Uncouth Reflections

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Camille Paglia — professor, provocateur, scourge of leftist academics and feminists — has a new book on visual art and was in town recently to lecture on it.

I trekked over to the Skirball Cultural Center on the westside.

Us fancy L.A. intellectuals milled about the lobby before the show.

La Paglia was 15 minutes late. She came out — black shirt, jeans, black boots, and black leather jacket — and said, “I wrote this book because…” and proceeded to talk for about 40 minutes straight with hardly a breath.

Her lecture was basically all the main points from the book’s  and a healthy mix of shots at her favorite targets, like a rock band plugging the new album while also including a few greatest hits. As predictable as the jabs at academe, Gloria Steinem, and French poststructuralists may have been, the crowd (including your humble correspondent) ate it up, hooting along as she delivered her barbs. But hey, don’t take my word for it, you can watch the lecture here. And here’s some more photos of the event.

As for the book itself, I finished it today and enjoyed it quite a bit. Paglia would probably chafe at this characterization but her book felt like a series of blog posts. Each chapter begins with an image and is followed by a 3-5 page essay that weaves together the work’s history, context, and her own interpretation. Because one of her explicit aims is to show people that art belongs to everyone, her writing is clear, accessible, and jargon-free. I don’t know about you, but my visual art eduction from K-12 was nonexistent. We’re schooled in literature and exposed to a wide range of classics, but visual art and music fall by the wayside. I’m guessing this is at least partly explained by our Protestant tradition that reveres the written word but is suspicious of images. It wasn’t until I took an elective survey course in college that the worlds of sculpture, painting, and architecture were opened up to me.

One of the stand-out chapters for me was of an artist I had never heard of previously, Tamara de Lempicka.

Not only did Limpicka work in one of my favorite styles, Art Deco, she had a hell of an interesting life:

With her haute couture and Garbo cheekbones, Lempicka did not disguise her naked ambition for social prestige as well as commercial success. Her sophisticated persona was the antithesis of scrabbling bohemian mythos. She attended and threw lavish, risqué parties in Paris and expertly manipulated the media for maximum publicity. Arrogant and opinionated, she never deferred to men in the art world or courted romances with male artists. As detailed in Laura Claridge’s riveting 1999 biography, Lempicka was a liberated new woman with her own agenda, which included cocaine-fueled bisexual adventures in seedy riverside bars.

Art deco and cocaine-fueled bisexual adventures? I almost broke the Internet, I hit that Amazon 1-Click button so hard.

By the way, if any of these works or style looks familiar, you’ve likely seen them before.