she wasn't over anything
second, there were, i have to admit, sparks of humanity in christie's pretensions, and in her desires, that i felt were missing in the rest of my life. she had coveted a huge diamond ring. she had hoped to land a guy with money. she had wanted her wedding to be an extravaganza, a day she'd remember for the rest of her life. she wasn't "over it." she wasn't over anything. she knew what she wanted, and she wanted the kinds of things that the marketers of luxury goods describe as "the best"—jacuzzis, chandeliers, access to the tropics in the middle of winter. third, and finally, what got me, i suppose, were the indications of humanity in christie's life that had nothing to do with her pretensions. the family crest on the christmas card had been embossed onto a picture of the bruewalds and their new baby in matching red-and-green velvet outfits. the little girl looked exactly like thomas—an odd-featured brown-haired old man. she wouldn't have the advantage of christie's looks, and, for someone as christie was, that must have been hard to take. you could say that i felt sorry for her.
- caitlin macy, "christie," the new yorker 10 march 2003
posted March 31, 2003 in printshe is forthright about her francophilia
"paris is the breeding ground of fashion at all levels," she said. "whether it is belgian designers out in the burbs putting on cool shows, bourgeois ladies putting on the chic for chantilly races, or those couture seamstresses with their gossamer handstitching. it's the taxi-driver thing: the london cabbies care about sport; the new york cabs care how many blocks you are going, and the parisian taxi-drivers care about how john galliano is doing at dior.
[words learned through reading this article: louche, febrile]
- john seabrook, "a samurai in paris," the new yorker 17 march 2003
posted March 31, 2003 in art, printif it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art
my post-adolescent mind thrilled to the opulent negativity of adorno's proclamations, some of which i can still recite off the top of my head: "to write poetry after auschwitz is barbaric." "the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant." "every work of art is an uncommitted crime." "the whole is the false" . . . but he is not quite as solemn as he seems; he can be hilariously bitchy. here he is on the nascent american gym culture of the forties: "the very people who burst with proofs of exuberant vitality could easily be taken for prepared corpses, from whom the news of their not-quite-successful decease has been withheld for reasons of population policy." on young left-wing intellectuals: "to see them as renegades is to asses them too high; they mask mediocre faces with horn-rimmed spectacles betokening 'brilliance,' though with plain-glass lenses, solely in order to better themselves in their own eyes and in the general rat-race."a key concept in the lachenmannian weltanschauung is contamination . . . and goes back to schoenberg's epic epigram, "if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art." the notion that popularity destroys the purity of art is so cherished in german-speaking lands—and, it should be said, on american college campuses—that it takes on the solidity of religious belief. but . . . every variety of dissonance, microtonal writing, and unpitched noise has been used in a hundred horror movies and suspense thrillers. and there is something creepy about the talk of "contamination" and "taint" . . . at the very least, hitler still casts a mysterious spell over the music scene: the project of writing according to his likes and dislikes gives him a power that should long ago have been denied.
- alex ross, "ghost sonata: what happened to german music?" the new yorker 24 march 2003
posted March 31, 2003 in art, music, print