Service, and More...

(Before I begin, as a courtesy to a friend, here's his birthday tribute to Les Paul--a musician and endlessly inventive tinkerer whose work I have always admired...)

Now, did anyone catch the Palin interview last night? I'd be interested to hear. I was out, but I doubt that I could have brought myself to watch it anyway. Was she questioned about the lies she has been repeating about herself with apparent impunity on the campaign trail? Thanks by the way, to Paul Krugman for a powerful column on this subject in today's New York Times. In case you missed it, here's his conclusion:

how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.

I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.

I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.

And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?

What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

Well put, indeed. But I still like to hear impressions of that interview.

Much more important, of course, was the Forum on Service following the two candidates' visits to the World Trade Center site--an event that I recorded, to play back on my return home later in the evening. The two men were interviewed separately, but in depth, with serious questions that were for the most part seriously answered. Citizen McCain (he of the seven mansions) went first by toss of the coin, and spoke honorably, with evident sincerity, about the value of service to one's country and those who share both our neighborhoods and our planet. He seemed to me, however, to epitomize precisely what he has used to often to castigate his opponent: rhetorical eloquence with very little in the way of substantial proposals to back it up. Obama, on the other hand, spoke not only with his customary, inspirational eloquence of the big picture, the honor and the rewards of service, but also with the detail of practical--and practicable--programs to encourage Americans to serve. You know, substantial stuff.

Speaking of service, I mentioned earlier that I was out yesterday evening. Ellie and I went downtown with a friend to the opening of an exhibition of art by the homeless on Los Angeles's Skid Row, and the premiere of a related documentary movie. It's the dedication of another friend of ours, the artist Lillian Abel, that brought this about. For years, she has been championing the creative potential of those who have fallen on hard times--some as a result of psychological disorders, some by reason of financial catastrophe--and find themselves "on the streets." She does not "teach," she insists, but she does create space, both physical and mental, where a joyful creativity can blossom in the heart of human misery.

The results are truly remarkable. We're a rather snobby lot, truth be told, in the world of "contemporary art," and we tend to look down our noses at the work of those we consider to be more amateurish than ourselves. But look at these paintings by unschooled artists, and you'll find an outpouring not just of emotional depth but also of real, raw talent. I'd show you pictures, if only I hadn't forgotten (wouldn't you know?) to take the digital camera with me, and there was no brochure I could see to bring away as a reminder of the names of the artists and their work. They'll remain here, reprehensibly, nameless. But each one of them had something remarkable to offer, something of their own vision and humanity. Both the movie and the exhibit were extraordinary reminders of the human treasure that society casually brushes aside in its precipitous rush for wealth and progress. Thanks, Lillian, for this truly remarkable and selfless work. This service.

What a scene in downtown Los Angeles! It was the night of the monthly Thursday art walk, and the streets were literally teeming with mostly young people around the area that has seen new galleries and exhibition spaces popping up on the ground floors--and second floors--of buildings that are still under redevelopment. I have never seen such crowds, such liveliness, such obvious engagement and enthusiasm on streets that have traditionally emptied themselves of all but the destitute after dark. Here were artists, street musicians, performers, a bedlam of creative energy that was quite exhilerating to experience and gave hope that our species might yet devise ways to survive its current phase of insatiable greed and insanity. I just hope that it's powerful enough to resist the encroachment of those developers, with their condos and their luxury office suites, their boutique storefronts and trendy restaurants, their warehouses converted into high-rent lofts...

A Busy Weekend

We do not often stay in town for the weekend, these days. We love the serenity of our Laguna retreat, and we so much value the Sunday morning session of our sitting group. But this past weekend was a particularly busy one, and there was much to keep us here in Los Angeles.

There was, first of all, the party I have mentioned earlier on The Buddha Diaries: I learned a while ago that there are twenty-nine men and women in the Southern California area who graduated from the Cambridge college I attended in the 1950s. They are mostly men, I have to say, since Gonville & Caius College did not admit women until the latter years of the twentieth century, well after my time. I have only recently begun to fully appreciate the privilege I was afforded, as a young man, by that experience, and it was with that sense of debt--and with a certain curiosity as to what the experience of others might have been--that I reached out to all twenty-nine in the hope of bringing us together for an evening's celebration.

That evening came around on Saturday. There were a number, of course, from whom I never heard in response to my initial contact. There were a number who declined because of other commitments. But quite a number did in fact show up--men only, regrettably, though with their wives; I would have loved to have met some of the Caius women on my list--and we enjoyed a splendid summer evening out on the deck.




Our group included men of all ages, including one who had matriculated in 1948, seven years before I myself arrived in 1955, and one who was my exact contemporary--though we did not know each other at the time. Then a number of younger men who had matriculated in the 1970s and 1980s.

Ellie and I had laid on wine and a generous table of hors d'oeuvres--too much, it turned out; we have quantities of left-overs to dispose of in the next few days, and we all spent a while chit-chatting and comparing notes until the last of the late-arrivals had showed up. Then, not least to satisfy my own curiosity, I arranged us all in a large circle and invited everyone to check in with the brief story of the path that brought them from their Caius days to living here in Southern California.

An extraordinarily diverse group of people we all turned out to be. Not only the Caius men, but also the women spoke about their lives, and I was impressed by the quality as well as the diversity of the paths we had chosen. What I found particularly striking was what seemed to me something of a common trope, a shared sense of redirection toward a less conventional set of values and beliefs. There was one who had devoted the better part of his life to a traditional medical practice, turning now toward alternative medicine; the lawyer turned software engineer turned hypnotherapist; the production designer returning to her original aim to be a painter; a neuroscientist applying his skills to the study of art and the imaginative work of creating special effects for film; there was the computer specialist turned yoga teacher; the corporate business woman now devoted to nation-wide charitable fundraising; and the philosopher pioneering efforts to promote mutual understanding between the world's great religions. As one who quit a conventional academic career to devote myself exclusively to writing, I felt not out of place. (By the way, if I have misrepresented any here, I offer my apologies: chalk it up to the fact that our time together was too short to offer more than a brief sketch of fascinating and productive lives.  Then, too, my memory is not so sharp as it used to be...)

Is it a natural part of the aging process, I wondered in retrospect, that so many of us seem to be looking for something different, something perhaps more meaningful as our lives progress? Or, possibly, as my sister often argues, is there some radical change taking place on our planet--indeed, as she would have it, in the universe? A movement away from the bad old, primarily Western goals of material comfort and individual success and toward a greater understanding and respect for the one-ness of us all, and our unity with nature? On the political front, is our Barack Obama at the forefront of a new wave of global cooperation and resolve to save our planet and people from the ravages of the misguided human ego? Or am I simply projecting my own desires and understandings on the world around me? It's fun, at least, to indulge in some innocent--though perhaps idle--speculation.

We invited our Caius guests for 6 - 8 PM. The last of the group left after midnight. Everyone was grateful to have been invited, and several specifically requested a repeat performance, even an annual reunion. We felt that the party had been a success! So much so that I protracted it, in dream, for what seemed like another few hours after falling asleep, and awoke in the very early hours with the impression that our last guest had left at five past two.

A morning, then, in bed with the newspaper. I did my morning sit out on the balcony, missing our sangha. Then off to brunch at the home of our friend Gina Stepaniuk (here's a 2006 painting of hers; it's called "Petite Mort"--"little death", a French euphemism, by the way, for sexual climax...)



We found ourselves in the company of other artists, some old friends, some new, enjoying good conversation, good humor, a glass of wine, good food... Our mutual interests and shared dedication to the creative life inspired me to think that my speculation might not be quite so idle after all. It's hard, in such company, to bear in mind that there are vast numbers of American voters, still, who do not share our enlightenment!

And then, to cap off a rather hectic weekend in the rarefied atmosphere of creative minds, we managed to stay awake for long enough, on Sunday evening, to betake ourselves to a dingy dive in Echo Park, on Sunset Boulevard, where our daughter's band, The Pickup Sticks was playing a gig. A tiny space, packed with young people and filled with the deafening sounds of hard core rock music. Sarah is a drummer and backup singer...


Her friend, Ed, is the lead singer in the band.


Our unprejudiced opinion was that they were great! We loved the energy and passion of the performance--though I personally wished I'd had a song sheet to be able to follow the words. As Ellie says, I'm "such a word person." The only ones I got were "cookie cutter." Still, I have to say that much of the emotional impact was delivered despite the lack of words. I've been hoping that The Pickup Sticks will soon get around to finishing their CD. They're good enough to deserve a bigger venue than this tiny space--appropriate though it was for their style and energy. It was great, too, to reconnect with many of their friends, and be welcomed by them with such warmth and interest.

Another late night, then. And a slow start this morning for the week to come... But much gained, over the weekend, in terms of the imaginative juices and the confirmation that there are many good people in this world, doing many good things; along with a salutary reminder that the encounter with creative minds is a healthy antidote to the woes that all too often afflict us.

Art, Food, Wine, Art, Music

An eventful afternoon and evening yesterday. We had decided to stay in town for the weekend for a change, with plenty of things to do. I was in England visiting my sister at the time of all the gala openings for the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum (awkward and unappealing acronym: BCAM) and the attendant changes in the architectural interiors of the old campus, so we chose this Friday afternoon to play catchup.

The elevator from the convenient new underground parking area leads up to the main plaza with a view of the massive Broad building, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. A not very exciting exterior, enhanced, at plaza level, by landscaping by the artist Robert Irwin (palm trees, walkways...) and installations by Charles Ray (that big old fire truck, reconstructed, I think, in wood--a strange apparition) and Chris Burden (a dense forest of old Los Angeles street lamps, neatly arranged in serried rows.)


From the plaza, to follow the planned flow of things, a long exterior escalator brings the visitor up to the top floor of the Broad...


(sorry, my pictures are not a very useful visual representation of the architecture: I took some better ones, but for some reason my little digital Canon malfunctioned--these are the best I have)

...whence one is transported down from floor to floor in a massive glass elevator that offers a spectacular view of the Hollywood hills. Photography is not allowed, but I managed to sneak in an illicit shot of the top floor installation before being reprimanded by the one of the guards.



You'll note the the shiny Jeff Koons objects occupy pride of place. I liked the gallery spaces, especially the top floor which is lit (entirely, I believe) by natural light, filtered through computer-operated ceiling louvers. Very lovely, soft, evenly distributed light that gives the entire space a pleasant glow.

The Broad collection, I have to say, was for the most part uninspiring. Great works that, seen individually, would have perhaps worked better than seen as an entire installation, where they became a kind of pro forma encyclopedia of late twentieth century art. All the right names: Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol--and, representing the West Coast in this West Coast city, Ed Ruscha and John Baldessari. Am I missing someone? Probabably. The white male gang. Plus a handful of power females: Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Cindy Sherman... But, sadly for this now majority (?) Hispanic city, not a trace of that tradition. And only Basquiat to represent that other "minority." It all seemed, well, a little pat, a little tedious in its grandeur. As Ellie pointed out, the sheer scale of many of the works in the collection felt like a reflection of the ego of their creators.

There were a couple of surprises, for me. A few grand, elegantly-shaped Ellsworth Kellys literally jumped to life. I have never really cottoned to their uninflected, monochromatic surfaces, but a couple of them in this installation seemed to fly off the wall with vibrant urgency. I found myself liking Damien Hirst much more than I have in the past. His "cabinet of curiosities" installation of common-or-garden medical gear and drugs (with a few skulls and broken mirrors here and there, to add the momento mori touch) and another of truly beautiful skeletons of various animals and birds were remarkable, I thought, as was a monumental triptych assemblage created out of butterfly wings, evoking the sacred stained-glass windows of a European cathedral.

A couple of others, too. But I left the building on the first floor, with its installation of two more-than-massive Richard Serra maze-like constructions in imposing corten steel with the feeling that I had been there and done that. Moving east to the familiar old Periera-designed Ahmanson wing, we encountered the installation of a massive David Smith sculpture


occupying what had once been the atrium like a giant spider. Very impressive. We wandered through the galleries, admiring selections of modern works from an extraordinary private Los Angeles collection previously unknown to us, with impressive depth in the early twentieth century work of artists like Picasso and Bracque and, notably, Giacometti. Here's another not very good illicit snapshot of what was a truly moving installation.


We had to give rather short shrift to the ground floor galleries of modern and contemporary work in the Ahmanson, since we had made early dinner reservations at Comme Ca, one of those new, trendy westside places modeled on the Parisian brasserie. We enjoyed an excellent glass of house wine and good salads--Ellie chose vegetables with romaine lettuce, I chose the beets--followed by salmon for Ellie and braised beef for me, along with a side order of their special "frites."


All very good, but the chocolate tart we ordered for dessert proved disappointing. The waiter happily took it back. All in all, a good--but not great--meal, in an environment so noisy that it was almost impossible to hear each other speak. We enjoyed the occasion, but would not be in a hurry to return.

On to our concert at Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills. We have been receiving invitations for their music series, but have not taken advantage of the invitation until now. It proved to be a great gathering of art world folk, many of whom we had not seen in years. And the Mandelring Quartet gave us a superb selection of music, superbly played. They started out with the Haydn String Quartet in G Major, and I couldn't help but be tickled by the contrast between the elegant, capricious, sometimes passionate music and the environment in which it was played, with a backdrop of enormous, four times life-sized, painfully detailed photographic portraits of female body builders by the German artist Martin Schoeller.

The second piece was Leo Janacek's "Kreuzer Sonata," whose wild dissonances, for me, evoked a desolate, post-battle World War I landscape, replete with strident rhythmical assaults, sharp as barbed wire, and sometimes raging, ominous atonalities, resolving themselves into lingering lyrical moments and, at the end, a kind of tenuous truce. Very dramatic, very compelling music, recalling some of the Expressionist paintings we had seen earlier at the museum.

The last piece, Beethoven's String Quartet in B Major, Op. 130, was the hardest for me, perhaps because my brain had begun to tire! It asked from me more musical knowledge and understanding than I possess. Seduced by the easy elegance of Haydn and the irresitible emotional sweep of Janacek, I could summon neither words nor pictures with the Beethoven. Clearly there were some serious musical ideas being worked out here, under the ironic gaze of one of those giant goddesses of the unfeminine physique, but I found them hard to follow. I finally allowed myself to simply breathe and let the music in.

After the concert, after the conversations with old friends, we drove back along Wilshire Boulevard past the museum, in order to see the Chris Burden cluster of street lamps lit. We were impressed. The practical purpose of street lamps, of course, is to be spaced at long intervals along the street, to shed their light for passing pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Removed from their utilitarian context, the lamps become a magical fantasy forest glittering at the edge of L.A.'s major thoroughfare. A delightful conceit.

Thanks for joining me on this marathon. We had a great time, and hope you managed to enjoy a little of it too, through this curious medium that we share.

Ojai: Fun and Fire

Well, it was quite a trip. Here we are, safely back in Los Angeles--thanks, by the way, to those who wished us a safe journey. It actually felt like touch and go at times on the freeway coming home. More of that in a moment. Meanwhile...

We headed up the 5 freeway Saturday morning as far as Magic Mountain (unbelievable queues of vehicles blocking traffic as people lined up to exit the freeway there, to spend a joyful Saturday on the roller coasters and other instruments of torture!) and took the 126 east through Piru and Fillmore to Santa Paula, where we had been urged to stop to see an odd new show opening up in an odd new art space miles from the "art scene" in Los Angeles. The happily-named Kunstbarn--a play, no doubt, on the more august, ubiquitous "Kunsthalle," the venue of much avant-garde art in Germany and elsewhere--turned out to be just that: a barn. But a barn painstakingly converted into a small but pristine gallery space by the owner, Lotar Ziesing, who deals primarily in "Decorative Art and Antiques." His inaugural exhibition was entitled "Dysfunctional American Portraits, 1930-1960."

The dysfunctional portraits in question turned out to be mostly paintings by those anonymous, self-taught painters whose masterpieces you can pick up for a couple of dollars at garage sales and swap meets. If you have a good eye--as Lotar quite evidently does--you can find real gems, of the kind popularized by the artist Jim Shaw in his Thrift Store Paintings. Here's a couple of them, for your delectation: Lotar has graced each one with a title of his own invention. These two are called "Abused Child" and "Illuminated Shopper," respectively. The theme of the dysfunctional family makes an interesting and satrical comment on mostly post-war America and its illusions of domestic bliss.

It's a trek out to Lotar's place, but worth the effort. Lotar himself is a genial man, a generous host, and a source of endless knowledge about all things "mid-century." Parked outside his house when we arrived was a magnificent pillar-box red Lancia from the 1950s--or perhaps the 1960s, I'm no expert--and while we were still there a friend of his drove up with a beautifully restored Airstream-type trailer of the same period (it wasn't Airstream, but I didn't catch the make.) The late 19th century homestead, also restored with a finicky eye for detail, enjoys a spectacular view of the valley below with its wide arroyo and the mountains beyond.

We took the scenic route up over the hill to the outstkirts of Ojai, where our friends Chris and Nancy had generously invited us to spend the night in their guest house. We were greeted by three rowdy dogs, anxious to meet George, the newcomer. George is normally quite nervous around other dogs, and is known to lunge at them in a less than friendly manner. We assume that, being small, he needs to assert his dogulinity. It's a Napoleon thing. However, they all seemed to get along just fine as we settled down to an excellent lunch of home-brewed potato soup and salad. After lunch, the four of us--here are our friends--set out on a marvelous, long walk along a back road that soon led us through avocado and orange orchards, where George for the first time in his life learned the joys of running off-leash in the countryside. His long coat managed to pick up every burr along the way, but it was worth the work of pulling them all out one by one just to watch his doggy spirit run free.

We enjoyed a very pleasant dinner in the town of Ojai, and managed an early night and a good sleep, away from the light and sounds of the metropolitan area. We watched the sunrise on an exquisite morning that was marred only, moments later, by Ellie's accident with a glass tea-caddy--it slipped from her hand and shattered on the tile floor in a million tiny shards. Out with George for his morning poop walk, though, I was at once amazed and thrilled to actually hear the beat of crows' wings as a pair of them flew past. It was that quiet...

Breakfast of coffee and toasted English muffins with our friends on their enclosed back porch, surrounded by whispering trees--the wind had not yet risen to its later gusty strength; and a visit with a next-door neighbor, the artist Michael Dvortcsak, whose paintings we have been familiar with for many years.



Michael loves rough, volumetric shapes like ancient vessels and huge, craggy boulders which occupy his canvases like mythical, paleolithic presences set in dreamscapes of the mind. His studio is a solitary cave, hemmed in on all sides by racks crammed with paintings of all sizes and a single wall on which the works in progress hand are hung, awaiting his attention. It's always great to spend time in an artist's studio, and it was a pleasure to meet the man behind the paintings.

There was another studio visit in store for us. After a brief stop in town at the farmers' market, we headed out into the country in the opposite direction--to the south and west--to find the studios of an old friend, Gary Lang, and his wife, Ruth Pastine. Gary left Los Angeles years ago, in the early 1980s, as I recall, and spent a number of years in the contemporary art mecca of New York. He and Ruth returned to Southern California--and the paradise of the countryside around Ojai--a few years ago, and have built a magnificent his- and hers- studio, with a wing for each of them to work in privacy. In Gary's studio, we found a dozen new paintings in pursuit of his love affair--the word "obsession" came up--with color and movement. At one end, a large painting, similar to this one



(apologies to Gary for having lifted this absurdly too-small image, sans permission, from his gallery's site: it gives no feeling for the scale and grandeur of the actual work!) Where Gary works in wildly colorful, eye-popping abstraction, Ruth works much more subtly with shifting color gradations in canvases where serenity rules. Here's a blue one:



(Apologies to Ruth, too, from pretty much the same reasons!) We spent a good while in the studios, amazed, as always, by the endless inventiveness of artists and their dedication to their work.

We enjoyed a bite to eat at Ruth and Gary's, out on the shaded patio behind their house. It wasn't long, however, before we began to notice smoke in the air and smelled the burning brush--our first inkling of the terrible fires that were breaking out all over Southern California. After leaving their house, we headed into thickening smoke around Ventura, where traffic slowed to a crawl beneath a dirty red, hellish sky. Unsure whether the freeway would lead us, in this murk, to a dead halt between flaming hillsides, we debated leaving the 101 and heading back east on the 126 again. Not knowing which of the two routes was worse, we opted on instinct for the 101. It turned out to have been the better choice, I think, because a call to Lotar gave us notice of a raging fire in the hills above them, near Santa Paula; and later we heard that there were fires on either side of the southbound I-5, which we would have had to take after leaving the 126. Even so, as you can tell from this picture, it was bad enough. We were thankful to find our own area clear when we got home. Today we can look forward to heat--and more brush fires.

Sheer Terror

A classic thriller: an upper middle class family is terrorized by unknown, invisible assailants. The threat is clear and imminent, but unspecified. The father is in a state of high anxiety, needing desperately to protect his family. I watch all this as one does a movie, anxious and scared, but somehow for them, not for myself. But totally engaged, "on the edge of my seat." It's "so real." Intense. Then I wake up for a bladder break in the middle of the dream and realize that I'll never know the end. I'll never know who these people are, or who is threatening them, or how, or for what reason. I'll never know if--or how--the family manage to extricate themselves from their predicament. Very Kafkan. Before heading off to the bathroom, I lie in bed and try to write an ending that feels right, but you know that never helps. The dream is a world unto itself, and an ending written in the waking world just doesn't quite do it...

This morning we leave for Ojai, with a stop in Santa Paula. Exciting times. We have chosen the hottest weekend since the September heatwave, with fierce Santa Ana winds blowing in from the deserts. Wish us luck.

Our House; Oh, and the iPhone...

Ellie hosted a meeting of professional women in the arts in our house last night, and it was a pleasure to see how well our new place worked to entertain a large-ish group of people. They arrived before sunset and enjoyed the daytime view of Hollywood from our balcony over wine and hors d'ouevres, then strolled in the garden before returning to the balcony for dinner around the big teak table there, staying on through the dusk into darkness, and well into the night.

I, meanwhile, was joined by the sole male guest--a friend and the husband of a member of Ellie's professional association. We sat and chatted together over dinner and throughout the evening, ending up with a long exposition from him about one of the great passions of his life: the Yiddish language--its history and practice, and its persistence despite the devastation of the Holocaust and the consequent diaspora of the twentieth century. A fascinating story. As one who studied languages and philology many years ago at university, I was able at least to contribute some interesting questions...

We talked, too, about the city and the undergraduate program I directed--also many years ago!--in which we took students for a full semester and immersed them in all aspects of art in the city of Los Angeles. Our first day, which started at four in the morning at the fruit and vegetable markets and lasted the full length of the day, was called "The City as Art" and involved a fast-paced, multi-vehicle tour of corners of Los Angeles that most students had never visited or known about--from the sublime to the ridiculous. We ended up at Forest Lawn cemetery, admiring the prim, fig-leafed copy of Michelangelo's David and the ghastly stained glass version of Leonardo's "Last Supper," viewed to the sound of pious organ muzak.

Interesting, though. My friend pointed out that many young people literally don't know where they are these days, In the geographical sense. The newest generation have grown up with navigation systems in their cars, so they drive without the faintest idea as to where they're going except as an electronic concept projected on those little screens. Without the digital assist, they would be lost. By the same token, we wondered, how many young people grow up with having to understand the basic principles of math? He told me that young employees in his office are astounded by his ability to work out mathematical problems in his head.

To what extent, I wonder, are we in the process of stultifying the human brain with our reliance on those marvelous digital gadgets? Are we at risk of sacrificing our own circuitry by outsourcing it to our machines?



It's today, is it not--or tomorrow--that the much-touted iPhone makes its public appearance. Predictably, there will be mobs of people storming the Apple stores to lay their hands on one. Another piece of miniaturized gadgetry that does everything but fly us to New York... How long will it be before everyone on Earth requires the help of such a device to ascertain where he is? Then we'll all be permanently lost.

Artwalk

Ellie and I made one of our periodic forays into the gallery scene on Wednesday, and came upon some current shows that seemed to warrant a few words of commentary.

First stop, the expansive (and expensive!) Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, where we found an installation by Chris Burden, whose work will be familiar to anyone even vaguely familiar with the Southern California art world: who could forget his crucifixion on the rear end of a Volkswagen, his shots fired at a jetliner landing (or taking off?) at LAX, his crawling naked through a bed of broken glass? It gives pause, these days, to observe his recently-abandoned tenure as Chair of the prestigious Art Department at UCLA, and to find him enshrined in this established mecca of the currently superheated art market.

Still, there he is, with “Yin Yang,” an installation that consists of two machines from the artist’s personal collection of strange and exotic exemplars of vehicular transportation—a sleek, low-slung1973 Lotus Europa racer and a klutzy, rusting old bulldozer, an International T6 Crawler.



(The above is obviously a promotional rather than an installation shot, shamelessly purloined from the gallery's website.) Yin Yang indeed. The one is the symbol of speed, precision design and engineering, superlative performance, streamlining; the other, a slug of the mechanical world, is slow, plodding, heavy on its tracks. (Both, incidentally, seem to be rudely leaking oil on the polished gallery floor.) On the walls alongside of each, Burden has tacked up a series of large scale, roughly made photographs depicting the vehicles and their (be it said, kindly though, from one who shares that seemingly inevitable spread, now rather more stocky) artist-owner with various expressions of bemusement on his face—and one with the contrasting figure of a man young enough to be his son.

I see both these vehicle as Burden: the once sleek, once fast-paced, once young body; and the older, more plodding, stockier version, slightly the worse for wear, and slower in performance. I see this piece to be in good part about the physical human body and the aging process, and I share viscerally in the pathos of it. It's the yin and yang of life itself.

And I must say I liked the simplicity of this statement. There will be those who ask whether this simple juxtaposition is enough to justify its exhibition in one of our major galleries, but I had fun with the show. Aside from the deeper and more disturbing implications, Burden’s boyish fascination with all things transportational will appeal to anyone who has ever loved a train set; and the film in the adjacent gallery, “Metropolis,” suggests that there are wider cultural issues at issue. The film documents another, earlier installation, this one a complex, miniaturized citiscape with dozens of toy cars speeding along roller-coaster highways and multi-car trams darting endlessly along their tracks. It’s a bewildering—and hypnotic—evocation of the edgy hum of mechanical urban thoroughfare, reminding us of the impossibly fast-paced, barely organized structures of our city lives, at once a critique and a celebration of the power of the machine.

It's also, in its network of nerves and pulsing circulation, another powerful metaphor for the human body.

On to Regen Projects, and the current work of a contemporary of Burden’s, Charles Ray. Ray is another artist who established his reputation with edgy, sometimes disorienting or discomforting work involving, often, like Burden, his own body—and another who joined, in a sense, the ranks of the academy as a faculty member at UCLA. He offers an exhibition every bit as simple, on the surface, as Burden’s pair of vehicles: “Hinoki,” Ray’s single—singular—object in the gallery space is a massive rotting tree trunk.

Well, not quite. It’s the recreation of a massive, rotting tree trunk, one spotted by Ray along Highway 1 on California’s Central Coast.


(Photo: courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles, photographer Joshua White)

Wishing to celebrate and breathe life back into this noble carcass which spoke so eloquently about time, entropy, and the forces of nature, the artist had casts made of its various parts and shipped them off to Japan for recreation in “hinoki” wood—Japanese cypress—by Yuboku Mukoyoshi, a master carver who specializes in Buddhist temples and sculptures. The work took the master and a team of assistants more than five years to complete, and the resulting object is a marvel of craftsmanship.

The eye is drawn first, of course, to the huge overall shape of the thing, and to its evocation of the original object of Ray’s interest. But it’s the paradoxical details that draw the eye next: the dovetail joints left visible, the marks of the chain-saw that carved up the tree and the chisels of the carvers—all those things that contradict the initial impression and set the mind off in an irresolvable spin between reality and illusion, object and artifact, nature and art. The viewer is seduced by the compulsion to keep looking further and for greater detail, exploring the pits and flaws of both surfaces and interiors, caverns and canyons--and by the nearly irresistible urge to touch, to feel the shapes and the texture of the wood, to somehow surrender to its massive, in some way humbling power. While very different in appearance from Burden’s vehicles, this awesome “sculpture”—I’m tempted to use the word in quotation marks, even though that is precisely what it is—shares the mature artist’s fascination with the aging “body” and the marks that time leaves on both its surfaces and its inner core.

Okay, two exhibitions well worth a visit. And, once in the neighborhood of Regen Projects, don’t miss the elegant paintings of Helen Lundeberg at Louis Stern.



This early 20th century California artist, wife of Lorser Feitelson and at least his equal as a painter, created wonderfully simple, mysterious, austere architectures in her work which tease the brain into finding the exits and entrances of her deceptively flat spaces. For the meditative mind, a special treat, as are the spectacular, late-career abstract expressionist paintings of Norman Bluhm around the corner at Manny Silverman Gallery. It’s amazing to see how the culture of street art and graffiti found its way into the exuberantly colorful vision of a painter who earned his chops many years before those whipper-snappers came along.

Also of note, on Beverly Boulevard at Crescent Heights: at Michael Kohn Gallery, a wonderfully-paired exhibition of the work of Carl Andre and John McLaughlin. The exchange of rhymes and the rhythmic echoes in the subdued palette and geometric shapes of these two artists creates a quietly lyrical ensemble, and the artists they serve usefully to inform and enrich each other. And, at df2 gallery, an interesting and challenging exhibit by three contemporary Chinese artists who "address notions of isolation and communication through the artist's placement of their own bodies in physically extreme conditions." I'm still thinking about this one, and may get back to it. Curiously, it's where Chris Burden and Charles Ray both started out...

Aftermath

It was an eerie day yesterday. Things were all somehow out of whack. The day was characterized by contention. Discord. Lack of flow.

I had intended to spend the better part of the day putting together the pieces of my next "Art of Outrage" episode for Artscene Visual Radio, but I couldn't get my head around it, the shape of it felt somehow uncomfortable, not what I was looking for. I became obsessed with money, and the management of money, and changes we are trying to make on that front. Blockages on that front, too. I had to take time out to visit the dentist for the repair of a front tooth.

In the evening, both feeling weary and out of sorts, Ellie and I went out for dinner at a local sidewalk restaurant. Two officers from the nearby fire station happened by, and we took time to thank them for the work they have been doing these past two days, with the fire that has been a constant presence in our lives and consciousness. Perhaps that's what's upsetting things. There's no escaping the sound of the helicopters, some ferrying back and forth with water drops to control the fire and others--the news crews--hovering, watching the others work and filling the airwaves with their reports. There's a crackle of strange energy in the air

It's a general malaise, a disturbance in the usual flow of energies. Which reminds me that I have a second appointment with my healer friend today. And that I'm still experiencing relief from that pain in the hips at night.

A dream last night: I'm not sure whether this an artist whose work I have become aware of, or whether I myself am the artist. The work is simple in the extreme--you might say minimalist--in appearance. A first series is a single graphite line connecting two points in space. It looks like a straight line, but that's deceptive. The line is delicate, filled with inexplicable intelligence, personal revelation, a subtle expression of the soul. The second series is more complicated. It, too, is based on the line, but in this case the connections are made between thirteen random holes in each sheet of rag paper, made by the scattershot of actually fired shotgun pellets, and the lines are drawn between them to construct a portrait of the artist, infinitely subtle and elusive...

Hmmmm. Back to work, now, on that Art of Outrage piece.

Fire, Cont'd.

A Real First-Hand Report from Carly

Meditation has many uses. One is to remain calm in danger. Terrors glance off. I never was one to panic, though.

While watching the huge LA brush fire late yesterday, the wind shifted directly for us. When the fire started down the next hill, things turned for the worse. Loudspeakers in the street were blaring, "LAPD, It is mandatory you exit your homes." My wife grabbed the dog, a few things and took off in one of the cars. As she did, embers were falling in the yard. Strong winds were pushing the fire toward us, fast. I climbed to the roof with two large buckets and my yard hoses linked together, filled the buckets, and began spraying the dry trees near the house.

By this time the fire was at the perimeter of Griffith Park, two streets downhill from me. The firefighters there were hosing everything with water cannons. Wimpy water hose in hand, I was facing a wall of red smoke and flames forty to eighty feet high, less than two streets away, while dodging helicopter searchlights looking for guys like me. I was really in no danger, except, I could fall while struggling with hoses. I was even admiring the beauty and strength of the fire, when I spotted a puff of smoke in my neighbor's lot, about sixty feet away in heavy dry brush and green ivy.

My heart started pumping abnormally. Adrenalin. Off the roof, hoses re-routed, through the gate of an adjacent yard, and over a fence, trampling around in heavy ivy ground cover, I came close to a small ember fire just as it flared. I looked at the two dry pines in a straight line between the sinister little fire and my house.

The fire was small but resistant, like it didn't want to die. I was restricted by the fence, and the embers were sparking off to a wider area in the big ivy leaves. It took ten minutes of dousing while I wondered, "why won't this fire go out?" Finally, there was only a black spot, lit by the red sky, four feet in diameter, of wet ash. Utter relief turned to paranoia, as I wondered where else are embers lurking.

Meanwhile the giant red flames were moving quickly downhill, toward other guys standing out there, impotently, with their tiny water hoses, I supposed. The hills were all aglow with a smoldering, interlaced red patchwork of subterranean fire, like hell had surfaced. I gazed in meditation at the unreal scene, which was real. Never listen to those who say everything is an illusion, I thought. Nature is not. It's predictable. It's in your face. Throw a cigarette in the woods, and energy will flow ceaselessly with the wind.

Dawn. The hills are black and bare, but, it's spring. They will come alive again, with certainty. The dead brush is all gone. Ash is great fertilizer. The Pine Grove, my meditation spot, looks like it survived on the hill over there. The wind bypassed it. A layer of ash coats everything, but there are many more birds in the yard today.

Fire

Funny thing, just a couple of days ago I was watching a severe weather report and thinking about Mark and Eli back there in Springfield, Missouri; and then yesterday afternoon I was watching the smoke billow out in huge clouds over the spot where Ellie and I visited, rather recently, with Carly and his wife, and his Cavalier King Charles from whom he borrows the name by which we know him on this site. (See "When Georgie Met Carly," The Buddha Diaries, Tuesday, May 1,)

Well, not so funny. I was horribly distracted during our artists' group session last night. Carly had emailed me earlier with the assurance that the fire was not affecting them, that it was moving in the other direction; but we could see from our balcony that the winds had turned, and that it must indeed have swept quite close to Carly's house on its way toward the Griffith Park Observatory. The hill that Ellie and I very often used to climb on our frequent morning ascents of Mt. Hollywood was in flames, and we learned from a television interview with L.A. City Councilman Tom LaBonge that Dante's View had been destroyed.

Dante's View is--was, at this point--a beautiful oasis in the wilderness of Griffith Park, originally planted and tended by one Dante (whose last name I forget, but whom we used to meet up there in the early days, in the 1970s, before his death.) The task of tending the garden was taken over by a charming, twinkle-eyed old seaman, Charlie Turner, who worked it well into his eighties; the trail that leads to Dante's is now named in his memory. And then Tom himself pitched in as chief gardener. We would meet him regularly on the mountain, long before he was elected to the city council--a big, gregarious, people-loving man who seemed to know everyone in Los Angeles and made the daily climb with a football under his arm.

Ah, well, all this is Griffith Park lore. Los Feliz has been our home for more than thirty-five years, and we have dearly loved our views of the park. It is sad indeed to see it so ravaged in the course of an afternoon and an evening. Tom was saying last night, in that interview I mentioned, that a quarter of the park had been destroyed by the fire. Even knowing that this is a part of nature's periodic renewal, we can't help but be distressed. As yet, this morning, I have seen no news. But last night, when Carly told me on the telephone that they were under a mandatory evacuation order from their beautiful and greatly-loved architectural gem of a home, he did add that they were optimistic that the house would be protected. And so far as I know, this morning, that area was saved from the flames by the able and watchful efforts of the fire department.

As for that beautiful grove that we visited with Carly and his wife--and our two dogs--I can't yet be sure that it survived. I hope so. Meantime, though, that "procedure" I mentioned yesterday fades into irrelevance. It was more painful than I expected, and they dosed me up with so much Demarol that after the initial excruciating stabs I must have gone under. I remember nothing until the recovery room, and kind nurses taking good care of me.

(This morning's television update: the fire continues to rage. 600 acres burned, and only 40 percent containment. And another favorite haunt, the Captain's Roost, destroyed by fire. Tom made the national news--but I'm sure he never wanted it this way.)

Gunshots

The first one, we paid no attention. It sounded like a backfire. Close by. Loud. But not unfamiliar, and therefore not alarming.

We were sitting on our balcony, enjoying a glass of wine, the calm of the early evening, our grand view of Hollywood, and we hardly paused in our talk. Then came the second, followed by a half dozen more, in rapid succession. Loud, angry shouts. The sound of vehicles roaring off down the street.

Gunfire. No doubt about it. Ellie wanted to get up and look over the balcony to see what was going on. I restrained her. The sounds were close enough to worry about stray bullets. Could it be, we wondered next, that there was something being filmed at the studios below? We look down over the old ABC studios, now the Prospect studios, since ABC was taken over by Disney. The sounds came from that direction.

After a few more seconds of silence, we did go to the balcony. Moments later, the sound of sirens, the approach of emergency vehicles, lights flashing...

Curiosity overcame us. We decided to walk down to where the action seemed to be, right outside the studios. Neighbors had already begun to gather when we arrived, chatting quietly amongst themselves. Yellow crime tape was strung across the road, closing off two whole blocks, but pedestrians seemed to be wandering in and out without hindrance from the police. One of them asked us, as we approached, whether we had seen anything at all. Cops swarmed everywhere, searching the ground for evidence, taking notes from witnesses. Our guy seemed to have time enough to stand around and chat. His theory--subsequently confirmed in an email from our neighborhood residents' association--was that rival gangs had met and clashed, probably Armenian and Hispanic. One had showed up, with two companions, at a local hospital shortly after the event, with a gunshot wound. The three were arrested.

Well, ours is generally a peaceful neighborhood, and it's disturbing to have violence erupt so close to where we live--no more than a couple of blocks, really, down the hill, and in plain view of our balcony. But then you have to remind yourself that there are neighborhoods not far from our own where gunshots are pretty much routine, and where rival gangs shoot and kill on a near-daily basis; neighborhoods where it's not so safe to sit out on your balcony or your porch, and where those whose do are actually killed by stray bullets.

All of which brings home the urgent need for us to be more mindful of ourselves, of our own families, our own neighbors. We neglect our young people at great risk to the fabric of our society. We permit them access to lethal weapons at great cost to their own welfare, and ours. Anger, rage--these are deeply human emotions, so radically engrained in our nature that we cannot hope to erase them from our genetic inheritance. Understanding their sources, however, and depriving those most likely to resort to violence of easy access to lethal weapons seems no more nor less than common sense. And if we pooled our resources and our knowledge as a society and approached the issue with compassion and dedication, we could surely do a lot better in offering our youth alternative and more life-affirming paths than the plague of street gangs.

Another night with no appreciable pain in the hips, by the way. I took note of what was happening in my right leg as we drove down here to Laguna Beach. There's still a good deal of tingling in the foot, but the discomfort that I have grown used to experiencing in my read end when driving was noticeably absent. These are promising signs...

Traffic

We left the Bergamot Station art gallery complex a little before 4:30 after our art walk Thursday. Bergamot Station is between Olympic and the 10 Freeway at 26th Street in Santa Monica, so there was good reason to believe that we were leaving plenty of time to make it to midtown, Melrose and Highland, in good time to make our 5PM dinner reservation. (We had made it so early because this restaurant has become so hugely popular that, with a good week's notice, we had been unable to get a table after 5PM!) As it turned out, we arrived at the restaurant forty-five minutes late for our appointment--and the table, of course, was gone.

Okay, it's getting to be a bore to complain about it, but it seems that the traffic in Los Angeles is getting worse by the day. After leaving Bergamot, we ran into nearly stationary lines of it on Olympic more than ten blocks before the 405 Freeway. After twenty minutes or so, thinking that it must be some dreadful accident that was holding us up, we cut north to Santa Monica Boulevard, and then east toward the freeway underpass and on through Beverly Hills. Same problem. The traffic was blocked solid, inching forward at the change of every light. Three, four, five light changes before we actually managed to cross an intersection. Same thing through Beverly Hills.

It's in situations like this, I confess, that I find it hardest to put those wonderful Buddhist principles into practice. Equanimity at zero miles per hour, sitting amongst the fumes of a hundred vehicles hemming you in--to me, this is a near-impossibility. I tell myself to breathe, but the anger and frustration continue to sizzle--and occasionally explode when my lane seems to be the only one that's stalled. Until, of course, I sneak into the next, which seems to be making at least minimal progress, and that one stalls instead, while the one I've left starts up with a burst of unpredictable speed. Or when one of those rude drivers zooms ahead and cuts in front of me from another lane--no matter that I've just done the same myself. Ah, yes, goodwill. Compassion... Equanimity, hell!

Well, cell phones have their uses, and Ellie was able to call ahead to let the restaurant know we would be late and ask them to hold the table for as long as possible. At five o'clock, they offered, tentatively, another twenty minutes. At that time, we even thought we might be able to make it. Vain hope! We did stop by the restaurant at 5:45, but by then it was already far too late. We drove on to a restaurant closer to home and drowned our sorrows in a nice bottle of coastal pinot noir.

Arriving in Laguna yesterday mid-afternoon, we were appalled to find gridlock here in the village too. We tolerate the summer crowds, and do most of our travel here on foot. But we usually expect to be spared, off-season. Is there nowhere to escape this curse of contemporary civilization?

Home Again, Naturally

It was the wall color that did it. As soon as I walked into the gallery yesterday to see the new David Hockney paintings at LA Louver Gallery, I made the connection. How could I miss it? Eating Room Red. Where had I seen that color before? Of course! The day before, at the Huntington Library, for the Constable show. There, in the words of the Huntington's press release, "the wall paint... was made possible through a gift by Farrow & Ball from their collection of colors, which is based on historic English interiors. The colors were selected to bring to mind the backgrounds Constable painted the wall of his lodgings in 1813 for displaying his paintings. The gallery walls are painted Eating Room Red, based on an 1818 color evoking the strong, intense shades favored during the early nineteenth century..." Of course, then! Big landscape paintings, plein air... two British artists, two centuries apart, the English countryside...

And I discovered from Hockney himself that the coincidence was in fact no coincidence. The idea of showing his big new landscape paintings of East Yorkshire concurrently with the Constable show originated with Stephanie Barron, the chief curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, who suggested it to Hockney.

It was a wonderful moment of synchronicity for me, however--compounded by the fact that I had been on the telephone that same morning, yesterday, February 8, talking to my sister in the Cotswolds, to send her birthday wishes. Hardly surprising, then, that my meditation this morning was flooded with memories of England and images of the English countryside I knew so well as a child: the bluebell woods at the bottom of the hill near our village of Aspley Guise in Bedfordshire, and the other, sandy woods toward Woburn Sands, across from my grandmother's house, where we went to gather chestnuts on cloudy autumn days; I can still recall the particular smell of ferns, damp moss, the bark of trees... Or the Sussex Downs-the setting for my school years--white with chalk beneath the grass, where my cross-country team would train with five mile outings over hill and dale and, the last half-mile, though thirteen dikes where we would have to break the ice in winter to splash through the muddy water...

Powerful memories, irresistible once triggered, as they were by the Constable and the Hockey shows. No matter how much I tried, in meditation, to being my attention back to the breath, they reasserted themselves with insistent stubbornness. I gave up, finally, and just allowed my mind to wander through those landscapes and recall the depth of feeling with which they are still associated. Mostly, for me, this was the sense of isolation, at once passionately sought after, as a refuge and--in the form of intense loneliness--feared.

What I got from Hockney's landscapes was predominantly joy, the sheer exuberance of return to a setting so intimately familiar that you know you're home. That this is where the heart belongs, has always belonged, since your earliest days. That kind of joy, that sense of "fitting" in one's true place in the universe. These are huge paintings, considerably larger than Constable's. Those in LA Louver's main gallery are rectangular assemblages of numerous separate canvases, each separately framed but all hung together to form a single picture--a device that reminds us forcefully that we are looking at art; and indeed that we are looking at painting, not the photography to which our eye has become attuned in its expectations. We are not allowed to see these gloriously colored images as "picturesque." We are required to experience the landscape through the medium of paint and through the artist's feeling-eye.

Having myself written a full-length monograph on David Hockney, I know about his decades-long fascination with photography and its influence on painters and the way we see. He was talking, last night, about Constable--and the fact that Constable must surely have known about camera obscura and the potential for "photographic" reproduction of reality. But as Hockney notes in a quotation cited in his exhibition's press release, "The camera sees geometrically--we must see psychologically." His critique of the photograph is that it flattens out both perspective and color, and tends to close the viewer out rather than welcome us in, as does a painting.

Clearly, then--and unlike so many artists working today--Hockney rejects the use of the photograph even as an aide-memoire. Even for these huge works, he packs a bunch of canvases in the trunk and sets them up on huge easels (for an image scroll down through this link) to work en plein air, as did Constable--though the latter lacked convenient transportation, of course, and brought his sketches back to the studio where he worked. That's why these Hockney paintings are so incredibly, almost shockingly lively. It's not only their scale, it's their immediacy we respond to--the direct connection we intuit between the landscape out there and the artist's eye-heart-hand. As Constable said (I think I have the quotation right: it's printed on one of those Eating Room Red walls) "Painting is another word for feeling."

Impossible, anyway, not to be swept up by the power of those big paintings, even in the crowded space of a big--in this case, a very big--gallery opening. Even with all the conversation, even with the attention diverted by the exchange of politenesses and catch-up--Hockney's paintings refused to be ignored. There they were, evidence of the simply masterful authority of a man who has spent his life examining the information his eye receives and the responses in his heart with critical curiosity, and who has acquired an ease of line and a sometimes outrageous passion for color that few can equal. I used the word "luminous" yesterday in talking about Constable, where it glows amongst the shadows and through the foliage. These paintings of Hockney's are all luminosity. Even those that are more subdued in tonality--and there are a few--seem to glow.

I did mention, earlier, my own ambivalent relationship with isolation. Beyond the exuberance. I sense that ambivalence in Hockney, too. His people and his panoramas have been largely separate. There are portraits, there are landscapes, there are interiors. They rarely meet, especially in the recent work with which I am familiar, in the same picture. There's an interesting push-pull between the often wild, irrepressible surfaces and the quiet within. Eventually, for me, it's the quiet that wins out. Take a breath... Another... Silence, that's the ticket.

A Nostalgic Journey...

... back into the English countryside yesterday, with a visit to the current exhibition of John Constable's "six-footers" at the Huntington Library in Pasadena. An amazing assemblage of Constable's greatest landscapes, set side by side with a selection of the drawings, the small painted sketches and the full-sized sketches that the artist made in preparation for the final works--the fruit of his ambitious labors to be admitted to the Royal Academy. My companion for the afternoon, an artist, was most taken with the sketches, attracted by the "loose" quality that freed them from the social contingency of providing a naturalistic interpretation of the world--a function which has since been taken over by the camera. He himself--if I understand him right--is looking to escape the influence of the photograph in his work, and to capture, rather than the superficial versimilitude, the spiritual quality inherent in what it is he paints.

I have likely oversimplified my friend's intentions here, but I do believe that is also what Constable was about--and that he surely considered the sketches no more than a stop along the path. With the benefit of hindsight--and a lot of subsequent art history--we see their "looseness" as a precursor of the impressionist aesthetic. On reflection, I myself would tend to see that quality more in the work of Turner than in Constable. Or even, say, William Blake, whose pursuit of the spiritual was more turbulent, more visionary, less attached to the illusionary appearances of mundane reality. With Constable, I tend to trust the artist: for sure, his intentions were guided somewhat by what he saw to be the demands of his particular audience, but those big, finished paintings were, to my mind, the goalposts he was aiming for from the first preliminary sketches.




The "spirit", as I see it, in Constable's work, is the spirit of place--to use the Latin term, the genius loci. That fits in with the whole trope of the Romantic moment. Wordsworth and Coleridge, when they first started out with their joint effort, the "Lyrical Ballads," were much influenced by the Greek Anthology, which they saw to be the wellspring of all lyrical poetry. These were inscription poems--a more lovely version of "Kilroy was here", that age-old impulse to leave a mark of one's ephemeral passage through a particular point in space and time--poems that celebrated, in effect, the "spirit of the place," the genius loci.

For Constable, the "place" was very largely the vicinity of a small bend in the Stour River in the county of Suffolk, England. He brought the incredible concentration of an eye that missed nothing in the landscape, and the dedication of a heart that deeply loved this native corner of the world. His tireless, inexhaustible visual search for its peculiar truth, what we might call the "spirit of the place", resulted in the major components of this exhibition. Everything from the quick ink sketches to the extraordinary canvases, whose shades and brilliant luminosities evoke that particular something timeless and ethereal beyond themselves, a something that literally dwarfs the human and the animal figures that inhabit the represented scene.

OK, it is a Romantic notion--and these are Romantic paintings. It's hard for me, in all honesty, to find my way past the jigsaw puzzle picturesqueness of it all. Constable's idealization butts up against my pragmatic and reductive inclinations. Despite the shared geographical roots--this is the countryside in which I myself grew up, or close to it--I find myself admiring the paintings more than I can feel with them and resorting, like my friend, to the detail of paint and brushwork to maintain my interest. I want things to be more real.