Talk about contrasts. Yesterday I woke up in one of the most deprived areas of Philadelphia, this afternoon I was in a prestigious art gallery, admiring a piece entitled “Shitted”. Let me explain (readers interested in my ongoing reflections on American politics and society should definitely read on until the end).
After running the gauntlet to 46th Street subway for the last time I headed into eastern Philadelphia and took a train to the airport to catch a plane to Chicago Ohare international. My flight wasn’t until 3.30, but i figured i’d get to the airport early and kill some time by reading, which believe it or not I actually quite enjoy. Further, I was delighted to hear that because i checked in so early i’d be one of the first to board. My delight was premature. For despite getting loaded onto our plane almost on time, and taxiing out to the runway, the plane just stopped. Stopped, and 30 minutes went by. Then an hour. We were informed that a storm was over Philadelphia, and all flights out were suspended indefinitely. In the end we sat on the tarmac going nowhere for four hours straight. You may never have noticed before, but the air conditioning on planes only works when the engines are running – and they don’t keep the engines running when the plane isn’t going anywhere. The result was that it got seriously hot on board, and people were getting progressively more and more irate. Things were not helped by having the least leg-room I have ever experienced on a plane; think RyanAir then shave 3 inches, then decide never to fly American Airlines.
Anyway, we eventually got the go-ahead and the pilot told us we’d be off in 20 minutes. 30 minutes later he announced that planes west-bound were taking off, but at intervals of 3 minutes (rather than the usaul 45)…and that we were 10th in line. This pissed everybody off, but soon we were to see exactly why this was the case. Now, as some of you may know, i don’t particularly like flying. I mean, i’d never not get on a plane, but the whole process is something I find drastically unpleasant. So imagine my delight at the realization that we were taking off in a storm. So much for stopping all take-offs, we were now rising up amidst lightning. Actually bloody lightning. Oh, and turbulence so bad that you actually needed your seatbelt so as to stay in the seat. I actually thought I was going to die – indeed, when we eventually got up above the storm clouds, one of the air stewards came over and asked me if I was ok so obvious had it been that I thought the end was nigh, and reassured me that the worst was over. Indeed I must say that the cabin crew were outstanding. There were just two air stewards for the whole of the economy section of the plane, and they did a fantastic job of not only keeping everyone calm and in relatively good spirits for the four hours on the tarmac, but were consistently courteous and even cracked funny jokes throughout. Much to my dismay I learned that rather than being paid over-time for the four hour delay, they had in fact lost wages because the lateness meant they missed the return job to Philadelphia. Another reason never to fly American Airlines, given that this is how they treat their employees.
I landed in Chicago – the view of which from the air is absolutely stunning, and gives you an idea of the unbelievable scale of lack Michigan, more an inland sea than a lake – and took a bus an hour and a half up to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There I met my next hosts, David and Maggi Gordon, as well as pathfinder Ashleigh Collins, whom I crossed over with for one night (she left for Denver the next day before I got my sorry self out of bed).
David read PPE at Balliol like me back in the 1960s, and has had something of an illustrious career, including working as Chief Executive of the Economist, then Chief Executive for ITN, and is now a consultant to the National Library of Israel. Until recently however he was director of the Milwaukee Museum of Art, and it’s that museum I wish to focus upon here.
Architecturally the museum is magnificent (pictures at the bottom). It sits on the edge of Milwaukee Downtown next to Lake Michigan, and looks rather like a gleaming white spaceship. Indeed, it is something of a Tardis [Americans: the Tardis is the time machine that cult British sci-fi character Doctor Who travels around in, which is bigger on the inside than the outside], for one does not realise from the outside how much is contained within. Sitting atop the structure is a pair of wings, which open in the morning, flap at mid-day, and close in the evening. Indeed, the entire structure has an organic feel to it; the central chamber when you walk in resembles a rib-cage, and if you looks down the long main corridor you have the impression of staring down the spinal chord of a living animal. The entire structure is a brilliant but not dazzling white, and marble floors and stairs give a feel of simultaneous grandeur, history and modernity.
I spent most of today in the museum, in fact. I was especially impressed by the permanent collection, which houses works of art beginning in the Graeco-Roman period (although there was actually an Egyptian sarcophagus) running right through to the present day, with galleries dedicated to significant periods of art and art-transition along the way, housing many varieties, styles and works. I particularly enjoyed a couple of Warhol and Lichtenstein originals as well as some of the more 3D ‘experiences’ of modern art, including a black room filled with nothing but suspended blue neon tube lights.
The main attraction, however, was an exhibition of work by Gilbert and George, two artists who have worked together as one outfit since (i think) the early 1970s. Their work is pretty controversial and in-your-face, and includes pieces such as “Shitted” (the two aritsts surrounded by, well, pieces of shit”), “The Penis” (the two artists above a graffiti drawing of, well, an ejaculating penis) and “Our Spunk” (the two artists, well, nude in full front and rear shots, slightly bent over).
Now some of this art – and i guess all of “modern art”, to use a term to inappropriately lump together many schools, much in the way one might talk of the myriad philosophies and traditions lumped together under the label of ‘feminism’ – I can understand and appreciate, but much of it I cannot. Indeed, ‘modern art’ for me is a lot like so-called Continental Philosophy. With a few such philosophers – notable Nietzsche and Foucault – I find their works to be penetrating, insightful and fantastically important. But with many – Sartre, Derrida, Baudrillard to pick on the French – I find that they bluster, gesture and pontificate about, well, high-sounding but ultimately vacuous nonesense. So with ‘modern’ art, I find that occasionally a piece will blow me away, yet often I find it to be, well, pretentious and shallow without the deep significance it is supposed to import.
Take “Shitted” by Gilbert and George. I’m afraid that I simply do not see any deep significance in this work – certainly not the rejection of the authority of religion which the authors claimed to aspire to on my audio guide. And what is more, I do not find it aesthetically pleasing. But you know, I don’t think this is at root an intellectual matter, and certainly not something I could argue people into agreeing upon. No, i suspect that it’s far more to do with temperament. This kind of work just doesn’t appeal to me; it’s not that I’m too dumb or too coarse to get it – but nonetheless I just don’t get it. Likewise I don’t think that everybody who likes such work simply claims to like it for the sake of being controversial or being, what i’ve sometimes heard unkindly referred to as, ‘an art fag’. No, some people just enjoy this kind of thing, the way some people think Sartre is providing deep and meaningful existential insights.
Yet there is an aspect of modern art, and the arts, which I have something more combatative to say, which pertains mostly to art culture and its interaction with the political. In the evening I returned to the museum with Maggi and Gordon to see a number of events put on specially, at least two of them (ostensibly) relating to the Gilbert and George Exhibition. The first of the night was a guy who was (ostensibly) giving a lecture on Gilbert and George. What we actually got was quite a funny presentation, with some very well-executed passages of ’stream-of-conscience’ dialogue, effectively woven in with a shifting background display to good effect. The presentation was extremely funny and professional – but I have to admit, i wasn’t sure whether the gentleman giving the performance was actually lampooning Gilbert and George and the art community, or rather was in fact himself engaged in a piece of visual art which an ignorant non-art lover like myself simply didn’t ‘get’. Which kind of took the edge off the funny, so to speak.
Next up was a man giving a presentation on ‘The Dandy in Cinema’. Brace yourself.
In America a ‘Dandy’ (at least, according to thefreedictionary.com) is: ”a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and the cultivation of leisurely hobbies. Historically, especially in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, a dandy often strove to imitate an aristocratic style of life despite being of middle-class background”. At any rate, the speaker made it sound a lot more like a Dandy was a homosexual, or at least an implied homosexual. Indeed this speaker rather got on my nerves, as my Oxford analytic philosophy training caused me to whince at such proclamations as “the Dandy may only exist in public, for the Dandy must be perceived so as to be brought into existence” and, “the Dandy wears what is surely an outward costume – and reminds us all, perhaps, that we too wear costumes, but that ours are hidden”, and finally the absolute worst of all: “the only remaining Dandies are the animals”, apparently because modern society is too fashion-driven for the Dandy to exist any longer.
Regardless, all of this was followed by two foreign films. The first featured a woman in a full panda suit poll-dancing for a few minutes, who then took off her panda head and repeated at great velocity a highly repetative – and not very good- poem, in French. Next, a 25 minute German epic featuring two men, one dressed as a giant shrew, the other as, you guessed it, a panda. They engaged in what can frankly be described as a disjointed and nonsensical series of events which amounted to a bastardisation of private detective movie, critique of the leisured artistic classes of California, and slapstick comedy. All of it in German (though with subtitles – not that this made the process any more bearable). The film ended for no reason with our animalistic protagonists taking off in a helicopter, after drawing some complicated diagram about the nature of time. What on earth this had to do with Dandies, let alone Dandies in cinema, is completely beyond me.
Next (after a good round of people congratulating their performers on how great it all was – and I swear a minimum of half the people in that room must have been lying through their teeth, though David tells me that conflict and disagreement is simply not done in the Mid-West, which may explain) we filed back to the main chamber where some experimental music was being played. This mostly consisted in a drummer, two guitarists, a bass-player, a saxophonist and a man hitting the windows with sticks, all of whom were apparently playing whatever they felt like at whatever timing suited them best. It sounded, I suppose, vaguely like new jazz, but in all honestly is was more like noise. Finally, however, the best of the evening. Male belly-dancers:
Now why am I relating all this to you? It is not, you may be surprised to hear, simply so that we can all have a slight sneer and a chuckle at the arts-loving intelligentsia of Wisconsin, as you may be suspecting. Far from it. I myself have no objection to the above things in principle, they just happen to be things I personally don’t, in general, find appealing. But there is more to all this than meets the eye.
Firstly, it was very bizarre to stand and watch these various displays for the cultured, middle to upper class and – let’s not beat around the bush – white residents of well to-do Milwaukee, and to recall that less than 48 hours earlier I’d been staying in a district where people use food-stamps to feed their children. And that it was the same country, if not the same state.
“OK”, I hear you say, “so America has – in some cases staggering – inequality, what’s your point?” My points are the following. Firstly i’m going to take a guess and say that 90% of the people attending this event will vote Democratic in November (I base that on the fact that they were coming to watch films about Dandys, look at paintings of shit, and were delighted at the prospect of male belly dancers. I may be wrong, but I don’t imagine those to be Republican pass-times). Meaning, I would in turn guess, that 90% of people in this room – the recipients and appreciators of boundary- and button-pushing art – would claim to be staunchly in support of helping people who live in those neighbourhoods such as I witnessed in Philadelphia, probably even at cost to themselves in the form of higher taxation.
“OK” you say again, “so some people who have a lot want to give to those who have little, what’s wrong with that?” The answer: nothing per se, indeed it is remarkable – especially in historical perspective – that large sections of what can, I think, be justifiably described as ‘The Elite’ wish to help and aid those lower down on the social and economic ladder.
The problem, however, lies in the nature of modern American politics. Indeed, perhaps it’s not even so much a problem as a feature, or even a symptom, of wider political trends in this country. Nevertheless it’s quite intriguing, and it goes like this. Firstly, David and Maggi are not snobs. Far from it; they are down-to-earth, caring, well-read, intelligent, welcoming and highly amiable people. Yet for an outsider looking in – for example, to a working class, unemployed NASCAR fan from rural Oklahoma – this sort of gathering of the liberal intelligentsia must look exactly like snobishness, in its most profound manifestation. After all, look at all these well-to-do city-dwellers, trotting along to their art exhibitions of shit and spunk, prattling on about the tragic loss of the Dandy after watching fat men jiggle around to bad Turkish music…all the while claiming to support and care for the plight of the ‘ordinary man’, of the ‘working classes’.
A few years ago Thomas Frank wrote a book called What’s the Matter with Kansas? Now, this is not a good book; Frank for the most part goes on a 250 page rant, in which he repeats himself endlessly and fails to really piece together a structured argument. Never-the-less it has its upsides (not least playing the neo-conservative right at its own game) one of which is the following analysis: the extreme right of the Republican party has, over the past two decades, drastically altered the American political landscape by focusing ordinary voters away from economic questions and onto social questions. Frank calls this the ‘backlash’, and its operation works as follows. Conservative Republicans portray America as a land divided between ‘ordinary’ people and a ‘liberal elite’ which mostly inhabits the East Coast and California, controls all of the media and politics, and consistently imposes undemocratic, immoral and alien policy upon an unwilling – but powerless – population of ‘ordinary’ Americans who themselves represent the true spirit of America. The result is that America herself is under threat from a group of scheming, un-patriotic do-gooder but ultimately demonic liberals. What the Republican party does is appeal to this notion and tell ‘ordinary’ Americans that they are the party for them – despite the fact that Republican economic policies benefit only one section of society: the wealthy (and especially the wealthy business elite). Thus the poorest farmers of Kansas, who are being bankrupted by conglomerate agri-business firms, continue to vote for the Republican party which does the most to promote the interest of agri-business. In this way the Republicans have managed to retain immense electoral success by getting voters to vote for a party which manifestly harms their own interests, economically speaking, in the pursuit of social interests – namely, to fight the (to a large extent mythical) liberal elite through issues such as abortion and gun control.
Now, read over again the description of the night’s events I just witnessed once more and ask yourself: “if the Republican party wanted to lampoon Democrats and liberals by telling a story about how liberals behave in their un-American, snootish ways, would they need to change any of the above?” In my opinion, not a thing.
What’s the significance of all this? I’m honestly not sure, but here’s a few thoughts. On the one hand I think it is good that there are art museums, male belly-dancers and experimental music bands – and good that people who enjoy these things should pursue them. On the other, I think that there is something fundamentally bitter and difficult to swallow about not only moving between the two worlds of 46th Street west Philadelphia to the haute culture of Milwaukee, but there is also something so – well – uneasy about observing the Democrat-voting liberal intelligentsia enjoying their talks about Dandies whilst hoping for an Obama win so that the poor can be saved.
Now don’t get me wrong, this is not an attack on David, Maggi or any of their friends – hell, I’m basically one of them myself. After all I’m white, middle-class, Oxford educated with every advantage in life and almost certain to make loads of money if I so choose – and I prattle on about the injustices of capitalism every day. Yet there is still something unsettling about it all.
Perhaps this analogy will help (but probably not). Maire Antoinette is said to have remarked, when the peasants of France turned up at the palace of Versailles demanding bread, that they should be allowed to eat cake (or brioche, to be precise). To me, people on the right have always seemed a little like that: after all, most right-wingers will tell you that the poor are poor because they are lazy and choose to be that way – if they just worked hard enough they could be millionaires. Yet is the left – for that matter, am I – any better? After all, if Marie Antoinette had proclaimed “oh how frightfully terrible, somebody really should do something to help those poor people” and then promptly gone off to play in her pretend farmhouse resolving to bring the matter up with Louis in the morning, would she really have been any better for it? I’m not so sure any more.
Anyway, photo time:
The Milwaukee museum of art in late evening. The area at the bottom of this photo leads to the most aesthetically pleasing parking lot in the known universe. The architect who designed the museum realised that Americans travel everywhere by car – and so incorporated the car spaces into the museum’s grand design:
The museum from the other side. Unfortunately the wings had folded up by the time i took these shots.
Some shots of Downtown Milwaukee below. Milwaukee is an incredibly clean and beautiful place. Sometimes called the ‘Cream City’ because of its almost cream-colored brickwork, it is a world away from the hustle, bustle and rush of the east coast. Here life seems to take place at a slower, more relaxed pace:
