Category: Three Fun Things

Arts, Three Fun Things

Three Fun Things: January 12, 2025

Brutalism in 3D, a Movie About Love and Grief, and Sparkling Water on Tap

By Erica C. Barnett

1. Drive My Car; streaming on multiple services

Recently, I found myself complaining—about an author I really want to like—that I would be a hundred times less likely to throw his books across the room if he would stop being so fucking weird about women.

By the end of this book—which had some really cool ideas in it, and the kind of unresolved ending that tends to make people, though not me, really mad—I was anticipating the introduction of each new female character with dread. “Here comes her breasts, boobing boobily,” I’d mutter, and indeed: The newly introduced woman (or, disturbingly, prepubescent girl) would have breasts that were lush and ripe, or taut and firm, or the cause of a “massive hard-on” that the protagonist, naturally, just “couldn’t help.” In the book I just read, a man commits murder to protect a cat, but an unambiguous rape scene is written, sympathetically, from the perspective of the rapist.

Then, a few weeks later, I watched a movie that was based on the work of the same author—one my household had put off watching because it was three hours long. Knowing who wrote the source material made me wince at some scenes—the dead woman who propels the action of the male protagonist, who we first see naked in a flashback, can only get ideas for screenplays after sex with men— but I found these flaws less glaring in the film, which—I’ve confirmed—is more humane to its female characters than the story on which it’s based.

The book I read over the holidays was “Kafka By the Shore,” by Haruki Marukami, and the movie was “Drive My Car.”

The story, in brief: A playwright and former actor, Yūsuke, who’s grieving over the death of his wife, Oto, gets hired to direct a multilingual adaptation of “Uncle Vanya” at an artists’ residency in Hiroshima. While there, Yūsuke learns that he won’t be allowed to drive his beloved red Saab because of an unnamed mishap that happened during a previous residency. Instead, he’ll be driven around by Misaki, a young, working-class woman who is fleeing her troubled life in a village on the other end of Japan. During their drives, Yūsuke listens to Oto’s “Uncle Vanya” recordings and recites the dialogue out loud. To play the grizzled, embittered Vanya, Yūsuke chooses a young man, Koji, who he knows was having an affair with his wife. An incident of unexpected violence propels Yūsuke into the title role—a role he hasn’t played since Oto was alive, when she recorded the dialogue onto cassettes so he could memorize it in his car.

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This is a movie of tense, quiet set pieces, not direct confrontations, and it’s filled with moments of uncomfortable intimacy. In one indelible scene, Yūsuke and Koji are discussing Oto, who was always struck with screenwriting inspiration just after sex. Stuck in a kind of trance state, she told the stories she came up with to both men, who would recount them to her the following day, when she would no longer remember what she’d said (That’s right—she was literally dickmatized.) In this scene, which takes place in the back of Yūsuke’s car, the camera lingers on each man’s face for a long, long time, settling on Koji as he describes the final chapter of one of Oto’s stories, which Yūsuke hasn’t hard. In this moment, neither man is right or wrong, and neither owns Oto’s memory or the right to mourn her with more intensity. They’re both the imagined main character in their own version of Oto’s story.

Misaki (whose breasts Murakami indeed described in the short story “Drive My Car”; SIGH) reveals her own grief in halting, reluctant intervals, but the bond that eventually develops between her and Yusuke allows both of them to move on, in an ending I found ambiguous—has Misaki managed to dupe her wealthy, somewhat sheltered patron, or have both these unhappy people actually moved on?

2. The Sparkling Water Fountain at Macrina’s Aloha Café

I’ve been dreaming for many years about a fountain that delivers sparkling water when you press the button. (Plain water is for chumps. You heard me.) And while science has not yet produced the water fountain of my dreams, Macrina Bakery on Capitol Hill has something that may be even better: A tap that, when you press it, produces a refreshing pour of beautiful, bubbly H20. Now, I’m not suggesting you go to Macrina and only use this magical tap—if nothing else, do yourself a favor and buy literally any of their gorgeous crusty loaves to take home or treat yourself to a gorgeous tart or crisp, perfectly laminated pastry. But after you’ve done that, mosey on over to the water taps in the back, and enjoy a compostable cup or two of water in its finest, most delicious form—fizzy, ice-cold, and fresh from the tap.

Macrina Aloha Café, 746 19th Avenue East Seattle, WA 98112

3. Brutal Poland (Zupagrafika)

My fondness for Brutalism started out, like so many true passions, with disgust: How anyone love an architectural style whose most famous Seattle example was the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a hideous double-decker freeway that used to run along the downtown waterfront? Disgust turned into curiosity, which turned into fascination with this photogenic—yes, photogenic!—20th century style. Eventually, I got interested in all types of concrete buildings, from the spomoniks of the former Yugoslavia to the massive modular apartment blocks you can see all over Central Europe. (Also the King County Administration Building. Fight me.)

In addition to brief descriptions and photo essays about each of the nine buildings featured in this book (three of which I’ve seen in person), the book includes die-cut models of each building, complete with graffiti, satellite dishes, and window A/C units for an authentic experience of post-Soviet realism. The book series, from the publisher Zupagrafika, also includes Brutal East I and II, Brutal London, and Brutal Britain, plus many other titles that I’m planning to add to my collection.

Arts, Three Fun Things

Three Fun Things for December 22, 2024

Rethinking downtown spaces, a “dry” bottle shop, and a bar that treats non-drinkers like adults.

1. STÖR/Rethinking Downtown Spaces

Mayor Bruce Harrell has expended a tremendous amount of public funding and civic energy on the idea that downtown Seattle is on the verg of dying, and that the only solution is pouring money into police (to prevent “disorder” and arrest addicts), plug-and-play park activations (giant Connect Four games, government-approved buskers) and graffiti eradication efforts.

PubliCola’s office is in Pioneer Square, where, last week, several local gift shops were bustling and an affordable Korean restaurant saw a steady flow of customers. That’s the part of downtown I see most often—and it isn’t dying. But what about the other end of the center city?

Last week, I stopped by an art exhibit in the former Bergman Luggage storefront—a place I never had reason to visit when it was open, pre- or post-pandemic. The exhibit that’s on now, STÖR, is a surreal, anti-consumerist (ish) version of IKEA where, instead of mass-produced BILLY bookcases, the goods on offer include an inflatable fireplace (FLUFHARTH) and a lamp cheerfully shaded in a sheath of blond hair (HÅRIG). Like the Swedish retailer, the show has directional arrows to guide visitors through a series of blind corners, a setup that had me whisper-shouting “look at this!” every few steps as I stumbled on a torn cane chair “repaired” with sparkly beads, or a “Mini-STÖR” filled with tiny replicas of the furniture for sale.

For a year or so, the massive old luggage storeroom—a business that was arguably obsolete before the pandemic took it out—has been the site of public art exhibits courtesy of BaseCamp Studios, which took over the space in 2023 and recently received a boost of funding from the Allen Foundation. The show gave me a reason to take a walk around Belltown—an area some of its residents seem to believe has been destroyed by graffiti—and put some money into the local economy (I got this kitschy glass nightlight), something I never did when the space was an expensive suitcase store.

STÖR, through January 10, 1901 3rd Ave. Details about current and upcoming exhibits: BaseCamp Studios

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2. Cheeky and Dry

How did it take me so long to visit Seattle’s only non-alcoholic bottle shop? One reason, I suppose, is that it’s way up on Phinney Ridge, a place I don’t frequent unless I’m making a pilgrimage to Windy City Pie (with a stop at Phinney Books before or after). About a year after it opened, I finally stopped by a couple weeks ago, and was blown away by the sheer variety of n/a beverages packed into such a tiny storefront. They have many of my favorites, sure—for me, Pathfinder and Wilderton are the gold standard for “adult”-tasting nonalcoholic cocktails—but also tons of unfamiliar labels, from whiskey substitutes to 0-proof sparkling wines to n/a beers I haven’t seen in other Seattle stores.

Aesthetically, Cheeky and Dry reminds me a bit of Boisson, the (now-bankrupt) chain of bottle shops that spread across New York City over the last few years. Vibes-wise, though, it’s a closer sibling to Manhattan’s Spirited Away, which bills itself as “America’s first booze-free bottle shop”: Both stores offer tastings, encourage questions, and are eager to educate you on the pros and cons of different options, which are often different than their alcoholic counterparts in ways you might not anticipate.

Want something that tastes more like a “real” drink? Go with Pathfinder or one of the tequilas spiked with capsaicin for a booze-like burn. Looking for a bottle of wine for dinner? You basically can’t go wrong wirh a dry white or rosé sparkling bottle, but stay away from the still reds and whites, which just aren’t there yet. Better yet, don’t listen to me—go to Cheeky and Dry and ask the experts.

Cheeky and Dry, 6120 Phinney Ave., Seattle, ,website for hours and product list

The Nonalcoholic Menu at Liberty Bar

3. When I quit drinking in early 2015, there really was no such thing as a sophisticated adult beverage for non-drinkers; the best most bars could muster was soda water with a dash of bitters—maybe a fancy flavor like black walnut if they had it on hand for other, “real” drinks.

These days, though, it’s possible to go out with friends to a regular cocktail bar (no Hecate in Seattle, yet) and get a thoughtfully constructed beverage, dreamed up and developed by an actual bartender, for about the same price as a “real” cocktail.

(There’s a whole discourse online about whether bars charge “too much” for n/a drinks. The answer is that, generally, they don’t, especially if they’re stocking up on nonalcoholic spirits, which can retail for $40 or more. Even if I am paying a bigger markup for, say, a shrub and soda than my friend who ordered a complex Manhattan, it’s worth it to be treated like an adult, not a child asking for a juicebox. If you’re gonna charge me $5 for soda water from the gun, though, I’m never coming back).

Liberty, on Capitol Hill, has a rotating menu of five n/a options, all between $12 and $17, and only one is a shrub and soda. I recently tried the Jennifer N-Aniston (“lemon and lime juice, fig syrup, peach bitters, and topped with ginger beer,” per the menu) and the Blacker the Berry (“Wilderton lustre, brambleberry syrup, and lime. topped with Jøyus sparkling rosé”); both were complex, worth savoring slowly, and made me feel welcome at a cocktail bar—a welcome evolution from the blank looks I got from many bartenders just a few years ago.

Liberty, 517 15th Ave. E, hours on website

Three Fun Things

Three Fun Things for December 8, 2024

My listening history, a magnetic roadside symbol of America’s “rot,” and a pie recipe that won’t make your fillings hurt.

1. I had a blast going on KUOW’s “Sound Politics” podcast, hosted by Scott Greenstone, with my “Seattle Nice” cohost Sandeep Kaushik, but we went on so long talking about Tammy Morales and Dow Constantine that a critical part of our conversation got cut for time.

The missing segment, as you’ve no doubt guessed, was the part where we talked about our Spotify Wrapped lists for this year—or, in Sandeep’s case, about listening to Ween. (Sandeep, there are so many better sad dad bands!) My Wrapped surprised me a bit, since it feels like my heavy-rotation albums this year were by Jason Isbell, the Flaming Lips, and Deeper; in reality, the AI tells me, my top songs were by Stars, Chvrches (No. 2 and 3!) Janelle Monae, and Charli xcx. (This is my non-algorithmically determined song of the year.)

My basic sense of self was restored once I saw Wilco in my most-listened artists (No. 3)—high enough that the AI sent me a (presumably not AI) video of Jeff Tweedy, looking about as uncomfortable as you’d expect Jeff Tweedy to look while recording a video for Spotify. I was confused to see Steve Earle in the mix until I remembered that I spent several days this year listening through many of the 21 studio albums he produced between 1986 and 2023, which are not all to my taste. You can’t deny “Galway Girl,” though—or, for that matter, “Telephone Road.”

Spotify’s marketing department has done a great job—case in point: Me, here, sharing their marketing tool with you—and I honestly can’t begrudge them too much. Say what you will about the brutal economics of streaming music (or read Stephen Witt’s great book, How Music Got Free), but they’re doing a good job making customers feel invested in their model. Now where are my fellow Goth Synthesizer Post Punk girlies at?

2. It’s the holidays, and in my household, that means forking over at least one hundred American dollars for a farm-grown fir and ladening it with ornaments that span the decades, from the Hallmark ornaments I collected when I worked there in high school to a heavy white disk bearing the image of the grinning, slightly demonic mascot of the Buc-ee’s convenience store chain.

Buc-ee’s, as I’ve mentioned in this column before, became ubiquitous in Texas after I left the state, so there’s no nostalgia there for me.  Nonetheless, whenever I’m back in Texas, I feel the siren call of its clean restrooms, mix-and-match soda fountains, and branded merch like my ceramic Buc-ee ornament.

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I write a lot about land use, and Buc-ee’s—with its acres of gas pumps and stores that are larger than a typical Seattle grocery store—is a prime symbol and symptom of Sun Belt sprawl. Jalopnik, one of my favorite non-political websites, had a fun little piece last month that captured the perverse experience of patronizing Buc-ee’s, a place that “almost certainly shouldn’t exist, and we are worse as a culture for having had it, but goddamn does it flip the right switches in our collective brain.” I’m overdue for a visit to Lafayette, where Axios reports the chain is building one of its biggest stores yet, bringing a “beach theme” to the decidedly landlocked corner of I-10 and Louisiana Ave.

3. Bookmark this one for next Thanksgiving: The New York Times’ pecan slab tart, which I adapted to fit a regular pie plate because I need a lot of “extra” pie dough to make most pie recipes work. (Rolling is hard, y’all.). I love regular pecan pie, but it tends to be cloyingly sweet, because the base is mostly Karo syrup; this recipe swaps out demerara sugar for the corn syrup and includes brown butter and toasted, finely ground pecans, creating a filling that holds together (and up) under a roof of toasted pecans but won’t make your teeth hurt.

Three Fun Things

Three Fun Things for November 25, 2024

Pompeii, the Czech Republic, and the Metaverse (circa 1992)

1. Questioning Old Assumptions

I learned about Pompeii in Latin class and promptly forgot the details. Historical data points—what happened and how we know it—were replaced with vague impressions: An ominous rumbling, mouthfuls of ash, then sudden death.

Although I don’t remember much of what I learned, I’m sure it colored by modern assumptions: Historians tend to make up stories to fill in gaps in the record, and the stories they told about Pompeii imposed modern beliefs onto people who died in the first century A.D. (The famous “bodies” are modern casts made by pouring plaster into the cavities made by the bodies and preserved under layers of sediment). Two women, locked in an embrace and dubbed “the Maidens,” were sisters, or perhaps a mother and her daughter, or lesbian lovers sharing a final moment together. A small but tight-knit family, dubbed the Family of the Golden Bracelet, stayed together to the end, the mother clutching her son in her lap.

Unsurprisingly, many of these dearly held assumptions are turning out to be wrong. Earlier this month, the New York Times and other news outlets reported on new DNA evidence showing that “the identities and relationships of the deceased do not match the longstanding assumptions, which had largely been based on physical appearance, the positioning of the casts and romantic notions promoted by literature and Hollywood films.” Those two “maidens,” for example, include at least one man, and mother and child are a man and a boy who are not genetically related. The “pregnant” woman probably wasn’t pregnant—bunched-up clothes may account for the bulge in the cast—and may not have been a woman.

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I’m a fan of debunkings (no, that green powder isn’t a substitute for a healthy diet) and I take comfort in the fact that as much as we may learn about the past, some things will always be inaccessible. This story has both things—a triumph of science and reminder that we should be humble instead of making assumptions based on our own limited imagination.

2. Filling In Gaps

Can I recommend Snow Crash, the 1992 novel by Neal Stephenson that basically predicted our entire present tense reality (and probably some of our future)? My guess is probably not—I’m halfway through and it seems like I left the most interesting stuff behind in the Metaverse—but I am extremely excited, on a personal level, to fill in this gap in my cultural awareness that has persisted for so long. It’s been really fun to experience, in real time, that “holy shit” feeling others have described having while reading this book: Wow, he really did invent everything, from the modern Internet to Google Maps (and Earth) to the experience of being terminally online in 2024. (Yes, yes, I know. Neuromancer is next on my list.) I’m also enjoying a weird feeling of nostalgia for the time when the book was written, when Walmart was just starting its march across middle America, Rush Limbaugh and the 700 Club were the monoculture’s loudest demagogues, and the two major parties (represented by Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush) seemed like two sides of the same corporatist coin.

3. Re-Reading With New Context

Almost a decade ago, I decided on a whim to read a book about the region now known as the Czech Republic and Slovakia, called Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed, by Mary Heimann. The book argues that the Czechoslovakian state was never really the exceptional central European democracy that outsiders, including the millions of Americans who visit Prague each year, tend to believe it was, and that it was doomed to fail from the beginning, due largely to nationalism and a sense of victimhood among Czechs that led them to persecute minority groups and neglect Slovakian needs and demands. I drove through Czech Republic recently (Brno was a highlight), and the experience—particularly the way Jews are treated like mythical creatures in Prague’s ubiquitous tourist shops—inspired me to put this book back on my reading list.

Three Fun Things

(More Than) Three Fun Things for November 10, 2024
The inside of my brain right now

Look, squirrel! A few of the distractions I’ve been relying on this week.

By Erica C. Barnett

I don’t know about you, but as someone who was disappointed but not surprised that US voters rejected a competent, capable Black woman in favor of a troglodyte who represents their worst instincts and darkest wishes, I am TIRED AS FUCK of listening to the Discourse about what happened on Tuesday. The outrage industrial complex requires constant fuel, but that doesn’t mean you have to engage, participate, or pay attention to every post-election explainer that comes off the hot-take production line.

As I write this, I’m sitting in SeaTac Airport, looking around and wondering who in this crowded terminal voted against my autonomy and humanity, along with those of every racial, gender, and religious minority in the country. To quiet these intrusive thoughts, I’m plugging in to some of my favorite podcasts that aren’t explicitly political, including Scam Goddess, The Constant, The Flop House, The Adventure Zone, and Revolutions, a show about historical revolutions that’s taking a brief sojourn this season into sci-fi with a series on an imagined future Martian Revolution —and who wouldn’t rather be on Mars right now? I may even go back and listen to My Dad Wrote a Porno again, for a reminder of simpler times.

If you’re looking for comfort food on television, I’m currently doing a rewatch of Parks and Recreation, a warm-hearted show about local government in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. (Its last season ended in 2015, just before Trump’s first election). As a city hall reporter and someone who follows celebrity news, the show hits differently on this watch for a lot of reasons, good and bad. (Ahem. And also.) If it’s been a while since you watched this show, or if you somehow missed it the first time around, I highly recommend it as an antidote to MSNBC, social media, or whatever else you might be outrage-scrolling in an open tab right now.

And if you want even more Aubrey Plaza, I highly recommend Agatha All Along, a queered-up sequel to WandaVision that—unlike that show, which crapped out in a typical Marvel CGI slopathon—is genuinely surprising and also gorgeous to look at, thanks to handmade sets that hearken back to ‘80s fantasy films like Labyrinth and Neverending Story.

You’ll know whether this show is for you from the first episode, which includes where the titular witch, Agatha Harkness (Katherine Hahn), is interrogating a mysterious young man she believes has broken into her home and yells, “TOTAL LOSER? OR TOTALLY LYING? LET’S FIND OOOOOOUUUUT” that sets the playing-to-the-back-seats tone for the entire series. (She’s trapped in a delusion where she’s the lead in a detective series. It’s Wanda Maximoff’s fault. It doesn’t matter). Agatha All Along also stars Patti LuPone (yes of COURSE there are songs) and Plaza, who plays Agatha’s nemesis/ex-lover, along with Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, and Joe Locke.

If you are braving social media these days, you’re probably aware that a ton of people are moving from X to Bluesky, where I’ve been posting since mid-2023. The good (and currently unique) thing about Bluesky is that your feed isn’t controlled by an algorithm that constantly shoves the hottest takes in your face; what you see is entirely dictated by who you follow, and there is (as of this writing, anyway) a strong culture of just blocking people who engage in harassment, attempt to bully, or otherwise start shit, so it was a much more pleasant place than TwiX even before November 5.

But you know what social media site is really an escape valve? Pinterest. If you haven’t looked at Pinterest since sometime in the Obama administration, it’s basically a visual bookmark site where people save and organize links to stuff they like and find interesting, which show up in a visually appealing grid.

So far, so useful. But the real magic of Pinterest is its algorithm. Click on one link about the top ten things to do in Zagreb, and you’ll instantly be served dozens of links to posts about travel in the Balkans; click on one of those, and you may end up in the land of recipes for traditional Bulgarian baked beans, or the role of the region in World War I. I’ve been going down a sneaker rabbit hole lately, so my current board is pretty shoe-centric, but yours will be literally whatever you’re into—meaning that yes, you can ruin the experience by clicking on national politics stories if you insist. For years, it’s been the place I go online when I need to turn my brain off for a few minutes, and maybe you’ll find a similar escape in its innocuous, endlessly updating grid.

Three Fun Things

Three Fun Things for October 13, 2024
via New York Times

Two Manifestos on Automation, a Life-Affirming Restaurant in the Central District, and a History Lesson on “Schmaltzy” Art

By Erica C. Barnett

1. “Yes, the Striking Dockworkers Were Luddites. And They Won.”

And “AI Will Never Solve This,” by Bryan Merchant

I’ve mentioned Blood In the Machine author Bryan Merchant’s excellent Substack in this column before, but damn, he was on fire this week, with two long posts about the myth that automation—whether by literal machines, like the threats that sparked the dockworkers’ strike earlier this month, or through AI—is inevitable and even desirable, no matter what the human cost.

I’m often struck, in conversations about AI and other technologies that supposedly remove humans from the equation (although see: Elon Musk’s creepily shuffling robots, Elon Musks’s “self-driving” Teslas, or the algorithm on Elon Musk’s sad little website), by how many people seem to think there’s no way to stop any of this stuff from happening. Especially in tech cities, it’s more or less embarrassing to argue that tech “advancements” do not result from forces of nature, or that replacing people with machines is not inevitable. No one needs a web-connected camera to tell them what’s inside their fridge, and no company needs to automate workers out of existence (or replace transit with silly-looking private buses). These are all choices, which is what the dockworkers, and those of us who push back when companies want to test potentially deadly automation on unwitting people just trying to cross the street, have been saying.

The longshoremen and other unions that have pushed back against AI and automation, like SAG-AFTRA and the WGA, “decided that automation was an existential threat to their jobs—and to fight back by rejecting the notion that bosses should hold the power to decide to use technology to replace their work. Outside the pundit class, these proved to be effective and popular positions, and each group won their fight, at least in the short term.”

*This* is modern Luddism. Rather than allowing executives to decide who and what will be automated, regardless of the cost—human or otherwise—workers are seeing that they can reject a technology that will be used to harm them rather than submit to it. That in doing so, they may not abolish its use altogether, but gain concessions and even power over how it’s ultimately used in their working lives.

Merchant also covers an AI debate so dumb I thought there had to be more to it, but nope: AI proponents, including the former CEO of Google, are arguing that it’s unethical, and essentially violent, to regulate AI companies’ astronomical production of planet-destroying fossil fuels, because eventually AI will solve climate change.

Merchant argues (and, again, I can’t believe this is a debate we’re having in 2024) that we don’t need a complex, all-knowing program to tell us how to address climate change—what we need is here-and-now political will, which AI has no power to create. Believing otherwise, Merchant writes, is “not merely foolish but dangerous—it’s another means of persuading otherwise smart people that immediate action isn’t necessary, that technological advancements are a trump card, that an all hands on deck effort to slash emissions and transition to proven renewable technologies isn’t necessary right now. It’s techno-utopianism of the worst kind; the kind that saps the will to act.”

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2. Communion, 2350 E Union St.

If you live in Seattle, chances are you’ve either been to Communion, the much-praised “Seattle soul” restaurant and love letter to Seattle’s Black past, present, and future—or you’ve tried to. Until this weekend, I was in the latter camp. I never managed to be at my computer when this Central District hot spot opened reservations for the upcoming month, and so I never managed to snag a table.

The hype may have died down a bit, but Communion remains astonishingly good. The juicy smoked chicken, generously brushed with a gently spicy berbere glaze, dares you not to pick it up with your hands; ditto the grilled pork chop, served alongside a tangle of bacon-studded fried cabbage. The menu changes twice a year (with a switch coming up next month), but the neckbone stew and Vietnamese po-boy—a mashup I’ve only had in New Orleans at Banh Mi Boys—are always available. I’m hoping that’s also the case for some version of the sweet potato hoecakes (buttery, honey drenched morsels the size of silver-dollar pancakes) and shrimp toast—a crackly, shatter-in-your mouth crust surrounding an almost dainty slice of white bread topped with juicy shrimp, like the best Monte Carlo sandwich you ever had.

3. “How the Impressionists Became the World’s Favorite Painters, and the Most Misunderstood”

Impressionist painters have become so synonymous with normie schlock— “Claude Monet: The Immersive Experience” continues its unstoppable worldwide tour as I write this—that it’s easy to forget that in their own time, the Impressionists were revolutionary. This New York Times piece takes a close look at a show at the National Gallery in D.C., which reconstructs two major Parisian exhibitions from 1874, demonstrating the radicalism of Impressionism in its own time, when the pinnacle of artistic success was an annual government-sanctioned annual exhibit called the Salon. Before Monet, Renoir, and Degas became “posters in your dentist’s waiting room,” critic James Farago writes, “impressionism was a critic’s sneer for the whole group, mocking Monet’s sunrise over the sea for lacking composition and finish.”