The Naked Nude

John Currin, Bea Arthur Naked, 1991

By Frances Borzello, London: Thames & Hudson, 2013

The idealized nude is a staple of art history and it is my favorite type of genre painting.  Kenneth Clark famously stated that being naked is the condition of being without clothes, but the nude is art with a capital "A."  Clark wrote, "The vague image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled or defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous, and confident body: the body reformed."  The nude, as Borzello so helpfully notes, "in art is a victory of fiction over fact."  

She asserts that the birth of modernism marks the end of the idealized nude.  Contemporary artists turn away from the depicting the perfect body and focus on our conflicted ideas about what it means to have a body.  We are obsessed with food, health, sexuality, weight, fashion, pornography--all topics that hinge on the problem of embodiment.  For example, John Currin once said that he like to paint images that embarrass him.  Indeed!  Looking at Bea Arthur Naked causes me to squirm.  I want to say, "Maude, please put your top on!"  Bea Arthur looks perfectly composed and dignified, but she has Mom breasts. In addition, that 80s hair style really hits too close to home.  

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future

Damien Hirst, richest artist in Western Euope and friend of oligarchs everywhere

By Joseph Stiglitz, New York: WW Norton & Co., 2013

With crystal clear prose and a well-organized argument, Stiglitz offers a devastating critique of contemporary American society. He writes, "We have a political system that gives inordinate power to those at the top, and they have used that power not only to limit the extent of redistribution but also to shape the rules of the game in their favor and to extract from the public what can only be called large 'gifts.'" Stiglitz introduced me to the vitally important concept of rent seeking that he defines as obtaining income not as a reward for creating wealth but as the end product of jiggering the political and market environment to one's own advantage. To put the question baldly: one can become wealthy by creating income or one can take it away from others.

I now see rent seeking all around me: agricultural subsidies that go to million dollar corporations; mining companies that extract resources from national parks and pay less than what the commodity is worth; the opaque and unregulated health care industry governed by kick backs and the drive for 20% annual profits; low-wage workers paid with Chase debit cards that charge a fee every time these employees use the card or obtain a "cash advance." These rents move dollars from the bottom and the middle to the top. Stiglitz explores aspects of the political and social systems in America that are rigged in favor of the 1%. A powerful and depressing book.

Nijinsky: A Life of Genuis and Madness

Vaslav Nijinsky in costume for the ballet Le Spectre de la Rose, ca. 1912

By Richard Buckle, New York: Pegasus Books, 2012

Buckle was a dance critic, curator, and scholar of the Ballets Russes.  He was a pall bearer at Nijinsky's funeral and decided it was his mission to "collect every single surviving Diaghilev design in the world."  This is a lively, fun book full of sharp insight.  It reads like a Vanity Fair profile crossed with an academic text. Buckle does an excellent job in laying out the social milieu and cultural world of the Ballets Russes.  There is no extant film of Nijinsky dancing, but Buckle works hard to convey the astonishing grace and daring innovation of Nijinsky's career.  His decline into mental illness, he suffered from schizophrenia, is truly heart breaking. 

Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929: When Art Danced with Music

Leon Bakst, Costume design for Vaslav Nijinsky as the Faun from The Afternoon of a Faun, 1912

Edited by Jane Pritchard, London and Washington, DC: V&A, NGA, 2013

This is the exhibition catalogue for the eponymous show at the NGA on the Ballets Russes.  Sergei Diaghilev was a masterful impressero who created the Ballets Russes troupe specifically for European (and eventually North and South American) audiences.  It was a touring company.  Diaghilev combined classical ballet with European high modernism and venacular Russian folklores.  The exhibition was arranged chronically which helped me learn about the different artistic phases of the Ballets Russes.  Diaghilev created productions that fused together dance, music and design in pursuit of "total art," or gesamtkunstwerk.

The Military Philosophers

Cecil Beaton, Daisy Fellows, 1941

By Anthony Powell, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995

This is the final book of AP's "war trilogy" and the ninth book in Dance to the Music of Time.  Its 1942, and Jenkins is working with Finn, assigned to the Poles in Allied Liaison, and Pennistone.  Jenkins visits Polish HQ which is housed in the Ufford Hotel.  His driver is Pamela Flitton, femme fatale and Stringham's niece.  Pamela informs Jenkins that Stringham was captured when Singapore fell.

One night during 1944 while living in Chelsea, Jenkins meets Pamela and her lover Odo Stevens during a bombing attack.  Mrs. Erdleigh makes prophecies about everyone's future while Odo and Pamela fight.

Jenkins makes a tour of Normandy and Belgium with a party of Allied military attaches.  While in Brussels Jenkins meets Bob Duport who tells him that Peter Templer died in the Balkans.  Stringham is assumed dead.

By the end of the war, Miss Weedon is engaged to Sunny Farbrother, and Widmerpool is due to marry Pamela.  At a party, Pamela accuses Widmerpool of intentionally putting Templar in harm's way.  There is a victory thanksgiving service at St. Paul's Cathedral, and Jenkins meets Jean (nee Templar) who is now married to Colonel Flores, a Latin American military attache.  Jenkins is released from the military and gets a new suit of clothing.  

Three novels left.  I am uninspired by AP to the point of feeling outright resistance.  I don't think its an accident that Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin (gasp!) are fans.  

The Solider's Art

Cecil Beaton, John Moore-Brabazon, 1st Baron Brabazon of Tara, 1940

By Anthony Powell, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995

So, here's the plot: during the middle years of the Second World War, Nick Jenkins is in the Army working alongside Capitain Biggs, General Liddament, and Widmerpool.  Jenkins is recommend to a liaison posting with the Free French military and meets Lieutenant-Colonel Lysander Finn.  Clearly functioning as a symbol wasted promise, Charles Stringham pops up in the story working as a Mess Waiter.

While on leave in London, Jenkins has drinks with Chips Lovell, estranged from Priscilla, and Hugh Moreland.  Mrs. Maclintick, now living with Moreland, joins the men for dinner.  Awkwardly, Priscilla and her lover Odo Stevens arrive in the restaurant.  Later that night, bombs rain down on London and kill Chips, Priscilla, and Lady Molly.

Returning to HQ, Jenkins discovers Widmerpool has transferred Stringham to the mobile laundry.  Widmerpool's political machinations run afoul of Sunny Farebrother, a cunning officer and friend of Peter Templer's father. Stringham is posted to the Far East, and Captain Biggs hangs himself.    

I continue to read AP's Dance to the Music of Time because I'm committed to working my way through The List.  Tedious.

The Valley of Bones

Cecil Beaton, Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, 1944

By Anthony Powell, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995

Oh my gosh, the seventh book in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time is a snooze fest. Just when I felt like I was getting into the High Tory groove, The Valley of Bones comes along and bursts that little bubble.  This novel is awful.  My mind wandered to my new poodle (see the picture below), a weekend trip to Pittsburgh, and the politics of scheduling at the American Ballet Theatre.  In short, I would rather think about anything than the thoughts and feeling of banker-soldiers in the first days of the Second World War.

Snowball!  The perfect Poodle puppy and Anthony Powell antidote

Its late 1939 or early 1940 in England, and Nick Jenkins is in the army.  We're introduced to his commanding officer, Captain Gwatkin and the booze-soaked Lieutenant Bithel.  The battalion Jenkins is attached to moves around England.  Yawn.  Nick makes friends with David Pennistone ("Penis Stone"!!), Odo Stevens, and meets up again with Jimmy Brent.  Brent discusses his affair with Jean Duport, and, maybe its through osmosis of British reserve, a small part of me died at these revelations.  How could Jean be so foolish? I imagined Jean was in thrall to her own sexuality, and her relationship with Brent was about self-knowledge, but, really, eh, Brent is so small.  What was Jean thinking?  I am worried about her and wonder what she's doing in South America.

Meanwhile, Odo Stevens drives Nick to Frederica Budd's house when Nick is granted leave.  There, Nick meets his pregnant wife, Isobel, and his Tolland in-laws Robert and Priscilla. Odo and Priscilla, married to Chips Lovell, flirt.  The scenes at Frederica's house had the most power.  I was once again engaged with the characters I met in the first six novels.  Why should I care about Nick's life as a solider?  Will these characters endure throughout the other novels?  Unlike other commentators, I am unmoved by the "humor" that contrast the officers--inevitably former bankers--and working-class soldiers.  

AP shows us that this is a time of "massive upheaval" since great houses are repurposed as hospitals for the war effort, but men still brought servants to war.  A batman was assigned to a commissioned officer as a personal servant.  I am stunned that officers took their servants to war with them.  Indeed,  Bracey, who we met in The Kindly Ones as one of the servants Jenkins knew when a child, is revealed to be Jenkins's father's batman in WWI.  Oh, how very organic.  A man serves you in war and then follows you back to your estate in peace time as a servant.  The bond between master and servant is strong indeed!  Of course, I think this is gross.  (Looking ahead to The List, I was reminded of Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels. Melrose's father cut his teeth in the sadistic corners of Imperial England)

In the last scene of the novel, Nick reports to HQ and meets Widmerpool.  At this point, I'm rooting for the fat, ambitious, and bossy Widmerpool.  Nick is a bland boy.