Culture and Stuff

On a thread many moons ago, we debated the "sanctity" of someone’s last will and testament. Once the person is gone, what’s the rationale, in the face of changed circumstances or desires, for fulfilling their wishes? I can’t find the thread (useless search engine), but I recall that I stood with those who value honoring the wishes of those who have passed because of the ramifications it can have on those of us still living if we don’t. In essence, a will is a social contract, and as soon as society stops honoring them, we’ll need a radical reconsideration of how we handle our own plans for the redistribution our worldly belongings.

The Barnes Foundation Gallery houses some of the most important artwork of the past few centuries. Somewhat outside Philadelphia, the collection and its trustees have been embroiled in a dispute about its current location, which was dictated as permanent in Barnes’ will.

The location is difficult to get to, the facilities are rife with access problems, and the installation of the artwork is quirky at best (See this image for a sense of Barnes’ affection for "salon style" hangings). And more than just that:

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The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has reopened in midtown Manhattan and the reviews are in. They range from unlearned and dully dismissive (see New York Post columnist Gersh Kuntzman in Newsweek) to fawning and overcongratulatory (see New York Times art critic, Holland Cotter’s love letter). In other words, what you’d expect.

What I didn’t expect (my personal taste in museums running toward industrial and rough around the edges) was to be so charmed by the new building (by famed Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi). From what I had heard, I expected to hate it. Artnet columnist and all around crumudgeon Charlie Finch had me expecting something terribly cold and corporate:

Sitting in the spacious sixth-floor atrium of the brave new Museum of Modern Art, listening to a dentefricial Ron Lauder praise himself and his wealthy colleagues, one remembers a more intimate MoMA where working class people brought a sandwich in a brown bag and a book of poems, or Shakespeare, to rest and bask in the temple of art.

That world, and that ethos, are gone forever. Even 9/11 could not bring them back, at least not in midtown Manhattan. Looking at Rosenquist’s F-111 like an altarpiece, one can hear the little blonde girl quoting Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and it is us."

Looking at Taniguchisan’s sterile environment, like a larger version of the interiors at MoMA QNS, one thinks of the auditorium scenes in films such as Charly or 1984. The individual is sucked out of existence in this matrix; the individual artist disappears in the wake of the exchange value of the art object.

We had a totally different experience at the opening we attended last night (the fiance and I). It may have been the flowing cocktails, but we had a great time and found the new building wonderous.

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That sound you heard, just now, was my jaw falling from my skull and drop-drop-dropping onto the floor after finishing Stephen Moore’s recent NRO article on Bush’s anti-trust policy. “Extraordinarily underwhelming” doesn’t begin to do justice as a desciption. (And, so we’re clear, I disfavor most forms of antitrust regulation; i.e., I’m putatively on Moore’s “side.”) The key passage, from which the rest of Moore’s analysis flows, is the following:

Antitrust actions may have made sense during the era of Theodore Roosevelt, when firms like Standard Oil could truly monopolize local markets. But in the 21st century, where markets are global, the idea that firms can gouge consumers on prices is as antiquated as the stage coach. Consumers are more fickle and cost-conscious than ever before. If prices get out of line in any market where there are no barriers to entry, competitors swoop in and lower costs so that monopoly rents disappear.

(Emphasis added.) The problem with this paragraph (and the highlighted sentence in particular) is not merely that it betrays a profound misunderstanding of the practicalities of “entry barriers” — though it does — but that it also demonstrates no appreciable concern for the realities of the present-day marketplace. This is the kind of passage a sociology major might write, between bong hits, and having learned all of his economic theory from Krugman’s New York Times columns. (‘Tis true that Krugman is an economic genius, but the evidence for it is of a super-Times-ular nature.)

As a threshold matter, there is no such thing as a market “where there are no barriers to entry.” Every market has entry barriers. Even with the most ephemeral or fungible products, you have to hire someone to create it, build some sort of office (or telecommuting) environment, pay for start up marketing, etc. Indeed, even if these entry costs did not exist (and they always do), entry into a new market at a minimum costs the sum of your next best opportunity. (Tom, in comments, notes that the economic (as opposed to actual) costs of entry may still be zero if the next best opportunity is not as good as the proposed market-entry; he’s right, of course, and my phrasing of this sentence is confusing. For the moment, consider it withdrawn.)

So Moore is simply silly on this first point. But Moore’s also wrong on a second, admittedly more sophisticated point. The very markets that Moore highlights as having small or nonexistent entry barriers — software companies — in fact usually have fairly high entry barriers. (Here, Yglesias’s analysis of Moore’s article also stumbles.) Meet the modern patent regime: wherein even “clearly” invalid patents have value.

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Les Kinsolving (WorldNetDaily): Against marriage? (I believe that the kids call the particular act performed on Mr. Kinsolving by Prof. Volokh and Jon Rowe a “full hand Fisking.”*)

In related news, what-o-what shall we do about voters suffering from dementia?

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In the spirit of lazy Sunday, here’s lazy Monday: The (former) Mosque at Cordoba, Spain. It is elegant in its simplicity, and quiet even in crowds. Go there, and see it.

By the way, there’s an elegant Baroque Chapel* that was inserted into the center of the Mosque. At any other spot, it would have been a destination in and of itself. Placed where it is, my opinion of the Chapel is the same as that of the King of Spain’s statement to the architect: You have ruined it.**

*My apologies if the term “chapel” is incorrect; I believe that the Mosque is now designated a Cathedral in Roman Catholicism, but “Cathedral” is too fine a word for this accidental monstrosity. And, anyways, humble Presbyterian, here.

**Paraphrase.

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DROPPING OFF a sculpture I sold to a couple with an incredible collection of contemporary art last night, I eventually turned the conversation to the fact that the United States may not have representation in the 2005 Venice Biennale. They shook their heads knowingly. The wife noted that our nation is adrift: “We have no national cultural agenda.” For those who don’t care much for fine art, it’s comparable to not having any American athletes in the Olympics. It suggests we simply do not care enough about such things to make the effort or spend the money to send our very best. It has many folks in the American art world in a funk, to say the least. It’s an awful blow to our egos.

AS I RODE the train this morning, I scoured The New York Times for a hot topic to rant on. Nothing even remotely sparked my interest. Then I found the Times’ third installment of Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (they’re reprinting installments of novels as part of their Summer Reading Free Book Series). “You don’t have time to indulge yourself with such trifles,” I thought. “Besides, you’ve already read the whole thing three times or more. Politics, War, Economic Strife…these are things worthy of your time…get serious. So much is at stake.”

A FEW YEARS AGO I became obsessed with trying to remember this short story I read in high school. I think it was titled “The Disappearing Act,” but I’ve been unable to find it or even verify that was its title. The story was set in the near future, and the world was in constant war. As I recall, generals and such were running the country, Spartan thinking was demanded of everyone, and creative endeavors were officially discouraged.

Then people started disappearing. Driving along in their car and then GONE. Hammering out a deal on the telephone and just VANISHED. It was officially denied by the government at first, when only a few people were disappearing, but soon there were so many folks vanishing without a trace, they had to do something about it. The final, chilling scene of the story has the country’s leaders realizing that they didn’t even have the skills to comprehend what was going on…they didn’t have the sensibilities to get their minds around the problem. Someone high up, rather frantically, begins commanding, “Get Me a Poet. We need a Poet.”

There simply were none left.

SO I READ the third installment of Breakfast at Tiffany’s on my way to work. It’s an American masterpiece. If you haven’t read it already, you really owe it to yourself.

Here’s a snippet (I rekeyed this, so please forgive any typos):

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I admit to a serious dislike of Michael Moore’s past work and present politics (to put it mildly), which I intend to express by not seeing his next film – which I feel is a proper response (and before you ask, I’ve given Moore enough fair chances already; I see no reason why I should give him another). Those who wish to may go watch it a billion times for all I care, as I doubt that the mere viewing of it will destroy Western society as we know it, or even convince a significant number of people who weren’t predisposed to be convinced, so as both a concerned American and a partisan Republican it’s not my problem.

So understood? Good.

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