b l o g
 

27.7.11

A Chronologue 

—So, you'll want to wind this watch once a day.
—How often is that? I can't tell time.
—Then why do you want a watch?
—I'm hoping the watch will help me learn to tell time. And once I've learnt to tell time, I'll be able to wind the watch when it needs winding, which sounds important.
—It is. But until you learn, you won't be able to.
—That's what it sounds like.
—Here, I've just wound it. Wind it again at this time tomorrow, if you can.
—Thanks ever so much.
—Can I help you with anything else?
—Yes. Can you gift-wrap it, please?

25.7.11

Daisy, Daisy 

Daisy Kennedy (1893–1981) not only played the violin, but also wrote an article called 'World Fame for British Artistes.'

The picture is from Volume 5 of Henry Wood's Music of All Nations (London, 1928).

8.7.11

Today's Musical Dadaism 

Today's musical dadaism is: 'Trois Trios et Sept Pets.'

(N.b. 'Pet' is not what it is in English.)

I've Been Told That There's Not Enough Peel in This 

4.7.11

The Fourth of July, 1916 

It's hard to say how much Childe Hassam's The Fourth of July, 1916 unsettles me. Three days after the Allied offensive on the Somme began, we see in New York a great, blinding, patriotic, puffed-up flag orgy, the culmination of a day of festooning and bunting-ing, whilst the British and French were fighting forward at Thiepval, Mametz, and Montauban. This is a celebration of exceptionalism and isolation and independence unconnected with anything else. Expression without action. Three dozen expressions that amount to a stripey abstract.

And surely for many people it was that, and it seems somehow disgusting. But Hassam saw the orgy as a contribution. He saw the day as another Preparedness Parade. (The explicit subtitle: 'The Greatest Display of the American Flag Ever Seen in New York, Climax of the Preparedness Parade in May.' He doesn't make the chronology very clear.) These parades were held in 1916 and 1917 to raise awareness of the German threat in a neutral America recklessly off her war footing, and to raise money for those already fighting in Europe. They fascinated Hassam. They were the stretching exercises before the fight to come. When this picture was done, Fifth Avenue was the front line.

One is asked to believe that preparedness is a virtue and an end in itself. What else could anyone in that canvas have done but think brave thoughts and wave a flag out a window? Isn't that enough? The gesture is nothing and everything. For Hassam, it is everything. I have my doubts.

Hassam executed some thirty flag paintings before and during the war, but the timing (bad news from the front was making it into the papers) and setting (New York, my New York) of this picture, the very first one, draw me to it in embarrassment and curiosity. I look for unselfish patriotism where I'm told it's supposed to be, and I have to keep looking.

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