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Nearly thirty years ago, Tom Wolfe made quite a splash with his reactionary little attack on modern architecture, From Bauhaus to Our House, his premise being that radical modernism imported from Germany had reduced American building to an impersonal frigidity. It was a dubious argument then, and a new show at MoMA demonstrates surely that it is flat out ridiculous. “Bauhaus: 1919-1933,” curated by Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman, surveys the Dessau school’s history; if you think of the Bauhaus as a sterile, dogmatic place, you will surely be stunned by the scope of work done there, and inspired by its humanity. All the favorites are here: Albers, Gropius, Mies, Klee, Breuer, Feininger. But there are many voices that will be unfamiliar, too, and working in all disciplines—photography, textiles, architecture, typography, graphic design, product design, etc. Walk through the show and it’s impossible not to point at objects and think “Want Want Want.” An Albers lounge chair? Want. A Bayer poster? Want. A very Diebenkorn-y Klee? Want. Don’t miss it.

What’s in a name? Tomorrow the Metropolitan Museum will put on display a sculpture of a boy archer that made headlines about a decade ago when a New York art historian claimed it was the work of Michelangelo. At the time it was placed with no great ceremony in the lobby of a Fifth Avenue mansion used by the French government for cultural programming. I recall seeing it there during an exhibition of work by the cartoonist Sempé, and thinking nothing much of it. Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, the professor in question, thought differently, and made the attribution.

Is it really a Michelangelo? Experts are divided. To the extent that the controversy drums up attendance at the museum I don’t see much harm in the debate, which is probably only good for the field in the long run. The evidence supporting the claim is entirely circumstantial and based on connoisseurship—that is, it looks like something he would have done and uses techniques he was known to use. Of course, naysayers have pointed out any number of ways it differs from the master’s work, including an analysis of the poor boy’s swingers. In lieu of any hard evidence, specifically, contemporary documentary evidence linking the piece to Michelangelo, I’m hard pressed to believe any claim that it’s his work. Connoisseuship has proven, over and over and over again, to be an unreliable method of authentication. We see what we want to see in things. History is filled with anomalies and black holes that undermine what appear to be logical assumptions.

Rubens generally took a liberal view of the concept of authenticity. He often recommended that clients purchase paintings from his workshop rather than signature works by himself, because he thought the two were indistinguishable in quality and the former could be had at much lower prices. That is to say, what concerned him most was the quality of the object itself. Of course, clients preferred to have the works by his hand, nevermind his suggestion. Part of the attraction of art is association with its creator, especially if that creator is thought to possess a mysterious “genius.” Which goes a long way to explaining the fascination with the Young Archer. Is it by Michelangelo? Maybe. But if it’s not, is it even worth looking at?

Does the air around here seem just a bit more rare on this fine Monday morning? Well it should. Master of Shadows appears in the privileged upper-right quadrant—that would be “highbrow” and “brilliant”—of New York Magazine’s weekly Approval Matrix feature. Impressive, and considerably better than Philadelphia, placed toward the top left for its “undistinguished architecture and culture.” Can’t say I totally disagree, but at least they’ve got this, which, come to think of it, is probably a nice illustration of how certain residents of that city are feeling this morning.

The full “Highbrow” and “Brilliant” quadrant after the jump:

Continue reading Master of Shadows: Highbrow + Brilliant

I’ll be discussing the original Shadow Master, Peter Paul Rubens, this Halloween evening on the John Batchelor Show. As you can see above, the man could do gruesome like few others, though he was in general a peaceable sort. Tune in to 770 WABC-AM at 11:00PM to catch the spooky proceedings. (World Series fans: do yourselves a favor and mute Buck/McCarver’s World Series commentary.)

Update: Listen to the interview here.

Many thanks to all who came out to my son-et-lumiere extravaganza last night at the Half King in New York. I trust everyone enjoyed the show and am happy to report that the good folks at Mobile Libris sold out of books. If anyone missed their chance at a copy, books are available at a store near you, or at your favorite online retailer. If you’ve already read the book, please feel free to write a review for Amazon.

I’ll be on drive-time radio tomorrow morning in Cleveland. Tune your dial to Magic 105.7 WMJI-FM at 8:10 am to hear me banter about Rubens on the Lanigan & Malone Morning Show.

What can our current Nobel-winning diplomat-president learn from the career of Peter Paul Rubens? More than you might think, actually. Over the last four centuries, the precepts of good diplomacy haven’t changed all that much. I have a new piece up on the Huffington Post, “Lessons for the President on the Art of Diplomacy.” A sample:

The frequency and suddenness with which political fortune could reverse itself, he thought, demanded constant vigilance and engagement. Certainly, the idea that one should not negotiate with one’s enemies would have been anathema to Rubens; the maintenance of such contacts was one of the essential principles of diplomatic practice at the time. Cardinal Richelieu, the French statesman who was one of Rubens’s most persistent adversaries, devoted an entire chapter of his influential Testament Politique to the utility of continuous negotiations. “I may venture to say boldly,” he wrote, “that to negotiate without ceasing, openly or secretly, in all places…is what is absolutely necessary for the good and welfare of States.

I should note that I also have a piece up now on yet another of Rubens’s other careers (he had so many it’s hard to keep track). You will find “Peter Paul Rubens: Book Designer” over on Design Observer, which has been one of my absolute favorite spots on the Web since it’s inception. So I’m very proud to see my writing there in the main column, and should add that I will be contributing more to the Places department in the future.

It was a great honor last night to celebrate publication of Master of Shadows with a small gathering at the residence of the Belgian Consul General in New York, Ambassador Herman Portocarero. The ambassador is a distinguished author in his own right, so it was especially appropriate to be there speaking about another artist-diplomat. I cannot thank him and his lovely wife Myriam enough for their generosity, nor can words adequately describe my debt to Dan Benjoseph and especially Lilliane Opsomer of FlandersHouse, for so much support. As I noted, it was just the kind of event Rubens enjoyed in his own day, as you can see in the image above, a painting by William van Haecht of an Antwerp party with Rubens in attendance (at bottom left.)

A few pictures after the jump:
Continue reading Master of Shadows: Reception

After so many years of working and waiting, the day has finally arrived: “Master of Shadows” has been released into the world, and is available at a bookstore near you. Please join me in celebrating publication of the book with a reading and beers next Monday night (Oct. 26) at the Half King, 505 West 23rd Street (off 10th Ave.) in Manhattan. Doors open at 7:00, and the event is free.

In other news, the Daily Beast has named the book a “Hot Read” for the week. Thank you Daily Beast!

There’s also a really generous review up at Bookotron—they call the book “gripping and intense.” A bit more:

“Lamster takes the reader on a journey through secret treaties, gorgeous art and secret negotiations conducted by the artist. It’s an incredibly involving portrait of a man as complicated as the world around him, a man who helped crate that complicated world. Inner and outer beauties collide. Lamster’s a fine writer who knows how to take the reader through history that we think we understand, only to offer a very fresh perspective. The prose is transparent, the better to see the people, the places and the events portrayed. Nan A. Talese has included a generous number of color plates in the book to compliment the excellent story. Here’s a proto-steampunk thriller about a real artist who happened to be a spy and a diplomat, in a lovely package. Reality seems to overtake fantasy with an ease that is often nearly as breathtaking as the work of Rubens.”

It’s a rather satisfying bit of parallelism that the excerpt of my book on the political career of Peter Paul Rubens appears in the Wall Street Journal on the same day that Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is the paper’s lead story. As I believe the piece in the Journal demonstrates, Rubens was a pragmatic, moderate man whose success as a diplomat was predicated on a combination of the high esteem in which he was held internationally and by his own great intelligence. Whatever one thinks about the timing of the Nobel, or of Obama generally, it’s hard to deny he shares these characteristics with Rubens. But I’d like to think the artist can serve as a fine model for the president, or any diplomat practicing today. He was a serious and dedicated public servant, a master of what we now call “realpolitiks.” His world, like ours, was faced with intractable conflicts, and he was tireless in his efforts to resolve them. The Low Countries, then, was a land divided by sectarian violence, and his own Flemish homeland was ruled by a grossly negligent foreign occupier. (In the 16th century, Antwerp was almost a proto-Baghdad, with a full-scale Green Zone avant le lettre.) Rubens was no revolutionary. He worked within the power structures of his day to shift policy and push ideologically opposed leaders toward reconciliation. There was never a more savvy negotiator, whether he was bargaining for European peace or setting the price on one of his very expensive canvasses. He was a peaceful man but believed in the use of military force, even its pre-emptive use, but in drastic situations only. Rubens had more than one contemporary who considered him as fine a statesman as he was an artist, and that was saying something, because in that field he was, indisputably, the tops.