180

There's a lot of interesting stuff in Pop Art: A Critical History, edited by Steven Henry Madoff. It collects a lot of varied writings starting in the 1950s (when the original British edition of Pop started) and continuing through retrospective analyses in the 1990s. 

What really stands out is how quick and vast a change in the public perception of art and artists happened in a very short amount of time.

Abstract Expressionism was the dominant style for about the first fifteen years after World War II ended. Painting had, for decades, been moving away from objective representation of the real world. Abstract Expressionism brought the trend to its logical conclusion. Paintings became pure expressions of form, color, pattern. It was now considered gauche to ask "What's it supposed to be?" The layman's criticism of "My kid could paint that"  really took off here, but among the initiated, this was what art should be. 

Pop Art, especially in its American phase, changed all this overnight. Now you could very much tell what you were looking at. It tended to be very familiar things: comic strips, movie stars, advertising montages, products you trust. All delivered with the precision of a Madison Avenue print ad campaign. If you looked closely enough and asked the right questions you might see some continuity with the previous regime. But again, as far as public perception went, this was the biggest change since Impressionism had hit in the latter 19th century.

One good bit is a public symposium with Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol. The moderator asks each of them when and why they started doing what they do. When he gets to Warhol, Andy says, "I'm too high right now. Ask somebody else something else." Probably got a laugh in the hall, but it's obvious that the real issue is that Warhol doesn't like being put on the spot. He's ready to join in the conversation when it's a conversation. I found this quite relatable.

Now hear this

Analog technology tends to be comprehensible to the amateur, at least if the amateur takes an interest and invests some time in studying it. Thus if something goes wrong, the user has a good chance of analyzing what it is and maybe even doing something about it.

Digital technology, on the other hand, has a tendency to crap out for no apparent reason. In the larger sense the reason is that it's not built for durability and you're using it to do everything. 

Mobile-exclusive telephone users are out on a ledge made of sand. To some extent that also applies to those of us whose landlines are push-button, cordless, etc. So I think Ted Rall is right to be dismayed at the deliberate obsolescence of copper wire landlines. It's the destruction of a piece of communications infrastructure that we may remember is necessary only when it's too late.

If you have the knowhow, the equipment, and a little bit of capital, consider stepping in where AT&T is stepping out. The telecoms' shortsightedness may be your golden opportunity.

Youth

Since Marjorie Taylor Greene was elected to the House, I've gone from being doubting that she'd do much worth talking about to actually rooting for her. (I never bought into the liberal panic about her.) 

Early next year she'll be leaving Congress. Her sponsorship of the Protect Children's Innocence Act makes me wonder if she might be planning a second act, and if so where. Her opposition both to Israel's assault on Gaza and the march to war in Venezuela speak well of her, but have made her persona non grata among the still dominant Neocon wing of her party. She's also broken ranks on some domestic issues. This could be intended as a reminder that she's still, after all, on the right.

Whatever the case, it's the right call. Gender medicine is a prime example of activists driving everyone over a cliff. Enough with the nonsense about how "kids know who they are." No, left to their own devices, kids will walk on all fours and eat grass because they think they're a cow today. The process of growing up is and always has been one of gradually finding out who you are. And in truth it lasts well into adulthood.

Let me count the ways

On this blog, I reserve the right to analyze awful trends, or to write about things that make other people mad and might make me mad as well. But that's not the primary reason for the blog. Things that are good, beautiful, or both: I want to take time to honor them.

An excerpt from his story "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" is justifiably one of the most celebrated things Jorge Luis Borges ever wrote. It's a classification scheme from a fictitious Chinese encyclopedia entitled The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, and it must be seen in full.

In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into: 

1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12. others,
13. those that have just broken a flower vase,
14. those that from a long way off look like flies.

At the risk of explaining the joke, this is not how classification systems usually work. When scientists divide animals into categories, it's by things like vertebrate/invertebrate, coldblooded/warm blooded, etc. Laypeople might divide by domesticated or not, or by color.

The thing about Borges's system is that if you're going to follow it, it forces you to switch into a different mode of thinking for every succeeding item on the list. Which is where the fun lies.

Newsflash

I've been keeping an eye on the little weather app that I guess is embedded with Windows, which puts the temperature and verbal stuff in the lower left corner of my laptop screen. First it said "Cold weather", which I'd already picked up on. Last night was colder, though. Then "Partly cloudy", which is a little harder to pick up on at night but I can see the cloud cover out the window. As far as predictions, it says the temperatures will rise tomorrow, which I believe. And also there's supposed to be an inch of rain on Friday, but that far out it's still anybody's guess.

Casey on the beat

What was the first American police drama with a female protagonist? A lot of people, I'm sure, wouldn't hazard a guess. Others might guess Police Woman, the 70s show starring Angie Dickinson. But it was actually Decoy, which aired in 1957-58.

Decoy starred Beverly Garland, who starred in several Roger Corman movies including It Conquered the World and who would later play Fred MacMurray's new wife on My Three Sons. It was created for syndication, which in some ways may have been a problem. It was consistently popular, but not being supported by a network meant the producers ran out of money after one season. That season has 39 episodes, though. 

Garland is an appealing lead, flitting from role to role as the undercover job requires, but always projecting warmth and decency. She narrates in voice-over while appearing onscreen, and at the end usually breaks the fourth wall to talk to the viewer. The show overall has a lyrical feeling.

Greasing the wheels

This is an odd time to be fighting against intellectual property. Generative AI (artificial intelligence) has been scraping all the digitalised material that humans have ever created, almost entirely without any licence or permission and creating ever-expanding torrents of slop. Copyright has emerged as the only effective tool for halting the descent into derivative banality and reasserting human dignity.

From an interesting critique of author/activist Cory Doctorow and his new book Enshittification, which I confess to not having read. But the author of the article makes a good point that there are downsides to Doctorow's crusade against Intellectual Property. Yes, concepts of IP and copyright have been abused by corporations, which essentially means that a number of interests have to be balanced. But consider what happens when copyright laws are absent, or when everyone just ignores them. If nobody owns anything, it turns out that Google owns everything. In practical terms, at least. 

This has happened numerous times in our era. Technological innovation breaks down barriers. Everyone celebrates. Only gradually does everyone learn that the real beneficiaries are an elite group who already own most of everything. Chesterton's Fence remains undefeated.