One-upmanship

I was recently given the book ‘The Forger’s Spell’ by Edward Dollnick. This is a story of a Dutch painter called van Meegeren who painted in the 1920s and 30s, and it goes like this. Han van Meegeren was a painter of, apparently, little talent. Or so the critics said. Van Meegeren himself had a different idea, and was not entirely thrilled with the way his peers viewed him. He quickly came to the conclusion that if he were to come to the recognition that he thought he deserved (and his lifestyle demanded), he would have to go beyond himself. And beyond himself he went. Great painter or not, van Meegeren had the cunning that would fool just about the whole art world of the time and make for, what appears to be, a colossal hoax.

His plan was simple. He would imitate the style of one of the great Dutch masters. But mimicking a given style would not be enough. If he was to stand a chance of ever passing as a 16th century Master, he would have to use the materials of the 1600s, or at least replicate how 1600s material would appear in the 20th century. Living in the Netherlands, it was not difficult to find a 1600s oil on canvas painting. He would first have to diligently scrape off the paint. An interesting detail (as always where one finds the devil!) is that solidified oil on canvas becomes harder with time. Van Meegeren was aware of this as well as of the fact that the paint’s hard texture would become the one challenge to beat. Fortunately for him, round about the time of our story, a (n other) famous Belgian called Baekeland would discover a material known as Bakelite, or simply ‘plastic’ (well, early plastic, we use other stuff today). Van Meegeren would spend years experimenting with baking paint contortions based on Bakelite. Most of them would end in baking disasters, but with the right instincts and lots of patience, he would eventually manage to calibrate the temperature to reproduce the desired texture. The story goes that when he took the canvas off the fire and saw the result, he cried!

The Master to imitate would be Vermeer (of the ‘Girl with the Pearl Earring’ fame). Note that he did not copy Vermeer's paintings; that would have been too obvious. He studied him and then picked few signature elements of the grand painter and set out to revive him! His first painting would find itself, as though by chance, in the hands of the most known expert. He then took the back seat while the world rejoiced in the thought of a newly discovered Vermeeer. Or actually, 6 new Vermeers. One by one they would find their way in the hands of gullible art collectors! For those of us not in the know-how, there are only about 30 authentic Vermeers (unlike Rembrandt who has a lot…a lot more!) so the art world is starved of the Delft mastery (see what I mean by cunning?)!

There was simply no end to the critics’ vanity! It turns out that van Meegeren wasn't a very good painter at all! His Master forgeries have a number of technical errors, which are visible even to my inexpert eye. But the more errors specialists found, the more critics authenticated his work, as "...the master is clearly learning!"

Van Meegeren delighted in his accomplishments and enjoyed becoming a very rich man in the process. But secretly, like any criminal(or is this just too strong a word?), he was itching to be discovered, and tell the whole world that he had fooled them; that he had fooled them big time! At the end of WWII, and suspicious of all the wealth he had enjoyed during the war, the whole thing inevitably unravelled. And while van Meegeren would be more than happy to demonstrate in the most minute detail howdunit, the critics never believed him (!!). The Dutch public deemed him a hero as the one who had swindled Goering (one of his paintings were sold to Goering who was a sucker for anything vaguely valuable!). Nevertheless, they tried him and eventually charged him with deception and condemned him to one year in prison. He died before he could serve his term. His paintings were removed from the main halls of the various museums they were exhibited but they still remain some the most sought out paintings by visitors.

While I am not going to condone deceit, there is something delightful about the one-upmanship of this story. For anyone who has ever tried to publish in academic journals, and has received ‘expert’ referee reports, this story will strike a very fine cord…

Over Soaps

There is a high cost involved with getting hooked to a new soap. In economics we call this (‘we’?? …classy!) fixed cost. With this in mind I am not keen in getting to watch anything that has the word ‘pilot’ attached to it, in fear of being hooked on something that isn’t very good, but keep on watching nevertheless, simply out of curiosity as to ‘where are they going with is’, or doubt that maybe there is an interesting twist somewhere down the line that will make all previous 24 episodes make sense! I simply don’t do that anymore…it is bad enough trying not to watch an episode of sex and the city every time they come up! But there has been talk about this series that has been and gone and by-passed me like wind in the Aegean. And I have now heard this from a number, of what I’d like to think are reliable sources. So, I took a leap in the dark and opted to give Pascal a 7-season West Wing present for his birthday, and in doing so, also give myself a little one too. No harm in that. Few weeks ago, we took the fling film out of season one and weekends have not been the same since, and have no intention of reverting to being whatever they were ‘before’, till we have been through the whole seven seasons, I have googled the writers, the characters and all matters of high and low importance.

And it is not difficult to decide what is great about the series. The speed for one, gives a certain element of immediacy that makes you feel that '....yes .... we can'. The issues are so actual, pressing and close to the bone that we wonder whether we wouldn’t qualify for deputy chief of communications to the white house ourselves! But the dialogue…well, I am as much of a sucker for new and fancy word as the next guy (like my summer experience of ‘discombobulated’), but West Wing takes this to a whole new level, with words like Shibboleth (which by the way I knew but had forgotten), the odd diplomatic parlance like ‘plenipotentiary’ and ‘filibuster’ or the deliciously loaded word of “buxom” uttered from no other that the eccentric British ambassador to Washington, Lord Marbury.

Cast and characters make for a great match, with Martin Sheen at the driving seat, a very worthy president. I think Toby is my favourite character though, simply because he is so principled. I like Sam too because he is a good writer (something I had always wanted to be) but mostly I think because I had the hots for Rob Lowe when I was 15 and he played in all those teenage films! I like CJ too, primarily because she has a very tough job and she is very quick on her feet. Josh is nice but I don’t think I would ever become a good friend of his. Leo is discrete and tough and his alcohol problem makes him all that more human. Charlie is cute and Ms Cunningham is the old lady we all want to know. Not so keen on the first lady but then we don’t get to see her much. I like how the private lives of the characters feature only minimally and the story line so far has been very much about the issues….

Just finished season two tonight and I am already getting nervous of what weekends will look like when the whole thing is over.

Zed's dead baby

We watched “Inglourious Basterds” the other day. Brilliant, but one has to have a highly developed Tarantino-esque taste! It is not for the uninitiated or for the light at heart! I regret to say that he remained faithful to his love for violence and knives, but sculling?! What is he thinking? I suppose one could see the humour in it but one has to keep watching and not covering one’s eyes all the time!And just as I was getting interested in baseball and the Red Sox, batting just went and got a completely new dimension! And mentioning Fenway Park just doesn’t have the intended ring!C. Waltz was excellent…though! Do I hear he is on the run for the Oscar? Well…it would be very well deserved. Actually, the rest of the cast were excellent as well! Brad Pitt gets an honourable mention for his brilliantly failed attempt to speak Italian! I loved the way Tarantino used music for effect (and boy was I touched with David Bowie!). The film had a number of good one-liners but was unfortunately no match for his previous efforts, of “I love you honey bunny” fame!

Hello

So there it goes. I had been thinking about this for a very long time and now that technology is in place I decided to launch my "seemingly random thought of the day". You see, it was going to be a just "random thought of the day" but when you google this, you discover that you are neither alone in your brilliance, nor is it actually random, as the thought generated actually serves some greater, albeit not always conscious, cosmic purpose. So here we are then and my "seemingly random thought of the day" is exactly this, my blog-birth. Emulating Jeffrey Eugenides' first line from "Middlesex", I am thus born twice. And I am hoping that my digital re-birth will prove worthy of the task.

I will be experimenting with the site as well as the content, but my main purprose is to write. And it doesn't matter really what it is, so long as it just gets written. So how's that for random?