21st-Century Leaps

Posted on February 29, 2024 by admin

Another February 29. If I counted right, my 16th. That got me to thinking, just how many February 29ths have there been? As in, ever? Not as simple a question as all that, first of all because the day Caesar inserted into the calendar was an extra one after the equivalent of our February 24, a situation that persisted for a long time. So a different question might be how many intercalary days have there been since the Julian calendar’s first (let’s say first one after the extra days tacked on 46 BC, the longest year in history).

I feel like I’m staring into a pretty extensive rabbit hole. So, I’m backing away.

2020

Last time around on February 29, no entry. I attended an exceptionally pleasant dinner party at an exurban San Antonio ranch house, on flat land in the direction of the Hill Country. Six of us, I think, eating and drinking a few glasses of wine and conversing. People wonder whether the art of conversation is dying, and I doubt it. But it might go underground.

Also, that was the last social gathering I attended until April ’21 counting ones with family members, and June that year that for groups of friends.

2016

“The saying represents something exceptionally easy, of course, but even so I’m not sure it would be.” I wrote. ”Let’s assume the barrel is full of water as well as fish. Unless we’re talking about really large carp or some such, you might disturb the water and scare the fish, but I’m not sure how many small fish would actually be hit. Also, you’d think that shooting would soon destroy a wooden barrel and cause a dangerous amount of flying debris. Or if it were a metal barrel, such as a steel oil drum, the danger of ricochets might be high.

“This is something for the Mythbusters fellows to investigate, but I suspect that shooting fish in a barrel never was anything but a metaphor, and by now a hackneyed one at that. So I’m reluctant to say that making fun of a press release I received recently — especially the first line — is like shooting fish in a barrel. But it cries out to be mocked.”

2012

“I’m sure that I learned about Leap Year at an early age, like most people. But I never knew the details — Caesar and Sosigenes, the longest year in history (46 BC), Julian and Gregorian calendars, etc. — until I read The Clock We Live On. [I forgot to mention that Isaac Asimov wrote it? I’m rectifying that now.]

“The inside cover has an example of my father’s handwriting, something I don’t have too much of, so I wanted to save that too. Apparently he bought it in 1963, the year before he died.” [Sixty years and a day ago. RIP, dad]

“I first read it in 1977. Besides the story of the western calendar, there was plenty of other interesting topics — why days have 24 hours and hours 60 minutes, the development of clocks and chronometers, the establishment of meridians and time zones, and so on. The calendar chapter formed the basis of an oral report I did in high school Latin class.”

2008

“Battlefield gore is a necessary ingredient in any war movie of our time, as well as soldiers’ profanity, and understandably so. My own preference in historical fiction runs to verisimilitude, but that isn’t to say that I didn’t like The Sands of Iwo Jima.

“The most effective horror-of-war scene in Flags involved off-screen gore. At one point, one of the men (Iggy) goes mysteriously missing from the hillside. Later, his comrades discover that the Japanese pulled him into one of their caves and killed him in a way the American soldier who found him would only describe as, ‘look what they did to the poor son of a bitch.’ At that point one of the characters is looking at whatever remains of Iggy, but we don’t see it, and it’s much more horrible that way.”

2004

“Leap Year brings to mind the lore of King Numa reforming the early Roman calendar, Julius Caesar (and Sosigenes) replacing lunar with solar, Caligula trying to name a month after Germanicus (at least according to Robert Graves), Pope Gregory ordering his change but the Protestant parts of Europe ignoring it, and so on.

“When I was a kid I was fascinated by calendars, and would draw my own sometimes. In high school, I read about the history of the calendar on my own time, because it wasn’t part of any class. Even now I have some interest, though not as much as a fellow I know who spent time calculating the dates of Easter in the far distant future — thousands of years further than the standard Easter tables. I think he even wrote a computer program to do that for him.”

A Few Rooms of Ancient Art

Posted on December 6, 2022 by admin

I might be misremembering, but I believe the Uffizi Gallery had a hallway that featured busts of every Roman emperor, plus a good many of their wives, down at least to Severus Alexander (d. AD 235), in chronological order. I spent a while there, looking over them all.

The Uffizi array included famed and long-lasting rulers (e.g., Augustus) but also obscure short-timers whose biographies tend to end with “assassinated by…” (e.g., Didius Julianus (d. AD 193), the rich mope who bought the office from the highly untrustworthy Praetorian Guard and held it for all of 66 days in 193).

I thought of all those emperor busts when I took a look at Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius on Saturday.

Second century AD, no doubt part of what would later be called propaganda: the effort to let the Roman people feel the presence of their rulers. These two busts are among the ancient Roman artworks on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, along with works by Greek, Egyptian and other peoples.

It isn’t a huge collection, though sizable enough. If you put together the ancient art found at Art Institute and the Field Museum and the Oriental Institute Museum, that might be a British Museum- or Pergamon Museum-class collection, but no matter. I always enjoy strolling around the Art Institute’s ancient gallery, which is back a fair ways from the main entrance, in four rooms surrounding a peristyle-like courtyard, though that is a story down.

Besides emperors, you’ll see emperor-adjacent figures, such as Antinous, done up as Osiris, 2nd century AD of course.

Beloved by Hadrian, Antinous took a swim in the Nile one day in AD 130 and drowned. Hadrian founded the nearby city of Antinoupolis in his honor (it’s a minor ruin these days) and proclaimed him a god — the sort of thing a grieving emperor could do in those days.

A Roman copy of a Greek statue of Sophocles, ca. AD 100.

Hercules, 1st century AD.

My cohort learned of Hercules through cartoons. Could have done worse, I guess.

A story never animated for children, as far as I know: Leda and the Swan, 1st or 2nd century AD. A story that nevertheless reverberates down the centuries.

Who doesn’t like ancient mosaics? I like to think these 2nd-century AD works were part of an ancient tavern that served food.

A sampling of Greek vases are on display as well. These black-figure works are from the sixth century BC, probably for storing wine. In vino veritas, though in this case that would be Ἐν οἴνῳ ἀλήθεια (En oinō alētheia), and I won’t pretend I didn’t have to look that up.

I always visit the coin case. Here’s a silver tetradrachm minted in the 2nd century BC in Asia Minor, depicting Apollo. Such detailed work for something struck by hand.

Then there’s this — creature.

Statue of a Young Satyr Wearing a Theater Mask of Silenus, ca. 1st century AD, the museum sign says (and he’s putting his hand through the mask). You need to watch out for those young satyrs. They’re always up to something.

Waning Summer Tidbits

Posted on September 1, 2021 by admin

As if on cue, we had a cooler afternoon and evening to start September. Not much cooler, but noticeable. Warmth will be back soon, but the air is slowly leaking out of that balloon as the days grow shorter. Back to posting around September 7.

There’s a nice bloom of goldenrod out by the back fence.

I realize that it isn’t causing our intermittent runny noses, which have been worse this year than last, but not as bad as the worst ever. That would be 1987, the first late summer/early fall I spent in northern Illinois, maybe without much experience with the pollen in question. Ragweed causes that unpleasantness, I understand.

“About Hay Fever,” says American Meadows. “In short, it’s an old wives’ tale. Goldenrod does not cause hay fever. It simply got that bum rap since it blooms at the same time as the real culprit — ragweed.”

Today I started reading When In Rome by Robert J. Hutchinson (1998), subtitled “A Journal of Life in Vatican City,” which is part travel book, part memoir, part popular history, and all very readable and amusing.

Something I found out today: Lyle Waggoner (d. 2020) founded a successful company that provides trailers to movie and TV studios, Star Waggons. After The Carol Burnett Show and Wonder Woman, that’s what he turned his attention to. One of his sons runs it even now, though it has been acquired by a REIT.

One more thing I found out today, early this morning: even at my age, dreams about missing class, or being unprepared for a test, do not disappear completely. Also, the sense of relief is still there when you wake up — ah, I haven’t had to go to a class in nearly 40 years, much less be prepared for one.

Paestum 1983

Posted on July 19, 2021 by admin

One more card, depicting Paestum, which I visited on July 20, 1983. The postcard dates from the early 1990s, sent to me by an Australian I knew. I’d recommended he visit the place, and he did.

“Paestum, also known by its original Greek name as Poseidonia, was a Greek colony founded on the west coast of Italy, some 80 km south of modern-day Naples,” says World History Encyclopedia.

“Prospering as a trade centre it was conquered first by the Lucanians and then, with the new Latin name of Paestum, the city became an important Roman colony in the 3rd century BCE. Today it is one of the most visited archaeological sites in the world due to its three excellently preserved large Greek temples.

“Paestum is most famous today for its three magnificent temples which are amongst the best surviving examples of ancient Greek architecture anywhere,” the encyclopedia continues. I’ll vouch for that. They were impressive indeed, and I also delighted in walking along such a well preserved Roman road.

A bonus thing to think about in that text: Lucanians, an Italic people who spoke Oscan. The Roman juggernaut eventually absorbed them, lock, stock and barrel, and I’d say they and their language are even more obscure than the Etruscans.

On the whole, it seems to be a well-written article, but I’m not sure about Paestum being a “most visited archaeological site.” It might not be entirely authoritative, but Travel & Leisure published a list in 2012 regarding the most-visited ancient ruins. Paestum doesn’t make the cut; the closest places are Pompeii and Herculaneum.

My own experience was that Steve and I had the place to ourselves on that summer afternoon — the same summer when we encountered a well-populated Pompeii. Of course, those recollections are decades old, but I suspect even now people don’t show up at Paestum in any great numbers, but rather go to Pompeii as always.

Clichéd the term might be, the beaten path is a very real phenomenon in mass travel, with its own discontents. The odd thing is that you don’t have to go very far or think that hard to find marvels away from the path.

The Getty Villa

Posted on March 9, 2020 by admin

I’m connected on Facebook with a man named Rolf Achilles. I took a noncredit class he taught on Chicago history at the Newberry Library in the late 1980s. I think he also attended the Harvest Dinner Party at my apartment on October 22, 1988, but I’m not sure — a lot of people were there. Not sure I’ve seen him since then, or whether he’d remember me if he saw me.

Rolf’s an art historian, and often publishes images of fine art on Facebook. Not long ago, he posted pictures of items on display at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California. I also happened to be planning my trip to California at the time. Almost at once I knew I wanted to see the place, along with the Getty Center. Thanks, Rolf.

When the time came, on the afternoon of February 23, I only had time for one of them. I decided on the Getty Villa. Of course I did. It offers a collection of ancient art.
Oil billionaire and notorious tightwad J. Paul Getty had the property developed in the 1970s to house his large collection of ancient Greek, Roman and Etruscan art. Tight-fisted Getty might have been in many things, but not when it came to the sumptuous villa. The structure, on the hills overlooking the Pacific, is a re-creation of a specific villa in Herculaneum, the Villa of the Papyri, which wasn’t just any Roman country villa, but among the poshest known.

Apparently the old man died before the villa was completed, or at least he never went to see it. Too bad for him. The villa was opened to the public as a museum for a short time, but soon closed and wasn’t re-opened until 2006, after some additions to the grounds.

Langdon Wilson Architects did the original design. “Architects looked closely at the partial excavation of the Villa dei Papiri and at other ancient Roman houses in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae to influence the design,” the Getty web site says. “The scale, appearance, and some of the materials of the Getty Villa are taken from the Villa dei Papiri, as is the floor plan, though it is a mirror of the original.”

In 2006, Machado Silvetti renovated the villa and added a nearby complex of buildings, such as a cafe, museum store and auditorium. These buildings set the pattern for your approach to the Getty Villa. After parking at some distance, you walk to a bank of elevators or flight of stairs that take you to a elevated path to the villa. Then you have to go back down (part of the way) to enter the villa — via a 500-seat outdoor amphitheater, which was also part of the addition.

In this shot, the amphitheater is to the left, the entrance to the right.
The entrance. I decided to go in and look at the building and grounds first, and then the works of art on display.
The entrance leads to the Atrium, a splendid introduction to the structure that has rooms off each side, exhibiting art. Then the structure opens up into an open-air Inner Peristyle.

“This type of space was common in the second century B.C., when the main structure of the ancient villa was built,” signage in the peristyle says. “The Getty Villa’s garden is lushly planted with a variety of annuals and perennials bordered with hedges. The colonnade is paved the terrazzo, a mosaic flooring… A long, narrow pool emphasizes the east-west axis of the Getty Villa. Statues of young women, reproductions of ancient bronze sculptures found at the Villa dei Papiri, are set around the pool.”

Exit the Inner Peristyle and you’re on a small balcony overlooking to Outer Peristyle. I stood there for a while, just gawking. It’s a gawk-worthy place.
The top level of awe at the property, as far as I was concerned. The Atrium had been bronze and the Inner Peristyle had been silver. Now I was at the gold level.

Walk out into the Outer Peristyle and all the way to the far end, and you get a view of the Inner Peristyle that you came from.I quote at length a press release from the time the Getty Villa reopened in the mid-2000s that’s remarkably informative: “Designed by Denis L. Kurutz Associates, and implemented by kornrandolph, inc., the Getty Villa landscape takes into account the lush topography of the Malibu canyon.

“In addition to the historically accurate species found in the four gardens and in areas closest to the J. Paul Getty Museum building, the landscape design also features a mix of Mediterranean and native California varieties, local plants of the Santa Monica mountains, and plants from other parts of the world that grow in climates similar to that of Southern California.

“[The Outer Peristyle] is the Villa’s main garden, the largest and grandest of the four. Bronze sculpture and replicas of statues discovered at the remains of the first-century Villa dei Papiri have been placed in their ancient findspots…

“Just like its smaller neighbor, the Outer Peristyle is dominated by a large pool running down the center. Trimmed ivy topiaries frame the edges of the pool, which is crowned at its north end with two sculptural pomegranate trees and enclosed by 24 Grecian laurels on either side, mirroring the structural columns of the building.

“Four benches are available — two located in arbors draped in grape vines, and two nestled in pockets surrounded by hand-crafted wood trellises. Clusters of rose gardens are filled with ancient gallica, damask, and musk roses, while much of the ground is covered with a layer of sweet violet. Flowering perennials such as chamomile, daisy, rosemary, and sage are planted in abundance for variety and color, along with tulips, iris, Madonna lily, cyclamen, and narcissus.”

I understand that the Getty Villa isn’t an exact replica of the original in Herculaneum. For one thing, the Villa dei Papiri hasn’t been fully excavated. Also, buildings in our time need to be up to modern fire codes and so on. Still, as a re-creation of ancient Rome, this is likely to be the best I’ll ever see.

It’s also an excellent setting for the art collection. I’ve read that the once upon a time, Getty had some issues with stolen artwork. Or at least disputed provenance. Back around the time the villa re-opened, a number of objects were sent back to Italy and Greece. Hope that’s all behind the museum. What remains is amazing enough.

Might as well start with the museum’s star piece of art. Its Mona Lisa, you might say: the Lansdowne Hercules, Roman, ca. AD 125. (As the museum styles it — not CE.)
Found near Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, so maybe the emperor himself saw it. In our time, the statue has its own room in the Getty Villa.

Other Roman statues include Leda and the Swan, AD 1st century.
Venus, Roman, AD 2nd century.
Crouching Venus, Roman, AD 100-150
Jupiter, Roman, 1st century BC
Plus busts. A number of emperors. Such as Augustus.
Tiberius.
Caligula.
All very good, but I’ll never shake the feeling that those emperors looked like Brian Blessed, George Baker and John Hurt, respectively.

The Greek galleries excelled in pottery. All the pictured objects are Athenian, 6th or 5th century BC. Such as Storage Jar with Diomedes Slaying Rhesos.
Mixing Vessel with Adonis and Goddesses.
Prize Vessel with a Chariot Race
All in all, the ancient art collection is in the same league as those at the British Museum and the Pergamon Museum, in my amateur opinion, though I’ve barely scratched the surface of the many collections around the world.

Getting Around Europe, Summer 1983

Posted on June 23, 2019 by admin

June 3, English Channel

Woke and had a good breakfast at our Harvich [England] B&B. After some confusion caught a bus to the Parkeston Quay, where we had no trouble boarding a huge ferry, the Prinz Oberon. It had five decks, with shops and restaurants for the elite, a cafeteria for the everyone else. We ate in the cafeteria — I had some industrial white fish — and then watched a sweet and sour Bert Reynolds movie, Best Friends, in the ship’s tiny movie house. As usual, Bert Reynolds can’t act.

Afterward Rich and I had a talk with a 10-year-old English boy named John, who knew all sorts of dirty jokes, and told us them. He had his Dutch mother with him, who habitually closed one eye when she talked, which was mostly about the perils of Amsterdam. Things aren’t what they used to be, everybody’s nasty now, etc.

June 16, Lüneburg, West Germany, to Copenhagen

At 12:30, Rich, Steve and I went to the youth travel agency and they told us, and we somehow understood, that the next train to Copenhagen was in 50 minutes or so. We bought tickets and dashed off to the bahnhof. And I mean dashed — Rich was worried about getting lost on the way and Steve had to meet us there, because he had to meet French Girl for a moment about something or other. I wonder that we ever got on the train, but we did.

For a while we were on the wrong car. Only some of the cars are put on the ferry, like a snake swallowing mice. One of the conductors told us that, and we went to the right car with a few minutes to spare. The crossing was brief, but we didn’t know that, so we ordered lunch. We had to eat fast.

Arrived in Copenhagen, spent some time figuring the subway out, then rode to part way toward a hostel we knew to be nearly out of town. Then we walked the rest of the way, only to find they had no space. But the kindly clerk at the hostel recommended another place that did have room — near the main train station we had just come from. We took a bus back into the city. Beds were available at the close-in hostel.

July 1, Lüneburg to Bremen

Rode a morning train from Lüneburg to Hamburg-Harburg. Some punkish fellows sat across from me: colorful pants & leather jackets with steel studs & short, almost crewcut hair with a mandatory earring each. One wore a digital watch.

At Hamburg-Harburg, I had 40 minutes to wait. I met a fellow, more conventionally dressed and only a little older than I am, who spoke British English so well I wasn’t sure whether he was British or German for a few minutes. Turned out he was from near Lübeck. His book for the ride was an English-language edition of The Lord of the Rings. The German translation, he told me, is “rubbish.” We talked about a number of other things as well. He told me he didn’t like the prospect of Pershing IIs stationed in West Germany, but he thought they were necessary.

July 14, Vienna to Rome

In the afternoon, we boarded our train. In my compartment was a family of four Hungarians and an Italian. Slept on a top bunk from 10 to 7 or so. Sometime in the night we crossed the border and so I woke in Italy. By that point no one had asked for a passport or a ticket. Arrived Rome at about 2. No one ever did ask for a passport, but the conductor eventually got around to checking my ticket.

July 22, Campania, Italy

Steve and I boarded the bus to Avellino in mid-morning yesterday and I remember having a fine ride – no hint of things to come. The Campanian scenery was pleasant, a lot of rolling countryside, though the air was more polluted than I would have expected. We got to Avellino, expecting to find a station, but instead a large parking lot full of buses functioning as the station. We asked a driver which bus connected with our destination, Mirabella, the small town where Steve has relatives, and he told us where to wait for it.

I felt nauseated in the hot sun waiting for the connecting bus. That bus wasn’t especially late — a notable thing in Italy — and my condition got worse during the bouncing, twist-and-turn ride deeper into the country (for Mirabella is a very small town). We arrived at a street corner in Mirabella, and immediately after unloading our packs from under the bus, I said to Steve, “I think I’m going to throw up.” Which I did right away. First on the sidewalk, then another wave in the gutter.

July 30, Florence to Innsbruck

The midnight train out of Italy was, of course, crowded, but at least we found seats. We had to disturb a mother and daughter already asleep to get those seats, and then more people boarded the car. After Bologna, the rest of the night passed more quickly than I expected in a fitful sleep sitting up, and by daylight I woke up tired in the Italian Alps. It was a good sight after the flatter, dustier parts of Italy we’d passed through earlier. Arrived Innsbruck about 9. Mucked around the station a while and then walked no short distance to a hostel run by a small church.

Aug 7, Down The Rhine

Today we took a slow boat down the Rhine. As good as it sounds. We started out this morning on the train to Mainz. Unfortunately, we forgot to change trains, and so ended up in Frankfort. But no problem. A friendly Ⓘ staffer helped us find a train to Rüdesheim, where we waited for the boat to Koblenz.

At this point, the Rhine cuts through steep hills, all very green and many overgrown with grapes. Castles stand on a few of the hills. We sat on the pea-green deck under a warm afternoon sun, watching the hills and castles pass by and listening to the other passengers, mostly children at play on the deck. Now that was an afternoon.

I Am What I Am, Even on Thursdays

Posted on September 13, 2018 by admin

Something else I snapped while on foot downtown Chicago last week: the front of the I AM Temple on W. Washington St.

I didn’t go in. A sign on the door says ring bell and wait for someone. I prefer my religious sites to be self-service.

The organization’s HQ happens to be in the northwest suburbs, not downtown. Without digressing into detail — a foray into the rabbit hole, that is — it’s enough to say that, according to Britannica, “I AM movement, theosophical movement founded in Chicago in the early 1930s by Guy W. Ballard (1878–1939), a mining engineer, and his wife, Edna W. Ballard (1886–1971)…. Ballard claimed that in 1930 during a visit to Mount Shasta (a dormant volcano in northern California), he was contacted by St. Germain, one of the Ascended Masters of the Great White Brotherhood.”

Is it possible that Popeye is a prophet of this movement? After all, he appeared ca. 1930 and was known to say, “I yam what I yam.”

Also, why are rabbit holes a metaphor for endless, bewildering complications? Are rabbit holes that complex? Maybe warrens are, but that isn’t the way the saying goes. Wouldn’t ant nests or prairie dog towns be more suitable?

Another day, another stash of Roman coins dug up in Italy. Late Roman imperial era, the article says.

Bonus: they were gold coins. That’s something I’d like to find in the basement, though strictly speaking, we don’t have a basement. Roman gold-coin hordes must be pretty scarce in the New World, anyway.

Late Roman imperial era, eh? I can imagine it: “Quick, find a place to bury the gold! The Visigoths are coming! We’ll come back for it later.”

The event probably wasn’t that dramatic, but someone put the horde there, presumably not to lose track of it — but they did, for 1,500 or more years. Distant posterity is the beneficiary.

Strictly by coincidence, Ann and I watched the first episode of I, Claudius last weekend, which is available on disk (but not on demand: what kind of world is this?). Been a long time since I’ve seen it. Early ’90s, I think, as it was available in Japan on VHS. I also saw it when I was roughly Ann’s age, on PBS when it was pretty new.

The other day I used bifurcation in an article. That’s more common in business writing than one might think, since it’s sometimes used to describe markets dividing in some way or other (often, winners and losers). It’s also I word I can never remember how to spell, so I always look it up.

Google has replaced a trip to a dictionary as the default for spelling. Sad to say, since the possibility of lateral learning is rife while thumbing through a dictionary. Many times in earlier years I spied an entry, not the one I was looking for, and thought, I didn’t know that word.

Then again, there can be sideways learning with Google. If you let it. Not satisfied with mere spelling, I fed “bifurcation” into Google News to see what would happen. Every single hit on the first page linked to items in the Indian English-language media.

From the Times of India:

GMDA can’t plan drain bifurcation now, say greens

Bifurcate HC too: Centre backs Telangana’s petition in SC

Bifurcation of Badshapur drain on cards to avert flooding in Hero …

From The Hindu:

‘Telangana drawing water from NSP without KRMB approval’

Demand for bifurcation of municipal corporation getting stronger

From the New Indian Express:

Centre to expedite High Court bifurcation: Vinod Kumar

Clearly, the word gets more mileage on the Subcontinent than in this country.

The San Antonio Museum of Art

Posted on July 25, 2018 by admin

Besides the Briscoe, last Tuesday I visited the San Antonio Museum of Art, which is just north of downtown and also happens to be no charge in the late afternoon and early evening every Tuesday.
The SAMA complex is a major adaptive reuse project from the 1980s. The former Lone Star Brewery, whose solid brick buildings dated from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was transformed into the museum, complete with neon-decorated skybridge on the fourth floor. Sounds Vegas-like, but it isn’t garish.

The museum has a sizable collection befitting its location in a sizable city, including ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman art, North American, Latin American and Spanish colonial pieces, collections representing Japan, Korea, and India, three galleries of Chinese works from early times to later dynasties, Near Eastern art, an Oceania gallery and more.

I decided to focus on two of the museum’s strengths — art from Antiquity, especially Rome, and Latin American folk art — though I did spend some time looking at American paintings and Texas artwork.

Here’s something that gets your attention, or ought to, right when you enter SAMA’s commodious Roman art gallery.
A second-century CE statue known as the Landsdowne Marcus Aurelius. Wonder what the original colors looked like.

“Begun by Gavin Hamilton (1723-98), one of the most prominent British explorers of classical sites of the eighteenth century, the Lansdowne Collection came to hold more than one hundred stellar examples of classical statuary, displayed in a specially designed gallery in Lansdowne House in London,” says a blurb for Reconstructing the Landsdowne Collection of Classical Marbles.

“The collection, however, was dispersed in the years after 1930, and its works are now scattered across the globe.”

This particular one wound up at SAMA, a donation of the 20th-century American owner of the piece, a rich fellow I’ve run across before: Gilbert Denman Jr. In fact, he left his collection of ancient art to the museum, making the gallery possible.
Another Denman bequest: the Lansdowne Trajan. The Romans were clearly not shy about official nudity.
A beat-up portrait of Hadrian.

Here’s something you don’t see every day: Etruscan art.
In this case, a lid from a sarcophagus. Considerably worn, with an unsettling face that looks at us from across 25 centuries or so. As historical peoples go, the Etruscans are a half-remembered fragment of a haruspical dream.

I also spent time at the Latin American Folk Art gallery, which is part of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art. Rockefeller had his hobbies, and one of them was collecting Latin American folk art.

As the NYT reported when the center opened about 20 years ago: “When Nelson A. Rockefeller made his final trip to Mexico in 1978, several months before his death, his eye was drawn to a small hacienda surrounded by a picket fence along a rural road in Oaxaca. Atop each picket was a tall, strangely striking figurine made of rough pottery.

“The former Vice President stopped the car, walked to the door and discovered the shop of a family of potters. Each statue on the fence had been damaged somehow in the making and just perched on the fence to help advertise the shop. They were evocative pieces spanning many years, left to bake in the Mexican sun. Rockefeller bought them all.”

These fellows greet you at the gallery.
Molds for papier mache figures, ca. 1930, artist unknown, from Celaya, Mexico.

The work of another unknown artist.
A Parachico Mask (Mascara de Parachico) from Chiapas, Mexico. Polychromed wood, glass, ribbon and cactus fiber. Ca. 1970 and about as funky as can be.

By contrast, the artist of these delightful creations is well known.

They’re painted earthenware by Candelario Medrano, a Mexican artist who died in 1988. “Medrano began his career by producing toy whistles, mermaids, roosters, and other animals,” the museum says. “Later, he placed them on airplanes, boats, towers, merry-do-rounds and trucks, thereby creating delightful and colorful scenes of fantasy.”

As usual, the museum isn’t selling postcards based on artwork that would make unusual cards, like this.

“The Psychoanalyst (El Psicoanalista),” ca. 1994 by Jose Francisco Borges of Brazil.

Bicycle Thieves

Posted on February 8, 2016 by admin

Some days you get up and think, I haven’t seen enough Italian neorealist movies. Well, maybe it doesn’t happen exactly that way, but anyway you have a sudden urge to see Bicycle Thieves, also known as The Bicycle Thief, though it’s clear enough that Ladri di biciclette, the Italian title, is plural, and for good reason, as things turn out in the story.

At least, I had a urge to see Bicycle Thieves recently. It’s been a long time in coming. Back in high school, I had a copy of The Book of Lists, one of the more fun (if not very scholarly) reference works of the pre-Internet age.

In its section on movies, the book included the results of three Sight & Sound magazine polls of the ten best movies of “all time,” polls done in 1952, ’62, and ’72. Topping the 1952 list was The Bicycle Thief, as it was known then in English, though it came in at no. 6 ten years later and wasn’t on the ’72 list.

It was a movie I’d never heard of on a list compiled by a magazine I’d never heard of in a time and place (ca. 1978, Texas) when accessing either the movie or the magazine would have been difficult, so I had every reason to forget it. Which I did. Almost. Somewhere, for years afterward, tucked in the labyrinthine warehouse of filing cabinets that form my memory, was a little folder called The Bicycle Thief, whose entire contents were, “Wonder what that’s about. Why did some critics like it?”

Sight & Sound, incidentally, is still published by the British Film Institute, and it still does a greatest-movie poll every 10 years. In 2012’s poll, Bicycle Thieves was no. 33 out of 50, for what it’s worth. But it’s hard to take a great-movie list that omits Dr. Strangelove too seriously.

In 1983, I noticed The Bicycle Thief discussed in one of the better textbooks I’ve ever had, Understanding Movies, Third Edition (1982) by Louis Giannetti, which I used in my VU film class, though we didn’t see the movie in that class. I still have the book, which says, “[The] Bicycle Thief deals with a laborer’s attempts to recover his stolen bike, which he needs to keep his job. The man’s search grows increasingly more frantic as he criss-crosses the city with his idolizing, urchinlike son…”

Put like that, it doesn’t sound like much of a story. Yet it is. Mainly it’s about how awful poverty is, and how someone stuck in it just can’t catch a break — without making it an overt polemic about class injustice. The man and his son are fully human, with the serious misfortune of being poor. By the time the movie’s nearly over, you’re really pulling for Antonio (the father, pictured above) and Bruno (the son). You want them to find the bicycle, but you know it isn’t going to happen, and you know what Antonio’s going to do about it, and think, I might do the same, even though it turns out to be a bad idea.

“After a discouraging series of false leads, the two finally track down one of the thieves, but the protagonist is outwitted by him and humiliated in front of his boy,” Giannetti continues. “Realizing that he will lose his livelihood without a bike, the desperate man sneaks off and attempts to steal one himself… he is caught and again humiliated in front of a crowd — which includes his incredulous son.”

Director Vittorio De Sica used nonprofessional actors in the lead parts of father (Lamberto Maggiorani, above) and son (Enzo Staiola). It probably helped that Maggiorani was an actual factory worker, but how De Sica teased such a remarkable performance out of seven-year-old Staiola is astonishing.

Also of interest: Rome, 1948. Much of the movie was shot out in the streets of Rome. It might be the Eternal City, but a lot must have changed in nearly 70 years: the streetscapes, the non-monumental buildings, the way the crowds look and get around town. I tried to notice as much of the background as I could. Even when I visited Rome in 1983, there seemed to be a lot more cars than depicted in De Sica’s city, though at one hair-raising point Bruno’s nearly run over by two careless drivers, something that seemed entirely believable to me.

In all, an exceptionally good movie. So I’m glad that, for whatever reason a few weeks ago, I thought, I never did see Bicycle Thieves. Time to do it. In our time, when you have such a notion, you can put the movie in your queue — or get it at once on your gizmo. I saw it on DVD. People who are put off by old movies, or black-and-white movies, or movies that have subtitles, seriously don’t know what they’re missing sometimes.

The Mad Little Boot

Posted on January 3, 2013 by admin

I, Claudius, that remarkable combination of comedy and horror, is worth watching (again) for many reasons, but few better than seeing John Hurt do Caligula. Such as in this scene, which only goes to show there’s no profit in reasoning with a lunatic who also happens to hold absolute power.

It’s all a fine production all the way through, but once Caligula is offed, the story loses a bit of its spark. A bit of its insane spark, that is.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: Rome