The Frick Collection after its 5 year, $220 million renovation

Mistress and Maid by Johannes Vermeer c. 1667 in the Frick Collection. 

Has it really been five years since I was last at the Frick prior to my visit on June 22? I guess it must have been. We didn't return as soon as it reopened this spring but waited until the Vermeer "Love Letters" exhibit opened. I'll start with that as I catalogue the renovated museum's hits and misses.

Top Highlight: Vermeer

The special Vermeer exhibit is ranks at the top of my list for the hits of the Frick's reopening. It  brought in two Vermeer paintings to complement the Mistress and Maid shown above. One is Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid, ca. 1670–72, from the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.

The other is The Love Letter, ca. 1669–70 from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

I urge you to get over to the Frick before the exhibit closes on August 31 because it's quite an experience seeing these three paintings together in-person. The Love Letter one reminds me of Vermeer's The Guitar Player  c 1672 and a variation of it on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. My favorite of these three is Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid.*  

Access to the Second Floor

Thanks to the renovation, visitors now have access to the second floor, which showcases some art in what had been bedrooms and also houses the museum's gift shop and cafe. This is generally a hit, though I would have liked the bedrooms to retain their original furnishings or their reproductions to reflect what the rooms were like when a family lived in the mansion. There are only a few dressers with no information about them. Speaking of that ...

Information on the Exhibits

The information on the art on view -- both on the placards on the walls and through the app that replicates information to be found on the Frick's site -- is extremely uneven. You'll get more than you want to know about Jean-Honoré Fragonard's "The Progress of Love," but find out absolutely nothing about some of the clocks and scores of other pieces. It is rather frustrating for those of us who would like more information. It's a serious missed opportunity for the museum not to have improved that aspect of its exhibit while investing so much money and time in the renovation. 

Ticketing and Timing: Hits and Misses

Tickets for adults cost $30. Years ago, the Frick generously offered "pay what you wish" times on Sundays. Unfortunately, it shifted that offer to the far less convenient time of  Wednesday afternoons 1:30-5:30 PM. 

If that doesn't work for you, check your local library for membership passes that will allow entry for 2, saving you $60. If you have a card at a New York City library, inquire about  Culture Pass availability. You won't only save money but time because those membership passes allow you to enter any time of day and  skip the line of people waiting to get their timed tickets.  

Allow me my rant on timed tickets, which were  popularized during the reopening of museums after the pandemic lockdowns. The more enlightened museums like the Met** dropped that major inconvenience aa couple of years ago. It only requires timed entry -- though not additional ticket purchases -- to the special exhibits. That the Frick is still stuck in 2021 even after the 2025 reopening is a major miss, but it pales beside another one. 

Really Rare Restrooms

Who designs a renovation for a building with a legal capacity of 1350 with  just three sets of bathrooms? The architect of the Frick renovation does. 

Yes, only half a dozen people would be able to use the restrooms with just two (one for each gender, though heaven knows why when they are all single-occupancy)  on the second floor and in two basement levels. I cannot comment on what these looked like inside because I never got beyond a locked door or a extended line leading up to it. 

I'm shocked that no architect consulted on this project pointed out a standard ratio based on the projected number of visitors, especially in light of the addition of the cafe. Seriously, who does that, especially on a $220 million budget?

Filling in the Sketch

To end on a positive note about what the Frick does well, I want to comment on the Cabinet Gallery. It's one of the smallest rooms on the first floor that is filled with sketches. The highlight of that for me was seeing a sketch for one of the Frick's celebrated paintings: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' portrait of Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Later the Comtesse d'Haussonville. 

*Notice that the love letters theme assumes literate women. I didn't think that much about that aspect until I saw the The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt special exhibit at The Jewish Museum. (You can catch it through August 10, 2025. Check your library for passes, or plan your visit for the Museums on Us Day to save the $15 per person admission.) A number of the paintings show Esther involved in writing, reflecting the unusually  high  literacy rate of the Dutch at the time. You may also notice that the tables featured in most of these paintings are covered by rugs just like the table  in Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid. 

**Speaking of the Met, it also has a temporary exhibit worth catching this summer: Sargent and Paris. Catch that one before it closes on August 3rd. It definitely worth the trip. The Met never imposes an extra charge for its special exhibits. Residents of NY and the metro area always get to pay what they wish, and for other visitors, it's possible to get in free on the first weekend of the month through the Museums on Us program from Bank of America.  Also the Met is home to five Vermeer paintings, so it will make a complement to the three you can see in the Frick now. One of them, Young Woman with a Lute,  features the same yellow jacket. 

Related: 

Vermeer in Philadelphia

Jane Austen at 250

Jane Austen at the Morgan

Vermeer in Philadelphia

Seeing a Vermeer painting may warrant a trip from New York to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA),  but I'm not certain that is what I saw there  

This was not a special exhibit with a masterpiece on loan like the one at the Frick I described 10 years ago. This was just a painting that had  sustained damage and was not displayed until an expert suggested it is a genuine Vermeer rather than a copy of The Guitar Player, c. 1672  that lives in Kenwood House in England.

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The Guitar Player, c. 1672 Johannes Vermeer 

If you zoom in on the image on the Google Arts & Culture, you would see some cracks in the paint, which is to be expected after over three centuries. But that painting is still in fairly good shape, especially when you contrast it with the version that was thrown into storage and incurred a very visible rip on the lower right hand corner. That's the state of the painting you can currently see in-person in Gallery 364 of the PMA's main building. 

The Guitar Player (Lady with a Guitar) (detail), c.1670-1720, by Possibly Johannes Vermeer or a copyist (Dutch (active Delft), 1632–1675), Cat. 497

As you can see, this is essentially the same picture twice with just a variation in the sitter's hairstyle. That is why it was assumed to be a copy of the Vermeer an not treated with the greatest of care. But that changed just this year.

As the tour guide explained, and the museum site records:

 In March 2023, researcher Arie Wallert reasoned that the Philadelphia painting could be by Vermeer himself, altered at some time in its past by aggressive cleaning attempts that removed much of the artist’s uppermost finishing layers of paint....

Old restorations were removed from the painting 50 years ago, revealing exactly what remains of the original paint. The painting is on view in this unrestored condition, giving all a rare opportunity to see what researchers have been looking at for the past five decades in their search for clues of style, technique, or materials that might yet tell us—Vermeer’s own work, or another artist’s?

Wallert found that the paint samples of the paintings in question were consistent with the paints available to and used by Vermeer, including his favored shades of yellow and the very costly ultramarine blue. He also established that the canvas is from the right time period, though it doesn't quite match the ones  in the other Vermeer paintings.  

It adds up to a Schrödinger's Vermeer situation. It may be worth 9 figures, or it may only hold the value of a good copy that's about 350 years old. It has yet to be determined. For now, the museum currently lists the painting as a Vermeer in the signs on the main floor, though the paper maps do not yet include it among its "must-see" items.

If you do make the trip into Philadelphia to draw your own conclusion on the Vermeer questions, there is also a lot more to see in this museum. Crowds also line up outside to take selfies with a statue of Rocky, the boxer who made the steps of the museum famous in this iconic film scene:

Oddly enough, though, the statue doesn't show him in the basic sweats but in his boxing shorts. Capitalizing further on the Rocky association, Philadelphia plans a Rocky Run on November 11. 

You you may want to steer clear of the museum that day. It's challenging enough to park nearby as it is, though I recommend you look around the numbered streets in the mid 20s perpendicular to Green street. .

The museum charge $30 for admission and  grants a mere $2 discount for seniors over 65. Students with valid ID pay $14, and kids under 18 get in free. To save on the admission cost, you can plan to go one of the "pay what you wish occasions." That's every Friday after 5 PM (the museum stays open until 8:45 on Fridays) and the first Sunday of each month.

The site still is showing timed tickets that you can purchase in advance, but  you really can just show up when you want and buy the ticket on the spot.

Related:

Jane Austen at the Morgan

Art, Architecture, or Parkland: Contrasting Estates of the Rockefellers

Sculpture-topped fountain at Kykuit. Photo by Ariella Brown (all rights reserved)

If you decide to explore some of  New York's historic Hudson Valley, you can see a study in contrasts between two Rockefeller estates: William Rockefeller's Rockwood Hall in Tarrytown and John D. Rockefeller's Kykuit in Sleepy Hollow. 

Now you see it, now you don't

The first obvious difference is that you can drive right over to the site of  Rockwood Hall and walk about it freely, as it is now a public public park. You cannot just drop in to see Kykuit. You have to first stop at the the Viistor Center at Phillipsburg Manor to meet for the tour there -- even if you have purchased your ticket online to save $2 . (You cannot tour the Phillipsburg Manor freely either, so if you want to work out that tour, budget both the time and the cost to do so on your visit). 

(Below is a picture of the grist mill at Phillipsburg Manor that I took in August 2022. I was on the tour years of the property several years ago. I'd say it's worth doing once but not necessarily doing twice.)

Aside from the cost of free vs. $20, $40, or $60 (depending on whether you go for 90 minutes, 2.25 hours or a full 3 hour tour) to see Kykuit, the most striking difference between the two is that in one you get to see a house, and in the other the house is gone. Below is all that remains of the 204 room Gilded Age tour de force built in "castellated Elizabethan style," which was demolished in 1941.  Alas, no Escape to the Chateau style revival is possible. (The fact that the estate was designed to be self-sustaining with all the food grown and/or bred on it to serve the family, servants and guests reminded me of the Strawbridges'  ambition to use the Chateau's property in the same way).  

These structures pictured above  were not part of the building itself but a front area for tennis, etc. It does give off quite an Ozymandias vibe when you know the history of the house. In fact, the hiking tour that is offered for this -- a mere $4.02  expenditure with EventBrite's fee -- offers visitors a sticker with a picture of the house that is conspicuously absent shown below:

                    

William Rockefeller was not the first one to scope out that site for an impressive mansion. There was already one there when purchased the property. But as he expanded his holding to a full thousand acres and hired Frederick Law Olmsted -- famous for the design of both Central Park and Prospect Park -- , to design the landscape, he also expanded the house. It's not clear if he tore down the existing structure or added to it. You can read more about that and see some (not color)  photographs of the interior decorated in the "more is more" style that defined the Gilded Age here:

parks.ny.gov/documents/parks/RockefellerRockwoodHallHistory

Crazy Rich Baptists

While William went for the over-the-top look of a castle, his brother John settled for a mere 40 rooms in his mansion that didn't even boast a ballroom. The largest room in the house is the music room, which was used for playing the organ and piano but not for dancing. Nor was alcohol served under John's domain because he was devout Baptist. However, that level of observance didn't last too long, and his son met his wife at a dance (according to the account of our tour guide) and also invested in wine glasses. on display in the butler's pantry when he gained control of the house. 

If you zoom in on the picture below, you can notice a great deal of detail on the front of the house -- from the eagle on top to the carvings below -- including representation of the arts and agriculture around the center windows. but aside from the art of the architecture, the house is home to many pieces of art --placed in various rooms, set out in the art gallery below the first floor, and scattered throughout the extensive and meticulously manicured grounds.  

 

The Oceanus fountain holds a prominent place in the front of the property. It is a copy of the fountain that Giovanni Bologna designed for the Pitti Palace at the Boboli Gardens in Florence.

There is a great deal of detail on the architectural structures that warrants noting -- like a slogan appearing on top of a gate, or the year building began  on top of one and the year it concluded on another. Below is a close -up of some of the ironwork that shows lifelike grape appearing among the vines:

There are many fountains around the grounds, but not all of them were on, as you can see from what's pictured above. Even the fountain that was the parallel one to the one in front of the front entrance shown below wasn't on. 

Kykuit: The gate shown here notes the year of construction. the one opposite it notes the year of completion.

Below is one of the many outdoor sculptures. The one below is by  Karl Bitter.

            This is the back part of the house with a wide porch that offers wonderful views of the Hudson

The picture above is one I took on a tour several years ago, though it was also in August. We saw more of the grounds on that tour and I took this picture of the view, sculpture and space that also frames garden views. 

On this visit, we got to see the inside of the garage with a vast collection of carriages for horses and a section of the automobiles that were used by the succeeding generations of people who lived in the house, ranging from a Ford Model S (earlier than T) to cars made in the 60s. Many of them still retained inspection stickers form 1981-1984, indicating they were still used about a decade before the house was turned over to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1992. 

Use it or lose it

And that is really why this house remained standing. It was occupied and used as a home for several generations and then turned over to a trust to be preserved a historic home that also functions as an museum. In contrast, the vast castle that William built was not kept as a family home, and so it became a white elephant of a property turned to use as a country club but not a residence. When that use failed, the lack of maintenance caused the crumbling property to become a potential hazard, which is what prompted the 20th Century heir of Rock Hall to demolish it and supposedly throw its parts into the Hudson. 

Related: 

French vs. American Style: the du Pont Estates in Delaware 

Restoring a garden and some history in Yonkers

A grand vision of Victorian architecture and engineering 

Have desk, will travel travel

How many times did Edison Fail in attempting to invent the light bulb?

True love meets marketing

In email from Modcloth

from Banana Republic

When a holiday invented on a TV program becomes a real thing, we can only marvel at how right Oscar Wilde was in declaring, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life."



Galentine's Day was born in a script for the 22nd episode of Parks and Recreation that first aired on NBC on February 11, 2010. In the episode named for the newly invented holiday, the holiday is presented not to supplant Valentine's Day but to offer a supplement to it. It sets aside February 13th as the day to celebrate women's friendship,with gifts and gatherings.





As someone who has never watched the program, I had not heard of Galentine's Day until a couple of years ago when businesses started to latch on to the day as cause for marketing clothes, cosmetics, brunches, etc. In fact, this year, I already received emails from the likes of Target, ModCloth, Gap brands and Olay with messages like the ones I copied here.

Clearly, marketers know an opportunity when they see it (even if some publications on marketing have failed to take note) and by 2019 Galentine's Day is a marketing holiday in its own right. Granted, Galentine's Day has not yet made it to the status of being counted among the holidays covered by National Retail Foundation (NRF). However, the force behind the Galentine's Day movement is a factor in the revision of Valentine's Day itself.

 The Evolution of Valentine's Day 

A 2013 article entitled "The Reconceptualization of Valentine’s Day in the United States: Valentine’s Day as a Phenomenon of Popular Culture"argues that the holiday was reborn in the US in 1840s, largely due to the rise of marketing, which extended the celebration through the promotion of gifts and cards: " Even though the holiday historically involved primarily young men and women, the range of individuals included in the celebration of Valentine’s Day was expanded in the United States to any and all ages through aggressive marketing techniques directed at both the young and old, consequently increasing the amount of Valentine’s Day consumers."

Certainly, there is no let up of marketing around such a lucrative holiday. This year, the NRF estimates a record-breaking  $20.7 billion will be spent on Valentine's Day, and that's even in the case of just 51 percent of people saying this will be celebrating it. That's because those who are spending are spending more, and not just on the red roses and romantic dinners. Cards and gifts for friends and indulgences one buys for oneself are propping up those spending amounts. As the NRF itself observes, the spending patterns for Valentine's Day have changed over the past decade.

The Galentine's Day Factor and Modern Princesses

The change noted by NRF fits well with the timing of the rising influence of the Galentin'se Day Phenomenon over that same period of time. Even for those who do not set aside February 13th as the day to mark the value of female friendships, the attention it -- among other key relationships outside romantic ones -- deserve has taken over a greater share of Valentine's Day itself. For an easily accessible barometer of pop culture, we'll look at the evolution of  Disney movie plots.

The cultural shift in celebrating various loves in life can even be seen in Disney movies of this period. While the classic princess stories, starting with the 1937 Snow White,  had always culminated in finding her prince, that has also evolved. Let's look at 2010: in Tangled, Rapunzel does meet a man she falls for her, he is not a prince, and they do not even commit to marry by the end of the film. So there is some deviation from the classic romantic plot there. By 2012, there is no romantic interest interest offered at all for the heroine of Brave who is motivated by her love for her family. But the really big change arrives the following year in Frozen in which the trappings of romantic love are presented only to be rejected, and the transformative power of true love is shown to be the bond of sisters.

True love, no longer the province of a  princess bride now can be taken to apply to friends and family, and so Valentine's Day itself is being redefined as a holiday of love that is not bounded by romantic tropes. Of course, marketing will take advantage, and we even have sellers who can take advantage of those whose spending is devoted to "anti-Valentine's Day" gifts.

Feminine feet: a study in contrasts

Two current exhibits at the New York Historical Society offer a study in contrasts in representing the feminine ideal as represented by their feet. In one feet are said to become worthy of their own cameras on the red carpet when they are encased in shoes like the diamond encrusted sandals pictured below:

$1,090,000 dollar sandals  decorated with 464  Kwiat diamonds.  In 2002, these diamond shoes were worn by Oscar nominee Laura Harring. Supposedly, that's what started the trend of a cameras placed to capture footwear at the Oscars. A replica of these shoes are  the first object in the current exhibit, Walk This Way: Footwear from the Stuart Weitzman Collection of Historic Shoes.

A number of problems I had with the exhibit:

1. The shoes are arranged in a particularly logical order like a chronological one or even an arrangement of shoes for work and shoes for parties and shoes for occasions. The arrangement keeps jumping around in history. There is some attempt to tie some shoes to historical events-- from changes in hemlines and dance styles to women's role in producing shoes, but there is no particularly cohesive story line.

2. The exhibit is about 90%  decorative but impractical high heels.  You can hear Weitzman talking about the eternal quality of high heels in the exhibit's audio tour. He claims they will always be around because nothing makes legs look better. He seems oblivious to the fact that not all women are willing to sacrifice their comfort and stability to heighten their decorative appeal. He also seems to be unaware of the trend since the 80s (as far as I recall from my own exposure to shoe brands and ads) has been to offer women shoe options that actually allow them to walk beyond a red carpet. Even before that, there were always women whose first priority for shoes had to be something durable.

This brings me to the point of contrast on what we idealize in women I noticed when viewing Norman Rockwell's famous "Rosie the Riveter" painting in full in the Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms exhibit.  One freedom that is not included in the four is the freedom of movement for women constrained by feminine fashion. Here we see a heroine for the World War II period named Rosie who is dressed in practical clothes with practical shoes (no high heels on a job that requires you to be stable on your feet). In fact, her comfortable loafers are poised over a copy of Mein Kampf. It is not delicate footwear that will defeat tyranny and hate but sensible shoes worn by a woman who is willing to get her face dirty and get the job done. 

Rosie is, in fact, shown as angel with a dirty face. As the description of the painting points out, her protective mask is pushed up in a position to assume the shape of a halo.  She is depicted as the strong female force of good that will stamp of evil. 

The exhibit also shows the usual poster associated with Rosie the Riveter, which is not a full length picture and includes the slogan "We can do it!" This version, which you can see in the still from the video below, was not created by Normal Rockwell but the Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller. Why more than one Rosie? The idea of Rosie the Riveter was depicted in song. You can hear it on this video. 

If you'd like to see a video that offers more information on the Four Freedoms and Rockwell's depiction of them, you can click on this video.

A Celebration of Rodin

As 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the death of the most famous sculptor to emerge fromthe  19th Century,  I recently got a double dose of Auguste Rodin. His work was the subject of a special exhibit both at the Met and the Brooklyn Museum. The former closed on the fourth, but the latter is to remain open through April 22.

The Burghers of Calais
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3279/2866409509_c5b7bdff7d_z.jpg?zz=1

It's worth seeing, not because you can't see these Rodin pieces in other exhibits but because of some of the insight it offers. For example, there's a video that shows the process currently used for casting in bronze that still uses lost wax as it did in Rodin's day, though it also incorporates some modern materials that would not have been been accessible to him.

But the one part of the exhibit that made the biggest impression on me was the account of Rodin's early art education. When he was 14, he began his formal art eduction at  the École Impériale Spéciale de Dessin et de Mathématiques – known as the “Petite École," to distinguish it from the   the top school, the École des Beaux-Arts. Rodin applied to that school at 17 and was rejected -- not just once but three times.

It's an amazing thing when you think about: the biggest name in sculpture in his day was seen as unworthy of the best art school. It's possible to infer a great many things from this about the limits of expert knowledge in terms of predicting success, self-awareness of talent that rises above the assessment of others, or even the possibility the true achievement is not a matter of what one is taught but what one learns to do on his own.

Living on 24 hours a day

Though the contexts may vary from those cloaked in spiritualism with suggestions of meals with a Buddah to those that guide you to a state of mindfulness, the essence of self-help books seems to be very much the same. 
And yet you are in search of happiness, are you not? Have you discovered it?
The chances are that you have not. The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.

That's what struck me when I read the really short book, How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett with a copyright date of 1910.  The author consciously references other book titles that say "How to live on X amount a day" to emphasize the point that time is money and even more precious and more evenly distributed than currency. I took a copy out from the library, but you can read the entire text online for free from the Gutenberg project here.

The book's central theme is maximizing one's time to achieve happiness, though not the happiness one pictures in a extroverted sense (see  http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/08/happiness-is.html). The happiness is rather the result of achieving harmony between one's principles and one's actions. This point is revealed in chapter 8: 

We do not reflect. I mean that we do not reflect upon genuinely important things; upon the problem of our happiness, upon the main direction in which we are going, upon what life is giving to us, upon the share which reason has (or has not) in determining our actions, and upon the relation between our principles and our conduct.

The book is a 20th Century product, so it's no longer deferring to the Church for guidance on how to live. Rather it is exhorting one live according to principles and reason. In contrast to Disney's advice to follow your heart, you are advised to use your head. But in doing so you also gain an appreciation for science, art, music, literature (if those things interest you) or even your own daily life. What would be packaged today as "mindfulness," he calls reflecting on genuinely important things. 

Chapter 5 is entitled "Tennis and the Immortal Soul." The conjunction here is not intended to suggest a deep connection as one finds in  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. On the contrary, the suggestion is that tennis and other leisure pursuits are what people regard as important while they neglect the type of "cultivation of mind" that the author believes is essential to feed the soul. That becomes clear from the end of the chapter:

 But I do suggest that you might, for a commencement, employ an hour and a half every other evening in some important and consecutive cultivation of the mind. You will still be left with three evenings for friends, bridge, tennis, domestic scenes, odd reading, pipes, gardening, pottering, and prize competitions. You will still have the terrific wealth of forty-five hours between 2 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Monday. If you persevere you will soon want to pass four evenings, and perhaps five, in some sustained endeavour to be genuinely alive. And you will fall out of that habit of muttering to yourself at 11.15 p.m., "Time to be thinking about going to bed." The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.But remember, at the start, those ninety nocturnal minutes thrice a week must be the most important minutes in the ten thousand and eighty. They must be sacred, quite as sacred as a dramatic rehearsal or a tennis match. Instead of saying, "Sorry I can't see you, old chap, but I have to run off to the tennis club," you must say, "...but I have to work." This, I admit, is intensely difficult to say. Tennis is so much more urgent than the immortal soul. 

I find it fascinating that the core of such advice is so consistent for over a century, despite the massive changes the world has seen over two World Wars and the rapid advance of technology. That is not to mitigate the differences in contexts. They are quite striking. Clearly, the people the book addresses are not feeling the same stress people do today when they rise early to commute to work and return from it. Work begins for them at 10 AM and ends at 6 PM. The commute is assumed to take at most half an hour, though there also is an assumption of a sixth half day of work ending at 2 PM.


For people living in England in 2010, leisure time is not frittered away in front of a screen (not even a movie screen, never mind a smartphone, computer, or television). Even a radio is out of the picture, as music is only to be found in live events. Still they manage to fritter away time but just by doing this and that until thinking of going to bed for a good 45 minutes before doing so. In that way, one lets time slip through one's fingers instead of getting one's real 24 hours' worth. In fact, the author doesn't expect one to use all 24 hours but just to make better use of the time spent outside work by exercising one's mind for 90 minute sessions and actively reflecting at other times when is apt to adopt a "semi-comatose" state.

Another difference most of today's self-help books and this one is that very little attention is paid to exercise of the body. Bennet does mention that 10 minutes a day of that can make a difference. However, he is not arguing that one needs to put in the time for the physical regimen but for exercising the mind and getting it into shape. Likely people walked a lot more just to get around as we're talking about a time before cars were owned by the average person.

Chapter 7 is entitled "Controlling the Mind," and like many modern books on meditation, the goal is to achieve concentration and focus, though Bennet skips the thinking about nothing step and jumps right into focusing on your end goal:

"What? I am to cultivate my mind in the street, on the platform, in the train, and in the crowded street again?" Precisely. Nothing simpler! No tools required! Not even a book. Nevertheless, the affair is not easy. When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (no matter what, to begin with). You will not have gone ten yards before your mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is larking round the corner with another subject. Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the station you will have brought it back about forty times. Do not despair. Continue. Keep it up. You will succeed. You cannot by any chance fail if you persevere.

When you achieve a certain mindset, you can appreciate that "nothing in life is humdrum" as stated by the title of Chapter 10. In that chapter Bennet demonstrates how an appreciation of cause and effect can make one more philosophical and less shocked when things don't go one's way with the example of accepting one's stolen watch as the result of knowable causes. But it's not just a matter of learning to appreciate human nature but all of nature:"The whole field of daily habit and scene is waiting to satisfy that curiosity which means life, and the satisfaction of which means an understanding heart." That is something that can even be appreciated by someone who does not care for art, music, or literature. But for those who do care for the latter, Bennet devotes an entire chapter.

"Serious Reading" is the title of Chapter 11. By using that term, Bennet's intention is to exclude novels because they do not require the mental exertion that should be applied to the 90 minute program. Good novels are all too easy to read, he says, and bad ones just aren't worth reading at all. It's remarkable that what was considered merely popular literature then are are now seriously studied in college courses. Wouldn't any reader today be proud for working her way through something like Anna Karenina if she were not required to read it for a class? Bennet has loftier reading goals, as he indicated by his own choice of reading, including the works of Marcus Aurelius (he doesn't leave home without him in book form), Epictetus, Pascal, La Bruyere, and Emerson. No women featured here, though he does reserve special praise for Elizabeth Barrett Browning and recommends that everyone read Aurora Leigh.


Aside from praising poetry over prose, Bennet offers two concrete suggestions for the one who embarks on improving reading:

The first is to define the direction and scope of your efforts. Choose a limited period, or a limited subject, or a single author. Say to yourself: "I will know something about the French Revolution, or the rise of railways, or the works of John Keats." And during a given period, to be settled beforehand, confine yourself to your choice. There is much pleasure to be derived from being a specialist.

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year. Unless you give at least forty-five minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your ninety minutes of a night are chiefly wasted. This means that your pace will be slow. Never mind. Forget the goal; think only of the surrounding country; and after a period, perhaps when you least expect it, you will suddenly find yourself in a lovely town on a hill.

Related post: http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/11/its-meaningful-life.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2014/12/views-on-boundaries.html

Seeing the whole picture

Perhaps you've seen some of these pictures in the past. Generally, at first glance you'll be sure of what you're seeing. But if you take a close second look, you may not be so sure.  Is it a duck or a rabbit? The answer is that it is drawn so that it could represent either, depending on your perspective.

Here's another one that is old enough to have been rendered into an 1888 German postcard. The old/young woman illusion is sometimes titled "My wife and my mother-in-law." 

I find if I look at these types of pictures for too long, I start to feel a bit dizzy, as my perspective keeps slanting to see it first one way and then the other. Perhaps that's what Calvin's cubism experience is meant to represent -- that feeling of dizziness -- one can experience when shifting perspectives.

Calving opts to drop the dizziness in favor of dogmatic certainty. In that way he reminds me of the figure of Dilke in the matter in which he is immortalized in John Keats' famous "Negative Capability" letter: "I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

In truth, most people go through life with a Dilke-like attitude that averse to being at all uncertain. There is great satisfaction in finding certainty due to the mental relief it brings. However, there are many things that are really not all fixed as either old or young, duck or rabbit. Forcing only one designation on them actually distorts the truth of the image by telling only half the story. But that is exactly what many people do in their adoption of dogmas: at a particular point in their lives, they chose the equivalent of "Team Duck," and will forever vehemently oppose "Team Rabbit" as evil incarnate for pushing a false agenda. Any reasoned approach to point out that the picture has elements of both will be ignored or refuted by repetition of the assertion, "This is a duck; everyone who has any sense agrees it's a duck. You have to be really stupid or possibly insane to claim it can be a rabbit."

That's my view of political affiliations and self-affixed labels; they lock people into only one way of seeing things. While insisting they have the answers that settles everything, they have not even begun to comprehend the questions. 

Context for common content

This is a reworking of a post I wrote this past August 6th, Andy Warhol's birthday, and the same week of my visit to the Whitney Museum in its new location. I had been to the old one a few times,
including once for a special Hopper exhibit.

The MoMA houses some of his most iconic works, which includes the Campbell's soup cans. But what Whitney has is his Green Coca-Cola Bottles pictured here. The museum's description begins as follows:

Green Coca-Cola Bottles was created the year that Andy Warhol developed his pioneering silkscreen technique, which allowed him to produce his paintings through a mechanical process that paralleled his use of mass culture subjects. Here, the image of a single Coca-Cola bottle is repeated in regular rows, seven high by sixteen across, above the company’s logo.

. Instead of stressing the monotony inherent in repetition and mass production of consumer goods, Warhol stressed that there was a great equalizing effect in offering everyone the same Coke, no matter how rich or poor they may be: “'A Coke is a Coke,' he explained, 'and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.'”

In the card next to the work in the  museum the description actually was even more positive, as it also included this statement, "All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good." I looked up the quote and found that it's part of a full paragraph from  The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again). Here it is:

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

Objectively, we know that the  sugar-loaded, caramel-colored drink is not a really good choice for nutrition or dental health. But there is something reassuring in the sameness and the fact that the exact same quality of the product is within everyone's reach. Coke puts consumers all on equal footing.

This becomes even more fascinating in light of  Horace M. Kallen's "Democracy Versus the Melting Pot" published in the Nation on February 25, 1915. Contrary to the general spirit of the age that promoted the assimilation of immigrants into a more uniform American culture, he defended the differentiation of ethnic identities what only came into vogue many decades later. Nevertheless, he maintained that a certain amount of assimilation is inevitable.

A certain uniformity occurs with no conscious agenda through fashion or what he calls, the "process of leveling up through imitation" that is promoted through "'standardization' of externals." This was the age in which people came to be more alike in terms of consumption:  "In these days of ready-made clothes, factory-made goods, refrigerating plants, it is almost impossible that the mass of the inhabitants of this country should wear other than uniform clothes, use other than uniform furniture or utensils, or eat anything but the same kind of food."  Certainly, Coke fits into that category.

The book on the exhibit

A few weeks ago, I visited the New York Historical Society's Armory Show exhibit. Though it opened in 2013 for the 100 year anniversary, you can still catch it until February 23, 2014 (and if you're a Bank of America credit card holder you can get in free, January 5 and February 2 courtesy of the Museums on Us program)

 There is an audio guide for the exhibit, but it is really difficult to take in all the details of the politics behind the show from that information. It became much clearer when I read Elizabeth Lunday's The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America.The books clarifies the differences in various types of modern art and the reactions they aroused.

 One of the things I found striking was how responses spread in 1913, through poetry, of all things. Lunday explains (p.80) that it would have been the "Twitter" of the day. "Where today's individual tweet and caption photographs in response to popular events, in the 1910s they wrote poetry -- vast reams of it, on every subject from the weather to fashion, foreign wars to the suffrage movement." The number of rhymes devoted to the Armory Show made it the equivalent of the subject an internet "'meme'" today. The book includes a few examples of such rhymes.

While the subject is the Armory Show, the book follows up on development in the modern art world throughout most of the 20th century and touches on major figures in American art whose fame came laer. One figure who currently looms large in the art world and did sell a painting through the show is Edward Hooper. But it wasn't the show that made him a success. He didn't sell another painting until another decade had passed. Lunday follows up on him briefly, as well as other artists whose names have became associated with modern art -- or the reactions against it.

Related posts: http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/11/masterpiece-marketing.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/01/art-reflecting-life-reflecting-art.html

Fom $7 to priceless: masterpiece marketing

The crowd waiting to get in to the Frick on Sunday, November 17th

Today I visited the Frick Collection to see the special exhibit on view through January 19, 2014,  Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis. (Of course, I also went into the rest of the museum, but as I've there several times before, the real draw for me, as it was for the many people waiting around the whole stretch between 70th and 71st and even round back onto 71st -- in the rain as pictured here.)

The visiting  painting that is the unquestioned star of the special exhibit is  "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Not only does it illustrate all the promotions for the exhibit, but it  given pride of place -- the equivalent of a solo performance -- in the museum. It is the only painting hanging in the oval room. Its special position allows visitors enough room to cluster around it without blocking people's view.



The exhibition details tell a rags to riches story about the painting, both in terms of its restoration and in terms of its valuation. The audio guide, relayed that the star painting was sold for the equivalent of just $7, as relayed here:

The history of the acquisition of the Vermeer has by now become legendary. Des Tombe purchased Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 1881 at a sale at the Venduhuis der Notarissen in the Nobelstraat in The Hague for 2 guilders with a 30 cent premium.  ...After Des Tombe’s death on 16 December 1902 (his wife had died the year before and their marriage had remained childless) it turned out that he had secretly bequeathed 12 paintings to the Mauritshuis, including Vermeer’s famous Girl with a Pearl Earring."⁴(from Quentin Buvelot, "COLLECTING HISTORY: ON DES TOMBE, DONOR OF VERMEER'S GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING" in the Mauritshuis Bulletin, Vol. 17, no. 1, March 2004)

 Why should a painting that originally sold for just $7 become such an attraction? The answer is simple.   It is now Vermeer's  best known painting,  thanks to Tracey Chevalier's 1999 novel, which was the basis of a very successful 2003 movie. Now that's an interesting point in terms of marketing value. The Frick is well aware of the film's role in the painting's popularity and so is offering a showing of it on Monday evening, November 18th, with an exhibition viewing to begin at 5:30 and the film at 6.  

 Not to say that the painting is not worth of attention, but I'm not certain it would have drawn such a crowd if not for the attention cast on it by a bestselling book and well-received movie. It's certainly not the only painting by Vermeer to feature a woman in pearl earrings. One of the three Vermeers that the Frick owns is a later work of his, "Mistress and Maid" pictured here.  But no one wrote a book to popularize the story that the painting seems to tell and then went on to dramatize the same in a film, despite the suggestiveness of the woman's expression at being handed a letter by her maid.

It's something to consider: commissioning a book that could turn into a popular film to cast the spotlight on a particular work of art.