A while back, I read this piece in the New Yorker by Tom Vanderbilt, âWhat Makes a Work of Art Seem Dated?â
This paragraph stood out for me:
âSometimes, of course, things are genuinely ahead of their time. In âThe Architecture of Happiness,â Alain de Botton reprints a 1927 advertisement for Mercedes-Benz that depicts a woman, wearing gloves and a cloche (that iconic headwear of the twenties), one foot astride the running board. The woman and the car are posed in front of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneretâs Double House, built for the Weissenhof housing project in Stuttgart. The photo reads like a childrenâs game: Which of these things is not like the others? The car and the woman are Jazz Age relics; the house looks like it could be have been built in Malibu last week. The irony is that the advertisement wants to depict all three as the quintessence of âmodern,â but only the house, so stylistically out in front, kept on being âmodern.â
Hereâs the picture in question:
The fashion looks dated because fashion moved on.
The car looks dated because industrial design moved on.
The architecture doesnât look dated because architecture hasnât moved on.
It isnât that this building is âgenuinely ahead of (its) time.â It is absolutely, rigidly, painfully of its time. Itâs that in the 86 years since, architecture hasnât moved one millimeter. So when you design a building that looks like Corbuâs, remember youâre making one just as full of pastiche as designing clothes or a car in the retro style of the ad.
I was mulling over the way architecture has hit creative vapor lock, but rhetorically insists that recently designed buildings are somehow more current than classically designed buildings, which are dismissed as âmere pastiche.â Iâve talked about this before, in response to seeing the TV program Architecture School.
To give an idea of the stasis I see, Iâve come up with what I call the Expo 67 Test:
If this building had been built or proposed as a national pavilion at Expo 67, would it have caused any aesthetic controversy at all?
(Itâs the âor proposedâ thatâs the real key â as any student of 20th century architecture knows, there are an awful lot of unbuilt but influential projects out there.)
Jobshenge is another building that utterly fails the Expo 67 Test. It keeps being described as âfuturistic,â and I suppose it is, but only with those ironic scare quotes â it would look completely at ease in a 1960s Kubrick SF movie.
The interesting thing is how the Expo 67 Test can be expanded to other arts as well:
* Would this painting look out of place in a gallery show at Expo 67? * Would this piece of music have sounded out of place as ânew musicâ in a concert at Expo 67?
One problem, though. Washingtonâs teeth werenât made of wood.
I donât know if it was this review of WASHINGTON: A Life by Ron Chernow in the New York Times. Still, I recently heard, in connection with Chernowâs book, something similar to Times reviewer Janet Maslinâs off-hand comment: â[Washington had a] harshly pragmatic attitude toward slavery (he purchased slavesâ teeth, perhaps for use in dentures).â
Yeah⌠that caused a big gulp on my part. Perhaps I have too much empathy but⌠George Washington? Of all people? Using the teeth of his slaves for his dentures? Can you be more literal yet symbolic when it comes to an image of white privilege and rapaciousness?
I hunted down what I think may be the source for this. It used to be reprinted online by the PBS series Frontline. I believe it was an article by Mary V. Thompson, who was described as, âA research specialist at Mt. Vernon, [who] studies the domestic life, foodways, and religious practices of the residents of George Washingtonâs plantation, with a special interest in the slave community.â The article originally appeared in Virginia Cavalcade, Volume 48, Autumn 1999, No. 4, pp.178-190.
Hereâs the core of it:
âSlaves of the eighteenth century sometimes turned to the perfectly acceptable means of making money by selling their teeth to dentists. Since at least the end of the Middle Ages, poor people had often sold their teeth for use in both dentures and in tooth-transplant operations for those wealthy enough to afford the procedures. Sometimes the teeth were perfectly healthy; others were diseased and needed to be pulled anyway. In 1780 a French dentist named Jean Pierre Le Moyer (also called Le Mayeaur, Le Mayeur, and Joseph Lemaire) came to America, possibly as a naval surgeon with the French forces commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau, and over the next decade treated patients in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Alexandria, and Richmond. He seems to have had an extensive practice in tooth transplants, but the results of the procedure were short-lived, usually less than one or two years. Transplantable teeth were hard to come by, and in 1783 Le Moyer even went so far as to advertise in the New York papers for âpersons disposed to sell their front teeth, or any of them,â netting the donor two guineas (forty-two shillings) per tooth. In Richmond, he offered anyone but slaves a similar amount for their front teeth. Technical problems made it impossible to transplant molars, so the operation was probably useful primarily for cosmetic reasons. Le Moyer first treated George Washingtonâs teeth at his military headquarters in 1783.
The following year, in May of 1784, Washington paid several unnamed âNegroes,â presumably Mount Vernon slaves, 122 shillings for nine teeth, slightly less than one-third the going rate advertised in the papers, âon acct. of the French Dentis [sic} Doctr. Lemay [sic],â almost certainly Le Moyer. Over the next four years, the dentist was a frequent and apparently favorite guest on the plantation. Whether the Mount Vernon slaves sold their teeth to the dentist for any patient who needed them or specifically for George Washington is unknown, although Washingtonâs payment suggests that they were for his own use. Washington probably underwent the transplant procedureââI confess I have been staggered in my belief in the efficacy of transplantion,â he told Richard Varick, his friend and wartime clerk, in 1784âand thus it may well be that some of the human teeth implanted to improve his appearance, or used to manufacture his dentures, came from his own slaves.â
Wow. Just⌠wow.
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EDITED TO ADD: Mount Vernon has an exhibit that includes the only known surviving denture of Washingtonâs. âCarved from hippopotamus ivory, the denture contains real human teeth fixed in the ivory by means of brass screws.â They donât note the provenance of the âreal human teethâ in question.
âThe mar to [Washington’s] beauty was his terrible teeth, which were replaced by unsuccessful transplant surgery and by dentures made from ivory and from teeth pulled from the mouths of his slaves.â
It was âpulledâ that made my heart drop. Thompsonâs account makes it seem much more voluntary â or as voluntary as a commercial transaction with a person who owns you as chattel can be.
My step-grandmother, Dorothy Barclay Thompson, died in New York City last Thursday, the 10th.
Dorothy Barclay, known to her family as Dot, was born March 12, 1918, also in New York, to George Barclay and the former Edith Roblin. George was a longtime writer for the Business section of The New York Times; Edith, a music teacher. Dot had one older sister, Charlotte Barclay, who died in 1998.
Dot attended New York City schools, and moved with her family to Florida in 1931 when her father left The Times. She went to high school in Miami, and graduated from Florida State University in 1938. While at Florida State, she was named Managing Editor of the student newspaper, The Florida Flambeau, for the 1937-38 academic year.
After work on other Florida newspapers, she joined the womenâs news department of The New York Times in 1942. In 1949, she was made Parent and Child Editor of The Times. She had at least two syndicated features during the 1950s, âShopperâs Cornerâ and âIn the Family,â which ran as far afield as Bingen, WA and Kendrick, ID.
She married my grandfather, Stephen G. Thompson, in 1950. The article in The Times which announced this ran on July 2, and was headlined, âMiss Barclay Marriedâ â as if regular readers of The Times would instantly recognize who âMiss Barclayâ was. My grandfather was Realty Editor of The New York Herald-Tribune at the time, so one could say it was a mixed marriage.
At roughly this time, Dot served as a member of the Home Economics Council of the Board of Regents, University of the State of New York.
In 1959 her only book, Understanding the City Child, was published by Franklin Watts of New York. It would later be reprinted by Collier.
In 1964 she was given an Honorary Doctorate by her alma mater, Florida State.
The âGuide to Job Placement of the Mentally Restored,â a 41 page booklet written by Dot and published by The Presidentâs Committee on Employment of the Handicapped, was published in 1965.
In 1965 my grandfather became VP for Public Relations at the American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers, which is based in Chicago. Dot left The Times and turned freelance, with writing credits in glossies such as Vogue. After he died in 1973, Dot returned to NY, living at the Barbizon Hotel.
She continues to be cited up to the present day. A search on âdorothy barclayâ ânew york timesâ on Google Scholar yields five pages of results, primarily because many researchers looking into contemporary accounts of 1950s attitudes on parenting and children consult The Times, and run squarely across her work. ED. NOTE: That was as of 2009. Refreshing the link in 2023, itâs grown to 19 pages.
She died of complications due to pneumonia. She is survived by her seven stepchildren and their own many children, myself among them.
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OK, thatâs the official-ish obit.
My own memories:
* I had gone with my parents, who were high school teachers, to Expo 67 on a large multi-day field trip the school had arranged. In the summer of 1968 we went back, and the fair had wound down to only the limited exhibition, âMan and His World.â Dad didnât think too much of that, and with the summer before us, he decided to take us car camping on a circle route around the Great Lakes. One highlight of that trip was visiting Grandpa and Dot at their apartment in Chicago, which was near Lake Michigan between the John Hancock Center and Lincoln Park. I remember being able to walk north to the park, across Lake Shore Dr to the beach, etc.
* During those years in Chicago, Grandpa and Dot traveled a lot, to places like the Alaska Panhandle and Moscow. Here you see a whale tooth carving Dot brought me from one of those trips. I remember a lot of pictures of them on Red Square, in front of St. Basilâs Cathedral, the Kremlin, etc.
* It mustâve been 1971 that Grandpa arranged to fly my mother and me out to California for Christmas. Even though I knew something was in the works, Mom had managed to keep our destination from me, mostly by use of Poeâs âPurloined Letterâ technique: She told me we were going to California. Dad had just died and I knew things were tight, so this was obvious nonsense. When we got off the plane at SFO, Grandpa and Dot were there to meet us. There used to be a picture, taken in black and white, of a small me looking at the photographer mouth agape, because while I may have recognized them that part had been kept as a surprise.
* Dot was always supportive of my efforts at writing, both poetry and prose. There was something I wrote about my uncle Paulâs wedding, âCamouflage Pants,â that she thought was particularly successful.
I miss her a lot, and am very regretful I squandered my chances to talk to her more often.
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UPDATED TO ADD: Turns out Dot knew Saint-ExupĂŠry. From Saint-ExupĂŠry: a biography by Stacy Schiff: âBarclay had earned Saint-ExupĂŠryâs gratitude for having researched a question crucial to him in the writing of the book: How many stars were in the sky?â Dot called the Hayden Planetarium on his behalf.
Schiff includes in the book a photo of the inscription Saint-ExupĂŠry made in Dotâs copy of Le Petit Prince:
The Prince says, in a balloon, âIl faut etre absolument fou pour avoir choisi cette planete-la! Elle nâest sympathique que la nuit, quand les habitants dorment.â(âYou have to be absolutely crazy to have chosen that planet! It is nice at night when people are asleep.â)
Beneath the Prince it says, âLe Petit Prince avait tort. Il y a sur la terre des habitants dont la droiture, la gentillesse, la generosite de coeur consolent de lâavarice et de lâegoisme des autres. Par exemple Dorothy Barclay ⌠Avec mon plus amical souvenir, Antoine de Saint ExupĂŠryâ (âThe Little Prince was wrong. It is the land of people who have honesty, kindness, generosity of heart, and console one from the avarice and selfishness of others. For example, Dorothy Barclay ⌠With my most friendly remembrance, Antoine de Saint ExupĂŠryâ)
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UPDATED TO ADD 2: Dotâs copy of The Little Prince was the centerpiece of an exhibition at The Morgan on Saint-ExupĂŠry, from January 24 through April 27, 2014. After the exhibition, it was then sold at Christieâs, realizing $125,000, which was subsequently split among my Momâs generation.
