Pop Culture (Garbo Recalls)
Well yeah, he was eccentric. From a big pharmaceutical dynasty. With a Swiss /English snobbery and Oxford pedigree came a sense of entitlement that kept him aloof from most. He played ‘dignity’ well. Who knows what lurked within?
I got on with his kind, old money connoisseurs. They admired my respect for the tradition they claimed as theirs. Them from high, me from low. We met somewhere in passing and paused long enough to get a bit from each other.
His taste…erudite. Concocted from a melding of Goethe and Wilde . Mine… a bud waiting for rain.
He quoted Collingwood, Shakespeare and Bertrand Russell when hemmed in. I loved to hear him spit out a Quatrain or an epigram from these.
My good professor knew his art history and enticed me with his tales of weeks at the Uffizi or Luxor. I would get there in time but then, enraptured by the very thought of The Prado could only drink the wine and long for it.
On Sundays we met at his beach cliff cottage in Hope Ranch. At sundown. He cooked the most terrific meals. Goofy things, Tongue, Mussels, Sweetbreads.
Wine with, Sherry before ,Port after.
On those Sunday evenings when well lubricated, Doctor Langerhans often took issue with his major irritant. What he called Pop Culture vs. High Art.
For him Perry Como was pop culture, Giuseppe Di Stefano was High Art. Both were singers but one was more famous and made more money. A product of Pop appealed to wider audience and was easier to grasp. It was a matter of complexity he said. He quoted Clement Greenburg: “ High Art resumes everything that precedes it, otherwise it is less than high”. (Later he would disavow Greenburg for encouraging Pollock ET all)
“He’s a traitor”.
Sargent was, he said, a culmination of all painting, distilled into an elegance not equaled since. When I first asked him what he meant by the word elegant. He said he used the word as it pertains to its common usage in Physics and Chess: Refining a difficult procedure into a move or a formula that is astonishing in its simple beauty and grace. Books he said were written about the greatest grand master chess matches, where any number of chess masters could see ‘mate’ in six but someone like Capablanca or a Bobby Fischer mated in one. The move was considered ‘elegant’.
“The World Wars blew everything up. Leaving rubble, death to millions and overriding disgust with the conditions and institutions that allowed for it to happen. Swept up was respect for tradition in the arts.” Viet Nam, Watergate and the assassinations were ahead… to finish the job. Italics mine.
Even then Art Departments of major Universities were falling into step with iconoclasts views. Students read the Art Magazines where Painting was said to no longer be relevant. I attended a Langerhans lecture on this very topic and in the Q&A; a student asked him what he thought of a very famous painter who said, “I’m painting as if no one ever painted before”. To which Langerhans replied with confidence, “When he gets to Giotto, let me know.”
Nuance notwithstanding the Professor was a fearless provocateur and an excellent host.
