Illuminations

Last week I attended a talk (by Wanda Corn, Professor of Art and Art History at Stanford, organized by the DC Stanford alumni association) about Saul Steinberg, a 20th c. graphic artist featured frequently in the New Yorker. Apparently he had over 80 covers with the magazine, which I find amazing. After the talk we walked over to the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) to view the exhibit on his work. It was a very satisfying couple of hours.

The talk was supposed to be held at SAAM, but the museum canceled our use of their lecture room and the organizer had to find another venue. Being a Stanford alum has its privileges, I suppose. She found a lawyer (another Stanford alum, part of the network) who is a partner at his law firm and had the liberty to lend the facilities at his firm for the gathering. The conference room was fancy, at least to someone like me who has never been able to take such privilege for granted, and who recently spent 8 years in the hinterlands of the Midwest, no less. I was really impressed, from the art on the walls (real art, not the fake hotel-like art I am used to seeing in business establishments), to the frosted glass that walls off the room, to the automatic blinds that open and close at the press of a button (and allow you to choose the level of daylight), to the incredibly comfortable, sleek, modern looking executive type chairs that adjust automatically to your posture. Wanda Corn, who is married to another professor at Stanford, happened to have a photo of her new (large) vacation home on Cape Cod on her desktop, a concept that, while totally foreign to me, seemed entirely relatable to others in the audience. There were also two current students there ("rising juniors," they called themselves rather finely), one of whom is spending the summer with the other's family, another foreign concept to me (who has the space and resources and time to do that?).

Wanda Corn looks exactly like Edna E Mode from the Incredibles, that eccentric and bold Edith Head-like clothing designer. Her hair was cut in a severe bob, and her large, perfectly round, bold red plastic glasses (with lenses that enlarged her eyes) reinforced the likeness. While she did say a few of the usual things ("... Steinberg takes the line and turns it back on itself...") they were mostly sensible. She also summed him up a few times in ways that, after seeing the exhibit, seemed rather felicitous.

I wished I could take some of Steinberg's illustrations home with me. They are so pleasant to look at, and each one seemed to elicit a chuckle. The illustrations are minimal; as Corn said, he knew when to stop. It's not that the page is bare in all of his illustrations, but that he doesn't fill up the page for the sake of doing so or add unnecessary flourishes if they are not there to say something. Some of them almost seemed like doodles. Corn asked something that has often occurred to me when I go to view modern art, especially graphic art, and that is how is this person's doodle or line different from a doodle I might draw? What is it about this one that makes it art and makes mine scratch? I can't pinpoint what that quality is, but somehow Steinberg's lines seem to say something (mine don't). They are also very self assured (mine aren't) while still being very light. And they are lightly ironic, so they make you chuckle and linger at the page.

It was a moment that made me appreciate being here in DC.

Stranger than Fiction

Unsatisfying is the only word that comes to mind when I think about how to describe this movie. It has some nice touches, but not enough to warrant calling it "uncommonly intelligent" (Roger Ebert). It also makes use of some visual and plot devices that ultimately add nothing to the content and only serve to fill up air time. Will Ferrell never takes it over the top, to his credit. And I like how detached the academic is (played by Dustin Hoffman) when he talks about literature. The writer (Emma Thompson) starts out the same way, talking about literature with detachment as though it has no emotional content or consequence and is simply a technical exercise (one that requires expertise, but is still a technical skill). Harold (Ferrell's character) has a crush on a woman who owns a bakery, and he shows up at her store with an assortment of flours. That was nicely expressed, and seemed true to how the characters would express themselves (i.e. it wasn't cute for the sake of being cute).

However the film has these quirky little graphics, ostensibly to show how Harold compulsively counts and sees spatial relationships. But they add nothing and are often distracting. Queen Latifah's character is entirely unnecessary. She's fine in the role, but none of the scenes with her character serve any purpose. The story doesn't hold much interest, and the dialog is mostly empty. Scenes intended to denote the passage of time or to express existential anxiety seem to have come from a template; they all seem pat.

A O Scott (NYTimes) puts it well, namely that there is "something soft and unfinished about the movie; it wanders about in its own conceit, collecting stray moments of intelligence or feeling without adding up to very much." not unlike the Andy Kauffman films, which seem to have inspired the style of this movie, but which, despite having even more conceit, also have a lot more content than this one.