How You Look at the Sky. A Great Teacher Looks Up.

Joseph Mallord William Turner  1775-1851

              I hereby nominate September 7 Great Teacher Day.

            Great teachers are rare and should be honored as the national treasures they are. 

            When I learned Don Gifford was coming to London on his way to give a lecture at Cambridge on James Turrell I called up my old professor at Williams College and suggested  we have lunch.  

             "Great," he said. "I want to go to The Tate.  "They've got a nifty little restaurant.  I'll meet you there."

              Two weeks later the tall gaunt figure of the great James Joyce scholar, a little bent by time, raincoat flapping, was striding across the restaurant.  As usual, he was glowing with enthusiasm. "I've been looking at the new Turner exhibition." he said. "And you know how a lot of people point to Turner as the precursor of impressionism."  I nodded as if, yes, of course I knew that.

               "Well they've got his cartoons up so you can see his sketches and he is very precise about where he places his clouds, what he does with his light.  He moves them around until he's got them where he wants them.  Which is, of course the opposite of impressionism which was painting quickly to capture a moment exactly as it was."

                He smiled.  "But the point is not where Turner fits in the arc of pictorial history. The point is how you look at the sky when you come out of the building." 

              

            

    

The Blog is off for Labor Day Weekend. Back on Tues. Sept. 7

                  While the blog takes a break, you will find a truffle or two scrolling down through earlier blogs.   
              The best one is  "The News". Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on "older posts." 
              Then there's the lap around Laguna Seca with Jimmy Vasser. And Jackie Stewart showing you how Keke does it with feathers and blood. And an in-car video with Juan Manuel Fangio in his Maserati 250F, Jimmy Clark, James Joyce.

               Scroll down, you'll find them.  And the Bugatti Veyron, lit like Michaelangelo's La Pieta.
               Monza's coming up next weekend so you might also take a look at Grand Prix Plus 
                GP+is a fine, 80 page, in depth report on the Formula One races a few hours after the race. My friends, Joe Saward, and David Tremayne, have been sticking their noses over the rail at Formula One races since you were in short pants/skirts.  So they have a huge amount of knowledge to draw on.  Here's how they describe their electronic pdf rag:
                'Grand Prix + is an 80 page magazine for passionate F1 fans. Long-established motor sport writers Joe Saward and David Tremayne have joined forces with celebrated F1 photographer Peter Nygaard to bring you the latest cutting edge electronic magazine. Between them they have the cumulative experience of more than 1000 Grands Prix - and they continue to attend every race.'
                      Meanwhile, they've been at it in Omaha.  Check out  The Top 28 Lemons of the Mutually Assured Destruction of Omaha 24 Hours of LeMons for the funniest names in racing.

James Joyce, Jim Clark, & Jesse Alexander

There are two portraits on my office wall, James Joyce and Jim Clark.  
      Joyce, along with WB Yates, revived the English language from its Victorian torpor. Mixing street slang, myth, bawdy dreams and the gyre of human history, Joyce made  the everyday thoughts of a lovable  adman, Leopold Bloom, heroic.   I was born on Bloomsday, June 16th, the day Joyce's grand glorious novel, Ulysses, (in whose shade all novelists now write) takes place. And I grew up to be an (unheroic) adman. So naturally I am biased when I put Joyce up on the wall for inspiration.
            Jesse Alexander's photo of Jim Clark is, as most students of the sport will tell you, the great portrait of a race driver. Clark's eyes have that thousand yard stare of combat.  A month later he will be dead.  A kid ran across the track at Hockenheim, a tire deflated; there are theories, no one knows for sure why his little Formula 2 Lotus skidded off the wet track to broadside a tree at 150 MPH. 

            The photo is on my wall as a reminder of the risk and intensity it takes to compete at the highest level.  And as a reminder of Jesse Alexander's great innovation in photographing the sport.  Jesse shifted the focus from the glittering, lethal machines to the men and women who drove them.  He was among the first to take motor racing beyond the level of spectacle and make it human. 
            In those celluloid days before monster zoom lenses, automatic bracketing, digital editing, etc. Jesse was on his hands and knees at the edge of the track, looking through the viewfinder of his Leica, getting to the heart of racing.  Go to his web site, see for yourself.