I have been thinking about writing an essay called "The House that Archaeology Built" that reviews architectural patronage by foreign archaeologists in Greece. From Heinrich Schliemann's house in Athens to Fred Cooper's house in Neohori, archaeologist houses present a fascinating type of home-making. The architecture of foreign archaeologists illustrate a physical, spiritual and scholarly connection with their newly adopted home. Construction proceeds from the ground to the roof in reverse order from the process of excavation. Some of the most interesting archaeologist houses, therefore, address the paradoxical relationship between the past (the very reason to come to Greece), the present (the home that shelters research) and the future (the masonry that will outlive its occupant). The archaeologists of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) have used different strategies to deal with the paradox of building-dwelling-thinking. One unique example is the house of Eugene Vanderpool at Pikermi, Attica, 12 miles outside of Athens.
Antiquated Vagaries (April 3, May 14, May 22, 2009) has posted a great oral history project, the interview of Pierre MacKay on the ASCSA of 1959-60. Discussing Eugene Vanderpool, MacKay echoes a comment that I have heard repeated by other Vanderpool students: "The Vanderpools had a place at Pikermi. They kept themselves to themselves, very much outside the world of the school. I've never seen the place out in Pikermi, one or two special students of Vanderpool have, but basically he and she [Mr. and Mrs. Vanderpool] wanted to have two separate lives and this was respected." I have asked dozens of ASCSA members of that generation about the Pikermi house but no one had seen it. A good source might be John Camp and, of course, Cathy Vanderpool. In an earlier posting, Art Deco Beauty (Dec. 2, 2007), I discussed the rich cultural life of Joan Bush Vanderpool, inspired by seeing her 1929 portrait by Tamara de Lempicka. Since then, I've been collecting more information about Joan Vanderpool's friendships with contemporary Greek intellectuals. I thank Artemis Leontis for sharing with me her research on the friendship between Mrs. Vanderpool and Eva Palmer Sikelianos. Letters from the 1930s also refer to a house in Xylokastro, Corinthia, where some of the ASCSA students met the Vanderpools (Alison Frantz correspondence).
But what about the house at Pikermi? As it turns out, the house was not a secret, but treated like a celebrity house in the Greek architectural press. I came across the first reference to the house in Demetris Philippides, Athens Suburbs and Countryside in the 1930s (Athens, 2006), p. 92. This is a great book documenting the development of suburbs like Psychiko and Philothei and their innovative architectural expressions. The Pikermi house is unique because it was built around an abandoned monastery. In 1956, the Vanderpools converted a 16th-century monastery into a house. I find this to be a fantastic proposition, especially in relationship to Rhys Carpenter's Folly at Ancient Corinth (see, Hesperia article). No other archaeologist house incorporates so fundamentally the sensibilities of living in ruins. The house at Pikermi also belongs to a distinctively American preoccupation regarding restoration, renovation, cloisters and the medieval past.
The Vanderpools were one of the most influential figures in the history of the ASCSA both in terms of the School's academic and extracurricular cultural life. Unlike many other faculty, they maintained a healthy separation between family and academic life. Although they guarded their private life in Pikermi, they were not guarded about the building itself. In 1958, Greece's leading architecture journal featured an article on the house, by Associated Press correspondant Vasos Mingos, "Ένα σπίτι 400 ετών υιοθετείται από Αμερικανική οικογένεια (A 400-Year Old House in Attika is Adopted by an American Family)" Αρχιτεκτονική 7 (1958), pp. 16-21. The article includes a sketch map drawn by Eugene Vanderpool himself, showing the exact location of the house, and an architectural plan (above). The original 16th-c building, the "cloister" is stippled and the additions are shaded in the plan (above). Some 18 photographs show interiors and exteriors, along with Mrs. Vanderpool and her young daughter Ann, "a Bryn Mawr student." The article summarizes the building's history, architectural features (including Mr. Vanderpool's research for comperanda) and Spanish furnishing. The visual juxtaposition of Spanish antiques within a medieval Greek space illustrates a dominant 30s aesthetic of a Mediterranean style. Objects such as a sculpture of Catherine of Aragon were acquired by Mrs. Vanderpool's father, through the American ambassador of Spain. The Spanish interior is also interesting considering the ASCSA's interests in Crusader Greece, including the Catalan and Aragonese towers of Attica.
I do not know what has happened to the Vanderpool house. It would be easy to learn about its state of ownership and preservation. In my mind, it is an architectural landmark. Its publication in Αρχιτεκτονική marks it as a celebrity house. Unlike Greek architecture journals today, the bilingual Αρχιτεκτονική (1957-67) was widely read internationally. Greek modernist were in the forefront of architectural debates (CIAM, Athens Charter, Doxiadis, etc.) Most good architecture libraries subscribed to it, including 70 libraries in the U.S. -- I first read the journal at Clemson University's Art and Architecture library, for example. The house in Pikermi was an internationally celebrated domestic space that marks a timely intersection between archaeology and design.
There are many houses connected to the lives of ASCSA luminaries, and each one offers unique notions. The list of great houses would include Schliemann's house in Athens (designed by Ernst Ziller, 1878), Villia Ilissia (designed by Kleanthes, 1838, for Philadelphia philhelene, now Byzantine Museum), the first American School Building (1878, by W. R. Ware) and Loring Hall (1929), the Duncan House at Kopanos (1903), a series of houses designed by Piet de Jong in Macedonia (1917, built 1930, I have oral histories for a specific home in Herakleia), the Rhys Carpenter folly in Corinth (1930), Oakley House in Corinth designed by Richard Stillwell (1920s), Hill House in Corinth designed by Charles Williams (1972, after original burned down, along with Mr. Williams' dissertation manuscript), the Shear House in Corinth, the Broneer House in Corinth (1950s, currently James Herbst and Ioulia Tzonou Herbst house), the Sanders house in Corinth (1990s, on-going restoration project), the Hill-Blegen House in Athens (Ploutarchou 8), the Alison Frantz/Lucy Tacott apartment in Athens, Hill House in Athens (1920s), James Merrill's House in Athens (donated to the ASCSA and now John Camp's house), Frederick Cooper's experimental house in Neohori (1960s), the Kalligas House in Monemvasia (1980s). I'm sure there are plenty more archaeologist houses of interest and I would love to hear about them. A collective study of all these works, would also need to consider the architecture of the foreign schools more broadly, from
A model for innovative domestic scholarship that combines architecture and social history is Alice Friedman's, Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History (New York, 1998).
While researching America's relationship with Greece in the 1930s, it dawned on me that Greece occupied a parallel place in the American imagination as Ireland and Scotland. In other words, the American discovery of folk Greece happened at exactly the same time as the discovery of the Irish, Celtic and other less modernized regions of the United Kingdom. Similarities in constructing the Irish and Greek modern nation-states is well known. The revival of dead languages (Gaelic and Katharevousa) and scholarly exploitations of folk culture were common strategies in nation-building. Eric Hobsbawn has addressed modern Greece, Ireland and Israel in his classic, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (1990).
I have always wondered what thoughts may have gone through an American's mind when first seeing the Greek "national" costume, the white kilt known as fustanella. A 1934 American film promoting Mediterranean tourism makes the connection between Scottish kilts and the Greek fustanella quite direct. Narrator James A. Fitzpatrick claims direct descent. This circuitous genealogy, no doubt, reflects popular notions of the 1930s. The film, "Citadels of the Mediterranean" (click here or here), starts in Andalusia and ends in Athens. Segments 6:06-6:50 mins. shows Greek soldiers perform a dance in the Olympic Stadium. The narrator's voice explains:
"As a matter of individuality, no army has ever excelled that of Greece in costuming its soldiers. And no army or navy has yet developed a dance like the one that was staged for us by the president's bodyguard regiment of the Greek army. The origin of this unique costume goes back to the highlands of Albania and it is preserved in Athens today almost exclusively by the presidential guard. The early Roman soldiers copied it from the Greeks and during their conquest of the British Isles it was adopted and modified by the Scottish highlanders."
During the 1930s, British and American archaeologists occasionally put on fustanellas on special celebrations. American expats like George Cram Cook, co-founder of the Provincetown Players, gave up western fashions entirely and embraced the fustanella. Cook's photo above was published in a biography written by his widow, Susan Glaspell, The Road to the Temple (New York, 1927). Humfrey Payne, director of the British School in Athens (1929-1936), was another such figure "going native" for special occasions, the local festivals in Perachora. See photos in his biography, also written by his widow, Dilys Powell, The Traveller's Journey is Done (London, 1943). The American School's photographic archive contains many images of American archaeologists sporting Greek costumes. At first glance, such cross-dressing may be interpreted as a form of orientalism. But the story seems more complicated. By wearing a Greek fustannella, British or American archaeologists also evoked their own national traditions via Scotland. For some others, wearing folk costumes was an act of rebellion, sharing with the avant-garde (such as Isadora Duncan's dressing rebellion).
The Scottish relationship with Greece is also evident in the development of particularly Presbyterian attitudes. Peter Brown first pointed this out to me in a casual conversation. Presbyterians (Church of Scotland) had a different relationship with classical Greece than Anglicans (Church of England). Classicists from Presbyterian colleges, like Princeton, had specific denominational agendas.
While everyone else is obsessing over the opening of the Acropolis Museum, I turn my attention to another touristic matter, Greek food. Satellite TV, a staple of every immigrant home, has brought low-end pop culture inside every Greek American living room. The cast of characters includes Vefa Alexiadou (left), the culinary consultant in Antenna's morning show, Πρωινός Καφές (Morning Coffee). Back in 2005, Phaidon Press published an English translation of the classic 1950 Italian cookbook, Il cuchiaio d'argento. The marketing idea behind The Silver Spoon was to introduce English-speaking audiences to contemporary cookbooks used by native households. In May 2009, Phaidon hoped to make the same impact with Greek cuisine by publishing Alexiadou's Vefa's Kitchen. Friends that are expert in Italian cooking swear by the Silver Spoon; I have only tried the classic 1960s recipe for vodka-tuna pasta sauce. I hope that Vefa's Kitchen has the same impact as the Silver Spoon. See some earlier thoughts on Greek cookbooks, Mediterranean Cooking (Aug. 20, 2008)
While I'm a great supporter of culinary fusion and experimentation, I must air some complaints about a dessert variation I had in Greece. Loukoumades (fried dough balls soaked in honey and cinnamon) is a well known Turkish/Greek/Arabic dessert. Kamena Vourla, a summer resort town, is famous for its loukoumades. My sister, brother-in-law, nephew, niece and I stopped at Kamena Vourla this summer on our way back from visiting relatives in Lamia. Evoking our childhood memories, my sister and I insisted on having some loukoumades. On the menu, we noticed a variation of chocolate-covered loukoumades. My sweet-toothed 5-year-old niece was thrilled by the combination as was my Swedish brother-in-law, who argued that anything covered by chocolate must be an improvement to the original. My sister and I stuck to the traditional version. Once our order appeared, we realized that the chocolate lovers had a plate of loukoumades smeared with Nutella. They didn't complain. I had a try and found the combination deeply unacceptable. It was like shoving Vienna into Istanbul. The next weekend, I found myself on an archaeological project in Dilessi, where I was informed that the chocolate loukoumades had made an appearance there, too. The American students (who had never tried loukoumades before), moreover, were fond of the chocolated fare. As much as I support fusion and taste combinations (see Peasant Food Fusion posting), I must resist this innovation. My brother-in-law thinks that my sister and I are forever imprisoned inside our childhood memories of pure loukoumades. To a certain extent, he is right. Nevertheless, some combinations should be rejected despite their popularity. Although I would never endorse any kind of culinary essentialism mandated by a foodie police, I like to set a few firm limits: no chocolate should interfere with honey-dripped loukoumades.
"Behold the Greek Nacho,"
Mark Bittman's Minimalist column in today's New York Times, rekindled the militant state of mind I first noticed in Kamena Vourla. First, I do not abhor nachos the way that Bittman does (watch related video), and second, I find his recipe totally silly. Call it some ad hoc Californian concoction, and I might eat it. But call it "Greek" and I'll revolt. I have clipped the recipe and will certainly try it.
I cannot leave the topic of Greek food without pointing out two discoveries from my trip to Greece, a bookstore and a newspaper dedicated to culinary matters. The bookstore is called Chef in Love and is located on Em. Benaki 17, Athens; it holds the largest selection of Greek cook books I have ever seen. I was particularly intrigued by a selection of monastic cookbooks, including Τα μήλα του μάγειρα: Παράδοση της μονηστηριακής τράπεζας, 4th ed. (Indiktos, 2009). The new monthly culinary newspaper is called I Cook Greek. Free copies are available in major bookstores and on line. Last night, I tried out a stuffed tomatoes recipe, which turned out OK but was not as good as the recipe in my benchmark, Diane Kochilas' The Food and Wines of Greece (1990). Although not available in English, the newspaper has interesting and unexpected articles. My favorite is, "Τα γλυκά των 70ς" (May 2009, pp. 14-15), where Christina Tsamoura decodes the complex semiotics of Greek sweets in the 1970s. This was a golden decade of Greek desserts from a fusion perspective. Social events as simple as name days involved negotiating a whole mess of pressures, old and new, Greek and non-Greek, high and low, urban and suburban. American desserts were caught in a similar maelstrom of rapid modernization in the 70s, but Greece was under additional pressures springing from nearby European capitals. Although it embraced laxities of comfort, the Athenian middle class retained some formalities, such as always bringing sweets to house visits. These old bourgeois traditions, interestingly enough, were rather new for many new Athenians. Remember, the city's population boomed in the 70s, while "Paris of the Balkans" (as Athens was described in the 30s) became transformed into a concrete nightmare.
Perhaps, I write about food because I'm compulsively avoiding the hype over the New Acropolis Museum that opened its doors last Saturday. Christopher Hitchens, "A Home for the Marbles" (New York Times op-ed, June 19, 2009) and "The Lovely Stones," (Vanity Fair, July 2009, pp. 44-47) are typical in the media's obsession over the Elgin marbles. Bernard Tschumi's building needs to be considered in its own right. But more importantly, it needs to be related to Tschumi's architectural corpus and the fiasco surrounding the architectural competition(s) over the last 19 years. If nothing else, a Tschumi building in Greece should elevate theoretical discourse to the altitudes of Foucault and Deleuze. Tschumi is meaningless without the theoretical armature, see Architecture and Disjunction (New York, 1996). Shouldn't Deconstructivism annul the banalities of "patrimony"?
The museum competition(s) took many turns. Tracing the consecutive victories and annulments over the last two decades tells an interesting story about architecture and politics in Greece. Calatrava's Olympic stadium was an equally botched up job. On the occasion of the momentous opening, I've pulled out the journal Tefchos 5 (1991) that documents the results of the first competition in 1990. Articles such as "The 'Landscape' of an Architectural Competition" by Yorgos Simeforidis illustrate Greek architectural culture at its highest. Tschumi's museum is definitely an interesting building, but general readers might never know why. Hitchens certainly does not understand it. In all fairness, I have not been inside the building; I've only seen the exterior. For the time being, I should just stick to my area of LEAST expertise, cooking.
Much of 1980s New Wave (ABC, Duran Duran, Thompson Twins, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, etc.) has an orchestral soulful sound. These "New Romantics" reclaimed the grandeur of Swing from the syncopation of Disco. The city of Philadelphia played a minor role in New Wave with figures like Hall and Oates (who met at Temple) and the Hooters (who met at Penn). A local music scene thrived in the late 80s and 90s, although many bands, like the Johnsons, Scram and the Dead Milkmen, received limited national attention.
Philadelphia is responsible for the origins of New Wave's grand sound by means of an earlier and lesser known avenue, David Bowie's 1975 album Young Americans. On August 11, 1974, Bowie spent a week in Philadelphia, recording Young Americans at the Sigma Sound Studios on 212 N. 12th Street. It is here that Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff created what is known as Philadelphia soul or the Philadelphia sound (Bowie called it "plastic soul"). Gamble and Huff had started the Philadelphia International Records label only three years before Bowie's visit. Y0ung Americans was an important point of departure from Bowie's earlier rock persona in Ziggy Stardust (1972), or Diamond Dogs (1974). In Philadelphia, therefore, David Bowie pursued one of his many incarnations as a spiritually black artist. And it is here that he met Puerto Rican guitarist Carlos Alomar, who became an integral member of Bowie's band. Young Americans also features back up vocals by Luther Vandross and includes the song Fame, co-written with John Lennon, which became Bowie's first American hit.
I doubt that 1980s New Wave (or New Pop) was directly inspired by Philadelphia International Records. Its point of departure is David Bowie's 1975 album, which had already reconfigured the elements of the Philadelphia sound. A year after the release of Young Americans, David Bowie turned a new chapter in his musical career by moving to Berlin with Iggy Pop. The short relationship with Philadelphia was hence quickly overshadowed by a three-year residence in Berlin. The Berlin trilogy (Low, Heroes, Lodger) incorporated Brian Eno's electronic experimentation into the Philadelphia foundations.
Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 and an excellent 4-CD box set was released on the occasion, Love Train: the Sound of Philadelphia (Sony Legacy). Terry Gross interviewed Gamble and Huff in "Riding Philly's 'Love Train' with Gamble and Huff" (NPR, Nov. 26, 2008, replayed May 22, 2009). On May 19, 2009, Gamble and Huff received BMI's Icon Award.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: A new book explores Bowie's creative three-years in Berlin, see Thomas Jerome Seabrook, Bowie in Berlin: A New Career in a New Town (London, 2008). For the Philadelphia episode, see also Christopher Sandford, Bowie: Loving the Alien (New York, 1996), p. 128. The story of the Philadelphia sound is chronicled in, John A. Jackson, A House on Fire: The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul (New York, 2004).
I revel in the first few pages of Ulysses, tracing Stephen Dedalus's and stately, plump Buck Mulligan's ascents/descents in Martello Tower. The structure belongs to a series of defenses built to withstand a Napoleonic invasion, and it currently houses a Joyce museum. Last weekend, I surveyed a 15th century tower in Boeotia, so towers are on my mind. Mulligan wipes the sacramental shaving razor on Stephen's noserag and sees a snotgreen art color reflected in the snotgreen sea (the Homeric wine-dark). At one moment, Mulligan leaves the parapet and descends the stair; his song disappears in the bowels of the structure. Stephen, alone now, watches the sea, "Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from stairhead seaward where he gazed." The morning's slivers of light make the sea resonate with w's, "wavewhite, wedded words shimmering on the dim tide," and Stephen enters a reverie over his mother's recent deathbed. As we have already learned, Stephen refused to kneel at his mother's deathbed, declaring his rejection of Catholic rite and dishonoring his mother. In the guilt-induced reverie, Stephen sees the objects of his mother's youth, "her secrets: objects in the locked drawer," toys and projected memories--birdcage, pantomime, featherfans, dancecards powdered with musk, amber beads. The juxtaposition of architectural vantage (in-out, up-down Martello Tower), the landscape (the snotgreen sea) and objects (mother's secret toys) make Ulysses a most instructive exercise in archaeology, leaving aside the literary density (Hamlet, Odyssey, Yeats).
As Stephen leans over the parapet and sees "the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth," I hear my own mailwoman at the door. Examining the contents of my mailbox, I find the new issue of DWELL magazine, to which I subscribed last year but now read with disinterest. I practically jumped out of my seat when I saw this issues special feature on Philadelphia, an interview by Ken Kalfus (left). For most of the last six years, I had been living in Clemson, South Carolina, where I taught architectural history. Before that, Philadelphia was home, to which I returned to take care of a sickly mother (but unlike Stephen, I knelt). Inga Saffron's Skyline Online became my remote link to the Philadelphia skyline, my guide through architectural changes and controversies. Incidentally, I learned of Saffron only after seeing a reading of Ulysses at the Rosenbach Bloomsday celebrations a few years ago.
Last academic year, my college adviser gave a lecture at Clemson University and over dinner he noted the lack of Philadelphia literature. I had just started blogging and posted some thoughts. In Philadelphia Literature Question Mark, I projected a Philadelphia Ulysses on Kalfus and Saffron. Returning to DWELL's article "Ken Kalfus's Philadelphia" (July/August 2009, pp. 70-76), I marvel at Kalfus' brilliant suggestion, to post Ulysses on the PECO Building. The Philadelphia Electric Company Building is a 1970 Miesian skyscraper with a twist, a scrolling text at its top floors. For 35-some-years, the PECO Building was the only skyscraper towering over the Schuylkill River. It's an attractive black box with quotations of the celebrated PSFS Building (with its stationary text). I love its textual directives that change every night. It manifests a confidence in architectural minimalism and, no less, in the irrefutable power of words. The skyscraper announced facts. In 2005, the PECO Building lost its directive prominence when Cesar Pelli's Cira Centre rose on the other side of the River (a lovely building, the only Pelli project I admire). Unlike its modernist neighbor, this postmodernist signboard lacks prescriptive content. Every night it changes its skin by projecting different light compositions. The message is graphically vague and targeted, perhaps, to Richard Florida's creative class.
Kalfus' Ulyssean appreciation of Philadelphia runs through the DWELL interview; it includes an iconoclastic disregard for the PSFS landmark, a transient appreciation of 30th Street Station (Louis Kahn encouraged all his clients to come to Philadelphia only by train), and also a rare nod to Van Pelt Library (left). Very few people would admit this in public, but Van Pelt is a magical place. For me, it's the place where I discovered Ulysses. As Kalfus points out, it is open stacks and open to the public. Penn's library is one of the largest in the United States (ranking fourth, if I remember correctly). Known as "the book barn," Van Pelt has been criticized as generically modern. Designed in 1962 by the same firm of the PECO Building (Harbeson, Hough, Livingston & Larson), it provides an expansive open interior, a rational city of books. One of my favorite activities used to be losing myself, like a flaneur, in its pastel-colored metal shelves and discovering unexpected pieces of knowledge. I have friends who cultivated entire love affairs in the building. Back in the 1980s, when Van Pelt had a smoking section, the greatest cultural exchange between smoking Eurotrash (like myself) and American sophisticates (or wannabe's on both accounts) took place. As much as the university tries to keep up with Barnes & Noble, Marks' cafe will never replicate the ad hoc environment of the old smoking section.
I left Philadelphia in 2003, when I joined Clemson's faculty. Sporadic maternal visits, funerals, weddings and baptisms supplemented with the imaginative reflections of Kalfus/Saffron have turned my Dublin into a place more thought-provoking than when I had left it. The PECO Building could be Martello Tower. The very moment I received DWELL in the mail, Saffron commented on my blog posting. How more magical could blogging be? In September, I'll be returning to the Philadelphia area, starting a new academic position at Franklin and Marshall. The prodigal son is thrilled to return physically and intellectually. Joyce, Kalfus and Saffron have added to the city in innumerable ways. I cannot wait to discover Lancaster, rediscover Philadelphia and explore intersections between architecture, archaeology, literature and journalism. I have great hopes in Franklin and Marshall's Philadelphia Alumni Writers House, which I thoroughly enjoyed during my interview.
June 16th is Bloomsday, a day in 1904 Dublin that forms the subject of Ulysses by James Joyce. Philadelphia's Rosenbach Library and Museum, home of a Ulysses manuscript, celebrates every year with a public reading. Nothing can be better than a Spring day in Center City listening to readers like Ken Kalfus and his wife Inga Saffron (architectural critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer and bloger Skyline Online) reading from Ulysses. Even at the risks of sounding pompous, Ulysses is one of my favorite books. In its last issue, the rock magazine SPIN placed derision on "People who get excited for Bloomsday. [They] Are asking to be beaten up" (June 2009, p. 34). Ironically, SPIN magazine's feature article is on Jack White's new band, the Dead Weather. I cannot think of a more Joycean figure in contemporary music than Jack White. But that's another story. The editors of SPIN need to re-read rock historian Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces (1989), where James Joyce is no stranger.
This year, I celebrate Bloomsday through archaeology. I follow the footsteps of Hugh Kenner, who first revealed how the archaeology of Greece deflated the fantasy that western culture had created from literary epics (The Pound Era, Berkeley, 1971, pp. 44-49). Archaeology turned attention to the quotidian banalities, trash, chaos, rubble walls. Both Ezra Pound and Joyce were followers of this discipline, which heavily contributed to their revolutionary vision. Ulysses is difficult to read because Joyce does not take for granted the subjective voice. Archaeology is similarly irrational because cultural authorship is not evident in material culture. Our data is the day-to-day, the stinking parts of life, the smell of liver cooked by Leopold Bloom.
This Bloomsday, I enjoyed Colum McCann's editorial describing his personal relationship to Ulysses, "But Always Meeting Ourselves," New York Times (June 16, 2009), p. A19. He quotes Vladimir Nabokov on the purpose of writing: "to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might pu on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade."
If good writing elevates the stinking day-to-day, good archaeology discovers its fragrance. Ulysses should be mandatory archaeological reading. I celebrate this Bloomsbury by reading 2 pages of Ulysses every day for the rest of the year, until Bloomsday 2010.
Although a practical science at heart, surveying is also a poetic enterprise. In the 1980s, archaeologists began to use EDMs, or electronic distance measuring theodolites. Traditional surveyors were horrified to see a new generation of computer users clicking points away without understanding the trigonometric fundamental of surveying. I learned my surveying in the summer of '92 on a 19th century transit up on the top of a Peloponnesean mountain. A year later, I learned how to use an EDM Total Station as an intern at the Corinth Computer Project. Surveying architectural ruins and archaeological landscapes has given me a fantastic education across the Mediterranean. The Leica theodolite has been a loyal friend through the years.
Last weekend, the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project (EBAP) asked me to assist in setting up their surveying instrument. EBAP is an intensive regional survey going into its third season. Looking ahead into geophysical studies and excavation, the project directors recently acquired a new theodolite, a Leica TCR 407. Bryan Burns (above), Camilla MacKay and I put our heads together and explored the tool's potential. After figuring out the command procedures (each machine has its idiosyncrasies), we set up pins and surveyed parts of the ancient and medieval acropolis of Elaion. My personal interests lie in Elaion's two medieval towers, one of which sits on the acropolis. MacKay, who has analyzed the site's medieval pottery, found no evidence for occupation before the 15th century. Once assumed to be a Frankish tower, the evidence at Elaion points to an Ottoman date instead. See EBAP's 2007 field report here. Camilla and I surveyed the tower's foundations and experimented with some digital photogrammetry (using ArcGIS's georeferencing tool).
Using EBAP's Leica felt like reconnecting with an old friend. The instrument's distinctive beeps, its pale green color, the frustrating DOS command system, the bright red hard case, and even the yellow raincoat transported me to the mid-1980s, when the machine was first designed. Although intended to produce hard facts--x, y, z coordinates--the Leica theodolite elicits an entire aesthetic universe reminiscent of its contemporary New Wave music--Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Heaven 17, etc. As a machine, it has visually dominated archaeology throughout the world (see example from Iron Age excavation in Sweden here). The Leica transit has added technological flair to an 18th-century practice. EDMs emit a laser beam which is reflected back through a prism. The Total Station calculates the time of the laser's flight and deduces distance. The laser technology has removed surveying from the domain of trigonometric functions. Strangely enough, it has also absolved the surveyor from some burdens of responsibility. The archaeological user is not asked to provide a margin of error or close the angles. The Total Station's precision, in other words, is often confused with accuracy. As a result, it is a lighthearted instrument once you understand how it works. In its daily operations, EDMs demand a choreography of buttons and commands. When the reflector is sighted and the laser is sent, the instrument emits a beautifully cerebral sound like the clicking of SLR camera mirrors.
For a detailed history of the Leitz company and its transition into Leica, see Leica Heerburgg im Wandel der Zeit (1996). The TC series tachymeter was developed in 1988. I cannot help but feel sentimenatl about the Leica EDM. Using it once again on the acropolis of a Boeotian town transported me into the universe of synthesizers and drum machines, the musical aesthetics of the '80s. The Leica's sleekness, the lack of userfriendly interface (pre-Windows) and the beauty of its primary elements invokes the world of Brian Eno. Bill Caraher wrote about similar experiences and DIY punk aesthetics while trying to crack a new GPS surveying instrument this summer in Cyprus, see Archaeology, Technology, and Who is the Punk Archaeologist Now? I am struck by the minimalist technological eclecticism of the '80s Leica. I think archaeology and its surveying instruments have profoun aesthetic manifestations. I will never forget a comment that my surveying mentor made one evening in the Peloponnese. His reason for branching out into digital surveying had to do with listening to John Cage's computer-generated music. The world of Cage, Merce Cunningham, Pop Art and Black Mountain College fed the imagination of an archaeological pioneer and the generation before me. In turn, my surveying world is inspired by New Wave and No Wave, the Cure and Sonic Youth. After all, '80s music was playing on the Walkman while clicking the Leica.
One more reason to be sentimenatl about the Leica has to do with its slow phasing out. GPS surveying (especially differential GPS) is displacing Total Stations. The Leica served an interesting role of connecting the 1920s (Weimar Republic, Bertrold Brecht, New Objectivity) with the 1980s, just as David Bowie, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Nick Cave and Tom Waits connected musical traditions. In the 1990s, Leica overlapped with GPS, but GPS embodied an entirely different world: smart bombs, selective availability, Persian Gulf, Desert Storm, video games, Al Gore and corporate navigation. As GPS is winning the battle over EDM, it also eclipses the Leica's aesthetics that made the 1980s a romantic reflection of the 1920s. Surveying truly connects archaeologists with minimalist avant gardes.
To the surprise of many, the Modern Greek art market shows no signs of economic depression. On May 19, Bonhams auction house in London completed its Greek sale with stunning results, a $6.2 million sale. The sale took place in Athens and the buyers were predominantly Greek. "There is a real passion by Greeks for collecting Greek Art today," said Bonhams' agent. The clientele, however, also indicates the lack of interest by non-Greeks. Unlike its Classical or Byzantine correlate, Modern Greek art remains a closed national market, which is surprising given the international reaches of Greeks themselves as entrepreneurs or as diaspora communities.
Bonhams' auction broke many sale records. The highlights included, Nikos Lytras' Landscape ($175,800), Konstantinos Parthenis' Dawn ($566,700) above, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika's Studio with Easel ($513,220), Yannis Tsarouchis' Pasalimani ($315,160) and Georgios Bouzianis' Asian Princess ($238,800)
The lack of interest on Modern Greek art by an international audience is a product of many forces. For most, interest in Greece (tourism included) stops with the Classical and for a few with the Byzantine period. The importance of Ancient Greek in early American religious education has translated into the monopoly of Classical Studies in all Greek curricula. At the same time, Modern Greece has been so obsessively literary since its foundation, that it has ignored art history. Most national battles have been fought through language rather than the visual arts. Art history as an academic discipline hardly exists in Greek universities. In many ways, Greeks are textually over-literate but visually illiterate. The county boasts many writers of international acclaim and a couple of Nobe prizes. Cavafy, Elytis, Seferis, Kazantzakis, Ritsos are household names to literary historians. Yet no Modern Greek artist has caught the same international attention. The contrast with Modern Italy is telling. Visual literacy and cultural investment on the arts (thanks to the Renaissance tradition) trumps Greece. Roman Catholicism's Counter-Reformation visual exuberance, moreover, has made visual rhetoric quite sophisticated in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France.
While teaching an independent study on Modern Greek Art in 2003, I realized how unsual it was to offer such a class in the United States. This is too bad considering how fertile the academic terrain is for "other," "lesser" modernisms (trying hard not to use the word "provincial.") Especially in the 1990s, the pages of the Art Bulletin were filled with reappraisals of Czech, Rumanian and Bulgarian modernism. After 9/11 the focus on minor Europe shifted outside of Europe altogether. What makes Modern Greek art interesting to a globalized context is not simply the cadres of national artists but also the Greeks of the diaspora whose international acclaim overshadows that of their peers living in Greece (e.g. Lucas Samaras, Yannis Kounelis, William Baziotes).
An appraisal of Greek-American artists alone is greatly needed. It is missing because the Greek American community has not been interested in the visual arts. The Greek-American identity has been dominated by Classical Greece, a phenomenon most brilliantly explored by anthropologist Yorgos Anagnostou. While teaching a History of Medieval Architecture class, one of my students approached me for an independent study on Modern Greek art. Fotini Xydas was a Greek-American senior majoring in Art History. The previous summer, she had interned with Christie's and was involved with the Modern Greek auction. And that's how the independent study began. Coming up with a syllabus was not difficult at all. Although there was no single textbook, the secondary literature in English was ample. After graduation, Fotini received a Master's in Museum Studies and began working for galleries in New York. She is currently Senior Research Associate at Citi Art Advisory Service and also pursuing a PhD. Although I knew that Fotini was unique, I appreciate how unusual her professional choices may have actually been in a Greek-American context. I have taken an informal survey among friends and colleagues in both universities and museums looking for young Greek American talent. Many Greek nationals in are taking Art History classes in American universities. They tend to be daughters of wealthy enterpreneurs, themselves art collectors, patrons and players in the Greek cultural arena. Those undergraduates typically return to Greece and oversee the family or the family company's cultural investments. The socio-economic profile is not different from American students in that respect. Given the lack of financial aid, undergraduates directly from Greece tend to be above-average in the socio-economic scale.
More surprising is the shortage of Greek-Americans, a much larger demographic pool than the foreign students. Greek-American students flock to Classical Studies instead. Looking at my own contemporaries, I note a few Greek-American academics specializing on Byzantium. This make sense; the Greek Orthodox Church of North America plays a central role in the education of the Greek community. I remember fondly Angela Volan telling me about her childhood inspirations in Merrillville, Indiana, looking up at the Byzantine mosaics of her parish.
Admitedly, Modern Greek art is a funny animal, missing the appropriate institutions for its study. The National Gallery in Athens and Melissa Publishing House have made huge contributions to the discipline in the last couple of decades. The flourishing Greek market must reflect this academic impetus. But time has come for Modern Greek art to break outside the national borders and receive greater exposure.
During the Q&A following my paper at the Dumbarton Oaks Spring symposium, I showed a map of the Peloponnese outlining the location of 16 archaeological surveys that have taken place between the pioneering 1968 Minnesota Messenia Expedition and the present. I also made a comment that, interestingly enough, Dumbarton Oaks had not financially supported any of these projects. As I might have anticipated, my comment solicited some further discussion at the conference and over email. Below, I have compiled some of my thoughts and clarifications on the subject, namely the lack of Dumbarton Oaks' interest in archaeological surface surveys in the late 20th century. I hope these observation will not be seen as confrontational but as the opening up of a larger discussion. The map comes from my dissertation, "Monuments of Rural Archaeology: Medieval Settlements in the Northwestern Peloponnese" (2003), p. 467, fig. 69.
In the last few years, I have been researching the history of Byzantine archaeology, exploring the wonderful personal friendships and motivations that bring scholars to the discipline. The research began with studies of Gabriel Millet, the American School of Classical Studies and Anastasios Orlandos (in the DO paper) . With historiography in mind, I've been especially vigilant over the role that collections of individuals and corporate bodies have made in shaping the direction of the field. Dumbarton Oaks has of course been a major supporter of archaeological projects. But an institution's identity, I believe, can also be gauged by the kinds of projects it does not support just as much as by the projects it does support. And in this respect, Dumbarton Oaks has had a specific identity that ultimately reflects the intellectual horizons of its senior fellows. During the 1960s, archaeology experienced a theoretical revolution known as New Archaeology or Processual Archaeology, placing the discipline on its own methodological foundations and away from its traditional role as a "handmaiden" to text-based or art-based histories. This movement developed new principles, methods and field practices particularly in studying settlements and the landscape; these methods had began to be developed in North American archaeology during the 1930s. The discipline flourished in the Peloponnese with the pioneering Minnesota Messenia Expedition, known today as the grandfather of field surveys. My comment about DO's patronage referred to a map showing the location of the 16 regional surveys that have taken place in the Peloponnese since 1968. These were all "intensive" rather than "extensive" surveys, meaning that they started with an experimental hypothesis and collected data indiscriminately rather than seeking out known sites, monuments, or works of art. My comment, that Dumbarton Oaks had not financially supported any of them, is true.
DO's lack of interest for this kind of field project as opposed to all the other kinds of projects it has sponsored is historically interesting. The one way I can explain the omission has to do with the senior fellows who make the granting decisions. Most of them and especially the archaeologists, I believe, were never part of this tradition. The archaeologists had been trained in historical or art-historical traditions and, therefore, would have not been trained in archaeological theory post-1968 especially in North America. In my limited exposure to Dumbarton Oaks, I believe that some senior fellows were even explicitly hostile to this tradition and went out of their way to block it. I remember conversations with Angeliki Laiou, for example, giving me this distinct impression. In all her brilliance, Dr. Laiou had some archaeological blinders. My experience as co-director of the Morea Project has also been negative. The repeated rejection of DO support over the course of a decade seemed too consistent to be accidental; I never saw this as personal, but rather as disciplinary. Another important situation to consider is national scholarships. New Archaeology was an Anglo-American development. If you belong in a French, German, or Greek intellectual tradition, you might have missed surveys altogether. To this day, survey archaeology is an Anglo-American specialty, rarely practiced by continental archaeologists unless connected to Anglo-American mentors (e.g. medieval archaeology in Italy, Holland, etc). I remember being amused in the 2005 DO symposium, where Johannes Koder applied central-place theory, a concept so foundational in survey archaeology. David Clarke's 1968 "Analytical Archaeology" made central-place theory part of every American undergraduate textbook. But unless you were an American undergraduate in archaeology or anthropology (not in art history), you might have not even heard of it. Exposure to archaeological discourse varies even in the United States. None of my friends with PhDs from the NYU's Institute of Fine Arts, for example, have had the slightest exposure to it (despite grand projects like Aphrodisias); same goes for Princeton or Harvard, in contrast to UPenn, Brown (as of recently), Michigan, UT Austin, Ohio State, or Stanford.
I have great respect for all the projects that Dumbarton Oaks has financed and even greater respect for its directors and personnel. As the surface surveys of the 1970s-1990s are now finally getting published, however, it has become impossible to ignore this tradition. Hence it is unacceptable to do settlement archaeology, rural archaeology, or landscape archaeology without it. And I've been critical of projects and publications on settlement archaeology that ignore it. Producing architectural drawings for buildings may also be called survey, but it's an 18th-century method quite different from what we mean by archaeological survey today.
Thank you for enduring through this long elaboration explaining my comment on DO's lack of support for the great surveys of the Peloponnesian countryside through the 60s-90s. The state of archaeology is something very dear to me and a topic that I discuss at every opportunity. I feel passionate about promoting medieval and post-medieval archaeology because it has finally reached a moment of maturity, even self-sufficiency. Every year, during the Archaeological Institute of America's annual meetings, a Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology group meets and discusses the state of the field. Our goal is to create an intellectual forum, share data, sponsor colloquia and generally promote the field. The meetings are well attended (about 20 people every year) and the discussion often takes stock of where the discipline stands. We have always respected DO's contribution to archaeological research, but the consensus among American archaeologists working in Greece right now seems uniform: DO seems to be tied down by a very art-historical definition of archaeology and has missed the excitement of New Archaeology over the last half century. In that sense, I felt that my reading of DO's relationship to surface surveys is not entirely idiosyncratic but reflects a more general opinion. This of course is already a backward looking observation. The situation at DO at this moment might be entirely different. The inclusion of three survey archaeologists in last week's symposium painted a completely different picture, different even from the 2005 symposium on Anatolian settlement archaeology (that was organized by text historians). I am very optimistic about the future.
Actually, this is an interesting time for survey archaeology in general because the age of large regional projects has almost eclipsed. The grand surface surveys that boomed in the 1980s and 1990s are simply not possible anymore. The generation of pioneers, like Tim Gregory (in the Korinthia), John Bintliff (in Boeotia), Jack Davis (in Messenia; now dir. of the American School in Athens) and others, are now close to retirement age. Their projects required large groups of student personnel; field walking is labor intensive and requires large data sets (in order for the analysis to be statistically meaningful). Both the financial resources and the student interest are waning. The younger, or second, generation also lacks the heroic fervor of the first generation, who invented the discipline out of scratch. As products of the 1960s, the first generation was very utopian about the power of their methodology. Many were attacking 19th-century traditions entrenched in classical archaeology and they brought a little bit of the renegade flair. Processualism, moroever, has waned under the critics of Post-Processualism.
Most of the large survey projects in Greece are now finished. Smaller projects are trying to carry on the tradition with more limited goals. Another interesting issue has to do with the material (mostly pottery) that was collected in the first generation of surveys. It survives in bags, in basements of archaeological services; the material has now accumulated its own age, some of it has been moved, the plastic bags have began to deteriorate, tags are starting to disappear, etc. Since much of the material may need to be reconsidered (or published for the first time), there is the difficult question of reconstructing its meaning. I know Archie Dunn is dealing with this issue in Thisvi -- and thanks for pointing out that Archie has indeed received support from DO. Tim Gregory had surveyed the territory in the 1970s (I believe) but the material was not published. So it's being revisited and revamped. The new method has become old.
This is probably more than anyone wanted to know about surface surveys. I should have pointed out an additional reason why surveys may have escaped DO's immediate radar. Given their undiscriminating collection principles, surface surveys are diachronic. By covering prehistoric to modern periods, the projects were not explicitly conceived under the umbrella of Byzantine Studies. For a quick taste of the diachronic scope, I recommend "Beyond the Acropolis: A Rural Greek Past" by Van Andel and Runnels (1996), a very accessible book by the Stanford Argolid Survey. And as publications move into the 2000s, the Byzantine/Frankish/Ottoman material becomes ever more focused. Ioanita Vroom's dissertation on the pottery from the Boeotia Survey is as good as it gets ("After Antiquity," Leiden, 2003). One interesting side-effect of the diachronic focus is that prehistorians and Byzantinists got to know each other and discovered that they were equally marginalized by antiquity in the middle. So they teamed up and ganged up against the classicists.
In making a comment about the 16 Peloponnesian surveys, I did not seek to express any personal animosity towards Dumbarton Oaks, or perpetuate any battles from the previous generation. I felt it was a matter of fact that needed to be ever-so-slightly underscored. Dumbarton Oaks has single-handedly created a discipline of rural studies and a focus on every day life. We would be nowhere without it. This great accomplishment has been carried out through the careful study of primary texts, works of art and monumental architecture. Somehow, the discipline of survey archaeology, however, has slipped through the cracks. Perhaps the fault lies on us, its practitioners, for not making the data more accessible to scholars in other disciplines. Perhaps DO's art collection has aligned the institution philosophical closer to museums like the Getty or the Metropolitan and further away from contemporary archaeological theory and ethics. DO must come to terms, for example, with holdings of problematic provencance (such as the Sion Treasure from Turkey and other controversial Meso-American artifacts). I don't really know. And by no means can I claim any familiarity with the institution; I'm only an outside viewer looking in and mostly someone who enjoys trying to make sense of the recent past and scholarly
traditions.
My blog postings for the month of May have slowed down considerably because of the Dumbarton Oaks symposium last weekend and a presentation last night at Princeton University. I summarize the latter here. The Mount Menoikeion project is directed by Nikolas Bakirtzis and involves a multidisciplinary workshop at the monastery of Saint John Prodromos in Macedonia, Greece. In 2005 and 2007, I supervised the investigation of the monastery's surrounding landscape, its immediate and distant territory. The last time I was at Princeton was exactly two years ago as a Seeger Fellow. It was great to return and visit old friends but also to meet this year's fellows. The program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton is probably the closest thing to a Greek think-tank in North America (and quite different from Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington). It's an extraordinary place for generating and sharing ideas. Princeton, for me, offers another treat. Although not affiliated with the university, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens has its U.S. headquarter in the town. So I got a chance to visit the busy bees of ASCSA's publication office and to share some of my recent detective work on Georg von Peschke (a very important but unknown painter who worked in the Corinth excavations during the 1930s).
Our Mount Menoikeion presentation last night anticipates a paper that Bakirtzis, Milliner and I will give in October, 2009, at the Modern Greek Studies Association conference in Vancouver. Last night also marks the first time I've used Franklin and Marshall College as my new academic affiliation. I carried the name with great pride. For more information on the Mount Menoikeion workshop explore the website here.
The Sacred Grip
Landscape and Art in Mount Menoikeion (18th-20th Centuries)
Kostis Kourelis (Franklin and Marshall College)
Matthew J. Milliner (Princeton University
Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 6:00 p.m.
Princeton University, Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
Mount Menoikeion near Serres, Greece, preserves a rich tradition shaped around the thirteenth-century monastery of Saint John Prodromos. The monastery evolved into a major monastic center, surviving through volatile chapters of Balkan history. It is a spectacular monument of Byzantine art and architecture surrounded by an equally spectacular natural environment. In 1986, the deteriorating architectural shell was taken over by a female community of nuns whose spiritual guide, the Athonite monk Elder Ephraim, resides in Arizona. The Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University established an annual field seminar to investigate the site's complexities in its modern and contemporary Greek context. Since 2005, the Mount Menoikeion Workshop has brought together a diverse group of scholars and students from anthropology, archaeology, history, classics, religion, music and art history. In preparation for the 2009 summer research season at Mount Menoikeion, this presentation will focus on two aspects of the monastery's history: landscape and wall paintings. The early modern landscape of Menoikeion reveals an inherent tension between the ideal of monastic wilderness and its aggressive human exploitation; the monastery's eighteenth and nineteenth century frescoes illuminate the post-Byzantine aesthetic trajectory of mainland Greece.
This entire last weekend, I was physically in Washington, D.C. but mentally in the Peloponnesos. Dumbarton Oaks' annual symposium on Byzantine Studies was devoted to "Morea: The Land and Its People in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade." This was by far the most intellectually fulfilling symposium I have ever attended, brilliantly crafted by Sharon Gerstel (but more about that later). The session was attended by many colleagues associated with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Maria Georgopoulou, Diana Wright, Pierre MacKay, Timothy Gregory, Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory, Glenn Bugh, Sharon Gerstel, Mary Lee Coulson, etc.), all friends who transported me to Greece. In the meantime, another member of the American School was searching the city of Athens for a blog challenge, the search for Isadora Duncan's house at Kopanos.
In my posting, Jogging Empowerment: Kopanos (Apr. 25, 2009), I challenged Antiquated Vagaries to find the house that Isadora Duncan built in 1903. The house is an amazing document of bohemian domesticity, a work of art in its own right, based on the house of Agamemnon. The challenge was met over the weekend. This is incredible. We can all now travel through space and time and share Katie's discovery. The narrative of discovery is just as interesting as the object of discovery. Don't waste your time with my words and immediately go to Success (Antiquated Vagaries, May 3, 2009).
I apologize in advance for the lull in my blog production. Between now and mid-May, I am overwhelmed with lectures, workshops, travel, exams, grading and most importantly planning for my new job, architectural historian at the College of Franklin and Marshall.
In 1975, Lou Reed released one of the most radical albums in rock history. Metal Machine Music consists of looping guitar feedback, orchestrated dissonance, 65 minutes of noise. Released a year after the pop-oriented Sally Can't Dance, the album has puzzled historians. Was it a joke? was it a redemptive avant-garde gesture? did it fulfill an earlier record contract? However skeptical some critics may have been, this monumental double album had a huge influence. Not only did it invent New York's Post-Punk "No Wave" movement but also a new rock genre known today as Industrial. It also aligned Punk with contemporary classical music, the rarefied mechanical universe of Xenakis, Stockhausen and Cage. In an interview with Lester Bangs, Reed points out that he originally sought to release the album in RCA's classical division.
In 2007, the German ensemble Zeitkratzer performed the piece with Lou Reed and released it on CD. See Pitchfork interview (Sept.17, 2007). Last Thursday, Reed performed Metal Machine Music once again at the Blender Theater in New York, with Sarth Calhoun and Ulrich Krieger (who first transcribed the work for Zeitkratzer). See review in New York Times (Apr. 25, 2009, p. C1)
It's amazing to think that 34 years have passed since the album's original release. Excluding Sonic Youth's success, the dissonant New York scene of No Wave is completely unknown to the general public. The situation might be changing, however, through a bibliographic explosion. In 2008, Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth) and Byron Coley have published a documentary visual history, No Wave: Post-Punk Underground. New York. 1976-1980 (New York). Two other books were released in 2007,: Mark Masters, No Wave (London); Paula Court and Stuart Baker, New York Noise (London). A biography of Sonic Youth has also just been published: David Browne, Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth (New York, 2008). In so many words, the New York punk scene has found some solid scholarly footing in the last couple of years.
There have also been some serious attempts to document the visual tradition of punk rock. While attending the Archaeological Institute of America's annual meetings in Chicago (January 2008), I got a chance to see, Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll since 1967, an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art that tried to present rock's visual tradition after 1967. I must admit that the exhibit was disappointing (for a variety of reasons that I won't get into here) but at least it made one contemplate the difficulties of pulling threads between art and music. At least, it inspired me to design a class on Punk Aesthetics (which I doubt anyone would ever let me teach). For those that missed the show, the catalog is just as good, see Dominic Molon and Diedrich Diederichsen (Chicago, 2007).
Although not explicitly connected to Punk, a relevant show just opened in New York, believe it or not, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Pictures Generation 1974-1984 reflects on artists like Cindy Sherman that flourished at the hey day of Punk. Some of the artists were also part of the music scene. Robert Longo is a good example. He designed The Replacements' album cover Tim (1985) and shot music videos for New Order and R.E.M. Robert Longo's Men in Cities painting series (1979) stands out as the greatest visual statement of Post-Punk aesthetics that I grew up with (left). The Met show includes another work by Longo, a three-dimensional leaping man, American Soldier (1977). Holland Cotter uses Longo's leaping metaphor in his review, "At the Met Baby Boomers Leap on Stage" (New York Times, Apr. 23, 2009). It's unusual that this shows takes place at the Met, "a fusty backwater for contemporary art and an object of scorn in the art world" (Cotter). But the change is very much welcome. The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney and the Guggenheim have become so annoying with their "contemporaneity" and steep admissions. The Met for me has become a default in the good old world of public service.
Pictures Generation runs parallel to a "Generational" show at the New Museum. The Generational: Younger than Jesus surveys a new crop of artists born after 1976 (hence younger than 33-yr-old Christ). The title is pretty annoying. Harold Cotter's review it in "Young Artists Caught in the Act" (New York Times, Apr. 9, 2009). The Generational series at the New Museum is trying to out-do the Whitney Biennial.
The object of my posting here was simply to overview some recent phenomena in the historization of Punk. The scholarly armature is growing. Biographies, photographic archives, new performances and museum exhibits entrench Punk deeper into a hole, the halls of academic legitimacy. Still, however, there is little on Punk Archaeology. If the reader had the slightest doubt that Punk has accumulated an aged patina of cultural value, consider the following. Christie's held its first Punk Rock Fine Art auction on November 24, 2008. You can see preview all 236 lots (and respective prices) on Christie's website here.Finally, congratulations to Holland Cotter, who has won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. His reviews in the New York Times have been a guiding light.
Today, I chanced on the original version of the song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" recorded by the Four Lads on August 12, 1953. The song hit #10 in the Billboard chart. I had only known the 1980 version by They Might Be Giants. The Four Lads, as it turns out, was a Canadian group from Toronto. Connie Codarini, Bernie Toorish, Jimmy Arnold and Frank Busseri met at Saint Michael's Choir School. They performed under various names including (my favorite) The Otnorots--Toronto spelled backwards. They were discovered by American band leader Mitch Miller and moved to New York City, also known as Old Amsterdam (according to the song lyrics). "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" made the Four Lads famous. I wish I had known this trivia when I was in Toronto with fellow Byzantinist Vasilis Marinis, getting a Licentiate at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Saint Michael's College. Saint Michael's Choir School belongs to the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome and the Toronto Catholic District School Board. I'm tickled by Toronto's Catholic influence on American pop culture.
This posting is a test in transnational academic connectivity. It is the kind of challenge one might encounter in an episode of the Amazing Race, the popular CBS reality show going on its 14th season. I set the challenge for Antiquated Vagaries, a terrific blog documenting the experiences of Katie, an American graduate fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA). Antiquated Vagaries has been posting on ASCSA history from research trips to the basement of the Archives, Loring Hall and from oral histories, see Dudes: Stay Out! (Feb. 2), Dinner Table Art (Feb. 20), School Art 2: Edward Lear (Mar. 12), and Happy Anniversary (Apr. 3).
Antiquated Vagaries has also been posting on jogging, see Jogging in Athens #1: The Olympic Stadium (Apr 22). Athens is a rough city for joggers, let alone pedestrians (who are killed by cars and motorcycles on a daily basis). Posting on jogging routes is, thus, extremely helpful to other joggers (I speak from personal experience, having been attacked by dogs on Lykavittos). But from an intellectual point of view, it extends a venerable tradition of Athenian topography. Direct engagement with the modern city has been central to ASCSA's curriculum since the 19th century. Ask any 60-something American archaeologist about Athens, and they will immediately bring up Eugene Vanderpool, the peripatetic master who discovered countless sites through his hikes with students. Moreover, there is a tradition of women archaeologists whose liberation took the form of walking through Greece--without chaperons or native guides, relying solely on their physical endurance, and on their linguistic and cartographic skills. The diaries of Lucy Shoe, Agnes Newhall, Virginia Grace, Allison Frantz, or Eugene Bush Vanderpool are testament to this peripatetic empowerment from the 1920s.
Antiquated Vagaries is the 21st century version of such diaries. Although Athens is a safe city, women are still confronted by patriarchical obstacles, quite literally ... the exposed phallus. Katie describes an empowering incident by fellow Fellows: "... a few weeks ago a teenager chased after two Associate Members with his junx hanging out. To his dismay, one of those girls turned around, chased him down the hill, grabbed him by the hair, and beat the shit out of him until he cried ... a story with a happy ending! All in all, though, jogging in Greece is a pretty safe endeavor, so don't let the creepo's get you down." Truth be told, that unlike the 1920s, it's only a minority of ASCSA fellows that have enough curiosity about the modern city to venture out of the ASCSA buble today. Kudos to Katie and others for confronting Greek realities face to face and striking a post-colonial victory.
Here is my challenge for Antiquated Vagaries. It's an experiment that hopes to bridge past and present, the U.S. and Greece. In Jogging in Athens #2: The University Run (Apr 23), Katie shows a photograph from the top of Mount Hymmetos. As soon as I saw the photo, I realized that Katie wasn't standing far from Kopanos Hill, where Isadora Duncan, the famous American dancer (above), built a house in 1903. In My Life (New York, 1995, pp. 93), Duncan writes, "The barren hillock, on the same level as the Acropolis, known since ancient times as Kopanos, now belonged to the Clan Duncan. The next step was to secure paper and architectural instruments and make the plans for a house. Raymond found the exact model desired in the plan of the Palace of Agamemnon. He scorned the help of architects, and himself engaged the workmen and the stone carriers." Find My Life on Google books here
So, my challenge for Antiquated Vagaries is to find the house through jogging. I am not sure if the house survives. Athenian topographer Leta Costakis has told me that the house still exists. The only clues I have for Katie are a few published photographs below. Mind you, I am writing this challenge from Middletown, Connecticut, so I cannot join the search. But perhaps this is the beginning of a new game, an ASCSA version of Geocaching. If you have never heard of the game, here is a clue: "Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment."
Spring has arrived, and the human body reclaims the city through exercise. The human mind also reclaims the past. The Kopanos clues below are images from, D. Duncan, C. Pratl and C. Splatt eds., Life into Art: Isadora Duncan and Her World (New York, 1993), pp. 53, 54, 110.
Why would a medieval architectural historian post on airport chapels or truck stop chapels? Good question. Although most medieval architectural historians focus on churches and mosques, I prefer vernacular forms, secular buildings, productive installations, houses and landscapes. My archaeological method defines me, but it also encourages me to think diachronically. Although I have never excavated in the "New World," I am a devout follower of Dell Upton and the study of material culture as defined by Henry Glassie, James Deetz and others. Whenever possible, I use Upton's unorthodox textbook Architecture in the United States (Oxford, 1998) in conjunction with Deetz's In Small Things Forgotten (1st ed., New York, 1977).
Teaching in South Carolina (where I also lived as a kid) has sensitized me to the region's unique history and the occasional stupidity by which some "Yankees" dismiss the South as hick, racist, or backwards. After the Civil War, the victorious North administered the South as a colony-- exploiting its natural resources and managing its bureaucracies. Creating a subhuman caricature of the Southerner hick is classic colonialist strategy. So I'm amused to hear enlightened post-colonialist specialists from the obvious colonies (India, Congo, etc.) forget about the American South. Liberals in general have grown hostile to the South because of its conservative dominance. A new anxiety with the South has grown in the last few decades because Southern culture has dominated American culture for the first time since the Civil War. See Richard King," The Regions and Regionalism," in The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture ed. C. Bigsby (Cambridge, pp. 53-72).
One of my favorite books on Southern history is Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South 1920-1960 (Baton Rouge, 1987). Kirby documents the southern modernization especially in the transition from agrarian to industrial modes of production. As Deetz reminds us, even bluegrass is a modern musical form (In Small Things, 2nd ed., pp. 180-182).
A couple of years ago I got a chance to meet Shane Hamilton, an American historian of technology who now teaches at the University of Georgia in Athens. We met, thanks to our commuter wives, who both happened to be teaching at Vassar College the same year. Hamilton takes the lessons of agrarian modernization and applies it to a rich case study, the abandonment of farming for trucking. Hamilton's dissertation has just been published, Trucking Country: The Roads to America's Wal-mart Economy (Princeton, 2008). The book answers a lot of questions and explores the southern agrarian origins of trucking culture.
And today, I just learned that there is a graduate student at Yale who studies Truck Stop Chapels. Dana Byrd is a PhD candidate in Art History at Yale University. I have not yet contacted her, but I am truly excited that someone is documenting such vernacular forms of devotion and architectural space. In 2005, Byrd gave a paper at the Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware, entitled "Way Finding: Work, Space and Evangelism at a Truck Stop Chapel." I look forward to its publication.
I learned of Dana Byrd through the power of blogging. One of my students in the House History course at Wesleyan read my Airport Chapels blog. Katherine Chabla is an American Decorative Arts specialist at the Yale University Art Gallery and a constant source of information. Katherine also wrote one of the most amazing House Stories, see From 100 to 99. Once I learn more about Dana Byrd's project, I will post some details. Keep on truckin'.
I have been thinking about writing an essay called "The House that Archaeology Built" that reviews architectural patronage by foreign archaeologists in Greece. From Heinrich Schliemann's house in Athens to Fred Cooper's house in Neohori, archaeologist houses present a fascinating type of home-making. The architecture of foreign archaeologists illustrate a physical, spiritual and scholarly connection with their newly adopted home. Construction proceeds from the ground to the roof in reverse order from the process of excavation. Some of the most interesting archaeologist houses, therefore, address the paradoxical relationship between the past (the very reason to come to Greece), the present (the home that shelters research) and the future (the masonry that will outlive its occupant). The archaeologists of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) have used different strategies to deal with the paradox of building-dwelling-thinking. One unique example is the house of Eugene Vanderpool at Pikermi, Attica, 12 miles outside of Athens.
