The AVE from Madrid to Barcelona

The Witches of Eastwick

John Updike: his prodigious facility and output raised doubts in my mind. A great writer, no question about it, with unparelleled command of the English language, as every casual reader of the New Yorker would know. But was he a great novelist, like Bellow or Roth? Prompted by Martin Amis, I tried. The first thing that struck me was his comic gift. Then, his incredible ear for dialogue: the telephone gossip between the three witches, the appearance of Darryl Van Horne (remember Jack Nicholson in the movie?): you are there. Little by little, other layers appear: the cruelty, but at the same time the vast knowingness. With infinite subtlety, he conveys every shade of meaning about relations between men and women, their yearnings, loves, rivalries. There is a familiarity with the mysteries of the universe, the ebb and flow of life. Updike was Piscis; he has the wisdom and the distance of the sign. His light touch does not make him any less profound than others more prone to display their intellectual bagage and their angst. How come this man never had the Nobel prize? It would have been richly deserved.

Lolita

Taking advantage of the summer lull, I am dutifully reading Lolita, prompted by Martin Amis' enthusiasm, by Richard Prince's collection of first editions in numerous covers and translations, by the lure of a twentieth century classic. No doubt, Nabokov is a virtuoso: "Lo.Lee.Ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth". Try it out: it is exact, precise like the best parts of his belaboured prose. But I must confess mixed feelings. Like all virtuosos, Nabokov finds it hard no to show off his mastery. To catch the translucent diamonds, one has to cut through much dead wood, climb over alliterations, swim past elaborate descriptions, master clever puns, decipher erudite allusions and puzzle over word games. And the humour? Yes, the text is suffused with it, but I haven't enjoyed yet one single laughing out loud moment. The best? The alluring nymphet herself, with her slang, her languorous poses, her sharp repartie, her mixture of kwowingness and naiveté.

Leonard Cohen live in Lisbon

Masterful, superb... it's easy to run out of superlatives to describe Leonard Cohen's concert yesterday at Pavilhão Atlântico. For close to three hours, his catalogue of classic songs was delivered with deep subdued feeling and insuperable precision.  The band was perfect - is there any other word? - and Cohen himself, his voice intact, his body lean, presided over the show with majestic serenity like the high priest of song he is.  Time flied, the audience roared and a beatific smile of elation and gratitude came over me.

Globalization

In the 1930's, two Swedish economists formulated a simple law of economics which goes a long way towards explaining some of the dynamics of globalization. The Hecksher Ohlin theorem states that a country will tend  to specialize  in sectors which use the factor of production it possesses in relative abundance. Thus, countries with abundant labour, like China or India, will tend to produce labour intensive goods whilst countries rich in capital, like the US or Germany, will tend to specialize in capital intensive goods. This apparently self evident law has a corollary: as world trade expands and the global economy becomes increasingly integrated, the cost of these two factors of production will tend towards equality across countries. Thus, the cost of labour will tend to fall where it is high, like in Europe, whereas the remuneration of capital will tend to rise, because capital is scarce in less developed countries with high demographic growth rates. As the cost of the factors of production become more similar across countries, so do their social structures. Hence the rise of inequalities in the developed world, where salaries are increasingly compressed - just ask any regular "mileurista" - and an increasingly smaller part of the population - those who have capital - get richer and richer. If you want to go more in depth into this, read the work of the brilliant French social scientist, Emmanuel Todd. If not, just stay with Leonard Cohen's age old wisdom: "the poor stay poor and the rich get richer ... as everybody knows".

A country made for walking

From pictures and novels, everybody has in mind a familiar image of the english countryside: lush greens, rolling hills, white cliffs, a strong sea wind, boys dressed in white playing cricket, horseriding in country lanes, elaborate picnics, classic convertibles in narrow country roads with old gentlemen and young ladies. Well, after a recent weekend in Sussex and Kent, I can confirm nothing has changed. Globalization is still kept at bay in these counties. Life remains much as it was and as it should be. 

Victor Pimstein

Blue is the dominant colour in Victor Pimstein's new show at Joan Pratts, in Barcelona. The line in the horizon, abstracted landscapes, chinese ceramics are distilled into pure evocative images  at once familiar and exotic. We are in a realm of rarefied imagery. The gloss of the painted image, the steady glow and perfect finish of these works only  add to their mystery. 

Celebrity culture

Yesterday, 45 000 people went to Real Madrid's stadium to greet Kaka, the new brasilian star acquired by the club for 60 million euros. They cheered wildly the short speech by the club's president, the real estate magnate Florentino Perez, and the even shorter speech by the star, who appeared fully clad in white, like an angel, with Real's trademark equipment. Real Madrid, who is expecting even more fans to greet Cristiano Ronaldo, who was purchased for 92 million euros, feels sure that these are great investments, not because of the goals they are expected to score but because of the financial returns in publicity and merchandising. This is celebrity culture gone awry. Politicians are hounded by the press and seen as little better than criminals; except in Italy, if they have entertainment value like Berlusconi. Now that ideals have vacated the realm of politics, they seem to be fully invested in football. Great players are no longer merely stars, they are heroes. 

Pina Bausch in memoriam

She was a very great artist. Like Wagner, she invented a new form of total art, turning ballet into a metaphysical and narrative genre. I had often heard great things about Pina Bausch but nothing prepared me for the overwhelming beauty and emotion of Agua, the first show of hers that I saw (CCB, Lisbon 2003). Since that first experience, never ever did I miss an opportunity to catch up on all her works that I had criminally overlooked in the years before. I managed to see Cravos and Ten Chi (Teatro de São Luiz, Lisboa 2005) , the great Cafe Muller — with herself performing — and The Rite of Spring, (Liceo, Barcelona 2008). I wish I had seen all of them.

The artist as icon

And now for something completely different. Taschen has just published a fabulous book retracing the entire career of Jeff Koons. It is impossible to look at his work without smiling. Koons himself is always smiling, as if inviting the viewer to share in the enjoyment of his work. It's schmaltzy, crunchy, shiny and glossy. His pieces are instant, cheerful, icons of popular culture. With the exception of the "Made in Heaven" series, which seem strangely literal, self indulgent and cold and whose shock value comes more from its sheer bad taste than from its explicit sexual content, Koons manages to combine wit, warmth, technical perfection and a complex simplicity in his multiple cross references to consumer culture, pop art, infantile imagery and sexual tease.  

The painter as hero

Julian Schnabel is a man of bold gestures. He is grand, immodest and generous. He built himself a palazzo on the Hudson river, when he decided to change medium he bypassed video and went directly to commercial filmmaking and, meanwhile, made a name for himself as a decorator, eschewing modern design for rich colours and deep textures. He is also squarely out of fashion. No respectable museum will touch his work. Is this perhaps unfair? The other day I stumbled upon a book published by Skira retracing his career and, much to my surprise, felt a strong compulsion to buy it. All of a sudden, his famous broken crockery paintings, which had always seemed to me slightly repellent, appeared full of energy and depth. His newer material, bold strokes of paint on found images, seemed beautiful and poetic. It seemed quite refreshing to find art that is openly emotional done by a painterly painter, as opposed to the dessicated, intellectual pieces  that fill so many museums and galleries these days... 

Museum night at MACBA

Performance art at the chapel: german/spanish rock by Monsters and Miracles. Kids, skaters and immigrants at the MACBA plaza. Art objects (Matt Mulligan, Rita McBride) and Manel and Victor having a good time inside the museum. The museum director chatting at the door. End