Roger, Rafi and Stan -- Footwear for Champions

We are bi-pedal -- using (usually) two feet to move us over dirt, grass, sand, rock, wood, in addition to concrete, tile, carpeting, linoleum with all its successors, astro-turf and other man-made surfaces.

We create footwear to seduce or serve, possibly both.
Footwear wears out, people buy more footwear, people demand better and better footwear.
Twenty-first century athletes have a huge selection.

Our tennis heroes Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka have opted for red and pink shades for this year's Australian Open, and their shoes are getting their own little blog.
Nadal and Federer have their shoes custom-made for them (check out Rafa's name-tags), but apparently Wawrinka hasn't walked this way (yet). Good old working tennis shoes. Yonex's star is rising.

RAFA'S SHOES

Custom-finished Nike pinks

aka Lunar Ballistec(!)

Nadal Wears CB 4.3 Imitating Nike Lunar Ballistec in Round 2 

Rafa Uses a Disguised Nike Court Ballistec 4.3 Instead of “Redefined” Lunar Ballistec Shoes

http://rafavault.com/tag/lunar-court-ballistec/

Whahh?? those were quotes from the above website.

These photos don't capture the hot pink we saw on TV during the Australian Open.  HOT!

 

ROGER'S SHOES 

Nike-Zoom-Vapor-9

I think he also has them in other color combos

Light, sensible, tri-color

STAN'S SHOES

Yonex SHT-PRO EX

Never heard of them before, but they're on the radar now!

THE CHAMP!!

via Getty Images/Michael Dodge

The Goldfinch - Part II The Book

Look Inside!

........or maybe don't bother.....

I wasn't familiar with the work of Donna Tartt, the author of the eponymous novel, but the media buzzed and I thought ok, here's a new novel by a well-known American woman author, I'll go for it. Stephen King gushed in the New York Times:

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."

A no-brainer, right? So I buy the hardback as a gift for my sister-in-law and a kindle copy for my ipad.

It opens with a twenty-something year old Theo holed up in a hotel in The Netherlands. Then fast backward to the museum in NYC, an explosion (terrorist?) during which his mother dies, and the painting (The Goldfinch) is taken /stolen / saved by Theo, the 13 year-old protagonist. A young teenager might thrill to the long, naughty drug-taking and booze-swilling narratives, the odd friendships, the compromised father, the rich friends, the bizarre friends.

Francine Prose (love her name) in The New York Review of Books lists some of the many astonishing clichés that run through it. I agree: the language so predictable you can surf through rapidly. A page-turner because the paragraphs have no heft, no resistance. And the characters feel shallow and unconvincing. Prose's review is the best I've read.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jan/09/after-great-expectations/

I've gotten to the point where the protagonist Theo has unwrapped the treasured canvas a few times, and is back in New York City after months of crazy days in Vegas. Theo has reconnected with Pippa, a girl who was present at the beginning.Their relationship resembles a cheap version of Pip's obsession with Estella in Great Expectations. (It turns out Tartt devoured Dickens)........ 

Here are some delicious mixed metaphors and mixed-up images from half-way through the book, when Theo has been ill and is recovering in the City:

"Time slid from under me in drifts like ice skids on the highway, punctuated by sudden sharp flashes where my wheels caught and I was flung into ordinary time....."

This flung me into ordinary time, andI realized I have two other excellent books to finish plus US and French taxes. After these, I might finish the book. Not sure if "might" is right. 

So how does one explain the success story?

     Brilliant marketing, fabulous timing

Donna Tartt revealed in a (rare) interview that she was unaware that a major art exhibit which included the Goldfinch would open in New York during October 2013!! (Official on sale date: October 22nd). Surprise! Bookstores and museum stores were/are ablaze with them. 

The Goldfinch has been in the top five of the New York Times bestseller in both print/plus e-books category and hardcover sales since November 24th 2014. I checked. And it is currently number two.

       Potential readers Teenagers. Then twenty-somethings looking for a read, art lovers, thirty-something airline passengers on business trips with long stopovers, forty-something city-dwellers, museum-goers, stoners, ex-stoners, nostalgic recovering alcoholics, early-, middle- and late-middle aged book discussion group members, National Institute on Drug Abuse / NIH librarians etc.

      Yearning: people are searching for something evocative and mystical as the painting itself, a narrative that connects them with another world and transcends time. In other words, to be transported by a thing of beauty, on the wings of prose (if you'll allow me one little cliché!).

In an interview Tartt states: 

"....some of the earliest scenes in “The Goldfinch” were taken from notes dated 1993. “I was writing for a while not knowing what I was writing,” she said. “That’s the way it’s been with all my books. Things will come to you and you’re not going to know exactly how they fit in. You have to trust in the way they all fit together, that your subconscious knows what you’re doing.” 

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/interview-the-very-very-private-life-of-ms-donna-tartt-29780543.html

Perhaps Tartt trusted too much. Pumped and hyped and 784 pages long, the book lets us down. 

- - - - - - -

PS In case the book proves too complicated, the plot too abstruse, there is now --tah-dah --

'Sidekick' for The Goldfinch  by Book Buddy- a reader's guide 

Read this analysis alongside the The Goldfinch to get chapter-by-chapter overviews that clarifies any confusing encounters.......Compare this book to Greek tragedies to see how death portrays a universal theme that has great impacts (sic) on any protagonist......

  

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

·  Price: $30.00 US/$33.00 CAN

·  Pages: 784

·  Physical Dimensions: 6" x 9-1/4"

·  ISBN-13: 9780316055437

·  On Sale Date: 10/22/2013

The Goldfinch - Part I The Painting

The Goldfinch, painted in 1654 by the young Carel Fabritius, was on show at the Frick in New York as part of “Vermeer, Rembrandt and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis” which ended on January 19th 2014. Real Vermeers.  For unreal Vermeers see the previous blog (http://lexieintrator.blogspot.fr/2014/01/authenticity-vermeer-and-van-meegerens.html).

Lance Esplund is eloquent in his description:

"Carel Fabritius studied with Rembrandt and influenced Vermeer. Among the most charming and rare pictures here is his "Goldfinch". The bird is a fluttery, feisty, wispy little guy perched on its feeding box. Emblazoning its black wing -- like a logo that both grounds and sets the bird alight -- is an opaque yellow lightning-bolt." 

and 

"Like Vermeer’s “Girl,” which inspired a book and film, this small picture has been in the spotlight recently because of Donna Tartt’s new novel, “The Goldfinch.”(my emphasis). At the Frick, the charming bird won’t outshine Vermeer, but it might just break a few hearts of its own."

 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-24/vermeer-s-girl-with-a-pearl-earring-seduces-at-frick.html

Aha, The Book.

Malcolm Jones first reads The Book and then decides to attend the exhibit and view "The Goldfinch" himself.

"Standing before the Fabritius painting, feeling it tug on me from across the room, even when my back was turned, I knew exactly what Theo Decker meant. I could stare at that painting for a year, and still not be able to tell you how he did it, but in its presence, I knew that Fabritius did make art and it was magic.

The Goldfinch was painted the year Fabritius died. The most promising painter of his time, student of Rembrandt, an influence on Vermeer, he was killed at the age of 32 when a gunpowder magazine exploded in Delft in 1654. Nearly all his paintings were destroyed. The Goldfinch, for whatever reason, survived. The man explaining the painting in the museum claimed that if you look at its surface closely, you could still see minute traces of the explosion." 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/01/face-to-face-with-the-goldfinch-the-painting-from-donna-tartt-s-novel.html

The collection returns to the Mauritshuis later this year. I will make the pilgrimage.

But what about The Book--  The Goldfinch, the new novel by Donna Tartt? A different story.

Next blog......http://lexieintrator.blogspot.fr/2014/01/the-goldfinch-part-ii-book.html

Authentic fakes and fake authenticity

                          No this is not Vermeer, it's a Van Meegeren. A truly fake Vermeer.

Several news items in the art world have caught my attention.
http://www.essentialvermeer.com/misc/van_meegeren.html *
http://www.themanwhomadevermeers.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/arts/design/guggenheim-project-confronts-conceptual-arts-nature.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.thewrap.com/tims-vermeer-review-penn-teller-tim-jenison-documentary

The first of these websites gives a brief description of the rise and fall (and 'rise' again) of Han Van Meegeren, an unsuccessful artist and successful forger of Old Masters. This individual 'found' lost canvasses which he sold to top Nazi officials. In the case of Goering, he bartered one 'Vermeer' for 200 Dutch paintings. Van Meegeren became extremely rich selling forgeries. When he was eventually brought to trial in the Netherlands after the war, he could claim he 'saved' 200 fine works from destruction by the Nazis.
He became a heroic anti-hero because he was able to outfox some of the ablest art experts of the thirties and early forties, educated but greedy high-flyers, who talked themselves into a frenzy of delight over the newly revealed (in fact newly painted) canvasses.*

  The supper at Emmaus, 1936-37

Of course the ethical problems are many. These important considerations aside, these forged paintings presumably brought joy to (some) observers. One may also assume that that the forgeries had some 'artistic' power over those observers. Of course you can say the the joy and pleasure experienced by these observers was intimately tied to the excitement of the 'find', the Old Master.
They were experiencing a 'Vermeer Moment', projecting their past aesthetic beliefs and pleasures onto a forged canvas.
They were not, in fact, experiencing Vermeer.

They were mistaken in thinking it authentic, but not mistaken in how they felt.

A Vermeer is beautiful, with light that seems to melt borders. The contours of a face, of a dress, a window or a jewel are magically soft. There are only 35 or so known Vermeers.
People have studied his technique, fascinated by how real, how authentic (that word again) a Vermeer feels.
Almost photographic.

The melting borders of truth.

* * * * *

There is another take on Vermeer: that in fact he used a kind of camera obscura  to achieve the accuracy of image. In 'Tim's Vermeer' a scientist, himself not a painter, has been able to reproduce Vermeer using a construction plausibly achievable in Vermeer's time. There is a documentary, which I haven't yet seen but have read about, that describes this.

Quoting a review of the film on the thewrap website:

The question he asks is, What technology might have Vermeer used to create such realistic looking paintings in an era before cameras were invented? Jenison has some hunches and throws himself into his scientific experiment, painstakingly building a replica of a Vermeer scene in a storage facility in Texas.

Before it’s over, painter David Hockney (who, in his book “Secret Knowledge,” originally theorized about Vermeer and other artists of the time using optics in their work) and actor-painter Martin Mull have lent their expertise; Jenison also gets a private audience with the real Vermeer painting he’s duplicating, which happens to be part of a collection owned by the queen of England; she, alas, does not make a cameo appearance.

So did the great Vermeer himself use materials and knowledge and apply 17th century technology to create the 36 plus masterpieces with such uncanny precision?

Truth is Beauty, Beauty Truth./ That is all ye know in life and all ye need to know.

This said of a Grecian Urn by the young and fervent Keats.

So is truth authenticity? Authenticity truth?

Do we think we like it because it's famous? Do we like/love it for what it is? Or what we think it is or represents? What is it truly?

People want to be wowed and thrilled: a newly unearthed masterpiece, a revelation.
People are so influenced by the opinions of those around us.

If I were standing next to an expert ogling the 'masterpiece' who is totally convinced, and voices that conviction, I would indeed be influenced.

* * * * *

And then there is the curious question of whether a work of art that has been reproduced is still 'by' that artist.

In the case of a large-scale urban art installations there are always helpers and craftspeople involved. The object is attributed to the one artist. In the case of smaller installations, there have been some curious skirmishes in the art world. When the Guggenheim museum purchased a large collection of contemporary art from an Italian patron-collector Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo (love that name), it had to deal with whether reproductions of originals in his collection (eg. that had broken or disintegrated) could rightfully be attributed to the original sculptor.
Whose art is it when a skilled carpenter makes the same item and it's just as good? Or perhaps not quite as good because he/she is not using the original wood -- perhaps plywood this time?

Is it that double-headed hydra of Marketing and Opportunism chasing Mammon and Athena? (mixed gods and metaphors notwithstanding).


*In 1937, Abraham Bredius (one of the most authoritative art historians who had dedicated a great part of his life to the study of Vermeer) was approached by a lawyer who claimed to be the trustee of a Dutch family estate in order to have him look at a rather large painting of a Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus. Shortly after having viewed the painting, the 83 year old art historian wrote an article in the Burlington Magazine, the "art bible" of the times, in which he stated, "It is a wonderful moment in the life of a lover of art when he finds himself suddenly confronted with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master, untouched, on the original canvas, and without any restoration, just as it left the painter's studio. And what a picture! Neither the beautiful signature . . . nor the pointillés on the bread which Christ is blessing, is necessary to convince us that we have here—I am inclined to say—the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft . . . "

The verb that traumatizes

In this post-Christmas, post-Hannukah, post-Kwanzaa slow winter slog toward spring solstice a new year is born. It's time to discard old illusions with the used wrapping paper.   

One illusion is that the English we speak is the same as the English we spoke sixty years ago. 

To gift: a newish verb made from a noun, in the late 20th century habit of turning an innocent noun into an untrustworthy verb. 

We used to say "I gave a gift to someone" . So now we say "I gifted": it's shorter, saves you "gave" and "a".  Gifting is swifter. Hey, more time to tweet!  E-mail shortened or eliminated paragraphs and tweets abbreviated sentences. 
Now our verbs are slimming down to fit into the newish bikini of the 21st century.

But according to Merriam-Webster online you can say “he gifted her with flowers”.

And I say you can say "he gave her flowers" as it's shorter, but I'm a hair-splitting  codger.

Pour la petite histoire:
While I was online ordering holiday gifts, I gifted myself (with?) a soap from a fancy website. It arrived along with a couple of items I'd be gifting (to) others. The little soap was for me.
Mistake. 

I'd gifted myself a soap that smells like rose petals marinated in fermented yak piss. 

Perhaps I  shouldn't gift myself during gifting season. 
I should stay off sites with fancy graphics and promises of youth restored.  
Right--I made the mistake because I gifted myself from a website!
In a real, live store you can smell that soap. If it smells like yak piss, you can move on to another specialty soap, such as strawberry in propylene glycol, apple and vanilla with Dead Sea mud, coconut and chocolate in ripe lanolin, organic eggplant with olive oil and thyme. (No wait, that's a recipe).

Your sad skin will rejoice, and so will your nose.

Moral(s):

1) You cannot smell a self-gifted or any other gift-soap online. Yet.

2) Do not look your own gift-horse in the mouth, because it might contain a verb that turns round and bites you in the blog.


"Gift" has a long, illustrious etymological history:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gift

gift (n.) 

mid-13c. (c.1100 in surnames), from a Scandinavian source, cf. Old Norse gift, gipt "gift, good luck," from Proto-Germanic *giftiz (cf. Old Saxongift, Old Frisian jefte, Middle Dutch ghifte "gift," German Mitgift "dowry"), from PIE root *ghabh- "to give or receive" (see habit).

For German Gift "poison," see poison (n.). Old English cognate gift meant "bride-price, marriage gift (by the groom), dowry" (Old English noun for "giving, gift" was related giefu). Sense of "natural talent" is c.1300, perhaps from earlier sense of "inspiration" (late 12c.). As a verb from 16c., especially in gifted. As a verb, giftwrap (also gift-wrap) attested by 1936.