that counts. Memorizing because there is no other way to retain information, though, well, that went out with the introduction of writing, and even more so with the printing press. Then facts no longer risked being lost because the person who knew them forgot them or didn't pass them on to someone else; they were there for all the world to see. Memorizing just for the sake of memorizing, once thought to be the indication of a well-educated person, well, that's gone, too. Eighteenth century scholars could spend all their time memorizing long poems as an exercise for their intellect. That kind of memorizing, though, requires a serious time commitment and deep focus, two things which most 21st century people severely lack.

Unless, of course, you're a professional memorizer who does things like enter memory contests. These people are the subject of Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer. A young freelance journalist, Foer went to cover the US Memory Championship, an event I'm sure few of us have marked on our calendars (or have the dates indelibly inscribed in our memories, perhaps I should say). He met a cocky competitor who swore that by using his methods, he could teach Foer to be a memory champion himself. This was too irresistible to pass up, both for the sheer lunacy of it and no doubt for the great pitch it made to a publisher. And it paid off--Foer won the US Memory Championship and produced a charming book about his adventures learning about the art and science of memory.