RIP Harold ‘western canon’ Bloom (1930 – 2019)

Harold Bloom was an American literary critic.

Bloom interviewed by Charlie Rose on ‘The Western Canon’

He is perhaps best known for his book The Western Canon, to its supporters a work defending art for art’s sake, the absoluteness of aesthetic value and literary genius; to its detractors a defense of elitism and dead white males. This makes Bloom is a cultural critic in the tradition of Matthew Arnold who stated that “[culture is] the best that has been said and thought in the world” (Culture and Anarchy, 1869).

I discovered Bloom in the early 2000s in a period I was researching the nobrow concept.

His death has been a good occasion to dig into the university library and bring home The Western Canon and The Anxiety of Influence.

That last book has two remarkable poetic texts, “It Was a Great Marvel That He Was in the Father without Knowing Him” and “Reflections upon the Path“. That second page-length text I have been unable to identify.

The bulk of today’s research went to The Western Canon, it is arguably Bloom’s best-known work and it has had relevance outside of the lit crit world.

The notion of a canon has also recently shown itself the object of a political debate in Flanders, the region I live and where the right (NVA) has managed to include it into to the policy of the Jambon Government The opposition (the left) was against it. The culture war fought in our region is one akin to the clash of civilizations of Huntington, more specifically the west and how it tries to come to to terms with the renewed religiosity in the form of Islam.

That Bloom’s canonization of 26 authors was an apolitical process can be read on page 4:

“I am not concerned with . . . the current debate between the right-wing defenders of the Canon, who wish to preserve it for its supposed (and nonexistent) moral values, and the academic-journalistic network I have dubbed the School of Resentment, who wish to overthrow the Canon in order to advance their supposed (and nonexistent) programs for social change.”

If you’re not familiar with Bloom and what to catch up quickly, you may want to check the interviews Bloom gave to Charlie Rose.

Here [above] is one in which he makes a couple of amusing and astute observations on the western canon and its detractors:

“If multiculturalism meant Cervantes, then who could protest? [but] they are asking us to read extremely inadequate Chicano writers.”

and

“That ridiculous metaphor we now call ‘empowerment‘, which is cheerleading as far as I can tell.”

As can be deduced from these quotes, Bloom considered political correctness an enemy of the literary criticism trade.

RIP Charles ‘death of modern architecture’ Jencks (1939 –2019)

Charles Jencks was an American cultural and architectural theorist best-known for playing a decisive role in the historiography of postmodernism by publishing the book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977) more than fifty years ago.

 Koyaanisqatsi (1982) featuring footage of Pruitt–Igoe

He was not the first to play a role in this historiography, Robert Venturi, who died in 2018, had published Learning from Las Vegas (1972) before him.

For me, Jencks’s death was a good occasion to score a copy of The Language of Post-Modern Architecture at my university library.

I got hold of a first edition, which is important because it features the introduction which is not part of subsequent editions (it’s not, for example, in the 2002 edition which I also lent).

This introduction is the one which reflects on the adequacy of the new term postmodernism in these words:

“The phrase ‘post-modern’ is not the most happy expression one can use concerning recent architecture. It is evasive, fashionable and worst of all negative – like defining women as ‘non-men’.”–p. 9

The second section of the book, titled “The death of modern architecture” has a poignant criticism on modern architecture, more particular a criticism of Purist ‘living machine‘ Corbusier style architecture. The critical analysis of this type of architecture, which reminds me of the progressivism-skeptic discourse of John Gray states:

“[The] Purist style, […] was meant to instil […] corresponding values in the inhabitants. Good form was to lead to good content, or at least good conduct; the intelligent planning of abstract space was to promote healthy behavior. Alas, such simplistic ideas, taken over from philosophic doctrines of Rationalism, Behaviourism and Pragmatism, proved as irrational as the philosophies themselves. Modern architecture, as the son of the Enlightenment, was an heir to its congenital naivities […] These shortcomings are now well known, thanks to the writings of Ivan Illich, Jacques Ellul, E. F. Schumacher, Michael Oakeshott and Hannah Arendt.”–p.10

This second section also contrasts the “not the most happy” genesis of the term postmodernism with the happiness of being able to determine the exact moment of the “death of modern architecture”:

“Modern architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 p.m. (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt–Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite.”–p.9

Jencks was not the first to criticize modern architecture and certainly not the last. “Machines for living” schemes such as the Pruitt-Igoe housing project, for various critics, including Tom Wolfe, illustrated both the essential unlivability of Bauhaus-inspired box architecture, and the hubris of central planning.

Incidentally, the death of modern architecture coincides with the death of the avant-garde.

But enough.

I leave you with a fragment of Koyaanisqatsi (1982) which features footage of Pruitt–Igoe and of its demolition (above).

RIP Ginger ‘Cream’ Baker (1939 – 2019)

Ginger Baker showing off 😉

Ginger Baker was an English drummer best known for his work with Cream (“Sunshine of Your Love“, 1967).

“Sunshine of Your Love” (1967). which sounds a lot like Jimi Hendrix

More importantly, he also played with Fela Kuti on Fela’s London Scene (1971), Why Black Man Dey Suffer (1971), Live! (1972) and Stratavarious (1972):

Fela’s London Scene ( 1971)
Why Black Man Dey Suffer (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20UbO62UJUg&t=232s
Live! (1972)
Stratavarious (1972)

He also recorded two albums with Bill Laswell: Horses & Trees (1986) and Middle Passage (1990):

From Horses & Trees (1986)
Middle Passage (1990)

RIP Vlasta Chramostová (1926 – 2019)

Vlasta Chramostová was a Czech actress perhaps best-known for her part in The Cremator (1969), one of several Central European films that dealt with the Holocaust.

The Cremator is featured in Film as a Subversive Art (1974).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9kzDgMz5ok&t=4363s
The Cremator (1969)

In this film, Vasta plays Lakmé, the wife of the delusional cremator who prepares for the endlösung.

Below is the OST by Zdeněk Liška.

OST to The Cremator (1969)

RIP Kim ‘muff’ Shattuck (1963 – 2019)

Kim Shattuck was an American musician and singer, best known for her work with her band The Muffs.

Having basically lost my interest in the pure rock idiom, I did find a connection between Kim and my universe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AZp1uJJbYU

The first season of Theme Time Radio Hour played The Muffs’s song “Laying on a Bed of Roses” (1995) in 2007.

From top to bottom: Metaphor (1972) by Hawkes, Shipwreck With Spectator (1979) by Hans Blumenberg, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936) by I. A. Richards, A Grammar of Metaphor (1958) by Brooke-Rose and Paradigms for a Metaphorology (1960) by Blumenberg.

Studies in metaphorology

It’s good to live in a city.

From the UA library on 3/10/19:

From top to bottom: Metaphor (1972) by Hawkes, Shipwreck With Spectator (1979) by Hans Blumenberg, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936) by I. A. Richards, A Grammar of Metaphor (1958) by Brooke-Rose and Paradigms for a Metaphorology (1960) by Blumenberg.

RIP Sid Haig (1939 – 2019)

Sid Haig was an American actor known for his parts in Jack Hill’s exploitation fare (Spider Baby (1968), Coffy (1973), Foxy Brown (1974)). He also had a part in THX 1138 (1971), the science fiction film directed by George Lucas in which in a dystopian future the populace is controlled through mandatory use of drugs that suppress emotions.

Spider Baby (1968)

Cult Movie Stars (1991) describes Haig as:

“Ugly, ruddy faced, usually bald, and occasionally bearded — he looks like an original member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention — Haig has been a seedy presence in low-budget, sex- and action-packed drive-in movies since the mid-sixties.”

Above is Spider Baby (1968) in which Haig is Ralph, one of three inbred, demented, and dangerous siblings. Ralph is a sexually advanced, but mentally deficient simpleton who moves through the house via the dumb-waiter. Unable to speak, Ralph communicates with only grunts and leers.

The siblings are introduced by their guardian as:

“Well, no. It’s more than a retardation. It’s sort of a regression, a progressive deterioration of the mental faculties, a rotting of the brain, so to speak. It begins in late childhood and progresses rapidly, ultimately resulting in physical deformity, rather like the last stages of paresis […] The unfortunate result of … inbreeding.”

The full film is on YouTube.

RIP Wim ‘New Alphabet’ Crouwel (1928 – 2019)

Wim Crouwel was a Dutch graphic designer, type designer, and typographer.

“Warsaw”  by Joy Division, lettering by Crouwel, using the ‘New Alphabet’ (1967

F. alerted me to the death of this design icon.

Crouwel is perhaps best-known for his typeface New Alphabet (1967), as used on the above Joy Division record.

The typeface is in the tradition of geometric reductionism of the Architype Van Doesburg (1919).

While researching this post, it suddenly occurred to me that Crouwel is perfectly and absolutely antithetical to Luigi Colani, the previous entry in this growing collection of necrologies.

What Colani was to the curvilinearity of biomorphism, Crouwel was to the geometric reductionism of the straight line.

Both Colani and Crouwel were born in 1928.

They both stand for one end in a major ‘Straight lines vs curvilinearity’ faultline of 20th century aesthetics.

I have long been fascinated by three major faultlines in 20th century art. Or four if you split up the third.

One may be tempted to map these fault lines onto the earlier Catholic–Protestant schism.

RIP Luigi Colani (1928 – 2019)

Luigi Colani was a German industrial designer, known for his use of curvilinear biomorphism.

I wished him happy 80th birthday in 2008 and did a post on biomorphism in in 2007.

Car Styling brought four special issues on his work:

  • Designing Tomorrow (1978)
  • For a Brighter Tomorrow (1983)
  • Bio-Design of Tomorrow (1984)
  • Concept-Design of Tomorrow (2010)

I own ‘Designing Tomorrow ‘ the first of these booklets, in the magazine edition, in very good condition. I’m selling it for 100 euros, contact me if you are interested.

This is a good occasion to delve into the historiography of biomorphism:

The term biomorph was coined in 1895 by anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon in his book Evolution in Art, in which he stated that “the biomorph is the representation of anything living in contradistinction to the skeuomorph, which […] is the representation of anything”.

One year later, British writer Geoffrey Grigson uses the term biomorphism in two essays: in the short “Comment on England” (1935) he notes that “abstractions are of two kinds, geometric […] and biomorphic,” and observes that the way forward are the biomorphic abstractions; in the chapter “Painting and sculpture” in The Arts Today (1935), he describes the term biomorphic as “no bad term for the paintings of Miro, Hélion, Erni and others, to distinguish them from the modern geometric abstractions and from rigid Surrealism.”

Another year later, in 1936, New York art historian Alfred H. Barr Jr. in the catalogue of his 1936 exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art, borrowed Grigson’s term without acknowledgement and noted that there is a secondary current in abstract art wich stems from Gauguin and Matisse and is “intuitional and emotional rather than intellectual; organic or biomorphic rather than geometrical in its forms; curvilinear rather than rectilinear, decorative rather than structural, and romantic rather than classical in its exaltation of the mystical, the spontaneous and the irrational.” He mentions the work of Joan Miró and Jean Arp and concludes: “the shape of the square confronts the silhouette of the amoeba.” Barr elegantly points to the major faultlines in 20th century art, which run along the axes ‘straight lines vs curvilinearity’, ‘wit vs seriousness’, and ‘cult of beauty vs cult of ugliness’ (or sexuality vs asexuality).

For a historiography of these early beginnings of biomorphism, consult Biocentrism and Modernism (2017).

Colani is dead. The last persons in my database alive in 1928 are philosopher Noam Chomsky, anthropologist Desmond Morris, musician Ennio Morricone and photographer William Klein.