A rare retrospective of the work of the American realist painter Alice Neel. Even virtually, her images can be appreciated as powerful reminders of our shared humanity and strived for dignity; irrespective of where we may be on our eternal search for self and place; sought by the privileged or the deprived, in home, studio or on the street. Terrific pictures in my opinion, and I love that she insists upon “pictures”; snapshots from real life, not for her the formalities of portraiture! The exhibition primer explores the sources of Neel’s inspiration; to be seen written in the faces and on the streets of Harlem.
In an excellent piece at The New York Times, Roberta Smith lauds Neel into the pantheon of modern painting; contextualising her radicalness in terms of the social and political turmoil of the twentieth century, and the complex interaction between those powerful exterior forces and the equally palpable interiors of the subjects, and in the virtuosity in which Neel, with colour and texture, bring all these facets together in her composition.
One reads, also, of the brilliant Met installation; the curators playing with chronology, thematics and historical; Kelly Baum and Randall Griffey have their say in the following excellent little video which was a virtual opening of sorts. I don’t know the pandemic status in respect to museums in New York at the moment, but it is to be hoped that, through this show, Neel’s work will find renewed attention and viewership into the Summer months.
Virtual opening introduced by Max Hollein and presented by the co-curators Kelly Baum and Randall Griffey.
With the success of Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half last year (which I wrote about here), it could hardly surprise that Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel would resurface and be talked about again, and therefore appropriate that Bennett be at the centre of this T Book Club event.
Not just about Passing, Brit Bennett also speaks on the person Nella Larsen, beyond the writer, and the complicated paths her life took. After years of obscurity – the NYT famously overlooked her death in 1964 – Larson was rediscovered by feminist academics during the 1970s, and given place amongst the (mostly male) Harlem Renaissance. Interest in Larsen has been sustained through the ensuing years, including what Darryl Pinckney calls a definitive biography in 2006 by George Hutchinson, which he reviewed at The Nation upon publication. I mention the biographical information (via Pinckney and Wiki) only because, it seems to me, the oddness – or, the inconsistencies – of Larson’s life are not dissimilar to those to be discerned in the novel.
Three African American women in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, ca. 1925
But, that is the thing with the unreliable; it titillates, seduces and ultimately leaves –has to leave – some things unresolved. And so it is with the voice of Nella Larsen speaking to us through Irene Redfield. I recall Brit Bennett mentioning Irene’s world to be a rare example of a historical depiction of middle-class Black America, and it is this term “middle-class” that perplexes me; but that is generally so, for its definition is very dependent upon context – in place and in time – and neither being American nor clear on the historical demographics of New York, I may have a different understanding of a socio-economic scale. And so I am left to be wowed at what a middle-class that must have been in Harlem in the 1920s! The Redfieds for instance: doctor, wife; juggling social calendar and committees; entertaining and being entertained by literary luminaries; trips abroad, private schools; upstairs, downstairs; separate bedrooms (which I mention because of the spatial factor – what it says about the relationship between Irene and Brian is another matter!); housemaid, cook. Many of these are attributes I find difficult to relate to the middle-classes – somewhat too uppity, to my mind! Is the Harlem of her novel that in which Nella Larsen lived, the society to which she aspired? Or has she over-imagined both?
“The Custom of the Country” by Edith Wharton (1913)
Edith Wharton, if she was ever out of vogue, is now very much ‘in’ again – talked and written about, her stories adapted to screen. Not so long ago I wrote about House of Mirth, and have recently been prompted (see the embedded video) to read her 1913 novel The Custom of the Country; and, unlike the aforesaid and The Age of Innocence both of which I know well, for the first time.
A conversation with Claire Messud about Edith Wharton & “The Custom of the Country”
Written a dozen or so years after House of Mirth, the general contours of The Custom of the Country remain the same – powerful female heroines (are they?) and splendid (or splendidly despicable?) supporting characters; embedded in that particular East Coast milieu of the Gilded Age into which one is either born or gains admittance at great cost, and a graceful exit doomed to fail. But, however overtly similar, it would be wrong to suggest that Wharton is limited in her vision, locked within the same familiar template; for this later novel very well demonstrates how her own path in the ensuing years, culminating in a divorce and self-decreed exile on the other side of the Atlantic, informed her writing life. And despite affinities shared, Wharton’s heroines in these two novels are in opposite trajectories – in House of Mirth, Lily Bart’s once promising outlook is hurtling towards a tragic end, whilst in The Custom of the Country, the irrepressible Undine Spragg is on the ascendant – life as a series of career moves.
Undine is an anti-heroine I would say, a protagonist without virtue – beyond her beauty, feted by some and envied by all – and ruthless in her pursuit of advancement in society; resolute she is for sure, but vacuous and amoral. In a young nation, a hierarchy has already been established – between old money and new, inherited and earned. And though Undine may slip up or miss a step as she ascends the social ladder, when all seems lost, she (unlike Lily Bart) always manages to regain control and live for another day.
The title of the book is not peripheral, and does suggest one of the novel’s main themes – how class structures and behavioral norms operate in different countries. (A Wikipedia entry gives another interpretation, the veracity of which I can not confirm.) Customs are to be adhered to, or challenged, or simply ignored, and Undine successfully adapts each as befits a situation. Abiding to custom, often means deception, improvisation, manipulation; all wiles to which she is adept. Undine marries when she will, and divorces likewise; she keeps company that she shouldn’t for all to see or closeted from the prying eye; when in one place she pines for another, and then another. And that money grows on trees, is for her not an adage, but a wife’s expectation. More generally, there is a way of recognising her actions as a product of the custom of man (and country); as proffered by a Mr. Charles Bowen in a conversation with Mrs. Fairford (Undine’s sister-in-law), which I quote in length because it says so much:
“[…]you say his wife’s extravagance forces him to work too hard; but that’s not what’s wrong. It’s normal for a man to work hard for a woman—what’s abnormal is his not caring to tell her anything about it.”
“…But why? Because it’s against the custom of the country. And whose fault is that? The man’s again—I don’t mean Ralph I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus. Why haven’t we taught our women to take an interest in our work? Simply because we don’t take enough interest in THEM […]
“Why does the European woman interest herself so much more in what the men are doing? Because she’s so important to them that they make it worth her while! She’s not a parenthesis, as she is here—she’s in the very middle of the picture. I’m not implying that Ralph isn’t interested in his wife—he’s a passionate, a pathetic exception. But even he has to conform to an environment where all the romantic values are reversed. Where does the real life of most American men lie? In some woman’s drawing-room or in their offices? The answer’s obvious, isn’t it? The emotional centre of gravity’s not the same in the two hemispheres. In the effete societies it’s love, in our new one it’s business…”
The Custom of the Country, Chapter XV, Kindle Edition (location 1856-65)
Elsewhere I have waxed lyrical about the working of thread into fine material as a most appropriate metaphor for the creative process. A finely crafted tapestry may be the outcome. Fifty years ago another tapestry was stitched, one of word and music; fine threads with names like “Will you love me tomorrow”, “It’s too late”, “I feel the earth move”, “You’ve got a friend”; all brought together to produce a work of beauty – Carol King’s “Tapestry”. Reluctantly I give away my years, when I say how much this album meant to me as a young thing. May I say very young! And to mitigate more, perhaps my recollections are from a time just a little after its first release.
In the above linked tribute in The Guardian, beyond the artistry of the music and lyrics, Rickie Lee Jones mentions the cover (here’s a Wiki link, as the copyright on the artwork seems unclear), and I too have it etched upon my brain – barefooted, jeans clad, long locks, the direct gaze that seems to say politely but firmly “I have to get back to my work!”. A window seat seemed to me one of the higher forms of luxury. Looking at it again, the vinyl of days gone by replaced with a CD picked up along the way, I see my memory deceived just a little because for some reason I remember a guitar and not a cat. King’s cat was named Telemachus. Penelope it was who weaved and weaved as she awaited Odysseus’ return, defending with her wits and industry the honour of her son and family.
Carole King – It’s Too Late (BBC In Concert, February 10, 1971)
Carole King’s work is on Spotify and most every other platform, and here is her official website with, amongst other things, announcements around and about the anniversary – which includes the release on YouTube of videos (see above) from the BBC studio concert given shortly after “Tapestry” came out.
Reading and discussion of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (translation by Oliver Taplin)
Above, as an example, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, which I note uses the Oliver Taplin translation that Emily Wilson spoke of here. And, Mr. Taplin is in fact a guest (approx. 22:00), and has some interesting things to say about translation and performance – in general and in respect to the Oresteia in particular.
A reading of the Odyssey is of course never over; for me, after a concentrated yearlong effort, it is at the moment in abeyance, but surely to be returned to. For many others, their journey may just be beginning, and this recent project from Harvard’s Centre for Hellenic Studies could be an interesting starting point.
24 hour reading of the 24 books of “The Odyssey” – performed December 8-9 2020
In these frenetic days, in which so much stuff, and so much more unsavoury stuff, is endlessly being thrown around, The New York Times has resorted to viral videos and the nostalgia of the urban snowball fight of yore. Not exactly today’s weapon of choice on the streets of Lyon or anywhere else I would suggest. So were my first thoughts…
Auguste & Louis Lumière: Snowball Fight (1897)
But, the author of the article, Sam Anderson, manages to retrieve his piece from my harsh verdict; both with some very nice observations and imagined narrative of the content, but more importantly with his reflections on our complicated relationship with the past and our exaggerated sense of the importance and uniqueness of our present.
…On an intellectual level, we all understand that historical people were basically just like us. […]They were anxious and unsure, bored and silly. Nothing that would happen in their lifetimes had happened yet. The ocean of time was crashing fresh waves, nonstop, against the rocks of their days. And like us they stood there, gasping in the cold spray, wondering what people of the past were like.
[…] to watch this snowball fight, to see these people so alive, is a precious gift of perspective. We are them. They are us. We, too, will disappear. […] We are not unique. We move in the historical flow. The current moment will melt away like snow crust on a moustache…
Sam Anderson, in “The New York Times Magazine“, Nov. 5 2020
The original black and white version included in the Lumière catalogue can be found here. On a technical level, the colorisation and a smoothing process makes the participants, indeed, look more like us – which of course they really did. This was something I actually thought about quite a lot a couple of years ago on seeing some excerpts from Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old, a documentary film he made in remembrance of the end of the First World War, and in which he took archive footage from the time and, with all the technical wizardry available to him, transformed the subjects from blurred images of long ago to (mostly) young men who one may very well come across today – on the bus, at the pub or football, or most anywhere. I remember thinking, irrespective of the objections raised by purists, the familiar visages that were exposed with such technical finesse do create a powerful bridge between all the years of the century passed. Again – they were just like us! Beyond that of community and comradeship, there is little comparison between the respective fights on the winter streets of Lyon and on the fields and in the trenches of the Somme, but what they do share, are the threads of time that bind each inextricably with our present and all the presents to come.
Much said of this Juneteenth in the last days, so I will just link here to an explanation at The New York Times, and here to a favourite NYT opinion writer of recent times, Jamelle Bouie – a young, black man with a lot to say, and who says it well – who gives his particular slant upon the celebration, and its place in commemorating the struggle for emancipation and freedom of black Americans.
To whet one’s appetite. I receive a newsletter from Bouie every week, with interesting stuff beyond his Times column, and he usually signs off with a “what I’m eating” bit which includes a recipe; giving away his delight in good food. Thinking about this and then reading this piece entitled – and I write it out because its says something – “A Juneteenth of Joy and Resistance”, in which four African-American chefs share their thoughts about this day, it is interesting to contemplate the celebratory role payed by food, especially when influenced by traditional and regional flavours, within a community. As one of those four, is the recently spoken of Eduardo Jordan, and the very special emphasis he places on West African cuisine in the “diaspora”, and his commitment to imparting to his guests (predominately white) its broader cultural significance.
Should one be hungry for more – food, knowledge or both – a favourable review of Padma Lakshmi’s new Hulu series “Taste the Nation” sent me to YouTube for a bonus episode (for Juneteenth) which has unfortunately now been removed. It was really very well done, and while focusing on the the culinary delights, gave some very interesting insights into the Gullah Geechee people of South Carolina – their culture and language – and their efforts to preserve the traditions of their ancestors, West Africans forced into slavery.
