good time fanaticism

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There is a Paris restaurant menu from the winter of 1870 that occasionally circulates online. The city was under Prussian siege for 99 days. Food is scarce. So, dear patron, try the stuffed donkey’s head. Or “Le Chat Flank de Rats, And don’t let the elephant dishes go to waste. The great beasts were obtained with some effort, and there are people starving outside.

Now let’s cross-reference this glimpse of the living hell with surviving art from that time and place. From Degas, we have “The Dancing Class,” in which some girls practice ballet at the Paris Opera. From Renoir, A Wandering Couple. By 1872, when the painters had had time to recover from the trauma of defeat and occupation, Monet introduced a woman seated among lilacs in “Springtime”. Sisley has made some nice bridges. Rarely has a group of artists turned down such a huge opportunity to focus on suffering. This task is trivial given the context. It is also eternal.

The Impressionists saw no intrinsic value – aesthetic, moral, intellectual – in suffering. I wonder if our own age is equally clear-minded. The new clarity about mental illness, and the removal of stigma from it, has been one of the most useful cultural changes of the last decade or so. What Martin Amis calls “one-downmanship” is less essential: a kind of competitive negativity. This is a boom in confessional literature. It exists in wall-to-wall psychoanalysis. A good Western chauvinist, I think the “decadent” reputation of the democratic world is a complete slander. Then I noticed that now advice is being given about “breaking up” with a friend.

Critics praised Wham! allowed the outward hedonism of, to obscure his Italian games, his sweet craft, his wit

One column ranges from Degas to George Michael. But here goes. For all kinds of reasons, the new Netflix documentary about Wham! Worth your time. Some of the remastered footage from the 1980s is a treat for the optic nerve. At least there’s refreshing information for non-obsessive fans of the group.

But the film’s ultimate value is as a warning about how easily joy is mistaken for emptiness and pain for depth. The most enjoyable non-produced pop act ever (their debut album was called that). fantastic) angry critics. When the pair shot a video in Ibiza, some awful-looking indie bores denounced shallowness and crypto-Thatcherite materialism. It doesn’t help that Andrew Ridgeley is the most daring man to prosper in that field of neurosis that we call the creative industry.

Four decades later, it’s become clear who was shallow, and it wasn’t Wham! Critics allowed the group’s outward hedonism, their Italian playing to obscure the melodic craft, wit (“Death by Marriage”) and the courage it took to entrust “Careless Whisper” to a single. August American Producer three times his age, and then his recording was canceled for not being good enough. It is said that the wonderful effect of time comes closest in art to the universal test of what is good and what is not. Well, although Ridgeley is too mild to describe it in his narration, there’s no Netflix doc on his group’s daring contemporaries, right? And who’s better since the 1980s: “last Christmas”, or the idea that Morrissey is an intellectual?

One-downmanship does not merely fail to guarantee artistic merit or psychological insight. It is not destructive either. The opposite way of moving forward in life can be a real counterculture. Abode! The documentary has been faulted for not deeply examining dark matter — Michael’s short life, most obviously — but that would put it in line with everything else today. This wham! K’s principle, would even crush the “lesson”, which is that it is possible to create some lasting value from the pleasure principle. You can look at the world with some joy without pretense.

I note that both members are sons of immigrants. There’s nothing like relative novelty to get someone excited in an affluent country. There’s nothing like family lore about hardship to help you see through the fake nobility of modern angst. Of course, at no point in the movie does anyone seem to care about anything so seriously.

janan.ganesh@ft.com

Get Free Life & Art Updates

we will send you one myFT Daily Digest Latest Email Rounding life and art News every morning.

There is a Paris restaurant menu from the winter of 1870 that occasionally circulates online. The city was under Prussian siege for 99 days. Food is scarce. So, dear patron, try the stuffed donkey’s head. Or “Le Chat Flank de Rats, And don’t let the elephant dishes go to waste. The great beasts were obtained with some effort, and there are people starving outside.

Now let’s cross-reference this glimpse of the living hell with surviving art from that time and place. From Degas, we have “The Dancing Class,” in which some girls practice ballet at the Paris Opera. From Renoir, A Wandering Couple. By 1872, when the painters had had time to recover from the trauma of defeat and occupation, Monet introduced a woman seated among lilacs in “Springtime”. Sisley has made some nice bridges. Rarely has a group of artists turned down such a huge opportunity to focus on suffering. This task is trivial given the context. It is also eternal.

The Impressionists saw no intrinsic value – aesthetic, moral, intellectual – in suffering. I wonder if our own age is equally clear-minded. The new clarity about mental illness, and the removal of stigma from it, has been one of the most useful cultural changes of the last decade or so. What Martin Amis calls “one-downmanship” is less essential: a kind of competitive negativity. This is a boom in confessional literature. It exists in wall-to-wall psychoanalysis. A good Western chauvinist, I think the “decadent” reputation of the democratic world is a complete slander. Then I noticed that now advice is being given about “breaking up” with a friend.

Critics praised Wham! allowed the outward hedonism of, to obscure his Italian games, his sweet craft, his wit

One column ranges from Degas to George Michael. But here goes. For all kinds of reasons, the new Netflix documentary about Wham! Worth your time. Some of the remastered footage from the 1980s is a treat for the optic nerve. At least there’s refreshing information for non-obsessive fans of the group.

But the film’s ultimate value is as a warning about how easily joy is mistaken for emptiness and pain for depth. The most enjoyable non-produced pop act ever (their debut album was called that). fantastic) angry critics. When the pair shot a video in Ibiza, some awful-looking indie bores denounced shallowness and crypto-Thatcherite materialism. It doesn’t help that Andrew Ridgeley is the most daring man to prosper in that field of neurosis that we call the creative industry.

Four decades later, it’s become clear who was shallow, and it wasn’t Wham! Critics allowed the group’s outward hedonism, their Italian playing to obscure the melodic craft, wit (“Death by Marriage”) and the courage it took to entrust “Careless Whisper” to a single. August American Producer three times his age, and then his recording was canceled for not being good enough. It is said that the wonderful effect of time comes closest in art to the universal test of what is good and what is not. Well, although Ridgeley is too mild to describe it in his narration, there’s no Netflix doc on his group’s daring contemporaries, right? And who’s better since the 1980s: “last Christmas”, or the idea that Morrissey is an intellectual?

One-downmanship does not merely fail to guarantee artistic merit or psychological insight. It is not destructive either. The opposite way of moving forward in life can be a real counterculture. Abode! The documentary has been faulted for not deeply examining dark matter — Michael’s short life, most obviously — but that would put it in line with everything else today. This wham! K’s principle, would even crush the “lesson”, which is that it is possible to create some lasting value from the pleasure principle. You can look at the world with some joy without pretense.

I note that both members are sons of immigrants. There’s nothing like relative novelty to get someone excited in an affluent country. There’s nothing like family lore about hardship to help you see through the fake nobility of modern angst. Of course, at no point in the movie does anyone seem to care about anything so seriously.

janan.ganesh@ft.com