A still from Tadasu Takamine's God Bless America (2002), in which ‘the artist and his wife wrestle with two tons of clay over a period of 17 days’. Courtesy of the artist

Art changes art. One painting, alongside another, can strengthen or fatally weaken its neighbour. Group shows may make you look differently at the focus or style of an image, for a while at least. When the Hayward Gallery mounted its 2001 survey of contemporary Japanese art, it seemed to many observers that the several hundred works on show were characterised by a precision and understatement not often found in the confrontational British art of the day. National affinities appeared to emerge.

This was an exaggeration, of course. Even the senior stars of that show – Hiroshi Sugimoto, Yayoi Kusama, Nobuyoshi Araki – had little in common beyond the selected works, leave aside their younger contemporaries. But I remember finding a particular vein of absurdism that seemed to run all the way from Sugimoto's vibrating Buddhas, shaking so fast they vanished before your eyes, to a guided tour of Tokyo for sea creatures and a brief film by Tadasu Takamine, whose first European exhibition opens at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham this week.

It showed a girl taking a high-wire ride on the top of the Tokyo Bullet, the train rushing along, the landscape hurtling past, the traveller trying to keep her skirt from billowing above her waist in the wind. What might have been disturbing seemed faintly ridiculous, certainly far less alarming for all these polite but futile attempts at decency.

Inertia, to use its correct title, feels quite different in Birmingham. It now looks like a metaphor for rape. The train drives on relentlessly and the girl cannot protect herself against the effects of its force. The camera focuses quite steadily upon her efforts to draw down the skirt. Now this film doesn't have any more impact, for me, than it did last time round. What the girl is resisting may well be sexual violence, if the train is taken as a Freudian symbol. Her underwear is exposed, her face is cut out of the picture. But what the camera cannot help recording is something else, or something different, a real girl having an awkward time of it trying to conform to the artist's instructions. In the most bathetic sense her ordeal is real.

What has changed is the context. Inertia appears in Birmingham alongside several works that show sex, imply sex or centre quite explicitly on the sexual act. And in each case, although those involved are known people (Takamine's assistant, his wife, his friends), there is some sense of a broader social theme. The artist is reaching towards an ideal society, or questioning the one in which he lives; this is where, for a British viewer, problems of interpretation may come in.

Takamine was born in Kagoshima in 1968. He is cool enough for Vogue, controversial enough for shocked headlines in the Japanese press. He started out as a member of the artist collective Dumb Type, famous for their darkly political performances. He is known for his candour and what is commonly described as irreverence, though some of his works – "paintings" made out of blankets – are more annoying than this implies, whereas others, such as his theatrical installations, assembled out of junk, are more powerful and at the same time conventional.

But it is Takamine's video work that has travelled most widely around the world and which carries controversy from place to place. Though the most contentious piece is the one least shown, vetoed and even removed from exhibitions in the US and Japan.

It concerns Mr Kimura, a victim of poisoned infant formula milk, who cannot control his limbs, walk or talk. For five years the artist was one of his carers; in the film, he gives Kimura sexual relief with his hand.

It is a sensitive piece, in many ways. The artist questions whether he has the licence to show it, whether he has interpreted Kimura's eye movements correctly. He ponders Kimura's courage, accepting what his body cannot reject, namely its appalling openness to others. But the aesthetic is a barrier of confusion: split-screens, showing partial details, with the artist sitting between them apparently as part of a filmed performance. And it ends with Takamine, rather egotistically, wishing he had done a better job.

Having seen it (Ikon has taken the decision to show it whereas the Hayward did not), I don't doubt that Takamine has understood Kimura perfectly well, seeing the joy in his face. But I still have no idea why Kimura's lack of privacy should be extended to art audiences, nor why (or how) Takamine wishes to make him "a superstar", or whether the sexual needs of the disabled are even the true focus of this work, which keeps cutting ostentatiously back to the artist.

People say that Takamine is intent on ethical inquiry, and so he may be. In God Bless America, the artist and his wife wrestle with two tons of clay over a period of 17 days. The claggy mound is pummelled from critter to GI to Easter Island statue in stop-motion animation, to the tune of the eponymous anthem. At one point, the head is sacked; later, the couple frolic in the sack; make of that what you will. As satire, let alone ethical inquiry, it's formless and callow.

Takamine's film of a woman in labour shows her face in close-up on the bed, restless, expectant, eyes inwardly turned. The association with sex, or the filming of sex, is direct and repugnant. And even without that association, the film's impassivity – just looking – feels offensively aimless. I wish I hadn't seen it for the way it inflected the rest of the show. Sometimes it is the artist's own works that bring one another down.

Summary: Ethical inquiry or voyeuristic frolics? Laura Cumming on the controversial works of Japanese artist Tadasu Takamine


There they are: two hi-tech war toys, phallic and fascinating. The Harrier jump jet hangs just inside the entrance of the long gallery, framed and cropped by an arch as one approaches. When Tate Britain opened this morning I saw two early visitors walking straight past on their way to the Whistlers and the Turners – before they turned to find the jump jet in a permanent nosedive, arrested inches above the floor, wings outstretched, rear lost somewhere up by the skylights.

Even hung by the tail, the Harrier is a symbol of power. But, like the assassinated Mussolini strung up by his feet, it also shows that power is mutable. I couldn't resist lying underneath, nose-to-nose, sensing the weight and mass and power of it above me, like a stilled pendulum. From this position all I could see was the circular nose cone, filling my vision like a football about to belt a goalie in the face. I am less certain that Fiona Banner needed to draw feathers on the bodywork and wings of the jet, even though she's done it discreetly; the Harrier is in any case named after a bird of prey. Maybe she wanted us to think of vermin strung up on a gamekeeper's gibbet, or a game bird hung in Tate Britain's neo-classical larder. Banner probably also wants to remind us of earlier drawings she has made, using fighter-plane wings as her canvas or paper. Previously she has written moment-by-moment descriptions of war movies – including Apocalypse Now and Black Hawk Down – and of the experience of drawing from a live model. Now she gives us the real thing.

It is a complicated experience. The planes are inescapably sexy, dangerous, compelling. At the far end of the Duveens, the Jaguar rests on its tail and its cockpit, as though it has skidded in on a shower of sparks in a special-effects disaster movie – except the wings would have been torn off by the intervening pillars as it screeched through the gallery. The Jaguar has been stripped of its paintwork and polished to a reflective aluminium shine. Somewhere between evil hypodermic and swordfish, it injects itself into the space, and might almost disappear among its reflections. I'll be honest: I found the confrontation a turn-on. They're boys' toys, and that is Banner's point. The Jaguar originally had a cartoon painted on its nose by one of its crew: a rendition of Viz comic's Buster Gonad, with his Unfeasibly Large Testicles, which he has to cart around in a wheelbarrow. "Look," Banner said to me this morning, pointing up at the twin black exhaust vents either side of the Jaguar's tail, "there's his gonads."

Banner's Harrier and Jaguar has upped the ante both of her own art, and of the Duveens commissions. This is more than a familiar transposition of two readymade objects from the hangar or the war zone into Tate Britain's neoclassical galleries. It is a timely and well-placed work, which enters into a dialogue not just with the decorum of its architecture, but also with space. One can make both sculptural and symbolic association with the earlier commissions: Mark Wallinger's earlier State Britain and Martin Creed's runners. Banner, too, invokes war and power, speed and image. Her fighter planes have become images of power as well as impotence – and, therefore, of art itself.

Summary: Adrian Searle: The artist has upped the ante with her Harrier and Jaguar: fascinating, phallic fighter planes that look like they have skidded in on a shower of sparks


There are few things more enjoyable than watching bookish types acting catty, so it is with some glee that I have been following the row that has broken out between the critic John Sutherland, the novelist and uber-blogger Susan Hill, and an as yet unnamed literary editor of a national newspaper. To recap: earlier this month, Sutherland wrote a piece in a Sunday paper in which he expressed his anxiety about what 'the web is doing to the craft and ethics of reviewing' - an anxiety that had been provoked, in part, by the Amazon reader reviews of Victoria Glendinning's new biography of Leonard Woolf (a run of pretty awful reviews was followed by one so outlandishly fulsome in its praise that it could only have been written by Glendinning's husband - which, in fact, it was). Web reviewers, Sutherland went on, are content to work for no money because they 'enjoy shooting off their mouths'.

Well, Hill didn't like this at all, and she fought back. 'How dare... these "literary mandarins" feel they are above us and, by implication, above book buyers and readers?' she wrote on her blog. 'The fact is that the tide has turned and the people have power now. One day, editors will wake up to the fact and give over their space to curling or dominoes.'

This pronouncement had two results. Hill's fans out in the 'blogosphere' - one of whom is Scott Pack, formerly buying manager at Waterstone's, a man who makes no secret of his chippy loathing for critics - wrote to cheer her on. But she also received mail from a literary editor whose name - so far - she has refused to reveal. It said: 'After reading your blog about book review pages, I would like you to know that no book either published or written by you will in future be reviewed on our literary pages. In the light of your expressed views, I am sure you will be neither surprised nor distressed.' Hill's indignation now reached delicious new heights. Lips pursed, she posted the mail on her blog.

In one sense, of course, this is a very local row - a hurricane in the hip flask that is British literary life. There are also good reasons not to take either side too seriously. Although Professor Sutherland is a very distinguished academic, lately his work has felt rushed and lazy. As at least one reviewer pointed out, his most recent book, How To Read a Novel: a User's Guide, is leprous with misquotations. As for Susan Hill, she has an output so prodigious it is practically incontinent. Look at her website if you don't believe me. Among all the clucky emails she sends to GCSE students of her novels and the exhaustive lists of what she's reading and why, she also posts her panting weekly reaction to ITV's The X-Factor.

In another sense, however, this is an early scuffle in what will undoubtedly prove to be one of the great arguments of our time. Battle lines are being drawn. The question that Sutherland has raised - what effect is the internet having on criticism? - is not only fair; it is one that no one who cares about art, and especially writing, can ignore. That goes even for Hill, whose flatulent Blairite talk of 'people power' makes me long to swap her lovely new Everyman editions of Wodehouse for Jordan's latest offering, and see how she likes that for a bedtime story.

I've written before about the importance of critics. I said, in essence, that they were useful because they know a lot (also, you know who they are, unlike so many faceless bloggers and internet reviewers who hide behind the anonymity the web provides). Soon after, I found my name on a bloggers' website called, charmingly, 'shit sandwich'. I was the focus of a lot of anger and frustration; bloggers didn't like my argument at all, seeing it as a way of getting at them and their amateur criticism. I was fine with that; if you dish it out, you should be able to take it. What I couldn't stomach were the unwarranted and inaccurate personal attacks on me (I might well be a 'daft, blond bint' but I am certainly not 'posh'; if only). Looking at this stuff was enlightening: some of these bloggers seemed to be motivated not by a love of the movies they claimed to enjoy writing about but by a putrid bitterness, a very deep sense of exclusion. What they wanted wasn't the right to critique films or books for themselves (thanks to the net, they've got that anyway) but for those people who are paid to do so to cease to exist - to shut up.

For the time being there is room enough for both sets of critics: the bloggers and the professionals. But what if the media one day does as Hill suggests, and gives up on serious criticism, exchanging it for the populist warblings of the blogosphere? This would be easy to do, and cheap. But my God, I hope it will not happen. This is not only because there are so many critics, past and present, that I admire. It is because so much of the stuff you read in the so-called blogosphere is so awful: untrustworthy, banal and, worst of all, badly written. After I heard about the spat between Hill and Sutherland I devoted an entire day to book blogs, trying to give them a fair chance. This was not an edifying - or even a very interesting - experience, and I really, really love books.

Hill's blog, I've already dealt with. From there I went to a site all bloggers recommend, Dove Grey Reader, which is written by a 'sock-knitting quilter' from Devon. I was pleased that she was 'truly hooked from the first line onwards' by Arnaldur Indridason's thriller Silence of the Grave, and it does sound good - but I have friends to recommend thrillers to me. Grumpy Old Book Man is, according to the Guardian, one of the top 10 book blogs. Eh? Even its author admits it's an 'acquired taste' (here he is on Jeffrey Archer: 'Good old Jeffrey. He's always good for a laugh, isn't he?') Finally, to Reading Matters by 'kimbofo', an Australian in London. Do we really need to know that Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go has been on her TBR (To Be Read) pile for a year, or that she bought it as part of a discounted set of Booker novels? Pooter lives!

I read and I read; I dutifully followed every link. And come supper time all I could think was that not a sentence I'd read was a millionth as good as anything in The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby's recently published diary of 'an exasperated but ever hopeful reader'. Why? Because his words are measured, rather than spewed, out; because he is a good critic, and an experienced one; and because he can write. The trouble is, these qualities are exceptional - which is why they must be paid for. Look, it's great that people are sharing their love of books on the internet; I'm glad it makes them happy. But Hill and her simpering acolytes should be careful what they wish for. Would they really be without Nick Hornby (or, in different times and places, William Empson, Claire Tomalin, Hilary Mantel, Joan Didion, Cyril Connolly, and Kenneth Tynan)? If so, they must be stark, staring mad. I know I wouldn't be.

There has been lively debate this week around the issue on our new arts blog. To join the discussion, visit Richard Lea's blog at: blogs.guardian.co.uk/books

...and what the insiders think

Ed Horrox, A&R manager, 4AD Records

In the early stages of a band's career, especially if the band is cutting-edge, certain sites and blogs can kick-start record sales better than print coverage. The writers prove themselves trustworthy to music obsessives by speaking with a legitimacy that springs from a deep love of music. That's not to say that print journalism doesn't have the same seriousness and infectious enthusiasm. From a record company perspective, getting the top album review in the Observer Music Monthly is as good as a 10/10 on [respected music website] Pitchfork.

The web acts as a filter for what we read in print. It gives newspapers and magazines the upper hand by sorting out the wheat from the chaff. MySpace can tell me within seconds what a band are like and if they're playing up the road, but I still pay attention to print-based fanzines like Sandman, and I still read the reviewers I've been reading in print for years because I'm keen to know what they think of a certain record. Of course, great writers will move with the medium, and in time some may move away from print, and the interested music lover will follow.

Charles McDonald, film publicist and CEO of Premier PR

Blogs and online criticism are influential, probably more so with a younger audience, but I wonder if they don't have greater influence on the rest of the media - the people who are covering the films - than on the end consumer. I'm not convinced that even the younger element is massively influenced by what's said about films online. Look at Snakes on a Plane, for example. You had the huge internet campaign, huge interest, great fun, but people did not go to see the film when it finally came out. They had probably seen enough online.

The Blair Witch Project appeared to herald a new era where the internet would reign supreme in cinema. I don't think this has happened yet. There's no doubt that the web helps create an atmosphere and gets the word out about a film. But when it comes to putting review quotes on posters, we still look to the larger newspapers and magazines, outlets that have a certain resonance. I'm not saying websites will never eclipse the print media in this way, but at the moment, internet reviewers still don't have the weight a national critic has.

Nick Hytner, director of the National Theatre

I find looking at the computer screen a depressant so I spend as little time at it as possible. So although I've not come across a blog that makes me want to revisit it, I'm not the best person to ask. I find it conceivable that a perceptive blogger might at some point attract a following large enough for her/his opinions to matter, but we're not there yet. I don't think there is yet a London theatre chatroom that anyone bothers with. I never hear anyone talking about them. They do in New York - which bewilders me. Proper bloggers (and journalists) at least tell you who they are. The anonymous drivel that passes for conversation on the internet is worth no more than unsigned letters in green ink.

Richard Charkin, chief executive of Macmillan, and blogger

If you think of the parallel of Wikipedia, user content generation isn't necessarily a bad thing. So why not reviews on blogs? Obviously some of the stuff on the internet is trustworthy and some isn't, just as it is with newspapers. In the olden days a review in the TLS was extremely important, and even better a review in the Sunday papers. Now there's so much media, there are so many words, the impact of any review is diluted. Clearly reviews in major newspapers are more credible than randomly collected reviews on Amazon or on blogs, because there is an editorial process, which tries to ensure quality. But then we all know that the newspaper world is a clique, and there tends to be cross-reviewing: certainly the blogosphere doesn't suffer from that. The fact that people want to do reviews on the web is great, it opens up people's views - they can discuss and argue. But if I wanted to be sure I was getting thorough information about a book, I would go to the TLS.

Summary: Rachel Cooke: There are few things more enjoyable than watching bookish types acting catty, so it is with some glee that I have been following the row that has broken out between the critic John Sutherland, the novelist and uber-blogger Susan Hill, and an as yet unnamed literary editor of a national newspaper.


Noteworthy stats from Sunday's game:

Season-low punts by the 49ers' Andy Lee. San Francisco scored on 5 of its first 8 possessions.

Sacks of Cam Newton, equaling the 49ers' season high. Ahmad Brooks had 2.5 of them, giving him 4.5 in two playoff games.

Panthers' second-half points, the second time S.F. has pitched a second-half shutout this season (Washington, Nov. 25).

Let the trash talking begin. The teams don't like each other, coaches Jim Harbaugh and the Seahawks' Pete Carroll, left, are hardly enamored of each other, and the fans at Seattle's CenturyLink Field are among the most raucous in the NFL. The NFC Championship Game begins at 3:30 p.m. Sunday.

Road postseason wins - not including the neutral-site Super Bowl - in the 49ers' history, three of which Colin Kaepernick, being congratulated at right, has started. The 49ers' other QBs with road playoff wins: John Brodie (Minnesota) and Joe Montana (Chicago). Kaepernick completed 15 of 28 passes for 196 yards and a touchdown and added another 15 rushing yards and San Francisco's other TD.

"It's going to be a knockdown, drag-out game."

Colin Kaepernick, speaking about the NFC title game against Seattle

Summary: The teams don't like each other, coaches Jim Harbaugh and the Seahawks' Pete Carroll, left, are hardly enamored of each other, and the fans at Seattle's CenturyLink Field are among the most raucous in the NFL.  Kaepernick completed 15 of 28 passes for 196 yards and a touchdown and added another 15 rushing yards and San Francisco's other TD.  Colin Kaepernick, speaking about the NFC title game against Seattle


In its first eight decades as a republic, the biggest question facing Turkey was one of identity. Would it be the secular democracy envisioned by its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, or a nation governed by the Islamic faith that defined the Ottoman Empire from whose ashes it rose? Ataturk did his best to secure the former option, sending the Caliph packing (on the Orient Express) and ordering Turks to use second names, abandon the fez and write in Roman letters. After he died, his acolytes enforced his vision with a rigidity grounded in an abiding mistrust of the masses. Four times in four decades, Kemalist generals deposed elected governments they deemed dangerous to secular rule.

But everything changed in 2002, when Turks voted the Justice and Development Party (AKP) into government, led by the charismatic and irascible Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Once an avowed proponent of political Islam, Erdogan campaigned for Prime Minister on a platform of personal piety and fair play, especially in economics. Embraced first by the conservative Anatolian heartland distrusted by the Kemalist elite, the AKP’s support grew in subsequent elections.

But as the country prepares for three more polls over the next 15 months, the most pressing issue is no longer about the secular or religious nature of the state. It’s Erdogan. Turks have to decide whether they prefer a strongman over the delicate calibrations required in a system of checks and balances.

(MORE: Turkey’s “House of Cards” moment.)

When spontaneous demonstrations erupted last May over the fate of a city park, Erdogan’s reaction validated the protesters’ assertion that the larger problem was his creeping authoritarianism. Riot police overreacted to the demonstrations, deploying tear gas and water cannons, and international outrage poured in. With the Prime Minister abroad, other AKP leaders, including President Abdullah Gul, struck a politic, palliative tone that lasted only until the boss got back. Erdogan blamed shadowy outside forces, invoking the reliable stewpot of bogeymen—hidden hands, Washington—for the unrest.

He made the same play when a massive graft investigation burst into the headlines in December. In time, the AKP closed ranks, passing bills consolidating power around its embattled leader. Gul signed a measure restricting the Internet and tracking users. Another bill tightened executive control over judges and prosecutors, a convenient move as troubling corruption allegations crept toward Erdogan himself. (The allegations should be best assessed by a judiciary visibly independent both of the Premier and the “parallel government” supposedly run by Fethullah Gulen, a moderate Islamic leader resident in Pennsylvania, that Erdogan’s allies claim is driving the probe.)

Municipal elections on March 30 will give voters their first say on all this. The opposition is uninspiring: led by Ataturk’s Republican People’s Party, it is riven by divisions and hampered by the lack of a compelling leader to take on Erdogan. But with the economy sliding, if the AKP ends up losing previous strongholds like Istanbul, the result would embolden Erdogan’s opponents. An electoral setback might also shake loose papered-over tensions within the AKP, perhaps exposing internal rivalries in time for the presidential election in August.

According to an AKP spokesman, Erdogan, who is barred by party rules from returning as Premier, will seek that office. But if the incumbent, Gul, also chooses to run, the resulting split within the ruling party could give voters the credible alternative to Erdogan that the opposition has thus far failed to provide. Gul is a devout Muslim who, in contrast to the Prime Minister’s majoritarian tendencies, talks of pluralism and the rule of law.

A more cynical scenario involves the parliamentary polls set for June 2015. Were Gul to vacate the presidency and were the AKP to prevail in the legislature yet again, analysts note he would be available to resume the premiership in place of Erdogan. Gul already performed that role in 2002, when a prior conviction for Islamist politicking barred Erdogan from immediately assuming office. Another job-swap in 2015 would for now close the door on the possibility that in the absence of a credible opposition, a viable alternative to Erdogan might emerge from within the AKP.

Summary: The Turkish leader’s authoritarian streak is the most important issue ahead of key elections


Charity Stevens enrolled as a sophomore at the New Life Christian School in Longview, Texas in October 2013. On Sunday, police arrested the 31-year old woman, whose real name is Charity Johnson.

A spokesperson for the school told a local news station that when Johnson initially enrolled she claimed to be 15 years old, and brought her guardian with her to sign up for class. On Tuesday, staff at the school discovered the identification she gave was fake and that the guardian was also bamboozled by Stevens.

That guardian, Tamica Lincoln, claims to have met Stevens in March 2013 and that Stevens presented herself as a 15-year old victim of child abuse whose parents had died. “I sympathized with her, and invited her into my home. I took her in as a child, did her hair, got her clothes and shoes,” Lincoln told KLTV. Lincoln started to suspect Stevens, though, and eventually called the police and went straight to the school.

“Teachers were crying and students were crying, and her best friend just couldn’t believe it,” Lincoln said.

Police arrested Johnson for failure to identify and giving false information after she gave them a fake name and birthday. She remains in the Gregg County Jail on $500 bond.

MORE: Americans Are Really, Really Bad at Answering Questions About Science

MORE: Study: 11% of Americans Think HTML Is an STD

Summary: Catfishing, no computer required


07/21/2014 at 08:30 PM EDT

Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello

Hollywood's hottest new couple just took their relationship to the streets!

stepped out together this weekend in Los Angeles, walking with their arms wrapped around one another as they strolled along the street.

Both actors looked casual in jeans and t-shirts, but Vergara, 42, added a dressy touch with black stilettos.

The red-hot pairing already has the approval of Vergara's

Manganiello, 37, has been open about his crush on the Colombian beauty, and the two

in early July after hitting things off at the

at Nobu Malibu, cuddling close in an

photo posted by her family member.

Summary: The sexy stars began quietly dating earlier this month


08/27/2014 AT 02:10 PM EDT

For her role as a '70s-era socialite in the new caper

sports big sunglasses, neckerchiefs and plenty of polyester. And the resulting look hit close to home.

"I basically look like my mom," she said at a press conference for the film in Los Angeles on Tuesday. "I pulled out a lot of her old pictures and tried to rock the old Nancy Aniston 1970s look."

The actress, 45, is also a producer on the crime caper, which costars Will Forte, John Hawkes and Tim Robbins and is based on Elmore Leonard's 1978 novel

"I love how [Leonard] writes his characters," she said. As for her role as a kidnapped housewife and mother, "I thought she had such a beautiful arc and a powerful one. In that time, to write that for a woman in the '70s was pretty awesome."

Upbeat and sleek in a formfitting dress – and sporting her

– Aniston told reporters she is eager to tackle more producing and directing gigs.

"Absolutely, that's the next thing," she said. "The big sort of hurdle I want to take on. I've done a few short films that I've just loved the experience of doing, and I'm just waiting for that wonderful window and that wonderful script and that will be the next one for me."

What types of projects is she drawn to? "I love human experience. I love human beings and behavior and relationships, and it will probably have something to do with that."

Asked what makes her happy, the

– who recently returned from a

to Bora Bora with fiancé Justin Theroux – had a simple response.

"I'm just excited," she said. "I'm happy where I am."

Summary: The actress rocks giant sunglasses and loads of polyester in her film Life of Crime


Gregory Crewdson: Beneath the Roses

White Cube, London N1; until 21 May

Scene one: America. A pregnant woman stands motionless at a crossroads in the eerie darkness before dawn, empty streets converging around her. What is she doing out at this hour? Where is she going, so alone? Is she fleeing or lost and abandoned?

Scene two: America. On a dark and stormy night in another drive-through town, a businessman has abruptly halted his car. He stands beside it, apparently mystified, holding out a hand to receive the rain as if it was some strange new substance he had never encountered.

Scene three: America. Somewhere deep in the woods, a man stands up to his waist in an open grave. Behind him, shafts of moonlight angle through the pines, picking out the battered suitcases around him. Is he burying this worrying luggage or digging it up? Has he just closed the topmost case or is he steeling himself to flick the clasps and discover its dreadful contents?

These three scenes are from Beneath the Roses, the latest series of vast tableaux by American photographer Gregory Crewdson, most of which are on show at the White Cube gallery. The images can be up to six or seven feet wide, almost as big as the screen of an art-house cinema. Each has been specially constructed, staged and performed. And each involves so many cast and crew that together they have longer credits than most independent movies.

For this Wellesian grandeur, plus his Howard Hughes budgets, Crewdson has become enormously famous. His work is collected by Moma in New York, by the Metropolitan and Whitney museums, by connoisseurs and Hollywood moguls. Academy Award winners are delighted to appear in his 'single-frame films'. He is a visiting professor of photography at Yale. Such is his acclaim and, indeed, his status with the young that he is regularly name-checked on American TV and shot the last advertising campaign for the cult series Six Feet Under.

But 'single-frame movies' is not quite right. Rather, Crewdson aims to distil films into single images. Not films that actually exist, of course, but the fictional movies that spool through his mind and which he hopes will end up unfurling in yours - tales of the unnatural and uncanny.

A car is hastily abandoned in a Midwestern town, its doors wide open, as a strange blue mist comes rolling through the streets. Supernatural white lights glow in tool sheds and houses. Naked lovers lie sprawled on a filthy mattress in a backyard festooned with creepers, as if in exile from the house. And the ordinary citizens, when they actually appear, wander through this suburbia like shell-shocked zombies, unable to make sense of the abnormalities.

It is never clear precisely where or when the images are set. Sometimes, the scenario and costumes suggest mid-America in the Frigidaire Fifties. Sometimes, the cars, the woods and the sinister drizzle make you think of Twin Peaks and the Eighties. But anything retro is always carefully countered by the ultra-contemporary look of these digitally finished photographs. For Crewdson treats his projects exactly like films.

Shot on location or on studio sound stages, very often starring Hollywood actors, they go through months of special effects and post-production. The stuffed songbird on the dressing table has to look alive, moths have to flit about the swamp, the fake corpse has to look plausibly decaying.

But to what end, exactly? To make them look more real or more like a scene from a movie? Obviously the latter - you could never mistake them for moments skimmed from reality. But is it a scene snatched from a movie or an elaborate purpose-built still? It is true that what first strikes is the sense of interrupted narrative - supposedly Crewdson's forte - but there is never the slightest sense of animation or continuing momentum. They are pictures, not imitation freeze-frames. And it seems to me that Crewdson is far better at mimicking the style of other people's pictures than at creating a drama of suspense.

Over the years, he has recycled the same scenarios - the mysterious luggage, the stalled car, the mis-communicating couple - very often, almost always turning someone else's originality into cliche. He refers - and defers - to Edward Hopper, Eric Fischl, Hitchcock, Spielberg, Lynch and even Norman Rockwell. But he doesn't have Hopper's gift for the decisively mysterious moment, for example. It is his ability to ape (and hybridise) their aesthetics that counts.

Whether to invent or discover your subject matter is by now an old conundrum for photography. Artists have been rejecting the traditional mode - first find your subject, then point and shoot - in favour of fictional scenarios for years. You might say it goes all the way back to the end-of-the-pier studio, but it became very prevalent in the Seventies and Eighties with Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall's deliberately confected street scenes and Les Krims's narratives. By the 90s, faked tableaux were everywhere in the international art world.

Sherman pioneered the genre - part performance, part fiction - in which Crewdson follows with her marvellous Untitled Film Stills. Part of the pleasure lay in spotting the stylistic allusions - Fellini or Godard, New Wave or New Realism - and a good deal in her own performance, playing every black-and-white heroine to perfection. So authentic was the pastiche that people who saw these so-called stills often told Sherman they had seen the original movies as well.

Which is exactly what would never happen with Crewdson's work. He may declare all his influences, but each photograph must look like a Crewdson first and foremost. He doesn't invent characters likely to enter one's consciousness, so much as borrow stock types and scenarios and employ top specialists - the production designer of Lost in Translation, the cinematographer of Independence Day - to vamp them up.

So, no matter the content, they always have this blockbuster gloss, exorbitant production values being inherent to their glamour. The involvement of arclights and key grips and set designers fussing with every tiny prop is always evident and the crew, you feel, is only just off-camera. You are meant to recognise Gwyneth Paltrow, William H Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julianne Moore.

But just as a vast budget can crush a good movie, so these photographs are flattened by their own over-production. Hopper hampered by Hollywood, Hitchcock ruined in remake - the industry parallels are all there. Which makes it all the more puzzling to hear that Crewdson is actually planning a film based on the photographs in Beneath the Roses, a sequel surely destined to end in bathos.

Summary: Art: Gregory Crewdson's uncanny photographs are in danger of drowning under Hollywood overkill.


JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon might have been surprised when he woke up Tuesday morning to find his bank’s earnings results already swimming across media feeds long before the scheduled 7 a.m. ET release time.

The early leak was the result of a mistake by third-party website Shareholder.com, the investor relations company owned by Nasdaq. The site accidentally made JPMorgan’s JPM third-quarter earnings public at 3:36 a.m. ET Tuesday.

“The root cause was a human error internally at Shareholder.com,” Nasdaq said in a statement. “The issue was contained only to JPMorgan Chase and did not impact any other Shareholder.com clients.”

This isn’t the first time news about a major corporation has been leaked by a third party (or even the company itself because of its own internal mishaps). Here are five of the top news-release snafus of recent years.

Summary: JPMorgan's mistaken early release of its earnings Tuesday isn't the first — or worst — of its kind.


Hewlett-Packard’s stock, which has fallen 2.6 percent this year, was the fifth-best performer in the S&P 500 index Thursday.

Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s biggest personal-computer maker, rose the most in three years after Gartner Inc. said the global PC industry unexpectedly grew in the first quarter. The Palo Alto, Calif., company accounted for 17.2 percent of worldwide PC shipments, the research firm said. Total global PC shipments climbed 1.9 percent to 89 million units, after predictions of a 1.2 percent drop, Gartner said.

Summary: Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s biggest personal-computer maker, rose the most in three years after researcher Gartner Inc. said the global PC industry unexpectedly grew in the first quarter as the company remained a market leader.


Is the App Store trying to prevent customers from reading nasty things about Steve Jobs?

Michael Wolff, a Vanity Fair columnist and Newser blogger whose last item about Apple AAPL was entitled “Is Steve Jobs Off His Meds?“, announced Tuesday that his Newser app has been rejected from the App Store.

Apple’s stated reason was that the company requires “sufficient amounts of content to appeal to a broad audience” — a justification that, according to Wolff, would make any specialty content ineligible for the iPhone or iPad.

But Wolff doesn’t buy it anyway. He’s convinced that Apple doesn’t want an app carrying his column in its store because of the nasty things he writes about its CEO. Like that he’s “odd,” “flaky,” “creepy,” “rude,” “dictator-like,” “slightly neurotic,” “anal retentive,” “a cocky sonofabitch,” infused with “messianic righteousness,” and maybe, simply, “nuts.”

Wolff is clearly delighted to make common cause with Steve Fiore (the political cartoonist whose app was approved only after he won a Pulitzer Prize) and Jason Chen (the Gizmodo editor whose computers were seized by police after he published photos of an iPhone prototype). And he uses the incident to make a broader point in the column posted Tuesday:

“What we have now, suddenly, is one of the most mercurial and paranoid and unusual men in American business — willing to swear out a warrant if you cross him — telling you what you can and cannot read.”

We haven’t seen the app in question. But if it has any merit at all, we wouldn’t be surprised if Wolff were to get a sheepish call from Apple inviting him to resubmit it.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Summary: Is the App Store trying to prevent customers from reading nasty things about Steve Jobs? Michael Wolff, a Vanity Fair columnist and Newser blogger whose last item about Apple was entitled "Is Steve Jobs Off His Meds?", announced Tuesday that his Newser app has been rejected from the App Store. Apple's stated reason was that…


Rich Aucoin broke down the barriers be-tween audience and performer Wednesday.

The idea of play is inherent in any sort of performance: At concerts, musicians are playing their instruments and compositions for an audience’s entertainment. But on Wednesday night at Great Scott, the Halifax multi-instrumentalist Rich Aucoin engaged his audience in the idea of play as well, enlisting them as backup singers, covering them in confetti, and jumping into the scrum to offer them his microphone — and his overwhelming charisma and ebullient songs made them more than willing to join in.

Aucoin has been making music since 2007; earlier this month he released his second full-length, “Ephemeral.” Designed to accompany a 1979 claymation adaptation of “The Little Prince” — here, Aucoin wore a sweatshirt honoring Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book until the room got too hot — it’s full of buoyancy and big hooks, with Aucoin’s impassioned vocals punctuated by crowds singing along, or yelling “hey!” and “oh!” The music at times recalls the lush synthpop once tagged with the descriptor “New Romantic,” but the vocal cacophony makes plain that Aucoin’s longings are toward life itself, particularly the idea of squeezing as much out of it as possible.

Wednesday night’s show broke down the barriers between audience and performer from its first moments. Illuminated by a single light bulb, Aucoin taught the crowd a simple poem, which they would shortly need to sing: “We are not dead yet / we are undead.” Soon after, messages implying hope — “LIFE IS SHORT BUT IT’S INCREDIBLE,” “CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING BORN” — were projected on a screen behind him.

Eventually, the screen was overtaken by shots of pop-culture ephemera that captured people screaming; the spaces between became their own percussive element, raising the room’s energy level. From there, Aucoin took a spirited ride through his catalog, powering through the giddy “Four More Years” and the muscular “They Say Obey”; before starting “Are You Experiencing?” he unfurled a giant parachute, asking the audience to create a tent from it. “This heart is all that keeps us up / This heart is beating,” concertgoers sang, keeping the colorful fabric aloft as instructed by Aucoin, whose bulb lighted the undulating mass from within.

The show ended shortly after that, with the clamorous singalong “It” and a confetti burst sending the assembled into the night. As he packed up his things, Aucoin flashed not just his Twitter handle, but also his phone number, on the backdrop; anyone who wanted to bring the party home could text him for free music — and the chance to engage in play on their own.

Summary: Rich Aucoin, a fast-rising producer and performer from Halifax, Nova Scotia, offered a playful performance in more ways than one at Great Scott on Wednesday night.


The Bank of England gave Britain’s state-backed lenders a narrow pass in its debut annual stress tests on Tuesday, but warned that next year banks would face tougher checks of their capital strength and international exposure.

Lloyds Banking Group Plc LYG and rival Royal Bank of Scotland Plc RBS scraped through a doomsday scenario of plummeting house prices and soaring unemployment after both took pre-emptive measures to boost their defences against potential losses.

The Co-operative Bank, which nearly collapsed last year before being bailed out by bondholders, was the only bank to fail the test, which was tougher on lenders with high exposures to British mortgages.

Co-op Bank, whose core capital fell to -0.2% under the stresses, said it would not have to tap shareholders for additional capital but would probably not make a profit in the next three years as its works out a recovery plan with the BoE.

Although Lloyds’ narrow pass raised questions about whether it can convince the regulator to allow it to pay a dividend for 2014, investors said both Lloyds and RBS had performed credibly in a test which simulated the impact of a property crash and rising interest rates.

“While the passes weren’t great, they were passes…The test was deliberately harsh and what’s key is they passed and we can move forward,” said David Moss, head of European equities at F&C Investments.

Britain decided to introduce annual stress tests of its banks in the wake of the 2007-09 financial crisis which required taxpayers to pump 66 billion pounds into RBS and Lloyds to keep them afloat.

“The results show that the core of the banking system is significantly more resilient (and) that it has the strength to continue to serve the real economy even in a severe stress,” Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said.

This year’s stress tests required banks to have a core capital ratio of 4.5% of risk-weighted assets but from next year, the BoE said that it would also assess banks’ leverage ratios, a measure that doesn’t adjust assets for their riskiness.

Regulators are increasingly focusing on leverage ratios amid widespread distrust of banks’ own assessment of the riskiness of their assets.

Both Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland had leverage ratios below the current 3% requirement under the Bank of England’s stressed scenario. Barclay’s leverage ratio was 3% under the stress test.

From 2019 onwards, large UK banks will have to have a leverage ratio of 4.05%, that could be increased in boom times by an extra buffer of another 0.9% to cool lending.

The BoE confirmed on Tuesday that for now there is still no need for banks to boost their buffers. The U.K.’s housing market, which had threatened to overheat at the start of the year, has cooled in the last few months.

The Bank of England stress test added a number of additional layers on top of those applied by European regulators in an E.U.-wide test of 123 banks in October, including a rise in interest rates to 4% from 0.5% currently.

Under the stress scenario, RBS’s core capital ratio fell to just 4.6%, a whisker shy of the 4.5% minimum required, before actions it had taken this year to shrink its balance sheet were taken into account. Lloyds’ core capital ratio was 5.0% before its actions were taken into account.

RBS, which is 80%-owned by the state, said it would sell 2 billion pounds ($3.1 billion) of notes to bolster capital.

“We recognise that there is still much work to be done to improve the resilience of our balance sheet,” Chief Executive Ross McEwan said in a statement.

Britain’s other large banks, HSBC Holdings Plc HBC , Standard Chartered Plc SCBFF , Santander UK and Barclays Plc BCS , scored comfortably in the test with pass rates of between 7% and 8.7%.

But the Bank of England warned that a stress test focused on emerging market shocks — which would affect HSBC and Standard Chartered more — could come in future and investors said none of the banks could afford to sit back.

“There will be no let-up even for those who passed with flying colours,” said Neil Williamson, co-head of EMEA credit research at Aberdeen Asset Management.

Summary: Bank of England says almost all could survive a sharp rise in rates and a housing correction.


FORTUNE — The numbers are so awful that you can hardly believe your eyes. Punch up any of the major China based solar energy companies and take a look (unless of course you’ve been, God help you, a long-term holder of these stocks, in which case you already know all too well what the charts show).

LDK Solar LDK , down 80% in the past year, Suntech Power Holdings STP down 87%. The numbers for other big Chinese names, Trina and Yingli among them, are almost as bad.

But don’t stop there. Go back four years or so, and look at where these stocks were trading then. For a brief moment at the beginning of 2008, Suntech traded at over $80 a share. Eighty dollars a share! Earlier this week, after a conference call in which it alleged it had been defrauded to the tune of 554 million euros, possibly threatening its ability to make future debt payments, it dipped under $1.00. LDK Solar once traded at over $60 per share. Now it’s $1.39. On and on we could go with all the other alleged Chinese powerhouses in the supposed industry of the future.

These are epic, historic collapses in market valuation, made all the more stunning by the assumption, so prevalent just four years ago, that “clean” energy’s time had come. How ironic it is that Barack Obama’s insistence that the United States invest government money into the creation of so called “green jobs” — which led to the debacle of Solyndra and other wasted investments — was predicated on the fact that if the U.S. didn’t do so, the industry of the future would be Made in China. A credulous political press, egged on by the environmental lobby, swallowed the reasoning wholesale.

MORE: This man wants to destroy Amazon

So now we sit, four years later, and China’s solar energy industry has become nothing less than a capital destruction machine, with some of its most prominent companies now desperately flailing for lifelines. On July 12, the municipal government in Xinyu, a town in Jiangxi province, 415 miles southwest of Shanghai, where LDK has its headquarters, said it would cover the $118 million debt it owes a Chinese bank, the Huarong International Trust Co. In May, LDK said in an SEC filing that if it couldn’t improve its access to funds it might be unable to remain a “going concern.”

Suntech, which accounted for 10% of the solar module and panel market globally last year, has its own troubles. Earlier this week it alleged that it may have been had been defrauded of 556 million euros by GSF Capital, the general partner in an Italian solar firm called Global Solar Fund S.C.A, of which Suntech owns 80%. After the credit crunch of 2008, when traditional sources of financing dried up, GSF turned to the China Development Bank, a state owned institution run by the State Council in Beijing, the country’s central policy-making body. In order to provide a loan to GSF, the CDB needed a Chinese guarantor. Suntech, in May of 2010, agreed to put forward 554 million euros as a loan guarantee. In order to protect itself, it then asked GSF Capital to post collateral for the funds, which it said it did, in the form of 560 million euros worth of German bonds. GSF claimed to have placed the funds in a “reputable custodian bank,” as David King, Suntech’s chief financial officer put it this week.

Fast forward to the present: Suntech, laboring under a huge debt burden, with large payments coming due next year, was looking to “monetize” its investment in GSF; that is, it wanted to cash out in order to pay down some of its debt next year. But Suntech discovered — allegedly — that the German bonds supposedly put forth as collateral by GSF capital didn’t exist. Suntech’s stock slumped to less than $1 on the NYSE earlier this week, a humiliating moment for a company that was supposed to inherit the earth. A market cap that was once north of $14 billion has now been slashed to a mere $188 million. Suntech is now suing GSF Capital.

Not all Chinese solar companies are in quite as dire shape as Suntech; but they’re close. And while it’s true that the rout in solar is not limited to just Chinese companies — Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar’s FSLR stock has plunged 87% in the last year — the longstanding fear among their foreign competitors was that the China-based firms were going to separate themselves from the pack; they could combine technology no worse than anyone else’s with rock bottom costs, as well as government support in a domestic market that would eventually, everyone assumed, become the world’s largest.

So why did these alleged world-beaters instead become the capital destruction machine they’ve turned into, and what does the future hold for them? The solar industry has been, as Michael Parker, a senior analyst at Sanford Bernstein put it earlier this year, “a $25 billion mechanism to extract subsidies from Western European and North American governments.” That is, given that solar has been uncompetitive relative to coal, hydro and natural gas, it relied on government subsidies—granted in the name of environmental protection—to exist. The global financial crisis, and the deep recessions that have ensued, blew that world apart. First—as we have seen in Suntech’s case— for a time it made access to capital nearly impossible in a capital-intensive industry. Worse, it meant countries like Germany and Spain, out of necessity, had to slash subsides as pressures on their national budgets increased. Later, the U.S. placed tariffs on some China made solar products, and Europe filed its own anti-dumping complaint, adding to the downward pressure on the Chinese industry.

In the short run all that hurt, to be sure; but it wasn’t necessarily a deathblow. Because over the past few years, Chinese companies and their global counterparts made enormous progress in reducing the installed cost of solar energy. The Holy Grail in the industry is to meet what’s known as “grid parity,” the point at which solar could go mano a mano with coal or gas or hydro-driven power plants, without subsidy. Grid parity, Sanford Bernstein estimates, would transform solar from a rent seeking $25 billion industry to a serious competitor in the $5 trillion global power generation market. Companies like Suntech, despite its deteriorating finances, have been drawing closer and closer to that magical place.

The problem for the industry is that almost every other major competitor has too. As Bernstein’s lengthy research report earlier this year argued, “good” industries (from an investor’s standpoint) are ones in which clear winners emerge, and losers exit, thus enabling the winners to earn bigger profits and generate positive returns on capital. Solar to date has not been a “good” industry. It’s one at which any number of competitors keep throwing capital, driving down costs, but not making much (if any) money, and not driving many competitors out of the business.

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In this, the Bernstein analysts put forth the heart stopping (for solar investors, that is) notion that solar is turning into the DRAM industry: a business which for decades was a capital intensive, low profit tong war, waged between Japanese competitors and, later, Korean companies, led by Samsung—which eventually emerged as the clear industry leader.

The comparison, as the Bernstein analysis notes at length, is compelling; and it’s a potential nightmare for Chinese solar companies, not to mention for the government that has supported them. For none other than Samsung has identified solar energy as one of its five core business going forward. And Samsung has a balance sheet which absolutely dwarfs that of any current Chinese competitor. That means, just as it did in memory chips, it can invest heavily even during frequent downturns in the market, upgrading its technology and driving down costs so that someday it clears the field of competitors. In an industry in which so many speculated that Chinese firms would dominate, there isn’t a single one out there at the moment that seems capable of competing long-term with Samsung.

That means one of two things needs to happen in China; either the government needs to allow– or even prompt — consolidation in the industry, something that hasn’t happened yet despite the astonishing declines in market cap. Or, it could wall off the massive Chinese market from powerful foreign companies, like Samsung and others who might be tempted to play in the space (Bernstein suggests GE may be tempted.)

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But even that might not help in the long run. Remember always that grid parity, nirvana for the solar industry, is a moving target. The stunning price decline for natural gas, coming in the wake of huge discoveries in North America, demonstrates that. Bernstein analyst Michael Parker notes, accurately, that the natural gas price in China is still five times higher than what it is in the U.S. The point being that while solar is simply not close to being cost competitive in the United States, it still can get there in China, and it if it does, the potentially massive domestic market will provide salvation for Chinese solar companies.

Maybe. But remember that in terms of potential natural gas reserves, the United States is only surpassed by one country on the planet: China. And while the geology here is more difficult than in North America, and there are other constraints (a lack of water being the most significant– water being critical in the fracking process), oil and gas industry executives interviewed for this story believe these issues are eminently surmountable. Which means, in ten years or so, the price of natural gas in China might be much lower than it is now.

So the crash in solar equity values in China — China’s solar eclipse — might be telling us as much about the future as it is about what’s happened over the past four years. It’s just possible that solar is the industry of the future in China—and always will be.

Summary: Four years ago, investors placed bets that China would dominate solar energy. Now China’s solar industry is just a capital destruction machine, with some of its most prominent companies desperately flailing for lifelines.


FORTUNE — Following a pattern that has become familiar to hard-core Apple AAPL watchers, the company announced today that it has scheduled its earnings call for the third fiscal quarter of 2012 on the first Tuesday three weeks after the last Saturday of the quarter, which ended June 30.

Got that? If so, you should already know that the results will hit the business wires about half an hour after the markets close on July 24, and that the call with analysts will begin at 5 p.m. Eastern (2 p.m. Pacific.) You can tune in to the live audio webcast here.

We’ve already started gathering analysts’ estimates for our quarterly Earnings Smackdown between what we used to call the professionals and the bloggers. (Because some of the latter have started to turn pro — one has launched a hedge fund, others have become consultants — they’re more accurately described now as “independents.”)

Our numbers are preliminary, but as usual the indies are more bullish than the pros, looking for earnings on average about $5 billion higher than the Street’s consensus. Both groups expect iPad sales to easily beat last quarter’s, and iPhone unit sales to decline somewhat. Apple is widely expected to introduce a new iPhone next fall, and if the past is any guide, some would-be customers will be holding out for the new model.

If you were looking to make a killing by buying Apple shares in advance of the earnings results, you may already be too late. According to a study of the stock’s pre-earnings movements over the last 13 quarters posted by aapltrader99‘s Randy Fosler, the best time to buy the stock is in the middle of the month before the results are announced. See here.

Summary: Expected to easily beat guidance. iPad sales should up a lot, iPhones down a bit.


With the New Year upon us, we tend to be a resolute bunch. Many of our resolutions revolve around self-improvement, peace on earth and fitting into old jeans — those same old unattainable things we like to devote several days of effort to each new year.

But several days of effort could pay off handsomely in new ways for wine lovers. This year could be the year you begin to benefit from a wine collection — with minimum investment of both time and money.

Make 2012 the year you decide to drink better wine. This is the first installment of the Snooth project to Build a Better Wine Cellar — for just $2500.

We’re beginning our cellar project by taking a look at some of the options available to people at a relatively modest price point: $30 a bottle. I could buy a single bottle of wine and be done with it, building that $2500 cellar in one purchase, but that’s neither fun nor helpful, is it?

What I’m hoping to do is help people understand where there is value in cellarable wine and with that, offer some pointers. Simply put, one need not invest exorbitant resources in order to build a cellar that satisfies its primary purpose, to supply maturing wines over the course of several years.

So what does my fantasy cellar look like? Let’s break it down by stages and price points:

The $2500 cellar is stage one and consists of six cases of wine broken down as follows: Eight types of wine, three labels for each type, three bottles each, all at less than $30 a bottle.

The $5000 cellar is stage two and includes the $2500 cellar plus: Five additional types of wine, three labels of each type, three bottles each, all at less than $60 a bottle,

The $10,000 cellar is stage three and includes the $5000 Cellar plus: Five additional types of wine, three labels of each type , three bottles each, all at about $100 a bottle.

The $20,000 cellar is the final stage and includes: Five additional types of wine, three labels of each type, three bottles each, all at $200 to $400 a bottle.

Today, we’ll start with our first two types of wine for the $2500 cellar: Rioja and Beaujolais. We want to drink better, we want wines that are representative, we want wines that work with the foods we eat, we want our friends to enjoy our wines, and we want to know something about the wines we share.

We want to find the great values out there — the real ‘wow’ wines under $30 that will reward up to about a decade of cellaring, though sometimes a bit less. If you cellar wine, don’t be afraid of taking a few risks now and again. A cellar full of your favorite wines is a fantastic treat, a cellar full of your favorite wines and wines you had no idea would become your favorites is even better.

Rioja Reserva: Not only are these wines delicious on release, they are ready to improve in the bottle for years to come. As such, they are ideal wines to begin a cellar with. One of the issues with more expensive wines for the cellar is they often taste bad when young. These Rioja Reservas all exhibit rich ripe fruit and the classic tell-tale oak that is one of the signature elements of the Rioja taste profile.

Three wines I added to my cellar this past year are:

2001 La Rioja Alta Vina Ardanza Reserva Especial $30

2004 Bodegas Riojanas Monte Real Reserva $20

2001 CVNE Vina Real Gran Reserva $40

I’ve already cheated a bit, sort of, by exceeding the $30 per bottle price, but the net result here is an average of $30 per bottle for a solid selection of cellarable Rioja. Total cost for nine bottles is about $300, with tax and delivery included.

Beaujolias: Like Rioja, Beaujolais may be off many people’s radar, but the truth is that the top of the line Cru Beaujolais are getting more attention than ever, and for good reason. Not only are these wines improving, showing lovely nuance, structure and an increasing effort on the part of winemakers to highlight the grapes’ and terroirs’ unique expression, but they are also proving to be one of the great values in the world of wine, for a little while longer at least.

While we think of Beaujolais as an early drinking wine — the best are considered on par with some minor Burgundy appellations as to their ability to improve with age, becoming complex, layered and wonderfully expressive. They are ideal food wines.

Three that I added to my cellar this past year are:

2010 Clos de Roilette Fleurie $20

2010 Chanrion Cotes du Brouilly $17

2009 J P Brun Terres Dorees Morgon $18

As you can see, these wines, all clocking in at under $20 a bottle, are real value. Buying three of each gets us to about $200, with tax and delivery.

Two wines selected, six to go, bringing us to a total of about $500 so far.

I’ll be back soon with more great selections, but if you have your own favorites, share them in the comments below.

Summary: Start small by carefully selecting bottles under $30 that will appreciate as they age.


03/10/2015 AT 09:10 AM EDT

He found his true love in fiancée

has another life goal in mind after personally announcing on Tuesday's

that he's joining the cast of

"I think the assumption is farmers don't dance and that I'm going to go out there and look like a complete idiot," he tells PEOPLE. "I'm going to try to prove that farmers can dance!"

The Arlington, Iowa-based corn farmer, 33, has already begun rehearsals with his partner –

) – in Los Angeles. "It's a good thing [her name is Witney]," jokes Soules. "I am of a very small mind and a short memory so it just keeps it simple!"

As far as his two-stepping talents, Soules, who

, says, "I think Americans think I can dance about as good as I can sing!"

But at least one fan is sure to be front row center every week. Bischoff, 29, will live with Soules in L.A. (and commute to Chicago for work) during the length of his stay on

. She's confident in her future husband's skills: "Hopefully we'll be in L.A. for a while because Chris is going to take home that mirror-ball trophy. He's got rhythm!"

's new season premieres Monday, March 16, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

Summary: The former Bachelor is deep in rehearsals for his Dancing debut


(Reuters) – E-commerce company eBay Inc reported a quarterly profit well ahead of Wall Street estimates as revenue from its payments business rose 14%, and said it will spin off its key electronic-payment business PayPal in the third quarter.

The company’s shares rose 5% in extended trading on Wednesday.

PayPal said in April it would continue charging eBay merchants less than it does other merchants and the two companies would stay interdependent for the next five years.

Some analysts have pegged the spun off company’s market value at about $40 billion.

PayPal’s net total payment volume jumped 18% to $61 billion in the first quarter ended March 31.

Revenue from eBay’s payments business, which had about 162 million active registered accounts as of Dec. 31, rose to $2.11 billion.

EBay’s net revenue rose to $4.45 billion from $4.26 billion, versus analysts’ average estimate of $4.42 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

EBay EBAY reported net income of $626 million, or 51 cents per share, for the first quarter, compared with a loss of $2.33 billion, or $1.82 per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, the company earned 77 cents per share in the quarter, ahead of analysts’ average estimate of 70 cents per share.

For more about eBay and PayPal, watch this Fortune video:

Summary: The online marketplace plans to spin off digital payments service PayPal in the third quarter.


Raymond Cutter (John Travolta) is an art forger. In just 10 months, he’ll be released from prison. But he has to get out now — being the father of a teenager can have that effect — so he cuts a deal with a truly nasty piece of work named Keegan (Anson Mount).

Cutter has to forge a Monet currently hanging in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. That’s hard. The forgery has to be good enough that Cutter can sub it for the original. That’s harder. Hardest of all? He has to steal the real one, without anyone noticing, so Keegan can sell it to a Latin American drug kingpin with a taste for Impressionist painting.

So far, so implausible. Travolta sports a weird little chin patch. At least it doesn’t cover that dimple. Christopher Plummer, as Cutter’s crankily crooked dad, has a grand old time. He goes way beyond ham, to corned beef and cabbage. Tye Sheridan, as Cutter’s son, holds up his sulky end. Abigail Spencer boasts the best cheekbones of any onscreen law-enforcement official this side of Sonja Sohn, back on “The Wire.” They’re accentuated by the tightly pulled-down cap she constantly wears, which emphasizes how tense she looks. You’d think Raymond would be the one on edge.

“The Forger” wants to be many things: gritty crime thriller, heist picture, domestic drama. Family bonds get “forged,” too, right? Director Philip Martin, who’s mainly done British TV work, is best known for “Prime Suspect 7.” Martin keeps things moving a little too briskly, perhaps. Scenes generally feel underdeveloped, and transitions abrupt. A suspicion grows that this is one movie that would have fared better as miniseries. Richard D’Ovidio’s script has a lot of things going on, and they could have benefited from some room to breathe.

“The Forger” is one other kind of movie: a travelogue. MFA sequences were filmed at, yes, the MFA. An establishing shot of the Tobin Bridge indicates that the Cutter manse (thankfully, not a triple-decker) is in Chelsea or Charlestown. The drug kingpin stays at the Copley Plaza. There are glimpses of Storrow Drive, Logan Airport, Boston Common, the Public Garden. The Cutters drink Narragansett. And you won’t find this many Sox caps being worn in the Fenway bleachers.

Oh, and the accent. Always, there’s the accent. Let’s just say its usage . . . fluctuates. A pal of Raymond’s mentions “alarms” and “Chahles” (as in “banks of”) within the same breath. Fortunately, local hero Steve Sweeney is on hand for an all-too-brief turn as a fence. How brief? He’s not even credited on IMDb. At least he’s onscreen long enough to remind us what real Boston accents sound like. Plummer may serve up a plateful of corned beef and cabbage. Sweeney, bless him, knows how to talk with a mouthful of it.

Summary: In “The Forger,” John Travolta is out to steal a Monet from the Museum of Fine Arts.


Convicted drug smuggler Renae Lawrence. (AAP)

The father of Bali Nine drug smuggler Renae Lawrence says Indonesian President Joko Widodo is "heartless" to allow the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukamaran.

Bob Lawrence, speaking from his home in Newcastle in the NSW mid-north coast, told the Newcastle Herald he is not a great fan of Chan and Sukumaran because of their role in "standing over" the drug mules in the gang, including his daughter.

Renae Lawrence, who is serving 20 years for attempting to smuggle heroin to Australia in 2005, testified along with three fellow mules that they were all threatened with death if they refused to smuggle the drugs.

However, Mr Lawrence yesterday said he believed Chan and Sukumaran had been rehabilitated.

"I just can't see the sense in killing them, there is absolutely no gain," he was quoted as saying.

"Seeing the families on the television and the heartbreak they are going through, I really don't know how they have been able to handle it."

He said Renae was not friends with the death row inmates but "she certainly never wished them any harm".

"She wanted to get in contact with them before they left for the island, but she was lost on what to say," he said.

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Summary: The father of Bali Nine drug smuggler Renae Lawrence says Indonesian President Joko Widodo is "heartless" to allow the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.


Updated MAY 05, 2015 7:06p ET

TEMPE, Ariz. -- Cardinals GM Steve Keim and his staff didn't stop working once the NFL Draft ended.

"Not only are we excited about our draft class, we've already got commitments from three or four players in free agency who we had as fourth- or fifth-round draft prospects, so we know we're going to come away with several other players who can potentially help our team," Keim said on Saturday.

By Tuesday, that list had grown to 14 players who agreed to free-agent contracts, with several more expected to attend Cardinals rookie camp Friday through Sunday, on a tryout basis, at the team's headquarters. The reported tryout list includes quarterback Taylor Kelly, a three-year starter at Arizona State.

The free agent signees reflect an emphasis on linebackers, with five in the fold, including Big Sky Conference defensive player of hte year Zack Wagenmann of Montana.

The Cardinals gained room on the roster with the retirement of tight end John Carlson and the release of running back Zach Bauman and cornerback Roc Carmichael on Tuesday. Teams are allowed a maximum of 90 players for their offseason and training camp roster. Here's a look at 14 players the team has signed, as well as some who will or could be here for tryouts, per media reports or their own tweets.

The Cardinals will release a full rookie camp roster later this week.

SIGNED LB Alani Fua, BYU, School bio OT Rob Crisp, N.C. State, School bio RB Paul Lasike, BYU, School bio TE Gannon Sinclair, Missouri State, School bio NT Xavier Williams, Northern Iowa, School bio LB Gabe Martin, Bowling Green, School bio DB C.J. Roberts, Colorado State-Pueblo, School bio DB Cariel Brooks, Adams State, School bio ILB Andrae Kirk, Florida Atlantic, School bio WR Jaxon Shipley, Texas School bio ILB Edwin Jackson, Georgia Southern, School bio OLB Zack Wagenmann, Montana, School bio WR Trevor Harman, Shippensburg, School bio RB Damond Powell, Iowa, School bio REPORTED TRYOUT PLAYERS QB Taylor Kelly, ASU, School bio QB Phillip Sims, Winston-Salem, NFL Draft bio OL Kody Afusia, Hawaii, School bio DL Nick Seither, Georgetown College, School bio OL Solomone Kafu, BYU, School bio DL Alfy Hill, Winston-Salem, school bio

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Summary: At least 13 undrafted rookie free agents will be in town this weekend for the Cardinals rookie mini-camp, hoping to make it to training camp and, ultimately, the 53-man roster.


''USE a log to hit a hog'' says Shel Silverstein in ''Hitting'' in his collection of poems and drawings ''A Light in the Attic.'' ''Use a twig to hit a pig. / Use a rake to hit a snake. / Use a swatter to hit an otter. / Use a ski to hit a bee. / And use a feather when you hit me.'' Only feathers are allowed to be used on this reviewer if parents can't find something pleasurable or satisfying for their reading-age children in this survey of the year's best books.

First, more for convenience than by intention, is Mr. Silverstein's A Light in the Attic (Harper & Row, $10.95), a companion volume to his ''Where the Sidewalk Ends.'' Mr. Silverstein's very light verse sometimes borders on the crude, what with burps, behinds, intestines, squashed babies and brassieres for camels being prominent. But his redeeming virtues are wisdom, as in ''God's Wheel,'' wit and an absence of the sentimentality that has made poetry off-putting to generations of children.

Another commendable volume of poetry and a handsome example of book-making is A Visit to William Blake's Inn (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $10.95.) by Nancy Willard. Slightly Oxford donnish in its approach and appeal, this is a volume of imaginative verse for the 9-year-old and up about the real and mythical inhabitants of an 18thcentury inn run by the famous poet-engraver. The illustrations by Alice and Martin Provensen of the time and place are appropriately graceful.

The best novel of the year is Lynne Reid Banks's The Indian in the Cupboard (Doubleday, $9.95). An English author, Mrs. Banks has few intrusive Briticisms as she writes of a 9-year-old, Omri, who transforms a plastic toy figure into a live, three-inch-tall, fierce and imperious Iroquois Indian named Little Bear. Providing fire, food, longhouse and a horse for his charge keeps Omri hopping; the real trouble comes when his envious friend brings to life a plastic cowboy.

The past is brilliantly recreated by Mildred D. Taylor in Let the Circle Be Unbroken (Dial, $11.95) for ages 11 and up. Miss Taylor's setting for her nearly 400-page novel, a sequel to her Newbery Awardwinning ''Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry,'' is rural Mississippi of the mid-1930's. She continues the story of the black Logan family, their four children and friends, as they experience racial antagonisms and adversity. A Mississippi-born author, Miss Taylor conveys the textures of life among black as well as white and writes not with rancor or bitterness over indignities but with pride, strength and respect for humanity.

More contemporary is the story of a tough, proud 14-year-old black girl in Rainbow Jordan (Coward, McCann, $8.95) by Alice Childress. Rainbow is trying to make her way through life and all its temptations without her mother, a young go-go dancer always out of town on another gig. A sturdy heroine in an almost heartbreaking story for 13-year-olds and up by the author of the controversial ''A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich.''

Another writer who has enjoyed enormous success and been embroiled in her share of controversy is Judy Blume. Her Tiger Eyes (Bradbury, $9.95) for 12- to 15-year-olds is about a teen-age girl, Davey, transplanted from Atlantic City after her father has been killed in the holdup of his store, to Los Alamos, N.M. Davey lives in fear with the memory of violence and is trying to pick up the pieces of her life. The book marks a new level of maturity for Judy Blume as a storyteller, perhaps because here she is not trying to break any taboos.

A cattle ranch on the Kissimmee Prairie of Central Florida is the setting for Vera and the late Bill Cleaver's The Kissimmee Kid (Lothrop, $8.95) for readers 10 to 14. The Cleavers can always be depended upon to come up with a spunky, gritty character, and 12-year-old Evelyn Chestnut, who discovers that her idolized brotherin-law is a cattle rustler, is no exception. Evelyn has to choose between family loyalty and truth - and she makes the right choice.

A family of children that sticks together is in Cynthia Voight's Homecoming (Atheneum, $12.95). Abandoned in a shopping-mall parking lot, the four children, ages 6 to 13, have their own incredible journey, with little help or money, from Rhode Island to Maryland in search of a place to belong. A first novel by this author, for ages 12 to 16, and one of love, loyalty and determination.

A band of children, too, is in Jan Slepian's Lester's Turn (Macmillan, $8.95) for 11-to 15-year-old readers, and a sequel to the author's much-praised ''The Alfred Summer.'' A young cerebral palsy victim and his friends set out to rescue their retarded friend, Alfie, from an institution. A touching, sensitive story not without its lighter moments.

The best of the sinister and supernatural is Lois Duncan's Stranger With My Face (Little, Brown, $8.95). A skilled hand at plotting suspense for young teen-agers, Mrs. Duncan has her 17-year-old heroine, Laurie Stratton, being impersonated by a long-missing, evil twin sister. Traveling by astral projection, the evil sister is determined to possess and inhabit Laurie's body permanently. Spinechilling from top to bottom.

Olga Cabral's So Proudly She Sailed (Houghton Mifflin, $8.95), for readers 10 to 14, is catalogued as fiction but there is more than enough truth in these tales of sailing aboard the frigate U.S.S. Constitution so that it is a documentary novel. Miss Cabral traces Old Ironsides from her contruction in 1797 through her glorious as well as sad times under sail, to her permanent berth in today's Boston harbor.

The best biography of the year is Jean Fritz's Traitor (Putnam's, $9.95), which deals with one of the most tragic figures in American history, Benedict Arnold. Known for her many biographies of our country's early figures, Mrs. Fritz offers readers 10 to 14 a scholarly, well-researched, always readable book about a man whose daring and bravery in the cause of independence were exceeded only by his treachery.

Summary: By George A. Woods   ''USE a log to hit a hog'' says Shel Silverstein in ''Hitting'' in his collection of poems and drawings ''A Light in the Attic.'' ''Use a twig to hit a pig. / Use a rake to hit a snake. / Use a swatter to hit an otter. / Use a ski to hit a bee. / And use a feather when you hit me.'' Only feathers are allowed to be used on this reviewer if parents can't find something pleasurable or satisfying for their reading-age children in this survey of the year's best books.   First, more for convenience than by intention, is Mr. Silverstein's A Light in the Attic (Harper & Row, $10.95), a companion volume to his ''Where the Sidewalk Ends.'' Mr. Silverstein's very light verse sometimes borders on the crude, what with burps, behinds, intestines, squashed babies and brassieres for camels being prominent. But his redeeming virtues are wisdom, as in ''God's Wheel,'' wit and an absence of the sentimentality that has made poetry off-putting to generations of children.


CHICAGO Sept. 16 - A group of black Roman Catholic priests announced today that they were sponsoring a rally in support of John Cardinal Cody, the beleaguered Archbishop of Chicago, and asked that diocesan schools in the city's 80 black parishes be closed Friday morning so students could join other church members in ''a positive, mammoth tribute'' to the Cardinal.

The announcement by the Black Catholic Clergy of Chicago marks the first org anized demonstration by any church-r elated group here to lend public support to Cardinal Cody, who is the subject of an investigation by the United States Attorney's office here.

The allegations that Cardinal Cody had spent church money improperly, which appeared in published reports here nearly a week ago, have shocked the Chicago Catholic community, which has 2.4 million members and is the largest in the nation. But the reaction has been strongly marked by puzzlement and uncertainty.

A Federal grand jury is studying allegations that Cardinal Cody enriched his stepcousin and longtime friend, Helen Dolan Wilson, by improperly diverting to her tax-exempt funds that belonged to the church. Denies Any Wrongdoing

Cardinal Cody has denied he did anything wrong, and he declared in public appearances that the accusations against him should be equated with an attack on the Catholic church in general.

The tribute to Cardinal Cody has been scheduled for the city's International Ampitheatre, which seat s about 12,000 people. Yesterday, th e black clergy got in touch with black parishes in the community, as king that children each bring a quarter to rent buses totravel to the rally, which will include choral groups and the presentation of a plaque to the Cardinal.

The Rev. George Clements, pastor at Holy Angels Roman Catholic Church, the city's largest black parish, said at a news conference today that the rally was intended as a display of gratitude for ''the material and spiritual resources poured into the black community'' by the Archdiocese of Chicago under Cardinal Cody. ''We cannot just stand by while all of this is going on,'' said Father Clements.

But later today some white priests who work as pastors in predominantly black parishes said they would refuse to close their schools Friday morning. ''We do not support having a rally for Cardinal Cody when the basic issue at dispute in the controversy is whether he gave his housekeeper $1 million or only $350,000,'' said the Rev. William E. Hogan, who is pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes, a predominantly black parish on the city's west side.

Father Hogan was referring to published reports in The Chicago Sun-Times that Cardinal Cody may have diverted up to $1 million in church funds to Mrs. Wilson, who worked for five years as a housekeeper at the Cardinal's residence on the city's near North Side. Mrs. Wilson and her attorney have denied the reports, and have offered evidence that she has a net worth not exceeding $350,000. A Plea From Nuns

Meanwhile, the National Coalition of American Nuns, a Roman Catholic organization based in Chicago, today sent a letter to Acting United States Attorney Dan K. Webb, asking that he make a thorough investigation of the charges against Cardinal Cody because ''we love the church enough to see the truth abide.'' And yesterday, Archbishop John R. Roach, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, urged a ''speedy and just resolution'' of the case before 45 fellow bishops at the opening session of the conference's administrative council in Washington.

While some individuals have called on church members to boycott The Sun-Times, many people have treated the allegations of financial impropriety as a serious matter that Cardinal Cody cannot sidestep.

''Cardinal Cody is just not a very popular prelate,'' said a member of the Chicago City Council, who is himself a Catholic and who asked not to be identified. Concern Among Parishioners

Indeed, even in the rock-ribbed Roman Catholic working class neighborhoods on the city's South Side, parishioners who agreed to be interviewed expressed serious concern and even anger over the reports about the 73-year-old prelate.

''Even if he only gave her $200, that's too much,'' said Linda Donovan, a member of Nativity of Our Lord Roman Catholic Church in Bridgeport, a blue-collar neighborhood that was the home of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley. ''Our church is always broke, the teachers at the school don't get paid enough and tuition just went up to $635 a year. He's got a lot of nerve giving away money like that.''

Mrs. Donovan said that when the newspapers made allegations against Mayor Daley, whose small bungalow is less than a block from the church, ''we all got pretty angry, you bet. But no one has ever liked Cardinal Cody from the beginning.''

While many people attacked Cardinal Cody for his autocratic manner in running the church, part of the reaction to him in working-class neighborhoods like Bridgeport reflects his reputation for being a liberal on civil rights.

But it is this same reputation that has helped forge his links with th e black Catholic community in Chicago, whic h counts about 100,000 members and is the largest in the country.

Officials of the Archdiocese of Chicago say they were not involved in planning the rally, and as of late today, Cardinal Cody had not yet accepted an invitation to attend.

Illustrations: photo of several Chicago newspaper headlines


WINTERTHUR, Del.— THE house-museum is a special breed of cultural artifact, not quite a house, and not quite a museum, either. It has neither the sense of domesticity of a true residence nor the air of a Great Institution that so many museums possess. It is something oddly in between.

Most house-museums were, of course, houses - they were built to be lived in, and part of their appeal is in our wonderment that the processes of daily life could actually go on within such quarters, so far from a normal domestic environment as they usually are. Who could imagine sipping morning coffee within what is now the Frick Collection on Fifth Avenue, for example, or pondering a choice of wardrobe within Fenway Court, the Isabella Stuart Gardner house that is now one of Boston's most beloved museums? And the sense of absolute awe that confronts the visitor to the immense and ornate palaces of such places as Newport is surely among the major attractions these buildings hold for us.

The Vanderbilt houses are notable examples of the work of Richard Morris Hunt and can be called distinguished architecture, but even the most serious architectural scholar must admit to a certain degree of voyeuristic pleasure when he or she visits these marbled quarters. Part of the appeal, in other words, is the amusement of seeing how the rich once lived.

There is no such feeling at Winterthur, the immense house-museum set amid 950 acres of rolling hills and exquisite gardens just outside Wilmington. Winterthur is among the most celebrated housemuseums in the United States, but it is like no other. It is vast, far more vast than such great palaces as the Breakers in Newport or Villa Vizcaya in Miami, and yet there is no sense of dazzling luxury. The first-time visitor is stunned not by what secret glimpses he gets into the private lives of the rich, but by how ascetic this vast house is, how disciplined, how far away from conventional images of posh.

Winterthur was created by Henry Francis du Pont, one of the many heirs to the family chemical fortune. He inherited the estate, which then included a much smaller main house, in 1927. His passion was collecting American antiques, which in the 1920's was not considered a particularly chic pastime.

Mr. du Pont was able to accumulate vast quantites of furniture, architectural paneling, fireplaces, glassware, wallpaper, chandeliers, carpeting and works of art at fairly modest prices. He continued to purchase objects until he died in 1969. As early as 1929, two years after he had inherited the house, he had already accumulated far more than the original Winterthur - which by any standards was a substantial mansion in itself - could contain.

So in 1929 Mr. du Pont commissioned a huge five-story wing to display his growing collections. The du Pont acquisitions were arranged in room settings, of which there are now 196. The 1929 wing tripled the size of the original mansion; it is Georgian in style, but so large that it looks more like a vast country hotel than a private residence.

In 1951 Mr. du Pont and his wife moved to a new 40-room cottage on the grounds and turned Winterthur into a full-time museum. Since then the structure has been added to again, and there is now a library and conservation wing, an office and administration wing and a glass-enclosed entrance pavilion.

The sense a visitor has of this place today is far more that of an institution than of a home; the recent additions, completed in 1959 and 1969, remove almost any trace of domesticity. But there was precious little of that even in Henry Francis du Pont's time, and this is the point - what Winterthur is about is collecting, not living, and that makes it rather unusual in the world of housemuseums.

Even such a remarkable array of pictures as the Frick Collection offers at least a taste, a tiny side glimpse, into the domestic arrangements of the rich, but Winterthur does not. It consists of room after room of perfect objects, perfectly arranged, without a moment's respite.

Winterthur's standing as the pre-eminent collection of American decorative arts in the world is beyond question, but this is not the subject here. There is no greater display of American antiques to be found anywhere, and one marvels not only at the extraordinary pieces themselves but also at Mr. du Pont's incredible energy. He did almost all his buying himself, and his connoisseurship was remarkable.

But in the end Winterthur seems more about connoisseurship than about anything else. A guidebook the museum published in 1972 describes Winterthur as ''not a museum of display cases'' but ''a great country house'' where the ''intimacy and richness of detail result in part from the fact that the house was a private residence before it became a public museum.''

Yet one feels almost no sense here of anyone's ever having lived at Winterthur at all. The parade of rooms is not arranged for normal domestic life, even domestic life on a grand scale; room after room is set in line, each one more perfect and precise than the next, and it is hard to imagine natural movement from one to the other.

Some of the rooms are immense. The ''Port Royal Parlor,'' which contains architectural elements from Port Royal - a country house built in 1762 north of Philadelphia - as well as Philadelphia Chippendale furniture, is bigger than many hotel lobbies. Despite its beauty, it is not really any more comfortable.

The same might be said of the ''Chinese parlor,'' an equally large room whose contents are organized around an exquisite Chinese wallpaper printed in 1770 and that contains Chinese Chippendale furniture, or the du Pont dining room, where dozens could dine - although, as the room was arranged, there is just one Federal style table set in the midst of a vast space.

What Winterthur is, in the end, is a series of tableaux, a series of little stage sets, and not a house at all. One senses that even when viewing the ''Montmorenci Stair Hall,'' the room containing the free-hanging staircase that came from Montmorenci, an early 19thcentury North Carolina plantation house. The stair, surely Winterthur's most spectacular architectural element, is placed in the center of the original wing of the house, far from the flow of traffic in the du Ponts' later sections, and seems to have been positioned for display more than for use.

What Winterthur lacks is that random element, that odd surprise that is not perfect, that is not a fine antique or even an antique at all. One of the great pleasures of a house such as the Benjamin Sonnenberg mansion on Gramercy Park, which was probably Manhattan's greatest private house until its interiors were dismantled after its owner's death in 1978, was the presence of an ordinary chair, covered in chintz, here and there amid the impressive English antiques.

Those chairs were of no inherent quality, but they were places in which to sit comfortably as one contemplated the antiques and drawings that were the central elements of the house's collection - as well as important symbols of the presence of normal life.

Winterthur has no such elements. It is about impeccable taste, about remarkable objects, about the skills of arranging and juxtaposing great works of art and craftsmanship. But these are the lessons of museums, not the lessons of houses.

Illustrations: photo of teh staircase from Montmorenci plantation in North Carolina photo of the McIntire bedroom, with 19th century woodwork and mantel photo of a 17th century room with woodwork and fireplace from photo of a corner of the McIntire bedroom with Federal style furniture,