11.23.08: Planet of the Neanderthals

There’s been a lot of buzz in the last week or two surrounding some scientists’ claims that, with about $10 million, they could bring a woolly mammoth back to life. DNA from the mammoth’s hair samples could be used to fertilize an elephant egg, if a modification allowed the egg to accept DNA with a few mismatched genes. Then the fertilized egg would come to term inside an elephant, and whoosh — mama would have a surprisingly hairy baby.

Whether this Jurassic Park scenario is followed through now or later (when further developments might make it easier), it does seem fairly inevitable. Another article lists, somewhat facetiously, some of the other extinct critters that could be brought back —  among them a 6-foot marine scorpion that lived in shallow waters. Imagine treading on one of those when you go to the beach.

And, of course, people have wondered whether or not our own ancestors, like the Neanderthal man, might be resurrected from hair and other samples belonging to the proto-human. (To be accurate, some believe Neanderthals are NOT our direct ancestors, but a distinct line of proto-humans that fizzled out.) They probably could be revived, as could the “Hobbit” people who used to live on the island of Flores in the Pacific, though convincing a person, obviously a woman, to volunteer to bring a caveman to term in her belly might be a bit much to ask. But who knows? Imagine the publicity!

This notion brings an interesting scenario to mind. I seem to remember reading some years ago that Neanderthals had larger brain capacities than we do. (This is debatable, but let’s accept it for now.) Maybe it was relative to their body mass, but at any rate, judging by brain size alone they must have been pretty smart. Most likely, they were smarter than us. Maybe not smarter in ways that we would instantly recognize — say, sitting down and taking an SAT test. But definitely intelligent in ways that would have given them the needed survival skills for life in a harsh environment, featuring encroaching ice (due to climate change), saber-toothed tigers, and our woolly friends. These guys may have been quick-on-their-feet thinkers, and WAY more street smart and cunning than we are now.

Could it be that over eons, as the world warmed up and societies formed and grew, the world may have become a somewhat cushier place, in which all of the skills that Neanderthals possessed are no longer needed in such abundance? In nature as in life, why try harder?

So, as I imagine it, evolution would eliminate — select against — this animal with the oversized brain, as it would any other animal with some superfluous organ or appendage. Brains require a lot of blood and care, so reducing its size to just what was needed would give a definite advantage. Most people will find this idea hard to believe — that evolution would dumb us down. But why not? We wrongly, I think, persist in believing that evolution is some kind of “progress” — a series of more or less linear improvements in each species — and that animals alive today, including us, are therefore “better” than what came before. Xenophobic thinking, seems to me. Critters that came before, and stayed around way longer than we did, were extremely evolutionarily successful in that they had adapted beautifully to the environment that existed around them. For example, if present-day animals were somehow transported back millions of years, we might find ourselves less suited for survival than our hairy pals. We’d be the ones that would go extinct. Evolution is not absolute.

So then what happens if we bring Mr. Smarty Pants back to life? If he were joined by some of his mates, wouldn’t they eventually realize that they were smarter than us? Would they bide their time, hiding their agenda, and ultimately sabotage our world, taking charge of our pathetic unintelligent mobs? Cornelius may indeed have been smarter than Charlton Heston; those movies might not be as far-fetched as we thought.

This does seem like an interesting basis for a film — done somewhat differently than “Planet of the Apes” or “Caveman” — in which a frozen guy is thawed out. It’s often portrayed that we’ll build machines that will become our betters, that will eventually dominate us. But wouldn’t it be a curious twist if it were our own past that came to dominate us? Consider a prequel to “Planet of The Apes”: if Neanderthal dude lived in our world, perfectly adapted for hunting and other survival skills, with heightened senses and quick reflexes, wouldn’t it make sense that he’d have no use for cushy bachelor pads, molecular gastronomy, universities, books, computers or money? No doubt he could master that stuff, but he might find it all boring and unnecessary. Our super-smart new rulers would let our infrastructure and institutions slowly crumble, having no need for them. We ignorant mobs may cling to our money, comfortable suburban houses and celebrity culture, which soon might wither from lack of support from the new hairy bosses. We'd be back to the Planet of the Apes scenario, with dust and dried leaves blowing through Redmond and Cupertino. We might fight and struggle, for a while, and strike back with our bulky, inefficient WMDs, but the infinitely wilier and cleverer proto-versions of ourselves would outsmart us every time.

11.22.08: Gas Wars

Last week GM — once one of the largest, most powerful companies in the whole world — went begging for a government bailout, along with the other 2 big U.S. automakers. Needless to say, Bush got this country is such deep debt that the prospect of bailing out all these entitled knuckleheads seems less and less do-able, never mind whether people agree and can stomach the idea.

These companies do not have the country’s best interests at heart — for years they have fought tooth and nail against fuel economy, defeating 2 bills in congress that would have resulted in cars that use less gas and burn cleaner. They saw that they could sell the macho U.S. car buyers on gas-guzzling giant SUVs and pickup trucks, and got the government to exempt those vehicles from many of the rules that apply to cars — and we’re supposed to help these guys? They could give a shit about us!

I feel bad for the working stiffs who will be and have been laid off by the thousands — though I didn’t see too many of the unions fighting hard for fuel efficiency and smaller cars — they mainly fought for more pay for less work and they aren’t getting much public sympathy either as a result.

I guess I’m in favor of a bailout, with severe conditions applied. Ideally all the managers, every last one of them, including the union management, would be replaced by Japanese and Koreans, and told we also need mass transit, light rail and an end to fossil fuel consumption. The Japanese/Korean thing is a bit of a joke — but seriously; these guys should NOT be replaced by their brethren. Their thinking is stuck, frozen, blinkered, no matter how much they might claim they’ve learned their lesson. They haven’t. They flew to DC on separate private jets while their companies have less than no money. They should be replaced by either foreigners or managers outside the auto and oil industries. Then their companies might stand a chance of reviving — but if these same guys are left in charge, say goodbye to that money. Their thinking is too ossified to change.

They’ll claim that they know their business, so they should be the ones who should be allowed to fix it. But them “knowing” their business is exactly the problem.

Oil is down to $50 a barrel from a high of $145 during the summer. Why? The newspapers claim it is because of lowered demand, meaning that as (Americans) drive less they force the oil companies (and the Arab states who supply the oil) to lower the price in order to increase sales. I don’t think I’m buying this explanation.

As much as they might wish to decrease their spending on gas and heating oil by 2/3, it’s just not possible that most businesses or ordinary folks could do that kind of reduction in a couple of months. People live in places that necessitate commuting, driving their kids to school, to the mall, etc. etc….and businesses are the same, they are set up in ways that demand the consumption of a large amount of oil and gas just to move the product, heat the buildings and run the machines. They can’t all of a sudden be closer to their warehouses and retail outlets, closer to their sources of supplies. Decades of cheap gas has created a world, a continent at least, in which everything is spread out all over the place. Moving goods and people was always relatively cheap and fast — though this summer gave a hint at things to come. But all of that can’t be readjusted in a few months to reduce demand by 2/3. It’s just not possible —  or so it seems to me.

Here’s a wacky but not altogether unrealistic alternative explanation. I remember as a kid there would be 2 — sometimes 3 — gas stations on some street corners in suburban Baltimore County. Occasionally there would be what came to be known as gas wars, in which one station would lower its prices to drive more business its way, and the others would have to follow suit. Usually the station that initiated this “war” was a big company like Esso, Texaco, or Amoco. The Seven Sisters. The indie gas dealer across the street was then forced to lower his prices too, or risk losing all his business, though the indie owner didn’t have the deep pockets to allow him to survive when the prices got so low that they didn’t cover his overhead. The little guy would then get driven out of business, and the big company’s station would pop their prices back to where they were before the gas war. They would have successfully driven out the competition — I saw it happen over and over — and not just in the gas station business; look at the policies of Microsoft over the years. Anyway — could it be that the Saudis might have initiated a gas war here? It would be plausible to use the economy as an explanation for lowered prices, but here the lowered prices seem to be running ahead, anticipating the collapsing economy. I suspect the Saudis see the looming oilfields, pipelines and refineries in Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Brazil and a host of other places — places who, with the price of oil as high as it was, could afford to fund all the capital-intensive ancillary aspects of the oil business. However, if the price got lowered, as it has, they won’t (and it turns out aren’t) able to finance the building of those refineries, pipelines, shipping terminals, drilling and exploration. The rivals will, if the prices stay this low for long, be driven out of business, just like the independent gas stations I saw go under in suburban Baltimore.

Call me conspiracy-minded or a crackpot, but why should OPEC behave differently than Exxon, Shell and Amoco? As soon as the rival oil producers stop production and go bankrupt the big boys will swoop in, take their corner and jack the price back up.

11.9.08: Philadelphia

The dancers are in the venue early, working on accumulating ideas for the two encore songs that currently serve as our finale. At present they aren’t dancing in those songs, and it seems a shame for them to essentially drop out of the show at that point — so that will change after our Thanksgiving break. Some of their ideas are based on the movements I’ve been doing during those songs, but both their movements and mine will probably get expanded, tweaked and organized during some dance rehearsals we have scheduled over the break.

It’s a rainy day here, and, as sometimes (but rarely on this tour) happens, we’re stuck at a hotel in the middle of nowhere because everything in town was booked many months ago for some massive convention. I wake up on the bus and look out the windows and see an expanse of highways, parking lots and identical building blocks. We’re 6 miles from the center of town and at least 4 miles from the venue. I inquire about whether there is any mass transit into town nearby — PHART (Philadelphia area rapid transit), as Paul Frazier refers to it — but it’s not close by, either. I hitch a taxi ride into town with Jenni and Steven, who are going to the Mütter Museum, a wonderful wunderkabinett of gross-outs and medical curiosities. I’ve seen it before, so I head to the Philadelphia Museum of Art where there is an exhibition of Gee’s Bend quilts and a retrospective of work by a man named James Castle, whom I suspect not many have heard of.

At the top of the steps to the art museum tourists strike Rocky Balboa poses, their fists up in the air. There are lots of Rockys today, as it’s a weekend — a black-suited Chinese man, a young black kid from a school group and a large white man all assume the position simultaneously.

The Gee’s Bend quilts are something special. They were previously shown at the Whitney in NY, and one can see why. They are made by a small community descended from former slaves on a river near Selma, Alabama. The website states:

After the Civil War, the freed slaves [almost all from one plantation] took the name Pettway, became tenant farmers for the Pettway family, and founded an all-black community nearly isolated from the surrounding world. During the Great Depression, the federal government stepped in to purchase land and homes for the community, bringing strange renown — as an "Alabama Africa" — to this sleepy hamlet.

From Seattle PI:

New York Times senior art critic Michael Kimmelman called the quilts "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced. Imagine Matisse and Klee arising not from rarefied Europe, but from the caramel soil of the rural South.

Thelma Golden, chief curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, took a contrary view. She wrote in Artforum that she loved the quilts but hated the exhibition, "which, with its shockingly politically correct tone, under the transparent cover of high/low intervention and demolished media categories, was the most culturally repugnant, retrograde moment I have ever experienced, perhaps in my entire professional life."

Kimmelman's reaction was widely shared. Golden stood alone, or nearly so, at least in public. The subtext of her argument seemed to be that she recoiled at the sight of white people exclaiming over black craft. Their admiration struck her as patronizing. For the same reason, some black people do not want to listen to black blues artists playing in clubs filled with white people "getting down," because white joy of that sort saps a black experience of its legitimacy, creating a chasm between the art and its original audience.

Kimmelman and Thelma’s reactions raise a whole world of questions. Does it matter where these objects — or others exhibited, recorded or written — come from? Does context and history determine the meaning of what we look at and see? In other words, are these quilts amazing because they are made by women unschooled in art history or are they incredible for what they are? Is a song by an unschooled self-taught musician any less moving, deep and wonderful that something by an academic composer? (There’s an amazing record of spiritual songs recorded at Gee’s Bend.) Is there any way to hear or see things free of history, class or context? Probably not. Does it matter? All of this sort of applies to James Castle’s work — and to lots of other stuff as well. We’re not just talking about some quilt makers here.

Here’s one made with leftover blue jeans:

When we see these quilts, do we see them through our knowledge and experience of Klee and Matisse? (I’d add Rauschenberg and Sigmar Polke to that, too.)

Here’s one made out of football jerseys:

And another that incorporates images and text “panels”:

Have we learned to experience these disrupted and “musical” patterns though our experience of fine art? Is that similarity what makes us stop in our tracks when we see these quilts? That certainly must have had something to do with why they have been exhibited in a series of high art institutions. But I would argue that’s not the whole story. The inventiveness, the mixture of African rhythm and Amish austerity, the humor and creativity visible in these quilts is not something only students of art history can experience. Those qualities, I maintain, are human, and they cross race, class and social barriers. I think that the erasing of those lines is part of what we’re seeing and experiencing as well, and it feels good. It doesn’t lessen the work’s context, the specific nature of the history of Gee’s Bend or of each artist in the collective, to feel that either.

Though part of the picture painted here is of an isolated community, separate from the contamination of the marketplace and the art world, that’s not entirely true, at least not the first part. Some of the Gee’s bend quilters were contracted by Sears, the giant mail order dept store, to make pillowcases in mass quantitites that were informed by their tradition. The remnants from the pillowcase material, particularly an avocado green fabric popular for one decade, found its way into the quilts as well. So they’re not “pure” in that sense, though we might wish they were in certain ways. But that lack of purity is often where the joy and creativity lie, and the obsessive need for authenticity and purity are often what saps the life out of a tradition or out of a person’s creative impulse.

James Castle was a deaf man born at the turn of the 20th century on a farm in Idaho. He refused to learn to read, write or sign, but he made lots of art. The work I’d seen previously were “drawings” of banal farm scenes — a barn with a fence, a shed with a chair — made out of soot and spit. This show, a retrospective, shows that he made a lot more than that, in a variety of styles and mediums. As with the Gee’s Bend crew, one can’t help but be shocked at the uncanny parallels to works by Warhol, Ruscha and a whole mess of others. Once again one wonders if those parallels make Castle’s work more incredible. Once again it would be hard to deny that those parallels are probably why his work is being shown here in a giant art museum.

Here’s one of the shack interiors. Completely banal and schematic. There are lots of shack drawings, as if he was cataloging a typology of shack interiors and exteriors. His world, maybe?

A kaleidoscopic rendering of matchbox labels:

And a similar kaleidoscopic rendering of a photo of businessmen:

In these works and in some of the quilts there is what is now called appropriation — using recognizable labels, texts, and images — grabbing them, re-working them, re-presenting them. It’s a recognition that the glut of reproduced images, photos, logos, typefaces and texts that makes up our world and that of the 20th century is indeed our environment….even that of rural Idaho.

Now, one of the qualities that is often brought up to separate Castle or the Gee’s bend artists from those who more regularly show in fine art galleries, auction houses and museums is intention. It is assumed that there is an awareness and intention in a work by Warhol, Ruscha, Betcher, Polke, whomever, that is not there in someone like Castle. I would suggest that his work proves that this is just not true. His intentions may not be geared towards the same marketplace, collectors and trade publications, but aesthetically it’s all there. The response to the world, a way of looking, a seriousness, and an investigation of phenomena, thoroughly done and from multiple angles — it’s all right there. I would argue that his work and that of the quilters proves that, well, nutty as it might sound, some part of the visual and material response to our world is innate — and like myths, a similar response might occur and recur across time and space — unconnected yet uncannily similar.

11.7.08: Pittsburgh: We Got Mail; Fallingwater

We got mail

We in the band got e-mail and text messages from people all over the world expressing their joy after the election results came in. I got mail from France and Brasil, Graham got one from Germany, and Kaïssa got a letter from a friend in Senegal — here is an excerpt:

“I could not miss this historic moment to express my profound admiration and sincere congratulations to my American friends for the incredible transformational power and the inspirational capacity of your society. Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Barack could run. Barack ran so our children can fly.”

Former Villages and Frank Lloyd Wright II (Fallingwater)

Thanks to Jenni’s friend Jim a bunch of us piled 8 bikes into the back of his pickup and we headed to a riverside park called Ohiopyle, which is also very near Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright house.

At Ohiopyle there is a wide bike path along what once was tracks for a small railway that served little lumber and coal mining towns along the Youghiogheny River. The coal seams are visible everywhere, as the river has created a valley and the geological fault line cuts through here, hence the numerous waterfalls along the river. The area was once a booming tourist and resort destination, served by the same little railroads, but the car did in those spots and the villages, and the forest growth now covers what once were small towns. Jim says his wife, an archeologist, has excavated along this bike path, and that one can dig almost anywhere here and come up with remains of farms and villages. But as we pedal through the foliage there is absolutely no evidence of any former habitation. I scan the woods for house foundations, chimney stacks or such, but it’s all been covered up; there are no ruins or any evidence whatsoever of former human habitation.

The movie version of Cormack McCarthy’s “The Road” was shot in these parts — a story about traveling through a land after the civilization has collapsed.

A few miles away is the Frank Lloyd Wright house Fallingwater, built by the Kaufmanns, a Pittsburgh department store family, in the late 30s as a summer retreat. Lily’s uncle Joe, who has joined us on this trip, says it was essentially a “party” house. This reminded me of my recent visit to the Glass House that Phillip Johnson build for himself in Connecticut. I could see that both houses were indeed essentially intended for entertaining important guests from town. Both of these houses also served as showcases for the architects — Wright was a low point in his career, almost bankrupt, and with no pending commissions, when Kaufmann Jr, who apprenticed under him in Wisconsin, encouraged his dad to hire Wright to build a rural retreat on some land they owned. Or so said Jr. — another version has it that Kaufmann Sr. had previously approached Wright about designing a parking garage next to the dept. store, as Wright had designed an innovative parking garage in nearby Maryland — so recent scholarship intuits that maybe Sr. let Jr. think he was more influential than he was. The initial budget was 20K, which must have been chicken feed to a wealthy family during the depression when labor was cheap. However, Frank’s work went over-budget, as architects are wont to do, and the final costs were more like 140K. That’s quite an overrun, though the total might still seem cheap to us now.

As a showcase it worked spectacularly. Wright got new commissions before the work was even finished, and they kept coming in, a steady stream, until he completed the Guggenheim during the last year of his life. Kaufmann Sr. went on to commission a famous Neutra house out in Palm Springs.

 

One isn’t allowed in the house unless you’re part of a tour, so we took one, and were admonished many times not to take pictures and not to touch anything. The interior is weird and spectacular: lots of wide horizontal spaces with fairly low ceilings, views outside through creatively fenestrated windows that lead to or open onto large balconies that overhang the stream that runs under the house. The main room was obviously made for entertaining, as there are multiple sofas and little tables for large gatherings and groupings, and an expandable dining table for feeding guests. The bedrooms and bathrooms, as is often the case in Wright houses (and those of his son, Lloyd Wright), are small and fairly claustrophobic. Kaufmann Sr. and his wife had separate bedrooms, which seems odd to us now, and Mrs. Kaufmann’s bed was by far the largest. One has the sense of being in a beautiful sculpted cave with many chambers, wrapped in a lovely womb, conveniently with multiple views of the outside world. One is in semi-darkness, sheltered, secure, and yet able to see the surroundings at the same time. I suspect this secure yet advantageous position, in principle much like a concrete gun bunker, gun turret or an animal’s nest, satisfies some deep biological need for protection as well as strategic position. Wright may have been tapping into biological needs more than he knew.

The house was in danger of falling down a few years ago, as Wright worked intuitively and didn’t always take practical matters into hand. Millions were spent to invisibly shore up the balconies. Surveillance cameras were installed, disguised as stone building blocks.

In addition, the flat roofs were not designed to support the weight of winter snows around here (this was a summer getaway) so servants had to push the snow off the roofs and balconies whenever it accumulated. So much for integrating architecture and landscape, at least beyond the visual.

Kaufmann Jr. later became director of the industrial design dept at MoMA, in NY, which encouraged “good” design. One can debate the merits of promoting “good” design to the masses, but that propaganda effort has certainly had a lasting effect, and the linking of the design of a certain class of quasi-mass-produced household objects with high modernism and fine art was no small thing either, whether one agrees with the idea or not.

Jr. had Fallingwater to himself from 1955 to 1963, after his dad died. Our tour group asked the occasional impertinent question of our guide, who kept her information flow to the straight and narrow. We tried to imagine the parties. Given that this was 75 miles from town, many of the evenings must have been sleepovers. The questions culminated in someone asking if Junior ever married. When the answer came back no, someone in our group shouted “bingo!” Our poor guide put her hand to her face as if this was all too much.

Pittsburgh comes back

About 4 years ago when I was here I was given a short tour of the area by my friend John Chernoff. He told me how the Heinz family was intent on bringing life (and eventually living) back into the downtown of this former industrial giant. We passed through neighborhoods of former steelworker housing – areas on the verge of coming back after years of being abandoned. Like Detroit, Cleveland and many others, this town got dealt a series of body blows in previous decades and some of those towns have managed to remain standing while others are definitely on the mat.

On this visit it seems that Pittsburgh is more than just standing — the cultural district downtown was jumping on the weekend, the little neighborhoods were thriving with their corner bars and grocery stores, the strip district still has its booming markers and, I was told, folks are moving back into the city. This latter is essential, as it will provide the tax base, and the humanity, that will allow this kick-start that the Heinz family and others have initiated to keep running on its own steam.

11.05.2008: Yes, We Can

I stayed in as the election results came in. Checked the TV now and then as Obama pulled ahead. Steven says he was on St. Mark’s Place and the street was closed and filled with people; Paul said the Lower East Side was like a huge party; Ray was in Times Square and Rockefeller Center and said it was just a wonderful heartening feeling to see all kinds of people of all races and nationalities out there celebrating; Graham was in Harlem at Sylvia’s and, needless to say, there were celebrations up there big time; and Kaïssa’s mom in Cameroon got up at 5 a.m. to follow the election progress.

As one might expect, much of the rest of the world, even those who traditionally are critical of the US, are heartened and overjoyed at Obama’s victory. It renews their faith in the myth of a country where miracles can happen and where a child of immigrants can be elected president. Not just his person and his history, and what that represents, but his policies and voting record have instantly turned the Empire into a less belligerent and bossy world power and a little more the beacon of democracy, possibility, and equality that is always espoused. There might even be a return of some respect, maybe, though years of work by Bush and his cronies did an amazing job of trashing that around the whole globe. People do want the hope and possibility that the US stands for and sometimes even offers. It’s amazing how so quickly the US might regain that, in the hearts of its own people and of those watching around the world. Yes, we can.

Not to put a sour note on the celebrations, but I can’t help wonder at what will happen to race relations in the US now. I suspect a lot of folks will feel that if a black man can be elected president, from a single parent household and with not a whole lot of connections and help, then why should other black folks deserve help and assistance? There may be a feeling that if Obama can do it, why can’t the rest of you out there pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps? There might be a feeling that, “Hey, how can anyone claim that there is discrimination now? So why are we spending all this money to help folks?”

Well, the US is still largely a racist country that discriminates — that isn’t going to change in one night. But the election definitely does give one hope that most of the country can put that aside and inch a little bit closer to being colorblind. A friend who was going door to door for Obama in Pennsylvania, hitting the houses where the voters were undecided, got into discussions during which many of the white folks claimed to agree with Obama’s positions, but some, mysteriously, just couldn’t take the next step of saying they were going to vote for him. She, the volunteer, suspected it was race that might be holding them back, and carefully pressed them on that point. Some of them admitted that that’s what it was, whereupon she sometimes said, “It’s OK to be racist [or something to that effect] but don’t you want to vote for what’s right for your country? You can still be racist and vote for a better life for yourselves.” Wow, don’t know if I could have pulled that line of reasoning out of a hat! No doubt about it, it’s a huge step that’s been taken. Gives one a little faith in human beings for a change.

11.04.2008: Election Day ; Paint on Canvas

Election Day

I'm scared to look.

Paint on Canvas

In an article in the weekend Financial Times, Jackie Wullschlager writes about a show of Renaissance portraits at the National Gallery in London. She makes a series of broad statements about the contemporary implications inherent in the changes portraiture went through at that time. Jackie says, for example, “the more human individuality is threatened — by biogenetics, global capitalism, the identikit personae of YouTube — the more intensely we turn to painted portraits.”

I remember hearing something similar in a YouTube video, “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube,” by anthropologist Michael Wesch and his class at Kansas State University. That piece is exactly what it says it is, and, of course, it itself is also a YouTube phenomenon that looks at other YouTube phenomena and back at itself. Anyway, one of the points he and his class make is that as certain values get eroded by phenomena or technology they simultaneously become more valued. They mentioned authenticity as being a value that is highly prized among YouTube denizens, as it is relatively easy to fake a posting. And therefore, the whole YouTube world prizes stuff that isn’t slick, or God forbid fake, but is “real.” When anything can be virtual, then “real” becomes precious.

So, I can see what Jackie is getting at — that the humanistic values implied by the new (at the time) Renaissance portrait styles might have contemporary relevance. Jackie also says that previous to the Renaissance, full frontal portraiture (not full frontal nude body images) were reserved for pictures of Jesus. So, by implication, to paint real people in that way was to say that the individual is no less than the God(s). That we each have a spark, a dollop, of Godness in us, and it’s always a little different. Maybe this was the beginning of the rise of the cult of individuality, of the idea that each of us is completely unique. Each a nation unto itself. Now science is telling us that maybe we’re not as unique as we would like to think. We’ll see where that leads.

Of course, portraiture was originally reserved for the rich and powerful — royalty, popes, bishops and powerful merchants. But eventually, the less wealthy merchant classes soon adopted it. Jackie quotes an Italian satirist, Pietro Aretino (1554), who laments that “even tailors and vintners are given life by painters.” God forbid. So, the rich and powerful did what they always do; they changed the rules of the game to maintain their distinction. They could afford to, so they had their new portraits done giant size. Or what was then giant size. It goes without saying that only they had the wall space for such large-scale works.

When is a painting not a painting? When it is a hot line to God. In another article in that paper, Robin Blake reviews a show of Byzantine works that includes a number of icons. These paintings were, he says, not revered for their painterly qualities and certainly not for their humanistic values. They were closer to sacred relics according to Blake. Like the bloody nails, bones, and wood fragments elaborately displayed in many churches today. “Any pious person who tried hard enough, it was thought, could establish a hotline to the divine through the painting.” Not only were these paintings powerful agents in this way, but also their power could be multiplied and transferred. (Walter Benjamin, take note). A copy, maybe every copy, maybe even bad copies, of the original icon was believed to somehow partake of the power of the original. This is digital technology from 1000 years ago! Where the copy and the original are identical — at least identical where it matters. I remember going into some Orthodox churches in Greece while there on tour and seeing women kissing the images on the icons. Not tongue kissing, mind you, but there was definitely passion of another sort involved. I wondered to myself how many contemporary artists might wish their work could elicit such a powerful reaction. Needless to say, one doesn’t judge these “artworks” in the same way one judges other portraits, just as a splinter allegedly from the cross is no mere chunk of kindling. Art criticism in this case becomes useless, and aesthetics too — it all becomes irrelevant.