Mao and Mozart

Since 1799, the Peabody Essex has boasted its Asian loot, booty from Salem’s wealthiest merchants, plying the China trade. In 2009, the Mahjong exhibit brings treasures from the old world full circle.

As China develops a brisk art market, subversive works of contemporary artists and social critics are pulling down millions. Riveting are the silly, smiling, identical statues of Yue Min Jun, their repetitious grin a hah! to individuality. More mind-blowing is Cao Fei’s vision of urban mess perched on an island idyll, manufactured in Second Life. The half-submerged shopping cart of skyscrapers off its shore made it for me. And I found a strange attraction to Yin Zhaoyang’s huge “Ode to Joy” - Tiananmen Square at night, glittery, celebratory, masses of people, anonymous and fuzzy. In this gorgeous painting of a killing ground, loaded with crushing memories, there is, to my surprise, (my horror?) a palpable excitement. Our hotel was just there, Kris pointed and mused on the Forbidden City.

Maybe that’s art’s forward message: something new comes from an image or a sound locked in sentiment and symbolism…how about that Marilyn Monroe Mao?...and brings the world alive again, in pain and imperfect, human. Here, on this site of carnage and outrage, a living breathing square full of people, looking up. Fireworks!

So, on this winter afternoon in symphony hall, in that familiar second movement of “Jupiter,” I heard, for the first time, the strings pounding down a pulse. A human heart under the melody. Mozart may not have lived long enough to hear it, but I did.

eBook Epiphany

Tim O’Reilly’s “Tools of Change” conference this week brought together an odd assortment of messianic bombasts (you need’em), suited executives (in or out of work, hard to tell), an agent or two (what’s the real royalty on an eBook), technology wizards with the latest apps, the coolest devices and, in some cases, an extraordinary idea. The contrasts were high, with barely a mention of the economic crisis in a week that saw Harper decimated. Some parts verged on Dadaism: The cost of free. A print-on-demand Gutenberg. Reverse publishing. Who needs a publisher anyway? The book is dead; long live the book.

At a show like this, there is plenty of room for the one-off wonders, the get-rich-quick schemes, debates over digital pricing. In a corral full of backpacks and iPhone holsters, vendor pitches not-so thinly disguised as talks, the questions bounced between improving the world, ending poverty, giving access, and finding that illusive buck on the web.

And, for me, there were transcendent moments. The young open source wizard describing a new world order for his daughter. The deeply thoughtful social software designer with a presentation full of Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Dopplr, iTunes and last.fm all in the service of elegant thought. With sweeping, arching ideas about community and access (“Think service not sale.”), building relationships (author + reader + publisher), and the grace of human connection, Gavin Bell quietly reminded us that we call them (us) readers, not users.

Tower of Babel indeed, with an occasional balcony from which to survey the sky.

Art and Science

All the same, winter is the best time for stars in Boston. Betelgeuse, Rigel, Capella and box of the brightest hang from the Great Hexagon and light up the cold night. It’s ironic that we’re Gemma, the jewel in a summer constellation, high in the sky off the Herdsman's shoulder in the dimmer half of the year.

This week the winter sky shone like ice on tarmac over Fan Pier, where we looked at Shepard Fairey’s absurd work in our new art institute. Best known for skateboards, OBEY GIANT street campaigns and that Barack Obama t-shirt, his first showing in a major museum raises the question: does mainstream acceptance tarnish an avant-garde glow? But the best part of the evening was the tiny couple arguing their way through the exhibit. Rather, she was arguing, right out loud. He was unmoved; we were shocked. And Catherine said, maybe it’s performance art. Maybe part of a plan to keep the artist's edge sharp. Who can tell where art begins or ends?

Art is perception.

One of the joys of my adulthood was discovering a pattern to the night sky. Steady constellations, phases of the moon and planets in constant progression. Light and shadow and the colors of the stars thrill me, as they have moved generation after generation. Art, I suppose.

New year, new world

Poems to the contrary, February is the cruelest month in Boston. While it makes for some pretty pictures on postcards, the days are just not warm enough, the wind is just a little too strong, and the snow is under my skin. It’s those hidden patches of ice, waiting to throw you down, that get to you. Still, the days are just a bit longer, and we’re all trying on some hope. A young president promises relief from our pain, and you want to believe. But it is a long way to summer, no joking.

So I dug out a November photo of Howth, jutting out into the Irish Sea, a bus ride from Dublin, and remembered to look up. Liz would stop in her tracks when I would exclaim the size of the Irish sky. You always say that, O’Hare, and how can a sky be any bigger anywhere. But for a small island, Ireland has a big lid, sweeping in from the west, dragging the wet of the Atlantic across the fields and up damp streets. “A soft day” is a day when the rain isn’t hard. Tromping the hills of Howth, home to the Norse and John Banville and a shower of tourists when the day is fair, on a promontory stuck out into the sea, a stone's throw from Ireland's Eye, the sky can swallow you up. Fast moving, fierce clouds mingle with the sea in a primordial swirl, and when the sun breaks through – it always breaks through – it’s a hand of god moment.

Boston this February is cruel, cold, broke. Economic slush and social calamity. But I chanced to look up, spied a star - Orion’s left foot? A wandering planet? One Twin? And the glimpse saved me.