Modern life

THE AFTER TIME

A lot has been written about the effect of Covid-19 and the associated year-long shutdown, on cities. The present situation is dispiriting: so many of the amenities that attracted people to cities in the first place—theaters, museums, ball parks, restaurants, bars—are either closed or half-closed. Too many businesses have gone out of business. Municipal tax revenue is down; municipal social costs are up. Commuting is down; crime is up. Tourism—a number one industry in many cities—is down; homelessness is up. Most urban commentators have reverted to their priors. Advocates of decentralization see a further shift to suburban living; digital seers see more work at home;

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REMEMBERING

“By convention, we erect most of our monuments to salute the heroic spirit, or acknowledge acts of sacrifice of statue-genic soldiers, police, and firefighters or illustrate national ideals, such as the Statue of Liberty or the Gateway Arch,” writes Jack Shafer in Politico, in an article that argues that we are unlikely to erect a monument to commemorate the victims of the Covid-19 pandemic. He is right, at least historically—there is no monument to the great influenza pandemic of 1918-19, although the recent trend, demonstrated by the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, is to commemorate individual victims.

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TRUMPITECTURE

Alex Beam’s article in yesterday’s Boston Globe has a provocative title (for a liberal paper): “Trump may be right about one thing, architecture.” The author seconds Trump’s critique of Brutalism and quotes me that too often we get “courthouses that look like corporate office buildings and atrium-equipped government buildings that resemble casinos or upscale resort hotels.” Beam refers to traditional or so-called Classical buildings as “Trumpitecture.” Catchy, but  misleading. Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s mansion in Pal Beach, is a Moorish-Spanish confection designed by Marion Syms Wyeth and Joseph Urban in 1934-37, and his apartment in New York’s Trump Tower is decorated in an ersatz Louis XV style,

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PHILLY PANTO

Do we still celebrate Columbus Day? This summer, statues of the intrepid explorer were defaced, beheaded, and toppled. In South Philadelphia, the City shrouded a Columbus statue and recently announced its removal. It is unclear what will happen to the Columbus Memorial near the Delaware River. The 106-foot ersatz obelisk was designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown in 1992. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “The Delaware River Waterfront Corp., which maintains the monument but was not responsible for its construction, said in a statement Tuesday that the statue ‘does not align with DRWC’s mission to create and maintain a safe and welcome space for all.’” In order to “protect public safety” and “reduce continued pain” the now offensive text at the base of the obelisk,

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INFLUENCE

The cancel culture never sleeps. The discovery that Edward Hopper once copied paintings “challenges the notion that Hopper was an absolute original, uninfluenced by others” according to the breathless headline in the New York Times. A rather silly conclusion since Hopper was sixteen at the time, and was obviously using the paintings of others as an exercise, to hone his—yet unformed—skills. And since neither the technique nor the themes of these pedestrian paintings prefigure his later work, it is a real stretch to speak of “influence.” When I was sixteen I remember clumsily copying Picasso’s “Mirror Woman”;

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CANCEL CULTURE

Although some have claimed that the “cancel culture” doesn’t really exist, a nationwide Zogby Analytics poll of likely voters recently found that a narrow plurality (37 percent) supported cancel culture, with 32 percent opposed and 30 percent “not sure.” Some of the poll details are interesting: support was stronger among men than among women, and stronger in the East than in the Midwest; the strongest support was among younger voters, 18-29 and 30-49, whereas the strongest opposition was among voters over 65; and also—surprisingly, at least to me—opposition was strong among the youngest group, 18-24. Self-styled conservative voters were equally split between support and opposition to the cancel culture,

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WOKE SPEED BUMP

Museum directors, college deans, and newspaper editors take note.

A few weeks ago a petition spearheaded by a San Francisco Bay Area high school senior was submitted to the Trader Joe’s supermarket company that included the following claim. “The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes [sic] other cultures — it presents ‘Joe’, as the default ‘normal’ and the other characters falling outside of it … The common thread between all of these transgressions is the perpetuation of exoticism, the goal of which is not to appreciate other cultures, but to further other and distance them from the perceived ‘normal.’” These days such statements are followed by steely-eyed demands,

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THE WAY WE LIVE TODAY

I am a latecomer to the Jordan Peterson phenomenon. I haven’t read any of his books but I have listened to numerous lectures and interviews. A 2018 interview with NYU professor Jonathan Hardt, founder of the Heterodox Academy,  about the causes for the unravelling of the contemporary university touched me close to home. Peterson appeared on the social media battlefield after involving himself in a free speech controversy with the University of Toronto, his employer. Peterson’s views have made him a lightning rod for radical left-wing critics who have trotted out the usual accusations: hate-speech mongerer,

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