Do You Wanna Dance?
Some of you may recognize our title this month. Does it take you back to the late 60s and early 70s, when America’s youthful males were obsessed with gas-guzzling, muscle cars, and had high hopes that the girl of their dreams would fast become a woman during their courtship?
Did you ever notice that most everything we like or need usually is a set; and is discussed, acquired, or possessed in pairs? You don’t go to the shoe store and buy two shoes do you? No, you buy a pair of shoes; in the same way you might buy a few pairs of socks. Arms, legs, eyes, balls, and boobs all come in pairs.
Some of our favorite expressions point toward our predilection for matched sets. Two pair in five- card stud poker is a great hand, Batman and Robin are heroic, salt and pepper are condiments we must have on the table, even meatballs and spaghetti always seem to go together.
Fifty six years ago, in 1951, the classic musical film An American In Paris was released and it is still discussed even today. This film, directed by Vincent Minelli, won the Oscar for Best Picture. It is the story of an American G.I. who stayed in Paris after WWII to pursue his dreams of becoming a successful artist and meeting Ms. Right.
Less than a month ago, I was an American in Paris, and my agenda was a tad different than Gene Kelly’s Jerry Mulligan. Now the only ones talking about it now are Mastercard and American Express, and hopefully, the Air France stewardess who took my card and said she would call. (more…)
Today is the Fourth of July. People will go out on boats, or load up their automobiles and go someplace. Across America there will be family outings to beaches and parks, where picnics and barbecues will happen. There will be parades, fireworks, and of course baseball.
How much do you really need in order to piece together enough information to get a coherent understanding of the object before your eyes. As you’ve seen in my column before, I generally like art from the school of classic realism. Make the art as near as possible to a photograph, and you had a good shot at appearing on these pages.
Recently, I visited a place called Jockey Hollow in Morristown, New Jersey. The area is a National Park, and is known for its beauty and remembered because this is where a number of American troops endured a fierce winter – including seven ‘blizzards’ in December alone – more than two hundred years and twenty years ago in what was known as The American Revolutionary War.
We hiked through wooded country, up and down the hills, and deep into the forest where our forefathers huddled through the winter in the soldiers huts, which were really no more than makeshift bivouacs. They slept on straw, and were lucky to get three meals a week much less a day. Over 1000 American troops deserted due to the harsh conditions.
Today I found myself in the wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to some of the European Masters. And speaking of Masters, during the 19th Century, artists in Western Europe began to grow out of the Romanticist and Pre-Raphaelite styles of art, and began to take an interest in more exotic topics, locales, and subjects. This style or school came to be called Orientalist Art. Centuries before, when the Moors had made incursions into Spain, they left an architectural and artistic imprint on Spain and by extension, via travelers, the Continent.
With Northern Africa relatively nearby, or even directly nearby, the 19th century artists headed for Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, as well as Libya and Egypt by ship. Those who were less courageous left Europe behind as they made their way overland to Turkey and points further East and South. Terms like casbah, souk, and harem fascinated and thrilled the Western Europeans.
Folks, I too was thrilled when I got my first taste of North African and Arabian culture by means of this Art known as Orientalist. May I share some of my favorites with you? Our first painting is called The Pyramids Road — Giza, and was the work of Edward Lear.
