My sabbatical being over and the school year underway, I admit I've seriously slacked off on blogging. Much has been happening, some of it definitely blog-worthy, but... well... we know how that goes.
This fall I'm teaching two courses, 1900-1945 and Czech Modernism. I'm pleased to say that the vast majority of students in both classes are doing very well and seem engaged in the course material. Nearly everyone has turned in all the required work so far and many students speak up in class.
Czech Modernism is a course I can only teach every few years, as while it is in one of my areas of specialization (as are my Surrealism course and my Women in Art course), our art history program is small. Every three years I rotate among a year of 18th- and 19th-century, a year of 20th century, and a year of American art; every spring I teach the second half of the intro survey; and I teach Women in Art every two years. So, as I am the only person teaching post-Baroque, my remaining courses need to shift about among the various other courses I have developed.
When I do teach Czech Modernism, students usually enroll in the class because it fits their schedule or because they like modernism or like me--not because they have an idea what Czech Modernism might be like, although I do include Czech modernist works in some of my other courses. Kupka is important in the development of abstraction and nonobjective art, Czech cubism enters into my discussion of cubism more generally, and of course the Prague surrealist group is part of what I teach when it comes to surrealism. However, students don't necessarily remember that they've already seen Czech art in other courses.
Consequently, students are unsure what to expect and how to connect Czech modernism to whatever they may already know. They can be alarmed by the names and worry how to choose a research topic that will have enough sources in English. (There is actually a lot published in English now, but not on every artist, and not always readily available.) Soon, however, they relax a bit and discover that they're drawn to much of the art and that Czech names can be kind of fun. After all, while names like Černý (Black) are fairly ordinary, names like Mrkvička (Little Carrot) are fun to hear and know the meaning of.
This semester, we also have the luck to have one student who has been to the Czech Republic and also an auditor who not only is very interested in her Czech heritage but is also fantastically generous, bringing pages from old Mucha and Lada art calendars to distribute and even books to give away to interested students. I'm discovering that while this isn't a language class, my students enjoy being greeted in Czech and find it neat to learn various Czech words. One of my students, in fact, has found that he can use ABBYY Finereader (which I merely use for OCR) to get rough translations of Czech texts. Without ABBYY and Google Translate and various other arcane tools he has found, I cannot imagine how he'd find enough information about the 19th-century Mánes family to write the paper that I was so reluctant to let him attempt. He has been kind enough to use his skills with machine translation to help some of the other students get a sense of Czech texts they have found, too.
In my upper-level exams I don't have students do IDs. In survey, yes, but after that I want them concentrating more on concepts, on understanding the different movements, thinking about the social context, etc., not stressing out over which year a work was made (although I really do want them clear on chronology and names). In the past I have done the Czech midterm as a take-home. This time I tried giving them the questions in advance and having them write in class without notes. This worked very well. While there were some cases of people not reviewing material that they really should have--I don't want to hear that Jan Hus was alive in 1620 for the Battle of White Mountain (even though his ideas were important then), or that Kupka was a leader of the Czech cubists--overall the class wrote very good exams that showed they had prepared appropriately. When I asked at the outset whether they wanted 15 minutes per question or 20, they clamored for 20 because they had "a lot to say!" It's gratifying when a class feels it has a lot to say on the material, especially when the subject matter is something that has required real effort and study.
On the whole, my students in both classes are keeping me pleased with life as a professor. That's important at a time when my university is having some serious problems.
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Revising the Powerpoints
School starts in a month, so there's no shortage of work to do to prepare, even though technically I'm still on sabbatical. (And of course, sabbatical is all about work too, just not about teaching at one's home institution.) My main immediate teaching-related task is to get my two fall courses ready to go, although ideally I'd be getting the entire year's courses out of my hair. (Every year I hope to do that before school starts, and every year I fail, prompting a flurry of work at Christmas-time.)
Mind you, everything I'm teaching this coming year is a course I've already taught. In theory, that makes life easier. Well, and indeed it does, just not as much as I'd like. In teaching art history, we use Powerpoint or some similar presentation software such as OIV, having abandoned physical slides around the time I finished grad school. I have never taught a course using traditional slides, although I could have done so had I so chosen during my first years teaching.
The advantage of presentation software is that whatever you've created is available to re-use next time around. This is also, at times, a disadvantage. When I began teaching, I had no access to image databases such as ArtStor.org. Just as my students now often do, I went rummaging around on the internet in search of jpgs to download. In those days much less was available. Fewer museums had put any of their collections online. And, just as today, often the image is not properly labeled, is not of sufficient size to project large, may have poor color, may be cropped without that having been stated, and may even turn out to be somebody's proud copy of a favorite artist's painting. These problems meant that my early Powerpoints had a lot of imperfect images, a problem I compounded by not labeling the works very thoroughly.
So--before each semester starts, I try to go through the Powerpoints, many of which have had portions cannibalized from some other course because after all I might want to show major works by an artist in survey, in a 20th-century course, and in Women in Art--and see what might need fixing. Does the color look right? Is the label complete? Next thing I know, I'm spending hours searching through ArtStor for information that they may not have either, or may have wrong depending on who provided the image to them.
On labeling: not every art historian believes in labeling classroom images, but I sure do--most of my students have no idea how to spell a wide range of foreign names, and I'm not going to write every artist's name on the blackboard at the beginning of class as some of my professors used to. But beyond that, I've learned that my students--mostly aspiring artists--want to know the exact medium, and often how big the work is, and I'd like them to know where these works are. So I work to improve my labeling. And I'd believe ArtStor that a given work by Gabriele Münter is a color woodcut, except that I happen to know it's really a color linocut, which isn't the same thing. And when I see that Paula Modersohn-Becker painted various works on board or on cardboard, I get nervous about information that says oil on canvas, because do they actually know or are they just making an assumption?
This sort of thing is what I fret about when I still have a reasonable amount of time before the semester starts--if there's no time left, I say the hell with it, I'll have to try to fix some things as we go along. But something I have to deal with this semester, which has been an ongoing problem, is that the number of class sessions per week have changed from last time I taught these courses. Somehow this seems to happen to me constantly--that the amount of time per lecture shifts.
When I taught in grad school, we were on semesters, although sometimes I taught once a week, sometimes twice, and sometimes three times. When I got a job, we were on quarters and I taught twice a week. Before long, we switched to semesters, still twice a week but with a different amount of time. Next, my schedule began to rotate between twice a week and three times a week. That was kind of hellish for course prep (I like to divide topics by day, if not by week), so we introduced a schedule that involves teaching three days a week but doing a mix of two-day and one-day courses. I like this new schedule a lot, my colleague a bit less. It seems to work for the students. But it does mean that anything I taught three days a week needs reworking (i.e. everything I'm teaching this year), and the once-a-week course needs to be made less lecture-heavy.
Consequently, while friends who have been teaching longer than I have are astonished that I would need to do more than minor tweaks to my courses, I regret to say that, as usual, I have an unpleasant amount of reorganization to do before the semester starts.
Mind you, everything I'm teaching this coming year is a course I've already taught. In theory, that makes life easier. Well, and indeed it does, just not as much as I'd like. In teaching art history, we use Powerpoint or some similar presentation software such as OIV, having abandoned physical slides around the time I finished grad school. I have never taught a course using traditional slides, although I could have done so had I so chosen during my first years teaching.
The advantage of presentation software is that whatever you've created is available to re-use next time around. This is also, at times, a disadvantage. When I began teaching, I had no access to image databases such as ArtStor.org. Just as my students now often do, I went rummaging around on the internet in search of jpgs to download. In those days much less was available. Fewer museums had put any of their collections online. And, just as today, often the image is not properly labeled, is not of sufficient size to project large, may have poor color, may be cropped without that having been stated, and may even turn out to be somebody's proud copy of a favorite artist's painting. These problems meant that my early Powerpoints had a lot of imperfect images, a problem I compounded by not labeling the works very thoroughly.
So--before each semester starts, I try to go through the Powerpoints, many of which have had portions cannibalized from some other course because after all I might want to show major works by an artist in survey, in a 20th-century course, and in Women in Art--and see what might need fixing. Does the color look right? Is the label complete? Next thing I know, I'm spending hours searching through ArtStor for information that they may not have either, or may have wrong depending on who provided the image to them.
On labeling: not every art historian believes in labeling classroom images, but I sure do--most of my students have no idea how to spell a wide range of foreign names, and I'm not going to write every artist's name on the blackboard at the beginning of class as some of my professors used to. But beyond that, I've learned that my students--mostly aspiring artists--want to know the exact medium, and often how big the work is, and I'd like them to know where these works are. So I work to improve my labeling. And I'd believe ArtStor that a given work by Gabriele Münter is a color woodcut, except that I happen to know it's really a color linocut, which isn't the same thing. And when I see that Paula Modersohn-Becker painted various works on board or on cardboard, I get nervous about information that says oil on canvas, because do they actually know or are they just making an assumption?
This sort of thing is what I fret about when I still have a reasonable amount of time before the semester starts--if there's no time left, I say the hell with it, I'll have to try to fix some things as we go along. But something I have to deal with this semester, which has been an ongoing problem, is that the number of class sessions per week have changed from last time I taught these courses. Somehow this seems to happen to me constantly--that the amount of time per lecture shifts.
When I taught in grad school, we were on semesters, although sometimes I taught once a week, sometimes twice, and sometimes three times. When I got a job, we were on quarters and I taught twice a week. Before long, we switched to semesters, still twice a week but with a different amount of time. Next, my schedule began to rotate between twice a week and three times a week. That was kind of hellish for course prep (I like to divide topics by day, if not by week), so we introduced a schedule that involves teaching three days a week but doing a mix of two-day and one-day courses. I like this new schedule a lot, my colleague a bit less. It seems to work for the students. But it does mean that anything I taught three days a week needs reworking (i.e. everything I'm teaching this year), and the once-a-week course needs to be made less lecture-heavy.
Consequently, while friends who have been teaching longer than I have are astonished that I would need to do more than minor tweaks to my courses, I regret to say that, as usual, I have an unpleasant amount of reorganization to do before the semester starts.
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Šopský salát
Continuing with cool hot-weather dining from Prague, šopský salát is a great and easy option. Now before anyone protests that šopský salát isn't Czech, well no, technically it is not a traditional Czech salad, but it has been popular for decades, and in the past you could find it on just about any Czech restaurant's menu. I looked it up, and according to Wikipedia, it was invented in the 1960s in Bulgaria as part of a tourist promotion, and the English name is Shopska salad. Well, the thing is, this salad became extremely popular throughout the Balkans and Central Europe, so while its origin is not Czech, it definitely became part of Czech cuisine.
According to Wikipedia, it's made from tomatoes, cucumbers, onion/scallions, raw or roasted peppers, sirene (white brine cheese), and parsley. The vegetables are diced and salted, then dressed with sunflower or olive oil, plus optionally vinegar (I am sure I have always had it with vinegar!) and then the cheese is added on top.
The description provided by Wikipedia seems a little vague given that one ought to be able to track down the original version of this recipe. However, it's not necessary to have the original version to enjoy some form of this salad. The version I have been making without any recourse to a recipe simply involves chopping up some cucumber, bell pepper, and tomato into a bowl, pouring some crumbled feta cheese on top, then adding olive oil and balsamic vinegar plus some salt and freshly ground pepper, and mixing the concoction with my fork. Due to the juicy tomatoes, there will be juice in the bottom of the bowl after the salad is gone, but it's tasty on its own assuming you didn't go way overboard on the vinegar. And while usually I find feta cheese somewhat too salty for my taste, in this salad you can use quite a bit and even add salt without making it unpleasantly salty. If you are on a low-salt diet, then of course you wouldn't add any salt, just go with the cheese.
In any case, it's quick, easy, and really good.
According to Wikipedia, it's made from tomatoes, cucumbers, onion/scallions, raw or roasted peppers, sirene (white brine cheese), and parsley. The vegetables are diced and salted, then dressed with sunflower or olive oil, plus optionally vinegar (I am sure I have always had it with vinegar!) and then the cheese is added on top.
The description provided by Wikipedia seems a little vague given that one ought to be able to track down the original version of this recipe. However, it's not necessary to have the original version to enjoy some form of this salad. The version I have been making without any recourse to a recipe simply involves chopping up some cucumber, bell pepper, and tomato into a bowl, pouring some crumbled feta cheese on top, then adding olive oil and balsamic vinegar plus some salt and freshly ground pepper, and mixing the concoction with my fork. Due to the juicy tomatoes, there will be juice in the bottom of the bowl after the salad is gone, but it's tasty on its own assuming you didn't go way overboard on the vinegar. And while usually I find feta cheese somewhat too salty for my taste, in this salad you can use quite a bit and even add salt without making it unpleasantly salty. If you are on a low-salt diet, then of course you wouldn't add any salt, just go with the cheese.
In any case, it's quick, easy, and really good.
Monday, July 23, 2018
Cool Summer Drinks, Czech-style
It's hot out and the thought of a cool drink is very appealing. But let's not think in terms of soft drinks or plain water (although the Czechs do have a cola called Kofola and they do drink lots of water, particularly of the sparkling variety). And let's also leave out beer, because we all already know the Czechs are famous for their beer, right?
Here's a popular option: Limonada. This term does not mean lemonade in the American sense, although lemonade is one possibility if we're talking about limonada. Basically, to make limonada you need carbonated water of some sort and fruits and/or vegetables. For instance, you could mash some red currants in a tall glass of that water.
The best limonada I had this summer was at the cafe in the Veletřní palác (which is the modern and contemporary art museum). In a tall glass, slice lots of cucumber. I'm not sure quite how much--that's up to you--but it was best when thinly sliced. Add a slice or two of lemon or lime, perhaps a little sugar (not much though) and perhaps some mint leaves. Stir it around and mash the cucumber slices a bit. If you wish, add ice cubes. Serve with a spoon or fork for the slices. It's just divine.
Here's a popular option: Limonada. This term does not mean lemonade in the American sense, although lemonade is one possibility if we're talking about limonada. Basically, to make limonada you need carbonated water of some sort and fruits and/or vegetables. For instance, you could mash some red currants in a tall glass of that water.
The best limonada I had this summer was at the cafe in the Veletřní palác (which is the modern and contemporary art museum). In a tall glass, slice lots of cucumber. I'm not sure quite how much--that's up to you--but it was best when thinly sliced. Add a slice or two of lemon or lime, perhaps a little sugar (not much though) and perhaps some mint leaves. Stir it around and mash the cucumber slices a bit. If you wish, add ice cubes. Serve with a spoon or fork for the slices. It's just divine.
Sunday, July 22, 2018
A Few More Changes Noticed in Prague
I've returned home by now, and am mildly embarrassed to have written so few of the blog posts that came into my head during this year's European stay. In the past I was a much more regular blogger.
In any case, I thought I might add on some culinary notes about changes in Prague. I've already mentioned that restaurants are charging more and expecting customers to tip rather than just round up as was previously the norm. But here I'll note actual shifts in cuisine.
Ten or fifteen years ago, most restaurants in Prague offered... guess what... Czech food! Second to Czech food came Italian food in the form of pizza, pasta, and risottos. Here and there one might also find Chinese, Thai, or Mexican (sometimes of very dubious authenticity). And, many years ago, there was a Georgian restaurant. I don't know which part of town the Georgian restaurant was in and so I have no idea whether it still exists. The only other Georgian restaurant I've been to was in Berkeley, and it is long gone.
Now, I was going to say that hole-in-the-wall gyro stands are new, but then I realized that they are not, they are just much more common and often have a sign saying "Kebap" which I don't think was the case before. I am certain, too, that in years past the proprietors did not ask if one wanted a tortilla. When asked this, I supposed they meant pita bread, so I said yes, but although the pronunciation of "tortilla" would have amused Mexicans, the object I received was indeed a flour tortilla. I was surprised and suspected I should have said I wanted bread, except that I had supposed choosing bread would have gotten me Czech bread. And while I like Czech bread, I don't want it with falafel or the like. (I can be something of a purist at times.)
So that's one kind of food that has become much more common. Thai and Chinese and Mexican restaurants too are rather easy to find. I was not greatly impressed with the two Chinese restaurants I visited--not having been to China yet, my favorite Chinese restaurants have been in California. On the other hand, while I didn't sample any of the Mexican food, the sudden prevalence of burrito joints suggests that one can probably get a decent burrito should one desire. And probably a more authentic one than those initially offered at American University's cafeteria back around 2001, which while tasty enough were made by staff who were clearly baffled by the whole concept and worked very slowly to concoct them and then cut them in half and topped them with sour cream and chives.
Something that seems utterly new in the past couple of years is, surprisingly enough, Vietnamese food. Why is this surprising? Well, given that North Vietnam sent a great many of its people to Czechoslovakia back in the 1970s, resulting in a large Vietnamese minority, you would think Vietnamese food would have become a staple long ago. Nope. It remained in the Vietnamese community until very recently. The Vietnamese run (apparently) all of the convenience stores (which stay open late as do those in the US, but which are much more focused on food and liquor than ours) and are famous for providing cheap clothing and suchlike at outdoor markets, but now their cuisine is being discovered.
And I might add that now the Vietnamese have been in Prague long enough (as you would expect) that one finally hears younger Vietnamese Czechs speaking perfect Czech with no accent whatsoever. I'm not sure why I never encountered this years ago, but I did not. Maybe it's a sign of increased connection. There are still plenty of Vietnamese Czechs under forty or so who have a strong Vietnamese accent.
To round out my account of the Prague restaurant scene, I must reveal that it seems harder and harder to find ordinary Czech restaurants. They exist, and it's true that as I spent a lot of time at the library, I was not in a part of town where ordinary fare for non-tourists was readily available other than in places such as the library bistro. But it seemed much easier to find Italian restaurants.
Ah yes. And food at cafes. That's another matter, although not necessarily more traditionally Czech. Perhaps I'll write about that another day.
In any case, I thought I might add on some culinary notes about changes in Prague. I've already mentioned that restaurants are charging more and expecting customers to tip rather than just round up as was previously the norm. But here I'll note actual shifts in cuisine.
Ten or fifteen years ago, most restaurants in Prague offered... guess what... Czech food! Second to Czech food came Italian food in the form of pizza, pasta, and risottos. Here and there one might also find Chinese, Thai, or Mexican (sometimes of very dubious authenticity). And, many years ago, there was a Georgian restaurant. I don't know which part of town the Georgian restaurant was in and so I have no idea whether it still exists. The only other Georgian restaurant I've been to was in Berkeley, and it is long gone.
Now, I was going to say that hole-in-the-wall gyro stands are new, but then I realized that they are not, they are just much more common and often have a sign saying "Kebap" which I don't think was the case before. I am certain, too, that in years past the proprietors did not ask if one wanted a tortilla. When asked this, I supposed they meant pita bread, so I said yes, but although the pronunciation of "tortilla" would have amused Mexicans, the object I received was indeed a flour tortilla. I was surprised and suspected I should have said I wanted bread, except that I had supposed choosing bread would have gotten me Czech bread. And while I like Czech bread, I don't want it with falafel or the like. (I can be something of a purist at times.)
So that's one kind of food that has become much more common. Thai and Chinese and Mexican restaurants too are rather easy to find. I was not greatly impressed with the two Chinese restaurants I visited--not having been to China yet, my favorite Chinese restaurants have been in California. On the other hand, while I didn't sample any of the Mexican food, the sudden prevalence of burrito joints suggests that one can probably get a decent burrito should one desire. And probably a more authentic one than those initially offered at American University's cafeteria back around 2001, which while tasty enough were made by staff who were clearly baffled by the whole concept and worked very slowly to concoct them and then cut them in half and topped them with sour cream and chives.
Something that seems utterly new in the past couple of years is, surprisingly enough, Vietnamese food. Why is this surprising? Well, given that North Vietnam sent a great many of its people to Czechoslovakia back in the 1970s, resulting in a large Vietnamese minority, you would think Vietnamese food would have become a staple long ago. Nope. It remained in the Vietnamese community until very recently. The Vietnamese run (apparently) all of the convenience stores (which stay open late as do those in the US, but which are much more focused on food and liquor than ours) and are famous for providing cheap clothing and suchlike at outdoor markets, but now their cuisine is being discovered.
And I might add that now the Vietnamese have been in Prague long enough (as you would expect) that one finally hears younger Vietnamese Czechs speaking perfect Czech with no accent whatsoever. I'm not sure why I never encountered this years ago, but I did not. Maybe it's a sign of increased connection. There are still plenty of Vietnamese Czechs under forty or so who have a strong Vietnamese accent.
To round out my account of the Prague restaurant scene, I must reveal that it seems harder and harder to find ordinary Czech restaurants. They exist, and it's true that as I spent a lot of time at the library, I was not in a part of town where ordinary fare for non-tourists was readily available other than in places such as the library bistro. But it seemed much easier to find Italian restaurants.
Ah yes. And food at cafes. That's another matter, although not necessarily more traditionally Czech. Perhaps I'll write about that another day.
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Prague Changes (and Also Doesn't)
As this year's visit to the Czech Republic draws to a close, I ponder some of what I've noticed this summer. I've spent a lot of time here over the years, including living in Prague for close to two years in 2005-2007. And while, naturally, much remains unknown or unfamiliar to me, I notice some of what has changed in just the last few years.
Some of these things are normal changes or trivial; others may be less so. But here are some things I see, for better or for worse. I list them in no particular order.
The construction at Prague's Národní třída metro station is apparently over and a mall stands atop it next to the Tesco department store. The restoration/renovation of the design museum (UPM) is also finally complete and the painted walls and ceilings are impressive! Work on the National Museum continues, however.
Tourists of South Asian origin have discovered Prague. I don't know how many are actually from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and how many are from the UK, but in years past one did not see many of them. Since the reviled Roma population also has a South Asian origin (albeit of centuries ago), I do wonder whether South Asian tourists in Western-style dress are ever mistaken for Roma. That wouldn't be very pleasant.
Speaking of the Roma, I have not noticed many of them this year, apart from the inhabitants of a building near the flat I'm renting. I wonder whether Prague has become too expensive for this generally under-employed group.
And yes, Prague becomes increasingly expensive! While the price of books seems fairly stable, the price of restaurant meals is far higher--double or more what it was not that many years ago--and not just in Prague. In the past, you could expect meals in other cities to be much cheaper, just as restaurants outside the tourist districts of Prague were cheaper than those frequented by tourists. Plus there's a change to service not being included in many establishments' bills. Consequently, I haven't been going to restaurants much! The bistro at the library serves decent lunches at an economical price and otherwise I eat yogurt or salads back at the flat.
More problematic for residents than the price of restaurant meals, of course, is the cost of housing. Residents tell me that real estate has gone way up. People are leaving Prague to commute in to work from towns elsewhere. I'm told by more than one person that the Russians are in large part to blame--that as in London, Russians buy city properties and then don't occupy them to any real extent, leaving areas empty and unavailable to people who actually need housing here. Of course, some Russians have settled here permanently just like expatriates from other countries, but I don't think people are blaming those who are making a life here. Presumably the people to blame are those infamous Russian money-launderers.
The English language is everywhere. Not that every Czech now speaks English, but many more do than ever before, and English-language signage is ubiquitous. While that's helpful to many of the tourists, it's also a little peculiar and perhaps just trendy. But one also now finds more English-speakers--whether tourists or expats--all over the city. I feel rather mixed about this. It's nice that visitors may be seeing more of the city than just the major sights, but...
There's also the... shall we call it Disneylandification? of parts of the city. I don't refer to actual Disney characters here, but the way areas begin to resemble an amusement park for tourists. Sure, even ten years ago there were barkers on Celetna calling on pedestrians to stop for Thai massage, but the number of mimes and buskers has become perhaps excessive (although at least they have certain skills--still, if you've seen one guy painted silver appearing to sit on thin air, you've seen them all). This year tourists have also been thrilled to encounter a ten-foot-tall dancing polar bear infesting Old Town Square. I'm serious. Someone (or two or three someones?) actually thinks it's a good idea to don a heavy and gigantic polar-bear costume in hot weather and dance around on the hot pavement, in a city that has no particular connection to the Arctic, and swarms of tourists squeal with excitement and can't wait to be photographed next to the bear. Okay, I guess it's better than bringing back the medieval amusement of baiting genuine bears, but otherwise is this not better suited to an amusement park than to a historic square in a national capital? However, it appears that Old Town Square is now Prague's own free amusement park where the statue of religious reformer Jan Hus is merely the backdrop to benches for the weary watching the giant bear lurch about across the square.
There are other changes to note, but it's always better to pause when my curmudgeonly side comes to the fore.
Some of these things are normal changes or trivial; others may be less so. But here are some things I see, for better or for worse. I list them in no particular order.
The construction at Prague's Národní třída metro station is apparently over and a mall stands atop it next to the Tesco department store. The restoration/renovation of the design museum (UPM) is also finally complete and the painted walls and ceilings are impressive! Work on the National Museum continues, however.
Tourists of South Asian origin have discovered Prague. I don't know how many are actually from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and how many are from the UK, but in years past one did not see many of them. Since the reviled Roma population also has a South Asian origin (albeit of centuries ago), I do wonder whether South Asian tourists in Western-style dress are ever mistaken for Roma. That wouldn't be very pleasant.
Speaking of the Roma, I have not noticed many of them this year, apart from the inhabitants of a building near the flat I'm renting. I wonder whether Prague has become too expensive for this generally under-employed group.
And yes, Prague becomes increasingly expensive! While the price of books seems fairly stable, the price of restaurant meals is far higher--double or more what it was not that many years ago--and not just in Prague. In the past, you could expect meals in other cities to be much cheaper, just as restaurants outside the tourist districts of Prague were cheaper than those frequented by tourists. Plus there's a change to service not being included in many establishments' bills. Consequently, I haven't been going to restaurants much! The bistro at the library serves decent lunches at an economical price and otherwise I eat yogurt or salads back at the flat.
More problematic for residents than the price of restaurant meals, of course, is the cost of housing. Residents tell me that real estate has gone way up. People are leaving Prague to commute in to work from towns elsewhere. I'm told by more than one person that the Russians are in large part to blame--that as in London, Russians buy city properties and then don't occupy them to any real extent, leaving areas empty and unavailable to people who actually need housing here. Of course, some Russians have settled here permanently just like expatriates from other countries, but I don't think people are blaming those who are making a life here. Presumably the people to blame are those infamous Russian money-launderers.
The English language is everywhere. Not that every Czech now speaks English, but many more do than ever before, and English-language signage is ubiquitous. While that's helpful to many of the tourists, it's also a little peculiar and perhaps just trendy. But one also now finds more English-speakers--whether tourists or expats--all over the city. I feel rather mixed about this. It's nice that visitors may be seeing more of the city than just the major sights, but...
There's also the... shall we call it Disneylandification? of parts of the city. I don't refer to actual Disney characters here, but the way areas begin to resemble an amusement park for tourists. Sure, even ten years ago there were barkers on Celetna calling on pedestrians to stop for Thai massage, but the number of mimes and buskers has become perhaps excessive (although at least they have certain skills--still, if you've seen one guy painted silver appearing to sit on thin air, you've seen them all). This year tourists have also been thrilled to encounter a ten-foot-tall dancing polar bear infesting Old Town Square. I'm serious. Someone (or two or three someones?) actually thinks it's a good idea to don a heavy and gigantic polar-bear costume in hot weather and dance around on the hot pavement, in a city that has no particular connection to the Arctic, and swarms of tourists squeal with excitement and can't wait to be photographed next to the bear. Okay, I guess it's better than bringing back the medieval amusement of baiting genuine bears, but otherwise is this not better suited to an amusement park than to a historic square in a national capital? However, it appears that Old Town Square is now Prague's own free amusement park where the statue of religious reformer Jan Hus is merely the backdrop to benches for the weary watching the giant bear lurch about across the square.
There are other changes to note, but it's always better to pause when my curmudgeonly side comes to the fore.
Thursday, June 21, 2018
The André Breton site
Hunting around for places to obtain suitable (publication-quality, hi-res) images is, as my regular readers will have gathered, an often arduous task. I'm pleased to report, therefore, that http://www.andrebreton.fr/en/ is an excellent source for those of us who are scholars of surrealism. The Association Atelier André Breton offers a wealth of online research materials and just cool stuff relating to Breton's voluminous collections, and most of the site is available in both French and English, which makes it easier to use in teaching.
I had discovered this site some time ago, but for some reason had not realized (or maybe it wasn't yet an option?) that one could order images from it. Had I realized that earlier, I could have used funding from my university to pay for the images, but the said funding has expired and in our current financial state no one is getting any money for just about anything. (I could go on about this problem, but now is not the time.)
Another matter slowing me down in ordering was that as I explored the site, I found that in order to find everything it offers relating to Toyen, one has to search on her name in quite a few different places. Some things come up searching under Photography, others under Fine Art; it's possible that these two covered everything I found, but I had first searched under Libraries, Museums, Archives, and Private Collections, each of which category had to be searched by the individual organizations. I did not want to order until I had done a thorough search and considered my options, most of which were photographs of Toyen in the company of other surrealists. The site does include some artworks by Toyen too, of which two were works I desperately wanted for the book, one more seemed like a good thing to add, and the several other possibilities were not works I could really justify including, alas (Toyen was a prolific artist and my book is not about every aspect of her work).
Having spent the morning choosing my four photos and three paintings, I laboriously entered all of the required data into the online order form and clicked Send. But nothing seemed to happen!
I waited awhile, checked my email, tried again, tried filling out a fresh version of the form again, all with no indication that my request had actually gone through.
I decided to do other things for awhile and returned to my email. And lo, there were now four identical emails confirming my order!
Presumably the humans on the other end can figure out that there is actually only one order of seven items, not four orders of the same seven. While I feel a bit drained that this process took up my entire morning, I am relieved and delighted that my last chapter will now have some photos of the artist hanging out with the other Parisian surrealists, and that my to-find list for the color plate section is now slightly smaller.
I had discovered this site some time ago, but for some reason had not realized (or maybe it wasn't yet an option?) that one could order images from it. Had I realized that earlier, I could have used funding from my university to pay for the images, but the said funding has expired and in our current financial state no one is getting any money for just about anything. (I could go on about this problem, but now is not the time.)
Another matter slowing me down in ordering was that as I explored the site, I found that in order to find everything it offers relating to Toyen, one has to search on her name in quite a few different places. Some things come up searching under Photography, others under Fine Art; it's possible that these two covered everything I found, but I had first searched under Libraries, Museums, Archives, and Private Collections, each of which category had to be searched by the individual organizations. I did not want to order until I had done a thorough search and considered my options, most of which were photographs of Toyen in the company of other surrealists. The site does include some artworks by Toyen too, of which two were works I desperately wanted for the book, one more seemed like a good thing to add, and the several other possibilities were not works I could really justify including, alas (Toyen was a prolific artist and my book is not about every aspect of her work).
Having spent the morning choosing my four photos and three paintings, I laboriously entered all of the required data into the online order form and clicked Send. But nothing seemed to happen!
I waited awhile, checked my email, tried again, tried filling out a fresh version of the form again, all with no indication that my request had actually gone through.
I decided to do other things for awhile and returned to my email. And lo, there were now four identical emails confirming my order!
Presumably the humans on the other end can figure out that there is actually only one order of seven items, not four orders of the same seven. While I feel a bit drained that this process took up my entire morning, I am relieved and delighted that my last chapter will now have some photos of the artist hanging out with the other Parisian surrealists, and that my to-find list for the color plate section is now slightly smaller.
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Images and Languages
I've returned to Prague after two weeks in Germany with My Sibling, and have wrapped up acquisition of a couple more photos for the book--one historic view of Smíchov, and one a photo of Toyen and Nezval that had not previously been digitized. So... some progress in that realm, although less than I'd like. And then I was also able to get a couple of much-wanted works that Christie's had auctioned--for anyone who needs images auctioned by Christie's, the procedure is to contact the auction house and they will forward the request to Bridgeman Images to fulfill. (I don't think one can do this directly through Bridgeman as they may not have the images prior to one's request, but I didn't ask about that.)
Settling back down at the library--which is where I do much of my work since I can work on multiple projects at once there, have wifi, and be out of the flat rather than sequestering myself--this morning I found myself taking the role of traffic director. As I prepared to enter the cloakroom area, I noticed a young woman attempting to communicate with the man at the somewhat inappropriately named Reception desk. (It is indeed a reception desk, but not an information desk and its staff are not multilingual as far as I can tell.) She kept saying "Library" and he responded, appropriately but not very usefully, "Knihovna." Whether or not she grasped that he understood what she had said was beside the point as there was no other information. Consequently, I stepped up and inquired if I could help.
As it happened, she was indeed looking for the library and wanted the reading room. I said that she would need to get a library card, as to the best of my knowledge this is the case. She was a bit put out and said she thought it was open to the public. I said that it is, but one needs a library card, which is not expensive. (It did not, unfortunately, occur to me that perhaps the city library would serve her purposes equally well; it is, after all, right across the street from the national library.) I provided some further information about getting a library card and said that once she had one, she would present it to the reception desk so that, I suppose, they can track usage, and that the main reading room would be just past his desk. She commented, with some annoyance, that "Nobody here speaks English!"
I was somewhat surprised, as this part of Prague is simply crawling with Czechs who can speak English. The library is situated in Old Town, which is where every tourist goes, and therefore over the past twenty or so years the shop employees have become quite proficient in our new lingua franca (a term I use with irony). I said, therefore, that actually quite a few people here speak English.
She did not look convinced, but went off in the direction of the library card application forms. I then found myself helping, or at least attempting to help, a woman who was trying to find where to buy tickets to see the building. I don't actually know where one does that but I knew that the staff in the next room were better equipped to assist than the cloakroom attendant, who has laryngitis and speaks no English.
I like to be able to be helpful, but I found myself rather irked by the first encounter. It is true that learning to use the Národní knihovna is a bit challenging for non-Czechs even now that some of the brochures and forms are in English, but I don't see why someone should expect that everyone in a foreign country should know English, especially in a country where a significant percentage of the population finished school before English was offered as a foreign language. Using the reading room at a national library (in whatever country) generally requires at least a rudimentary knowledge of that country's language(s). Do people arrive at the Library of Congress and expect to walk in and hang out in its reading rooms and speak only, for example, French to the staff? There are certainly staff at the LOC who know French, but they are not everywhere.
Having made this commentary on the state of things, I will now proceed to look at Filmová Praha of 1923 in the hope that it will prove useful for a conference paper I am presenting in the fall.
Settling back down at the library--which is where I do much of my work since I can work on multiple projects at once there, have wifi, and be out of the flat rather than sequestering myself--this morning I found myself taking the role of traffic director. As I prepared to enter the cloakroom area, I noticed a young woman attempting to communicate with the man at the somewhat inappropriately named Reception desk. (It is indeed a reception desk, but not an information desk and its staff are not multilingual as far as I can tell.) She kept saying "Library" and he responded, appropriately but not very usefully, "Knihovna." Whether or not she grasped that he understood what she had said was beside the point as there was no other information. Consequently, I stepped up and inquired if I could help.
As it happened, she was indeed looking for the library and wanted the reading room. I said that she would need to get a library card, as to the best of my knowledge this is the case. She was a bit put out and said she thought it was open to the public. I said that it is, but one needs a library card, which is not expensive. (It did not, unfortunately, occur to me that perhaps the city library would serve her purposes equally well; it is, after all, right across the street from the national library.) I provided some further information about getting a library card and said that once she had one, she would present it to the reception desk so that, I suppose, they can track usage, and that the main reading room would be just past his desk. She commented, with some annoyance, that "Nobody here speaks English!"
I was somewhat surprised, as this part of Prague is simply crawling with Czechs who can speak English. The library is situated in Old Town, which is where every tourist goes, and therefore over the past twenty or so years the shop employees have become quite proficient in our new lingua franca (a term I use with irony). I said, therefore, that actually quite a few people here speak English.
She did not look convinced, but went off in the direction of the library card application forms. I then found myself helping, or at least attempting to help, a woman who was trying to find where to buy tickets to see the building. I don't actually know where one does that but I knew that the staff in the next room were better equipped to assist than the cloakroom attendant, who has laryngitis and speaks no English.
I like to be able to be helpful, but I found myself rather irked by the first encounter. It is true that learning to use the Národní knihovna is a bit challenging for non-Czechs even now that some of the brochures and forms are in English, but I don't see why someone should expect that everyone in a foreign country should know English, especially in a country where a significant percentage of the population finished school before English was offered as a foreign language. Using the reading room at a national library (in whatever country) generally requires at least a rudimentary knowledge of that country's language(s). Do people arrive at the Library of Congress and expect to walk in and hang out in its reading rooms and speak only, for example, French to the staff? There are certainly staff at the LOC who know French, but they are not everywhere.
Having made this commentary on the state of things, I will now proceed to look at Filmová Praha of 1923 in the hope that it will prove useful for a conference paper I am presenting in the fall.
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
100th Anniversary of Armenia's First Republic
I was wandering about yesterday evening after a day at the library, when I heard what sounded like bagpipes, Balkan style. (And for those who associate bagpipes solely with Scotland, no, different varieties are found in many countries!) I headed over in that direction and discovered a crowd around a troupe of costumed line-dancers.
Long ago, I used to design lighting (in a fairly primitive way) for folk dance concerts, so the type of dancing I was seeing, as well as the style of music, struck me as south Slavic and definitely not Czech. The costumes provided clues--the men wore sashes of red, blue, and gold stripes--but I'm not that familiar with every country's national colors and so wasn't sure whether they might be Montenegrin, Bulgarian, or what.
Before long, however, there were some speeches, and I discovered that rather than being part of a folk festival (and there was one just days ago), this event was in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Armenia's First Republic. Now of course I knew that 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia's First Republic, but I confess I hadn't realized Armenia had even had a First Republic. When I think of Armenia 100 years ago, I'm afraid I think of the Armenian Genocide.
There was some more dancing, and then some more speeches. One of the dancers turned to me and asked in English, as the speaker was using Armenian at that moment, if I knew what the event was about. Since I had been standing there long enough to have picked up the gist of things, I was able to say that I did know it celebrated the 100th anniversary. The dancer noted that while Armenia has existed for thousands of years, the First Republic was a brief one. I commented that it must have come soon after the Genocide, and he agreed that it had. He asked where I was from, so I said the United States, and he commented that we have a large Armenian diaspora. I agreed, and began to say that growing up I knew a good many Armenian-Americans (as many Armenians settled in California), but at that point one of his colleagues moved him back into the main group.
It was an interesting and moving, not to mention unexpected, celebration, and I was glad I happened along just at the right time.
Long ago, I used to design lighting (in a fairly primitive way) for folk dance concerts, so the type of dancing I was seeing, as well as the style of music, struck me as south Slavic and definitely not Czech. The costumes provided clues--the men wore sashes of red, blue, and gold stripes--but I'm not that familiar with every country's national colors and so wasn't sure whether they might be Montenegrin, Bulgarian, or what.
Before long, however, there were some speeches, and I discovered that rather than being part of a folk festival (and there was one just days ago), this event was in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Armenia's First Republic. Now of course I knew that 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia's First Republic, but I confess I hadn't realized Armenia had even had a First Republic. When I think of Armenia 100 years ago, I'm afraid I think of the Armenian Genocide.
There was some more dancing, and then some more speeches. One of the dancers turned to me and asked in English, as the speaker was using Armenian at that moment, if I knew what the event was about. Since I had been standing there long enough to have picked up the gist of things, I was able to say that I did know it celebrated the 100th anniversary. The dancer noted that while Armenia has existed for thousands of years, the First Republic was a brief one. I commented that it must have come soon after the Genocide, and he agreed that it had. He asked where I was from, so I said the United States, and he commented that we have a large Armenian diaspora. I agreed, and began to say that growing up I knew a good many Armenian-Americans (as many Armenians settled in California), but at that point one of his colleagues moved him back into the main group.
It was an interesting and moving, not to mention unexpected, celebration, and I was glad I happened along just at the right time.
Monday, May 28, 2018
Prague-Brno Train Travel Gets Trickier
On Saturday I headed for Brno on a day trip to go to a museum or two. In the past I've often taken the yellow Student Agency bus, which is a great option--very comfortable, with drinks and movies. On the other hand, if traffic slows to a crawl between Prague and Brno, there's nothing much the bus driver can do about it.
And, it looked like the museums I wanted to go to were a very simple walk from the Brno train station, so this time around I opted for the train. I looked up schedules on idos.cz, wrote down the most promising few, and set off for the station to buy my return ticket and go.
My day in Brno was pleasant, if a bit on the warm side. I saw some art, although the paintings I had gone especially to see were not on display, being removed for conservation or loan. (Right, the signs didn't specify which, so I have no idea whether these works are on display in some other city or secreted in a basement lab!) I also visited Brno's design museum, a gorgeous building inside, which turned out to be entirely taken over by a design biennale. I wanted to see that, but didn't find it as interesting as I had hoped.
I headed back to the train station, where my notes indicated I could catch the 5:09 back to Prague. The return ticket I had purchased was valid for trains going through a range of towns--there was only one town listed as not valid. Pardubice was on the valid list and the 5:09 train went via Pardubice, so I climbed aboard, saw a window seat that wasn't marked reserved, and planted myself. A young woman then sat next to me, the train started, and I began looking at the scenery.
A young man arrived with bottles of water and, to my mild surprise, asked for my ticket. (Conductors and refreshment purveyors are not, in my experience, the same person.) He informed me, pleasantly enough, that my ticket wasn't valid on this train because my ticket was from Ceske drahy whereas this was a Regiojet train.
Well, this was news to me because in my experience Ceske drahy sells the tickets for all train trips in the Czech Republic. Never mind whether the train originally comes from Germany or Hungary, if you buy your ticket in the Czech Republic, you're buying from Ceske drahy. But apparently Regiojet, which is part of the same company as Student Agency, has somehow obtained the right to run its own passenger trains that require purchase through that company.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Student Agency and Regiojet are very good at what they do. Their buses and trains are new and comfortable and not particularly expensive. And despite my ticket not being valid, I was left in peace the whole way to Prague. (I was going to get off at Pardubice and change to the next Ceske drahy train, but when we got to Pardubice the woman next to me was sound asleep and didn't respond to my voice or nudges, and her tray table was down, so I figured it wasn't worth it to shake her awake.)
On the other hand, I really don't like the idea that now the traveler has to worry about multiple companies and whether the ticket is good for the next train. The UK broke up their train system into a gazillion different carriers, and while their trains are nice too, it can be difficult to figure out just how to get to your destination. It's my impression that in the UK, it's at least divided up by region, but none of the companies seem to be able to provide any information about anyone else's train and so when I wanted to take the night train from London to Arbroath, I was unable to determine whether it had couchettes or if so how I would reserve one. (Perhaps I was incompetent, but I did spend quite awhile once fruitlessly trying to find out more about the Caledonian and eventually just dozed in an ordinary seat.) In the case of Ceske drahy and Regiojet, the trains are in direct competition on the same tracks.
Just when you think you know (mostly) how something works, you learn you don't after all.
And, it looked like the museums I wanted to go to were a very simple walk from the Brno train station, so this time around I opted for the train. I looked up schedules on idos.cz, wrote down the most promising few, and set off for the station to buy my return ticket and go.
My day in Brno was pleasant, if a bit on the warm side. I saw some art, although the paintings I had gone especially to see were not on display, being removed for conservation or loan. (Right, the signs didn't specify which, so I have no idea whether these works are on display in some other city or secreted in a basement lab!) I also visited Brno's design museum, a gorgeous building inside, which turned out to be entirely taken over by a design biennale. I wanted to see that, but didn't find it as interesting as I had hoped.
I headed back to the train station, where my notes indicated I could catch the 5:09 back to Prague. The return ticket I had purchased was valid for trains going through a range of towns--there was only one town listed as not valid. Pardubice was on the valid list and the 5:09 train went via Pardubice, so I climbed aboard, saw a window seat that wasn't marked reserved, and planted myself. A young woman then sat next to me, the train started, and I began looking at the scenery.
A young man arrived with bottles of water and, to my mild surprise, asked for my ticket. (Conductors and refreshment purveyors are not, in my experience, the same person.) He informed me, pleasantly enough, that my ticket wasn't valid on this train because my ticket was from Ceske drahy whereas this was a Regiojet train.
Well, this was news to me because in my experience Ceske drahy sells the tickets for all train trips in the Czech Republic. Never mind whether the train originally comes from Germany or Hungary, if you buy your ticket in the Czech Republic, you're buying from Ceske drahy. But apparently Regiojet, which is part of the same company as Student Agency, has somehow obtained the right to run its own passenger trains that require purchase through that company.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Student Agency and Regiojet are very good at what they do. Their buses and trains are new and comfortable and not particularly expensive. And despite my ticket not being valid, I was left in peace the whole way to Prague. (I was going to get off at Pardubice and change to the next Ceske drahy train, but when we got to Pardubice the woman next to me was sound asleep and didn't respond to my voice or nudges, and her tray table was down, so I figured it wasn't worth it to shake her awake.)
On the other hand, I really don't like the idea that now the traveler has to worry about multiple companies and whether the ticket is good for the next train. The UK broke up their train system into a gazillion different carriers, and while their trains are nice too, it can be difficult to figure out just how to get to your destination. It's my impression that in the UK, it's at least divided up by region, but none of the companies seem to be able to provide any information about anyone else's train and so when I wanted to take the night train from London to Arbroath, I was unable to determine whether it had couchettes or if so how I would reserve one. (Perhaps I was incompetent, but I did spend quite awhile once fruitlessly trying to find out more about the Caledonian and eventually just dozed in an ordinary seat.) In the case of Ceske drahy and Regiojet, the trains are in direct competition on the same tracks.
Just when you think you know (mostly) how something works, you learn you don't after all.
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Image Acquisition Continues
This year's Czech trip has several purposes--among which are doing research for new projects and seeing friends--but the more pressing project is, of course, image acquisition for Magnetic Woman. I knew when I began that image acquisition for art history books generally takes quite a bit of time and money, but each book has different needs and I didn't really have a clear sense of where my own time and money would end up going. I did know that I had taken a lot of photographs myself of Toyen's book illustrations, which meant that while I'd still have to pay copyright clearance on those, at least I wouldn't have to pay for the photos.
Yes--payment is usually a two-step process. First you get a photograph (these days typically a hi-res digital image) of the work, which can be anything from free to hundreds of dollars per photo, and then later, if the work is under copyright, you pay to clear copyright. In other words, you tell the copyright clearance people what you want to use this image for, how big, whether in color or b&w, etc., and they tell you how much it will cost.
An area where I've made nice headway since coming to Prague is that of getting photos of Toyen and her associates. I knew that the Památník národního písemnictví (PNP), which although an archive of Czech literature nonetheless is a major repository of art-related materials, had some of these photos. I also knew that the design museum (UPM) had purchased Jindřich Štyrský's photos, which included at least one of Toyen. I've worked with both of these entities before and am pleased to say that both responded very appropriately and professionally to my inquiries about photos and that I have now paid for and received most of what I requested. (One photo still has to be scanned by the PNP, and there are one or two artworks I may also request from them which are handled by the art side rather than the literary side.) This is all good and a great relief.
There remain some photos I'd like to get--photos of photos, that is--but I'm not sure who has them. Usually publications provide individual credits of who something belongs to, but some of these photos have been published without a specific credit, which is unhelpful.
Acquisition of photos of paintings remains even more difficult than I had anticipated. I knew that it probably wouldn't be easy to locate photos of privately held works, but it never occurred to me that several museums and galleries would simply not respond to emails. Kudos, therefore, to the museums that have already provided images, whether free or fee!
Yes--payment is usually a two-step process. First you get a photograph (these days typically a hi-res digital image) of the work, which can be anything from free to hundreds of dollars per photo, and then later, if the work is under copyright, you pay to clear copyright. In other words, you tell the copyright clearance people what you want to use this image for, how big, whether in color or b&w, etc., and they tell you how much it will cost.
An area where I've made nice headway since coming to Prague is that of getting photos of Toyen and her associates. I knew that the Památník národního písemnictví (PNP), which although an archive of Czech literature nonetheless is a major repository of art-related materials, had some of these photos. I also knew that the design museum (UPM) had purchased Jindřich Štyrský's photos, which included at least one of Toyen. I've worked with both of these entities before and am pleased to say that both responded very appropriately and professionally to my inquiries about photos and that I have now paid for and received most of what I requested. (One photo still has to be scanned by the PNP, and there are one or two artworks I may also request from them which are handled by the art side rather than the literary side.) This is all good and a great relief.
There remain some photos I'd like to get--photos of photos, that is--but I'm not sure who has them. Usually publications provide individual credits of who something belongs to, but some of these photos have been published without a specific credit, which is unhelpful.
Acquisition of photos of paintings remains even more difficult than I had anticipated. I knew that it probably wouldn't be easy to locate photos of privately held works, but it never occurred to me that several museums and galleries would simply not respond to emails. Kudos, therefore, to the museums that have already provided images, whether free or fee!
A Preview of a Possible Show
I come from a large extended family--both of my parents were descended from fertile immigrants. I have quite a few first cousins, and at last count, over 300 second cousins. (Maybe it's over 400 at this point; it's a bit tedious to count them although my genealogy program does produce a handy list.) With that many second cousins, it's perhaps not that surprising, statistically speaking, that my second cousin Larry ended up marrying a Czech and retiring to the Czech Republic.
On Saturday Larry and I ventured down to the Prague suburb of Radotín, where a filmmaker of his acquaintance was previewing a rough draft of the pilot for a TV show he hopes to create. The idea was to get feedback from a small select group of Czechs and Americans as to whether we found the characters engaging, the scenes intelligible, the pacing good, etc. Neither Larry nor I had ever critiqued a project like this before, but as he is a former newspaperman and I've belonged to various writing groups and have taken both film history and photography courses, we were reasonably well qualified to participate.
So, if a downloadable TV series called Cizince (Foreigners) should ever appear on your screen, know that I offered comments at the very first preview!
On Saturday Larry and I ventured down to the Prague suburb of Radotín, where a filmmaker of his acquaintance was previewing a rough draft of the pilot for a TV show he hopes to create. The idea was to get feedback from a small select group of Czechs and Americans as to whether we found the characters engaging, the scenes intelligible, the pacing good, etc. Neither Larry nor I had ever critiqued a project like this before, but as he is a former newspaperman and I've belonged to various writing groups and have taken both film history and photography courses, we were reasonably well qualified to participate.
So, if a downloadable TV series called Cizince (Foreigners) should ever appear on your screen, know that I offered comments at the very first preview!
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Margalit Fox's New Book
Newsday just posted its list of the best summer books and among the temptations therein is Margalit Fox's new title, Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World’s Most Famous Detective Writer.
Many readers know Margalit Fox through her highly regarded New York Times obituaries--one of her last and favorites is "Dovey Johnson Roundtree, Barrier-Breaking Lawyer, Dies at 104," but although I admire her obituaries, I myself first became acquainted with her through her husband George Robinson, as George and I were both active in the National Writers Union and co-chaired the Book Campaign for a time.
Margalit Fox is leaving the obituary-writing trade to focus on writing books, and after her fascinating The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code (about how Evans, Kober, and Ventris worked to decipher Linear B), I am looking forward to learning about Conan Doyle's own detective case.
Oh, and I see there's also a book on the photographer Weegee on Newsday's list!
Many readers know Margalit Fox through her highly regarded New York Times obituaries--one of her last and favorites is "Dovey Johnson Roundtree, Barrier-Breaking Lawyer, Dies at 104," but although I admire her obituaries, I myself first became acquainted with her through her husband George Robinson, as George and I were both active in the National Writers Union and co-chaired the Book Campaign for a time.
Margalit Fox is leaving the obituary-writing trade to focus on writing books, and after her fascinating The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code (about how Evans, Kober, and Ventris worked to decipher Linear B), I am looking forward to learning about Conan Doyle's own detective case.
Oh, and I see there's also a book on the photographer Weegee on Newsday's list!
Monday, May 21, 2018
And on to Holešovice
After my two weeks living out near Bílá Hora, I was able to move into a flat owned by a historian of my acquaintance, who commutes back and forth between Prague and Vienna and therefore doesn't live in the Prague flat all the time. This takes me to the northern Prague district of Holešovice, a place I was mainly familiar with through the train station there (not Prague's main train station but an important station all the same).
The flat is on the fifth floor and on the corner of the building, so it gets lots of light, which I appreciate as the hotel room was a bit dim and for that matter my house, while a very fine place in most respects, is not that well endowed with natural light.
So far I'm definitely enjoying being close enough to the center that I can easily stop at the flat in the middle of the day (although I haven't yet done so) and knowing that I can spend the whole day in the flat if for some reason I want to (which one can do in a hotel but it really disrupts their cleaning routine).
There are lots of small cafes nearby and the big tržnice (an indoor and outdoor market of small proprietors, mostly Vietnamese in this case) is a block or two away, meaning easy access to Vietnamese dining.
So, lots to like, but this morning there is construction noise right below (jackhammers and all), so I'm going to finish up my coffee and head for the library!
The flat is on the fifth floor and on the corner of the building, so it gets lots of light, which I appreciate as the hotel room was a bit dim and for that matter my house, while a very fine place in most respects, is not that well endowed with natural light.
So far I'm definitely enjoying being close enough to the center that I can easily stop at the flat in the middle of the day (although I haven't yet done so) and knowing that I can spend the whole day in the flat if for some reason I want to (which one can do in a hotel but it really disrupts their cleaning routine).
There are lots of small cafes nearby and the big tržnice (an indoor and outdoor market of small proprietors, mostly Vietnamese in this case) is a block or two away, meaning easy access to Vietnamese dining.
So, lots to like, but this morning there is construction noise right below (jackhammers and all), so I'm going to finish up my coffee and head for the library!
Sunday, May 20, 2018
Moving About a Bit, Starting with Bílá Hora
It had been my hope that this summer I'd be able to rent the same apartment as when I lived in Prague 2005-2007, but regrettably it was not available, so I am instead doing a combination of lodgings. For the first couple of weeks I stayed in a pension out near Bílá Hora, which for those who know Prague will recognize, is on the western fringes of the city. It's at the end of a tram line, in fact.
Why did I choose to lodge way out there? Well, several reasons. First off, it was one of the less expensive options, and that's always a consideration. But secondly, I rather like seeing different parts of Prague. While I'm very fond of my old apartment near the Dvorce tram stop in Podolí, which is near a greengrocer's and has good access to a wonderful riverside path (where I learned to rollerblade!), every part of Prague has its merits. Bílá Hora, famous as the site of the historic battle (Bílá Hora/White Mountain) which altered the course of Czech history, is also near Hvězda, a place I'm quite fond of.
Hvězda is not a major tourist attraction, but it's an interesting building, hosts some good small exhibitions generally relating to history, literature, and art (the exhibitions are curated by the Památník národního písemnictví), and there's a large wooded park plus a nice little cafe. It's a great place to go and relax, whether by walking the paths, sitting on a bench under a tree, sunbathing on the lawn, taking in an exhibition, etc.
So, spending a couple of weeks taking the tram back and forth from out there seemed like a pretty attractive notion, and on the whole it worked out just fine.
Why did I choose to lodge way out there? Well, several reasons. First off, it was one of the less expensive options, and that's always a consideration. But secondly, I rather like seeing different parts of Prague. While I'm very fond of my old apartment near the Dvorce tram stop in Podolí, which is near a greengrocer's and has good access to a wonderful riverside path (where I learned to rollerblade!), every part of Prague has its merits. Bílá Hora, famous as the site of the historic battle (Bílá Hora/White Mountain) which altered the course of Czech history, is also near Hvězda, a place I'm quite fond of.
Hvězda is not a major tourist attraction, but it's an interesting building, hosts some good small exhibitions generally relating to history, literature, and art (the exhibitions are curated by the Památník národního písemnictví), and there's a large wooded park plus a nice little cafe. It's a great place to go and relax, whether by walking the paths, sitting on a bench under a tree, sunbathing on the lawn, taking in an exhibition, etc.
So, spending a couple of weeks taking the tram back and forth from out there seemed like a pretty attractive notion, and on the whole it worked out just fine.
Saturday, May 19, 2018
A Small Progress Report
These last few weeks have been a busy time for me. As usual, I have several projects underway, but I also had to get ready for this year's research trip to Prague and then get settled in.
Image acquisition for Magnetic Woman is moving along, although never as quickly as I'd like (each month I hope that I will finally wrap up this phase of the book!). Just prior to leaving the US, I discovered that the library of the Art Institute of Chicago has some of what I was looking for, so I hurriedly made an appointment to go up there. In recent years, the Art Institute has acquired numerous examples of Czech modernist books and journals--they now have a real trove--and the librarians were very helpful. I was able to take my own study photographs of all sorts of things plus order reproduction-quality photos of some items for the book.
After arriving in Prague, I set out to obtain copies of photos of Toyen and other members of the Czech avant-garde. Quite a few have been published in the past, but not always with clear indications of their provenance. I knew, however, that the Památník národního pisemnictví (literary archive) would have some and that the UPM (design museum) would also be a good place to inquire. The Památník was able to offer me a selection of photos they had already scanned, plus when I went to their central depository in Litoměřice and rooted through Vítězslav Nezval's personal photos, I saw other interesting options. For the most part it must be said that Nezval's snapshots of his friends are small and not terribly clear, but I did find a more professionally done photo from an event that struck me as worth using in the book. Nezval's photo stash also included a set of entertaining pictures of him on an outing with Roman Jakobson, Jan Mukařovský, and a young woman who was very cozy with Nezval, and as Nezval, Jakobson, and Mukařovský all figure in my book, I was tempted to include one of these photos. However, there was not a specific one that was really quite right for my chapter, so with regret I passed on this even though I would have enjoyed showing that Mukařovský had a less serious side than one might gather from his scholarly work.
The UPM, meanwhile, is preparing a digital file of one of their photos for me.
So--there's progress, although I'm not happy about museums that don't respond to my inquiries.
Image acquisition for Magnetic Woman is moving along, although never as quickly as I'd like (each month I hope that I will finally wrap up this phase of the book!). Just prior to leaving the US, I discovered that the library of the Art Institute of Chicago has some of what I was looking for, so I hurriedly made an appointment to go up there. In recent years, the Art Institute has acquired numerous examples of Czech modernist books and journals--they now have a real trove--and the librarians were very helpful. I was able to take my own study photographs of all sorts of things plus order reproduction-quality photos of some items for the book.
After arriving in Prague, I set out to obtain copies of photos of Toyen and other members of the Czech avant-garde. Quite a few have been published in the past, but not always with clear indications of their provenance. I knew, however, that the Památník národního pisemnictví (literary archive) would have some and that the UPM (design museum) would also be a good place to inquire. The Památník was able to offer me a selection of photos they had already scanned, plus when I went to their central depository in Litoměřice and rooted through Vítězslav Nezval's personal photos, I saw other interesting options. For the most part it must be said that Nezval's snapshots of his friends are small and not terribly clear, but I did find a more professionally done photo from an event that struck me as worth using in the book. Nezval's photo stash also included a set of entertaining pictures of him on an outing with Roman Jakobson, Jan Mukařovský, and a young woman who was very cozy with Nezval, and as Nezval, Jakobson, and Mukařovský all figure in my book, I was tempted to include one of these photos. However, there was not a specific one that was really quite right for my chapter, so with regret I passed on this even though I would have enjoyed showing that Mukařovský had a less serious side than one might gather from his scholarly work.
The UPM, meanwhile, is preparing a digital file of one of their photos for me.
So--there's progress, although I'm not happy about museums that don't respond to my inquiries.
Monday, April 9, 2018
All About Bohuslav Brouk (if you read Czech)
One of Toyen's many remarkable friends was the somewhat unclassifiable Czech surrealist Bohuslav Brouk. As he was neither an artist nor a poet, his surrealist early work is not well known in the English-speaking world, despite the fact that he spent much of his life in Australia and Great Britain. For those who read Czech, however, the site Bohuslav Brouk: Zde trapno existovat offers a great wealth of information relating to Brouk, including PDF copies of several of his books.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Brouk wrote extensively about sex, psychoanalysis, marxism, and aspects of linguistics and semiotics. He was quite the controversial figure in the 1930s and a subject of satirical cartoons (several of which I plan to include in Magnetic Woman) but he fled Czechoslovakia around the time of the Communist takeover and pursued a quieter but nonetheless busy scientific career.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Brouk wrote extensively about sex, psychoanalysis, marxism, and aspects of linguistics and semiotics. He was quite the controversial figure in the 1930s and a subject of satirical cartoons (several of which I plan to include in Magnetic Woman) but he fled Czechoslovakia around the time of the Communist takeover and pursued a quieter but nonetheless busy scientific career.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Japanese Woodblock Prints at Library of Congress
The Library of Congress does, in fact, have thousands upon thousands of freely downloadable images of many different kinds; while they do try to provide good finding aids, the level of detail varies. This particular collection looks very well organized, so that there are numerous ways for the searcher to locate items. You can narrow things down by artist, period, location shown, and so on. When you find one you want to download, make sure you choose the right file for your purposes; you have the option of several sizes of JPG, a GIF, or a TIF.
The print shown here is a color woodcut by Harunobu Suzuki from 1765 entitled "Semitori" and it shows a woman and a child catching crickets. I chose the 50.7 KB version for this post.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Yugoslav World War II Memorials
Another person whose project deserves note is Vladimir Kulić, whose book Bogdanović by Bogdanović: Yugoslav Memorials through the Eyes of their Architect,on Bogdan Bogdanović's photographs of his Yugoslav World War II memorials has received a Graham Foundation grant.
The Graham Foundation states:
Vladimir's book is due out this year. And go see the exhibition at MOMA!
The Graham Foundation states:
The project is an extension of Vladimir Kulić’s previous research on Bogdanović funded by a 2014 Graham Foundation grant, which supported the digitization of Bogdanović‘s personal slide collection. The book will be published by The Museum of Modern Art in New York in conjunction with the forthcoming exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980. In addition to Bogdanović's photos, the book will feature a preface by Martino Stierli, an introductory essay situating the architect's work in the cultural context of postwar Yugoslavia, as well as excerpts from an unpublished interview conducted in 2005–06.I had not previously been aware of the Graham Foundation, as my work doesn't focus on architectural history. "Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts fosters the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. The Graham realizes this vision through making project-based grants to individuals and organizations and producing exhibitions, events, and publications."
Vladimir's book is due out this year. And go see the exhibition at MOMA!
Friday, April 6, 2018
No Screaming Jelly Beans?
One of the nice things about having a blog is that it provides a way to salute people and projects I admire. "Nancy's Bookshelf" at North State Public Radio in California has two interviews with my friend Denise Minor about her two books--first, one about her scholarly book on being a language teacher, and about 25 minutes forward, a later interview about her memoir No Screaming Jelly Beans: Trying to Pursue a Career while Raising a Son with Autism.
Denise is an inspiring person. She was a journalist and Spanish teacher when we met through a mutual friend, and we were members of the same writing group for many years. Meanwhile, she got married, had two boys, began her PhD studies at UC Davis, and discovered that her younger son was autistic.
Denise and her husband have put tremendous effort into their parenting of both boys, but even so she managed to complete her PhD in Spanish Linguistics and is now a professor at Chico State.
Whenever people tell me I accomplish a lot, I'm very much aware that it is people like Denise who are really much more impressive as regards productivity.
Denise is an inspiring person. She was a journalist and Spanish teacher when we met through a mutual friend, and we were members of the same writing group for many years. Meanwhile, she got married, had two boys, began her PhD studies at UC Davis, and discovered that her younger son was autistic.
Denise and her husband have put tremendous effort into their parenting of both boys, but even so she managed to complete her PhD in Spanish Linguistics and is now a professor at Chico State.
Whenever people tell me I accomplish a lot, I'm very much aware that it is people like Denise who are really much more impressive as regards productivity.
Thursday, April 5, 2018
Forthcoming in Opossum!
It was a good move to attend the AWP conference a few weeks ago. (Can it already be a month ago? Shocking but true!) The benefits were many--getting back up to speed on the literary world after quite a few years of focus on art history; learning some new tips that will help me promote Magnetic Woman when it appears; buying and being given various journals, novels, and story collections; meeting and chatting with the staff of a long list of journals and presses. (Actually, I am still sorting the materials I brought home, which take up half the dining room table.)
AWP re-energized me about sending out my fiction. Long ago, I was extremely diligent about sending out my work, and always had at least ten stories out in the mail. It was important to be that diligent, because the sort of thing I wrote wasn't much in fashion then and it usually took a long time for any given piece to find a home. Friends suggested that I might have better luck if I adopted a Spanish pseudonym, as magic realism did get published in English translation. I did not, however, think it fitting to pretend I hailed from a completely different culture. Like Günter Grass, I have Germans from Poland in my family tree.
Anyhow, the first good news has come in on a story submitted after AWP! A relatively new journal called Opossum likes what I sent and hopes to publish the tale in either the spring or fall issue. I can't tell you the title of the piece, as it sounds as though the title is the main thing the editors want to change, so I'll have to think about that. But this is pretty exciting news.
Opossum describes itself as "a Literary Marsupial" and "a biannual literary magazine featuring work animated by music." There are two print issues per year, with fabulously beautiful covers. Plus, each issue includes a 7-inch vinyl record of author readings. (Color vinyl, at that! Very snazzy.) After each printing, all contributors’ work trickles onto the website where it is freely available to see and hear. What's more, Opossum pays its contributors! (Yes, it would be nice if all literary journals did, but often that's just not possible.)
What a fine way to start the day!
AWP re-energized me about sending out my fiction. Long ago, I was extremely diligent about sending out my work, and always had at least ten stories out in the mail. It was important to be that diligent, because the sort of thing I wrote wasn't much in fashion then and it usually took a long time for any given piece to find a home. Friends suggested that I might have better luck if I adopted a Spanish pseudonym, as magic realism did get published in English translation. I did not, however, think it fitting to pretend I hailed from a completely different culture. Like Günter Grass, I have Germans from Poland in my family tree.
Anyhow, the first good news has come in on a story submitted after AWP! A relatively new journal called Opossum likes what I sent and hopes to publish the tale in either the spring or fall issue. I can't tell you the title of the piece, as it sounds as though the title is the main thing the editors want to change, so I'll have to think about that. But this is pretty exciting news.
Opossum describes itself as "a Literary Marsupial" and "a biannual literary magazine featuring work animated by music." There are two print issues per year, with fabulously beautiful covers. Plus, each issue includes a 7-inch vinyl record of author readings. (Color vinyl, at that! Very snazzy.) After each printing, all contributors’ work trickles onto the website where it is freely available to see and hear. What's more, Opossum pays its contributors! (Yes, it would be nice if all literary journals did, but often that's just not possible.)
What a fine way to start the day!
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
New Images Received!
Images, images... A major task in putting together almost any art history book is the gathering of the necessary images. Yet, sad to say, this is generally a long and painful process. You may recall reading about some painting or sculpture in an article or book and being annoyed that there was no photo of it--well, that could mean that a) the author couldn't locate a print-quality photo of it; b) the cost of the print-quality photo was prohibitively high; c) it wasn't possible to clear copyright; or d) the publisher put a limit on the number of images in order to keep the cost of printing under control. Yep.
Notice that first possible problem--locating a print-quality photo of the artwork! In the world of digital photography, that means it is not just a faithful photo of the artwork, but that it has a minimum of 300 dpi (versus the 72 dpi normally used for Web images). In other words, trawling the internet for a suitable photo is generally not an option. Nor is it usually possible to scan from a book, due to the existing printed dot pattern. (Think how a photocopy of a photocopy isn't as good as the first photocopy, which isn't as good as the original.)
Where do we find these good-quality photos? Well, we get them from museums, from private collectors, from art galleries, from third-party sources of various kinds, and sometimes we shoot the photos ourselves. All of this takes a lot of time.
I've been lucky in that as much of Toyen's work involved illustration, I could photograph from the books she illustrated. Thank you to the archives, libraries, and private collectors to whom these books belong! I have hundreds of photos of these illustrations, as well as some photos of illustrations by her peers. (Not that I can use hundreds of photos of these book illustrations in my own book, but at least I can use a fair number of them as examples of particular themes and stylistic choices.)
I did not, however, have even all of the book illustrations that I wanted to use, and here a friend of mine who works for a collector has been very helpful. He passed along numerous photos of illustrations and prints by Toyen awhile back, for which I am eternally grateful, and now he has also provided me with many by her artistic partner Jindřich Štyrský as well!
Life is suddenly better and my stress level regarding images has dropped a notch.
Notice that first possible problem--locating a print-quality photo of the artwork! In the world of digital photography, that means it is not just a faithful photo of the artwork, but that it has a minimum of 300 dpi (versus the 72 dpi normally used for Web images). In other words, trawling the internet for a suitable photo is generally not an option. Nor is it usually possible to scan from a book, due to the existing printed dot pattern. (Think how a photocopy of a photocopy isn't as good as the first photocopy, which isn't as good as the original.)
Where do we find these good-quality photos? Well, we get them from museums, from private collectors, from art galleries, from third-party sources of various kinds, and sometimes we shoot the photos ourselves. All of this takes a lot of time.
I've been lucky in that as much of Toyen's work involved illustration, I could photograph from the books she illustrated. Thank you to the archives, libraries, and private collectors to whom these books belong! I have hundreds of photos of these illustrations, as well as some photos of illustrations by her peers. (Not that I can use hundreds of photos of these book illustrations in my own book, but at least I can use a fair number of them as examples of particular themes and stylistic choices.)
I did not, however, have even all of the book illustrations that I wanted to use, and here a friend of mine who works for a collector has been very helpful. He passed along numerous photos of illustrations and prints by Toyen awhile back, for which I am eternally grateful, and now he has also provided me with many by her artistic partner Jindřich Štyrský as well!
Life is suddenly better and my stress level regarding images has dropped a notch.
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Doing the Marketing Questionnaire
It's a complex process to publish a book, as I was telling my cousins just a few days ago. Writing the thing is just the beginning. Or sometimes not even the beginning. But let's not go way back in the process. Magnetic Woman has already been written, proposed, peer-reviewed, contracted, and revised, after which I turned my attention to image acquisition (it's an art book, after all), and I've been working on that for several months now. And also working on the next book.
Meanwhile, it came time to do the Marketing Questionnaire!
If you aren't a writer--and particularly a book author--you may wonder why I had to complete a Marketing Questionnaire.
Wonder no more. Publishers have staff who work to publicize books, but those staffers can do a better job with help from the authors. To this end, they ask authors to fill out a Marketing Questionnaire.
Since I've been writing for a long time now and have had some experience helping other authors promote their books, this was not news to me. Still, I had not been involved in promoting anything in quite some time, so when I went to the AWP conference in March, I attended some panels on book promotion, which were very helpful in getting me up to date and ready to work on my Marketing Questionnaire.
A well-thought-out Marketing Questionnaire isn't something you throw together in an afternoon, although you can probably make good headway on it in that amount of time. Some of the information is probably ready to hand, while other information will have to be hunted down. Depending on the topic of the book, it may be useful to include your religion or where you spent your childhood. For scholarly books, it's important to provide information on which disciplines and sub-disciplines the book pertains to and whether the book could be used as a textbook in particular kinds of classes. For every book, it's smart to provide information on specialized media that might review it, local newspapers and radio stations, organizations that might be interested, bookstores where you might be able to do a signing or reading. The publisher's staff may already know about some of what you put on the questionnaire, but they are not likely to know everything that you can dig up.
It's also important to know whether you feel comfortable speaking in public or being interviewed. It's much easier to promote a book whose author is able to speak well, but many writers are shy. Luckily, most authors of scholarly books are used to teaching and giving talks, so that gives us a bit of an advantage. At the same time, as one AWP panelist pointed out, it's wise to know just how much about yourself you are willing to tell the public, and to think ahead about how you would present yourself in an interesting and truthful, yet unembarrassing, manner should you be so lucky as to be interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air.
I spent over a week preparing my Marketing Questionnaire. I didn't work on it every day of that week--I did have a family funeral to attend midway through--but I did think about it every day. I spent most of one day on the first go-round, added bits on subsequent days, and finally looked it over to see what I had left out. While I'm sure that with additional time I could come up with more to add, I was able to turn in a carefully thought-through document by the requested deadline.
And now it's back to image acquisition.
Meanwhile, it came time to do the Marketing Questionnaire!
If you aren't a writer--and particularly a book author--you may wonder why I had to complete a Marketing Questionnaire.
Wonder no more. Publishers have staff who work to publicize books, but those staffers can do a better job with help from the authors. To this end, they ask authors to fill out a Marketing Questionnaire.
Since I've been writing for a long time now and have had some experience helping other authors promote their books, this was not news to me. Still, I had not been involved in promoting anything in quite some time, so when I went to the AWP conference in March, I attended some panels on book promotion, which were very helpful in getting me up to date and ready to work on my Marketing Questionnaire.
A well-thought-out Marketing Questionnaire isn't something you throw together in an afternoon, although you can probably make good headway on it in that amount of time. Some of the information is probably ready to hand, while other information will have to be hunted down. Depending on the topic of the book, it may be useful to include your religion or where you spent your childhood. For scholarly books, it's important to provide information on which disciplines and sub-disciplines the book pertains to and whether the book could be used as a textbook in particular kinds of classes. For every book, it's smart to provide information on specialized media that might review it, local newspapers and radio stations, organizations that might be interested, bookstores where you might be able to do a signing or reading. The publisher's staff may already know about some of what you put on the questionnaire, but they are not likely to know everything that you can dig up.
It's also important to know whether you feel comfortable speaking in public or being interviewed. It's much easier to promote a book whose author is able to speak well, but many writers are shy. Luckily, most authors of scholarly books are used to teaching and giving talks, so that gives us a bit of an advantage. At the same time, as one AWP panelist pointed out, it's wise to know just how much about yourself you are willing to tell the public, and to think ahead about how you would present yourself in an interesting and truthful, yet unembarrassing, manner should you be so lucky as to be interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air.
I spent over a week preparing my Marketing Questionnaire. I didn't work on it every day of that week--I did have a family funeral to attend midway through--but I did think about it every day. I spent most of one day on the first go-round, added bits on subsequent days, and finally looked it over to see what I had left out. While I'm sure that with additional time I could come up with more to add, I was able to turn in a carefully thought-through document by the requested deadline.
And now it's back to image acquisition.
Friday, March 30, 2018
A Blog is Born--and Soon, a Book!
Time flies--čas letí--and my book on Toyen has been accepted for publication by University of Pittsburgh Press. We are calling it Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic and hope to see it in print this fall.
Toyen's work is increasingly well known, but there are still many people, even many art historians, who are unfamiliar with this artist, so don't feel ignorant if the name is new to you. Toyen (born Marie Čermínová, 1902-1980) joined the avant-garde Devětsil group in 1923 and in the 1930s became one of the founders of the Prague surrealist group. She worked in painting, drawing, printmaking, and collage, and had a long and interesting career, working in both Prague and Paris. My book particularly examines how her Prague context made it possible for her to become not just an artist, but a surrealist with a strong erotic bent--but the book also looks at her postwar French work.
Note: As Toyen used masculine-gendered speech in Czech, it's possible that today Toyen would have identified as transgender, but as Toyen's friends referred to her with feminine-gendered speech, and Toyen apparently did not use masculine forms in French, I think she had ample opportunity to state what she wanted, and so I follow her friends' practice.
Toyen's work is increasingly well known, but there are still many people, even many art historians, who are unfamiliar with this artist, so don't feel ignorant if the name is new to you. Toyen (born Marie Čermínová, 1902-1980) joined the avant-garde Devětsil group in 1923 and in the 1930s became one of the founders of the Prague surrealist group. She worked in painting, drawing, printmaking, and collage, and had a long and interesting career, working in both Prague and Paris. My book particularly examines how her Prague context made it possible for her to become not just an artist, but a surrealist with a strong erotic bent--but the book also looks at her postwar French work.
Note: As Toyen used masculine-gendered speech in Czech, it's possible that today Toyen would have identified as transgender, but as Toyen's friends referred to her with feminine-gendered speech, and Toyen apparently did not use masculine forms in French, I think she had ample opportunity to state what she wanted, and so I follow her friends' practice.
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