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Some Notes on the Harry Ransom Center's Architecture

HRC interior #1

Image Credit: Jay Voss

Over the next few weeks viz. will be rolling out a series of blog posts related to the Harry Ransom Center’s upcoming King James Bible and Belle Geddes exhibitions, and in preparation I thought it’d be fun to take a moment and consider the architecture of the Ransom Center. The building stands out from its comrades on the University of Texas at Austin campus, many of which boast a discernibly Spanish feel. Gorgeous arabesques withstanding, it’s quite easy to compare most of UT-Austin’s buildings with the Alhambra in Granada, or the Monastery of Santa Cruz in Sahagún, for example. UT-Austin’s buildings tend to be clad in a white limestone (which can be blinding in the Texas sun), and feature gorgeous soffits clad in turquoise and burgundy. But the Ransom center is different. It’s a cube of gray concrete and might be the only building on campus that I can think of that doesn’t feature a single soffit. Despite the seeming simplicity, there’s much more going on here than what might seem obvious to the cynical. In my humble opinion, the architecture of the Ransom Center is emblematic of an important shift in architectural practice over the past thirty years.

Prado's Mona Lisa

Prado Copy of Mona Lisa

(Image Credit: NPR)

A couple of weeks ago I posted on the lost and recently rediscovered Leonardo da Vinci painting Salvador Mundi. Thus, it’s only fitting that this week I write about the lost and recently discovered copy of Mona Lisa, unveiled by the Prado in Madrid one week ago today. Its discovery represents a compelling moment in the history of Western art. The Mona Lisa is iconic: its picture is replicated everywhere, art historians and non-art historians alike debate the ambiguity of her smile, and throngs of viewers everyday fill her gallery in the Louvre. It’s hard to overstate the importance of da Vinci’s painting. Mona Lisa is probably worth upwards of $720 million (the painting was insured for $100 million in 1962, and adjusting that value for inflation bumps it up to around $720 million). Nevertheless, despite all of its fame, modern viewers are probably not seeing the Mona Lisa in its original grandeur. The Prado copy shows us what we might have been missing.

Hogarth's Industry and Idleness

Industry & Idleness, Plate 1

(Image Credit: Wikipedia)

I came across an interesting set of William Hogarth prints this past week, and thought it’d be fun to throw them up on viz. Titled Industry and Idleness, the 12-part set created in 1747 demonstrates the benefits of handwork and industry, and warns against the prospect of easy entertainment. This is, of course, a reoccurring theme in art work of the eighteenth century, and Hogarth’s dabbling in the matter shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. One can see similar ideas espoused in anything from Daniel Defoe’s great novel, Robinson Crusoe, published early in the century (1719), to Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, which was published much later (1793). Nor are the issues raised in Industry and Idleness that far removed from Hogarth’s other sets of engravings. What stood out to me, however, and the reason why I decided they’d be fun to put up on viz., is that Industry and Idleness is a remarkably boring set of engravings. Given the excitement of Hogarth’s earlier sets, for example A Harlot’s Progress (1731) or Marriage à-la-mode (1743), I’m not sure how successful Industry and Idleness could have been in converting the masses over to good moral behavior.

Salvator Mundi

Salvator Mundi

(Image Credit: Robert Simon, Tim Nighswander)

While away on my Christmas holidays I had the very lucky opportunity of viewing the Salvator Mundi painting that has just recently been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. The possibility that a lost da Vinci painting could be rediscovered in the opening decades of the twenty-first century has left much of the international press swooning (The Telegraph, Daily Mail, LA Times), and rightly so. The image is at once perfect and effortless: its symbolism is compelling and its technique is masterful. Here, Christ doesn’t just look out at us from a boring blackish-brown interior: He subtly gazes at us through layers of sufamato that belie eternity. And yet questions are sure to abound. Modern viewers unfamiliar with Christian iconography are sure to question the significance of the crystal globe in Christ’s left hand. Similarly, on a lazy afternoon, it’s fun to ponder whom Christ might be blessing in the image. The world? The viewer? One of da Vinci’s patrons? Who could have been da Vinci’s patron when this painting was made? Was it Charles I? Eclipsing all these minor issues is the fact that the artist who had such a complicated relationship with organized Christianity appears to have composed a lovely portrait of Christ.

Coffee Cups and Acronyms...'Tis the Season

Starbucks Christmas Cups

Image Credit: nomnomclub.com

The Starbucks Christmas cups have been out in full force for what seems like several weeks, although I’ve delayed writing about them until after Thanksgiving. If last year is any measure, I should be writing about these cups at exactly the right moment. Last year, at the Starbucks in and around UT’s campus, their coffees reverted to the boring white cups nearly a full week before Christmas. Whereas the area’s students had gotten in the mood for Christmas well in advance of Thanksgiving, at the exact moment they were turning in the last of their final papers, at the exact moment when responsible students might let their thoughts drift towards dreams of sugar plum ferries, Yuletide cheer vanished from the cups of their gingerbread lattes. This strange vanishing has made me suspicious of Starbucks’ holiday cups.

"Ice cream. That is cheap. Fact"

Herman Cain Picture

Image Credit: The Daily Show

While searching yesterday for video of Rick Perry’s memory issues in Wednesday night’s debate, I came across an interesting series of montages on youtube. Thinking I was about to hear Perry eloquently speak about “the three agencies of government when I get there that are gone,” instead I heard Perry saying, “Ice cream. That is cheap. Fact.” Only a moment’s pause was needed to see that these weren’t Perry words. Someone divinely competent with video editing software has taken video clips of prominent politicians (in this case, Perry), muted all sound therein, and then over-dubbed random words that seem fitting given the movement of their lips. As can be seen above, these videos work to fantastic effect. Their true success is emphasizing that, in our age, what really matters is the way a politician looks whenever he or she says something. Looking closer at Perry, it becomes clear that he’s modeling his style off that of Ronald Reagan. Perry’s team was probably taking advantage of their candidate’s Reganesque chin when they suggested that he get a Reaganesque haircut.

Who said the book was on its way out?

Steve Jobs Biography

Image Credit: NPR

Who said the book was on its way out? Last week saw the publication of two exciting new volumes. Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography has seemingly been touted in every major news organ, and literary-minded folks are currently devouring Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, fresh off the press. The design of each volume is gorgeous, especially 1Q84, and it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to read these works on an iPad/iPhone or a Kindle. That said, just yesterday Amazon.com announced a lending library for the Kindle, wherein members of Amazon Prime can check out for a limited amount of time any number of 5,000 volumes from an online repository. Who could possibly want to check out IQ84 or the Steve Jobs biography when the physical volumes are so absolutely gorgeous?

Fact and Fiction in Anonymous

Anonymous Movie Poster

Anonymous opened in theatres across the country yesterday, and I have already heard much grumbling about the ways in which the film neglects history. Anonymous engages the Shakespearean authorship question, and depicts a fiction in which Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, is the pen behind some of the greatest verse written in the English language. Such unorthodoxy is nothing new: the theory was first advanced by J. Thomas Looney in his 1920 book, “Shakespeare” Indentified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. This hypothesis has subsequently become known as “the Oxfordian theory,” and hasn’t received much critical attention since the 1950s. Modern Shakespeare scholars don’t even seriously think about it. So, surely the friction caused by Anonymous is justified, right? I’m not so sure. Several of Shakespeare’s histories go off the tracks factually. Given the Bard’s penchant for good entertainment, is it possible to speculate what he might have thought about an entertainment such as Anonymous?

There’s really no question about Shakespeare’s life. While I am not a Renaissance scholar, I do know that we have more biographical information on William Shakespeare than we do on many of his contemporaries. Pick up any modern edition of the Bard’s work and you are likely to find facts substantiating this claim. We know that Shakespeare probably came from a Catholic family in a time when such beliefs were not tolerated. We know that Shakespeare’s father held an important political position in his town until the Protestants kicked him out. We know where Shakespeare went to grammar school. We know he was a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and later in the King’s Men. We know of certain apartments that Shakespeare leased while living in London. We know of lawsuits in which he was called upon as a witness. We know he purchased a large house in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1597, and we know which grain stocks he invested in later in life. This is more than we know about, say, Robert Green.

Anonymous is a major Hollywood film (and thus fictional), not a documentary. Although the picture’s humble $30m budget is relatively small, it’s much larger than John Sayles’ Amigo. Perhaps the small endowment is more of a reflection of the economy than anything else. Nevertheless, because Anonymous has big studio money behind it, it must appeal to as broad an audience as possible, otherwise Columbia Pictures will never recoup their $30m investment. Surely Shakespeare, ever the savvy investor, would understand these circumstances. Yes, the film diverges from history, but all the world’s a stage. If Anonymous inspires some 8-year old kid to pick up his parents’ dusty copy of Shakespeare, I think literary folk have much to be happy about.

Putting the plot aside for a moment, we might stop and consider the visual appeal of the film (see trailer above). Roland Emmerich and his production team masterfully recreated early-seventeenth century London. Broad aerial shots of the city depict a bustling Renaissance environment. If nothing else, the groundlings and those in the 5-penny seats should find the visuals of Anonymous stimulating.

World Series Program Covers

'42 World Series Program Cover

Image Credit: New York Times

When I looked through The New York Times’s feature this week on World Series program covers, the image above stood out. No, it didn’t stand out because of the cute dog peaking out from behind the boy’s right knee, or because the war bonds saleswoman looks like a flight attendant. It stood out simply because on first glace it seemed to depict a young boy dressing as a baseball player in order to go to an important baseball game. The “WAR BONDS AND STAMPS” table looks like it might be part of a turnstile, and the boy looks happy just to be inside of his team’s park. What could be a more fitting image for the Fall Classic of our national pastime?

For Amber Waves of…Censorship?

AMS Edition, Forever Amber

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

Please note, the opinions expressed herein are solely those of viz. blog, and are not the product of the Harry Ransom Center.

Forever Amber was the best-selling book in 1940s America, selling over three million copies during the decade (Guttridge). In many ways, the scope of the work recalls Thackeray’s The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Written by Kathleen Winsor and set in seventeenth-century England, Forever Amber is the tale of Amber St. Clare, who climbs the ranks of British society by marrying (or sometimes just sleeping with) wealthier and wealthier men. The book was subject to vehement censorship, even though (or perhaps in spite of) a market demand that surely tested the durability of the Macmillan Company’s printing operation. Interestingly enough, as part of their Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored exhibit, the Harry Ransom Center is showing an Armed Services Edition of Forever Amber.

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