Category: Books, Music, Art, Architecture

Hi, I’m Glen Campbell

One of the biggest problems with the Tweety Administration is that it sucks the life out of the news cycle – there’s simply no oxygen left for anything that doesn’t have the word “Trump” in it. It sucks the life out of the news, and out of culture, and out of the internet. This week it even seemed like it might suck the life out of life itself.

So I forgive you if you didn’t note the passing last week of Glen Campbell at age 81. Maybe you never saw a link to click on to read about it, or maybe you ignored the link and thought, “Yeah, I get it. Wichita Lineman, Galveston, country music dude. So what? Struggled with alcoholism, addiction, and ultimately Alzheimer’s? Yeah, like a lot of people. Boo Hoo.”

I admit that my own first thought was that I didn’t need to think too much about the guy who had that All American, red white and blue, clean-as-a-whistle TV show, “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour”, from 1969-1972, at the height of the Viet Nam War, when what we needed was the exact opposite.

But then I remembered Glen Campbell the musician. That boy could play.

His solo career took off with the release of “Gentle On My Mind” in 1967. That changed everything for him, and was the start of whatever most people know about him.

But before that, Glen Campbell was a charter member of The Wrecking Crew, the group of studio musicians that played on virtually every record produced in Los Angeles in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. And I mean everything. From Sinatra and Dean Martin, to Elvis, Nat King Cole, Bobby Darin, Ricky Nelson, Jan and Dean, The Monkees, the Ronettes, The Mamas and the Papas, Bob Dylan. If it was produced in L.A., Glen Campbell probably played on it. All genres, all styles, all tempos, all arrangements.

If you want to find out who was really playing on all those Beach Boys or Byrds records or who really was Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound”, there’s a Netflix documentary for you to stream called “The Wrecking Crew”. As a bonus, you’ll also find out something about the greatest female musician you never heard of, Carole Kaye.

Check out the T.A.M.I. Show sometime for a trip down Memory Lane, and to get a tiny feel for their versatility. They played every tune for that show.

Even after Glen Campbell became a household name and a huge star, he returned often to the studio to continue playing with them on other people’s records. That’s how good they were and how much they enjoyed playing together.

Playing with The Wrecking Crew meant you were one of the best studio players in the profession, meaning you were one of the best professional musicians in the country. You couldn’t make a mistake – it was expensive to make a record, and there was no budget for overtime for the band or to keep the studio an extra hour. Campbell mainly played rhythm guitar, as he never learned to read music beyond chord charts, but his musicianship was as good as there was.

Glen was a modest and self-effacing guy, the seventh of twelve children born to a poor family in Arkansas. They had no electricity. He picked cotton for $1.25 per hundred pounds, and said, “A dollar in those days looked as big as a saddle blanket.”

He got a five-dollar guitar when he was four and his dad made a capo for it out of a corncob and a nail. He was playing on local radio by the time he was six. He never had any formal musical training, practiced after working in the fields, and admired Django Reinhardt more than any other player he’d heard.

He dropped out of school at 14, worked menial jobs and moved to New Mexico at 17 to start his career as a musician with his uncle’s band. He moved to L.A. at 23 and began work as a session musician, and you know the rest.

He died last week in Nashville, six years after first being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He was great at what he did and made a lot of people happy.

glen2

Youthful Success

glen 3

D.U.I.

glen1

Alzheimer’s

Came for the Klimt, Stayed for the Gerstl

Today I made good on the promise I made myself back in February to see the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II before September, when it will go to its new home, a private collection in China.  See this post for the background of why this is interesting.

woman2

The original Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer (the “Woman in Gold”) is spectacular, and seeing it in the same room with a collection of many other important Klimt portraits is pretty special.

woman1

While at the Neue Galerie, I had a chance to see a fantastic exhibition of Richard Gerstl, who is virtually unknown to many today, but was a very influential Viennese artist who died at age 25 in 1908.  Gerstl’s unique style preceded the German Expressionists and foreshadowed them. His work was original, intense and beautiful.

gerstl

Self portrait

He committed suicide by first stabbing and then hanging himself after being caught in flagrante delicto by Arnold Schönberg, with Schönberg’s wife, Mathilde.

Schönberg had asked Gerstl to give him painting lessons, as he had hoped to be able to supplement the meager income he had from composing music.  Gerstl became close friends with the Schönbergs (a little too close, evidently), and their circle of artist and musician friends, and painted Mathilde many times.

After Gerstl’s suicide, his family hid away all his works in an effort to put the whole scandal behind them, which is why he is virtually unknown today.

Mathilde wrote a letter to Richard’s brother Alois, asking him to destroy anything he might find among Richard’s things that related to her:

Dear Herr Gerstl. – Many thanks for your efforts, I would have much liked to speak to you myself, but I am so poorly and down because of the tragedy, that I found it to be impossible. I certainly hope to speak to you, when we are all somewhat calmer. – I would only now ask you, if you should find something in Richard’s studio, that you suspect to belong to me, simply to destroy it. Please do not send me anything, it is all so terribly painful, and only reminds me of the tragic misfortune. -Believe me, Richard has chosen the easiest way for both of us. To have to live, in such circumstances, is very hard.
Be well, and as I said, I hope that I haven’t spoken to you for the last time. Yours
Mathilde Schönberg.

Only a small body of Gerstl’s work remains, and the exhibition at the Neue Galerie has many important pieces.  I particularly like the portraits of his brother, his father and himself.

brother

father

self

Strats and Strads

Remember this scene in Antonioni’s “Blow Up”? It’s one of my favorites of all time. David Hemmings wanders into a performance space where a band is playing to a somewhat dazed looking small audience. One of the players is having trouble with an amp, and, well, see what happens next…

It’s such a great scene for a lot of reasons, one being that the band is actually the  Jimmy Page/Jeff Beck Yardbirds, one of the most iconic and influential in the history of Rock and Roll, with Beck smashing his axe in the scene.

But it’s the “treasure to trash” ending of the scene I really like. In the context of the show, the busted up guitar is treasure worth fighting for, but a minute later, out on the street, it’s just junk. It has no intrinsic value, just the perceived value of the people watching the show.

When you think of the value that certain violins have to collectors, e.g. those made by Amati or Stradivari, you can see something different. They are valued for their craftsmanship (the techniques and skill of the maker can’t be replicated), their rarity (no more will be produced), their provenance (who has owned and played them), and, most of all, their sound. Those violins are meant to be played. Of course, most of the great players can’t afford the instruments, but the people who can afford them will often purchase them with the objective of having them played by an expert. Yes, they have great value as museum pieces, but they also have intrinsic value to the musician.

Of course, there are some violins that are valued entirely for their provenance, irrespective of their quality. For, example, the violin on which “Nearer My God To Thee” was played as the Titanic went down. According to this site, it was discovered in an attic in England, had its history verified, and was last sold for $1.7 Million.

titanic

But the most expensive violins are valued for their sound as much as their history. Here are a couple of examples from the same site (click to enlarge):

To be sure, there are famous luthiers and manufacturers whose products are also valued for their sound and playing characteristics, and some of their guitars are quite expensive.

But the most expensive guitars are simply the most famous ones, i.e. owned and played by the most famous musicians. They are typically made by companies still in business today: Martin, Gibson, and Fender, and, although often customized for the particular player, could easily be reproduced to the original standard. They are not meant to be played or even touched, but rather admired and either re-sold for a profit or given to a museum.

The Fender Stratocaster on which Jimi Hendrix played The Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock was purchased by Microsoft founder Paul Allen for $2 Million. If he plays it, he doesn’t do it in public, at least to my knowledge.

jimi

Will this particular instrument increase in value over the centuries? Only if Jimi’s fame and the Woodstock moment endure. I’m not saying they won’t, but anyone who wants a guitar of identical sound and build quality, could have one made today for a lot less than $2M.

The highest price ever paid for a guitar does not yet match the highest price ever paid for a violin, but the gap is closing. The Reach Out To Asia strat sold for $2.7 Million, not because it’s a great instrument, but because a lot of legendary players signed it for a charity auction, held for relief for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami victims. (Click on the link to find out who).

tsunami

An electric Washburn owned but rarely played by Bob Marley, was given away to his tech, Gary Carlsen, and ultimately sold for $1.2 Million. It is now enshrined in Jamaica as a “National Treasure”.

marley

Bringing it all back around to the Yardbirds, this 1964 Gibson ES-335 was used by Eric Clapton in his time with the band (before Page and Beck), as well as with Cream, Blind Faith, and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

clapton

It sold at auction at Christie’s in 2004 for $847,500, at the time the third highest price ever paid for a guitar. A nice axe, to be sure, but who knows what David Hemmings and Michelangelo Antonioni would do with it.

The Judensau, 500 years after Luther

On October 31st, we will mark the 500th anniversary of the posting of Martin Luther’s “95 Theses”,  a list of questions and propositions for debate which he nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. It sparked the Protestant Reformation by arguing against the corrupt practice of selling “indulgences” to absolve sin. He argued that salvation could only be achieved through faith, not deeds.

At first, Luther was willing to welcome Jews into his congregation, reasoning that with the corrupt practices of Catholicism removed, they would have little reason not to accept Christ. He wrote in 1523 that Catholics had treated Jews “like dogs”, making it difficult for them to convert. He said,

“I would request and advise that one deal gently with them …If we really want to help them, we must be guided in our dealings with them not by papal law but by the law of Christian love. We must receive them cordially, and permit them to trade and work with us, hear our Christian teaching, and witness our Christian life. If some of them should prove stiff-necked, what of it? After all, we ourselves are not all good Christians either.”

But when few Jews proved willing to abandon their view that a man could not be God, Luther gave up on them and had plenty to say against them in his famous book, “On the Jews and Their Lies. “

In the treatise, he argues that Jewish synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes burned, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and “these poisonous envenomed worms” should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He also seems to advocate their murder, writing “[W]e are at fault in not slaying them”.

The Wittenberg Castle church had been a Catholic church before Luther, and has remained a Lutheran church through today. Like many Catholic churches across Germany, it had a Judensau, a Jew-Pig, carved on its facade in 1305.

wittenberg judensau

sau

The Judensau iconography taunts and vilifies Jews. It’s often located on the outside of the building where all can see it, but it can also be present inside on choir chairs, on wall paintings, woodcuts, and so on.

The Wittenberg Judensau includes a nonsense inscription, “Rabini Shem hamphoras,” which seems to be a version of “shem ha-meforasch”, the full-form name of God regarded by Jews as too holy to be spoken.

Luther talks about the sculpture in his 1543 Vom Schem Hamphoras, in which he equates the Jews with the devil, and indicates their Talmud is located in the sow’s bowels:

“Here on our church in Wittenberg a sow is sculpted in stone. Young pigs and Jews lie suckling under her. Behind the sow a rabbi is bent over the sow, lifting up her right leg, holding her tail high and looking intensely under her tail and into her Talmud, as though he were reading something acute or extraordinary, which is certainly where they get their Shemhamphoras.”

Last year, an online petition was started to finally take the Wittenberg Judensau down.  The thinking is that 700 years of this kind of thing is enough, particularly given modern regional history which is very much present in the memories of many still alive.  But the petition has only got about 7500 or so signatures so far.

If the people of South Carolina can finally be persuaded to lower their confederate flags, maybe some of those open-minded, progressive Germans we keep hearing so much about could think about taking a similar baby-step here.

If you ever get the urge to see some other Judensau examples still in place today, here’s where you can find them:

judensau map

And here are some pictures showing some variations on the theme:

Dylan’s Nobel lecture

So now Bob Dylan is being accused of plagiarizing the lecture that the Nobel Committee forced him to give as a condition of receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. He didn’t care about the prize to begin with and he didn’t want to give the lecture. But everyone told him to just go ahead and do it because it would be better for everybody if he did, and the “controversy” of his “snubbing” them by not showing up at their ceremony would be set aside once and for all.

So he put together a speech explaining his influences, starting with Buddy Holly, and going on to describe how three books he read in grammar school stayed with him and inspired a lot of his writing: Moby Dick, All Quiet On The Western Front, and The Odyssey.

The accusation is that he took a lot of phrases from the SparkNotes summary of Moby Dick to make his point. This “outrage” is laboriously documented in a Salon piece.

Oy vey.

First of all, how many new ways are there to summarize the plot of Moby Dick? If you came up with something yourself today, completely your own original ideas, there’s no chance someone else hasn’t expressed the very same ideas before using many of the very same words.

Of course Dylan went to some summary source to check his memory of a book he read sixty years ago before grudgingly performing this compulsory exercise for the Nobel people! How could it be otherwise? Should he have attributed SparkNotes  in his Nobel lecture? Would that satisfy the critics or just open him up to other “criticism”?

Is he being accused of plagiarizing any of the work for which the prize was conferred? If he paraphrased or simply lifted some words from SparkNotes in the lecture, does that diminish his body of work or influence on culture? Do I care about this at all? No, no, and hell no.

Everything we see and hear now must be framed as controversy, or, even better, a scandal. Everything must be presented as a clash of adversaries. The internet demands it. The revenue model of “news” demands it. Our poor attention span demands it. If it’s an old white guy we’re trashing, so much the better, and so much easier for everyone involved.

Can we not give Bob Dylan a pass after all these years? Just this once? He’s Bob Fucking Dylan, for God’s sake.

bob

 

 

Zeno’s bridge

Remember Zeno’s Paradox? Achilles gives a tortoise a head-start in a foot race, but can never overtake it. By the time Achilles has run to where the tortoise started, the tortoise has moved ahead a bit, and by the time Achilles covers that bit, the tortoise has moved further. And so on, ad infinitum.

Well, if you ever want to get a big infrastructure contract in Boston, like fixing the decaying Longfellow Bridge, you’d do well to keep Zeno in mind when you prepare your sales pitch.

Check out this super-slick animated presentation about the Longfellow Bridge rehabilitation project now underway in Boston. It’s a really cool look at how the engineers will accomplish it and every detail is covered in their plan, which they created at the time the project went out for bid.

After watching this thing, you will be 100% confident they know what they’re doing and have taken all eventualities into account. There can be no doubt they’ll complete the work on time and maybe even under budget.

Wrong again, suckers!

The project was begun in 2013 and was going to be completed in mid-2016. But guess what? When they started the repairs, they found out there were some problems that they hadn’t figured on. “Like what?”, you may ask, “that animation they did had everything covered”. Well, see, it turned out some elements of the steel supports were rusty!

rust

Now, I’m no engineer and I certainly have no experience making animated sales pitches, so naturally my first thought on hearing about the rust was, “No shit! That’s why we needed to fix the bridge in the first place.  Remember?”

Anyway, when the first deadline of three years passed, the engineers said, yeah, well, we’ll be done in a couple or three more years, maybe in late 2018. When they said that, they may have really believed they could do it (or not), and, anyway, it was so  far into the future that no one would remember when the time came.

Well, we’re six months away from 2018, so they better move fast. When I look at the bridge today, it seems about half done. They’ve got the Red Line tracks moved over to one side and the entire roadway on the other side is removed. I took this picture the other day.

update

In my lay opinion, and given the way things always work around here, there’s no way this project can be completed in 2018. Around September of next year, you can expect them to say, “We’re almost there. Only about 12 months left. Sorry for any inconvenience.”

To which Zeno will reply, “No worries, Achilles, you’ll probably pass that tortoise any day now”.

A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall

It was 54 years ago this week that a little-known folk singer named Bob Dylan told the most important figure in prime time television, Ed Sullivan, to take a hike.

In May of 1963, Dylan had a small following based on playing clubs around Greenwich Village and the release of his first album a year before, called “Bob Dylan”, which contained only two original songs. His second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, which would change  everything, had not come out yet.

freewheelin

Freeweheelin’ had a bunch of  soon-to-be-classic Dylan compositions on it, including “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “Girl from the North Country”, “Masters of War”, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”, and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”.

Before Freewheelin’ dropped, Dylan was like a lot of other people struggling to be heard. Unlike almost everyone else, though, he got a huge break in the form of an invitation to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, which at that time was the biggest thing anyone could hope for. It was the country’s highest rated variety show – a guarantee of a huge national audience.

But on May 12, Dylan walked off the show because network censors rejected the song he planned on performing, “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”. The song lampooned the loony right for its tendency to see a “Communist” everywhere they looked, and the network worried they’d be sued because the song equated the views of the Birchers with those of Hitler.

They asked Dylan to choose a different song and he told them to choose a different singer.

As you may know, The John Birch Society was co-founded by Fred C. Koch, the father of David and Charles Koch, who have been doing their best for some time now to ruin this country with their Dark Money.

An excerpt from Amazon’s description of “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right”, by Jane Mayer:

Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers?
     The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against “big government” led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement. But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. 
     The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs—that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom—are sincerely held. But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws.
     The chief figures in the network are Charles and David Koch, whose father made his fortune in part by building oil refineries in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. The patriarch later was a founding member of the John Birch Society, whose politics were so radical it believed Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. The brothers were schooled in a political philosophy that asserted the only role of government is to provide security and to enforce property rights. 

The Kochs have changed the face of Congress by bankrolling candidates that can be relied upon to support their views, and by attacking their opponents with all manner of fake news, made-up scandals, and assorted dirty tricks.

One of the beneficiaries of the Koch largess has been Trey Gowdy, a partisan hack from South Carolina, who has been nicknamed “Hillary Slayer” for his absurd and relentless persecution of Hillary Clinton when he was chairman of the Benghazi hearings, a two-year long waste of the taxpayers’ money. His behavior more closely resembled that of a demented piranha than a U.S. Congressman.

pir1

Guess who Trump’s first choice for the next Director of the F.B.I. is?

trey1 Trey Gowdy

Just when you think Trump can’t top himself, he surprises you. At least this time we don’t have to fret about whether Trump will again be so clueless as to ask Gowdy for his loyalty. Everyone already knows the answer to that one.  And it’s another big day for the sons of the Birchers – the Kochs are smiling about this.

As Dylan said all those years ago, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.”

hardrain

Immortal art and confirmed bachelors

It would be nice to live in a world where someone’s gender or sexual orientation was unremarkable and didn’t come up in workplace matters or in courtrooms – where it would actually be odd to refer to it.

But that’s not the world we live in now. Homosexuality, for example, is regarded very differently depending on where in the world you find yourself. In Iran, there is none, if you believe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Or in Chechnya, either.

The map below comes from this site, where you can find a breakdown of how gay people stand. There are ten countries were homosexuality now is punishable by death.

rightsmap

In general, North America and Western Europe are on the right side of history here and seem to be illuminating the path forward. But it’s a daily struggle.

Yesterday, Trump signed his  “Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty” order, saying, “For too long the federal government has used the state as a weapon against people of faith.” The long national nightmare of persecution of Christians may be coming to an end. But many Evangelicals are not happy about it. They’re pretty miffed, in fact.

See, they were expecting Trump to include language that he had promised, and that had appeared in earlier drafts of the order, which would allow federal contractors to discriminate against LGBT employees based on faith beliefs. Slate commented on the original language:

“a homophobic government employee could refuse to process a same-sex couple’s tax returns or Social Security benefits; federally funded religious charities could refuse to serve transgender people or women who’ve had abortions; and government contractors could fire all LGBTQ employees, as well as any workers who’ve had sex outside of marriage. Meanwhile, a homeless shelter or drug treatment program that receives federal funding could reject LGBTQ people at the door, citing religious beliefs.”

Apparently, Trump was somehow made to understand that in pleasing the evangelicals on this point, he would be displeasing a larger segment of voters, so his “core principles” kicked in, and he decided in favor of getting more “likes” and “re-tweets” with the new version, leaving the LGBT community alone, at least for now.

Anyway, the whole thing got me thinking about the Italian Renaissance (bet you didn’t see that coming!), because it’s pretty clear that it produced some of the most beautiful and enduring works of art mankind has ever seen, and many if not most of these works were produced by homosexuals. Moreover, the principal patrons and beneficiaries of this torrent of creativity were churches and other religious institutions, including and especially the very center of Christendom itself, the Vatican.

In Florence, where Lorenzo the Magnificent was amping up the patronage and philanthropy exemplified by his grandfather Cosimo de Medici, you had a raft of “confirmed bachelors”, working more-or-less contemporaneously, producing art that can only be called immortal.

Lorenzo death mask

Death Mask of Lorenzo de Medici, 1492 

Here’s an interesting read that explains the official attitude towards homosexuality at the time,

During the Renaissance, Florence developed a reputation for being pervaded with homosexuality – “sodomy” in the language of the time. Smarting from this reputation, reeling from population loss suffered during the Black Death, and pressured by homophobic clerics, in 1432 the city government set up a judicial panel called “The Office of the Night” exclusively to solicit and investigate charges of sodomy.

It goes on to say that although the population of Florence at the time was about 40,000, there were 17,000 arrests for sodomy during the 70-year tenure of the Office of the Night. That’s a lot – nearly half the male population for two generations.

But in the meantime, in the studios and palaces of the wealthy, the guys were hard at work.

The model for Verrocchio’s “David” is thought to be the fourteen-year-old Leonardo da Vinci:

david-verocchio

Donatello’s “David” really speaks for itself, n’est-ce pas?

david-donatello

Michelangelo’s “David” is the most famous and perhaps most beautiful:

Michelangelo-David

All these bachelors worked for the Medicis, as did lots of others, including Sandro Botticelli:

sandro-botticelli

Birth of Venus

When it was time to decorate St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Lorenzo lent out a few of his guys to the popes. Michelangelo and Botticelli painted the Sistine Chapel.

Botticelli’s frescoes:

botticelli frescoes

Michelangelo’s ceiling:

ceiling

Out in the main part of the Basilica you can find Michelangelo’s Pieta, perhaps the most beautiful single object ever created by human hands, done at age 24.

michelangelo_pieta_grt

Anyway, this is not the place to summarize the brilliant body of contributions made by “confirmed bachelors” to the world in general, and to the church in particular.

Today’s point is that it would be nice not to have to reference anything about the personal lives of these geniuses and to let their art stand on its own. Maybe we’ll all get to that point some day. But today I think it’s useful to point out to the National Association of Evangelicals that employing gay people is not something they need to promote laws against.

Antiquities: dealing vs. stealing

Four months ago, I wrote something about how, through the miracle of digitization, a long dismembered illuminated manuscript called the Beauvais Missal was being re-assembled. I mentioned how the leaves of this work had been broken up and sold individually (an activity known as “biblioclasm”) by a rare books dealer and notorious book-breaker in New York named Philip Duschnes, who had purchased the Missal from William Randolph Hearst.

Duschnes’ name crossed my screen again today in a story about how the Boston Public Library is going to return three items to their rightful owners in Italy, after having had them in their collections for decades. The items were all purchased “legitimately” by the BPL. including one from Duschnes in 1960, Mariegola della Scuola di Santa Maria della Misericordia.

manuscripts

It’s the one on the right. In English, it’s  “Rules of the school of Our Lady of Mercy “.

The B.P.L. is putting a rosy spin on the affair, bragging about how it discovered the true history of the items through its own researches, has been a careful custodian of them for decades, and now wishes to return them to their rightful owners.

In a press release, they explained

“Today Boston Public Library announced the return of three items from its Special Collections to the State Archives of Venice, Italy and the Library of Ludovico II De Torres in Monreale, Italy. During a repatriation ceremony with Mayor Martin J. Walsh and representatives from Homeland Security, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the Italian Carabinieri, Boston Public Library formally returned the Mariegola della Scuola di Santa Maria della Misericordia, a medieval manuscript dating to 1392; an illuminated leaf from the manuscript Mariegola della Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, dating from between 1418-1422; and Varii de natvralibvs rebvs libelli, a  collection of works by Bernardino Telesio, published in 1590.”

As regards the item purchased from Duschnes,

Questions about the Mariegolas’ provenance emerged through new independent scholarship and a recent project funded by the library to research and describe its medieval manuscripts holdings in preparation for electronic cataloging and digitization. The Mariegola della Scuola di Santa Maria della Misericordia was written in Bologna in 1392 for the use of the scuola (confraternity) of Our Lady of Mercy at Valverde, a spiritual and charitable brotherhood.  It was part of the scuola’s collection until the confraternity was dissolved in 1803, at which point it passed into the collection of the State Archive of Venice. Beginning in 1879, the manuscript was on permanent display in the Archive’s Sala Diplomatica Regina Margherita. The manuscript was taken off exhibition in the late 1940s, at which time several manuscripts disappeared under unknown circumstances, including the Mariegola della Scuola di Santa Maria della Misericordia.

Another way to say “disappeared under unknown circumstances” is that the item was “mistakenly” stolen , and somehow managed to find its way to Philip Duschnes and then to the BPL.

What’s interesting to me about this version of events is that it doesn’t quite mesh with the provenance of the item given in the BPL’s own link, which states that prior to Duschnes, the previously known owner was one Michael Zagayski.  Zagayski was a Polish collector of Judaica whose collection was stolen by the Nazis in 1939.

I have no idea where Duschnes got the item from, but I do know that what it meant to be a legitimate Rare Books and Manuscripts dealer in 1960 is somewhat different than what it means now. Duschnes enjoyed a good reputation in his day (except among his peers who objected to his greed-induced biblioclasm), but issues of provenance were not nearly as sensitive then as now, and “acquiring” items from far-off and war-torn places was seen more as a capitalist right than a historical privilege.

The representative of the Italian police working on this case, Fabrizio Parrulli, said he expects many more cases of repatriation like this one.

The Boston Public Library  holds nearly 250,000 rare books and one million manuscripts. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said during Wednesday’s ceremony, “Hopefully everything we have is ours now.”

What are the chances?

 

 

Wild Mountain Thyme

I saw an OK flick the other day, “Their Finest”. It’s about making a patriotic movie to rally British morale after the evacuation of their trapped army from Dunkirk in 1940. I liked it well enough – it was ostensibly about something I find interesting, but it morphed into more of a love story and a story of the growth and emergence of a talented woman film-writer. It had the advantage of a strong and sympathetic female at its center, which is something we’ve talked about here at GOML in the past.

Their Finest Hour and A Half Directed by Lone Sherfig

The movie’s principal weakness is that it doesn’t know when to quit. It goes on past the moment it should end, and actually breezes right through two or three points that would have been a perfectly appropriate ending, until it feels like it’s testing the patience of the audience a little bit.

But it does have several emotional moments that are really well done. One, for me, comes when the cast members of the movie within the movie are gathered having drinks after the project is just about done, and are led in the singing of the Scottish folk song, “Wild Mountain Thyme” (actually written by Francis McPeake, who was from Northern Ireland).

It’s a really beautiful song, and everybody who has any interest in traditional music has covered it at some point. Mark KnopfIer did a nice instrumental version, and I really like the authenticity and feeling of the Clancy Brothers’ version:

The Corries, a Scottish duet from the early sixties, did a very heartfelt and emotional version, which I also like very much.

In this version, when the chorus begins with, “And we’ll all go together…”, listeners join in, as they do also in the movie version and in many others as well. It’s a powerful and sad effect – it feels like an anthem to solidarity in some common cause or shared feeling. It almost makes you want to cry, but the thing is, you don’t even know what the hell you’re crying about!

And here’s my question for you today: What is this song actually about? Are we “all going together” to war? To a cult meeting where we’ll drink some thyme Kool-Aid and die? To courting? If it’s just a love song asking the lassie for her hand, “Will ye go, lassie, go?”, why so sad and serious?

Or are we just all going to pick some thyme and then come right back? Is it about summer being all too brief after waiting so long for it? It’s written like something promising is beginning, but it’s played like something tragic is ending.

Maybe it’s simply that element of morbidity in all things Scottish that often comes through – cold, wet, darkness, death, and melancholy – no matter the subject?

So tell us, dear readers, what does Wild Mountain Thyme say to you?

Hank to Hendrix, via the beach

Can you spot the genius in this picture?

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Hint: he can play a Stratocaster upside down. And, if this picture is any indication, apparently without electricity!

The picture features Candy Johnson, famous for her shimmy in the ridiculous Beach Party pictures of the early sixties. But that guy with the guitar in back of her is Dick Dale, also known as King of the Surf Guitar. As a lefty, he had to turn the Strat upside down to play it.

He was born in Boston, and went to high school in Quincy.  He started playing guitar as a kid, and, like virtually everyone who came after Hank Williams, Dale cited Hank as one of his early influences.

He moved with his family to the west coast after 11th grade, where he fell in love with surfing and wanted to make music that matched the sounds he heard in his head when he surfed. He quickly developed his own style, distinctive for its rapid-fire up-and-down staccato picking.

To get the heavily distorted, “thick” sound he wanted, he developed customized amps and pick-ups with Fender. He invented that instantly-recognizable “surf sound”, which had to be loud enough to be heard over the ocean. So he built the first-ever 100-watt amplifier.

Jimi Hendrix was also left handed, and that’s one of the reasons Dick Dale was an early influence on him. But the main thing was that Dale took the instrument to a new level, making it do things no one else had ever done, and creating a unique body of work that expressed who he was and what he felt. In other words, Dale created brilliant art – something Jimi understood well.

Dick Dale will be 80 years old in a couple of weeks, and he’s still going strong. Catch him if you can.

Art triumphs over fate

Henry James said, “One is touched to tears by this particular example which comes home to one so – of the jolly great truth that it is art alone that triumphs over fate.”

He was talking about the bronze tomb effigy of his friend, Elizabeth Boott Duveneck, that adorns her grave in Florence, where she died at age 41. He wrote about her and her home in Florence in his novels, Portrait of a Lady and The Golden Bowl.

A marble version of the tomb effigy was commissioned by her father for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The effigy was made by her husband Frank Duveneck, as was the portrait of her, which hangs in the Cincinnati Art Museum. Click below to enlarge.

“The Last Day of Pompeii” is a painting done in 1833 by the Russian artist Karl Briullov. He had visited Pompeii in 1828 and was inspired by the subject of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., which had destroyed the city and entombed its surprised residents in ash.

pompeii

When the Pompeii site was excavated, plaster casts were made of the cavities in ash left by the decomposed bodies of the trapped citizens, revealing their fate, i.e. how they were posed at the moment of their deaths.

Briullov exhibited his huge painting (21′ x 15′) in Rome to great acclaim, garnering attention that was unprecedented for a Russian artist abroad. He never made anything else that approached this success.

The painting inspired Alexander Pushkin to write a poem about it and Edward Bulwer-Lytton to write a novel, “The Last Days of Pompeii”, published in 1834. The book was very popular and had many memorable characters, including Glaucus, a handsome Athenian nobleman; Ione, a beautiful Greek aristocrat engaged to marry Glaucus; and Nydia, a young slave kidnapped from high-born parents who sells flowers to get money for her owners.

Nydia is blind and in love with Glaucus, but keeps silent about this because she knows he’s taken. When Vesuvius erupts, Nydia tries to lead Glaucus and Ione to safety, using her heightened sense of hearing, more useful than sight in the ashy chaos. She loses the two at one point, but somehow finds them again and ultimately leads them out. In the end, her unrequited love for Glaucus causes her to commit suicide.

The story of Nydia inspired Randolph Rogers to sculpt this piece in 1859, called “Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii”.

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Rogers’ work became the most popular American sculpture of the nineteenth century and was replicated 167 times in two sizes, according to him, with many fewer of the full sized version. He did this by making a full-size plaster model, and then having skilled Italian masons cut and polish new examples based on the model.

Several important museums have a version, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The National Gallery of Art in Washington, The Art Institute of Chicago, and The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I took the below picture of the MFA version yesterday with my phone, which may explain the poor quality.

Nydia (2)

Since 2012, admirers of Nydia in the MFA are often struck by the painting on the wall next to her, which is entitled “Museum Epiphany  III”, done in a photorealist style by Warren Prosperi. It shows museum goers admiring art in the very gallery where the painting is hung. The woman at the left of the frame would be looking at the picture she’s in.

epiphany

So, to review: the eruption of Vesuvius and the excavations of Pompeii in the mid-eighteenth century inspired Briullov to create a brilliant painting, which inspired Bulwer-Lytton to write a widely read book, which inspired Randolph Rogers to make a greatly admired sculpture, which inspired Warren Prosperi to paint an extremely interesting picture, which inspired me to write this today.

This may or may not be what James meant by the triumph of art over fate, but it’s fun to think about it.

Tell Tchaikovsky the news

The other day I was reading something on a local news blog I follow about what a mess we’re in, and someone commented that America would not be able to move forward, or solve even one problem, until the last baby-boomer was dead. I was really taken aback by this, as I could not recollect a single thing I had done to impede our progress as a nation. And yet here was someone asserting, earnestly and without irony, that I had to die before things would get better.

I figured, OK, there’s always one idiot who needs to stand out with an inflammatory remark. I know there’s a lot of boomer-hate out there, but this guy is clearly a troll. People will put him in his place with their replies, I thought. But  I soon realized that everyone who reads this blog thought exactly the same thing, and they were all “liking” the boomers-must-die comment. One or two brave souls piped up to put in a good word for my generation and cite an accomplishment or two, but they were quickly and loudly shouted down.

It made me realize, yet again, that everyone always thinks the older generation caused all their problems and the younger generation is a bunch of spoiled brats who don’t know what they’re talking about. Unless you’re a pandering crypto-douchebag, like, say, a Noam Chomsky, once you reach a certain age you’re pretty much useless and/or invisible to everyone who comes behind.

Which brings me to the subject of popular music. Remember how you thought your parents’ taste in music was so awful? I’m not just talking about the obvious “Doggie-in-the-window” kind of awful, but everything they listened to, even the stuff that you now realize was pretty damn good – from Benny Goodman to Miles Davis. Or Les Paul, who, it turns out after all, was a God.

Everyone loves the music that was in the air when they came of age. And everyone holds on to that peculiar love as they get older, insisting that their music is the only really great music.   It’s painful to hear the generation after us dismiss or make fun of our music.  How can they not see the brilliance? 

Chuck Berry died yesterday.

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You can go swimming in an ocean of words about him on the internet today, so I’m not going to write about why he was so important to us, except to say that he was.

You can read about how weird it was that a black kid from St. Louis became an important icon for white teenagers, while black kids weren’t much interested in him at all.

Or you can read  about how eccentric and difficult he was to work with, how he wanted to control all aspects of his “product” and the revenue stream it produced, and how this ultimately hurt and diminished him.

Or you can read about his brushes with the law, including some things he shouldn’t have been doing with underage girls. ZOMG! Monster! I can hear all you Millennials and gen-whatevers screaming, “His music must be banned!”

Do as you like. Think what you will. It doesn’t matter to me, just as my ramblings will likely not matter to you. Chuck Berry was and is a lot more important to me and many others like me than you young geniuses can ever understand.

Sweet Home Chicago

Eric Clapton called Robert Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived”.

Johnson died in 1938 at the age of 27 near Greenwood, Mississippi. It’s not clear how he died and some legends have grown up around the subject, e.g. that he was poisoned by the husband of a woman he had flirted with. On his death certificate, the county registrar wrote that the man on whose plantation Johnson died was of the opinion he died of syphilis.

Just as the details of his death are murky, so are many of the details of his life. Again, there are a number of legends about it, the most important of which is that he made a deal with the devil at a crossroads near the Dockery Plantation (or near Hazelhurst or Beauregard, Mississippi, depending on the version).  He met the devil at midnight and handed him his guitar. The devil tuned it and played a few tunes then handed it back. At that instant Johnson attained full mastery over the instrument and gave his soul for the fame he would receive as a musician.

Only a couple of pictures of Robert Johnson exist, and a few recordings.

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When you listen to his music, you may not be struck at once by its greatness or power.

I think it’s like trying to understand how the first moving pictures or first “talkies” were received by the audiences of the day. They had never seen anything like them before and their minds were blown. To the contemporary movie audience, bored even with 3D or CGI magic, those early innovations now seem like nothing at all. Maybe it’s the same with the early music innovators.

During his life and even twenty years after his death, Johnson was virtually unknown. He got the recognition he deserved after the 1961 release of the Columbia album, “King of the Delta Blues Singers”, and a much wider and mostly white audience heard his music. Many of the greats of Rock and Roll and  R&B claim Johnson as a primary influence.

“Sweet Home Chicago” was one of four of his tunes included by the Rock and Roll all of Fame in their list of 500 that shaped the blues genre. This is the 1936 recording:

I was thinking about all this after stumbling on this version of Sweet Home Chicago, in which Barack Obama helps out the immortal Buddy Guy (and a constellation of other extremely bright stars).   Obama could do it all and make you feel good, too. No Executive Order or even Executive Tweet can roll back this part of his legacy.

Some other modern members of the “27-Club”, important and highly original musicians who died at age 27:

Jimi Hendrix “Smoking” taken in early 1967 in Gered’s Masons Yard studio in London.

Woman in Gold

This beautiful painting by Gustav Klimt, “Bauerngarten”, will shortly go on auction at Sotheby’s in London. It’s been appraised at over $56 million dollars, but Sotheby’s expects it to go for much more.

bauerngarten

Klimt is one of the most important artists of the late 19th and early 20th century,  a leader of the Vienna Secession movement, and revered by Austrians. His primary subject was the female body and some of his work, particularly a ceiling he painted at the University of Vienna, was controversial for being “pornographic”.

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Today, all his work is much sought after by both collectors and speculators. In 2006, Oprah Winfrey paid $88 million for “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II”, and last summer sold it to a buyer in China for $150 Million.

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In his “golden period”, Klimt used gold leaf in his work, creating some very striking multimedia works, one of the most famous of which is “The Kiss”.

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The most iconic work of this period was known for years as “The Woman In Gold”, which took three years to complete. It hung in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna for some sixty years beginning in 1941, and was regarded as one on the great treasures of Austria and a symbol of Austrian culture.

woman1

You might notice the resemblance of the subject here to the one in Oprah’s oil painting. It is, of course, the same woman, Adele Bloch-Bauer, and the title of the painting, before the Austrians enshrined it, was “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer”. It was commissioned by Klimt’s most important patrons and friends, the Bloch-Bauer family of Vienna.

Adele Bauer was born in Vienna in 1881, the youngest of seven children. Her father was the General Director of the Viennese Bank association and the president of the Orient railway company. She married at eighteen to the 35-year-old Ferdinand Bloch, the son of a Prague sugar producer. He grew the sugar business into an important European industrial concern. Adele’s sister was already married to his brother. They had no children and both couples combined their names to Bloch-Bauer.

Adele made their home a salon for intellectuals and artists, and the Bloch-Bauer patronage contributed greatly to the flourishing of Austrian art in the period. The two Klimt portraits Adele commissioned were a small part of their legacy. Adele died suddenly at age 44 of meningitis.

Shortly after the annexation of Austria by the Nazis in 1938, the Germans barged into the Bloch-Bauer home and took all their possessions, including the Klimts.

Ferdinand fled and died in Zurich in 1945.  He had willed the art to his nephew and nieces including Maria Altmann (née Maria Victoria Bloch). Maria married Fredrick “Fritz” Altmann who was taken to Dachau shortly after their honeymoon in 1938 as a hostage to get the Altmanns to transfer their textile factory to the Germans. Maria and Fritz were able to flee with their lives to the U.S. All the property they left behind was taken by Hermann Goering.

Maria became a naturalized citizen in 1945 and worked in the clothing industry. Fritz died in 1954. The story of how Maria was able to reclaim ownership of the Klimts, despite the determined efforts of the Austrians not to return them, is told in the film, “Woman in Gold”. Check it out on Netflix.

Both the Klimt portraits of Adele are currently on display at the Neue Galerie on Fifth Ave. at 86th in NYC. They’ll be there until September when the oil will go to its new owner in China. You have a few months to see them together. See you at the Neue.

 

 

The Rose Kennedy Median Strip

The North End is Boston’s oldest and arguably most interesting neighborhood. It was settled in the 1630’s and has been a residential neighborhood continuously since then.

“North End Aerial with Rooftops”

Click to enlarge

Paul Revere’s house is still standing, as is The Old North Church.

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Paul Revere slept here. Every night.

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One if by land, two if by sea…

In more recent times, it was where the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 happened. And the Brinks robbery. It was the home of Honey Fitz, JFK’s grandfather, and Charles Ponzi, inventor of the you-know-what scheme. At various times it was the neighborhood of Boston’s African-American, Irish, Jewish, and, most recently, Italian populations.

brinks

This is where the Brinks robbery happened

molasses

Some say you can still smell the molasses in summer

For fifty years, the North End was physically separated from the rest of Boston by the monstrosity known as the Central Artery, an elevated highway that sliced through downtown  Boston, blocking out the sun and creating a daunting obstacle for any pedestrian who was bold enough to try to reach the North End on foot. In the picture below, you can see a couple of foolhardy tourists risking their lives walking from downtown on the left to the North End on the right.

centralartery1

In 1991, the Big Dig started, a huge infrastructure project that completely changed Boston. It added a new tunnel under the harbor to carry I-90 traffic to the airport and beyond, a new bridge to carry I-93 traffic across Charlestown, and lots of other stuff.  The centerpiece of the project was the removal, finally, of the Central Artery, and the building of a network of tunnels under Boston to carry all the displaced traffic.

Click to enlarge

All of this meant 15 years of chaos and disruption for downtown Boston and even more isolation of the North End. It’s been a decade since it’s been completed, and, by and large the traffic objectives were met. The 24-hour traffic jam that had existed in Boston was greatly mitigated and the monstrosity that had divided the city was removed. It was once again possible to walk to the North End.

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The Central Artery, before and after the Big Dig

All throughout the project, one of the most interesting questions was what would be done with the open space created by the removal of the Central Artery. As usual, everyone in Boston had an idea, but most agreed it should be green space in some form. In 2008, The Rose Kennedy Greenway was finally opened. The slogan on their website is “Boston’s Ribbon of Contemporary Parks”

OK. Finally to the point of today’s post. The Rose Kennedy Greenway is not all that green and not in any sense a “way”. It is, rather, a more-or-less contiguous chain of 23 parcels of land, each developed separately with no real over-arching theme or cohesion. You’ve got the Armenian Park, the Chinatown Park, the Dewey Square Park, and so on. And while it does reduce the danger of reaching the North End on foot, it does little to “invite” you to do so.

It is a failure and a perpetual finalist for the Stewie Award.

The biggest problem with the Greenway is that it replaced the car-centric planning of the Central Artery with a car-centric open space. To be fair, it at least does have a few blades of grass growing on it. And it looks good from a helicopter.

after_aerial_photo_of_greenway-0-0

The Greenway is bounded by a three lane road on each side of it, and the 23 parcels are divided by active cross streets, each with a set of traffic lights that has Greenway users begging for a few seconds to pass from one rather bland and joyless parcel to the next. The car is still king, and therein lies the problem.

greenway2

As the above photo clearly demonstrates, the more accurate name for the Rose Kennedy Greenway is certainly the Rose Kennedy Median Strip. Or perhaps the Rose Kennedy Lost Opportunity.

Three of the twenty-three parcels are shown in this particular picture, and the one in the top left reminds us of the car-centricity of the Median Strip. It is a ventilation tower for the tunnels below, and gives off the expected “keep out” vibe when passing close by. There are also several other of the parcels that are nothing but on- or off-ramps to the tunnels.

Ramps: click to enlarge

This next before-and-after composite gives you an idea of what the Greenway really achieved for pedestrians and “park” users. Not all that much.

composite

It’s better, of course, but think of what it might have been! Other big cities have dealt with similar challenges and have come up with ideas that really do invite the pedestrian in and keep the automobile out. New York’s High Line comes to mind.

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In Paris, you have the Promenade Plantée, the “first elevated park in the world”.

paris

But we’re talking about Boston here, not Paris or New York. In Cambridge, right across the Charles, we know how to make life better for pedestrians. All you have to do is set aside a few hours every week, say Sunday afternoons, and prohibit cars from the place you want to enjoy. Check it out:

 It would be so easy to improve the Rose Kennedy Median Strip, too.  Just close off a few of those pointless cross-streets to traffic on Sundays. That would be a start. The traffic on Atlantic Ave. is practically nothing then, and everyone could still get where they want to go just by driving an extra block or two to make their turns.

All those businesses in the North End would be happy about it. They waited half a century to be re-connected with the city they started, and we didn’t really deliver on the promises made. But, again, we’re talking about Boston. Not gonna happen.

That’ll Be The Day

The day the music died was 58 years ago yesterday. On February 3, 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson (“The Big Bopper”) died in a small plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa.

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They were on a tour of 24 cities in 24 days called the Winter Dance Party. They were travelling by bus, but the bus was having heating problems, so Holly chartered the plane to fly his band, which then included Waylon Jennings, from Clear Lake to Moorehead, MN, where the 12th date of the tour would be.

Most people know the story of how Richardson asked to take Jennings’ place because he was sick. Holly joked to Jennings that he hoped that old bus broke down, and Jennings joked back that he hoped the plane crashed, a remark that haunted him his whole life.

And most people know that Valens “won” the last seat on a coin flip with Dion (of the Belmonts), though that story has been disputed. Apparently the $36 price of the plane ride was an important disincentive.

The Big Bopper was 28 years old. He was on the tour because of the success of his one hit record, Chantilly Lace, which elevated him from the menial jobs he had up until then. He was broke when he died, with only $8 in a savings account.

Hard to believe, but Ritchie Valens was only 17 years old!  He’d already had several big hits including the immortal “La Bamba”, and was certainly destined for greatness. His work is still an important influence today. Seventeen. Wow.

valens

At 22 years old, Buddy Holly was an old man compared to Valens, and was by far the biggest star of the three. He had recorded dozens of great tunes at that point, and wrote them all himself.  It’s hard to overstate his influence on those that came afterward. That’ll Be The Day was the first song ever covered by the Quarrymen, John Lennon’s first skiffle band that morphed into the Beatles. But everyone listened to Buddy Holly and everyone wanted to be like him.

Most of the tunes were simple, using just three chords and about two minutes in length, as the AM radio format of the day required, but Holly’s brilliance was to show how much could be done within those primitive boundaries.

Holly basically invented the modern rock band. The original “Crickets”  had Holly on lead and vocals, along with rhythm guitar, base, and drums. But the rhythm guitar, Niki Sullivan, quit the band after a year to go back to school, so the iconic line-up was lead, bass, and drums.

It’s all that was needed to make great Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Buddy Holly was one of the most important pillars of 20th century popular culture, and his music is as exciting today as it was all those years ago.

Just because I’m a librarian…

Talking about illuminated manuscripts led us to the story of the Spanish Forger which leads us to the fascinating Belle da Costa Greene.  A little background to begin…

The Beaux-Arts architect Charles Follen McKim finished the magnificent Boston Public Library in 1895.

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There are so many wonderful details and decorations inside, you really have to visit it to see.  Never mind the fabulous collections housed there.   Bates Hall is the main reading room and is recognized by architects as one of the most important rooms in the world.

bates_hall_boston

Around this time in New York, J.P. Morgan started collecting medieval manuscripts to go along with his books and art.  He kept his collection mostly in England, because of a 20% tax in the U.S. on imported art, but also had many things in storage at the Lenox Library on 5th Ave. at 70th St.in NYC. And he had many pieces at his home on Madison Ave. at 36th.

He wanted to consolidate the collections to properly house and display them, and in 1902 he asked McKim to build him a library adjacent to his home.  The result is regarded by many as McKim’s masterpiece.

rotundapierpont-morgans-library-bs

Now, he needed a librarian to organize, catalog and expand the collection, and in 1905 he hired the 21 year old Belle da Costa Greene, who had been introduced to him by his nephew, a Princeton student.  She had been working in the library at Princeton, and had gained some expertise with illuminated manuscripts.

Greene has been described as smart and outspoken as well as beautiful and sensual.  It’s often said she lived with “Bohemian freedom” – I’ll leave it for you to imagine what that’s actually a euphemism for.  She moved with ease in elite society, and was known for her exotic looks and designer wardrobe.  She said, “Just because I am a librarian doesn’t mean I have to dress like one.”

Andi Bohs as Belle da Costa Greene

She was one of the first women to be elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America.  She became Morgan’s most trusted confidante and cultivated a wide variety of art dealers, critics and museum curators. It’s easy to understand why, given her knowledge, style, personality, and the unlimited resources of J.P. Morgan.  She held the job for 43 years.

The story of the Spanish Forger began with “The Betrothal of St. Ursula,” a painting that had been ascribed, based on its style, to fifteenth-century Spain. In 1930, Belle da Costa Greene refused to support its purchase for New York’s Metropolitan Museum because she suspected it was a forgery.  She was the first to identify the Spanish Forger’s distinctive characteristics and gave him his name.

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The Betrothal of St. Ursula

Later, the St. Ursula panel  was tested using neutron activation analysis, and it was discovered that the green pigment in the painting was copper arsenite a.k.a. Paris Green, which was not available before 1814, confirming Greene’s suspicions.  Because French newsprint has been found behind some of his panels, it is suspected that he actually worked in Paris, but the name Greene gave him has stuck.  In 1988, the painting that gave the Spanish Forger his name was given to the Morgan Library and Museum.

Greene’s achievements are even more remarkable when you factor in the need to overcome the racism of the day – she was the daughter of African American parents, but concealed her background and invented Portuguese lineage to take its place.

An amazing woman.  If you want to know more about her, check out this biography.

The Spanish Forger

Ready for a little more on biblioclasm? Of course you are. OK, let’s go.

Once a book has been dismembered, it’s pretty difficult to establish provenance for each leaf.  For a long time, expert forgers were able to reap profits by insinuating their work into otherwise legitimate sales and auctions.

In at least one case, the forgeries were so beautiful and well executed that they retained a lot of value on their own, even after the forgery is revealed. This is what happened for the “Spanish Forger”. No one knows who he was, and he almost certainly wasn’t Spanish. He was probably French and he produced a large number of works around the turn of the 20th century.

Wikipedia says,

The Spanish Forger’s works were painted on vellum or parchment leaves of genuine medieval books, using either blank margins or scraping off the original writing. He also “completed” unfinished miniatures or added missing miniatures in medieval choir books. His works fooled many experts and collectors and appear today in the collections of many museums and libraries. Over 200 forgeries have been identified

Some examples of his work:

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forger1

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The Forger didn’t simply copy genuine works. He developed his own style, a romanticized vision of the middle ages, and ultimately this led to his being “outed” by experts, which finally happened in 1930. They noted that the Forger’s work often contained themes inappropriate for the works they were to have been taken from. For instance, one of his trademarks was showing a woman’s “cleavage”, as in the second example above. This wouldn’t have appeared in a genuine bible.

But his works still have a place in museums and private collections. Here’s one owned by Harvard, which contains many of the hallmarks of the Forger’s style: courtly scenes, sweet facial expressions and decolletage for the ladies, swirling water, fairy-tale castles, and tapestry-like trees:

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Here’s a Christie’s auction where a few pieces fetched about $28,000 in 1998. The Morgan Library in New York had a one-man show of about 75 of the Forger’s works in 1978. It was the Morgan that first figured out what the Forger was up to.

Want more about The Spanish Forger? Tons of detail and history here.

American Biblioclasm

If you look up “biblioclast” in the dictionary (by which I mean click on that link, since no one actually uses a dictionary anymore and the word isn’t in a lot of them anyway) you’ll see it means one who destroys or mutilates a book. It is most often used to refer to book-burning, but to librarians and collectors, it refers to someone who separates out of leaves of a book to be used individually, mostly to be sold as works of art in their own right.

Before the printing press, books were individually created and “illuminated” by scribes and artists, some taking years to produce. Very few individuals could afford them, and very few could read. We’re talking here mostly about bibles, prayer books, texts used in the Catholic mass, and so on. Some examples of illuminations:

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In many cases, books were hauled away and dismembered as part of the spoils of war. It was pretty much standard operating  procedure, since raising and maintaining armies was expensive and they were expected to pay for themselves.

In the last years of the 18th century, for example, Napoleon invaded Italy and looted the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Many of the liturgical manuscripts there were lost to biblioclasm and spread to the winds. Some did survive intact, found their way into private collections and can be seen by the public from time to time.

But some were cut up, reassembled, and sold as works of art. Between 1802-1806, the Venetian priest-turned-art-dealer, Abbé Luigi Celotti, cut miniatures from some of the Sistine Chapel loot to make montages which he framed and sold. This one, now in the Houghton Library at Harvard,  has as its central image a Last Judgement taken from a missal belonging to the Medici pope, Clement VII. The border has four scenes of Adam and Eve taken from other books, and the whole parallels the original sinners and the damned at the Second Coming of Christ.

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From the book lover’s point of view, all this is quite barbaric.

In the 20th century, the Nazis took biblioclasm to new levels, burning any books written by Jews. This was, of course, an ideological outburst more related to the Bonfires of the Vanities than to biblioclasm-for-profit. Hard to say which is worse, really.

Right here in the U.S. we’ve had some pretty egregious examples of mutilating books for profit. A  good example is the Beauvais Missal, a manuscript produced at the end of the 13th century that originally had 309 leaves. It survived intact for well over six hundred years and was ultimately purchased at a Sotheby’s auction in 1926 by William Randolph Hearst, who sold it for $1000 in 1942 to New York dealer Philip Duschnes, a notorious book-breaker.

Duschnes quickly went to work selling leaves for $25 to $40. Today, there are 99 known leaves of the Beauvais Missal scattered across the world, in 26 states and five countries (Canada, Japan, Monaco, Norway, and England).

Here’s a case where someone found a leaf of the Missal in a trunk in Maine!

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Leaf from the Beauvais Missal

All of this brings us to the real subject of today’s story: with help of the internet and digital technology, we can attempt to reassemble some of the books that were scattered in this way. The Broken Books project at Saint Louis University is attempting to re-assemble them digitally.

Here you can look at the leaves of the Beauvais Missal that have been traced so far, and here is an interesting site about the effort to reconstruct it.

What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

 

Why we can’t have nice things

So we’ve mentioned what a failure City Hall Plaza is before. It’s a nine-acre plain of 1,246,343 bricks and nothing else.  We’re always interested in the latest plans and schemes to  make something useful out of it.

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Wind speed averages 24 miles per hour on a portion of the plaza’s barren flats, which was rated “dangerous and unacceptable” in a 1996 engineers’ study.

It originally had a fountain, which Architectural Digest hailed as Boston’s answer to Trevi Fountain in Rome! I’m guessing no one at that publication had ever actually seen Trevi.

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But the fountain leaked from the beginning, with the water going into the subway below, and quickly morphed into a weed-choked hole. It’s gone now -they put plywood over it and then concrete.

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In 2014, safety concerns were raised. The Boston Herald reported plywood under the concrete is severely waterlogged and sponge-like, and could be compromised. “Due to the observed plywood saturation, mold and insect infestation, we consider the remaining service life to be uncertain,” BSG Group engineers wrote in a report.

Over the years, lots of things have been suggested to improve the space. Jan Wampler, an MIT architecture professor who worked  for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, considered the plaza “horrible,” and in 1970 began suggesting improvements: a drive-in movie, maybe, or public vegetable gardens.

The cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who lives in nearby Cambridge, supported a proposed $4.5 million “music garden” inspired by Bach’s “First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello.” But after a year’s wrangling over money and scheduling, a frustrated Mr. Ma pulled up stakes and found another city: Toronto, where, in a day, he secured a prime three-acre site and basic backing for the deal.

In the 1990’s, mayor Tom Menino held a contest for the best ideas on what to do with it. 190 people submitted ideas, including put a ballpark there, or an abolitionist museum, a video village, a “Tomb of the Bambino” (for Babe Ruth).

In 1995, he formed The Trust for City Hall Plaza, a 33-member panel led by real estate developer Norman Leventhal, who was responsible for many successful projects in Boston, including the beloved Post Office Square park.

At hearings, a Trust member requesting anonymity said, referring to the City Council chambers, “Since the redesign process is starting from scratch, why not think big? Why not get rid of the monstrous City Hall building, an architectural Frankenstein, and replace it, in a new location on the lot, with something that works. This room is a prime example of what’s wrong with City Hall.  It’s a hearing room where you can’t hear.”

They came up with proposals that included a hotel, a glass-enclosed Winter Garden and cafe, civic green and more. But people in Boston objected to the Trust, saying it only had real estate developers and corporate interests on it, and not enough average citizens, and anyway it didn’t have the authority to recommend anything.

In Boston, everybody has to have their say and this usually means nothing can get done. Menino backed away from the Trust and their ideas withered away.

So here’s today’s brilliant idea: let’s let Delaware North transform City Hall Plaza into a winter wonderland, give it a hashtag, #BostonWinter, and then they can charge people money to use it!

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From Boston.com

For the entire month of December, Boston’s City Hall Plaza will be transformed into a magical land of winter festivities, New England’s first European-inspired holiday market featuring 42 shopping chalets, and attractions. Bostonians and visitors alike will be dazzled by the eclectic array of winter activities with more than 50 things to do, from wine and chocolate tastings, ice skating, live events and local artisans and musicians. #BostonWinter has plenty to offer all ages every day of the week from 11 a.m. daily through New Year’s Day. See website for holiday hours and evening closing times. Tickets for paid attractions are available online in advance (bit.ly/BostonWinterTix); shopping, public performance and browsing is free and open to the public. 

Closing times? Ticket prices? Will we never learn? This is why we can’t have nice things.

Turmoil, discovery, and creativity

In the 1960’s we experienced war, cultural upheaval, exploration of the unknown, and a creative explosion in the arts. But, for my money, it was the 90’s that was the real decade of turmoil, discovery, and creativity – the 1490’s.

Technology took a leap forward with DaVinci’s oil lamp in 1491 – its flame is enclosed in a glass tube placed inside a water-filled glass globe

In 1492, The Emir of Granada, Muhammad XII, surrendered to the army of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile bringing to an end the 780 years of Muslim control of Andalusia.

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Muhammad XII

In 1492, The Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, or Torah, was published for the first time.

Columbus set out to reach the orient by sailing west and stumbled on the “new world” in 1492, although it wasn’t really “new” to the people living there. The largest and slowest of his three ships, the Santa Maria, went aground on what is now Haiti and sank on a calm night in December. Only the cabin boy was steering the ship at the time as everyone else was asleep.

In 1492, the Spanish Inquisition, determined to enforce Catholicism and root out its enemies, was picking up steam. The Catholic monarchs issued the Alhambra Decree that forced the Jews of Castile and Aragon to convert, leave, or die. 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled. The Alhambra Decree was revoked in 1968.

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Ferdinand and Isabella

The most fortunate of the expelled Jews succeeded in escaping to Turkey. Constantinople had fallen to Muslim rule in 1453. Sultan Bajazet II welcomed the expelled Jews warmly. “How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king,” he was fond of asking, “the same Ferdinand who impoverished his own land and enriched ours?”

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Istanbul in 1493

In 1493, the Jews were expelled from Sicily

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The Aragonese Empire

Florence was the artistic, commercial, and homosexual capital of the known world, but in 1495,  Girolamo Savonarola held it in thrall with his prophecies of Florentine greatness. “Florence will be more glorious, more powerful and richer than ever, extending its wings farther than anyone can imagine”.  He had been assigned to Florence in 1490 by Lorenzo de Medeci, who died in 1492. Savonarola became a fierce critic of the Medecis and contributed to their downfall in 1494.

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Savonarola

In 1495, Savonarola began hosting his regular Bonfire of the Vanities. Anything associated with sin was thrown on the fire – combs, mirrors, jewelry, artwork, books, playing cards, cosmetics, fine clothing, musical instruments. Even Botticelli, swept up in Savonarola’s preaching, allegedly threw some of his paintings on the bonfire.

In 1496, King Manuel of Portugal concluded an agreement to marry Isabella, the daughter of Spain’s monarchs. As a condition of the marriage, the Spanish royal family insisted that Portugal expel her Jews. Only a few were actually expelled; tens of thousands of others were forcibly converted to Christianity on pain of death. The chief rabbi, Simon Maimi, was one of those who refused to convert. He was kept buried in earth up to his neck for seven days until he died. In the final analysis, all of these events took place because of the relentless will of one man, Tomas de Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor, who died in 1498.

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Torquemada

In 1497, Savonarola was excommunicated. In 1498, he was condemned as a heretic and schismatic, and hanged in the Piazza della Signoria (live cam).

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The Murder of Savonarola

The Pieta, perhaps the most beautiful single object ever produced by a man, was sculpted by Michelangelo in 1498.

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Da Vinci’s  “Last Supper”, painted on the wall in the dining room of the monastery at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, was completed in 1498

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No doubt about it. The 1490’s were a wild ride with lots of high points and lots of lows.

And the 2016 Stewie award goes to…

Teddy Ebersol’s Red Sox Fields! Also known at Stewie Committee Headquarters as the “Teddy Ebersol Grass Museum”.

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Congratulations, Teddy!  For the 8th consecutive year, Teddy Ebersol’s Red Sox Fields has garnered the prestigious Stewie, which is awarded annually to the second worst public space in the Boston area.

Here is a brief FAQ about the prestigious Stewie award and its 2016 winner.

What qualifies as a “public space”?

Any place that is open to the public, whether owned or maintained using tax dollars or is privately controlled.  Examples include public parks (of course), airport terminals, train stations, college campuses, waterways, “greenways”, bike trails, and so on.

How does the Stewie committee determine what a bad public space is?

Well, it’s the opposite of a good public space, which is one that is well used, one that invites you in, one that is known as a good place to meet old or new friends, one that is accessible, comfortable, and functions well as intended.

An example of a good public space is Post Office Square Park, formerly a parking garage, now an inviting urban oasis. Privately developed and maintained.

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Everybody in the area gravitates to it and enjoys it.

Why does the Stewie go to the second worst public space in Boston and not the worst?

Because there is no question about which space is worst and therefore no surprise about who would get the award. The worst public space in Boston, and maybe anywhere in the country, is, and always will be, City Hall Plaza. It is a vast Sahara of bricks, unbroken by any shade, benches, greenery, water, or other indication that human beings might be able to survive on it for more than a couple of minutes.  It is such a complete and abject failure that no other space could ever hope to compete.

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It can only be seen as “successful” if its objective was to keep you from ever entering City Hall itself, the brutalist monstrosity which is also a horribly failed public space.

Who is Teddy Ebersol?

He was the 14 year old son of Dick Ebersol and Susan Saint James who was killed in a chartered jet crash in 2004 in Colorado.

What does this have to do with the field we’re talking about?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.  The kid was a Red Sox fan. The father was an NBC exec who is friends with Tom Werner, a Red Sox team owner.  They all figured a good way to memorialize the kid was to appropriate a well-used public space and put their own stamp on it.

Isn’t this another example of the privatization of public resources?

Yes. Yes it is. You have to make an appointment to use the field. It’s “closed” one day a week.  The permitting process is guided by an unnamed Advisory Board, and the permit schedule is not made public.  All weekday field use is permitted to Hill House, a Beacon Hill community group.

What are some other examples of privatization?

Development of beach front real estate that de jure still allows public access to the beach, but de facto makes it almost impossible

Converting metered parking spaces on public streets to reserved spots for Zip-cars and the like.

Allowing small planes to pull ad banners over public spaces, creating flying lawn-mower noise pollution  that makes enjoying your back yard difficult in summer.

Closing off the Boston Esplanade to public use for a week before the July 4 concert for “security reasons”, and reserving large spaces in the venue for “VIPs.”

Allowing tour buses filled with people who want to gawk at Harvard or M.I.T. to park in public bus stops, making it difficult for the public to access their bus and creating unneeded traffic jams.

Private interests have transformed what once was a well utilized and loved space into a virtual “Grass museum”.  You can go by there at any time on a beautiful spring or summer day and see not a soul.  Once in a while you might see a pack of Beacon Hill nannies with their toddlers off to the side in the shade, wearing their play-time helmets and slathered with sun-screen, but that’s about it.

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It is the most underutilized public space in Boston. For decades, this space had been a great destination for anybody wanting to play with their dog, throw a football around, smoke a joint, make out with their love-interest, take a bag lunch, or just hang out.  It was well used with no complaints. No more.

Everyone is sorry about Teddy dying in the plane crash, but there simply has to be a better way to honor his memory than to take away a well-used public space and substitute a never-used grass museum.

Today, everything about Teddy Ebersol says, “Keep Out”, and that’s why it’s a perpetual Stewie award winner.  Congratulations and well done.

Some people feel the rain.

Others just get wet.

I know as little about poetry as I do about wine, which is to say practically nothing. I took a wine class once to try to fix this. On completing it, I felt this cartoon accurately reflected my new level of knowledge:

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In high school, I was exposed to some poetry basics, like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Around a campfire,  “The Cremation of Sam McGee” seemed awesome, but that was about as far as I got.

My more literate friends gave me the side-eye when I said  Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”, just sitting there on the page with no music, was the best poem I ever read. Fifty years later, it turns out I’m a damned poetry genius.

As with everything Dylan, getting the Nobel Prize for Literature stirs  controversy. Part of it is his initial apparent snubbing of the prize people, but most of it seems like envy and misunderstanding – critics being critical and needing to show how clever they are by putting something down. Like the man said, “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand”.

I think maybe there’s something else going on as well. It’s like the legendary visit Steve Jobs made to Xerox PARC, where they gave away all their innovations, which  Jobs then used to revolutionize desktop computing. Jobs said he was so blinded by the brilliance of the first thing they showed him (the graphical user interface),  that he completely missed the importance of two others (ethernet and object oriented programming).

Maybe Dylan’s powerful vocal style and “finger-pointing” songs blinded the critics to his beautiful music and his brilliant poetry.

Dylan’s vocals were unique and authentic, so much so that many thought he couldn’t really sing. Mitch Miller was head of A & R at Columbia when they signed Dylan, and said he “didn’t see the genius in it”. They wanted beautiful voices and beautiful arrangements.

And sometimes you don’t realize how beautiful Dylan’s tunes can be until you hear them covered by someone else, and he’s been covered by more contemporary artists than anyone. This site catalogs something like 6000 recorded covers of 350 different Dylan songs covered by about 2800 different artists.

But the torrent of words, images, thoughts, dreams, and ideas that flowed from Dylan is the thing, above all else, that defines his brilliance, and has only now been accepted by the literary establishment (or at least the Nobel Prize committee) as “new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

Dylan may be quoted more that any other English language source besides Shakespeare and the Bible. Dylan is the song writer most quoted by the Supreme Court. There are over 700 references to Dylan’s words in the biomedical journals database.

Everywhere you look there is a Dylanism. Today I saw something in the bookstore subtitled “The whole world’s watching”. I’m guessing the author didn’t know this is from “When the Ship Comes In”, a brilliant song and poem that has been largely forgotten, except that I just this second heard it on TV as the soundtrack to a VW Golf Alltrack ad.

So much has been written about Dylan that it seems silly to try to add anything new at this point. But if you’re looking for expert opinion on poetry, I can now say with confidence that you’ve come to the right place today.

Also, watch this space for my thoughts on why Gruener Veltliners and Rieslings co-exist so well in the terroir just west of Vienna.