Marc Haefele considers "Breaking News" at the Getty Center, which shows how broken newsgathering has often been; In "Broke," KPCC's Rina Palta and Priska Neely look at California's growing homeless problem; Taylor Orci talks pastrami and deli menus with Norm Langer; and Gustavo Arellano tells hipster chefs to look away from Mexico for inspiration in 2017.
Luther and LACMA: An amazing response from an Off-Ramp listener
To bring you up to date if you haven't been following the minor saga ... In a piece that aired at the end of November, Off-Ramp arts commentator Marc Haefele criticized the LA County Museum of Art for omitting mention of Martin Luther's anti-Semitism in its celebration of the Reformation.
The art is glorious, but the tone of the show uncomfortably exults the Reformation. ... For one thing, the religious battles that followed the Reformation killed off 40% of Germany’s population alone. ... For another, the great Martin Luther, simply by being the most prominent Anti-Semite of the 16th Century, inspired the centuries of German bigotry against Jewish people that culminated in Hitler.
On December 14, LACMA changed the exhibit's audio tour and that main didactic to say, in part:
This exhibition is a celebration of the Reformation and of its impact on European culture. Martin Luther was the key figure in the Reformation. His ideas and actions were marked by controversy, and his writings could be particularly virulent to groups beyond the Roman Catholic Church. Particularly unacceptable were his anti-Semitic feelings, which he expressed in several pamphlets. Although Lutheran churches have over the years distanced themselves from Luther's positions on the subject, there is no denying that Luther's anti-Semitism was used by the Nazis to foster their own.
While we don't think this is the biggest art story ever, it is a victory for a intelligent, nuanced art criticism, and I said as much in Off-Ramp's weekly email newsletter. And got this passionate, intelligent, nuanced reply, from the Rev. Dr. Tom Eggebeen, a retired Presbyterian minister, which I've only edited slightly, with permission:
Well, yes, and maybe some questions …
Luther had plenty of issues, especially toward the end of a most difficult life, beset with illness and depression, the death of two of his children, and the constant state of siege under which he lived since 1517 - an outlaw of the Holy Roman Empire - though safe in Wittenburg under the watchful eye of Elector Frederick.
From the tone of this note, it’s as if Luther was mostly a monster … I fear that this is the result of trying to impose upon him the sensibilities and paradigms of 2017 … which can only result in two things: 1) missing the whole point of the Reformation and the Renaissance and Luther’s role in setting his world free in ways that you and I can only dimly, if at all, imagine; 2) walking away with pride that we’ve scolded LACMA and now have set things right with the world.
And, for many folks reared in 20 Century Roman Catholicism, Luther was a monster, as were Catholics for many a Protestant.
Yes, Luther’s writing were marked with controversy, but so was the Renaissance as a whole. The debates of the Middle Ages, often limited by the power of the papacy, which along with various princes, suppressed freedom of thought and faith on every hand - the papacy held the threat of hell over everyone’s head, by denying the person the sacrament (excommunication) or denying it to an entire region as punishment (if they deemed the prince in violation of the church, and so the prince would relent under pressure from the people), and did so while raising huge sums of money to build lavish palaces and sustain a life style that both the likes of Erasmus and Luther came to despise, and so did much of the population, but what could they do.
Nor was Luther alone - preceded, as he was, by Huss and Wycliffe … their efforts were quickly lost amidst the vicious attack of the papacy … Luther, too, would have lost, if it were not for two things: 1) the printing press (movable type) and 2) the threat of “the Turks” pushing into Europe from the east and France in the west, distracting the Holy Roman Emperor, and causing the Emperor to rely upon the German princes, a number of whom were sympathetic to Luther, less for his religious beliefs, and more for his opposition to papal influence over Germany. These princes offered their help to Charles in exchange for their local freedom.
But it wasn’t just political - all along the way, Luther, who received a first-rate education, was counseled by brilliant men, many of whom came to stand with him … he wasn't alone, any more than Martin Luther King, Jr., was alone in his struggle for Civil Rights.
To suggest that 40% of Europe’s death toll in the wars that followed was the result of Luther alone is ludicrous … the wars of Europe were bitter and bloody affairs, and no doubt they would have found plenty of reasons to keep on killing one another.
Nor did it birth the original scurrilous mass media … that was already well in place in the Western World - this was opponents labeled one another … it was, however, the printing press that enabled the wide-spread dissemination of such ideas.
Anti-semitism has its roots, not in Luther, but in Western Christianity for a thousand years before the Reformation - but it was in Spain where the fateful shift was made from anti-Judaism to anti-Semitism (1492) … after large numbers of Jews, under threat of death, converted to Christianity, but that still wasn’t enough for the church; after this point in time, then, it no longer about religion, but about blood.
Marc Haefele’s article is rather well balanced ... but I think your email note is a bit heavy handed on the matter. Yes, if LACMA failed to mention such things, that’s an oversight that needs to be corrected. But if folks fail to grasp Luther’s genius, and the brilliance of those who lived with him in the struggle to free Germany from the clutches of Rome and religious superstition, then the exhibit will have truly failed. It’s not just about the art, but the ideas that drove that art to give expression to human longing.
It’s our task to understand history, neither whitewashing it nor getting uppity about it. They did their best, and it's our task to be both encouraged by Luther’s courage and humbled by his frailties and his errors.
And I quite agree with the curator’s assessment - the Reformation changed the world for the better … nothing is pure and clean … but the Reformation and the Renaissance brought about the modern world, with all of its ills, certainly, and all of its scientific and political achievements.
BTW, some of my energy on this comes from my current reading on a new bio of Luther, "Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer."
Thanks.
Keep up the good work.
Happy New Year.
'Breaking News' is broken — art confronts media failings at Getty show
Over the past half-century, the distrust of the print and broadcast media has just kept on growing. Newsgatherers are asked to do more, and yet seem to deliver less. Increasingly, even the media is prone to criticizing itself. Particularly after the last US election, whose results were an upset to most of the news world.
Now, at what seems a very appropriate time, there is a show at the Getty Center about media incomprehension itself, as singled out by several noted contemporary artists surveying photos, video, and print media. “Breaking News: Turning the Lens on News Media” is a broad, creative take on how easily our newsmongers fail at telling us what is really happening.
Sometimes, the artist uses simple emphasis and mild exaggeration: This is artist Donald Blumberg’s approach, particularly with his blow-ups of 1960s local newspapers’ jejune coverage of the Vietnam War.
Blumberg’s expanded dotty-grain news photographs grant an almost Roy Lichtenstein-like absurdity to the accompanying bloated news texts, which include a solemn ROTC colonel handing a batch of medals to the grieving parents of a young soldier killed in action and an interview with a non-combatant Air Force sergeant, who exults the homey comforts (“movies every night” and fresh milk daily, all the way from Hawaii) of his Vietnam bivouac while deploring those who protest the war. Somehow, this home-front reportorial mediocrity now seems as culpable as the war atrocities headlined elsewhere in Blumberg’s work.
Two spacious print-media creations stress how news magazines (remember them?) evaded the major topics of the time. One composition by Alfredo Jaar shows 60 years of Life magazine covers, starting in the 1930s. During this period, much of WW II was fought in Africa, followed by 20 years of tormented decolonization, plus ensuing civil wars that still endure. Of some 3,000 weekly Life covers, only five refer to Africa. This is one way of telling about a story that isn’t being told. Another Jaar compilation is of all the 1994 Newsweek covers—the year of the Rwanda massacre. Only one cover touches on the ghastly event.
Martha Rosler became famous for her activist photo-surrealist arrays, such as her 1960s “House Beautiful: Bringing the War Back Home,” a series of inkjet prints on view here.
She jammed together some luscious and supertasteful suburban home interiors with the grim actualities of Vietnam combat, conflating the irreal with the real. The power of her work lies in the dissonance between the seductive allure of home décor and the overhanging presence of death in an unjust war. Oh yes, Pat Nixon is there too.
Several artists worked with the idea of the TV presenter, the anchor person or interviewer as a mediator between the audience and the event.
Over 30 years ago, the late Robert Heinecken created what he called a “docudrama” melding talking heads in a study called “Finding an Appropriate Newswoman,’’ suggesting a certain interchangeability of on-air celebrities. I was much taken with David Lamelas and Hildegarde Duane’s 15 minute video, “Interview With a Dictator,” in which Duane impersonates a Barbara Walters-style TV interviewer doing a one-an-one with Lamelas, posing as an arrogant deposed Latino potentate in trim, blue blazer, and Ray-bans. In the discussion format, the despot’s past atrocities mellow into inane pleasantries and he even seems to be hitting on his interviewer.
It’s a graphic illustration, and seen immediately following the Trump election, demonstrates how what should be media scrutiny often winds up elevating or even exonerating its subjects.
Some of the artists displayed seem to sympathize with the manner in which subjects and events can be so immense that they overwhelm the most proficient and intelligent media figures. In CNN Concatenated, Omer Fast weaves together, in the transposed, truncated words and halting sentences of CNN newspeople, his own monologue driving home the sheer anxiety, terror, and lack of comprehension that followed the greatest American catastrophe of this century—the September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center.
"The Breaking News exhibition is not an exhaustive survey of this material,’’ says exhibition curator Arpad Kovacs. "But it tries to show various facets of artists reacting to the news everyone sees.” Yet to those of us actually in the media, “Breaking News” also shows, relentlessly, how easily and often newspeople fail in the simple but immense task of conveying to the rest of us what is actually going on.
"Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media," is at the Getty Center through April 30, 2017.
Song of the Week: K-Syran's first US tour comes to LA
K-Syran (like K-Siren) is a Norwegian based in Geneva, but the singer, songwriter, actor, director, producer, and human rights activist is anything but conventional. (Sorry.)
Her tune "Intimacy" was the official anthem of the UN's International Women’s Day in 2016, and she's making her first US tour, with a stop at The Mint on Monday.
Her songs are dance-pop, but our song of the week is the acoustic version of "Broken Smile," from her new album "Smoke in My Veins."
K-Syran's gig at The Mint (610 West Pico Blvd., LA CA 90035) on Monday Jan 9 at 8:30pm is a free all-ages show. It's part of the Hunnypot Live Event, and she'll be interviewed on stage for Hunnypot Live Radio. The evening starts at 7 and also includes a DJ set from legendary A&R man Don Grierson, Spookey Ruben, Tabitha, and Khlidlike.
'Elote is just corn on the cob, you hipster gabacho!' ... and 9 other Mexican foods to stop festishizing
Editor Gustavo Arellano throws a few food bombs in his latest OC Weekly article, "10 Mexican Dishes Hipster Chefs Need to Get Over Already."
"While I'm catholic in my evangelization of Mexican food belonging anywhere and everywhere and cooked by everyone, the following dishes usually get lost in translation and deserve a break. Or, better yet? Just order them from the paisas who do them right instead of the IG-buzzy hot spot with 4.5 stars on Yelp based on 699 reviews, maybe 10 actually written by Mexicans."
So, Gustavo says step away from the tacos; elote is just corn on the cob, you dope; most churros suck; peppers are vegetables, not heat bombs; most Micheladas also suck; and the mezcal and avocado crazes might actually be doing some damage.
"The one dish I'm amazed that has not been appropriated: tortas! Americans love Mexican food. They love sandwiches. How have they not yet discovered the ultimate Mexican sandwich?!"
Listen to the interview in the audio player to hear Gustavo call John a "Puritan" for disparaging the food combination problem, and to hear John mispronounce aguachile (and probably several other words) and Gustavo mispronounce Worcestershire.
Please explain pastrami to me
If recent reports are to be believed, the popularity of the classic American deli is in decline. This is in part because of people like Offramp producer Taylor Orci-- an on again, off again vegetarian overwhelmed by large menus and meat she can't explain.
So when Carnegie Deli shuttered on New Years Eve, she set out to chat with local deli owner Norm Langer of the James Beard Award-winning Langer's Deli to gain an appreciation for the American institution.
True, Carnegie's closing may have had to do more with struggles resembling a sandwich soap opera rather than simple demand: even Woody Allen himself can't save a famous deli from a gas leak that closed the restaurant for almost a year, back wages to workers owed in the millions, and a divorce where the owner's ex husband may have given trade secrets to his mistress.
Still, Carnegie going the way of expired cole slaw is the latest in a number of delis closing their doors. But that doesn't mean Norm Langer of Langer's Deli is about to start catering to trendy whims.
"I'm a big fan of do what you do and do it well," Langer told Orci after the lunch rush on a cloudy Wednesday afternoon. "Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Johnathan Gold said our pastrami is the best in the world." He added, "If you want bean sprouts, I'm not your guy."
And for folks who are curious if Langer's is going to open Sundays, the answer is still a resounding, "No." Gotta respect that unwavering stance.
UPDATE: LACMA amends 'celebration' of Protestant Reformation to include Luther's anti-Semitism
"Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach" is at LACMA's Resnick Pavilion til March 26, 2017.
UPDATE 1/3/2017: On Dec. 14, two weeks after Marc's commentary ran on KPCC's Off-Ramp, LACMA added the following to the exhibit's main wall didactic and says it made changes to the audio tour as well:
"This exhibition is a celebration of the Reformation and of its impact on European culture. Martin Luther was the key figure in the Reformation. His ideas and actions were marked by controversy, and his writings could be particularly virulent to groups beyond the Roman Catholic Church. He supported, for instance, the repression of the peasants' revolts in 1525 and sided with the powerful, who in return protected him. Particularly unacceptable were his anti-Semitic feelings, which he expressed in several pamphlets. Although Lutheran churches have over the years distanced themselves from Luther's positions on the subject, there is no denying that Luther's anti-Semitism was used by the Nazis to foster their own. Luther's positions on Islam were equally inflammatory.
"Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach is in no way an endorsement of Luther's beliefs on these subjects. The works in this exhibit have been selected primarily for their beauty, but also to evoke a major cultural shift in Europe by bringing together some of the finest works by the greatest German artists, painters, sculptors, and craftsmen of the Renaissance and Reformation periods."
Marc responds: I appreciate that their corrections underline Luther's infamies. I might further point out that, while Luther did at one point castigate Muslims, in Luther's time, the armies of Islam were engaged in total war with Christian Europe, while the Jews were a small, powerless, and inoffensive segment of the European population. And Luther's "On the Jews and Their Lies" was a full-length book; he did also write some anti-Semitic pamphlets.
LACMA’s observation of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation is a mighty production from three major German museums: the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen München. It’s exhaustive, inspiring, beautiful, unique … and disturbing.
500 years ago, rich principalities among the incoherent Catholic entity known as the Holy Roman Empire eased away from the teachings of Rome. Generations of dissent focused on a single prelate, Martin Luther, who in 1517 published 95 resolutions against the Church — the big one being that people could not save their sinful souls merely by giving money to the Pope.
It was one of history’s major spiritual convulsions, and it produced an outpouring of visual art the German-speaking countries of Europe had never experienced … and birthed the original scurrilous mass media.
“Renaissance and Reformation,” at LACMA’s Resnick Pavilion, offers us work from the titans and the lesser known. So here we have Holbein, and works by Albrecht Durer, best known for his myriad engravings, that show he may have been the finest German painter of all.
There’s a superb array of works by the Cranach's, father and son. Cranach the Elder, like Durer, worked for both Catholic and Protestant patrons. LACMA has also gathered fine work by artists far less known, like Hans Baldung Grien and Melchior Feselen.
There is an affecting transition here, as the great religious painting of the Renaissance, with its mighty triptychs and frescos, gives way to a more individual and realistic style of portraiture, and the more personal style of artistic religiosity that brought us Durer’s “Praying Hands” and Holbein’s mighty “Christ in his Tomb.” Another art revolution came via the printing press: not just books, but pictures rolled off the presses. Durer’s major income source was the stream of engravings that he and his wife Agnes peddled all over Central Europe. These included some of his greatest and most famous pictures, like the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and “St. Jerome in his Study,” both of which are at LACMA.
Printing also produced what the exhibition rightly terms the invention of mass media as religious propaganda broadsheets — vicious captioned cartoons showing the Pope as the devil, or Luther as a 7-headed monster.
This material was distributed on both sides by the tens of thousands, waging an indelible war of words that often fueled the war of swords that raged until 1648. (The show appropriately includes many ornate weapons of the period.)
The art is glorious, but the tone of the show uncomfortably exults the Reformation. LACMA’s Chief Curator of European Art, J. Patrice Marandel, said at the press preview, “The spirit of the Reformation changed the world for the better.”
Few historians see it that simply. For one thing, the religious battles that followed the Reformation killed off 40% of Germany’s population alone: it took 130 years for Europe’s leadership to realize warfare can’t settle religious differences. For another, the great Martin Luther, simply by being the most prominent Anti-Semite of the 16th Century, inspired the centuries of German bigotry against Jewish people that culminated in Hitler. Luther wrote a book, widely circulated both in his time and Hitler’s, called “Jews and Their Lies,” and the last sermon he ever preached called for Jews either to convert or be killed. In his time, Jews were driven out of Nuremberg, Regensburg, and other German cities.
The exhibit’s $50 catalog briefly notes Luther’s anti-Semitism, but the wall copy, which is what most people will see, doesn’t even mention this tragic underside of the glorious Reformation. Via a LACMA spokesperson, curator Marandel explained that mentioning that Luther was an anti-Semite did not seem essential, especially since the museum didn’t have a copy of “Jews and Their Lies” to display.
But it is essential, and not mentioning it is a serious historical inaccuracy, idealizing an historic movement while ignoring its deep, dark flaws. An old saying goes, “where God builds a cathedral, the Devil will build a chapel.” The devil built a megachurch right inside the Mighty Reformation.