Clement Greenberg (1909-1994), although an art critic , not an artist, is to me the most fascinating figure in 20th century U.S. art history. He first made a splash with the essay " Avant-Garde and Kitsch ," published in the Partisan Review in 1939. Here, BTW, is a link to a discussion of the history of the PR. But I'm more interested in that word "kitsch." Nowadays it has a somewhat more favorable, or at least a less unfavorable, meaning than Greenberg meant to give it , in appropriating the German word for tacky. Greenberg would dislike the note of sentimental indulgence that has crept into some usages of the word. He wrote, "Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations. Kitsch changes according to style, but remains always the same. Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times. Kitsch pretends to demand nothing of its customers except their money -- not even their ti...
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1. In anthropology, James thought of a human as a stream of consciousness, and of the conscious being as unified by his internal cohesion, the way one pulse of awareness follows from and flows out of another, not by any facts as to its physical or metaphysical setting. 2. In metaphysics, James defined himself by negation, resisting both the "upper" and the "lower" dogmatisms, both idealism and materialism insofar as either threatens to impose on us a deterministic block universe. 3. In epistemology, Jamesian thought had both a negative and a positive pole. He told us to beware of verbal formulas we cannot translate into practical terms, and to believe what is in the line of our needs. 4. In ethics, James held that the only fact true about all goods is that they are objects of desire -- that objects of desire do and must conflict with one another -- and that moral life accordingly has a tragic aspect, which it is our duty to lessen over time. 5. In politics...
Might as well push my luck, and apply this six-point template again. 1) In anthropology, Aristotle dissented from Plato's dualism, treating the human soul as the form of the human body. 2) In metaphysics, he is remembered for a modified realism about universals. He held that appleness is one and the same fact whether I am speaking of this apple or that apple. BUT he denied that appleness is a fact metaphysically separate from any and all of the particular apples. 3) In epistemology, Aristotle added a note of empiricism to his teacher's critical rationalism. He sought for example to collect what was known about living organisms in his day before drawing conclusions about life processes. 4) In ethics, Aristotle believed that the virtuous man (the great-souled man) will do what is right. The task of ethics is neither laying down duties or deliberating over consequences, but cultivating virtue. 5) In politics, Aristotle believed that the best city is likely to be ...
Q. Why do marketers of a range of products spend as much money as they do on advertising? A. Becau se they want to sell more products. You don't have to be Don Draper to figure that one out. Q. But why does it increase the demand for the advertised products? Let's focus on broadcast commercials, and on competition within a particular industry: how does the radio/TV exposure cause people to want brand X rather than brand Y, assuming that they want the generic type of product to which both X and Y belong? A. The marketers of X try to persuade people that X is better. Q. Yes, I understand. But isn't the public long since jaded? How does persuasion work, if we assume that consumers are rational? [Rational consumers certainly would be jaded about the content of broadcast ads, would they not?] A. One possible answer to that is that rational consumers, regardless of the content of the ad, measure the likely expense of the advertising campaign. The amount of money that th...
My recent movie-going experiences include The Longest Ride, an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. I'm not going to talk about the plot, especially, so there's no need for a "spoiler alert." This post concerns a secondary theme of the movie by which I was struck. A little information about structure and cast will get us there. There are two stories, one framing the other, The frame involves a pair of young lovers, rodeo star Luke Collins (played by Scott Eastwood, Clint's boy) and aspiring art curator Sophia Danko (Britt Robertson). Their story is not especially interesting except that it provides a frame for a better love story. Luke and Sophia become involved in the life of an old man, Ira Levinson. Ira as the old guy is played by Alan Alda, though Ira as a young man (in flashbacks triggered by readings of old letters) is played by Jack Huston. Young Ira's beloved, starting in 1940, is a refugee from Austria, Ruth Pfeffer (Oona Chaplin). As I...
Was Penn Station really worth saving? I mean of course the old Penn Station in downtown Manhattan, created in 1910 and destroyed in 1963. Its destruction caused an outcry (and if I remember correctly was referenced in a couple of MAD MEN episodes) and eventually inspired the Landmarks Preservation Act of 1970. Was it worth saving? Here's an iconoclastic discussion of the point. Click here.
Greece is dominating financial news just now. I'll keep my thought for today quite brief, though the subject is complicated. The problem seems to be that there is no 'clean' way for Greece to leave the Eurozone. Bringing back the drachma would require at the least an extremely complicated period of transition, one with which the rest of Europe would have no incentive to co-operate. So the Eurozone is like the roach motel of yore. Roaches check in, but they can't check out. Yet there is no a priori reason to believe that the single monetary policy maintained by the Europen Central Bank and related authorities is best for all the countries involved. So one might naturally hope that thought will be given to an orderly exit mechanism.