There’s a show on at the County Art museum: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America, 1880–1920: Design for the Modern World which I visited with my folks yesterday. I’ve always liked “Craftsman” style, but didn’t have a good feeling for how it fits in with other styles of design and schools of art. I’ve always been partial to Green & Green craftsman style, Art Nouveau and Tiffany, Jugendstil, Bauhaus and the whole German Expressionist movement, but this exhibit gave me a glimpse into how they interrelate.
The show is organized by country, which gives a strong impression of the regional variations of the style; this could, of course, be an artifact of the pieces available in the collection.
What surprised me was the diversity of the movement: everything from almost pathologically-detailed Islamic-inspired detail work to very plain, simple work. It seems that one of the common threads in the Arts and Crafts movement, aside from the stated goals, was a sense of elegance.
As ever, the exhibit made me want to get out the calligraphy pens, the stained-glass and soldering iron, clay, woodworking tools, and learn to make jewelry all at once.

I braved the rain last night to see Joanne Jaffe and Evelyn Wilson’s opening at The Gallery of Functional Art at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station.
Joanne is showing a collection of outstanding vessels decorated with Aztec-inspired sgrafitto, along with a smaller collection of abstract sculptures with a columnar and egg-like shapes.
Evelyn is showing sculptures of people, mostly in small groups, in sorts of tableux of everyday life.

It’s worth going to check out!

OK. This is a test of the new system. We’re upgrading from fogbound.net 2.1 directly to 3.0 with fancy blogging software. Isn’t it a little late to be jumping on this bandwagon? Yes, yes, yes it is. But this is schnazzier than updating pages with vi.

If you’re looking for all the old stuff, fear not! You can access it via the “Old Stuff” link on the left.

F. Scott Fizgerald, 1922, read as an e-book from BlackMask.com

There is little to say about Fitzgerald that has not been said (with copious references and footnotes) by my betters. So I will merely say that this book has little to recommend it if you’re looking for sympathetic characters, an engaging plot, or even a rollicking good story. It’s a long book for the events it describes. The main characters are frustratingly shallow, misguided, and objectionable on virtually every level.
But don’t take any of this as a recommendation to avoid the book.
The Beautiful and the Damned has an astonishing collection of descriptions of people in circumstances that are so evocative that you could swear you’d been there. It features goosebump-inducing descriptions of people’s internal dialogue that ring frighteningly true. Fitzgerald makes their despair and desperation palpable. You’ll find yourself sharing the characters’ frequent need for a drink. And some of their less-shallow moments of self-reflection are nothing short of beautiful.

Susanna Clark, 2004, Bloomsbury.

Here’s a book that was widely hyped, and largely lives up to the expectations set for it. In a faux-historic novel, two men work alternately together and at odds in their efforts to return English Magic to its former prominence. The writing is solid, the descriptions evocative, and the story convincing. The characters are human, interesting, and provide occasional surprises to keep things moving along. While Clark has an overfondness for footnotes that tell too much of the story (leave us some mystery, please!), the style is reminiscent of Charles Palliser, although without all of his characteristic grimness.