A New Yorker's Stories

by Philip Gould

Is it not astonishing that the earliest African sculptured (terracotta) figures to be among the most lavishly attired, the most self-confident, and the most intellectually affirmative? How to account for all these attributes?

  I can only surmise, in answer to that question, that the people of the Nok region of Northern Nigeria had discovered the means of iron production. Iron gave the people the means of superior farming through metal implements, hence larger agricultural returns that could sustain the population from harvest to harvest. Iron produced better arms hence the sense of security through a superior defense, which in turn gave rise to leisure, and the inevitable expression through art of an advanced society.

  Without the desired controlled excavation of the Nok sculptures it is difficult to assign them specific meanings or functions. It is not, however, too rash to offer the conjecture that these sculptures are portraits: notwithstanding certain conventions, each head enjoys a different and highly individualized coiffure, suggestion of pursed lips or of a smile, slouching posture, corpulence, folded or open arms, and dress and ornaments that reflect individual preferences. These are the observations that lead to an interpretation and to some speculation.

  Bernard de Grunne justly celebrates The Birth of Art in Black Africa by his attention to Nok statuary in Nigeria. This art deserves a wider audience and a greater esteem. (12/23/08)

  MOVIE REVIEW: VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA

  I heard so many wonderful accounts and reviews of this movie I was tempted to see it. Labor Day, when most everything else was closed, was a perfect time to spend an afternoon in the theatre. Mind you, I haven’t been to a movie in more than three years, so this was a special occasion for me, and putting down eight dollars was a sign of great expectations.

  I was, I must tell you up front, disappointed. I think the movie is a failure. I should explain this judgment before I go on. The movie is billed as a “comedy” but there were very few laughs in the audience. I laughed a lot but mostly silently to myself for fear of shaking up the people around me. All the characters in the play were defective, dysfunctional in one way or another and constantly making self-destructive decisions. Instead of finding their mistakes funny, the audience was pulling for them, hoping they would redress themselves at the critical moments. The characters had sufficiently sympathetic personalities for the public to want to help them. Maybe the public could identify so well with the characters that they were not willing to let them suffer the indignities of ridicule. But doesn’t comedy depend on comedians making fools of themselves?

  The two American girls, Vicky and Cristina, go to Spain for a short holiday. Though they have very different expectations of the trip, both fall for a Spanish Don Juan. The three principal figures plus the Spaniard’s ex-wife are all stereotypes. The girls are emotionally starved for a love experience that exists only in their imaginations and the Don Juan is a hustler, only interested in getting laid. He is fully aware of the girl’s weaknesses, and in short order conquers both of them. The girls are in love with the idea of the man they see as “romantic” for his frank physicality, and for his pseudo bohemianism. The man appears always in his frumpy clothes and with an unshaven stubble. His Spanish ex-wife-girl-friend is a hysterical type who can only express herself in bouts of declamatory rhetoric and threats of violence; a darkly disturbed person who provides the climatic scene with a revolver ready to do everybody in.

  Woody Allen reveals his life long attraction/repulsion for psychological conditions which infect his characters and propel his plot lines. This movie is a repeat of the same old pre-occupations of the director-writer. We can concede that Mr. Allen is a brilliant cineaste but we can still wish he would finally grow up.

  The parts I did appreciate in the movie were the interludes of guitar playing that enhanced moments of tension or that seduced us into tender feelings of affection. The shots of the architecture of Barcelona and other Spanish cities were great although too fleeting. Views of Gaudi’s architecture can be redeeming.

  (9/2/08)

  PYGMY PAINTINGS

  Pygmies are found in forests across Equatorial Africa but the area of concentration is in the Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more specifically in the region of the Ituri Forest. Pygmies maintain a hunting and gathering society that some claim dates from the late Stone Age. Pygmies wear very few clothes, have very little possessions apart from a knife, a bow and arrow; their way of life is sustained by what they find in the forest day by day. One exception to this account is the production of paintings used on special occasions as loincloths. But even here the paintings, once the occasion for their creation is past, are disposed. The Pygmies are confident that when they need additional painted bark cloth they will be up to the task.

  The materials for Pygmy paintings come entirely from the forest. The inner bark from trees, found between the outer bark and the wooded center, is stripped and cut into rectangles or squares (about 20” by 35”) and pounded against a large smooth log until the bark becomes soft and supple. Men traditionally perform these functions. Once the bark is ready for painting the women take over. Women are the artists. They work with a dark pigment that is derived from roots or other plant sources, using a finger or a twig to apply the paint. The painting is a social event with a group of women gathered together, the bark cloth draped over their knees, as they paint. Sometimes two women will work on the same piece; each tackling one-half and when this occurs it is easy to see that each painter has a style unique to herself.

  The issue of style is of the greatest importance; as a generality it can be said that the bark paintings are a compelling artistic experience. They are invariably fresh and vibrant and a delight to the eye. With the most meager of means, isolated in the Ituri forest of the Congo, the illiterate M’bute Pygmies have demonstrated a distinct aesthetic gift. What makes for the success of their paintings? First of all, each work has a distinct unity; the parts belong together, whether the composition is dense or sparse. There is no possibility of “modeling” or shading as practiced in the West because the bark absorbs the pigment quickly. But effects of light and dark are achieved by the use of line alone; many short lines drawn close together stands out as dark compared to the areas left unpainted and what follows is a dynamic alternation of lights and darks. These areas are joined from time to time by a connecting line; there is no way to predict when these joinings will occur, they just do. So the field is full of surprises, of unexpected links. Some times the lines run from one edge of a panel to the other without monotony because each line is rendered in an individual way, and small variations of closeness and openness keep the field alive. Groupings may tumble in one direction and then in another in a way that evokes the herringbone patterns of Jasper Johns’ recent paintings. In fact, the abstract nature of Pygmy paintings resonates powerfully with much of contemporary Western abstract painting. That explains why Pygmy paintings enjoy such popularity today around the world. Some scholars are not sure if Pygmies were influenced by Western artists such as Paul Klee or if the influence went the other way. What is certain is that both cultures share common aesthetic virtues of simplicity, complexity, innocence, invention, spontaneity and the clear joy in the act of creation. (1/13/09)

  Recommended reading:

  Meurant, Georges, Mbuti design: paintings by Pygmy women of the Ituri forest/Georges Meurant and Robert Farris Thompson, New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1996

  CHAPTER VII: TRAVEL

  A FUNNY THING HAPPENED BACK FROM HOUSTON

  When I went to Houston, to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with the daughter of my former student at Columbia University, I brought along a sizeable amount of cash just in case the opportunity to buy something developed. The daughter of my former student had recently spent a lot of time in northern Pakistan and fell in love with the tribal embroideries that were passing over the border from Afghanistan. She is, I discovered, as crazy about folk textiles as I am.

  I spent five days with my friend in the remote suburbs o
f Houston, and I had time to look over the textiles she had brought back. But we never found a way to make an exchange so I returned to New York with the money belt full of dollar bills.

  One week later there was a reunion in my apartment of the members of a reading group that my wife had organized. This meeting was meant to be in honor of my wife who died over a year ago, and would mark the end of the group. There were seven people at the table and me. As was the habit everyone brought some food or drink. Each member read a piece and listened to the critiques that followed. Little by little the sweets and the drinks were dispensed. Little by little people were getting tipsy (there was some hard liquor besides the wine). People were free to move about the apartment, everyone felt at home, as it were. Four hours later the group broke up.

  The next day as I was about to go out I thought I had better take an extra twenty dollar bill from my usual hiding place. I was startled to discover that the wad of bills and the money belt were gone, just gone. My God, I thought, I have been robbed. I looked around, of course, for a possible other spot I may have placed the money but nothing turned up. I was flabbergasted. The money was always placed in a cabinet in my bedroom, so I concluded: someone who had knowledge of my hiding place must’ve taken the money and the money belt, both in a clean sweep.

  As a rule I never keep much cash in that cabinet. The trip to Houston and the unsuccessful exchange accounted for the excess amount of money. I thought to myself, “Just when I had the largest reserve in the hiding place, the infamous act was perpetrated, as (bad) luck would have it.” The money must have been taken by someone I trusted, by a friend in whom I had confided. What perfidy to be violated by a friend so my thoughts ran. I had all I could do to eliminate the possible villain and to not become overwhelmed with regret and suspicion.

  As much as I would try to imagine the guilty person I knew I could not go around accusing people of theft. I had to suffer this loss alone. I did call my good friend Fred because I trusted him implicitly. He was dismayed to learn of the theft but could not in good conscience think any member of our group responsible for an ignoble deed. He concluded the job was done by someone who had access to my apartment and he advised me to change the lock of the front door.

  I also called my brother in California. He was no help at all. He ranted on and on about how stupid I was for leaving money in a place so accessible; he was no comfort and no solace; I simply had to take the blows of adversity, I deserved to suffer. That was my brother’s message.

  I was, indeed, resigned to suffer in silence.

  Two days later as I sat down in the living room to watch a late television show, I casually looked over my shoulder at a pile of textiles on top of which sat my money belt and all the money I had taken to Houston. I was so relieved and realized immediately that this episode was a matter of short-term memory deficiency. I had no recollection of leaving the money belt in the middle of the living room on a pile of textiles in plain view of everyone. Nobody touched the money; it was where I left it. But the older memory of hiding my money in the habitual hiding place in my bedroom was stronger than the last drop-off place. The problem is the problem of aging. I simply have to be doubly or triply attentive to where I leave things. What else can I do? (12/10/08)

  A LITTLE WHITE LIE IN ISTANBUL

  Breakfast was included in the price of the hotel so the residents were eager to start their day with all the “free” food they could eat. The dining room was a circular, one- story structure with a pole in the center, altogether resembling a yurt or a ger, the typical domestic house of the nomadic Mongols whence the original Turks came from. That was just an idea that occurred to me as we took our places along the windows that faced the garden, or if you will, the backyard of the hotel.

  Self-service was the usual order with food laid out on a round table around the center pole: hard-boiled eggs, slices of goat cheese, olives, both black and green, little containers of butter and jam, and thick slices of so-called French bread. Of course there was an ersatz fruit juice, coffee, and tea. The tea was the Turkish type, dark and pungent, served from a samovar-like affair and the coffee was made from little airline style plastic packets. Sometimes there were also cakes which were a special treat. I always took two extra slices to wrap up in my paper napkin for use later in the day.

  By eight o’clock the dining room was full of people, all busy serving themselves and eagerly consuming the goodies. People mostly came in twos with an occasional single. We sat quietly, hardly conversing to each other or if we did we did so in hushed voices so the sound of voices would not pass beyond the table. But furtive eyes were, nevertheless, canvassing the room as each couple sized up the others. Tourists are usually a great mix of people from Scandinavia, Austria, France, Spain, Holland, the US and sometimes Latin America. Occasionally an exchange of “Good Morning” was shared and more courageous people would actually start conversations. People were really anxious to talk, especially people traveling on their own. Once the silence was broken and the initial contact was made, the exchange of information went fast and furious. The opportunity to get acquainted was extremely limited so we quickly revealed our cities of origin, our languages, our occupations, our travel plans, or the good and bad episodes while on the road.

  On this morning my wife, as usual, the first to break the social barriers, spoke to two women who were traveling together. They both proved to be of interest and “sympa” as the French would say, especially the woman who told us that she was born in 1940 and therefore had no memory of the Second World War, but learned that she and her family escaped the Nazi occupation of France by hiding for four years in a remote agricultural part of Southern France. My wife could empathize with that experience because she and her family had saved themselves from the same Nazi terror by walking across the Pyrenees into Spain in 1943.

  After breakfast I took off on my own to make the most of another day in Istanbul. I headed for the Grand Bazaar only two stations away from our stop on the tram at Sultanahmet. I remember the Grand Bazaar from another visit there twenty-five years ago and was longing for the same magic I had known then. No luck. Of course, things change and the thrill of discovery cannot be reproduced on demand. I walked through lots of narrow passages, eyeing the big and little shops, listening to the usual merchants’ importuning invitations: “just step inside, just take a look, you don’t have to buy.” I found one tiny shop no bigger than a telephone booth. The old man of the shop claimed he was the dean of the bazaar, the one others come to for authentication. He won me over. I bought a small bracelet covered in a thin layer of silver probably coming from Pakistan. I was mostly interested in the knobby ends of the bracelet for a study on polymorphic solids in tribal ornaments. Then I went on to the book market which is located outside the bazaar proper. I was skittish about asking question about old books under the mistaken notion that the subject was taboo. Manuscript copies of the Koran are supposedly not to be treated as consumer goods and traded in the open market like other objects. So I just gathered some information and passed beyond the book market to the next open space which turned out to be a yard devoted to the sale of prayer beads. Men congregate around other men with open satchels filled with all manner of strung beads. These beads are carefully and lovingly examined and reexamined until just the right qualities are discovered. I walked through this little market on to a much more expansive square, one donated, I remembered reading in the guidebook, by an early sultan to the city of Istanbul. The square is a great public place but also a stage setting for the monumental stone gate, the entrance to the University of Istanbul. As I approached the entrance I noticed the students presenting ID cards to the attending guards. Accordingly, I flipped out my University Card, presented it, and was politely directed through.

  The main building on campus was located at the end of a long tree-shaded walkway. As hot as it was, by midday, I trudged on meeting halfway down the alley a young female student. I stopped her and asked her point blank where I could find the sc
hool cafeteria. She, most graciously, told me she could indicate the better of two lunchrooms, and more than that, she reversed the direction of her walk and escorted me to the building where lunch was being served. We stopped at a little office dispensing meal tickets. My guide explained to the cashier my mission (as a foreign professor) and we were permitted to pass without charge. Then the young lady applied her magnetic ring to a turnstile so I could finally enter the eating area and she departed.

  The food tray was slipped through a small opening in the kitchen wall. Everyone got the same food: juice, a main plate with, as I learned later, dolma, a stuffed vegetable covered with light cream, bread and chocolate pudding. Tea or coffee, of course. I ate my lunch watching the young people in the room, all dressed in Western fashion, t-shirts and jeans, men and women, interacting pretty much as young people will on an American campus. These were the advantaged kids getting the best possible education in the country and destined to play important roles in the future life of Turkey.

  Why was having lunch at the University Istanbul such a coup? I don’t know but I was anxious to get back to the hotel to tell my wife about the morning’s adventure. An afternoon siesta was a must at home, and even more on a trip away from home. By late afternoon we were refreshed and ready for another adventure. We had an early dinner at the corner restaurant just a block away from our hotel. This restaurant was a phenomenon: just five tables squeezed together under a canvas shelter projecting into the intersection of two streets. It was a tiny place with an even tinier kitchen but with a loud and demonstrative patron or owner who greeted everyone as though he or she was a long lost relative or a really good old friend. Handshakes, of course, were de rigueur and seating was achieved with a certain pomp that befitted a four-star hotel restaurant. The food was good and the prices were good as well, so we ate there for most of our meals during the first ten days. By then we had exhausted the menu repertoire and got tired of the fake congeniality and decided to never go back.