When The Blues Was Dues- The Guitar Of Elmore James-About Who Put And When The Rock In Rock And Roll

When The Blues Was Dues- The Guitar Of Elmore James-About Who Put And When The Rock In Rock And Roll

I will get to a CD review of Elmore James’ work in a second. Now I want to tell, no retell, the tale that had me and a few of my corner boys who hung out in front of, or in if we had dough for food or more likely the jukebox, Jimmy Jack’s Diner in Carver where I came of age in the early 1960s going for a while. On one lonesome Friday night, lonesome meaning, no dough, no wheels, no girls, or any combination of the three, with time of our hands Billy Bradley, Jack Dawson and I went round and round about what song by what artist each of us thought was the decisive song that launched rock and roll. Yeah, I know, I know now, that the world then, like now, was going to hell in a hand-basket, what with the Russkies breathing hard on us in the deep freeze Cold War red scare night, with crazy wars going on for no apparent reason, and the struggle for black civil rights down in the police state South (that “police state" picked up later after I got wise to what was happening there) but what were three corner boys to do to while away the time.  

Here is the break-down though. We knew, knew without anybody telling us that while Elvis gave rock and roll a big lift in his time before he went on to silly movies that debased his talent he was not the “max daddy,” not the guy who rolled the dice. For one thing and this was Billy’s position he only covered Big Joe Turner’s classic R&B classic Shake, Rattle, and Roll and when we heard Joe’s finger-snapping version we flipped out. So Billy had his choice made, no question. Jack had heard on some late Sunday night radio station out in Chicago on his transistor radio a thing called Be-Bop Benny’s Blues Hour where he first heard this guy wailing on the piano a be-bop tune. It turned out to be Ike Turner (without Tina then) blasting Rocket 88. So Jack had his position firm, and a good choice. Me, well I caught this obscure folk music station (obscure then not a few years later though) which played not just folk but what would be later called “roots music.” And the blues is nothing but roots music in America. One night I heard Elmore James slide guitar his way through Look On Yonder Wall. That is the song I defended that night. Did any of us change each other’s mind that night. Be serious. I later, several years later, saw the wisdom of Jack’s choice and switched but old Elmore still was a close second. Enough said.       

CD REVIEW

The History of Elmore James: The Sky Is Crying, Elmore James, Rhino Records, 1993

When one thinks of the classic blues tune “Dust My Broom” one tends to think of the legendary Robert Johnson who along with his “Sweet Home, Chicago” created two of the signature blues songs of the pre-World War II period. However, my first hearing of “Dust My Broom” was on a hot LP vinyl record (the old days, right?) version covered and made his own by the artist under review, Elmore James. I have heard many cover versions since then, including from the likes of George Thoroughgood and Chris Smither, and they all reflect on the influence of Elmore’s amazing slide guitar virtuosity to provide the "heat" necessary to do the song justice. Moreover, this is only the tip of the iceberg as such blues masters and aficionados as B.B. King and The Rolling Stones have covered other parts of James’ catalog.

Perhaps because Elmore died relativity young at a time when blues were just being revived in the early 1960’s as part of the general trend toward “discovering” roots music by the likes of this reviewer he has been a less well-known member of the blues pantheon. However, for those who know the value of a good slide guitar to add sexiness and sauciness to a blues number James’ is a hero. Hell, Thoroughgood built a whole career out of Elmore covers (and also, to be sure, of the late legendary Bo Didderly). I never get tired of hearing these great songs. Moreover, it did not hurt to have the famous Broom-dusters backing him up throughout the years. As one would expect of material done in the pre-digital age the sound quality is very dependent on the quality of the studio. But that, to my mind just makes it more authentic.

Well, what did you NEED to listen to here? Obviously,” Dust My Broom". On this CD though you MUST listen to Elmore on "Standing At The Crossroads". Wow, it jumps right out at you. "Look On Yonder Wall" (a song that I used to believe was a key to early rock 'n' rock before I gravitated to Ike Turner's "Rocket 88" as my candidate for that role), "It Hurts Me Too" and the classic "The Sky is Crying" round out the minimum program here. Listen on.

Lyrics To "Dust My Broom"

I'm gonna get up in the mornin',

I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)

Girlfriend, the black man you been lovin',

girlfriend, can get my room

I'm gon' write a letter,

Telephone every town I know (2x)

If I can't find her in West Helena,

She must be in East Monroe, I know

I don't want no woman,

Wants every downtown man she meet (2x)

She's a no good doney,

They shouldn't 'low her on the street

I believe, I believe I'll go back home (2x)

You can mistreat me here, babe,

But you can't when I go home

And I'm gettin' up in the morning,

I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)

Girlfriend, the black man that you been lovin',

Girlfriend, can get my room

I'm gon' call up Chiney,

She is my good girl over there (2x)

If I can't find her on Philippine's Island,

She must be in Ethiopia somewhere

Robert Johnson

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-The 16th and 17th Dutch And Flemish Paintings at the Museum Of Fine Arts In Boston –Art And The Revolution

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-The 16^th and 17^th Dutch And Flemish Paintings at the Museum Of Fine Arts In Boston –Art And The Revolution   

By William Bradley

I have not been a writer on this site for very long having just been hired by site manager Greg Green to give a younger view to the blog (and a few linked on-line publications) so I do not know unlike older writer Frank Jackman whether it is normal to response to something written by one of the other writers in this space as he did to me in recent exchange about art and the progress of early capitalism.  (I do know we are under mandate not to write about the previous site manager as I found out the hard way when I was blue-penciled for a reference to him for supporting articles about art.)

After having been given an assignment to view the Vermeer and friends exhibit down at the National Gallery in Washington since I was in that town on another matter I was looking at the archives here to find out if anybody had written about the high tide of Dutch and Flemish Art (you know the time of Rembrandt, Hals, Reubens, Van Dyck and their respective schools, workshops and progeny) and out popped an article by Frank Jackman then the senior political commentator under the old regime. Truly knowing nothing about the subject of Dutch and Flemish art other than liking some of it and being bored by the endless paintings of fruit and such perfectly detailed, I figured that I would ask Frank about his take. As it turned out I didn’t know much either about his so-called Marxist perspective combining art and the productive system in a way that seemed odd to me.

I wrote an article about the Vermeer crowd basically on the like/don’t like aspects mentioned a minute ago since it had escaped me about putting the fight by capitalism against feudalism and art together except the Dutch and Flemish painters unlike the Italians weren’t hung up on Christian piety themes and Old Testament sagas. Frank responded that I had a lot to learn about milieu and its effect on artists which he explained in another way when I mentioned in that first article that I liked abstract expressionism and he mentioned back that you could not understand that milieu without knowing about the effect of the 20^th century wars and alienation produced by late capitalism which he called imperialism on the artists.

Greg Green recently asked me since I was going to be in Boston for the holidays to visit my sister to go check out the latest Dutch and Flemish exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts which some collectors had promised to the Museum and which they were going to display. Lance Lawrence when he heard about the assignment dubbed me “Leonard De Bois” whom I did not know by name but who is a big wheel in the Dutch and Flemish academic art field. My only comment was that it seemed in my experience that these museums seem to run into common exhibitionism. Washington and now Boston (and New York I think) are on a Dutch-Flemish jag. Last year half the world seemed to be featuring various stages of Matisse’s career. Japanese art seems to be the new up and coming thing. In any case now that I am an “expert” I can rehash my stuff about Vermeer and his crowd with the stuff in Boston. An honored academic tradition:            

“Frank did a whole series of articles under the title When The Capitalist World Was Young to be found in the archives making the connection between the artistic sensibilities of the rising bourgeoisie and their clamoring for paintings which showed that they were on the rise, that they were the new sheriffs in town and could afford like the nobles and high clergy in the ancient regime to show their new-found prosperity by paying for portraits, collective and singular, and displays of their domestic prosperity. Of course Frank, an old radical from the 1960s … was coming at his view from something that he called a Marxist prospective. A prospective which not knowing much about it except it had a lot to do with the demise of the old Soviet Union now Putin’s Russia and why it had failed I asked him about since I was clueless about how that artwork had anything to do with politics. What he told me, and I don’t want to get into a big discussion about it is that Marxism, Marx saw capitalism as a progressive force against the feudal society and that would get reflected in lots of things like art and social arrangements.      

“Under that set of ideas Frank was able to give a positive spin on a lot of the art from the 16^th and 17^th century, especially Dutch and Flemish art in the days when those grouping were leading the capitalist charge via their position in the shipping, transport and the emerging banking world. In one part of that above mentioned series Frank highlighted the connection between art and economics by referring to a famous painting in the National Gallery down in Washington, D.C. where some very self-satisfied burghers and civil officials were feasting and showing off their new found emergence as trend-setters. I took his point once I saw the painting he was referring to and noted that these guys and it was all guys except the hard-pressed wait staff really were self-satisfied even though I am still not sure that you can draw that close a connection between art and economics.    

“That discussion with Frank was in the back of my mind when I was assigned by Greg Green, since I was down in Washington for another reason, to check out the Vermeer and friend retrospective at the National Gallery (that Frank referred painting of the burghers was nowhere in sight and I wound up viewing it on-line while we were discussing it). I took a different view of what I saw there since I am not very political and certainly would not draw the same line as Frank did. What struck me, and I am willing to bet many others who viewed the exhibit as well, was the extreme attention to detail in almost all the paintings observed. The sense that the artists had to whether it was portraiture, domestic scenes, or landscape, including those famous frozen lakes and canal winter activity scenes, show in extreme detail and shadowing exactly what they were observing. I admit I am more interested in let’s say abstract expressionism that this kind of  imagery but my hat is off to those who were able to do such detailed and exact work. Whether or not they were rising with the high tide of capitalist expansion.”      

  

Frank left me with a few political ideas to think about which I can apply as well to the Boston clot. He told me to look at that self-satisfied burgher business, look at the pot-bellies of the men and the rounded face of the young women which indicated how well-fed they were, look at the very neat way they arranged their domestic lives. Most importantly look at those unadorned halls and churches which a very far away from the medieval overkill of the huge centuries to build cathedrals that kept everybody tied down to looking inward. Like he said these guys were the “elect,” knew they were the elect and they could push forward come hell or high water.  

From The Guys And Gals Who Know The Face Of War-The Smedleys-Veterans For Peace

From The Guys And Gals Who Know The Face Of War-The Smedleys-Veterans For Peace    

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-The Dutch And Flemish Paintings at the National Gallery-A Reply

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-The Dutch And Flemish Paintings at the National Gallery-A Reply

By Frank Jackman

Normally I don’t have occasion to response to something written by one of the other writers in this space but young William Bradley has set the pace by referring to your humble servant in his piece about his take on Vermeer and his cohort who after Rembrandt, Hals, Reubens, and Van Dyck lit up the firmament and kept the torch burning for the rest of that impressive Dutch and Flemish-driven century when they were kings of the hill. That Bradley reference to me came after he had seen Vermeer and crew in a big retrospective down at the National Gallery in Washington which since he was down there for another reason site manager Greg Green had assigned him. Somehow young Bradley had been thoughtful enough about his assignment to check the archives here to see if anybody had written anything about this period of Dutch-Flemish ascendancy in European art (and really the last time that this section of Europe made a big splash on the art world for reasons that I could speculate on but which don’t really concern us here so I will push on).    

What William found in the archives was a short piece I did several years ago after I had been down at the National Gallery myself and was smitten by a huge mural-like painting at the 4^th Street entrance detailing in exhaustive fashion a banquet that a small cohort of self-satisfied Dutch burghers were attending and that sight sparked an idea that had been in my head for a while about the days when now wore out capitalism, worn out to do anybody but lift a few people up, was a progressive force in the world. That sense (along with that self-satisfied well-fed feeling that the world was their oyster) is what put pen to paper. Not so much for the art aspect, the painting was done by a lesser light and would if were judging on a scale was only so-so in the heady atmosphere of 17^th century Dutch painting, but for the way art intersects with economic forces. That (and I don’t know what else Bradley might have seen in the archives that would have helped him) was when he came to me to ask a few questions since his take as anybody could see from his short screed dealt with the art for art’s sake aspect of what he had seen at the Vermeer exhibit.

I had originally written that little nugget rank for the on-line edition of Progressive Nation when I was the senior political commentator here under the old regime, a time before Bradley came on boards so the art part was not fundamental to my idea.  I agree with him though that I liked to write about the proud beginnings when the rising bourgeoisie was going mano a mano (my words from the piece he saw in the archives and used in his article) against the old stagnant feudal society that depended on the static-and hard core universal church Catholic religion which promised the good life not now but in the great by and by. These guys were not worried about paying some middleman indulgence trafficker to insure their road to salvation. They were getting theirs in this world and if God approved so much the better if not well too bad.   

I did a whole series of articles under the title When The Capitalist World Was Young to be found in the archives making the connection between the artistic sensibilities of the rising bourgeoisie and their clamoring for paintings which showed that they were on the rise, that they were the new sheriffs in town and could afford like the nobles and high clergy in the ancient regime to show their new-found prosperity by paying for portraits, collective and singular, and displays of their domestic prosperity. Of course my perspective as an old radical from the 1960s was coming from something like a Marxist prospective. I had to laugh, laugh a bitter laugh that through no fault of his own Bradley was clueless about such a prospective. About not knowing much about Marxism except it had a lot to do with the demise of the old Soviet Union now Putin’s Russia so he was clueless about how that artwork had anything to do with politics. What I told him, and I don’t want to get into a big discussion about it is that Marxism, Marx saw capitalism as a progressive force against the feudal society and that would get reflected in lots of things like art and social arrangements.      

Under that set of ideas I was able to give a positive spin on a lot of the art from the 16^th and 17^th century, especially Dutch and Flemish art in the days when those grouping were leading the capitalist charge via their position in the shipping, transport and the emerging banking world. Funny young Bradley took my point once he saw the painting I was referring to and noted that these guys and it was all guys except the hard-pressed wait staff even though he was still not sure that you can draw that close a connection between art and economics.  We have a lot of make-up work to do for the lack of serious leftist perspectives the past couple of generations. 

I left William with a few political ideas to think about. Also told him to look at that self-satisfied burgher business, look at the pot-bellies of the men and the rounded face of the young women which indicated how well-fed they were, look at the very neat way they arranged their domestic lives. Most importantly look at those unadorned halls and churches which a very far away from the medieval overkill of the huge centuries to build cathedrals that kept everybody tied down to looking inward. Like I said these guys were the “elect,” knew they were the elect and they could push forward come hell or high water.  

The Jar Of Isabella X- A Journey Through The Arts-The Boston School, Ah, At The Museum Of Fine Arts-Thwarted Love With A Bizarre Twist- Alexander’s Keats’ Inspired Isabella And The Pot Of Basil

The Jar Of Isabella X- A Journey Through The Arts-The Boston School, Ah, At The Museum Of Fine Arts-Thwarted Love With A Bizarre Twist- Alexander’s Keats’ Inspired Isabella And The Pot Of Basil

By Laura Perkins    

I will get to the subject in hand, a take on the marvelous and mesmerizing Isabella, Or A Jar Of Basil seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston a while back while on assignment for this upstart series which site manager has given to me under circumstances not of my own making. However the reaction I received to my first foray into this new review area for when in discussing John Singer Sargent’s The Portrait of Madame X has forced my hand to reply if that is the right word to all kinds charges of pandering to what is essentially soft-core pornography, or taking such a view of the painting. I might repeat for what it is worth that when I took this assignment, I told Greg Green that I would decide what I wanted to focus on in each painting, Not what the art world, the world of self-serving curators deemed the reason the damn things were in some museum other than as pace-fillers. So I will vent as is my prerogative. Laura Perkins]      

You never know what will happen in this business. This latter-day publishing business where unlike the old days you can lose stuff in an instant, lose by an injudicious hit of the delete button. That happened to me of late in something of an omen when I tried to do a second installment of what is according to site manager Greg Green an on-going series of painting which I am at liberty to choose to get us up to date in the art world, an area woefully under- represented in this publication. If I behave myself of which more below. Without overestimating the old days and their sluggish technologies there was something to be said for hand-written yellow pads and carbon copy smudge typewritten materials even without all the comforts of what the new technology has brought us. In any case I am starting to get the hang of it, the last barrier of cyberspace, getting used to the idea that not every utterance, every word needs to be etched eternally in the ether. Strangely I did believe that proposition in yellow pad (some of which I still have from my 1970s days as a free-lancer) and typewriter times (some also when I was weaned off of the yellow pad which was both too cumbersome and too slow when I had to make a day to day living out of my words). That typewriter in turn gave way to word processor and such when that too proved too cumbersome and too slow to make a day to day living out of my words. I would also add as will become clear below that I miss the old days when a reader had something bilious to say, some vitriolic smattering of words she or he had to not only write the spiel out but put stamp to envelope and actually go mail the damn thing. Which meant that they had to put some effort into the task unlike today they can fire off some silly salvo and move on to the next target of their villainy.    

But enough of personal recollections in the dark ages of this “publish or perish” business. As one and all should know by my first foray into the subject, at least first foray since I was named “unofficial” art critic I am taking quirky looks at some of the great paintings that intertest me. And not for art curator purposes either. I became an Art critic by default when Sam Lowell, my longtime companion who balked at doing this assignment. Sam, for better or worse, balked since he is in hot pursuit of why famed California private detective Lew Archer, yes that Lew Archer, who if you are old enough to remember solved the Galton kidnapping case, the Carlton murders and the infamous wife-done Hallman serial killings all under the noises of the public coppers, never made the vaunted P.I. Hall of Fame after such a glorious start. Sam has a “theory” which he can tell the reader if interested all I know is that site manager Greg Green let him off the hook to pursue his leads. Let Sam off the hook and put me on the hook once he knew from Leslie Dumont I had taken some art classes and at least had gone to an art museum unlike his other potential candidates.

By the way Sam’s credentials are far greater than mind could ever be since I only took art appreciation classes in high school and college and since then have limited my experiences in the field to an infinite number of doodling sessions when some windbag is fouling up the air at one conference or another. Sam actually could have gone to art school, his high school art teacher encouraged him endlessly and would have paved the way for him. Actually, now that I think about it did pave the way for him at his alma mater the highly regarded Massachusetts School of Art. Sam, from the desperately poor Acre section of North Adamsville where he grew up got a serious chill, a serious no when his mother found out he had applied and been accepted. She painted, nice word although not literally true, a horrendous picture of him in some flea-bitten, rat-infested and crime-ridden cold-water flat garret with him barely able to hold his frozen hand brush to canvas for the rest of his life. Her idea, a not uncommon one in the Acre from what some of the other guys who grew up there have told me, was for him to be the first in the family to have a nice steady white-collar civil service job which would bring the family fortunes up a notch. He didn’t do that but neither did he to his sometimes-later regret pursue that art dream, cold water flat and frozen fingers or not. I got the job even though I made it clear to Greg that I would not pose as an art critic and would take my shots where they would lead me without any regard for what they meant for the greater art world.  

My first foray not so strangely was John Singer Sargent’s Portrait Of Madame X which now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. How it got there is a long story as is the story behind many art acquisitions but will not detain us because I have bigger fish to fry today. My main axis on that first assignment was to deal with the obvious sexual allure (circa the 1880s which was demurer than now) of the painting and of Madame’s scandalous sex life considering she was married to some French pillar of society, a well-heeled and connected banker. You can read my take in the archives (see January 8, 2019) but mostly what I have found out was that Madame Guiteau, no need to be coy about that “Madame X” business she foisted on a less than candid world was that she was so intend on being a social climber, of working her way up French high society that she slept with any guy who could get her moving up what Seth Garth calls “the food chain.”

Fair enough then if today not fair enough in a post-#MeToo world since beautiful women, perceived beautiful women were known to, for good or evil, use their “profession” beauty to get ahead in this wicked old world. I said some other stuff, but this is what has brought me a ton of blow-back, blow-back which Sam, dear Sam in this instance, warned me would happen when I laid out my argument. He always said reviewing was a tough cutthroat racket and now I have had my baptism of fire. The gist of the responses has dealt with exactly how John Singer Sargent (hereafter Singer Sargent we don’t have to go on endlessly with the robber baron era habit of three name monikers among the elite to show pedigree or prove legitimacy in or more democratic age) got the Madame to pose so provocatively in the first place.

Even Sam was surprised though at the apparent source of the criticism not of me, although that may be in question the evangelicals. People not known to frequent this publication but who saw an opening to see who was, or was not, doing Satan’s work, who was damned and why. Here is where we get into what Sam and others call the “trolls” and their “alternate facts,” actually alternate universe outlook. A major rash of e-mails pointed out that Singer Sargent had obviously picked his model up out of the gutter and gave her a few sous, francs, some French money to pose for him, that he got some kind of sexual pleasure out of what he was doing as well as painting a great if toilsome masterpiece. Those skimpy straps ready to tell all, something like that. Certainly the gown and her provocative pose spoke of eternal damnation to these mob. The other big “school of thought” was that the model, nobody wanted to tie Madame Guiteau, a well-oiled member of high society looking to move upward with the age old art of using her professional beauty to work her way up that chain, had been tossed out of a high-end bordello in New York City after she had “stolen” some dough from one of the customers. Jay Gould, yes, the robber baron Jay Gould, and had to flee to avoid his wrath and her imprisonment.        

            

Under either theory what these ding-dongs have in common is the erroneous idea that Singer Sargent was getting sexual pleasure out of the provocative poses of the model, especially that very suggestive slipping of one of the straps of her evil thought jet black evening gown. What they could not factor in was the idea that Singer Sargent, as was well know, had a number of “assistants,” male and female, who found his bed. Which ones, which sex is problematic but most people with an opinion have mentioned that the females acted as cover. I have uncovered some useful information in that regard. The great English poet and self-acknowledged gay man when that was not cool to say in polite society, when it was the love  “that dare not speak its name,”    W.H. Auden had always claimed Singer Sargent for the “Homintern,” a name which he or one of his crowd, one of his gay friends maybe Christopher Isherwood or Stephen Spender, coined as a spin-off from the Comintern which both had at one time supported to mean that the guy was a member of the fraternity, was gay in the cloaked terminology of the times. Yes, the evangelicals will have a field day with this one if they can figure it out. What I don’t get is people who are ready to absolve every sexual predator alive if he or she repents has no mercy for somebody who used their sex, as with Madame X, to get ahead whether we agree or not.      

Most of the other comments descended downward from that Madame is a whore trope and are not worthy of comment. What is worthy is one that attempted to take the high road, attempted to in the end try to whitewash the whole sordid affair. One Arthur Gilmore Doyle, here we go with the “three name” Brahmin (although not all the “three name” crowd were Brahmins, Boston variety since Singer Sargent would trace his lineage from the Philadelphia Main Line crowd but they are all of a piece), who argued, if that is the right word, that Singer Sargent would not stoop to having some “fallen woman,” his term, pose for him under any circumstances. So here we have the class line drawn in lieu of the sex line. Or maybe both lines since he seemed very fussy about the whole matter.

Doyle further mentioned that Madame X if she posed for Singer Sargent was a pure as the driven snow. Worse disputed the evidence presented by the famous Parisian paint-maker Bleu who provided Singer Sargent (and others) with his paints in his memoir that when Madame was in her plebian wants mood he was her lover. Going up the back stairway to her boudoir, sometimes when her husband was down in his study figuring out ways to make money to keep his growing number of creditors at bay. Disputed as well, the testimony of Madame’s personal maid that she let him in and further, under orders from Madame, had cut that provocative gown strap with her own scissors. You see according to Doyle one   could never believe the hired help, not even somebody who had to change the sweaty sheets after each exhortation. Yes, the class line indeed.

We have already dealt with the predilections of Singer Sargent for his male “assistants” which may not freak out Brother Doyle as much as it was the gay-bashing evangelicals since it was an open secret that half the bluebloods were same-sex inclined. And everybody knew and accepted it unlike in poor Oscar Wilde’s irate father of Lord Alfred Douglas who was crazy with hate about the whole matter. Where the heck do you think they got the term “Boston marriage” when two unmarried women lived together lesbian splendor.

What has amazed me about this first volley into the art world, or the social aspect of it is that nobody thus far has mentioned word one about why Madame had not allowed herself to be posed in a frontal position by Sargent (and upon further investigation by any other artist with one possible later exception to be mentioned below). That is she did not want her beak-like nose to be fully exposed to the light of day. Apparently Madame was so vain to have that horrendous little pointed nose shown too prominently would have detracted from his sullen suggestive pose. Remember she was using her professional beauty to advance in the world, a hard task for an “ice queen” and so that was her order. Upon further investigation there is some evidence that later in life, in 1907 she did pose in a frontal position but by that time the wear and tear of using her beauty for social advantage, the dissipation showed through. And the nose was even more hideous that I expected. So Madame did make a smart move, very smart. Still I don’t know why nobody in the flutter of responses picked up on that beak even to defend her against my charges that maybe men liked that kind of nose then. Fashion and beauty tend to change with the ages, with time.   

But let’s move on. Finally I can get to the subject matter for today’s piece, John White Alexander’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil which is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (here we go again with the three name moniker business that drives me crazy so let’s call him Alexander and be done with it). Alexander was linked to the Boston School who were for the most part interested in realistic portrayal of whatever subject matter they were painting. When you first go into the room where the painting is located you are immediately drawn to this high Victorian beauty in a great gauzey with sharply drawn flowing lines dressing gown strangely caressing a jar, a big jar with 

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-Vermeer and Friends at the National Gallery-2017

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-Vermeer and Friends at the National Gallery-2017   

By William Bradley

Frank Jackman, a fellow writer in this space and I believe in the on-line edition of Progressive Nation when he was the senior political commentator here under the old regime, a time before I came on board, according to the archives loved to talk about the days when capitalist was a progressive force in the world.* He liked to write about the proud beginnings when the rising bourgeoisie was going mano a mano (his words from a piece I saw in the archives) against the old stagnant feudal society that depended on the static-and hard core universal church Catholic religion which promised the good life not now but in the great by and by.

Frank did a whole series of articles under the title When The Capitalist World Was Young to be found in the archives making the connection between the artistic sensibilities of the rising bourgeoisie and their clamoring for paintings which showed that they were on the rise, that they were the new sheriffs in town and could afford like the nobles and high clergy in the ancient regime to show their new-found prosperity by paying for portraits, collective and singular, and displays of their domestic prosperity. Of course Frank, an old radical from the 1960s a period that he and the older writers here have spent an incredible amount of time writing about some of it interesting and informative and others written seemingly since they had nothing else to write about and figured a nostalgia trip, trips would get them space in a blog dedicated to bygone history and culture, was coming at his view from something that he called a Marxist prospective. A prospective which not knowing much about it except it had a lot to do with the demise of the old Soviet Union now Putin’s Russia and why it had failed I asked him about since I was clueless about how that artwork had anything to do with politics. What he told me, and I don’t want to get into a big discussion about it is that Marxism, Marx saw capitalism as a progressive force against the feudal society and that would get reflected in lots of things like art and social arrangements.      

Under that set of ideas Frank was able to give a positive spin on a lot of the art from the 16^th and 17^th century, especially Dutch and Flemish art in the days when those grouping were leading the capitalist charge via their position in the shipping, transport and the emerging banking world. In one part of that above mentioned series Frank highlighted the connection between art and economics by referring to a famous painting in the National Gallery down in Washington, D.C. where some very self-satisfied burghers and civil officials were feasting and showing off their new found emergence at trend-setters. I took his point once I saw the painting he was referring to and noted that these guys and it was all guys except the hard-pressed wait staff even though I am still not sure that you can draw that close a connection between art and economics.    

That discussion with Frank was in the back of my mind when I was assigned by Greg Green, since I was down in Washington for another reason, to check out the Vermeer and friend retrospective at the National Gallery (that Frank referred painting of the burghers was nowhere in sight and I wound up viewing it on-line while we were discussing it). I took a different view of what I saw there since I am not very political and certainly would not draw the same line as Frank did. What struck me, and I am willing to bet many others who viewed the exhibit as well, was the extreme attention to detail in almost all the paintings observed. The sense that the artists had to whether it was portraiture, domestic scenes, or landscape, including those famous frozen lakes and canal winter activity scenes, show in extreme detail and shadowing exactly what they were observing. I admit I am more interested in let’s say abstract expressionism that this kind of  imagery but my hat is off to those who were able to do such detailed and exact work. Whether or not they were rising with the high tide of capitalist expansion.      

*[I am not sure I am supposed to address this issue but I will write my comment and let the editors blue-pencil the thing if it is beyond the pale but under the old regime Frank was given the official title of Senior Political Commentator after the old site manager brought in a few others to assist in that work who were dubbed Associates. Under the new more democratic regime everybody is just identified by their names as was the case when this publication was hard copy and in its early on-line days.]           

On The 100th Anniversary Of The World War I Armistice-Gal Gadot’s “Wonder Woman” (2017)- A Film Review

On The 100^th Anniversary Of The World War I Armistice-Gal Gadot’s “Wonder Woman” (2017)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

[If the name Laura Perkins seems familiar to the readers of this space that is right since she has been the subject of several pieces by Sam Lowell, her long-time companion, who before his retirement was the Senior Film Critic when the blog gave its personnel job title under the previous regime. Sam has always called Laura his muse and now the tables are turned as Laura has decided with this first review to take a stab at writing pieces on her own. She has told me that she did not feel any particular encouragement from the previous management to act as anything but Sam’s muse in this space but the combination of the issue of war and a potentially feminist icon motivated her when I asked her to take on the assignment. Greg Green]

Wonder Woman, starring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, from the DC comic characters stable, 2017 

An essentially blanket condemnation of humankind’s follies, its folly that war can resolve human disputes, is a tough dollar to break through as the film under review, Wonder Woman, has made amply clear. Apparently Ken Burns when talking about his ten part, eighteen hour overview of the Vietnam War which was a central defining point of Sam and my youth and thereafter when we tried to keep the lamplight burning on the issues of war and peace is not alone in his view that “war is in our DNA.” When the whole thing gets boiled down, both by the dialogue and the action in the film, that is what stands out to these eyes about the film-makers motivations. Of course since we are also dealing with a female character, Wonder Woman aka Diana Prince, played by Gal Gadot, even if a comic super-hero there are feminist issues raised as well. I want to address them but I have noticed that the folly of war has gotten lost, as it has lately in at least American society in the almost non-existent peace movement lost among the swelter of other social concerns even by progressives and leftists. Believe me Sam and I know of whence we speak on that one since more than once we have been among very few kindred out in the street protesting the current craze for war with North Korea or Iran, or both by the madmen in the White House, Pentagon and the Congress.          

As Sam always likes to say, which I can reveal now that he got from me who got it from my Irish grandfather, here’s the “skinny” on this one. I will admit I have played a little tongue in cheek on which seems right or a comic book-etched super-hero. Apparently Zeus, yes the Greek god, created humankind out of an act of hubris, who thereafter proved to be troublesome and not into perfection after the Fall, you know, the exit from the Garden of Eden, that he had created to give them something to do. His son, mother unknown, or at least unknown to me, Ares, who will armor up as the God of war in the pantheon, has the bright idea that the way to bring back the purified Garden now lost due to human culpability, is to kill off all the citizenry (an idea shared by the various generals in WWI given the casualty numbers). In short to make the good green Earth a wasteland fit only for him apparently. Zeus wastes but does not kill Ares in a titanic sky battle so he will live to wreak havoc another day.

Enter Diana, aka Diana Prince, aka Wonder Woman, or rather her mother who created her out of clay although the real deal is that she, the Queen mother, coupled with Zeus on the quiet. When all hell broke loose in the heavens among the menfolk she led her Amazon warriors, and no men, to a secluded spot and set up a female commune, nunnery, convent, military academy waiting for the wounded but not defeated Ares to make his inevitable charge. Diana will be the vessel who will champion the Amazons, champion the humankind cause once she breaks out of that female retreat and heads out into the messy real world.          

Enter the real world out of nowhere in the person of her future star-crossed lover Captain Steve, played by Chris Pines, who happens to be an American on loan to the British who are using him as a spy.  A spy trying to figure out what the nasty brutal Germans, the Huns, are up to in the days leading up to the Armistice maybe trying for one last bit glory and victory. The German strategy. Develop serious gas to exterminate everybody on the other side, along with those who get in the way. Steve finds the secret formula book laying around the secret lab of the well-known notorious Doctor Poison who is cozy with General Death (Ludendorff but let’s call him by his generic name, an evil guy no question who has a serious junkie drug problem from what Sam said when I asked about whatever Doctor Poison provide medication was giving him the energy to be a bad ass).   

After saving Captain Steve Diana (you already know aka Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman so let’s stick with her given name) and hears his story about the mass murder, injustice and civilian collateral damage going out in the real world beyond the retreat she senses this is the work of that damn Ares her mother keeps alluding to but wouldn’t confide in her about. Off they go to London so Steve can give the book to the proper authorities and await further instructions. For a foreigner, an isolated island young woman, she acclimates to society pretty well. Takes everything in stride, including sex and other such things that if she was not a super-hero she would be clueless about. She keeps clamoring to go to the front like any action junkie super-hero and so Steve and some comrades who Steve picks up along the way escort her there. Once there she cannot believe what humans will do to each other for whatever reason those in charge give.

Everything Diana was bred and trained for back in the barracks at home comes to the fore now and Steve and the other guys are just ornaments, back-up for whatever caper she is into. This is strictly her show from here on in. Along the way she solves the trench warfare stalemate that has taken many lives and driven many generals crazy by a frontal attack on the German trenches to get to that poison gas lab and a confrontation with General Death who she thinks is Ares in earthly disguise. Along the way the obvious attraction between her and Captain Steve plays out and they go as guys like Sam like to say “under the silky sheets” but I will just say have sex (off-stage of course). Her intelligence proved to be wrong after a mini-battle with General Death when she finds that the people are still going about the business of war full throttle.

These humans certainly have messy and contrary motives. As it turns out Ares is alive and well in the area in the person of a British War Council member who is conning the world into believing that he is leading efforts to bring an armistice to fruition. (That armistice will come in the real world on November 11, 1918 which is now commemorated in the United States as Veterans Day which Sam and his crowd is trying to get changed back to the original intention he wishes me to tell you). Diana, as you know daughter of Zeus in “real” life and hence a goddess, goes hand to hand with her brother Ares who now is dressed up in funny costume and she vanquishes him forthwith. Unfortunately for the lovely couple Steve committed suicide when he took a plane loaded with poison gas up and exploded it saving his little segment of humankind. Probably better that he got killed early on since Diana was still around 100 years later and he would have been long gone by then. Yeah, she was still around trying to figure what makes these humans tick and why does she have to endlessly go out and save their butts.    

It seems rather fitting, to me at least who has always been on my own and with Sam interested in history (we actually met at a forum on the influence of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the October one, on world politics in the 20^th century), that the backdrop to the storyline in this film is the fruitless, insane blood-letting of World War II. Yes, the war to end all wars, a faulting premise for going to war from the start, which this year will be commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the armistice that stopped the slaughter. For a while but as we are painfully aware did not resolve anything in the great scheme of things. Ironic as well, and probably every general’s wet dream was to have a warrior woman who could break the awful trench war stalemate by the force of her singular personality. The irony being, as is always a subtext in these comic philosophical underpinning, that the peacemaker will untold wreak havoc on her chosen bad guys (who not so strangely from an American view, comic strip or otherwise, happen to be the very same enemies of the British and the Americans with the “bloody Huns represented by a renegade general as the bad guys) with as many kills under her belt as any machine gun or bombshell. The old adage of blessed are the peacemakers takes a holiday in this film except as the two main characters go back and forth about the foibles of humankind.       

To finish up in the year 2018 after all of the stuff about male sexual harassment and sexual crimes against well-known women, and as it turned out by not so well known women by powerful public men in Hollywood, Washington, the media, academia and wherever else some men given an unequal power relationship use that for perverse purposes I have to deal with the implications of a film showing a super-woman with plenty of regular woman traits (empathy, sense of justice, compassion, sorrow) and some useful warrior traits that some of the #metoo women could have used to advantage. As mentioned above there is an odd confluence here between Diana’s basic “human” empathetic instincts and her means of playing that out as an aggressive warrior not unlike every warrior who has come down the path worried more about kill ratios than trying to figure another way to deal with the problem. Sometimes that is the only way but not always and you don’t have to be a pacifist to say that. You also don’t have to be a feminist, although it helps, to wonder out loud about what image being projected on the screen those very impressionable girls and young women with the tubs of popcorn and cup of soda in hand and cellphone at the ready are seeing about the way women have to navigate in the world.       

I won’t bother to address the “dress,” the scanty dress issue which seems to have been a bugaboo for some feminists, some women in general since the real point is about the character was projected and how and not about her attire, well-bundled proper lady in London and scanty warrior princess on the killing fields.   

[I would like to acknowledge, at least a little, Sam Lowell’s help on this first film review and some of the touchstone points may reflect the fact that we have been companions for a fair amount of time now and I have been reading his reviews for years. After this maiden voyage I will be better able to reflect my own “voice” a bit better. Sam thinks so too. Laura Perkins]    

Westward Ho!-Australia-Style-Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman’s “Australia” (2008)-A Film Review

Westward Ho!-Australia-Style-Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman’s “Australia” (2008)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By Phil Larkin

Australia, starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, 2008 

I suppose I am not supposed to talk about it under some bogus agreement Sam Lowell made with the current boss but I will test the waters while I am still here. Still have a job. Finally I have gotten a goddam assignment that doesn’t belittle my intelligence, belittle the intelligence of anybody except maybe “stable genius” Donald Trump. (I know, I know you are not supposed to mix politics with movie reviews but I couldn’t resist the comparison after what I have had to endure the last few months and my time is short here anyway from the look of things). Finally have gotten away from a steady diet of super-hero flicks, Batman, Superman, Ironman, those clowns, whose collective plotlines wouldn’t fill a whole page unless I did my puffing-out magic. Got those silly assignment as “punishment” called “broadening my horizons” by certain influential parties. (I do still have the right to characterize the nature of the work without recrimination, don’t I?) So I bled over the carpets a little and drew if not a great film then an adequate one to sink my teeth into Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman’s great blue-pink  Australia Western night film, ah, Australia (those Aussies know how to promote themselves).       

Funny except for the Aussie English accents and local slang words like “sheila” for woman, the names of the major cities, the time frame of the film just before and during World War II with the Japanese breathing fire on Australian ports, the  positive spin on the native population, the Aborigines, the weather and seasonal differences since Australia is as they say “down under,” and the stuff the ranch hands and citizens drink for hard liquor this film could have been a classic cowboy movie set in the America Wild West before the taming in the late 1800s. And that is the riff I think that the film-makers were trying to play off of in this one what with the desperate cattle drive through the desert making one think of John Wayne trying to get the herd to market in Rio Bravo, the “good injun” coming  to manhood through some rites of passage (read here Aborigine) versus the bad gringo white bastard land grabber trying to grab the neophyte landowner’s land, the feeding at the public trough with Army meat contracts and the shoot ‘em up stuff every few minutes.       

That might be what the film-makers in their cinematic dreams were looking for but this film is really about two things. The “cat and mouse” game played by that neophyte land-owner rancher Lady something from England played by the handsome and still at times eye-catching Nicole Kidman and the everyman every cowboy man “Drover” played by the beautiful, no, that is too good a description for him, pretty boy Hugh Jackman. From the minute Lady eyes Drover and he her you know, you can bet six, two, and even that they will be messing up some sheets before this one is over, well before it is over. The other point is an interesting look at what in old time American Westerns would never be looked at except as an aside-at best-at what coming of age means in Native cultures. We have come a long way from the idea that “the only good injun is a dead one” in relationship to Native cultures in the struggle to tame the west-America or Australia.       

The latter idea is pretty straight up with a precocious youth and a wizen wise old man of the earth showing the way that the culture gets passed through (and in the clinch saving some gringo asses as well). That leaves the boy meets girl thing, man meets women, in this one via the common struggle of Drover and Lady to save her inherited ranch from bankruptcies, unscrupulous cattle barons, and deadly “land hungry” upstarts. Like I said the stars were aligned and Lady and her Drover man  hit the sack not without prior and subsequent differences as befits to culturally different characters (he had had an Aboriginal wife whose death was a result of white racism in not getting her medical treatment and she had shown up without a clue shortly after her husband had been murdered by parties at first unknown but later proven to be that land-grabbing son of a bitch ). So now you have the “skinny” as old Sam Lowell who apparently has lost a step or two with that silly pact with the devil site manager used to like to say in the days when he wrote reviews hot and fast.          

Come On All You Jacks And Jills-Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby’s “High Society” (1956)-A Film Review

Come On All You Jacks And Jills-Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby’s “High Society” (1956)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

High Society, starring Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, with Jazzman Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong and his All-Stars coming up and stealing the show-a few big scenes anyway, music and lyrics by legendary Tin Pan Alley composer Cole Porter, 1956

It is a little ironic that I am doing this assignment at the same time as my fellow writer here Sam Lowell just finished doing a short review of folk troubadour Bob Dylan’s tribute to Frank Sinatra, In The Shadow Of The Night from several years back. Ironic in the sense that those of us who came of age in the 1960s like Sam and me whatever else we may have disagreed on, no matter whether one took Sam’s hippie path or my more middle class career we almost universally rebelled against the music of our parents’ generation the Tin Pan Alley-derived stuff that got them through the Great Depression and World War II. And number one on their hit parade was “the Chairman of the Boards,” one Frank Sinatra just as Elvis was our growing up rock and roll hero and for some of us, not me, that folk minute hero Bob Dylan now covering one Frank Sinatra.    

All of this as prelude to talking about Mr. Sinatra in another of his musical performance films here. This time not about his Oscar-winning role as a wise-ass Army grunt in pre-World War II Hawaii in the film adaptation of James Jones’ From Here To Eternity, the madman “max daddy” junkie fixer man in the film adaptation of Nelson Algren’s The Man With The Golden Arm or the eerily chilling role of presidential political assassin in Suddenly but as the odd-man out in a love triangle down in Mayfair 1950s Newport. In the 1950s Jazz Festival times not the old time summer watering hole of the ultra-rich robber barons who built the massive mansions back in the 19^th century but still quaint and high end Newport before the tourists swarmed in.

Frank definitely gets his shots at his first career, the singing that in the 1940s made all the bobby-soxers take off their bobby-socks and who knows what else if you go by the frenzy Elvis provoked in a later generation here in the musical/drama High Society.  Add in a word as well about the jazz for the Festival being hot as per Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong or off-stage like Dizzy, Charlie, the Duke who blew away a 1954 crowd of younger upstart Mayfair swells and almost caused a riot when his max daddy sax player hit the high white note.

But enough of that Frank sex stuff, Satchmo blowing big rings around staid Newport or even Mister Cole Porter from up in Tin Pan Alley land doing his popular music American Songbook thing because musical, musical comedy if you will although the gags are strictly from nowhere, or not this is about romance, romances. And that seems about right if you figure that Grace Kelly is the protagonist who gets all the attention. I might as well say here in the interest of transparency, or drooling, take your pick, that for a while now I have been adding this too every Grace Kelly pic review. After seeing her here, in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and High Noon I now understand why Prince Rainer, her husband, not a man given to public display of emotion had wept openly at her funeral when she passed away in that awful car accident.

To the film.  Here’s how the Mayfair swells go about their private business in a not so private way since half the world knows what it knows. Tracy, played by gracious Grace, now happily divorced from low-ball achiever/mere musician/composer and not classical like Mozart or Bach but jazz if you can believe that, and not a big time financial operator like her father, three name C.K. Dexter, played by another crooner from the 1940s Bing Crosby, is ready to do the deed again with a real self-starter, a guy who worked his way up the food chain and not some sportsman scion of the wealthy set like old C.K. (By the way that divorce business not then, or now for that matter, not well-disposed of by the money set as it confuses wealth transfer and other technical problems.)

That little fact, that underachiever and ne’er-do-well part sets the tone for what will be become a “battle of wills” between Grace and Bing who as you know already to my mind is still rightly in love with her. Enter Mike Connor, an world wary everyman regular guy played Frank, not at this moment like in other entry moments in the film ready to burst into song either alone or with Bing, but as a reporter who is out to get the low-down on the rich and famous for a sleaze bag publishing outfit. To get any juicy pics worldly wise Liz, played by Celeste Holms, who is half in love with Mike but letting him  out on a long leash, tags along for the ride.         

Scene set the rest of the film, interrupted by song and more importantly by savior Satchmo and his All-Stars doing some great old time jazz to make the heart flutter is a breeze through. (Please remember Satchmo and his gang and Bing are there for the Newport Jazz Festival and are merely “crashing” the wedding festivities.) Tracy and C.K. cat and mouse it while the intended groom is in the dark, clueless and moreover happy about that fact until the hammer comes down. The happy hammer coming down at the pre-nuptial wedding digs where Tracy gets blasted and runs off with… No, not C.K. things are too 1950s chaste for that but with a smitten Mike (to work partner Liz’ chagrin). That short intoxicated fling over the next morning the wedding is to be called off once that intended groom takes the high moral ground and foolishly (oops) doesn’t take Tracy in all his arms and carry her off. Wait. You cannot disappoint Mayfair swell guests come for a wedding any more than any other wedding. So Tracy and Mike, no, C.K. retie the knot. Who knows how long that rematch will last with these two wild kids.       

If this all sounds familiar, sounds like a film review plot that I have done before it is. This is just a musical remake of the classic version of the story in black and white The Philadelphia Story with Kate Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart in the respective roles. Cary naturally in Bing’s place. That’s the go-to film unless like Prince Rainer you need to see Grace when she was in her prime. And Satchmo in high dungeon.