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"Cezanne vs. Picasso vs. Gladwell"

32 Comments -

1 – 32 of 32
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Check out Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte for a brutal evisceration of Galenson's work.

4/24/08, 1:59 PM

Anonymous David said...

The insight is useful as a starting point for thinking about the careers of artists; but the data he amasses are faulty.

One example: this business about Alfred Hitchcock as a late bloomer and Orson Welles as a "young bloomer." Both were great from the start and continued great for decades.

Hitch made breakthrough films in his late 20s - part of the reason why the British press at the time dubbed him "The Young Man with the Master-Mind." Orson Welles directed great (though largely unseen) films in his 50s.

Welles's young curve peaked with "Citizen Kane" at age 25 while Hitchcock's young curve peaked with "The 39 Steps" at age 35. Welles's old curve peaked with "F for Fake" at age 57, while Hitchcock's old curve peaked with "Psycho" at age 60.

As Steve pointed out, you can't go on receipts as a measure of artistic greatness. If you do that, you will rate The Rolling Stones higher than Chopin.

(Btw, that's a peculiarly American standard of judging greatness, isn't it? How much dough was he pulling down? In other words, popularity proves worth. This is American because it's democratic: the mob in its vast numbers is regarded without question as the arbiter of all things.)

4/24/08, 2:18 PM

Blogger Jose said...

Edward Tufte has a disquisition on the silliness of Galenson's aregument here.

That anybody would take Gladwell seriously is a mystery to me. When he's right, he's trivially so, when he's not trivial, he's quite obviously wrong and out of his depth...

But there are times where celebrity trumps logic or accountability.

4/24/08, 2:19 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Steve, once again you've shown how insensitive you are. Don't you understand what he's trying to say? He's saying, some are slow learners but that's OK. They may become geniuses later on. How do you know for sure that they won't? Who can tell, after all? ("Can we actually know the universe? My God, it's hard enough to find your way outa Chinatown" -- Woody Allen.)

Maybe all those kids who still can't read at the 8th grade are just, well, "seekers?" (See, I myself feel today kinda like a "seeker" -- knowing I got out of the bed on the wrong side. I know I'm seeking my glasses, but I just can't find them, nor can I remember why I was seeking them in the first place.)

Why are you so insensitive to the fact that Gladwell can't disown his own reasoning any more than he can disown Erskine Caldwell or Imglad Wellhowboutcha (an Indonesian voice artist that can imitate cuckoos in the chord of Cb7#11 in solo and a capella)?


JD

4/24/08, 2:19 PM

Anonymous dearieme said...

Rembrandt.... Sylvia Plath: the man must be a tit to think... oh why bother? Tit, tit, tit, tit, tit.

4/24/08, 3:49 PM

Blogger Glaivester said...

david:

Actually, Orson Welles last role was a pretty good one, too - a death star-sized Transformer who ate planets.

4/24/08, 4:36 PM

Blogger Ryan said...

It's like the tortoise and hare fable, except in this version everybody can be a winner at the finish line. One thing that really bothers me is the "you can be anything" philosophy given enough effort.

I once worked with a woman who was built like a linebacker, as was her little girl, who was enrolled in dance classes. It was obvious that she probably clomped around the dance studio like a Clydesdale among the lithe girls and was no doubt ridiculed. A better option for her would've been softball or the hammer throw (or shot put or discuss).

4/24/08, 4:45 PM

Anonymous testing99 said...

What about guys like Raymond Chandler? Or Dashiell Hammett? Both couldn't work in their original professions, so switched to writing at a late age (relatively). They fit neither model.

4/24/08, 5:08 PM

Anonymous Canson said...

Steve,

I enjoy the ax you grind for fool Gladwell almost as much as the ax you grind for cool Obama. The vacuous quality of their ideas and the chum swilling eagerness of the boobs that uncritically lap them up must be a 150 proof shot of inspiration for you. You are a thinking man's loser and I admire the integrity you display by refusing to spin the truth for gain and favor.

4/24/08, 5:20 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gladwell : public intellectual

Obama : transcendent politician

4/24/08, 5:57 PM

Blogger Mary Pat said...

Well, it's definitely true that it takes longer for some students to get some concepts than others. Abstraction doesn't come at the same speed for everybody.... but as Gladwell doesn't want to admit, for some people, it comprehension never comes at all, no matter how good the education you throw at them.

And you know what, Malcolm? That's okay. It's okay that I will never be able to slam dunk or hit a hole-in-one. It's okay that some people can't read Chinese (whether their native language or not.) And it's certainly okay that most people won't get calculus. They don't need to.

But no, math is the ruler by which worth is measured, evidently. Low ability in math keeps people out of certain lucrative jobs, which is true. My lack of athletic ability or good looks keeps me out of certain lucrative jobs as well, and I'm not crying over that.

But of course, if he admitted that, nobody would be interested in paying his speakers fee. Carry on, I guess.

4/24/08, 6:16 PM

Anonymous abe said...

"Enough about Gladwell."

Are sure, Steve? Because you can keep talking about Gladwell all you want. It's plain you want to.

4/24/08, 6:39 PM

Anonymous Henry Canaday said...

It is interesting that the only subject the New Yorker has so far taken seriously enough to reject Gladwell's pretentious wind-bagging on is art. Now if Gladwell is foolish come up with a botched analysis of the maturation of cartoonists, a topic the New Yorker really knows well, he really risks becoming persona non grata for a while.

4/24/08, 6:43 PM

Anonymous abe said...

It should be mentioned that Gladwell clearly has a higher IQ than Steve, thus explaining his superior socioeconomic status (i.e, he doesn't need to beg for money from his readers like Steve.)

4/24/08, 7:12 PM

Anonymous DissidentMan said...

abe wrote:
It should be mentioned that Gladwell clearly has a higher IQ than Steve, thus explaining his superior socioeconomic status (i.e, he doesn't need to beg for money from his readers like Steve.)
Just like Gallileo was clearly in the wrong because the much more powerful church said so. Might/wealth/popularity makes right, I take it?

4/24/08, 7:32 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Vintage Sailer, and why Steve is a major intellectual and Gladwell is a corporate sellout.

4/24/08, 8:01 PM

Anonymous abe said...

Might/wealth/popularity, in the medium in which both Sailer and Gladwell are engaged--are probably a function of intelligence. The fact that Sailer is so concerned with Gladwell is a testament to his apparent need to tear down someone clearly superior to him at his own game. Yea, Gladwell's article got rejected (I wonder how many articles are rejected by the New Yorker) where as Sailer couldn't keep his gig at UPI. I wonder what's more pathetic.

4/24/08, 8:33 PM

Anonymous MZappala said...

With artists, the single biggest variable is age of death. For example, two of Galenson's young bucks are Vermeer, who died at 43, and and Van Gogh, who died at 37.

Plath, another of his "young bucks," died at 30.

If he wanted to make this point he would have done well to substitute Emily Dickinson for Sylvia Plath. They both peaked in productivity at 30, but Dickinson went on to live for a few more decades afterwards, still writing, but producing nothing like what she did in her most productive 2 to 3 years.

4/24/08, 8:35 PM

Anonymous Geronimo McTavish said...

Abe - Gladwell is a corporate toady (or arse licker as we would say over here in the UK), he tells smug people what they want to hear, there is always a market for that.

4/24/08, 8:46 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Brilliant post, Steve. If it weren't for your need to write about HBD, I think you'd be cleaning up writing magazine articles like this, fluently arcing from Renaissance painters to baseball hitters.

Your description of Cezanne's difficulty with perspective reminded me of this poem by the great Stephen Crane:

There was a man with tongue of wood
Who essayed to sing,
And in truth it was lamentable.
But there was one who heard
The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood
And knew what the man
Wished to sing,
And with that the singer was content.


- Fred

4/24/08, 9:29 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Excellent post Steve. Gladwell takes examples to far. And anyway, taking samples of rare, idiosyncratic artistic pioneers, isn't going to tell you much about anything.

Though I'm sure he makes it entertaining enough.

4/24/08, 9:40 PM

Anonymous simon newman said...

abe:
"...where as Sailer couldn't keep his gig at UPI. I wonder what's more pathetic."

Socrates couldn't keep his gig at Athens, either.

4/25/08, 4:09 AM

Anonymous poor richard said...

There is such thing as a seeker. Abraham Lincoln said that even as an adolescent, he had a passion or obsession for rolling an idea around in his head ("quartering it north, south, east, and west") until he could put it in plain and simple terms and felt he really understood it. He described himself as slow to learn and equally slow to unlearn.

The problem is not the "seekers." The problem is the kids who just do not give a damn about knowledge. The kids who would rather shoot hoops than crack a book.

There is a big difference between actively, slowly seeking to understand, and refusing or failing to learn while teachers fruitlessly drill information.

4/25/08, 4:29 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Rembrandt.... Sylvia Plath: the man must be a tit to think... oh why bother? Tit, tit, tit, tit, tit."


I don't know dearime. Maybe he's a prick like.... Unlike you, I'll refrain from a chorus.
Actually I think Austen, Emily Dickinson, George Elliot or a Bronte would have been a better choice representation of female genius.

4/25/08, 5:06 AM

Blogger Thursday said...

Steve:
Your theory assumes that Cezanne actually isn't very good. While he certainly does have his flaws, I'd say he actually does deserve his rep.

4/25/08, 7:40 AM

Anonymous David said...

RE: glaivester

The bashers are out when Welles is about!

What about Hitchcock's dreadful promo for "The Incredible Shrinking Woman"?

Both men did all sorts of commercial trivia to keep up the shop and the bank account. Stuff they didn't write or direct, like your example. Welles did a number of beautiful voice-overs and short story readings around the time of "The Transformers"; why not refer to those instead?

Have you seen "Chimes at Midnight"? Wonderful - and it was made 25 years after "Citizen Kane."

4/25/08, 11:04 AM

Anonymous David said...

Father Coughlin was a better analyst than Steve is - because Coughlin pulled down more dough. I fully expect Abe to genuflect to Coughlin. Not.

What type of person worships money and multiculturalism? This type sets the tone of America' culture of falsehoods and death, that's for sure.

4/25/08, 11:12 AM

Anonymous Martin said...

I've never been as fond of the visual arts as of music. However, even I can recognize that there is real talent involved in painting up through the early part of the 20th century at least. Most of what passes for art these days can most charitably be described as "crap".

However, there is something about painting and such which is different than music. If it were discovered that some particular painting - Van Gogh's "The Potato Eaters" for example - were not painted by Van Gogh but by someone else, I suspect that it's value, in dollars I mean, would plummet. But if it were discovered that Beethoven's 5th symphony were not composed by Beethoven, but by some unknown admirer of him, it would still be played just as much.

The provenance of a painting has much more to do with its perceived worth than is the case with music. That's reflected even in the way that it's presented. An art exhibition is usually of the form: The works of this or that artist, or paintings by artists of this or that particular school, rather than just: here's a bunch of pretty pictures. A classical concert however, is quite often a grab bag - a symphony by Mozart, an overture by Mendelssohn, and then some big concert piece by Rachmaninov or Ravel.

4/25/08, 11:39 AM

Anonymous rast said...

It should be mentioned that Gladwell clearly has a higher IQ than Steve, thus explaining his superior socioeconomic status (i.e, he doesn't need to beg for money from his readers like Steve.)

Correct. Gladwell is smart enough to tell elites what they want to hear, while poor dumb Steve keeps harping on unpopular truths.

4/25/08, 12:00 PM

Anonymous James Kabala said...

I believe that that analysis of Schulz's career is generally agreed with. Christopher Caldwell had a good article back when Schulz retired (and then almost immediately died)

I believe even Richard Weaver, in his attack on modern art in Ideas Have Consequences, conceded that Cezanne was the one modern artist who had genuine talent. I'm not very familiar with his work myself, however.

4/25/08, 4:56 PM

Blogger Glaivester said...

david -

The bashers are out when Welles is about!

David, you misinterpreted me. I wasn't intending it as an insult.

I have the entire original Transformers cartoon series on DVD, as well as both the tape of the movie (although I think I lost it), the DVD, and the 20th anniversary special edition DVD.

I actually admire Welles for his final role, although I am aware that msot people think that playing a character on the cartoon show that was my absolute favorite as a child is a low role.

I think that Wells (wherever he is now) should be proud of having played Unicron.

4/25/08, 5:23 PM

Blogger ricpic said...

Pisarro puts both Picasso and Cezanne to shame. But nothing wierd about him so of no great interest to the cognoscenti.

4/26/08, 5:52 PM

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