Degrees of separation: Clement Greenberg & Kurt Cobain

James writes:

Clement Greenberg and Kurt Cobain. One is the great formalist critic of twentieth-century art. The other is the former front man for the rock band Nirvana. If you don't know who Clement Greenberg was, you can read my review of Alice Goldfarb Marquis's Greenberg biography here (from the Wall Street Journal). If you don't know who Kurt Cobain was, well, you're not a member of my generation (Roger Kimball asked me, "Wasn't he a famous drug addict?").

Now for the connection (I owe it to Dara for making the discovery): Kurt Cobain was married to Courtney Love. Love is the grand-daughter of the writer Paula Fox. Fox is married to the writer and translator Martin Greenberg. Martin is Clem's brother.

It's a small world!

Is Tintoretto the greatest?

James writes:

I just submitted an article for the Wall Street Journal's 'masterpiece' column on the subject of Tintoretto, the sixteenth-century Venetian painter. Here I make the argument that in his monumental "Crucifixion" of 1565, located in Venice's Scuola di San Rocco, Tintoretto may just have painted the single best work of religious art in the Italian Renaissance.

I'll have more to say on this painting when the piece appears, but for now, check out the website maintained by the Scuola confraternity--http://www.scuolagrandesanrocco.it. Click around the website a bit and look for the 'virtual view' of the Scuola Grande. There's no substitute for the real thing, but the 360 view of the "Crucifixion" in the 'albergo' boardroom is worth checking out.

'Self-Portrait as Overbearing Mother in a Hitchcock Film'

THE NEW YORK SUN

By DARA MANDLE
August 1, 2007; Arts Section, Page 17

Given the events in the film world last week--the deaths of directors Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman--I thought it was appropriate that a poem of mine about movies was published.

SELF-PORTRAIT AS OVERBEARING MOTHER IN A HITCHCOCK FILM

A BOY’S BEST FRIEND IS HIS MOTHER.
—Anthony Perkins, Psycho

I don’t take tranquilizers. I endure
Janet Leigh, stunning, soaping: the whore.

Norman cared for me as for the hawks
he stuffed and hung over the hearth.

Ingrid Bergman was like a daughter—
She wouldn’t lock me in the fruit cellar—

In Notorious, a Nordic beauty
For my German son, a Nazi.

He came to me for help, she was a spy.
I knew what to do, he could be so shy.

My cigarettes, please. This is what we tried:
We poisoned her slowly, and she almost died.