Richard Avedon: beauty and beholder
The New York Times recently featured a retrospective article and slide show of Richard Avedon’s photography from 1944-2000. Looking at twig shaped models sprinting in high heels across a voyeur's stage, I wonder.
How would we react if a highly acclaimed photographer glamorized the foot binding that once kept Japanese women's feet petit and therefore desirable? Would we recoil in horror? Would we rationalize it as a cultural norm of another time, focus on the stunning quality of the photography? Ignore how the women suffered?
How do we separate art from abuse? Self abuse, perhaps. A model chooses her profession. But if I, the viewer, ignore repression in art, am I culpable of that repression, or the message it sends?
What bothers me is the obliviousness of Avedon’s time and also of this time. Take the 60s, purportedly all about liberation and human rights. To his credit, Avedon was ahead of his time when he included women of color and women of emotion (including laughter!) in his work. But for me, equating beauty with the impoverished bodies of his subjects doesn't bode freedom for women of his day.
I think of Scarlett O’hara getting her corset tightened up by the parlor maid in Gone With the Wind. Miniscule waistline. Poor little belly. Poor diaphragm trying to breathe. Poor Scarlett.
Excellence vs enthusiasm
I've given some thought to excellence over the past few days. My work on a two minute video for a Cleveland Tourism contest was interrupted by the nine hour road trip to my nephew's senior concert at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Sam did a great job, as did the other guitarists, high school students demonstrating the lush reward of preparation.
Excellence.
Most of my time en route to and from Michigan was accompanied by randomly downloaded TED talks offered by titans of creativity like Ben Dunlap: The story of a passionate life and Louise Fresco on feeding the whole world. At TED, each speaker distills his/her expertise into 18 pure and often evocative minutes. One of my favorite 'talks' was wordless, Eric Lewis: Striking chords to rock the jazz world. Excellent.
By the time I emerged from the Vulcan mind meld with TED on wheels, I knew I'd pass on the Cleveland video project. Why? Because I had no heart for excellence-lite.
Here's an analogy. I once worked in Switzerland with barely a word of German to my name. On the Swiss farm we spoke with hands, copious head nodding and kind smiles. We lost a lot in translation.
Three years later, I lived in Germany with an excellent tool to fit the experience: fluency. I talked with Germans about slavery, the Holocaust, WW II, Vietnam, religion, food and art. I dreamed auf Deutsch, got the jokes and made lifelong friends who no longer thought of Americans as vacuous gum-chewing TV addicts.
- Susan Weber's blog
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Love castles: art and ardor
What do you call a thing that excites you, intrigues you, enriches and enthralls you? Love. Right.
Kiran Desai conjures young love in her novel, The Inheritance of Loss, with words like these:
When they would finally attempt to rise from those indolent afternoons they spent together, Gyan and Sai would have melted into each other like pats of butter - how difficult it was to cool and compose themselves back into their individual beings.
And old love with these:
Father Booty looked about at his craggy bit of mountainside - violet bamboo orchids and pale ginger lilies spicing the air; a glimpse of the Teesta far below that was no color at all right now, just a dark light shining on its way to join the Brahmaputra. Such wilderness could not incite a gentle love - he loved it fiercely, intensely.
And here we have a modern myth shattered by a few exquisite phrases. The myth that tells us fiery love is for the young, with a bland assortment of affection left over for the elderly.
But of course, all that warrant-less ageism serves no one, for all of us do age. Why not face the truth of inexhaustible ardor?
Nonviolent mashup
They've been community organizers all their young adult lives, traveling the US, Brazil, Nicaragua, Nepal and beyond to learn, and help. One of them recommended I read Nonviolence, by Mark Kurlansky; the other sent me The Inheritance of Loss, by Karin Desai.
I started reading Nonviolence before going to see the young gift givers, dug into The Inheritance of Loss during the visit and plan to finish off Nonviolence (as would the rest of the pampered few) when I'm done reading the novel.
The two books tell the same story in very different ways. The journalist sets the stage, the novelist fills it with humanity as I, the audience, weep. It's a story a lot of us fight to ignore, and one a whole lot more, who barely survive the underbelly of the beast, can't.
Add to my reality book-burger (vegetarian, of course) a certain picante dressing served up by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot on Bill Moyers Journal, talking about a passion-rich life at any age:
Burnout is not about working too hard. Or working too diligently or being overcommitted. Burnout is about boredom.
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
- Susan Weber's blog
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Isabel Allende: tales of passion
She begins with a Jewish saying, “What is truer than truth?
Answer: The story.
So Chilean novelist Isabel Allende tells the story of carrying the Olympic flag for the 2006 Olympic Games.
She shared the honor with Italian actress Sophia Loren, American actress Susan Sarandon, Nobel Peace-prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya, Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco, Manuela Di Centa of Italy, Maria Mutola of Mozambique and Cambodian human rights activist Somaly Mam. It was the first time eight women carried the Olympic flag.
In this story, Sophia Loren ('the universal symbol of beauty and passion') is the star; Isabel Allende is her foil. It is a humorous, self effacing segue into Allende's passion for writing. Some quotes:
