A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby - Kara Walker

Kara Walker's new show,is an installation  site-specific -- the abandoned Brooklyn  Domino Sugar Factory. The visitor is presented with figures from our country's southern antebellum past, made of sugar and other sugar industry products such as molasses.

 It's profoundly historical in an ever-widening pattern web of  relationships and events connecting the European Middle Ages to the present, economically, culturally and politically.

This is revealed immediately in the title she has given this show is brilliant, invoking European history back to the crusading medieval era, when the lucrative, if dangerous and very expensive sugar trade with the Middle East brought the sweet stuff to the tables of the ruling elite. Their kitchens fashioned  the sugar into extravagant shapes, landscapes and emblems served as centerpieces at banquets, called an entremet, and in England, more commonly by the Renaissance, a subtlety. By the Renaissance the Europeans were already slaving Africa, taking the people to the New World, to work in the gold and silver mines that financed the architecture and wars of Europe's baroque, rococo and neoclassical periods, and the sugar plantations that would finance the Industrial Revolution.

"Carrying either big baskets or bunches of bananas, they are enlarged from small cheap ceramic figurines still made in China."

... Dominated by an enormous sugarcoated woman-sphinx with undeniably black features and wearing only an Aunt Jemima kerchief and earrings, it is beautiful, brazen and disturbing, and above all a densely layered statement that both indicts and pays tribute. It all but throws possible interpretations and inescapable meanings at you.

Crime Fiction Is Always About the Past

Irish crime fiction writer, Brian McGilloway, nailed it perfectly, when interviewed by the UK Guardian, about the crime fiction set in Northern Ireland:

" ...  issues of right and wrong and how the past impacts on the present.

"Crime fiction is always about the past: it begins with a dead body and the detective has to go back to work out what happened. The whole genre is about starting at a point in time and then tracing back to work out where it all went wrong."

This explains why crime fiction, like historical fiction a genre with a vast variety of sub-genres, including crime investigators from all eras, appeals to so many historians. I had noticed quite some ago that crime fiction is sort of universal genre solvent -- it dissolves successfully into every other form of fiction there is, and this must be why.

Thank you Mr. McGillowy!

Two James - Henry and Charles - Women in Society and Fashion

As an amuse-bouche  for the eyes, ears and brain, I've been watching BBC Affairs of the Heart, Series I (1974) and Series 2 (broadcast 1974 and ?; available in U.S. on dvd 2008).

Diana Rigg and Jeremy Brett in "Grace" - Affairs of the Heart

The series feature fine casts of familiar players. However, though the stories are based on some of Henry James's (1843 - 1916) shorter works, the titles have the stories have been changed to female names.  For example, The Aspern Papers became "Miss Tita."

As the title of the series indicates, these are all tales of love, love in all its permutations, many of which are wry, ironic and twist in directions that confound the expected romantic resolution of happy pairing. These stories are not for an audience that wants comfort romance, fast action and physical violence

The writers and director, Terrence Feeley, strip the James's stories to their bones, focusing solely upon the strange ways of men and women of a certain class all too frequently drive right past each other while desperately wished to bond.  These being James works, many of them are culture clashes of how the old English monied classes and the newer American monied classes just miss each other. Everything else is told through impeccable production values of location, set dressing and particularly what the characters wear.

Which brings us to the second James, who has been featured extensively in this city's media this week, the designer, Charles James, about whom more here.

From the catalog for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute exhibit of Charles James:

James, who was born in England in 1906, began as a hat designer and settled permanently in the United States in 1939, building his art on the simplified lines and bias cuts of the early-20th-century French modernists Paul Poiret and Madeleine Vionnet. He also synthesized forms from the deeper past — the imposing split skirt of the 18th-century robe à la française, several kinds of bustles, army greatcoats — but his best garments exude an undeniable modernity. They are, in their own way, as organic, forward-looking and self-evident as a Brancusi sculpture, an Eero Saarinen tulip chair or a Pollock drip painting. They transcend yet celebrate function, elucidate while mystifying form, and reveal by adorning the female body in sometimes startlingly erotic terms. In the exhibition’s lavish catalog, James describes fashion as “what is rare, correctly proportioned and, though utterly discrete, libidinous.”

Similar references dot the walls of the galleries where James refers to his innovative shapes as “a high form of eroticism” and describes his driving passion “for form related to movement and, above all, to erotic grace.” He notes that bluejeans are “functional and, being functional, highly sexual” and that the true function of fashion is as “a rehearsal for propagation.” After all, what could be more crucially functional than the propagation of the species? . . . .

The ball gown gallery, where each dress is a feat of engineering, is one of the great demonstrations of how shape and color convey meaning and pleasure. James is at his most erotic in a 1948 ball gown partly inspired by a Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1946.

"The dress is an explicit yet elegant combination of vulval drapes and labial folds in pale peach silk faille and orange silk taffeta.

These gowns are made for dancing, which is why they are designated ball gowns. Ball gowns have featured on the page of novels and journals that include women, written by women since before Jane Austen, and ever since.* Can anyone describe better the why of so many words given over to dress up clothes, balls and dancing in fiction featuring women than Charles James?

... describes his driving passion “for form related to movement, and, above all, to erotic grace.” He notes that bluejeans are “functional and, being functional, highly sexual” and that the true function of fashion is as “a rehearsal for propagation.” 

This is what went through my mind last night while watching a ball room scene in one of the tales in the Affairs of the Heart.

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*   This is why too, though Henry James is an American, why so many BBC series have dramatized his fiction. In this context of love, dancing and gowns,  I adore that Affairs of the Heart chose to include in the Aspern Papers in the series -- reaching as it does, back to the age that saw club-footed Lord Byron spending his time in the ballroom sneering at those who danced, while being adulated by all and sundry young ladies for his dashing poetry.

Another Observance From May 5 -- Metropolitan Museum's Annual Costume Institute Gala Fund-Raiser

It seems whatever era we are in things remain the same: ridiculous, useless wars, financial panics and depressions as the ruling elite gets richer and richer and the poorer grow ever more poor and in numbers -- and frivolity and frou-frou remain for the richer and richer.  Yesterday's date hosted a most important event in NYC, the annual Met Costume Institute fund raiser gala (complete slide show of the attendees and their sartorial choices included at the link).  Each gala observes the glories of fashion as displayed by the most wealthy social classes of the past via what this year's social - celebrity elite chooses to wear.

Cecil Beaton's portrait of women in Charles James's gowns 1948

Charles James 1958

This year it honored Charles James's (1906-1978) post WWII gowns that themselves honored

Sargent - "The Wyndham Sisters" (1899-1900)

Ena and Betty, Daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Asher Wertheimer (1901)

the Gilded - Edwardian age of John Singer Sargent's (1856 - 1925) women of the elite classes, their billowing clouds of skirt, sleeves and / or deep décolleté.

The First Lady opened the newly re-named for Anna Wintour (forever editor of Vogue) Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute earlier in the day.  She was the ribbon cutter.  She wore a plain and simple a-line dress, to the knees, and teeny heels.  The most dressy thing about the dress was that the fabric was a print. It was no gown at all.  So she must not have attended the gala.  Surely she could have, if she'd wanted to.  A scheduling conflict?

I clicked through all the photos of the celebrities who attended the gala, to which this years the men were instructed to wear tails -- which almost none of them did, saying tails made them look like short, tubbby schlubs.

However, Johnny Depp went tails all the way, including walking stick and white gloves, all just slightly exaggerated, just a bit off, retaining his dark glasses, a presentation true to his signature demented persona.

Cumberbatch looks to the tails born.

For the first time I wondered: can you use the bathroom while wearing this? Some Red Carpet walkers must have been sew into their dresses. Does that mean they went without eating or drinking for three days before (typical for Victorian and Edwardian women for ceremonial occasions such as being presented at court)? Or subjected themselves to a severe cycle of purging? Neither one is good for one's health, and is particularly bad for the complexion, one might think. On the other hand it seems to be an actress these days means never eating.

The women who looked the best, i.e. natural, in some of these gown-extravaganzas, naturally, were the professional models.

Sarah Jessica Parker's acres of Oscar de Laurenta gown covered her foot gear. However, it was big news here in NYC last year when it was revealed that Ms Sex in the City had to give up heels forever because of the damage to her feet. Then there are the shoes.  Women's feet these days all look like ballerina feet, and those feet are ugly!  Doubtless this is from a couple of decades of stumbling about in ever-more ridiculous high stilettos.

What Lupita Nyong'o was thinking -- well, we all make sartorial errors. When you're been called on as constantly as she has been to be on view on red carpets since 12 Years a Slave began its film festival screenings -- that she blew it this time, no thing. Besides it's the Costume Institute gala and attendees have traditionally gotten "creative."

Nor was she the only one, by a long shot.  A lot of these! And look at those poor feet!

Though Madonna's bandage costume this year got banned by Wintour, so Madonna stayed home.  Which is just as well.

For what it is worth, which is nothing, I liked this look (on her) a lot. Also, so not Charles James.

Back when I was young enough to wear anything and chose to wear mostly nothing (but with a tan! it was warm! it was the desert!) who would have thought I'd come to enjoy looking at Red Carpet photos of fancy dress? I've never been a consumer of fashion magazines -- unless they were from periods prior to about 1920. Now clothes from the past have always interested me. This was part of which developed me the historian, from my earliest years, pouring over illustrated books and magazines stored in my great-grandparents' basements, their photo albums, even the art illustrations in my piano practice books. After I moved to NYC I've always attended the Met's exhibits in the Costume Institute. In fact, the first, or at least among their first costume exhibits was The Horse, the catalog of which was very useful to me while writing my Horse Girl Fantasies. Since then I've always been clear there were connections between art and fashion though art and fashion are not equivalents -- just as pop culture is not the equivalent of culture.  As well as being pop culture mad, this  city has always been fashion mad, -- though generally seldom what one could call elegant. And, finally, I've come to know a few fashion designers. So those are probably the reasons I now enjoy looking at Red Carpet photos.

Today We Observe These Events

Bungle or Necessary? As the War is understood in terms of class, and at least as importantly, in terms of military weapons, battlefield, offensive and defensive engagement.

Today the Independent, a long discussive article, in observance of the commencement of WWI.

As well, today is the anniversary of the 1893 Wall Street crash.

And, of course, the Cinco de Mayo Battle of Puebla, 1862, in which the Mexican forces defeated the invading French army of Napoleon III (nephew of Napoleón I), hoping to rule through the Austrian puppet, Maximilian I -- and incidentally defy the U.S. and the Monroe Doctrine. He wasn't as successful with this strategy as was his uncle.

Filming Vonda N. McIntyre's The Moon and Sun

The film production of Vonda N. McIntyre's 18th century French alternative historical novel (featuring Pierce Brosnan as Louis XIV) flew McIntyre over to watch some of it in progress.

She provides an account, with photos, here. 

More photos here, with a link to a YouTube video, that begins with a beat of Vonda McIntyre sitting next to Brosnan.

YAY! Go Vonda!

Vikings - History Channel - Season 2 - Ep. 10 , "Lord's Prayer"

That was one suspenseful, tight-tensioned finale.  Usually I'm more than excellent at calling plot lines long before they are on screen, but this time, I couldn't. This is a large part why I love this show -- I don't know!  I am frequently surprised, and almost always in good ways, with the notably unfortunate exception of whacky sex-obsessed Mercian Princess Kwenthrith.  Fortunately, we do not see see her or any Saxons, unless Athelstan counts, or England in this, Viking's season two final episode.  It's about the Northmen taking care of their home business.

Floki named his daughter Angrboda, after Loki's first wife, mother of monsters. He sends his beautiful daughter and wife Helga back home, out of Kattegatt. Something bad is coming.  Soon.  So, it seemed it was all over, that Floki honestly was on the dark side. 

He proceeds then to shoving a psychotropic mushroom into the very wounded from last week's disastrous-Horik-battle-loss Rollo's mouth -- what was that about? Seemingly, to get Rollo back in his head and start working on getting fit from being nearly dead. But we don't know, really.

Floki continues to be busy.

He secretly gives mushrooms to Torstein, one of Ragnar's most loyal and fierce warriors. And Torstein dies. So why didn't Rollo die?

Floki and Ragnar sure did play a loooooooooooooong game, and they played it so well. We've seen how very cunning Ragnar is, and his capacity for the waiting game as part of his long game -- which is why Horik lost that battle last week, because unlike Ragnar he could not wait -- that we believe with no trouble at all that the seeming duplicity was Ragnar's strategy all along. 

Athelstan and Ragnar in a pretty place to recite "The Lord's Prayer"

Ragnar's determination to learn about Christian practices, even a prayer, is part of his determination to learn other languages, so he doesn't need to rely on interpreters. However, Ragnar didn't wish to conclude the Lord's Prayer with its proper conclusion:

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive them that trespass against us. 

And lead us not into temptation, 

But deliver us from evil. 

For thine is the kingdom,

The power, and the glory,

For ever and ever.

Amen.

Ragnar has no intention of forgiving anybody directing evil against his family.

Nor is it clear whether Floki's disdain for Athelstan is real or also part of the game?  Athelstan fought again, and was there, with the Ragnar family in the Hall where Horik's world ends. It's this sort of ambiguity I can live with, particularly when it is Floki - Loki.

Two arrivals by water, both of them boding extreme ill for Kattegatt and Ragnar's people. With the arrival of Horik's family I knew the king's plot was nearly at the boil now, because why else would he bring his family there?  (Even so, it still made no sense for him to bring his family to a slaughterhouse, even if he expected to be the chief executor.)

Between the first and the second water-brought visitors was an impressively shivery short bridge scene on the beach. Lagertha and Aslaug stand shoulder to shoulder looking at the storm raging in the sky and beating at the water.  Aslaug says, "The gods are coming."  Those two were planning something, certainly, but what? Don't you just love women like them?*

After the storm two ships beached, stopping the heart, filled with warriors -- or were they mercenaries -- greeted by Horick's still-unnamed, and, now, never to be called by name ever, son. O dear, one thinks.  Jarl Borg's invasion reprised.

But -- in the Great Hall, where Siggy was to murder Aslaug's sons, is revealed, one-by-one the whole Ragnar family, minus poor Rollo -- who did manage to do his bit despite nearly being dead, perhaps due to the mushrooms Floki gave him. Siggy's one of them so the ability to breathe resumes. The tension rebuild immediately -- what else was going to happen beyond Horik getting his?  Who else will die?  His queen was dead already.

Lagertha was terrifying in the icy fury in her combat with Warrior Queen Gudrun -- is that her name? The actress does this so convincingly -- not every actress could pull that out of her, one thinks. I don't know, of course -- but just for instance, say -- Glenn Close can, but Lena Headey cannot -- she manages uber-whine-bitch fine, but this, she cannot do, it seems, or at least isn't allowed to.

Lagertha and the others fighting with her walked away from Horik's terrified children and their maids. How refreshing -- some mercy for the innocent, like Siggy wasn't killed when her husband was. But -- all those sisters, his daughters that Horik joked he could marry to Ragnar's sons, who he was all the while planning to kill, ended up dead. His warrior lady queen had plotted with Horik to murder all of Ragnar, Lagertha and Aslaug's children, so they reaped what they sowed.

When Horik gave Siggy a special dagger and told her to kill Ragnar's younger sons with it, it was impossible not to hope that Siggy would not carry through with that because it was in her eyes how much she hated Horik for how he'd humiliated her -- nor did she believe he'd marry her -- and -- she'd be only second wife -- he was humiliating her casually yet again. What I'm not sure of is whether Siggy was part of Ragnar's long game all along, that she'd deliberately set herself at Horik to spy on him?  Or was this part of Siggy's attempt to figure out her new life?  I kept thinking of that scene some episodes back, when she'd been talking - plotting with Horik at a feast, and afterwords asks Floki if he can keep a secret, and Floki said it was impossible, while you knew his eyes had penetrated effortlessly what she'd been on about with Horik.  

The end of Horik is brutal and somewhat prolonged.  Yet it is satisfying within the milieu -- almost all those whose deaths Horik had planned -- these are all people he knew and ate with -- give him a cut, and then depart, leaving the king alone with Ragnar. Ragnar does not hold back.  However the writers and photographers do, for which they are highly, highly praised.  We know exactly what is happening, but there is no wallowing in it, and we are not pushed into participating.

We'll ne'er know ye name, o only son of Horik!

Was Horik's son saved for the blood eagle, or even for what Floki said he'd do to the person who had poisoned Torstein?  Floki's reaction to Torstein's death seemed excessive even for Floki, even when at the time the audience does not know Torstein was not dead, which flipped the thinking again to: "Is this a Ragnar plot?"

As part of Floki's busyness, he sneak-follows Bjorn everywhere, even when Bjorn and Porunn have sex after a somewhat bloody bout of foreplay. This echoes the walk Ragnar did last week with Athelstan out of camp to where he was safe from assassination by a Horik man. Or so it is understood, once we learn that Floki's doing this to keep Bjorn safe, rather than killing him, as Horik had ordered Floki to do.

So, we conclude the season with Bjorn taking up the mystical sword (where did that come from?) and Ragnar looking filled with years -- and holding this sword, which is a symbol of something, kingship? That Bjorn handled this sword first, is this a portent of the inevitable, generational changing of the guard?

Great finale -- terrific season!

I've noticed today some are saying they knew what was happening all along, so this was a weak finale. They also are disappointed that at least one of the principals did not die in the course of this season, which makes the series too predictable. But by now now we're so used to principals getting written out a series with a Big Death Not Expected, that that is the predictable thing.  So those critics are wrong! :)

I have hope next year's will be as good as season two was. If they rid is of sex-crazy Princess next time around, or have her fall on her head and get sane, then I can be entirely satisfied.

Edited to add there is an interview with the show's creator and writer, Michael Hirst in which he tells us:

1) Horik's son is saved by Ragnar, though all the girls were killed by their slave girls -- which I say is a very bad idea and will end badly -- why not save girl and marry her to one of his sons?  much safer.  Also -- the toad's name is Erlendur.

2) We are not seeing the same version of Vikings that is seen in Europe -- which has more scenes and is longer.  Which explains why we slide over so many things, seemingly.

3) Next season Ragnar goes to Paris.

4) Horrible Princess Kwenthrith is going to be around.  I hope she eats Erlendur.

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*   Probably every watcher's favorite bit from last night's final episode came when Horik's Queen Gudrun? asks Lagertha how she became an eorl in her own right, and Lagertha says, "I put a knife in my husband when he tried to put himself in me." The two women laugh great bonding laughter. So ... what happens later is even more surprising.