A quick guide to the art market labyrinth
by Elizabeth Flock | Aug 21, 2009
Read it at Forbes
As an investment, art is growing in acceptance and prevalence. Historically, it has proven to perform better than other asset classes, especially in downturns. Studies by Barclays Capital and The Economist (in 2003 and 2005) showed that art outperformed both equities and property over both short and long periods of time.
But, like wine or stamps, art has always been considered an ‘alternative’ asset. It can be as volatile as the stock market, cannot be easily liquidated and is at its best as a long-term buy, as the last year has — painfully — shown. And, well, it’s art. It’s difficult to put numbers to it.
Milind Sathe, founder-director of Indiaart.com, puts it succinctly: “In a world where you monitor companies and stocks on an hourly basis, well, that does not happen in art. There are no indices on artists.”
As a result, there’s a ferocious amount of pure BS floating around in the art market. So, yes, the downturn means it’s a buyer’s market, and a good time to buy art, but how the heck do you figure out all the nebulous claims and insider jargon?
The Numbers Game
What are the numbers art does give us? When the downturn hit, gallery sales of top contemporary artists were down by up to 50 percent.
Yet the figure for contemporaries has already returned to about 30-35 percent of original retail values of 2007 and 2008, says Sharmistha Ray, director of Bodhi Art Gallery, Mumbai. But wait, Ray cautions: “These are not scientific figures, they are based on a loose average of gallery sales.”
Other unscientific pulse-readers: The Indian Art Market Confidence Indicator by London-based ArtTactic dropped 23 percent from May to October 2008. And since then it’s gotten worse. Art funds that are soon maturing are scared to liquidate. Average auction prices are down too.
Is it all terrible? We can take some comfort in knowing that the seller always expects the best price, that expectations are always higher than the market. “Expectations are built overnight,” says Ray, “but take a long time to dismantle.”
It’s all about perception. Like the Sensex, art market values plummeted due to falling expectations. They are already going back up as perceptions improve. Sotheby’s auction of impressionist and modern art raised $55.1 million at the end of June, well within pre-sale estimates. It’s not all rosy yet, but try to think long term.
The Recession Is Your Friend
Very belatedly, artists are now negotiating prices. Like real estate or oil, art is getting healthier with much-needed price corrections. Aditi Khurana, former Senior Manager of Palette Art Gallery in Delhi and current project head of the arts initiative ‘Contemplate,’ says the boom meant people stopped differentiating between good and bad art, which is correcting itself now.
And the art itself will get better. Khurana says, “When demand was high, artists were producing works at a fast pace, and it affected the quality of their work. In a way, the slowdown is the best thing. Now there is sanity, correction, and maturity.”
Business ethics should also improve. Khurana thinks the art market is becoming Darwinian: Only the best artists will survive.
Beware of Contemporary Art
The bubble has burst. And about time too. Contemporary paintings that were being sold for the price of a Mumbai suburban flat — plus your kids’ education abroad — are now going for much cheaper.
Take contemporary artist Anju Dodiya. In 2000, she was selling at Rs. 1 lakh through galleries. She sold the same kind of work in 2007 for Rs. 50 lakh! And now, prices for her pieces have fallen 30 percent, back to rational levels.
ArtTactic estimated in June that the average auction price of all contemporary art saw a 76.2 percent fall. Contemporary art followed the shape of the sub-prime market. Up breathtakingly fast. Then back down again to sensible levels.
Deepak Shahdadpuri, art collector and board member of SaffronArt, gives a more famous example: Subodh Gupta. The man’s art work took the same rollercoaster as Dodiya (though to even higher levels). Currently, his art is selling at prices between $150,000–$200,000, 85 percent below their peak, and a much more sane level than the boom time.
“But at least his works are selling,” Shahdadpuri says. “Many other artists who rose during the boom have no buyers today at any price.” He attributes the fall not only to inflated prices, but also to the difficulty of assessing how artists with little track record will develop over time.
In early July, a series of auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s saw old master paintings outperform the summer’s impressionist, modern and contemporary sales for the first time in several years. Perhaps it’s time to go back to the ancients.
Ignore the Hype
Contemporary art is just one glaring example. Henry Ford’s father, William Ford, famously said, “The world is filled with so much hype and PR bull. Frankly, it all comes out in the end.”
Sathe points out that it’s not very difficult to hype up an artist, a body of work, or a show; investors must try to see through that. “Any investor in art has to develop the ability for himself or find someone he can trust to decide if the work of an artist will stand the test of time.”
Shahdadpuri says the best way to do this is to visit museums, galleries and shows. “Speak to artists, collectors and curators. Read as much as you can about the artists, art history and understand its relevance. You need to have a passion for art. Buy what you like. If it is only about the money, [the investor] will probably end up losing money in this ‘investment.’” And you probably won’t see through the hype.
Erm, What Exactly Stands the Test of Time?
Admittedly, it’s not always easy to tell. Decorative art — art intended for ornamentation purposes, that you buy to match your living room’s shade of paint — certainly doesn’t. As investors’ pockets have gotten shallower, many are falling into the decorative art trap. But experts agree it is never a shrewd investment. It’s just... pretty.
Cheap Is Usually Not Good, and Expensive Has to be History
Collectors and dealers are now being forced to offer art at much better prices than the lunatic levels of years past. Watch out for good deals at competitive prices, but be wary of bad art flooding the market on the cheap, which has been happening for the last few years. Make a promise to yourself only to buy pieces which qualify as high quality art. Sathe says that you should look out for the “thinking artist, an artist who uses his skill to make a comment or express something, and respond to a social situation.” As we said, no decorative art. Ray stresses a mantra she once heard from a French collector: “Only spend $100,000 or more on art work if you are buying a piece of history.”
Stay Close to Home
This is a buyer’s market, and the market is at your door. Well, sort of. The total auction size of the Indian art market grew from $5 million in 2003 to $150 million in 2008. Subodh Gupta, M.F. Husain, Tyeb Mehta, Anish Kapoor and Raqib Shaw commanded million dollar sales even after the downturn hit.
(UK-based phenomenon, Damien Hirst, laid off 17 members of his staff that made the pills for his multi-million-dollar medicine cabinet series, according to the Guardian.)
The rest of the world is waking up to the value of Asian art, too. In August, Sotheby’s moved auctions of Asian contemporary art from New York to Hong Kong; dealers said this showed Sotheby’s growing commitment to the Asian art market. But remember: The art market bubble has burst. That includes Indian and Asian art. Ray says an investor shouldn’t focus on whether it’s Indian or Asian — it depends on the artist and the work.
Don’t be Afraid to Buy a Ningyo Doll
Paintings are not even one percent of the art out there, yet somehow they get all the attention. It’s time to balance your portfolio. Crafts, statues, antiques, toys, and other art objects are currently selling at low prices in India. Experts expect they will ascend into the stratosphere in the next 10 years.
Osian’s Auction House recently got into Japanese samurai helmets and armours, African tribal masks, Polish film posters, Chinese and Soviet political propaganda artefacts, magic memorabilia — and those mysterious Japanese ningyo dolls.
Ray suggests investors look at India’s heritage: Miniatures, Picchwais, Bengal School, antique jewelry, and old-period sculptures. And Sathe sees potential for significant growth in the market for memorabilia and photography. Newly popular types of art like these are the best investment right now. Basic investing rules apply, Sathe says. “For any portfolio, an investor needs to spread the risk.”
No More Queues
In the boom period, art collectors were plagued by galleries who refused to sell to buyers not well-known in the art world, forced quick decision-making in the fear of losing the work to someone else, and long lines to wait for artworks. “The artists and galleries may be cribbing about the downturn but collectors, especially collectors who have liquidity are thrilled. They can now focus on building their collections without getting in queue and begging for works,” says Shahdadpuri.
Before You Buy…
Decide how much money you want to spend. “Putting in $100,000 will get you some good buys,” advises Ray. Consider investment timeframe, risk factors, the right price, and authenticity; they all seem pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised how many investors forget them. Too many have bought high-priced art without adequate documentation. And because the art market at present is especially dynamic, risk factors are ever more relevant.
Sathe gives this example: “Some people don’t make sure the material will last and then the painting deteriorates in 10 years so it’s not recognisable.”
More than any asset, it’s important to be sure of longevity. Like a car, it should last at least until the time you want to sell it. “Focus on four-five artists you really believe in and buy them in depth. Be discriminating in selecting only good work by these artists and then pay a bit more to get good works,” suggests Ray.
Not Convinced? You Can Still be Productive in the Interim
If you really want to sell, first get rid of the works you can live without at a price good enough for them. Like those über-trendy, doomed contemporary art pieces (though it’s best to wait for the market to go back up). Network with art connoisseurs; research planned investments; maintain your collection; insure your artworks; catalogue and document them. And may be, just may be, buy a little ningyo doll.
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Friday, August 21, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Tough Love: Downers That Get You Up
Published on Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 19:05 , Updated at Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 19:12
Source : Network18 business magazine
Elizabeth Flock, Forbes-Network18
Experts have never been able to figure out why people seek out art they know will be painful. They have never been able to really explain why that sad love song feels so good, or why we enjoy a really good horror flick.
Some attribute it to the ‘paradox of tragedy’, the philosophical discussion on why human beings derive pleasure from unpleasant emotions. David Hume addressed the paradox in his treatise ‘On Tragedy’. He argued that tragedy is pleasurable because the impulse of negative emotions is overpowered and converted into pleasure through the eloquence used to depict works of art.
The theories are multitude, but accepting Hume’s theory, let us say that the works of art below succeeded in their eloquence, such that these tragic works are in fact pleasurable. These works of art appear to be downers but really they make you feel good.
And as the world, your job, or your bank account teeters on the edge of collapse, you might just need them.
ART
Anupam Sud
Perhaps the finest printmaker alive in India today, Sud focuses on the tragic tensions between men and women. Yet in her unabashed representation of the nude body, there is an undeniable loveliness. As art critic Gayatri Sinha says, the bodies in Sud’s prints are “the only certainty in this shiftless world”.
Sud is a feminist without the pretensions of being one: displaying the male-female relationship as it really is, complete with exploitation, anguish and desire. It’s refreshing, actually. Sud conquers a physically demanding medium and we can all be gratified by the unabashed lines that etch bodies much like our own.
Best piece of art: “Cupid Playing”
Anupam Sud is on display at the Palette Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Modern Arts in New Delhi.
Banksy
Works of art from the nearly anonymous British graffiti artist have shown up in zoos, museums, building walls, and theme parks from London to New York to the Israeli West Bank. While Banksy does not hold exhibitions in commercial galleries, you can be sure to find him popping up where you least expect it.
Banksy is sometimes controversial, usually satirical, and always sticking it to the man.
He gives you a bit of an uneasy feeling when he subverts the corporate machine by sneaking his work into galleries (In 2004, Banksy hung a picture in the Louvre, Paris, that he had painted of the Mona Lisa with a yellow smiley face on it).
Yet then you remember that having a print of his recent graffiti work “One Nation Under CCTV” from Westminster, London, still makes you feel countercultural and avant-garde and cool.
Best piece of art: Nine images Banksy painted on the Israeli West Bank barrier in 2005 (including a painting of children digging a hole through the wall).
Banksy is on display wherever you least expect him.
MUSIC - THE BLUES
Why do the Blues—a style of music not only named for its use of blue notes, but also the phrase of dejection—feel so good? Below are some of the masters of melancholy, who for years have also provided the utmost listening pleasure.
B.B. King
No Blues list is complete without the ‘King of Blues’ himself, B.B. King. The American guitarist and singer-songwriter defined the genre with his penchant for improvisation, complex string blends and left hand vibrato.
The name of King’s guitar, Lucille, comes from near-tragedy-cum-pleasure. In the mid-50s, King was performing at a show in Arkansas when a fight broke out, spilling over a kerosene lamp and starting a fire. King realised his $30 guitar was inside and rushed back into save it, narrowly escaping with his life. When he found out the fight was started by a girl named Lucille, he named his guitar after her, and played the guitar for the greater part of his career.
King’s career was indeed long. In 1956 alone, B.B. and his band played 342 one-night stands. Total, King has played 15,000 performances. And he is still performing today.
Best album: “The Thrill is Gone”
Best song: “Everyday I have the blues”
Lyrics excerpt:
Everyday, everyday I have the blues
Oh nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Yes nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Speaking of bad luck and trouble
Well you know I had my share
John Mayall
John Mayall, the skinny English counterpart to the black American blues performers, grew up listening to his father’s jazz collection and was drawn to the Blues—even its melancholy sound gave him great satisfaction.
Mayall has been around for 50 years and collaborated with a plethora of famous instrumentalists, including Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, and Mick Fleetwood. On Mayall’s 1967 album “A Hard Road”, he is assisted by future Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green, who lends aching guitar solos and raw vocals. Mayall is at his best, using a glut of instruments to give you just that feeling.
Best album: “A Hard Road”.
Best songs: "Someday After a While (You'll Be Sorry)," "It’s Over”
Lyrics excerpt (“It’s Over”):
The way it came about it was a lonely night,
She’d been drinking, wasn’t treating me right
I went outside and I took her for a walk
Things fell through when we started to talk.
Janis Joplin
The girl personifies the Blues. Her struggles with heroin and depression were lifelong. In 1969, while she was with the Kozmic Blues band, she was allegedly shooting $200 worth of heroin per day. On the album released that year, “I Got Dem ’Ol Kozmic Blues Again, Mama”, you can hear her drugs induced more-throaty-than-usual vocals.
When she played with the band at Madison Square Garden that year, she was so drugged up people doubted she would make it. But make it she did and the CD went gold.
Best album: “I Got Dem ’Ol Kozmic Blues Again, Mama”
Best song: “Kozmic Blues”
Lyrics excerpt:
Time keeps movin' on
Friends they turn away
I keep movin' on
But I never found out why
I keep pushing so hard the dream
I keep tryin' to make it right
Through another lonely day, Whoaa
LITERATURE
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita is perverse, it is scandalous, and it is sometimes disgusting. But that doesn’t stop it from being delightful.
The story of an affair between sexual pervert Humbert Humbert and a 12-year-old Dolores Haze has never stopped being controversial from the time it hit the presses. The storyline appals you, and yet you cannot help revelling in Nabokov’s expert parodic style and his celebration of the absurd. The hero’s actions toward young Lolita are repulsive and yet you can’t look away. Perhaps some delight comes in knowing that in comparison at least you are normal. Or that this is only a story. Either way, Lolita will abhor and amuse for decades to come.
Best line: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is a bitter novel. It traces the horror of war through one man, Yossarian’s, plight, as the carnage of his crew members and friends pile up, and as fear of his own death begins to consume him. Yet Heller’s dexterity of language makes this perhaps one of the most hilarious books ever written, using hyperbole to reveal the absurdity of war.
Heller’s eloquence was such that he coined a new phrase in the English language. A Catch-22, or artificial quandary where no real choice or solution exists, was played out many times throughout the book, most famously in the number of missions the soldiers must fly, ensuring they will never return home.
Readers will despair over Yossarian and the other men’s predicaments, yet delight in the outrageousness of situations. (For example, Yossarian’s late-night attempt to move the enemy line, demarcated by a string on a map, so as not to have to fly more missions).
Heller is at his best in Catch-22, exposing the bitterness of the war and the world, and then exaggerating it to make us laugh at it.
Best quote: There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."
"That's some catch, that catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
FILM
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Directed by Milos Forman, from the book by Ken Kesey
The psychiatric hospital setting of the film, with most of the patients based on real-life mental patients Kesey had met when he worked in a hospital, gives great fodder for humour. But Forman’s realistic portrayal of insanity also gives you the chills.
The rebel McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, may be one of the most memorable in film history. Like all rebels, he is fights oppression and gathers a host of followers—here, his fellow patients. His desperate attempts to subvert Nurse Ratched, the tyrant of the hospital, and the reactions of the fellow patients become increasingly catastrophic and bizarre as the film progresses. But while McMurphy’s demise at the end of the film is tragic, it is not without first inspiring us all.
Best scene: McMurphy’s hilarious attempts to convince Nurse Ratched to rearrange the schedule so that the patients can watch the opener of the 1963 World Series Baseball game on TV.
Taxi Driver
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Taxi Driver was not the first in the cinema of loneliness, but it is one of the grittiest. Disillusioned New York City taxi driver Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is disturbing and yet the audience identifies with him. He is presented as a common man, a Vietnam vet plagued by insomnia, and we can all understand his disenchantment with the political machine and the city’s crime, as well as his inability to ably connect with other human beings.
As Bickle becomes increasingly more violent, you find yourself further in the coils of Scorsese’s story. At the end, it leaves you feeling bloodied, but you are glad for it.
Best scene: Travis Bickle practicing a threatening speech at home, saying into the mirror “You talkin’ to me?”
Elizabeth Flock is an associate reporter with the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in association with Forbes, USA.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/features/tough-lovedowners-that-get-you-up/373362
Source : Network18 business magazine
Elizabeth Flock, Forbes-Network18
Experts have never been able to figure out why people seek out art they know will be painful. They have never been able to really explain why that sad love song feels so good, or why we enjoy a really good horror flick.
Some attribute it to the ‘paradox of tragedy’, the philosophical discussion on why human beings derive pleasure from unpleasant emotions. David Hume addressed the paradox in his treatise ‘On Tragedy’. He argued that tragedy is pleasurable because the impulse of negative emotions is overpowered and converted into pleasure through the eloquence used to depict works of art.
The theories are multitude, but accepting Hume’s theory, let us say that the works of art below succeeded in their eloquence, such that these tragic works are in fact pleasurable. These works of art appear to be downers but really they make you feel good.
And as the world, your job, or your bank account teeters on the edge of collapse, you might just need them.
ART
Anupam Sud
Perhaps the finest printmaker alive in India today, Sud focuses on the tragic tensions between men and women. Yet in her unabashed representation of the nude body, there is an undeniable loveliness. As art critic Gayatri Sinha says, the bodies in Sud’s prints are “the only certainty in this shiftless world”.
Sud is a feminist without the pretensions of being one: displaying the male-female relationship as it really is, complete with exploitation, anguish and desire. It’s refreshing, actually. Sud conquers a physically demanding medium and we can all be gratified by the unabashed lines that etch bodies much like our own.
Best piece of art: “Cupid Playing”
Anupam Sud is on display at the Palette Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Modern Arts in New Delhi.
Banksy
Works of art from the nearly anonymous British graffiti artist have shown up in zoos, museums, building walls, and theme parks from London to New York to the Israeli West Bank. While Banksy does not hold exhibitions in commercial galleries, you can be sure to find him popping up where you least expect it.
Banksy is sometimes controversial, usually satirical, and always sticking it to the man.
He gives you a bit of an uneasy feeling when he subverts the corporate machine by sneaking his work into galleries (In 2004, Banksy hung a picture in the Louvre, Paris, that he had painted of the Mona Lisa with a yellow smiley face on it).
Yet then you remember that having a print of his recent graffiti work “One Nation Under CCTV” from Westminster, London, still makes you feel countercultural and avant-garde and cool.
Best piece of art: Nine images Banksy painted on the Israeli West Bank barrier in 2005 (including a painting of children digging a hole through the wall).
Banksy is on display wherever you least expect him.
MUSIC - THE BLUES
Why do the Blues—a style of music not only named for its use of blue notes, but also the phrase of dejection—feel so good? Below are some of the masters of melancholy, who for years have also provided the utmost listening pleasure.
B.B. King
No Blues list is complete without the ‘King of Blues’ himself, B.B. King. The American guitarist and singer-songwriter defined the genre with his penchant for improvisation, complex string blends and left hand vibrato.
The name of King’s guitar, Lucille, comes from near-tragedy-cum-pleasure. In the mid-50s, King was performing at a show in Arkansas when a fight broke out, spilling over a kerosene lamp and starting a fire. King realised his $30 guitar was inside and rushed back into save it, narrowly escaping with his life. When he found out the fight was started by a girl named Lucille, he named his guitar after her, and played the guitar for the greater part of his career.
King’s career was indeed long. In 1956 alone, B.B. and his band played 342 one-night stands. Total, King has played 15,000 performances. And he is still performing today.
Best album: “The Thrill is Gone”
Best song: “Everyday I have the blues”
Lyrics excerpt:
Everyday, everyday I have the blues
Oh nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Yes nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Speaking of bad luck and trouble
Well you know I had my share
John Mayall
John Mayall, the skinny English counterpart to the black American blues performers, grew up listening to his father’s jazz collection and was drawn to the Blues—even its melancholy sound gave him great satisfaction.
Mayall has been around for 50 years and collaborated with a plethora of famous instrumentalists, including Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, and Mick Fleetwood. On Mayall’s 1967 album “A Hard Road”, he is assisted by future Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green, who lends aching guitar solos and raw vocals. Mayall is at his best, using a glut of instruments to give you just that feeling.
Best album: “A Hard Road”.
Best songs: "Someday After a While (You'll Be Sorry)," "It’s Over”
Lyrics excerpt (“It’s Over”):
The way it came about it was a lonely night,
She’d been drinking, wasn’t treating me right
I went outside and I took her for a walk
Things fell through when we started to talk.
Janis Joplin
The girl personifies the Blues. Her struggles with heroin and depression were lifelong. In 1969, while she was with the Kozmic Blues band, she was allegedly shooting $200 worth of heroin per day. On the album released that year, “I Got Dem ’Ol Kozmic Blues Again, Mama”, you can hear her drugs induced more-throaty-than-usual vocals.
When she played with the band at Madison Square Garden that year, she was so drugged up people doubted she would make it. But make it she did and the CD went gold.
Best album: “I Got Dem ’Ol Kozmic Blues Again, Mama”
Best song: “Kozmic Blues”
Lyrics excerpt:
Time keeps movin' on
Friends they turn away
I keep movin' on
But I never found out why
I keep pushing so hard the dream
I keep tryin' to make it right
Through another lonely day, Whoaa
LITERATURE
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita is perverse, it is scandalous, and it is sometimes disgusting. But that doesn’t stop it from being delightful.
The story of an affair between sexual pervert Humbert Humbert and a 12-year-old Dolores Haze has never stopped being controversial from the time it hit the presses. The storyline appals you, and yet you cannot help revelling in Nabokov’s expert parodic style and his celebration of the absurd. The hero’s actions toward young Lolita are repulsive and yet you can’t look away. Perhaps some delight comes in knowing that in comparison at least you are normal. Or that this is only a story. Either way, Lolita will abhor and amuse for decades to come.
Best line: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is a bitter novel. It traces the horror of war through one man, Yossarian’s, plight, as the carnage of his crew members and friends pile up, and as fear of his own death begins to consume him. Yet Heller’s dexterity of language makes this perhaps one of the most hilarious books ever written, using hyperbole to reveal the absurdity of war.
Heller’s eloquence was such that he coined a new phrase in the English language. A Catch-22, or artificial quandary where no real choice or solution exists, was played out many times throughout the book, most famously in the number of missions the soldiers must fly, ensuring they will never return home.
Readers will despair over Yossarian and the other men’s predicaments, yet delight in the outrageousness of situations. (For example, Yossarian’s late-night attempt to move the enemy line, demarcated by a string on a map, so as not to have to fly more missions).
Heller is at his best in Catch-22, exposing the bitterness of the war and the world, and then exaggerating it to make us laugh at it.
Best quote: There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."
"That's some catch, that catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
FILM
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Directed by Milos Forman, from the book by Ken Kesey
The psychiatric hospital setting of the film, with most of the patients based on real-life mental patients Kesey had met when he worked in a hospital, gives great fodder for humour. But Forman’s realistic portrayal of insanity also gives you the chills.
The rebel McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, may be one of the most memorable in film history. Like all rebels, he is fights oppression and gathers a host of followers—here, his fellow patients. His desperate attempts to subvert Nurse Ratched, the tyrant of the hospital, and the reactions of the fellow patients become increasingly catastrophic and bizarre as the film progresses. But while McMurphy’s demise at the end of the film is tragic, it is not without first inspiring us all.
Best scene: McMurphy’s hilarious attempts to convince Nurse Ratched to rearrange the schedule so that the patients can watch the opener of the 1963 World Series Baseball game on TV.
Taxi Driver
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Taxi Driver was not the first in the cinema of loneliness, but it is one of the grittiest. Disillusioned New York City taxi driver Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is disturbing and yet the audience identifies with him. He is presented as a common man, a Vietnam vet plagued by insomnia, and we can all understand his disenchantment with the political machine and the city’s crime, as well as his inability to ably connect with other human beings.
As Bickle becomes increasingly more violent, you find yourself further in the coils of Scorsese’s story. At the end, it leaves you feeling bloodied, but you are glad for it.
Best scene: Travis Bickle practicing a threatening speech at home, saying into the mirror “You talkin’ to me?”
Elizabeth Flock is an associate reporter with the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in association with Forbes, USA.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/features/tough-lovedowners-that-get-you-up/373362
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