Reviews and News:
Lee Rosenbaum finds the Brooklyn Museum’s overhauled collection of American art oddly selective: “It seems perversely fixated on what’s shameful in our country’s past. While it’s legitimate to raise uncomfortable issues, the relentlessness of the negative critique makes the installation sometimes seem less a celebration of American culture and achievements than a recitation of our nation’s faults. The introductory wall text fires a warning shot: ‘Some of the objects . . . raise difficult, complex issues, since many works were made for and collected by racially and economically privileged segments of society’…John Singleton Copley, born poor but risen high on the strength of prodigious talent, is caught in the net of ‘Pan-American Privilege’ in the next section. His portrait, c. 1772, of New England monarchist Abigail Pickman Gardiner,dressed in ‘the height of London fashion,’ is one of three depictions of ‘privileged Americans’ leading off the display devoted to the Colonial era.”
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The rise and fall of Les Halles: “The site of the city’s ancient and gutsy market, Les Halles was once ‘the belly of Paris’. Bad design turned the belly into un trou. Will the latest construction, La Canopée, heal old wounds?”
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The story of Detroit.
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A nearly essential Goethe.
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How Tetris took over the world: “The Tetris Effect tells the bizarre story of these and other machinations, all of which eventually led, as we know well, to the successful release of Tetris on Game Boy and its concomitant cultural canonization. While tales of ineffectual bureaucracy, contractual confusion, and commercial hoodwinking over computerized configurations of squares stuck together may not sound like a page-turner, Ackerman doles out intrigue worthy of Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy. It’s a behind-the-Iron Curtain nail-biter. The bumbling ELORG, the simple Soviet programmer, the haphazard Dutch-American-Japanese businessman — the whole of it feels like a delightful milkshake of Jason Bourne and Mr. Bean.”
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“Curating” for cash: “Apple Music announced ‘that British retailer Burberry had come on board as a “curator”‘, meaning that Apple Music would feature a web page on which Burberry would select ‘musical talent from the British Isles’. Who at the fashion house would do the ‘curating’ is not apparent…A list of the best restaurants in the United States, says an item in my local newspaper in South Carolina, the State, was ‘curated by local food experts’.”
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Essay of the Day:
In The Guardian, Rachel Cooke writes about the Third Reich’s methamphetamine addiction:
“The story Ohler tells begins in the days of the Weimar Republic, when Germany’s pharmaceutical industry was thriving – the country was a leading exporter both of opiates, such as morphine, and of cocaine – and drugs were available on every street corner. It was during this period that Hitler’s inner circle established an image of him as an unassailable figure who was willing to work tirelessly on behalf of his country, and who would permit no toxins – not even coffee – to enter his body.
“‘He is all genius and body,’ reported one of his allies in 1930. ‘And he mortifies that body in a way that would shock people like us! He doesn’t drink, he practically only eats vegetables, and he doesn’t touch women.’ No wonder that when the Nazis seized power in 1933, ‘seductive poisons’ were immediately outlawed. In the years that followed, drug users would be deemed ‘criminally insane’; some would be killed by the state using a lethal injection; others would be sent to concentration camps. Drug use also began to be associated with Jews. The Nazi party’s office of racial purity claimed that the Jewish character was essentially drug-dependent. Both needed to be eradicated from Germany.
“Some drugs, however, had their uses, particularly in a society hell bent on keeping up with the energetic Hitler (‘Germany awake!’ the Nazis ordered, and the nation had no choice but to snap to attention). A substance that could ‘integrate shirkers, malingerers, defeatists and whiners’ into the labour market might even be sanctioned. At a company called Temmler in Berlin, Dr Fritz Hauschild, its head chemist, inspired by the successful use of the American amphetamine Benzedrine at the 1936 Olympic Games, began trying to develop his own wonder drug – and a year later, he patented the first German methyl-amphetamine. Pervitin, as it was known, quickly became a sensation, used as a confidence booster and performance enhancer by everyone from secretaries to actors to train drivers (initially, it could be bought without prescription). It even made its way into confectionery. ‘Hildebrand chocolates are always a delight,’ went the slogan.”
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Image of the Day: Presidential posters
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Poem: Dan Albergotti, “Vane”
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