Lux Lotus

On the General Merits of Joining a Caravan

Although I find his political commentary generally wanting, and far too conservative for my tastes, I am enjoying David Brooks' BOBOS (Bourgeois Bohemians) in Paradise, which I picked up today on the advice of the lovely Lulu, along with Graceland by Chris Abani, and Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson, at the Book Cellar.

I have just started Bobos, but it is a welcome, hilariously well-informed and biting satire of so much that seems commonplace in New York, especially. He begins his analysis with the first wave of Bohemianism, against puritanical middle-class American ideals in the 18th century and what he terms "parlor society," with the attendant focus on front-room status and impressing guests:

The idea was to create an elevated environment where people could cultivate delicate sensibilities and higher interests. It was also a place where people could show off their genteel manners and demonstrate their elite status...The new upper middle classes were building a social hierarchy that would allow them to distinguish themselves from the course masses.  In parlor society, women were praised for having tiny hands and feet and for landing on the carpet like butterflies.

That last sentence is, of course, exquisite.

The book and its interesting perspective as a cultural study is turning out to be a surprisingly fun read, but I would more highly recommend Among The Bohemians: Experiments In Living 1900-1939 by Virginia Nicholson, an excellent, illuminating, and generally flawless historical survey of early 20th-century poets, painters, artists, rebels and genteel vagabonds in Great Britain and the way their independent choices profoundly influenced the way we live today.

Leslie From The Block

I used to read Us and Star as a guilty pleasure on airplanes, but it always led to an intellectual hangover: that empty, wasted feeling of having moved my eyes back and forth for an hour without actually processing any information.

A couple of days ago, I saw all of the magazines lined up in the drugstore, each headline screaming, "Brad and Jen: What Happened?" and "Anatomy of a Break-Up!". I glanced over but no further curiousity held sway; they are probably the two least compelling people in the world, as far as I'm concerned.

Yesterday, however, on my way home, I happened to turn my head just as I passed Sotheby's, where antiques experts Leigh and Leslie Keno were engaged in an animated conversation out front. I was totally, totally starstruck!

That would have to be my favorite neighborhood celebrity sighting ever, except for maybe Anne Slater, wearing her trademark blue glasses, of course (she is so beyond!), walking into Cafe Sabarsky when I was there one afternoon.

"Hot Girls of the Middle Ages"

Eleanor of Aquitaine: 'that girl from Poitou.'

Not Televised So Much As Sponsored By Nike

I had a very stimulating conversation over dinner tonight with one of my favorite people regarding how best to combine successful living in a capitalist society with passionate idealism about making the world a better place.

Thinking about some of the points we both made (admittedly, he got a couple of zingers in there) led me to digging through a long neglected sheaf of papers from college to unearth a much-adored article, entitled "Karl Marx in Love: The Enlightenment, Romanticism and Hegelian Theory in the Young Marx," by Harold E. Mah, originally published in History of European Ideas, Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 489-507, 1986.

It's a brief but utterly charming survey of Marx's early philosophical influences as they relate to events in his life, e.g.

The relationship between Marx and Jenny was in a state of constant turbulence. Each seemed to delight in expressing and then withdrawing one's love, in tormenting the other with one's own doubts...And entangled in this web was the sharer of the secret of their engagement, Heinrich Marx.

When his son's taste for Romantic poetry first developed while he was at the University of Bonn, Heinrich Marx tried to show a sympathetic interest...Heinrich suggested to Marx that the latter should not publish his poems until his talents had further matured. At the same time, the father encouraged this son to pursue something more practical and less self-indulgent, such as legal studies. Both parents also tried to wean Marx from his Bohemian style of manic activity, sleepless nights and alcoholic dissipation.

The father did not become seriously concerned about Marx's Romanticism until Marx had become engaged...

This continues for quite a while, until Marx has his infamous conversion to Hegelian theory. And, of course, later on he goes on to formulate his own brilliant theories on the nature of political economy in modern industrial societies.

My love for Marx's ideas (in their original form, minus the -ism) led me, along with a confluence of other factors, to work in the labor movement when I finished school. I can say with some certainty that nothing could have extinguished my own youthful idealism more quickly than my experiences over the next few years, but I am still on the path to self-discovery, much like Marx once upon a time.

And They Say I'm Hard to Shop For...

A word of advice: Smythson.

Not Exactly A Wallflower

I am absolutely in love with this photo by Lisa Merrell. It sort of sums up my entire state of mind at the moment. [via Swivel]

You Never Know What Might Change Your Life

Art historian Frederica Todd Harlow has written an illuminating article on French decorative artist Theodore Deck (italics mine):

In the mid-19th century, Europe's artistic and fashionable circles were enthralled by a vogue for all that was Oriental. Visitors to London Galleries and Paris salon exhibitions became familiar with Middle Eastern desert and village life, with Arab, Persian and Turkish costume and decorative arts as they were recorded - or sometimes imagined - on canvas or in watercolor by European artist-travelers. De rigueur for Victorian ladies were the sumptuous, colorfully patterned paisley shawls, while loose, cool pajamas, as worn in the Islamic world, were adopted into the well-dressed European male's wardrobe. European homes featured the new "divan" associated with life à l'orientale - furniture that invited lounging and relaxation - and the Turkish bath was introduced to Paris...Against this backdrop, the acquisition of a single brilliantly colored Islamic tile prompted French ceramist Joseph-Théodore Deck to explore and revive Middle Eastern ceramic techniques in the creation of his own unique art.

The piece, from the excellent publication Ceramics Today, offers a fascinating glimpse into the artistic development of modern ceramics in Europe, and France, particularly, and the important role played by the revival of historical motifs.

Related from the LL archives: Cloak and Dazzle.

Recently Thrifted

A vintage black and tan striped Calvin Klein caftan from the early '80s, and a copy of How Proust Can Change Your Life.

The Fountainhead

I wrote a profile of artist Samm Cohen for the current issue of Trigger, a new magazine that aims to capture the "rebellious sense of energy that has come to represent the 'downtown' aesthetic that defines a New York scene in danger of becoming extinct," and provide "a direct response to the cookie cutter, conveyer belt era of corporate catalogues and focus-group based market research that creates a ubiquitous franchise on every corner and a full spectrum of beige in every home." Without a doubt.

Sgraffito Chic and Tea

Last week I checked out a couple of exhibitions at the Freer in Washington, D.C. The first, "The Tea Ceremony as Melting Pot," was a very small but well-curated show that explored the influence of international trade on the development of chanoyu (the tea ceremony) in Japan.

Trade with China, Vietnam and Korea introduced ceramics and earthenware with new glazes and motifs to the traditional Japanese ritual. I thought that the colors - vivid cobalt blues and emerald greens, as well as satisfying muddy shades of deep brown and russet red - were gorgeous, and the motifs, which drew from nature but also other sources were quite appealing as well. Lotus and wild aster designs were joined by a very darling pot embellished with a "rabbit in the moon," which piqued my curiousity with a distant, slightly hazy memory of the early '90s electronic music act that made sense when I read the accompanying text noting that the rabbit in the moon is occupied with "pounding the elixir of immortality." There were about a dozen objects total in the show, among them containers, bowls, vases, tea jar and other accoutrements, and the smart and informative exhibition text did a terrific job of exploring the role of trade and its impact.

The next day at a thrift shop I happened to come across Empty Vessel, Replenished Minds: The Culture, Practice, and Art of Tea, a catalog from the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. The hundreds of objects that appear in the book, many of which are unfortunately not available to view online, includes a set of 12 granite tea utensils that is the most complete collection of stone tea utensils from the Tang dynasty (618-907), as well as "Eighteen Scholars of the T'ang," a scroll showing "a party of Sung [dynasty 960-1279] literati drinking wine and tea." My favorite by far, though, is an absolutely extraordinary teacup made from fa-lang-ts'ai enamels with a layered motif of peony, magnolia, and begonia flowers, dating from the Ch'ing dynasty, Yung-cheng reign (1723-1735).

Another exhibition I viewed at the Freer was Black & White Ceramics From The 10th-14th Centuries. The image seen above is of one of the standout pieces in the show, a vase with a leaf design etched using a sgraffito technique. The period in question was a time of innovation and competition among rival kilns. The first thing that caught my eye was a vibrant white dish with molded rim and carved decoration of lotuses, naturally, which dates from China in the 12th century, in the Hebei Province. The dish is made of porcelain coated with a a transparent ivory-tinted glaze, and boasts a motif of fully-open blossoms with swirly stems and leaves. The overall effect of the motif is bold, stylized, and sensual, offering the barest hints of both modernism and art nouveau in the distant future. Another piece, a simple vase from the Jianxi Province during the Yan dynasty, was rendered very attractive with a "tortoiseshell glaze" that admirably reproduced the authentic pattern with a technique combining dark glaze overlaid with a glaze consisting of splashed ash. The elegantly named sgraffito "is a mode of decoration pioneered within the network of Cizhon kilns ... in which a surface layer of glaze or slip was pared away to create a pattern and expose a ground -- either a slip or the clay body -- of a contrasting color. The vessel was then coated with a transparent colorless glaze and fired."

I especially liked the way that accompanying text traced both the development of aesthetic trends and also discussed the effects of consumer demands and the marketplace on ceramic innovation. For instance, at one point, "Tea drinkers believed the beverage's white froth looked best in a bowl of contrasting dark color..." while "The most famous writer on tea drinking, Lu Yu (733-804), extolled certain northern white ceramics as 'bright as silver and white as snow.'" "Black vs. White Ceramics" may have been a more accurate title given the forces at work on the craft at the time.

For a taste of the rich variety of styles evident in contemporary tea bowls, Eyebeam reBlog (with Wooster Collective's Marc Schiller currently at the helm) points us to the photoblog of "Ottmar Liebert, who is a renowned guitarist, and, apparently, a collector of beautiful bowls for tea."

Yet another exhibition I checked out on that same afternoon was the retrospective of Ana Mendiata's work at The Hirshhorn. Her Silueta Series absolutely blew me away, and I have much, much more to say on her work and its effect on me, but the thing that I found most immediately delightful was that Mendieta also used sgraffito in her work. She began to draw on fresh green leaves in 1982, and "puncturing, stippling, and incising the leaves. She employed an array of instruments including nails, needles, spoons, a stylus, ballpoint pens, and pencils. These impressions, often referred to as sgraffito, remained on the leaves as they dried." And they certainly left an impression on me.