Sunday, July 28, 2013

Pop Art Pop Tarts

The Earlier Salvador Dali Post Threw Me Onto Another Tangent, that -- Hopefully -- Will Stand on its Own, At Least as a Conversion Starter: the Idea of Being Simultaneously Overrated and Underrated. Or, Perhaps a Better Way of Expressing This: Overexposed and yet Under-Appreciated. Or: Influential Yet Critically Overlooked. I Hope the General Yin-Yang of the Idea Comes Through.

I Realize That This is Not an Original Dialectic: Again, Conversation Starter.

In the Case of Dali He Can Be Seen as a Both a Publicity-Seeking Caricature and Yet has Provided Culture With Elements That Still Can Be Recognized Today.

However, I Do Not Mean This to Be Specific to Dali: Rather Than Spin about in Oblong Shapes I'll Toss Out a Few (Neutral?) Possibilities in No Particular Order, Low-Hanging Fruit, and See What Gets Added and What Gets Mercilessly Shot Down:

Beatles as a Whole
John Lennon as Himself
Andy Warhol
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bob Dylan
Alfred Hitchcock
Norman Rockwell

Feel Free to Travel Farther Back in Time.


Jump Ball...



52 comments:

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

If DalĂ­ were alive today, he'd be a blogger, and he'd have called it "The Persistence of Mammary," and he'd have put more jugs in it.

rhhardin said...

Digital clocks.

Cody Jarrett said...

digital what?

oh.

clocks.



I thought we'd found the source of all that humming and throbbing from the other thread.

rhhardin said...

Eternity is represented by lots of clocks flashing 12:00, like on the Enterprise after a Klingon attack.

rhhardin said...

No need to melt those babies.

rhhardin said...

The NYT isn't overrated, to judge from the stream of discount offers I'm getting.

rhhardin said...

A clock flashing 12:00 is self-aware.

sakredkow said...

Feel Free to Travel Farther Back in Time.

Well, they say that in his time Shakespeare himself was given the cultural significance that he has today. I'm not even sure what that says though.

I think Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen are fabulous pop music stars. But I also think they're about the closest our culture has to the prophets of old.

rhhardin said...

Machines can only be self-aware for short times (Heisenberg uncertainty principle), like the dryer when the load is done.

rhhardin said...

Francis Ponge said that washing machines work on active disgust, but this is doubted today.

He was trying to account for purification.

rhhardin said...

The washing machine is enfranchised by its ignoble labor, however.

rhhardin said...

Still life with low hanging fruit.

betamax3001 said...

I Have to Admit: I Thought (Hoped) This Comment Would Be rhhardin Bait.

Known Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Known Unknown said...

Comment Home > Althouse

chickelit said...

You got him hooked, betamax. Are you going to "reel" him in or cut bate?

chickelit said...

A Comment Home divided against itself cannot stand.

or

A Comment Home divided cannot stand itself.

betamax3001 said...

Re: "You got him hooked, betamax. Are you going to "reel" him in or cut bate?"

He is a Marlin That Will Break the Line.

rhhardin said...

Jackson Pollack is said to do fractals without discovering ferns.

He is no computer scientist.

betamax3001 said...

Re: "I think Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen are fabulous pop music stars. But I also think they're about the closest our culture has to the prophets of old."

I Agree With This.

My Take on the Cultural Yin-Yang of Dylan:

I Am Rather Tired of the Endless Mythologizing of a Brief Period of the Sixties: 'Like a Rolling Stone' is a Moment, But That Makes it Hard to Simply Listen to as a Song.


His Later Work Has Layers of Magic that Have Been Scarcely Touched.

In the Middle: I Find Myself Listening to 'Isis' Over and Over, of Late.



deborah said...

De gustibus non est disputandum.

chickelit said...

Go for the gusto!

Known Unknown said...

David Bowie.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

In AA sharing the time is also considered sharing.

William said...

I understand that Dali was a technical virtuoso. He was, some say, after Picasso the greatest artist of his generation. His great flaw was not his open pursuit of commercial success but his support of Franco. No one can be an accomplished artist and a supporter of Franco......,The Spanish Civil War is remembered as a Hemingway tale, an existential struggle between the forces of evil and the forces of good. Hardly. It was closer to a Kafka story where people were sentenced to death on bureaucratic whims......John Dos Pasos had a friend named Juan Robles who fought for the Republican side. Robles was a committed Communist. He was a Spanish professor at John Hopkins and something of a linguist. He translated for the Soviet general who supervised Russian aid.. The Soviet officer fell afoul of Stalin and was executed. To be on the safe side the Communists also executed his translator. The Communists claimed that he was a Fascist spy. Dos Pasos knew this was a lie. He tried to enlist Hemingway and Lillian Hellman to denounce this lie. They felt that the fight against Fascism was too important for minor distractions such as the death and libel of an innocent man. Dos Pasos wrote a book about his friend's death. That was the end of his critical reputation. Hellman and Hemingway went on to greater fame and glory..

rcocean said...

I like the Beach Boys better than the Beatles. Why? The BB's were writing about their experience in SoCal. Seems real. And they stayed away from politics - in their big hits.

So much of the Beatles is politics/philosophy for teenage girls.

And Lennon. Intelligent, but uneducated and goofy like a lot of R&R ers.

Wish I could be more positive. Need Coffee.

rcocean said...

Dali did some interesting stuff for Hitchcock in "Spellbound".

deborah said...

chick:
"Go for the gusto!"

I remember when I was about 3 1/2, and my littlest sister was a baby, my middle sister and I clashing our little juice cans together, up in the air, like in a beer commercial.

We were true Irish triplets, born within three years, to the month.

Meade said...

ratemyprofessors.com is overrated. Rasmussen Reports' presidential approval rating is underrated.

sakredkow said...

His Later Work Has Layers of Magic that Have Been Scarcely Touched.

Struth.

virgil xenophon said...

I was never a Dali fan until my two combat tours in Vietnam. If ever there was a surreal war that was it. My next assignment in the USAF was to a base in the UK. I remember (Circa 69-70) standing before one of Dali's huge "melting clocks" works at the Tate and thinking to myself: "NOW I understand.."

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

I know there is a lot going on.

But, Saltalamacchia just hit a double up against the right field wall. The ball was retrieved by Nick Markakis.

Red Sox 3, Orioles 0. top of the 6

Aridog said...

Just my thing, perhaps...but the music I was in awe of and craved in the 50's included Ahmad Jamal, a founder among many of modern jazz, and the late Ellas Bates, otherwise known as Bo Diddly an original in R&B, Rock, and precursor of Funk. I still listen to both when I can today...nostalgia you know...

virgil xenophon said...

@Aridog/

Once caught Ahmad Jamal live at a night-club in Columbus, Ohio (of all places) summer of 1965 where I was attending ROTC summer camp..

Aridog said...

@virgil xenophon ... not surprising at all. Ahmad Jamal took his music far and wide to venues large and small. He was here in Detroit at Baker's Keyboard Lounge twice a year IIRC until Baker's ceased bringing in national acts.Baker's was still a jazz spot, however. A guy I met at Mario's in Detroit last week said he thought Baker's was still open [I'd thought they closed]... and so it is ... soon I have to go back to the future.

If my cougar daughter can go to a friend's birthday cabaret at Club Gigi near me in Detroit, she can damn sure go with me to Baker's. Heh heh.

Lydia said...

He also did Destino with Disney.

chickelit said...

Beatles vs. Stones?

Everybody thinks the Stones were the hard man and the Beatles were the sissies and it's really opposite. The Beatles were from Liverpool and the Stones were from the London suburbs--you know, going to art school and shit and so it wasn't that way at all. And The Beatles--I always thought were the best band in the world you know? ~ Lemmy from Motorhead

(Y'all should google that quote)

betamax3001 said...

Re: "Beatles vs. Stones?"

Makes me Think of the Metric Song "Gimme Sympathy":

I can feel it in my bones
Gimme sympathy
After all of this is gone
Who'd you rather be?
The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?
Oh, seriously
You're gonna make mistakes, you're young
Come on, baby, play me a something
Like, "Here Comes the Sun"
Come on, baby, play me a something
Like, "Here Comes the Sun"

Good Solid Pop Song, That.

Known Unknown said...

The Beatles and Stones made it good to be alone.

Also, the acoustic version of Gimme Sympathy is really good. Best line (to me) is

"We're so close to something better left unknown."

betamax3001 said...

The Band 'Rock' is Better Than the Band 'Scissors'. The Band 'Scissors' is Better Than the Band 'Paper'. The Band 'Paper' Covers the Band 'Rock': A Covers Band.

betamax3001 said...

Re: "Also, the acoustic version of Gimme Sympathy is really good."

However, The Non-Acoustic (?) Version is the One Used With the Video, and the Video Shows Off the Singer's Great Legs. Her Voice Indicates Great Legs: Nice to Have Confirmation.

deborah said...

Unscientific/Unofficial Comment Home House Band Poll

Known Unknown said...

However, The Non-Acoustic (?) Version is the One Used With the Video, and the Video Shows Off the Singer's Great Legs. Her Voice Indicates Great Legs: Nice to Have Confirmation.

I met them. I have a photo with her and James Shaw that looks as if she is grabbing my ass.

chickelit said...

Try calling Dali llama -- you'll get flamed!

chickelit said...

@deborah: Who are "The Others"?

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

I don't know about you, but do lagging threads have a closet feel here?

I always like to be up front of the bus.

I'm free, I would not be caught dead, or alive, mangling, jingle-jangle metaphors.

Meade said...

"mangling, jingle-jangle metaphors"

Take Lem disappearin'
through the smoke rings of his mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Lem's not sleepy and there is no place he's going to
Hey, Mr. Naked Robot Man, play a song for Lem
In the mangled jangled morning
Lem’ll come followin’ you

Sydney said...

Paul Simon is over-rated

chickelit said...

What a great Byrds song from the 60's, Meade!

Meade said...

Yes but Lem's Back Pages is my favorite Byrds song of all time.

chickelit said...

Didn't Cher cover that, Meade?

Meade said...

I don't think so. She covered All Lem Really Wants to Do.