letter from America 2: democracy?

There is a serious question to be asked about every self-proclaimed democracy throughout the world. Nowhere is that question etched more sharply than in America. To be sure there are elections, but they essentially provide a thin gloss of democracy on a sea of vested interests, self-interest, prejudice and what can only be described as corruption. Every candidate, successful and unsuccessful, has effectively been "bought".  So many many millions of dollars are needed to run viciously negative attack campaigns that large sums of money must be taken from huge entities of varied kinds. They are not bankrolling candidates (often opposed candidates) for no reason. The massive lobby groups bully politicians and promulgate skewed information on a massive scale. For every dollar that huge entities pour into lobbying, they should give two dollars to charity.

It would be conventional wisdom to identify this corruption with the right, especially the far right. But no faction is isolated from it. There is no "left" in the USA in this respect. Obama has decent instincts, but he a is at root a conservative Harvard lawyer not an out-and-out reformer. He rode on to office on a raft of other people's money and an enthusiasm for a level of change that was never his reality.

 Only through the operation of severe caps on election expenditure can politicians and the media surface from the inundations of vested slogan-speak to highlight the actual issues.

Even considered as a political process the American system no longer works. It should be the right a party elected with a manifesto and a mandate to implement their policies. I do not support the Conservative / Liberal coalition in Britain, but I defend their right to govern and implement their policies during their term of office. Instead, here we witness endless exercises in political obstruction in which politics is the name of the game not policy. The so-called sequester - the general slashing of budgets across the board that was introduced as a political device and that was not expected to be realised - is a vivid illustration of the breakdown of sane governance. It seems that most significant measures are subject to so much politically driven compromise that it limps into being as an ineffectual runt of the original idea.

Again the constitution is in difficulty. It sates that "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years". 
The internal dynamics and chronological disjunctions in elections to Senate and Congress, given two closely dominant parties, all too readily results in the kind of ponderous paralysis that we now witness in tackling the challenge of creating a fair society.  The party with a majority should be able elect the chief executive and their policies should be operative for their due term. To have a president and two houses of varied political complexions may look as if it creates balance and safeguards. In reality it now allows a vacuum of incoherence into which vested interests rush. 

letter from America 1: gun control.

I have now been in Princeton for well over a month (teaching a grad course on Leonardo until late May) and it's about time I resumed my ineffectually intermittent blog.
The title "letter from America" is a tribute to Alastair Cook (if you know about that it dates you) rather than a pretence that I could even come close to his excellence.
This first one picks up on gun control.
The situation is even more scary here than it is at a distance. The prime response to killings is to argue that even more people should have guns and to introduce armed guards into schools etc. The head of the National Rifle Association, LaPierre, sloganised that the only only way to combat a "bad guy with a gun" is by a "good guy with a gun". Here as elsewhere in American politics slogans act as a substitute for thinking.  Who is a guaranteed "good guy? Is it a military veteran? Is it a policeman? Is it a hobby shooter with a large arsenal of weapons. Is it a young man with a loving mother? Is it me? Is it you? If only it were so easy, so facile. I believe, as I said before, that any private person owning a weapon whose only prime function is to inflict serious injury or death on living creatures is not in this respect a "good guy".
Then there is the holy cow of the constitution. A senator said that the second amendment is a "holy thing".  This is what it actually says: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed". This is historically specific to the security of the early republic that was threatened by reconquest.  Even it we only read the second part of the sentence, we cannot assume the the founding fathers (for whom I have huge admiration) foresaw its application to todays circumstances - both in terms of society as it has developed and the technology of weapons. Even if we claim that they were divinely motivated, they were human and subject to limits. Jefferson would be horrified by the NRA.
Even the pragmatic argument falls. The proliferation of weapons, including the routine arming of police, certainly had not been successful in reducing death from shooting, which run at a horrifyingly large rate compared to Britain. Ugh!

gun control

Another tragic set of killings. This time of teachers and children at Sandy Hook. The same fatuous statements from the gun lobby, and unfortunately from ministers in the churches. The Christian right and gun lobby lie together in the same incestuous bed, while the victims lie in harsh earth.

The basic logic of the situation is that guns are specifically designed to kill. That is why they were invented and perfected. Other potentially lethal objects, such as knives, were not designed specifically with killing in mind. A gun is designed to kill in a detached manner. Stabbing someone with a  knife is more directly tactile and bloody - and, in a strange way, needs more courage.

No private citizen should have the right to own a device whose only primary purpose is killing.   Someone who owns a gun is saying, I can easily kill you with the motion of one finger.

Firing a lethal weapon cannot be classified as "sport", least of all when the targets are animals. Obtaining pleasure from killing, which is what hunting is about, is amoral and degrading for those who gain the pleasure and those who spectate. It may be that famers have the right to possess shotguns, but even that needs scrutinising.

The gun lobby claims that people have a right to bear arms to defend themselves. By defending the universal right of citizens to bear arms, they defend the right of potential killers to bear arms. Who is a potential killer is not safely definable. It may be you or it may be me.

As I understand it, the right to bear arms in the Constitution was formulated to allow the ready raising of a militia in the face of continued threats to the fledgling republic. Even if that is not what was meant, I cannot think that Jefferson and the founding fathers would even begin to defend the current situation. They could not have envisaged some 10 million potent modern weapons in the hands of almost anyone who wants to obtain one. Their humane principles would have demanded that the Constitution be amended. The right to carry a gun is trumpeted as an inalienable American right. It is simply and hideously wrong.

The day after the killings, a local pastor trotted out the homilies about Christ having triumphed over death and the necessity of evil in the world. Obama announced that god has "called" the children to him. Why are we not celebrating if they are joyous in the arms of god? The teachers children are cold corpses. The agonised parents relatives and friends face the reality. The rest is political and religious cant.

abortion, evidence and Jeremy Hunt

Listening to Jeremy Hunt on the Today programme, being asked about his views on abortion....  His declared view, presumably not unrelated to his Catholicism, is that the limit for abortions should be reduced to 12 weeks.  As Health minister he was rightly pressed to say on what grounds he supported such a radical lowering of the age limit. Was it a matter of evidence or faith? Or both? He refused to say or even give a hint on what basis he might adopt his stance. Given that he is an elected member of parliament and health minister, we ought to know. This was even more evasive than his unwillingness to take responsibility for what his adviser was doing in the BSkyB affair.

He parroted the now stock reply of any politician dealing with issues that involve science that his decisions will be "evidence-based". Does this mean that in other areas evidence does not matter?  More seriously, what does "evidence-based" really mean? Evidence is collected according to hypotheses and then evaluated before a more conclusive proposal is made. (Yes, I know its not as tidy as this.) A different hypothesis may well result in different modes of evidence gathering. Even with the same mode, evidence is subject to interpretation. No evidence interprets itself. The same evidence is frequently interpreted in widely divergent ways.

In the abortion debate the main point of recent reference to evidence seems to involve the age at which the foetus can live outside the womb. This seems to me not to be a workable criterion or even a valid one. In practical terms it is likely that medical science will be able to push that age back even further than now. We know that a very early foetus can live for a time outside the womb during transplantation. The key issues are at what time does the foetus become a "person" with a right to life, and how do we define a "person". Is the prerequisite for becoming a "person" a certain level of consciousness?  And what are the rights of that "person" with respect to the rights and wishes and health of the woman who is carrying the foetus. These are complex, slippery issues, and are ultimately ethical and emotional in nature. They cannot be decided by scientific evidence.

What is clear is that the visuals exploited by the anti-abortionists is often hugely rigged. This is an except from a piece I wrote in Nature some time ago (2005!). It was written in response to a two-hour

programme Life before Birth made in Britain by Pioneer Productions and directed by Toby McDonald. 

The film was screened in Britain as In the Womb. 

There were some glimpses of relatively raw scans, but most of the spectacular visuals relied on animated models made by Artemis. The foetuses were sculpted in wax, cast in silicon and hand painted. Animation specialists MillTV — better known for the creation of aliens in Doctor Who and for special-effects work in the film Gladiator — then set them in motion. The skill and imagination behind the models were of the highest order, and the results were seductive, visually and emotionally. We felt that we were eye witnesses to a beauty and conscious life previously unseen. But at no stage was it clear what we were seeing. The credits named the companies responsible, but didn’t explain how the images were generated, and they were all implicitly accorded the same level of “visual truth”.

Only on MillTV’s website is the process made clear: “After months of research, courtesy of 4D

ultrasound scans, medical books and pictures of mummified foetuses, MillTV developed anatomically

accurate CG recreations of month-four and month-seven foetuses.” Each elaborate and laborious animation involved such methods as “multilayering”for “shadowing, depth of field and colour correction flexibility”.

Where is the visual evidence here? Portraying something that cannot be "seen", other than by scanning with non-visible rays, involves high contrivance and deliberate choice. If we think that are four-month foetus has all the pink and pliable appeal of a Raphael bambino, our instinctive the attitude to the termination of its life is likely very different  from only seeing an ultra-sound scan. 

Not an easy issue. My stance is to support a woman's right to decide, given a balanced setting for that choice. But I really don't have "scientific evidence" for that stance. 

Leonardo da Vinci. The Isleworth Mona Lisa

THE “ISLEWORTH MONA LISA”

In an extraordinary bout of promotion, the Mona Lisa Foundation has captured incredibly wide media attention through the announcement on Thursday that they are in possession of the “earlier version” of the Mona Lisa – the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco de Giocondo. The announcement, ostensibly comes from a non-profit research foundation, but the directors of the Foundation are to be identified as belonging to the syndicate of owners.

David Feldman, the major stamp dealer who is a director of the Foundation, kindly arranged for me to be sent a high resolution image and a copy of the glossy, gilt-edged book, which contains their “proof” that they own the first version of Leonardo’s portrait. I have not seen the painting in the original, but some things are so clear from the image and from their mish-mash of suppositions in the book that seeing the original is most unlikely to change my present conclusions.

The book, apparently written for the most part by Feldman’s brother, Stanley, is as physically impressive as it is historically slippery. There is no sense of how to distinguish core evidence, evaluate sources and construct arguments methodically. The piles of unstable hypotheses, stacked one on another, would not be acceptable from an undergraduate.

They (he?) says there must be a first Mona Lisa – the evidence shows this. Let’s cut back to basics. We now know, courtesy of the annotation by Agostino Vespucci in his edition of Cicero’s Letters to Friends, that the painting was underway in 1503. Vespucci, who knew Leonardo, mentions her “head” and that the painting was incomplete.

The next possible mention is the travel diaries of Antonio de Beatis, who visited Leonardo's French residence in the service of the Cardinal of Aragon. Antonio noted three pictures, one of which was of “a certain Florentine woman portrayed from life at the instance [instanza] of the late Magnificent Giuilano de’ Medici”. This might be the Mona Lisa , though Antonio’s precision as a source is questionable. He says that Leonardo suffered paralysis in his right hand and that we “cannot expect more good things from him”. Leonardo was left-handed. If the portrait is the Mona Lisa, it is possible that Giuliano, whom Leonardo served in Rome 1513-16, expressed interested in obtaining the portrait.  

In any event, the next really solid reference is in the 1525 list of the possessions of the cunning Salaì, who had obtained some key Leonardos that were in the master’s possession at his death. “La Gioconda” (i.e. the wife of Francesco de Giocondo) is recorded in the list designed to facilitate the division of the late Salaì’s possessions between his two sisters.  The best of Salaì’s Leonardos, including the Leda and the St Anne, entered the French Royal Collection at an unknown date, presumably during the lifetime of Francis I, Leonardo’s patron.

Where is the evidence for an earlier version of the younger Lisa? The most straightforward explanation consistent with the evidence is that there was one autograph portrait, never handed over the commissioner but retained (like other paintings) by Leonardo himself. We know that he was notably slow painter, and the physical evidence in the Louvre painting – different modes of handling and crack patterns – favours an extended period of execution. The painting may not even be quite finished now.

The book claims that none of the evidence of scientific examination indicates that the Isleworth picture is not by Leonardo. Nor does it show that it is not by Raphael. Even this ineffectual claim, with its double negative, is not justified. The infrared reflectogram and X-ray published on p. 253 do not reveal any of the characteristics of Leonardo’s preparatory methods. Leonardo, as the infrared images of the Louvre painting show, was an inveterate fiddler with his compositions even once he had begin to work on the primed surfaces of his panels. The images of the Isleworth canvas have the dull monotony that would be expected of a copy.

The carbon dating of the canvas on p. 246 produces a date band (broad as ever for carbon dating) that effectively ends in the early 15^th century! Either the technique had gone awry or the linen was in existence at least 100 years before  the painter used it.

I see lots of dossiers of “scientific evidence” attached to purported Leonardos. It often seems enough to have the texts with the data, diagrams and images to “prove” the authenticity, whether or not the they actually tell us anything that actively supports Leonardo’s authorship.

When we come to look really carefully at the “Isleworth Mona Lisa”  it is evident that the copyist has failed to understand significant details and the suggestive subtlety of Leonardo’s image.  I could give a big list, but here are a few:

1) Lisa’s dress, as revealed by the gathered neckline in the Louvre painting, consists of a miraculously thin, translucent overlayer with thicker opaque cloth underneath. The copyist does not understand this structure and renders it lamely;

2) the spiralling veil over her left shoulder, rendered by Leonardo with depth and diaphanous vivacity, is transformed into a series of dull stripes of inert highlight;

3) Lisa’s  hair has that characteristic rivulet pattern in the Louvre painting, but is rendered in a routine manner in the Isleworth picture;

4) the veil beside Lisa’s right eye floats over the sky, rocks, water and her hair with extraordinary delicacy, with its meandering edge marked with a minutely thin, dark border – but not in the Isleworth version;

5) the folds of draperies in the latter are hard, routine and show little sense of the folding processes that are apparent in the Louvre painting;

6) the mid-ground hills / mountains in the Isleworth picture are painted in a thick, heavy-handed and opaque manner, with none of the optical elusiveness of Leonardo, and none of his living sense of the “body of the earth”;

7) the island on the left of the painting is truly bad – a literal blot on the landscape. There is no logic to the reflection and no other sign of the water that is responsible for the reflection;

8) the head in the Isleworth picture has been conventionally prettified in stock direction of the standard Renaissance image of the “beloved lady”. The idea, in the book, that Renaissance portraits of mature women can be used as accurate registers of the their actual age is misguided.

Everything points to the Isleworth painting being a copy. There is a comparable copy – island and all – in the National Museum in Oslo. Another is illustrated on p.199. There are families of copies of the Mona Lisa. This family of three is not the best.

And, on this flimsy but noisy basis, the Mona Lisa Foundation has the world-wide media jumping to attention. Any Leonardo story is mega-news. It is this phenomenon that is really notable in the current episode of Leo-mania. Leonardo would have been pleased. He was certainly looking for enduring fame.

Marilyn again

Recorded a Radio 2 programme on Marilyn (no need for a surname). Christ to Coke has had an affect - I now get asked about other iconic images, e.g. Munch's Scream, which generally means some rapid homework. I wrote a blog for the Oxford University website about Marilyn's "Happy Birthday Mr President. It begins:

It’s John F. Kennedy’s 45th birthday at Madison Square Garden on 19 May 1962. Only it’s not. His real birthday is ten days in the future. The compelling mass schmaltz that Americans do with an underlying, knowing absurdity saturates the event. After she has characteristically missed her cue on at least two occasions, the host Peter Lawford finally (and with inadvertent irony) introduces the “late Marilyn Monroe”.
In a glittering faux-nude dress tighter than her own skin and enveloped in a soft fur wrap, that most desirable of female bodies shuffles with exaggerated mini-steps towards the podium, like a penguin on speed. Her floss hair has long given up any pretence to organic life. She is unwrapped by Lawford and ups the sexual ante with mute lip squirming directed at the microphone, which she holds tenderly like a living member. Everything is comically kitsch yet irresistibly powerful.

The rest can be seen on the Univ Press website:
http://blog.oup.com/2012/05/happy-birthday-mr-president-marilyn-monroe-jfk/

For the radio homework Judd lent me disks of The Prince and the Showgirl. Also My Week with Marilyn by Simon Curtis.
The Olivier / Monroe conjunction  is fascinating. He was a great actor and mastered film. Monroe was film. There's a passage in the coronation in Westminster Abbey where the whole narrative of the majestic event is carried by her printed programme and her face. Micro-millimetres of fleeting facial nuances. Whether this is "the method" or natural talent and intelligence is difficult to know. I suspect the latter.
My Week.. has a special resonance - the young man, Colin Clark, who accidentally becomes Marilyn's human outlet during the circus of performing animals, is the son of Kenneth Clark, Lord Clark of Civilisation. Clarks's catalogue of the Windsor drawings by Leonardo remains one of the greatest ever works of art-historical scholarship, and his monograph (for which I provided an intro for the Penguin revised ed.) is as good as any monograph of any artist in its perception and beauty. As so often with such biopics, the first time I saw Branagh as Olivier in the film I thought "you're not Olivier". The first time I saw Michelle Williams I thought "you're not Monroe". A short way into the film, I lost the sense that Branagh was not Olivier. He became a character who was analogous with Olivier. I never lost the sense that Williams was not Monroe. This is not a matter of acting as such, since Williams is superb. It comes from 2 things: 1) Williams is always imitating Monroe, which Branagh does not do with Olivier unless it is when Olivier plays the prince; 2) more importantly, Monroe's magnetic presence on camera is such that it never fades (for me at least), however hard William tries.
I visited the Marilyn exhibition in the Salvatore Ferragamo (shoe) Museum in Florence. Very well done, if too many SF shoes included for thin reasons. Wonderful costumes borrowed from major collectors good film clips. Her notebooks of which there are facsimiles are a revelation. Questing, sad, enigmatic and poetic. One, after she had attended some university classes in Los Angeles in 1950, lists family trees of Florentine artists, Donatello, Masaccio, Lippi et al. I missed my vocation. I could have tutored MM on Renaissance art.

Sarah Simblet's talk

Aaah. That last one was posted by Judd, my excellent PA, who has been grappling with the site as well. What she says is right - a talk by Sara Simblet who worked with me for TV reconstructing the technique of the Leonardo portrait on vellum.  She spoke about her new version of John Evelyn's Silva (1664) on England's woodland trees. What she is doing is extraordinary in her quest for artistic and functional perfection.

I've found at the moment that if I remain signed in I can post blogs. But I not counting on it...