Dakota Modern

 The Art of Oscar Howe … now at the NYC Smithsonian Museum of Native Americans.

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Evil Spirit of the Buffalo Dance, 1961

I was there because of a review by Peter  Schjeldahl in the 7/11 & 7/18 Fiction-issue of The New Yorker.  He wrote: “ In Bear Dancer (1962), illustrative details -a bear’s head, a wielded spear - lurk unobtrusively amid cubistically distributed abstract forms.  Yet more peekaboo are bits of figures in the plangent gallimaufry of “Dance of the Heyoka”. “. Never saw plangent gallimaufry; had to go.

His history, Oscar Howe, is laid out in a video. The Native American history of being removed from ‘the res’ to go to the white man’s school at 7 years of age.  When his mother died shortly after, he went back home to live with and to learn from his grandmother.  In 1934 he attended the government run, Santa Fe Indian School, known as the Studio School.

Sioux Grass Dancer, 1934-1938

Sioux Water Boy

Blue Antelope

He moved on to Oklahoma University where he was introduced to the Mexican muralists.  See my blog ‘Vida Americana’ dated around 2/20.

Sioux War Dance, 1954

Three Women, 1952

Buffalo Dance,1955

Ghost Dancer, 1963

Woman War Dancer, 1965

Sioux Dancer, 1953

Dance of the Heyoka

Rider, 1968

Peter Schjeldahl says he is haunted by “ One rifleman, neglecting to shoot, gazes askance with an enigmatic grin” in Wounded Knee Massacre, 1960.

I saw 

That was on the second floor.  The first floor was very good too.

 Maybe tomorrow.

It’s free!

Robbie Ross

 Robbie Ross, a character in the film ‘Benediction’, interceded with the military at the height of the First World War, in 1917, and saved Sassoon from the firing squad.  He also, earlier 1895, tried to save Oscar Wilde from a disastrous prison sentence. The fact that the film focuses on David Tennant, Stephen Tennant, Ivor Navarro, and other Bright Young Things and neglects the reserves of heroic functioning in people like Robbie Ross and Glen Willy is my argument against the film. Imagine another film.

Robbie Ross, 1869-1918

He was an open, out, homosexual and endured many painful attacks because of it.  He was bullied at King’s College, Cambridge and when dunked in a fountain developed pneumonia.  He left school but not before fighting for an apology from his fellow students and getting it and seeking the dismissal of Augustus Tilly, head Tutor, who encouraged the students.  Tilley left voluntarily.

It was March 1, 1895 that Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas, and Ross visited law offices in order to sue the Marquess of Queensbury for criminal libel.  Wilde lost; spent two years at hard labor and then exiled himself to Paris where he died November 30, 1900.

All of Wilde’s texts were sold when he declared bankruptcy and his name and notoriety were used to sell black market books of erotica.  Ross as Wilde’s literary executor found and purchased the rights to all of Wilde’s works. He published them and gave the rights and income to Vivian Holland and Cyril Holland, Oscar’s sons. All during this time Ross was pursued by the Marquess for his homosexuality.

Ross died suddenly of a heart attack in 1918.  

A clipped outline for a screenplay?

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Last month

 I Visited a couple of museums and enjoyed:

Oscar Kokoschka’s self portrait, 1913

Henry Lyman Sayen, Valley Falls II, 1915

Oscar Bluemner, Old Canal Port, 1914

John Marin, White Horses-Sea Movement off Deer Island Maine, 1926

Max Weber, Chinese Restaurant, 1915

Albert Bloch, Mountain, 1916

Marsden Hartley, Landscape, New Mexico, 1919-1920

The main event was a visit to MoMA’s The Red Studio, 1911

The Red Studio is a painting of Matisse’s studio which he created for and sent to his patron Sergei Shchukin.  It was rejected and eventually ended up here

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The Gargoyle Club, a 1920s London cabaret frequented by artists, intellectuals, writers and probably poets because the club was owned and operated by David Tennant husband for a time of Hermione Baddeley, and brother of Stephen Tennant.  Stephen Tennant, known as one of the Bright Young Things, was the lover for 6 years of Siegfried Sassoon, until Tennant broke off the relationship with a letter from his doctor. I mentioned Hermione Baddeley, actress, because she was the sister of Angela Baddeley, actress, who married Glen Bryan Shaw a lover of Stephen Tennant and Siegfried Sassoon.  Glen and Angela, you may know her as Mrs. Hudson in ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’, we’re married in 1929 until his death in 1986.  They had one daughter and we’re reportedly a very happy family.

John Singer Sargent’s portrait of the Wyndham Sisters, 1899

In the middle is Pamela Tennant, 1871-1928, writer, mother of David and Stephen and member of The Souls, a salon devoted to the discussion of anything but politics. 

She’s at the Metropolitan Museum of Art   

Benediction

 Terrance Davis has written and directed this movie whose subject is Siegfried Sassoon.  Both very interesting people and worth a journey down the google rabbit hole.  After the movie I felt I should go back to my office and write a S.O.A.P. Note.

Subjective: Mr. Sassoon has decided he does not want to return to combat. He writes a letter to his superiors accusing them of fighting without having a plan.  He states it is a war of aggression for territory.

Objective: show Mr. Sassoon’s experience and motivation for such an act which could have led to a court martial and a firing squad.

Assessment: overdone.  Too many scenes of dead bodies, soldiers in hospital beds screaming in pain, voiceovers of statistics on how many have died, only scenes of bitter, nasty gay men, scenes of Mr. Sassoon fighting with his son and dissing his wife.

Plan: More scenes of Mr. Sassoon dancing the Charleston with his soon to be wife, and going to the theater with his son. And the poetry, the writing,  there’s only 2 scenes: Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Disabled’ in a voice over and Sassoon reciting a poem at a dinner party.

Meanwhile a tree grows on St Mark’s Place across the street from W.H. Auden’s home when he lived there.

N.Y. Review of Books

 A Proliferation of Beauties, Jarrett Earnest, review of Far From Respectable: Dave Hickey and His Art by Daniel Oppenheimer, and The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty, Revised and Expanded by Dave Hickey.

“Similarly, and almost uniquely in contemporary criticism Hickey‘s writing returns to artists both their painful humanity and their extraordinary talents inextricably pushing them apart from and toward their fellows.  It honors the simultaneity of Maplethorpe’s “aberrant “ sexuality and his photographs angelic light. Hickey’s advocacy for “beauty” locates the arrow that flies with unerring precision, hitting a stranger’s heart every time.  Moving beyond the personal psychology or biography of an artist, the artwork extends an unlikely communion with other alienated people who found that by making and thinking about something beautiful, they invoke a gentler, more exciting and more livable society.” Mr. Earnest

How to lower inflation

Try reading ‘Tossed and’Turned’ on buying a mattress by Patricia Marx in the New Yorker’s June 27th issue.

“ Before we can talk about buying a mattress you’ll need a PHD in chemistry and another in mechanical engineering.” Ms Marx.

Inner spring is the most old fashioned and most popular invented in 1871 in Berlin though the water bed has been around since1600 BC.  Nowadays water beds are used by dairy cows including Queen Elizabeth’s 165 dairy cows. Tempur-Pedics are generally regarded as superior but $2,399-$5,399. You could try the Zinus Green Tea Cooling Swirl Memory Foam Hybrid $379, Denver’s mattress Doctor’s Choice Plush $799, Nova Foam Comfort Grande $599, Allswell Bed In A Box Hybrid $349,  or Hesstun Medium Firm Innerspring $549.  There’s Avocado Green, No. 1 by Consumer Reports $24,000.  Good news, Mattresses are always on sale, due probably to their 40 to 50% markup.

You can always follow Drake and go to Hastens. He bought the Grande Vivius $400,000.  Included in the price: a “pair of “sleep doctors” will come to your house twice a year for 25 years to flip, rotate, and massage your mattress.”, Ms. Marx.

Memory foam is the biggest thing in bedding. Memory foam tends to feel hotter than a spring mattress which is airier.  To compensate  memory foam is sometimes infused with gel in capsules or swirls.  Does this work, not really?  And many are not biodegradable. Go for the Latex foam; made from the sap of the rubber tree. The manufacturer promises no trees were harmed.  It’s like giving blood. They say.

How will reading this fight inflation? Perhaps shopping now won’t seem so attractive.  Give it a rest.

I’m watching

 Hercule Poirot

Love Art Deco