Keystone State is Key

Wednesday, a Republican judge in Pennsylvania denied the request for an injunction to stop Pennsylvania's voter ID law from going into effect. This was done in spite of the acknowledgement of all involved with the case that in person voting fraud is practically nonexistent in Pennsylvania. Although the plaintiffs are filing an appeal with the 6 member state Supreme Court, they need four votes to overturn Judge Simpson's ruling. Three of the PA Supreme Court justices are Republican and three Democratic. I don't hold much hope for the appeal to be successful. We've already seen what an ideological, politically motivated court can do – from the denial of the Bush Florida recount to Citizens United. I will be totally surprised if one Republican judge votes on the side of fairness, on the side of the defining right of a democracy.

There is no question but that this law, as others passed in states with Republican-held state legislatures, is intended solely to suppress the vote of minorities and other Democratic voters. These are the voters least likely or able to have the ID's or afford them or, in the case of elderly voters, obtain the birth certificates and other documents necessary. Some grassroots efforts are being started by Al Sharpton and others to help the voters get their ID's. The task they are facing in Pennsylvania is monumental – up to 750,000 registered voters who voted in the 2008 election could be denied their right to vote. All told there are a million registered voters in Pennsylvania without the required ID and one third of registered voters are unaware that an ID law even exists. And there are just 82 days to get the job done – i.e., more than 12,000 people per day need to be getting their ID's.

How important is this? Well, in 2008 Obama took Pennsylvania by 600,000 votes. The math is clear – if 750,000 overwhelmingly Democratic voters were denied their right to vote, John McCain would have carried Pennsylvania in 2008. The race in 2012 is much closer – Obama is not running against the backdrop of the huge Bush failures this time. If these votes are denied or if voters can't get their ID's, Romney will win Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is critical for Obama's re-election. Obama will not win the Presidency if he loses Pennsylvania.

NY Times columnist Charles Blow has written several insightful columns on the upcoming election recently. In an August 1 blog, he pointed out how the voter suppression laws will, at a minimum, hold down turnout and that polls showing an Obama lead, especially in the many swing states with voter suppression laws, need to be taken with a large grain of salt. In a July 27 column, he notes that Democratic voters are not as enthusiastic about going to the polls as they were in 2008 or even 2004. That column also has some interesting statistics on the money unleashed by Citizen's United and the potential impact of the voter suppression laws. States that have passed restrictive voting laws account for 214 electoral votes – about 79% of the amount needed to win the Presidency.

The right to vote has come under its worst, most outrageous attack since before the Civil Rights era. This has been a well-funded, organized effort to deny legitimate voters one of the most important rights in a democracy. Republicans should be ashamed and Democrats should be outraged. Outraged enough to go to the polls in droves. Get your ID if you can but go to the polls even if you can't get your ID. Demand that your vote be taken and counted. Let the state of Pennsylvania (or any other democracy-deficient state) prove you are not who you say you are.

Cezanne's Pig

One of the many pleasures of our vacation in the South of France was the opportunity to visit the sites where artists created their paintings, to view and experience the landscapes and light that inspired them and informed their work. Aix-en-Provence is a graceful, elegant city steeped in art history and culture. Its fountains, squares, mansions and museums help Aix retain its architectural heritage.  It is a cosmopolitan city and home to 40,000 university students.  Its central boulevard, the plane-tree-and café-lined Cours Mirabeau, is considered one of the most beautiful in France. 

The Cours Mirabeau, Aix-en-Provence

Aix is the city of Cézanne. He lived and painted here - his studio (Atelier Cézanne) as well as his family estate (the Jas de Bouffan) are both in Aix. We visited these as well as a café that Cézanne frequented with writer Emile Zola and the building that housed his father's hat store before his career change to the banking profession. Unfortunately we did not have time to visit the quarries at Bibemus with its view of Mt. Saint Victoire,

The Atelier, located up a steep hill from the city center, preserves Cézanne's indoor work area where he composed many of his still lifes. There is a peaceful garden surrounding the workshop and you can imagine Cézanne setting up his easel and painting Mt. Sainte Victoire – still visible in the distance.

If you only have time to visit just one of the Cézanne sites, I'd suggest the Jas de Bouffan. Although the family home is now almost completely devoid of furnishings and has none of Cézanne's paintings (long since departed for the museums of Paris, New York, etc.), there is an excellent tour that provides a great introduction to Cézanne and his works. Cézanne's paintings are projected on the walls of the main room. You tour the estate and see the locations where he painted many of his landscapes. The description of the stages of his artistic development and the biographical sketch of the artist are informative and interesting. What my wife Diane christened as “Cézanne's pig” made its appearance during one explanation in the back garden. A black and white baby pig sauntered over to the tour group, sniffed around the tree near which we were standing (looking for truffles?), and then wandered slowly away. I have no idea where the pig came from – perhaps one of the neighboring properties - but I'd like to think of him (or her) as the descendant of one of the pigs that lived at Jas de Bouffan while Cézanne was painting. Alas, I have been unable to find any Cézanne painting featuring a pig.

Jas de Bouffan, the family estate from 1859-1899



Paul Cézanne was born in Aix in 1839. He certainly qualifies as one of the cultural giants of the nineteenth century who paved the way for the revolutionary changes at the turn of the twentieth century. (See the August 3 post, TheTurning of the Centuries). Recognition of his genius came late in life but time has been kind to his reputation and lucrative to those who own his painitngs. Earlier this year, the nation of Qatar paid 250 million dollars to purchase one of his “Card Player” paintings. This was the highest price paid for any painting. Ever.

Cézanne is sometimes classified as a Post-Impressionist but, over the course of his life, he painted in many styles and art historians have identified four stages of his development. His earliest paintings, through 1870, were emotional and expressive – the output of an intense young man. Some had violent or erotic subjects. These paintings were generally composed in dark colors, which led some to name this stage of Cézanne's artistic development the “dark period”.

The paintings of the next stage were influenced by the techniques and colors of the Impressionists. It included many landscapes created in the open air. Cézanne was a slow and exacting artist. One wonders how he kept pace with his Impressionist friend Camille Pissaro, who strongly influenced Cézanne and with whom Cézanne often painted outdoors. Perhaps he did not. In comparing paintings by the two artists of the identical scene (an orchard in Pontoise), Richard Murphy in The World of Cézanne [WOC] contrasts Cézanne's greater interest in the architectural elements – the buildings and walls near the orchard - with Pissaro's emphasis on the light variations and colors around the leaves and the trees. Pissaro's painting shows the orchard in full blossom while Cézanne's has most of the leaves and blossoms gone from the trees and the building and wall more clearly seen. Murphy writes: “...there was quite possibly a purely practical reason for the differences... Cézanne worked so slowly that the blossoms may very well have fallen from the trees before he could complete his picture.”

Beginning about 1878, Cézanne entered what has been called his “Constructive Period.” Cézanne referred to his paintings as “constructions after nature”, built out of “plastic equivalents and color”, and urged that we “see in nature the cylinder, the sphere and the cone”. [WOC] This artistic philosophy seems almost Platonic – looking for an ideal form beyond the immediate visual impression, imbuing meaning beyond that given by our senses. For twenty years, he had spent time painting in both Paris and in Provence. Then in the late 1870's, he moved back to Aix more or less permanently and away from the influence of the Impressionists. Besides landscapes and portraits, he began painting still lifes (more than 200 over the course of his life) - bringing back a genre that had lost favor over the years. A still life lends itself easily to his artistic philosophy – the forms are more distinct and the painting could be “constructed” more easily.

The last stage of his development was “a peiod of synthesis during which his painting, incorporating elements of all the previous styles, became freer and more nearly abstract.” [WOC] His later works laid the groundwork for the abstract painting of the twentieth century. Cézanne died in 1906 at the age of 67, having contracted pneumonia after painting in a downpour for two hours. Both Matisse and Picasso have been credited with the line that “Cézanne is the father of us all”.

Here are several paintings that I think show both the stages of Cézanne's artistic development and the changes in art styles through the nineteenth century.  From top to bottom are examples from his early Expressionist/emotional/"dark" period ( Portrait of Achille Emperaire, Cézanne's friend - c. 1868), his Impressionist period (Jas de Bouffan, 1876), the Constructive period (Still Life with Open Drawer, c. 1879) and the Synthesis Period (Le Mont Sainte Victoire, c.1904).

 

 

 

Attribution

The Time-Life Library of Art series has an excellent summary and analysis of Cézanne, his life, his art, and his times: “The World of Cézanne: 1839-1906” by Richard W. Murphy. If you can get your hands on a copy (it was published/copyrighted in 1968), it would be a great way to explore Cézanne further. The notation [WOC] designates direct quotes from the book.

Links

No blog entry can capture even a small portion of Cézanne's work. The paintings above are simply examples to illustrate the various stages of the development of his art. The web has many images of of his paintings. Here are links to images of ten more of his works along with their current locale.

The Card Players                                                                    Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Bathers                                                                              The National Gallery, London

This YouTube video includes a brief discussion of the work.

The Black Clock                                                                      Private collection

The Railway Cutting                                                                Neue Pinakothek, Munich

At the right of this 1870 painting is Mt. Sainte Victoire.  This is the first time this favorite subject appeared in a Cézanne painting.

Mont-Sainte-Victoire from Bibemus Quarry                            Baltimore Museum of Art

This is a later painting of Mt. Sainte Victoire (1898-1900).  There is a brief discussion of the work at the Baltimore Museum of Art's webpage. Click here to go there.

Mardi Gras (Harlequin andPierrot)                                             Pushkin Museum, Moscow

Still Life with Apples and Fruit Bowl

The Gulf of Marseille Seen from L'Estaque                              Art Institute of Chicago

View of Gardanne                                                                      Brooklyn Museum of Art

.

The Turn in the Road atAuvers                                                  Private Collection

Here are two websites with thorough (complete?) collections of the paintings.

http://www.paul-cezanne.org/

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/paul-cezanne

 

 



 



Anybody Out There?

After more than eight months in space, Curiosity has landed on Mars. As it continues its self-checks, it has been sending back stunning images of Earth's sister planet, such as this one from Mars' Gale Crater.

Besides its studies of Mars' climate and geology, Curiosity will be searching for evidence that Mars could at one time have been suitable for life.  Curiosity will also be gathering information necessary for a potential manned landing.

As of this moment, Earth is the only place in the universe that we know of where life exists. The odds that there is life somewhere out there are very high. Considering the vastness of space, the odds are also very high that intelligent life exists somewhere besides Earth. 

Still, after decades of searching, we have not found any other life,let alone other intelligent life. Physicist Enrico Fermi reportedly commented “...so where are they?” on the absence of any signs of other intelligent life in spite of the probability that such life exists.

I am not sure what would be the more awe-inspiring scenario – that we are totally alone in the vastness of this universe or that our galaxy is teeming with advanced technological civilizations. If we are indeed alone, then, as the only beings capable of looking into space-time and understanding it, we have an awesome responsibility. On the other hand, if Curiosity can provide definitive evidence that life existed at one time on Mars, then at least part of our burden is lifted. If life arose on two planets just in our solar system, then with billions of other solar systems out there, maybe life is not as rare and as fragile as it has seemed until now.

Besides the search for evidence of life or its possibility, the other special objective of the Curiosity mission is to gather information necessary for a manned mission to Mars – currently planned for 2030. Frankly, I am disappointed that we haven't already had a manned landing on Mars. It's been 43 years since man set foot on the Moon. It has been many years since the last manned Moon mission and since then, we have traveled nowhere else. If we spent less on weapons systems and war and more on space systems and exploration, we might have been there by now and the world would have been better off. A manned mission to Mars would be a truly heroic achievement – all the more so, if this could be done by an international team. It would engage the adventurous and scientific energies of mankind and we would be one step closer to making space exploration a reality.

So, here's wishing the best to our robotic envoy. Good luck, Curiosity.

Related

The Drake equation is the classical formula for calculating the probability of the existence of technological civilizations. It was presented in 1961 by astronomer/astrophysicist Frank Drake.

The equation is usually written:

N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L

Where,

N = The number of civilizations in The Milky Way Galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable. 

R* =The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.

fp = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.

ne = The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.

fl = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.

fi = The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.

fc = The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

The factors that one plugs in are conjectural. Basically, you can get any answer you want to believe.

The authors of the Wikipedia entry on the Drake equation used maximum and minimum values that have been proposed in recent years for the factors in the equation. The answer ranged from a low of 8 x 10^-20 - i.e., not only are we alone in our galaxy, we may be alone in the whole universe – to a high of 182 million detectable civilizations! Hmm, that's no help.

In a 2007article in Cosmos Magazine , Tim Dean estimated a more useful range for N, the number of detectable civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy.  He calculated N to be between 0.00127 (As Dean writes: “To put that in perspective, it means that over a 100,000-year period, around 127 detectable civilisations will crop up but they may not overlap.") and 245 detectable civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. 

Fermi's paradox is based on Fermi's “so where are they?” comment - the apparent contradiction between the high probability that intelligent life exists given the scale of the universe and the absolute lack of any evidence that it does exist elsewhere. The Wikipedia entry is excellent and I'll just summarize its theoretical answers to Fermi's paradox here. The arguments fall into one of two categories – there are few, if any, other technologically advanced civilizations or they do exist but we do not see the evidence.

Few, if any, other civilizations have arisen because...

• No other civilizations have ever arisen
• It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself
• It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others
• Life is periodically destroyed by natural events
• Human beings were created alone.
• There are many, many more young universes than old, Universes with civilizations will almost always have just one, the first to arrive. This argument is based on multi-verse theory.

They do exist but we see no evidence because...

• Communication is impossible due to problems of scale
• Communication is impossible for technical reasons
• They choose not to interact with us
• They are here but unobserved

 



The Turning of the Centuries

“On or about December 1910, human character changed. I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that. But a change there was, nevertheless; and, since one must be arbitrary, let us date it about the year 1910.”

-Virginia Woolf, from “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”, 1924

The twenty or so years preceding 1910 were marked by revolutionary changes in how humans viewed the world. The ground-breaking nature of these ideas and inventions of the early 20^th century dwarf anything comparable in the 21^st. Maybe we are not far enough into the 21^st century to notice or to understand the significance of what is happening now. Or maybe the turning of the 20^th century was just a unique period not to be repeated again.

If measured by the number of new developments, the speed at which we're changing is continuing to accelerate.  Alvin Toffler's Future Shock popularized this concept. Toffler found an audience primed for the message: the book shot to the top of the best seller list in 1970. However, what's central to the present discussion is not the number but rather the impact of the changes - their revolutionary, creative nature. In this respect, I believe the “big” ideas of today fall short of the changes of the early 20^th century. Those changes in science, in technology, in public health and medicine, in art and literature revolutionized life on the planet. Today's changes seem, at least at this point, to be more incremental.

So what are some of the noteworthy events around the turn of the last century? Let's start with transportation. In December 1903, The Wright brothers made the first controlled power airplane flights near Kitty Hawk. Henry Ford incorporated the Ford Motor Company the same year. That the world has been made effectively smaller and the individual freer by the airplane and the automobile, there can be no doubt.

We also saw electricity beginning to shape the modern world. In 1897, Marconi established a “wireless” (radio) station on the Isle of Wight off the coast of England. The tungsten filament light bulb made its appearance in 1905. Electrical power was being applied to everyday household chores. Washing clothes and cleaning house were to become easier and less time consuming with the introduction of the electric washing machine (1901) and vacuum cleaner (1907).

In science, Einstein's 1905 paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” overturned the absolute space and time of classical Newtonian mechanics and introduced the special theory of relativity.   Some years earlier, Max Planck had developed his quantum hypothesis, which laid the foundation for quantum mechanics. These concepts had an enormous impact on physics throughout the 20^th century and still do today more than 100 years later.

Medicine and public health were also changing. In 1900, Middlekerke, Belgium began chlorinating its water supply to decontaminate it – the first city to do so. Marie and Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 for their work on radiation. Radiology was born and the X-ray invented.  For the first time, doctors could see inside the body in a non-invasive fashion. 

In the arts, the new medium of film was just being developed. In Paris in 1895, Antoine Lumiere began exhibitions of projected films to paying audiences. In time, film would add sound, color, three-dimensionality, and computer-generated special effects. Its reach would span the globe.

With photography and film capable of capturing images in more realistic detail than an artist ever could, artists searched for ways to convey meaning beyond the literal (to mix metaphors) representation.  Painters provided new ways of seeing reality.   Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Braque's Violin and Candlestick (1910), Matisse's Atelier Rouge (1911) and Kandinsky's various “Improvisations” and “Compositions” (Link to Mark Harden review of Kandinsky: Compositions by Magdalena Dabrowski) are early examples of what came to be known as modern art. 

Western classical music was also undergoing a revolution. Schoenberg began composing his atonal music in 1908 (Link to String Quartet No. 2, 4th Movement) . Stravinsky's daring compositions about this time – especially The Firebird (1910) (Link to YouTube video of Stravinsky conducting the Firebird "Lullaby" at age 82) and The Rites of Spring (1913) – brought him international acclaim and an enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary.

Freud, Jung and Adler were laying the foundations of psychoanalysis, psychiatry and psychology. Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1899; Jung's Psychology of the Unconscious, in 1912.


French philosopher Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution was published in 1907.  "The book provides an alternate explanation for Darwin's mechanism of evolution, suggesting that evolution is motivated by ... a 'vital impetus' that can be understood as humanity's natural creative impulse...The book also develops concepts of time...which influenced modernist writers and thinkers....For example, Bergson's term 'duration' refers to a more individual, subjective experience of time as opposed to mathematical, objectively measurable 'clock time'." (Source: Wikipedia entry on the book Creative Evolution)

Influenced by the ideas of Freud, Einstein, Darwin, Bergson and others, the modernist literary movement began “on or about...1910”, following Virginia Woolf's analysis. The internal state of the characters became ever more important and techniques such as stream-of-consciuosness were developed. Some early modernist works include the first volume of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (1913), Kafka's short story “Metamorphosis” (1915), Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Eliot's poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1916).

What caused this concentrated outpouring of creativity and invention? If I had to hazard a guess, it seems to have been a combination of several things:

• the continuing development and application of the concepts and inventions of the previous (i.e., 19th) century
• the serendipity of having men of genius like Einstein, Edison and Picasso alive at that time
• the new technologies that were then coming to the fore – especially electricity.

And what would be some changes or discoveries today that would make a comparable impact - i.e.,  that would again significantly change the "human character"?   Genetically enhanced human intelligence?  Discovery of life on a planet other than Earth?  Cold fusion for safe, clean, nearly limitless, energy? A cure for cancer? A new interactive art form based on computers/game machines, virtual reality and artificial intelligence?  The discovery of a parallel universe? A realized noosphere enabled by advances in communications and computer technology and the Web?  Any others you can think of that would qualify?

Most of these seem, to me at least, to be in the far future.  Unfortunately, the turn of the 20th century was a unique point in time not soon to be repeated.  I hope I'm wrong.

Random Stuff

In October 1903, the American League Boston Red Sox defeated the National League Pittsburgh Pirates 5 games to 3 in the first modern Major League World Series.  (I know - this is not quite on the same level as the Theory of Special Relativity or the flights at Kitty Hawk but I thought it was neat.)

The Victor Talking Machine Company was incorporated in 1901.  At about the same time, the bulky cylinders used in the early gramophones were being replaced by flat disks that were easier to produce and distribute.  Music recorded by others, both classical and popular, could now be enjoyed by anyone at anytime without having to go to a concert hall or other live venue.  The invention of the gramophone did for music what the printing press had done for the written word.

The concept of a "noosphere" originated with Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945)and developed in the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955).  The noosphere is "the sphere of human thought".  In Vernadsky's original theory, it represented the third stage in the development of the Earth, succeeding the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life).  For Teilhard, "the noosphere emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds.  The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass...as it populates the Earth....Teilhard argued the noosphere is growing towards...greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega Point...an apex of thought/consciousness", which Teilhard saw as the goal of  history.  (Source: Wikipedia entry on noosphere)

The now-widely used term "biosphere" was coined by geologist Edouard Suess (1831-1914) in 1875.  He met Vladimir Vernadsky in 1911.