Shooting star cigars often burn out.

Stay with me, cigar lovers . . . 

“He believed in the power of the banal. This faith was the wellspring of the Pop-art paintings—the Campbell’s soup cans, the Brillo cartons—that made him famous in the nineteen-sixties and changed America’s taste in art.”*

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Andy Warhol believed in the banal.  For that, he became one of the most well-known pop artists in the history of art.  He was an individual who emigrated from a small town which is now Slovakia.  One of three children.  

When he got hold of a Baby Brownie Special camera ($1.25), not only would he be changed forever, but the concept of art would make a seismic shift that has influenced every artist from the 40s until this very day.

Andy Warhol was that one in a million maybe even that one in a billion people who had the gift of seeing by observing and not holding back his feelings or his interests and sharing them with those around him – damn the public’s opinion.

No, he was not a saint, but he was as close to being himself as one can get.  Why?  Because he refused to see what everyone else had already seen.  Was he criticized?    Yes.  Most geniuses are.  And they take the admonishment in stride because they believe in themselves to the point of our astonishment.

A refreshingly new biography has recently been published,  Blake Gopnik’s book (Warhol) is over 900 pages in length.  There are over 7,000 footnotes the reader can access online.  This is one of the most thorough and detailed biographies of Andy Warhol ever written.

And, for Warhol, it all started with simple observation with no regard for what everyone else was doing or seeing.  He went his own way and that way was straight to the top.  Some might say to the pinnacle of Kitsch.  But what difference does that make?  He didn’t care a whit about criticism.      

Some cigar blenders are the same as Andy Warhol.  They see far beyond the “what is” and can visualize the “what is” by being insouciant to the insidious drama of trying too hard to please everyone.

I can’t name all the cigars that have come and gone simply because they were considered “banal.”  Banal meaning a lack of originality bordering on boredom.  But they are (were) still solid contributions to the marketplace.

Why did some cigar makers vanish?  Lack of conviction.  A shakey belief in their own creation.  Too eager to wait for acceptance.  I can think of one manufacturer (Alberto J. Medina of PIO cigar.) who has believed in his cigar for 24 years.  He has never wavered.  He has what Andy Warhol had – conviction (and a superb blend).  He was once quoted as saying,   “My commitment to all of my patrons at a national level is to maintain the exquisiteness and value of each and every cigar.”  He has done that.

There is a critical component this manufacturer has yet to capitalize upon, however – Marketing.  That’s where Warhol excelled.  Despite the romance of art and cigars, both are still businesses and the value of marketing is worth all the diamonds mined in Russia, the world’s leading supplier of the precious gem.  Capitalize on its banality or perceived predictability (not a criticism if the reader is paying attention) and success will follow – for some.

Warhol went on to what – methinks, all men and women seek – immortality.  My lone manufacturer will, I believe, end up in the famed firmament of famous cigars because he has taken his cigar and exposed it to the public in such a way that eternal life will follow.  He just needs a bit of a push.  Languishing in the wreckage of an ersatz ego, such as Warhol’s, will get you nowhere.  Read the book.

  *(The New Yorker June 8 & 15, 2020.   A quote from a review written by Joan Acocella about Blake Gopnick’s new book, Andy Warhol.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LDHSBVZpzc     Andy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQSPKDnvbrM     Cigars

 

No luminary to fill the Chinese cigar void.

Chunghwa (中華) is the “national smoke” of China.  A cigarette.  The cigarette is king in China.  Has been.  Probably always will be.  Despite the inroads of the cigar in China, which is Cuba’s second-largest market, the cigarette remains the smoking tobacco of choice.  

American manufacturers are coddling the Chinese market with their cigars.  Indeed, you could say the dream of the Dominican Republic and the Central American cigar being sold regularly in China is making manufacturers’ mouths water.  Think about it.  The population of China is 1,439,494,919 as of Sunday, July 12, 2020 (350 million are smokers).  Of course, not all Chinese smoke just cigarettes, but “foreign sales make up only 3 percent of the Chinese market, yet this still accounts for 51 billion cigarettes every year.”  (Wiki)  I can imagine the cigar manufacturers staying up at night in wet pajamas and perspiring brows going mentally insane trying to calculate the profit from sales.  An incomprehensible amount of money, money, money.  Ah, the sacred tradition (mon …. whoops, read, cigars) has indeed gone global. 

There are over 900 brands of cigarettes offered in China with the closest competition to  Chunghwa being Hóngtâshān (紅塔山) or Red Pagoda Hill, and Panda (熊猫) not far behind.  Not all smokers are able to afford these premium brands, especially the rural population.  They must settle for lesser-known brands supposedly (Ha!) made with poor quality tobacco.  But no matter what, as is the case here in the United States – as long as they buy!  That’s what is the cigar’s crucial critical concatenation to happiness – SALES! 

So that begs the question, how do you lure the Chinese smoker away from the cigarette to try an “American” cigar.  Cuba has already cut into the market share.  That being said, the Chinese sure didn’t have a problem accepting American cigarettes like Marlboro, Camel, and Kent.  So what would be the problem with transitioning to cigars? 

It should be a cinch.  The question is, “Why do the Chinese favor cigarettes to the nth degree over cigars?”  Research suggests that “. . . in Chinese culture, smoking cigarettes is connected to masculine identity as a social activity that is practiced among men to promote feelings of acceptance and brotherhood  . . .” (Wiki)  Sounds like the same reason most kids try smoking cigarettes in the United States – to be macho.

It has long been the Chinese custom to give luxury premium cigarettes to businessmen as gifts.  It shows great respect and has been going on like this for decades.  Now the cigar is introduced.  Can the Chinese cultural confusion be headed toward the cusp of change? 

The other question is how did Chunghwa become as popular as it is today.  Some say it’s the quality.  The paper tube is packed with fine tobacco and filled to the foot.  But I think the most logical reason Chunghwa became the favorite smoke is that it was the chosen cigarette of Chairman Mao.  He was the persona to emulate.  But the decision to induce national popularity to a cigar must go beyond the “cult of personality.”  

As with any consumer climbing expedition, there are always unexpected mishaps with loose rocks along the way, and the American cigar industry is no exception to its assent for the one brand to be the best – the preferred choice.

So as the United States fights its own cultural battles 7,233 miles away – who would it be?  Hell, the Chinese people didn’t even recognize Bob Hope on his first visit to China in 1979.  The fact is it will be up to the Chinese market, the 350 million faithful Chinese smokers to pick out their own “national” cigar hero –  if there is one to be had.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nalGIiLBRFw

Illusions of cigar grandeur exposed.

“Fifteen years ago, the artist and writer Walter Robinson wrote “we don’t have art movements any more … we have market movements”. Michael Shnayerson’s Boom, a history of the art world money-go-round since the Second World War, reads like a confirmation of his thesis. It illuminates a world in which a coterie of “mega dealers” may “goose” the market in the artists they favour, increasing their prices substantially in a short period of time. Because of the clout of these galleries, commercial spectacle reverberates in discourse, on the museum circuit and in the auction rooms: the artist is suddenly important. Broadly, Boom describes a New York-centric art world which has seen the contemporary market explode beyond anyone’s imagining. In the late 1940s, from a pioneering dealer such as Betty Parsons, you could buy any work you liked by the leading Abstract Expressionists for a very few thousand dollars. In 2015, David Geffen made a package-deal sale to Ken Griffin: one Pollock and one De Kooning for $500 million.” (TLS 3.27.20 Matt Bown’s review of Boom by M. Shnayerson)

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Sounds just like the Cigar Industry, doesn’t it?   I mean it seems as if there is only one commodity left in this world – money.  I know I’ve written about it before. But “The times they are a-chain-gin’.”   And not for the better.  Now with this god-forsaken pandemic; the only thing that may supersede the necessity of cash flow – is life.  But even that notion comes off as a wish and a prayer for some. Or so it seems. (That’s cynical isn’t it?) 

I used to know a guy who asked me for kicks, “If you had one lifejacket and your mother and your wife were both drowning and you didn’t know how to swim, who would get the Mae West?”  A conundrum for some.  

Think about it.  In the article, Shnayerson summarizes, “ . . . without art on the walls, rich people have nothing to talk about when people come to visit . . . .”   It’s the same with cigars, lighters, cutters, even ashtrays? Everyone wants the best to feel and look important or be perceived by others to own only the finest.  What would happen if there were no Davidoff? No Bugatti? No S.T. Dupont? No Lalique Crystal?

Yeah, I’m stretching this analogy into a very thin line, but the connections are still there.  The willowy strand of appearances is still intact – but just barely. One false jerk or a wisp of gravity and it separates and the illusion of wealth vanishes.  Ask Prince Charles.

And now with the world’s economy going to hell, it takes much more to float the art of delusion.  We can begin to see through the thin, foggy film of phantasmagoric phoniness that has permanently permeated our culture.  Thank you, COVID-19.

The book is a fascinating journey through “Mad money, mega dealers, and the rise of contemporary art.”  Yet the journey is so similar to the one I’m on right now. Some cigars are expensive while others aren’t.  But if no one is buying (or observing) it becomes a moot point whether a piece of art or a well-known cigar or a boutique brand is out in the open to gawk at.

The collector or consumer is caught in an ersatz Möbius strip with one side, one boundary, and seemingly no beginning or no end.  Now is the reality in the ethos that our culture is unlikely to escape – whether we’re rich or whether we’re poor.

 

Enlightenment and cigar essays.

I think there may be a misconception as to why I write my posts, select the subjects I choose, and my style of composing text.  I have a site on Word Press where I publish an essay once a week (www.irvcigarbroker.wordpress.com).  I also share it on Facebook for my friends, a variety of groups, (most of which I have been asked to join), and individual direct messages.

I began this blog over 1000 essays ago to give the reader a taste of how cigars and the industry interact with our culture from my perspective as a cigar broker.  By culture, I am referring to “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” (Google).  I never said, wrote, inferred, or intended the blog to be anything more than my viewpoint.  

On the site, the reader will not find the casual or standard cigar review;  the reader will not find the casual or standard profile; the reader will not find the casual or standard style of writing; and, the reader will definitely not find the casual or standard subject matter – though each article intertwines in some way, shape or form with cigars – however minute that connection may be.

My point is to link cigars, its history, its personalities, its mere fact of being to whatever I find makes a lucid and entertaining read – with a twist.  Oftimes, the connection is rock-solid, other times the mixture of culture and cigars is a bit more complex and challenging.  

We were taught in journalism 101 that the news is written for those who want to get through the day’s events without any effort, ergo the lead – who, what, when, where, and why (and sometimes how.)  That is still the goal of journalists provided that’s all the author of the article intends it to be.

But I thought it would be interesting, née, a challenge to link art, dance, music, sculpture, literature, poetry, and the sciences with the cigar simply because they coexist!  There is a relationship that exists between the two – however slim that link may be.  True, oftimes, I do go off on a tangent that even becomes a confounding maze for me to figure out the connection,  but I do it to produce a challenge for the reader and for myself as the author.

In short, please enjoy my work for what it is.  If you appreciate it – fantastic.  If not, really, all you have to do is scroll down and you’re over it – literally and figuratively.  No need to get nasty.

So I will continue to write every day.  From those articles, I will pick out what I am convinced is an essay that will tantalize the reader’s intellect and post it.  And if a reader is smoking a cigar while perusing the piece, it’s even more ideal and enjoyable.  Why?  Because very often I’m puffing away myself as I’m scratching out an essay on my pad so that in the end the reader will hopefully absorb some enjoyment from it – even if just for a few minutes in what has become a very hellacious world to comprehend.

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