Saturday, March 5, 2011

LEONARD BERNSTEIN, LILLIAN HELLMAN, LENA HORNE, AND LES PAUL'S DEAD:  The Awl's J. Feindt ranks the 173 subjects of PBS's "American Masters" series in order of Americanness and mastery.

4 comments:

  1. Adlai3:57 PM

    This list makes absolutely no sense. Tony Bennett at #1? Philip Johnson above Alexander Calder? Annie Liebovitz  above Isamu Noguchi, Robert Capa, and Man Ray? Mike Nichols (93) way the hell above Elaine May (161)? Man Ray only one slot above David Hockney? I will stop there.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joseph J. Finn4:46 PM

    Alfred Hitchcock is #59.  Above...well, a bunch of Americans.

    ReplyDelete
  3. isaac_spaceman5:28 PM

    I kind of feel like there needed to be three lists -- one ranking by mastery, one by Americanness, and a third combining the two.  But, you know, to respond to Adlai, I love Noguchi and realize that he is American, but there is something fundamentally Japanese about his work.  Same with Man Ray -- he seems more European than American.  But Hockney, he's English, but his vocabulary is very American.  So some of this makes sense to me, although "show all work" would have been nice.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Adlai2:58 PM

    I guess I'm mostly going on "mastery," in which case my points stand. I don't really know how you rate "Americanness," and usually it ends badly. 

    But I disagree about Man Ray - I think of his work as totally New York. 

    ReplyDelete