GIERSCHICKWORK

Artists' little helpers: thoughts on apprenticeship

2011-12-08T15:41:00.001-05:00

Matisse, La Danse mural

Donald Judd, Untitled (for Susan Buckwalter), galvanized and aluminum.

(I'd be very interested in any comments on these thoughts...)

It has been a tradition of artists for centuries now,particularly Western artists, to have numerous assistants (in earlier parlance,apprentices). In exchange for experience, remuneration and perhaps some cachet,they work for these well-established artists, doing menial and preparatorytasks: canvas preparation, paint mixing, layout drawing or painting,fabrication, and so on. In the modern era (1890s until about 1990s), thisrelationship morphed more into the assistant category than apprentice: thoughmany of the assistants undoubtedly went on (and still do) to further their owncareers through connections they made, or references found through their“masters”, it wasn’t necessarily as much a given as it would have been underthe earlier definition of “apprentice”. There the younger artists were part ofa more rigid and established pattern of master and trainee, not unlike thetrade guilds of medieval Europe, and likely were more subject to the system’sparameters, not to their own desires or whims as to when hanging out their ownshingle was finally possible: following the system was mandatory to be acceptedas a serious artist in the market (then largely ecclesiastical).

Here are two interesting aberrations of the general modernistmodel, which might be worth investigating in light of the older model ofapprentice: Henri Matisse and Donald Judd.

Matisse, in La Danse,his canvas-cum-mural commissioned in the early 1920s by Dr. Barnes ofPennsylvania, was already laying the groundwork for his famous, late-careercut-paper works. The nearly forty-foot long mural incorporates large areas ofcolor, depicting frolicking grey female figures against a backdrop of pink,blue and black. Spending time with the mural it becomes obvious that, along eachedge of the positive shapes, there seems to be a painted, undulating band orborder, in a slightly different value and sheen than that of the larger fieldof color, that visually readjusts, balances and cleans up the edges of thoseshapes. There are also similar bands along the inside of the negative shapes.This toys with one’s perception of the negatives and positives: they seeminglyfloat upon each other, like paper on a puddle, soaking in water at intervals,creating a set of complex, nuanced and mutable planes. Beyond simpledescription, however, this quality points to one of the many interestinganecdotes about this work: that Matisse hired a house-painter, presumably inNice, where the studio for painting La Danse was situated, to paint in the verylarge areas of solid color. Matisse afterwards then likely applied those aforementioned“bands” which tidy-up – and edit compositional balance, as can be seen by the manyline and edge adjustments – the areas the house painter covered. Was this doneby Matisse as a time-saver; was he perhaps running past schedule? Or did hesimply not feel the need to individually and directly apply every drop of paintonto a mural which would carry his name? This is not a very Modernist concept;modern expression at its height was so much about the individual’s expression,created by that very same individual; it wasn’t until more postmodern timeswhen the direct creation of work and manipulation of material as an unbrokenline from the individual’s idea was questioned, and became somewhatunnecessary, immaterial or even pejorative (such as in Donald Judd, who we’lldiscuss next). Could this gesture of using a workman’s hand in a fine artapplication be of the same seminal token as much of Matisse’s artisticdecisions? Or was it simply out of necessity…or both? And more importantly,could that humble (station; we don’t know his personality) house painter beconsidered the missing link between the ancient idea of “apprentice”, and thepostmodern idea of the “hired tradesperson”, such as Judd and others used?

Donald Judd was a postmodernist artist of what is sometimescalled the Minimalist school, and that title has much to do with our questionsof “individuality” and “authorship” of an artwork. Minimalists became known foractively and deliberately divorcing the material creation of their work fromthe concept or idea. This would often take the form of farming out thefabrication of their sculpture and materials to workmen and craftspeople of thecommon variety: for Judd, this sometimes meant HVAC contractors, metalworkersand carpenters, who would fabricate his work for him according to hisspecifications and drawings. Artists have been doing this, of a sort, forgenerations, in the form of having other more specifically-trained artisans,such as bronze casters or lithographers, carry part of a project to completionthat the author/artist was not well-versed in (or not interested in). That isnot exactly what we speak of here: this is different in that it is (a) usingskilled workers, but from outside the art “world”, and (b) using labor which isnot personally invested in finding their own way, and making a name in the samemilieu as the hiring or “master” artist. This is the major reason why Matisse’suse of a house painter to apply the actual paint surface of a painting is sointeresting; a completely ancient and a completely postmodern gesture, all atonce.

A good example of a Judd work that was fabricated by skilledtradesmen is one of his wall pieces of galvanized steel: not surprisingly, thesame material used to make HVAC ductwork (the one I know personally is in aprivate collection in Philadelphia). The piece is expertly made – more expertlythan perhaps Judd himself could have accomplished – but has its aberrations asany handmade object does. Was Judd revolutionizing the idea of an “assistant”for the postmodern era (that of an aesthetically disinterested tradesperson),or was he simply riffing off an idea begun quietly by Matisse?

"Nevertheless, the thing is there.": an introduction

2011-08-19T14:28:00.000-04:00

What is art? What an enormous question: yet, philosophically, I believe finding a portion of an answer is a fairly straightforward exercise. Art is artificial, or it is nothing. It is artifice; created; made; constructed; conceived; solidified; materialized; realized: foolery. Art may try to convince you it is the real thing, but it is not: it is impossible for it to be; it is fake. Not a pejorative fakeness, but the fakeness of models; living symbols; simulacrums. This foolery is what gives art its power; its autonomy. It provides suspension of belief as well as unbelief. The man who cried impulsively, "Lord, I believe; help me with my unbelief!" could have been uttering the cry of a working artist. The label of "art" bestows foolery on even those things that belonged to the world of actuality even moments before: once some thing enters into the realm of being perceived as art, it has, whether truly "art" or not upon inspection, dissection and reflection, become a shadow of its self. It is artificial, even if it's not autonomous. When a thing is both artificial and autonomous - then it is truly art.

Try to point to any one single work of art and explain how it is not artificial in some way, or autonomous in some way - it's not possible. An old quasi-synonym is abstraction. It is an outdated, insufficient term, which should be supplanted with artificial autonomy. And by autonomous is meant the artwork possesses a power which goes beyond its original "artificer", and even its material, and moves into and within a larger, communal reality . It continues to exert power over people, things, actions, emotions and reactions far beyond, in time and space, the original understanding and even intent. It has entered into a high-functioning pantheon. But this is not a rarefied pantheon, but rather one which, like the Greek gods and goddesses, lived among the people, slept with them and had progeny by them. Like the Nephilim, true art produces a race of giants among humans. If any artwork is thought to be non-autonomous, then it is no longer an artwork - it is merely an image, or a hollow, excoriated symbol. Art must have its power, or it is nothing.

(to be continued)

Schooled: Curator's Statement

2011-06-02T16:17:00.000-04:00

(Title wall of Schooled: photo thanks to Vicki Liantonio, as well as Ben Weaver and Second Space Arts at OCMC)

This is my curator's statement for the latest exhibit at Second Space Arts at OCMC, Schooled, featuring the works on paper (and three wonderful wooden bas-relief sculptures) by Steve Evans, Ben Weaver and Douglas Witmer. (Pardon the weird layout; I wrote the document in Apple Pages, which I can only import as an image).

And for those who are interested (and still reading) the artists' reception for this exhibit is June 10th, from 6-9 PM. Come meet the artists and see their fine work, as well as celebrate Second Space's 1st anniversary! Check out our Facebook page for directions, etc.

An open appeal to frustrated art viewers:

2011-05-23T16:57:00.000-04:00

Parade Rain, 2011.

Pull away from needing meaning; move towards associations, memories.

Questions are normally more helpful than answers; besides, what good would answers be without them?

Rediscover the childlike sensation of learning a new color, and pure enjoyment in seeing it clash, click and melt with another color.

Re-investigate the edges of things, without needing to immediately get to the marrow.

Close your eyes if it helps.

Remember that definitions often close doors; absorb the mystery; be okay with not knowing; re-learn the education of the unsure.

Pick up a pencil, and make an unplanned mark; a movement straight from your body.

Remind yourself that, though art is a discipline, it is more importantly innate.

Art is the making; not the product.

Fairmount Arts Crawl, 2011

2011-05-03T12:13:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, the Church Studios at Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church participated in the Fairmount Arts Crawl...here are some scenes from that event, centered around my studio...
(Thanks to Vicki Liantonio/Piccolo Takes All for the photos!)

More in depth posts are in the works...stay tuned...

Fruit…village?

2011-04-01T17:10:00.001-04:00

courtesy of Douglas Witmer

Douglas Witmer’s ongoing wall work, entitled Fruitville, might just as well reference a people, as reference a place: for people, at least as far as villages go, make the place, no? Indeed Fruitville’s persistent – indeed, insistent – individuality as fully-realized, miniature artworks makes it more reminiscent of the unique, one-off nature of people, rather than domiciles or stores, which are more variations upon a theme. In fact, their arrangement, a loosely-milling group, akin to a crowd at a carnival or a shopping mall, is far more characteristic of how we arrange ourselves, rather than our dwellings, shops and shelters. Our buildings often tend to follow lines: straight, curving, intersecting, but orderly lines nonetheless. Despite anthropological protests, lines are not natural to our self-arrangement as humans: they are imposed, rather than innate. This may tell us something about why this series has the name of a village: because it has, if not the direct form of one, the nature of one: more freewheeling, organic and adaptive than a neat-as-a-pin, Lancaster County hamlet might let on. A village was, in its earliest forms, a mutually-beneficial arrangement: for protection and safety; amiability and cohabitation; close-to-hand resources. Whether or not Fruitville is intended as this kind of place – tending towards this looser model – is not entirely the point, but nonetheless, it is more characteristic of a system which is tipped still towards the individual’s strength within a group; the unique shape; the singular contemplating the possibility – the utility – of the corporate.

And it’s not unusual that a gallery (AxD gallery, associated with Always by Design) run by an architectural firm might have been smitten with the whimsical structures of Fruitville. They are, after all, highly reminiscent of dashed-off sketches by architects of basic shapes, edges, lines and blocks of color, groping towards a more realized structure...except these Fruitville objects have maintained the immediacy of the initial, aha-sketches. And of course, architects make their own small – but more realized – models, taking those sketches to the next level of definition. But beneath this fairly neat parallel, one must not forget why the vast majority of architecture happens: it’s to form otherwise undefined space to a particular function – a human function. What, therefore, is more human than architecture? What is more architectural than human intent finding expression in livable artifice? Fruitville is, along with being thoroughly delightful, a serious-minded and ongoing commentary on human artifice through our building(s)…despite itself…ourselves.

Experiment: new paintings via iTouch

2011-03-23T13:07:00.000-04:00

A little experiment here; seeing what kind of quality I get with photos from my iTouch. Either way, you get to see some progress happening in my studio (which I haven't shared for a long time).

Okay...now that I know this works, I'll a) take better pictures, and b) more!

A Short Conversation with Baudrillard

2011-03-15T13:55:00.000-04:00

Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard threw me for a loop last evening. I had bought his The Conspiracy of Art several years ago, but never quite got into the meat of it...I picked it up again last night, since I remembered he addressed some of the issues I'm currently mulling over, and (attempting) to write about. After last night and this morning; after reading several chapters, I have the following (initial) thoughts.

Baudrillard is adept at illuminating (or delineating, if you will) the problems; the issues...but, like most Modernist anthropologists, refuses to (in fact, cannot) posit or even offer a solution. Cannot, not because he is philosophically or spiritually adverse to any particular solution, but that as a Modernist and, I guess, atheist or at least agnostic, he is adverse to supplying any answers at all, as a basic life-value. It reminds me of the sign, ubiquitous in areas where Quakers are found, which reads "War is not the answer", with which my mind invariably counters, "well, what is the answer?" But of course, like Baudrillard, they (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, or PYM, the traditional and universalism-leaning branch of the Friends) cannot (and, I think I can say, will not) supply an answer. That is up to the individual -- or otherwise designated party. He is (in my American mind -- Disney-fied, as Baudrillard may say!) a prototypically French thinker, in that he senses deep irony, but will only comment, and is almost completely non-committal -- even, often, to his own conclusions. This, I suppose, is the philosopher mind in him; acting as governor to the social critic. Critically speaking, he is fairly conservative in that regard. Being a much better artist than I am anthropologist, or even social critic, I still agree with much of what Baudrillard has to say -- for example, that art has nearly ceased to exist; has become "null", through its saturated ubiquity, and its continued insistence on transcendence, despite the lack of obvious "form", that is, difference from life -- however, I have to believe that there is a way out of that quandary -- a solution, for a solvable issue. And perhaps its art's ancient answer, in part: keep making, and push through until the seed finally germinates. It's an answer I give myself often enough.

Have any of you read Baudrillard? I'd be fascinated to hear what you think.

Seeing Faces at the Barnes Foundation

2011-03-07T14:18:00.000-05:00

(above, Gallery 6, south wall)
(picture source)

It's amazing how sometimes it takes years for a thing or a concept, to soak in and become more clear. For the past six years, as art handler and collections assistant at the Barnes Foundation, I've been (casually) puzzling over the placement of the candlesticks and vessels (mostly meant for potables - coffeepots, teapots, tankards, pitchers and the like) that dominate the tables, desks and chest-tops at the Barnes Foundation. Now, Dr. Barnes arranged symmetrically - stridently so - thus these furniture pieces are normally anchoring the wall arrangement or "ensemble"; they are essentially rooted to the floor by these furniture pieces, the furniture acting as a kind of grounding mechanism (root system, if you will) for the more esoteric interplay taking place in the branching arrangement above. But the items on the furniture pieces are symbolically important as well, I realized recently. And it seemed like so much of a trope for so long, that I'd (nearly) taken it for granted. Almost always, the two candlesticks are at or near the two back corners of the piece's top, and then the vessel is centered on the top, but - and here's the detail which confused me at first - placed towards the front. I dutifully maintained this arrangement (according to the original, 1951 postmortem installation photographs which function as our standard), but without really understanding what Barnes was after (if anything at all).

And here is what I believe Barnes may have been after: a visage; a physiognomy made from symbolic decorative arts items, suggestively arranged to resemble a face. Normally this consists of candlesticks for eyes, and vessels for a mouth (and occasionally a nose and mouth). Thus, the concept of the omnipresence of art at the Barnes Foundation (or a pervasive mirror, if you will). Essentially, Barnes was creating the suggestion of a face on the very surface which a centralized viewer would be standing in front of. And the items vary according to which direction the symbolic connection is to go. For example, in Gallery 6 on the south wall, (see image above) a teapot is placed: it both formally references the reflection on the lake in the Gauguin painting above it, as well as symbolizes a carrying and possible pouring out (or divvying out) of of knowledge, wisdom -- or potency. Conversely, in Gallery 2, east wall, the central vessel (mouth, if you will) is a host box for holding the symbol of Christ's body for communion...of course, it references the painting above, a depiction of a vision of the Holy Virgin, by El Greco. But it also symbolizes the emptiness (which it is) of a soul waiting and imploring for the holiness of God to fill them - it is a vessel in waiting; in limbo; in anticipation, along with the saint seen in prayer receiving a vision.

One of the most blatant examples, and the one which initially precipitated this idea, is in Gallery 23, west wall, under the Unpleasant Surprise masterpiece by Henri Rousseau. There is a bear attacking a maiden in the painting, and on the blanket chest below it, is an ursine face scaring us; confronting us with a similar danger (and possibility, in the form of a saving rifleman). The arrangement formula is slightly different here: two ears are created by candlesticks; two eyes by tankards, their handles angling towards the back corners, implying furrowed brow and menacing face. The nose, septum and slightly grinning mouth is created by a particularly unusual item, used in the production of wax-covered rush lights, called a "grisset".

Considered as a persuasive phenomenon, or a general component of the collection's arrangement, there is certainly a sense of omnipresence of art. Students are instructed to be "centralized" and focused on the ensembles as didactic "chalkboards", thus by virtue of these assembled visages, the dedicated gaze is immediately met with an artificial face; an oracle of sorts, which imparts a symbolic direction to those seekers who face down the occasionally intimidating walls. They also function as a mirror, in which different aspects of ourselves can be seen - not unlike the assumed human presence in landscapes (picturing ourselves as being there). This is, if it is true, meant as both comforting and confrontational, two aspects of the best of art collections. But mysteriously oracular? That is all Barnes Foundation.

Service: Curator's Statement

2011-02-04T13:48:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone...here's the curator's statement (i.e. by yours truly) for Second Space Arts' third exhibit:

Service: Photographs by Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas

What is it that drives people to serve selflessly: to help or give without asking in return? (Some modern skeptics deny true altruism even exists). We might learn more of the answer – moving beyond easy theology – by considering the three parties normally involved in service. The first two: those served (or in need of service – in the case of this exhibit, people from the hurricane-ravaged town of Cameron, LA); those serving (providing energy and resources to supply to those in need – here a conservative Mennonite group from Harrisonburg, VA). The third party in the realm of service is not so much a defined group as it is a sense, a feeling; a spirit. It is the goodwill; the bonhomie; the mutual fulfillment created – and in some sense, revived – as a byproduct of the selfless pattern of one people’s service to another…though we may discover the lines of serving and being served fuzzier than we first imagined. All three parties may be found populating these photographs by Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas.

This exhibit involves two additional entities linked to the idea of service, one which is mysterious and difficult to pinpoint, and the other more obvious: firstly, the drive or motivation behind service; the cause, beliefs; a desire meeting a need. Secondly is the physical record of the parties of service: the pictures seen around you. But these photographs by Bresnan and Lucas are much more than simply a record – they are sincere and integral components of that same spirit of service: they are, in a way, a psychological mortar between the bricks of service, spiritually binding and anchoring the solid byproducts of goodwill; bonhomie; mutual fulfillment. Simply put, photography unites. And this is made even truer by their parallel aim of being aesthetically captivating: in color, composition, emotion and association. The Shaker saying, “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well” comes to mind. If one is to photograph a people in action – in service – then won’t the core aims of that service be expanded by good craft; careful composing; arresting images – by visual examples of the same serving mentality, spirit and practice? Might the photography itself become an actual service?

Judge for yourself – and absorb the arc, the depth and breadth of life visible in this exhibit: both the people who serve as well as the people who receive service; working at their respective day-to-day activities, as well as those specialized times of direct service, along with scenes of the landscape, the environment, the architecture of the places where service happens. Use these photographs as an opportunity to investigate and consider this panorama of what service is – and how it looks. A final question can be left with you the viewer: does service continue as everyone involved returns to their “normal” lives, in their “regular” places of living? That spirit of mutual fulfillment, does it also continue, and seep into unexpected areas of the parties’ lives and hearts? Consider the “easy yoke” of service in and for your own life, and uncover the answer for yourself.

www.mds.mennonite.net - Mennonite Disaster Service, domestic disaster missions www.mcc.org - Mennonite Central Committee, multi-denominational; global missions

www.emm.org - Eastern Mennonite Missions, branch of Lancaster Conference, MC-USA

Timothy Gierschick, curator

Here's a link to Patrick Bresnan's Cameron portfolio.

Thoughts on Power and Brancusi's Endless Column

2010-12-21T19:57:00.000-05:00

How many epiphanies have descended in bathrooms? A late Constatin Brancusi piece and a childhood habit collided there recently. For years as a child, I would contemplate on my bedroom's manufactured ceiling tiles with the random punctuation; the kitchen floor with the vaguely repetitious pattern -- and wait to find faces; animals; grotesque caricatures with hats and strange proboscises. And while sitting in our home's bathroom, I still do the same thing: it's a short interlude of childhood, this looking for those same faces or patterns. The floor in our current bathroom does not foster much face-finding, but the hexagonal porcelain tile facilitates all manner of abstract geometric patterning and formation -- which corresponds to my current painting work, and keeps me thinking.

In the back of my mind, I've long questioned (gingerly and respectfully) Brancusi's Endless Column -- it seemed like such an offhanded gesture among so many of his strokes of brilliance. I questioned its power, its efficacy even: for goodness sake, the column is obviously not endless. And irony is fine, but it seems too shallow even for the beginning of irony. From what did this tower draw its undeniable gravitas -- even for a skeptic such as myself? I admit, until recently, I did not know.

Looking for patterns in the worn tile, stroking my innate attraction to Rorschach-type images and Jungian symbolism, suddenly one emerged -- one which I'd noticed before, but had never associated with Brancusi's Romanian column. Simultaneously, I realized the form's uncanny similarity to a taut, stretched accordion or concertina, bursting with the possibility of immense noise -- the infinitely tense pause of a captured breath in a fully-extended lung, forever silent on the cusp of a sound. Thus, like a rush, I finally understood the power -- the potential -- of Brancusi's piece: it benefits from the incredible power of the delayed moment; the possible blare; the state which causes the flinch in front of a wave of expected sound, thought to be imminent. To capture and express this emotional state was a brilliant (and perhaps unconscious) move. There is more coercive power in the possibility or anticipation of enormity, than there is in the final expression of it. Once captured energy is released (the squeezed accordion; the bawling child; the piercing whistle or sneeze; the aria's final note) there is a context which needs to be reacted against, and the actual capacity or power of the energy has been expressed. More energy must then be exerted to come to a similar state of powerful suspension. An unknown power is stronger than a known one, in theory; largely because of our imaginations. We (humans/observers) can imagine an almost infinite amount of power (related to our innate need for a divinity...but I digress). Withheld, that power is in essence infinite. Once expressed though, the actuality is known, and more likely than not, finite.

And thus, though Brancusi has finely expressed infinity (or perceived infinity) through the column, he has simultaneously expressed finiteness through the seemingly cheap irony of a column named Endless, with an undeniable material end. There's no getting around this, he says, in his prototypical peasant wisdom, fencing the line between profundity and simplicity...and mocking my epiphany. Not only is there no getting around the finiteness of this gesture, the form references common funerary markers of southern Romania (where the monument is to be found): a finite status if there ever was one -- as well as one laced with concepts of infinity (for those who ascribe to a future not fully defined by the present). Seen in this way, the formal constantly lapsing into the symbolic, the intertwining statuses of finiteness and infinity become even more integral. The form seems to reference in an even more basic way the axi mundi, the ancient and worldwide symbol found in multitudinous guises, of the universe's central pillar or bellybutton: a protean symbol of both origins and destinations, thus mixing past, present and future; the prime progenitive symbol of the world. The moniker of Endless becomes less ironic and more appropriate through this realization. Seen stylistically, as a form where angles interact in a consistent manner, between intersecting and diverting, it begins weaving a spiral and thus creates another primal form, uncovered in the 20th century and likely unknown to Brancusi: the double helix of DNA.

Months ago, I was inspired to write about the double helix as the universe's or nature's genetic center, after seeing two butterflies in a mating dance in flight, which drew that very shape in evanescent movement, up and up into the air, in a spiraling form. Are we seeing in Endless Column, Brancusi's contribution to this seemingly universal and shape-shifting, deeply seated and culturally diverse power symbol? I think so, and if so, it is indeed an "endless" column in that its pictorial, anecdotal and anthropological antecedents are legion, and eternal -- as far as I can see. Another proof that a work's title goes far beyond the work itself.

INROADS: Curator's Statement

2010-10-26T15:26:00.000-04:00

Yvonne Valenza, Jumble, from the exhibit INROADS

An ongoing project of mine (I'm heading it up, anyway) is an art exhibit space in my place of worship, Oxford Circle Mennonite Church, called Second Space Arts. The current exhibit (up until the 28th of November) is entitled INROADS, the work of Tegan Brozyna and Yvonne Valenza. Their work in this exhibit deals with both the ins and outs (inward and outward) aspects of journey...and how our individual journeys impact others, as well as our environment. What follows is the curatorial statement I wrote for the show:

Curator’s Statement

Inroads: Brozyna and Valenza

Life’s a journey: we’ve all heard this so many times, it’s nearly a cliché. But like most clichés, it has its origin in dignified truth. In a Western (European/American, generally) cultural sense, this journey is implied as linear – one occurrence after another, lined up like fence-posts or hatch-marks – creating a line which does not return. In the Eastern (Asian/African; again generally) cultural concept, a journey often assumes, rather than linear, a circular progression: occurrences repeat; one’s actions influence how you are acted upon. This is related to the concept of karma: good results in good; bad often results in bad.

Looking at topography (the “lay of the land”) or cartography (maps) should then resonate with our guts – our instincts, so to speak – and visually remind us that extremes are often incorrect: the truth is often somewhere nearer the middle. The meandering lines found in Tegan Brozyna’s paintings and works on paper are a fine synthesis of the linear and the circular versions of journey. In a real sense, rather than life being a journey, life is journeying: the passive becomes active. In Brozyna’s works, we visually walk with her over hill and dale; through the streets and avenues of America, all the while enjoying the view afforded by Brozyna’s joyful re-working of the landscape, and its realignment into a more ambiguous space. Painted on “bird’s-eye view” maps, the lines we actually traipse on morph into a more horizon-based experience: our progression is pleasant, but somewhat mysterious, because of this ambiguity. As the French post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin asks in his famous painting title, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

Ambiguity and mystery are part and parcel of all journeys – including that of our psychological interiors. Ever since the early-twentieth century heydays of the ground-breaking psychological theorists Freud and Jung, a cultural fascination with the self’s personality, direction and meaning has been popularized. But of course, regardless of what our time within consists of; all our inner journeys impact all our outer life directions. And this is the line where Yvonne Valenza’s works on paper find their footing. In fact her illustrations and prints confront us with the question of how our direct actions may directly influence others’ lives (and journeys)…a little Western-style karma anyone? The work deftly retains both a sharp (poignant) sense of the interior, as well as one of social and cultural action and questions.

Whereas Brozyna is making work as an invitation to the viewer to join (and enjoy) the journey, Valenza’s work acts most usually as an investigation of journey: how do our individual journeys – both inner and outer – affect our surroundings and fellow pilgrims?

Timothy Gierschick

Curator

Coming soon...part 3 of Wherefore Painting?

Wherefore painting? (part 2)

2010-10-21T16:48:00.000-04:00

(Part 2 of an ongoing essay)

(Matthew Sepielli, Black Book, 2010).

A further question which arises then is why, if the book trope functions to give Sepielli’s works both a physical and psychological skeleton, as well as make it a driver of experience, does not the nearly-as universal trope of a four-sided, rectangular painting surface seem to function as strongly? The history and psychological power of the flat painting surface is even deeper historically and potentially more primeval than even the scribed and bound book. One possible approach to this question is to consider the educational and didactic shift that happened because of (or was occasioned by) the printing press. Before the book’s more universal availability and affordability, production was highly laborious, and the finished products were rare and expensive, therefore only available to the elite (i.e. church; ruling class; etc.) The average citizen could not read. Previous to this, didactics were based on pictures: one of the primary reasons churches were adorned with all the beautiful and lavish painting was for educational means – to instruct the laity in scriptural stories, beliefs and credos. Then came the printing press: Gutenberg’s innovation made the book more affordable, more lightweight and more ubiquitous. From this point on, the heretofore prime didactic tool – the painting (or more correctly picture) – was gradually replaced by the book; at least for the masses. In the six centuries since, the concept and logic of a book (put forward here earlier) became linked directly to not only our sense of narrative and progression, but also education, knowledge and propaganda. Therefore the trope of a book is rooted in the subconscious, in its power to sway, direct and limit one’s absorption of anything related to or reminiscent of that particular group of logic. And of course, Sepielli’s paintings are our pertinent example of that dynamic.

In Black Book, Sepielli takes this idea a step further, and appeals to that by-now ingrained logic more directly. In Black Book, we have a characteristically Sepiellian surface: nearly tar-bound with a protean, rubbery consistency, this painting reads fairly simply, until one reaches (incidentally, by “reading” left to right, Western-style) a shape suggestive of a backwards capital letter B. Now, Sepielli has been utilizing text in various ways in much of his recent work, on both book and non-book pieces, but not normally in quite so direct a way as this; which recalls one of Ed Ruscha’s iconic letter paintings. No longer is it something to be “read” and “interpreted”; here it is more symbolic (as all letters are) and decipherable. B relates to perhaps the title, Black Book, or the original Greek beta, second in command to the alpha – a commentary on a book’s subservience to the author; a painting’s subservience to the artist? The sense of cipher, symbol and icon is heightened by its being filled in (no “gesture” to speak of, such as script has, which would imply human hand, and less autonomy) and its highly-variable and expressive application of palette. It is literally a shape which suggests a letter, rather than vice versa.

(Ed Ruscha, F-house, 1987)

There is one other feature of Black Book which distinguishes it from the other book paintings: it is permanently opened – sealed to this particular spread. This creates an instant ambiguity: we are (book-wise) in the center, yet simultaneously at the end determined by Sepielli. The iconic B then, is afforded even more power, because it becomes a pointer (as it does even by virtue of its shape) to the previous narrative (the alpha) – leaving us to guess at the rest of the narrative, or alphabet, if you will. It is therefore ironically even more of a mystery than the closed books are: having been afforded the sense of “readability” by an ostensibly open book, the conversation and narrative are more titillating than a book of which we are given only the cover/surface. There we are given a surface with the informing logic of a book (trope); here we are made to attempt to read it – that is, approach it as a book rather than a painting – to ultimately little avail. Does Black Book intimate the infamous bachelor’s “little black book”, akin to a Tracey Emin embroidered confessional tent – and leave us wanting and wondering? We cannot be positive; and thus this is a work in control of itself; drawing strength from its limiting (and limits); both revealing and withholding.

(Tracey Emin, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, 1963--1995, 1994).

Wherefore painting? (part 1)

2010-10-15T14:10:00.001-04:00

(Some thoughts garnered from a few hours at Matthew Sepielli's new show at Tiger Strikes Asteroid...)

What is central to a painting? What is at its core; both physically and philosophically, and most fundamentally, how are these related – or are they?

The reason Matthew Sepielli’s paintings are a good case study for these sticky – and dangerously unanswerable – questions, is that they are overwhelmingly corporeal; meaty and unavoidable. These are objects for which titling seems nearly unnecessary – their presence alone speaks with a certain enough voice to eliminate any overt need for textual specificity. And yet, Sepielli does title them; attaching small rudders to these already careering vehicles. Some of these paintings are indistinct color studies; each color morphing into another, Kosoff-like; line being a near non- entity. In others, the matrix itself is delineated literally, with connect-the-dot-style mapping nets, elbowing and hinging their way across the soupy surface: and in this case, color is sublimated. This seems to offer the beginnings of a thesis: no one formal concern is paramount; indeed as is intimated in Sepielli's press release, the organic exploration informs directly which element or elements the piece moves within and towards – and what materials are intuitively grabbed and incorporated. Is it then the experiment itself which forms the core of these works? Perhaps…but to posit a more succinct theory, I believe the choice and features of the painted-on form/surface most closely directs the path of the paintings, in a roughly-centralized manner. That is, rather than line in this one, color in that, and surface in yet another, the actual depth, perimeter, dimension and sheer thing-ness of the painted-on form/surface (or object, as the case may be) most universally drives Sepielli’s paintings’ direction and eventual conclusion.

The series (and this term is used as loosely as I believe Sepielli might use it) of books as surfaces/objects focus in even more closely on this core driver of Sepielli’s work. As with the other paintings, the compositions on the books are centrally organized, but depending on the piece and the choice of incorporated collage that is appliqued to the surface, the perimeter is occasionally pierced slightly by those added elements (or literally pierced, as in State Fair). (The frequency of this does not work against the surface as prime-driver argument; rather it is fairly consistently utilized; enough to consider its absence as the “exception which makes the rule”). A book, in the beginning as that alone, is an understood and fully-logicized entity, physically: it is read as being complete in its form. In this way, even before becoming subsequently a surface, it exerts a strong influence even on the final parameters of the piece. In other words, the logic of the book, even before paint is applied, reaches ahead of the artist and places certain defining limits and stops on the process. This is a highly organic comingling of mind and matter; past, present and future; meta- and micro-reality – becoming not unlike one of Karl Jung’s famous anthropomorphic Archetypes.

But why these particular limits from the very concept of a book – and why does this feature prominently in these particular works? Put simply, the strongest component of a book’s overall logic is its narrative (meant in the largest sense possible); that is, we logicize and assume, through long and absorbed experience, that a book has a distinct beginning and distinct end, with a center of some length between. And not only is this a theoretical and psychological dimension, it is wrought physically in a form, for us to know tactilely. Therefore this narrative logic is multi-leveled, and that much more pervasive and persistent, placing a particularly strong defining logic on anything added to it, even if that addition, for all intents and purposes, is primarily physical in nature. Thus, Sepielli’s paintings rely heavily on, firstly, the force of surface and form; and secondly, the book “series” even more so because of the forth-going, extrapolating narrative logic.

(All images, Matthew Sepiellli, 2010. Titles, top to bottom: Pig Meat; State Fair; In a Fine Net)

(Part 2, next week...)

In3s: two paintings

2010-08-31T12:26:00.002-04:00

Here are two of the three paintings that will be in In3s at Artspace Liberti, Fishtown, opening this Friday evening the 3rd:

Pique, latex, enamel, collage, found object on panel, 2010.

Parade Rain, latex, enamel, collage on panel, 2010.

The opening reception runs from 7 - 10 PM. See you there?

TSA Essay: Thomas Vance: Plan

2010-08-09T13:02:00.001-04:00

For those who didn't make it for the opening, or had trouble finding the essay I wrote for Thomas Vance's new exhibit at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Plan, here it is.

Thomas Vance, 2010

Craft is a bridge. This image alone imparts a finely-tuned sense of the cause-and-effect of tools on a concept. Craft itself is a tool to make sense of the area between impulse and idea, where a finished work will eventually result. It also lends a sense of trickery to the workaday. And, how is the viewer engaged? This too carries a sense of craft; of willing wiliness. Craft will tend to be antisocial; anti-modern; anti-change. It is defined by gathered knowledge; private skill; proven technique; quality repetitions. Because of this, craft can adroitly chisel out a beautiful rut for itself. The trick becomes old.

Thomas Vance’s exhibit of new work, Plan is, strictly speaking, a trompe l’oeil: both expertly constructed and finished, those same constructs and finishes fool our eyes, suggesting otherwise to us: the delicate hatching on an upright board suggests bark; the painted flow chart-like patterns suggest wood’s graininess; the puffy, turquoise jewels suggest trimmed shrubbery. But unlike trompe l’oeil, Vance’s surfaces are never fully a substitute: the trickery (craftiness) is never a less-than; replacement or simulacrum. They exist, rather, on their own – his piquant trees are stubbornly autonomous, morphed into a hushed, almost introverted timelessness. Faux-grained chests, originally made to mimic the richly-veneered case-pieces of the wealthy, may once have served as a consolation prize for a lower-class dowry, but they quickly became their own, powerful definition of beauty in artifice.

Not only that: Vance, the chief sorcerer in this mystic, aesthetic re-appropriation, has tricked foam, dimensional lumber, paper, clay and pigment into thinking they are a garden, or a lacquered floor. Much like the Japanese tradition he’s inspired by, Niwaki, one element of nature (shrubs) are tricked into thinking they are another (clouds). Interested in both sides of this equation, Vance utilizes not only his painted trees and interiors, but also painted wood that might have been sawn from those trees, and clad those floors – both painted on materials made from the actual thing. This brings to mind the phrase “inside-out” – implying a sense of being backwards, confused or reversed. The trickery, however, is only skin deep; the answer only a finger’s breadth away. And coupled with the reverse of that phrase, “outside-in”, we are reminded of Vance’s keen fascination with connections between the garden (traditionally an outside space) and architecture (traditionally an inside space), and the crafty places in which they meet, mingle and overlap. Plan is a deliberate experiment in that arena; craft lends directly into our visual ambiguity.

Nature is not crafty. Nature is direct, forthright and brusque. We may see craftiness in nature, but it is normally anthropomorphistic: we see a resembling reflection. Craft is a (nearly) thoroughly human distinction. Yet, we operate in nature; the places and materials we utilize and create in our craft are inevitably of, in or from nature. Houses must have a skin which touches air; gardens must be given light, otherwise our very definitions begin crumbling. Vance’s faux gardens and interiors then, are important neutral places between humanity’s craft and nature’s resoluteness; a mental or psychological resting place; a bench between impulse and idea. His work is a reflecting pool, in which the trees above us are juxtaposed and framed with our own bodies, on the very same – very physical – surface.

Reflections on Painting and Cultivation

2010-07-09T16:38:00.000-04:00

(above, Warren Rohrer, of Yellow 9, oil on canvas [diptych], 1994).

Painting and Cultivation

The artist Paul Klee, so it’s told, had three great loves, one of which he became internationally famous for: art, music and cooking. The latter two, most certainly sustained both him and the first great love, in many intermeshed ways. Music and its lyrical, rhythmical, logical, as well as visual qualities, is readily evident in much of Klee’s work: the meters, the brassy lilt and line; the bars and note-like figures; the titles alluding to music of the spheres and the instrument – all feeding off the second love. But what of the cooking? In my readings on Klee, it’s mostly self-referential, this love of cooking – and perhaps it really was “number three” in a hierarchical sense. But my inclination is to think of these three things, these three loves, as being hierarchical only to the outsider, the critic and the clarifier. To Klee himself (speaking as a fellow artist) I’m sure they were more egalitarian, and cross-complementary than even the most attentive of us may know.

I’ve noticed this “layering” of talents in many artists I’ve known personally, or have read about: one talent or love stands out, but there is usually at least one other which is more latent; more personal and perhaps self-indulgent – but no less important. Two disparate examples include E. E. cummings (a passionate illustrator to help pay the bills), and secondly a close friend of mine who, brilliant painter “by day”, has also been an accomplished musician for years, to the point of being recorded. Continuing with this model, my passions are art, writing and gardening (or cultivation, as I will direct it here). Much crafting, so to speak, is carefully and ingeniously re-defining repetition within a particular model, or set of limitations. Cooking, music, writing, art, and gardening – all work within that definition of “craft”, writ large. Taking gardening as the working example, cultivation is a clarifying direction. Cultivation implies not only providing an appropriate condition for growth (as in the sense of weeding and tilling soil), but as every gardener will tell you, much repetition. It must be done over, and over, and over. And here is where love becomes operative. One must have at least a modicum (and ideally, more!) for the chosen repeated love, or otherwise it fails its own definition. Cultivation also implies a continuity of tradition, or form, but more on that later.

(above, Warren Rohrer, Four Fields)

This distinction suggested itself to me upon seeing anew a canvas by a painter named Warren Rohrer, entitled Christiana Boogie-Woogie. Appropriately parsed and contextualized, this title alone states much on this subject. Christiana, Pennsylvania, near where Rohrer’s roots lay deep, is a predominantly rural, agricultural area, with repetition of the landscape sort abounding. Rohrer himself was from a devotedly religious, farming family, all tropes including copious amounts of both cultivation and repetition. The Boogie-Woogie portion of the title, the art-savvy, brings to mind the influence of Piet Mondrian’s seminal, visual-dance-step of a painting, Broadway Boogie-Woogie – an obvious (inclusion-wise, if not immediately visually-wise) influence on Rohrer’s practice and thinking – and tradition. By this title alone, again, Rohrer bridges two usually disparate worlds: an agrarian, sectarian world, with that of an urbanized, dynamic and a joyfully-structured high-modernism. That bridge, as I realized recently, could be considered as nearly synonymous with cultivation. And being an inveterate gardener and artist, familiar with cultivation of both the horticultural and artistic varieties, it seems a helpful connector. But where, formalistically, might the connection continue? Rather than starting formally inside the painting (as is normally my wont), let’s begin with gardening (or horticulture). Whether one espouses a Western (linear; spacious) or Eastern (triangular; compact) aesthetic in one’s horticultural practice, order is necessary (as opposed to flower gardening, which is often a different animal altogether). It is necessary because of cultivation: an element of careful balance between control and freedom is essential. One must realize that a complete ordering of a natural environment is impossible, and naively utopian (or dystopian, depending on your viewpoint). This then brings us to the “form” portion of “formal”. Part of traditional gardening, unlike modern industrial farming, is great variety. When cultivating a diverse garden, then, “small” forms (specific cultivars; individualized, custom techniques) lie within the larger forms (soil augmentation; bed preparation, etc.) Both are integral to that cultivated balance. And one picks up from where, so to speak, your tradition left it – sometimes to the point of refreshing it with alternative cultural traditions. Geniuses such as J. I. Rodale, or Jackson Pollock, take those traditions and squeeze them, scour them, and set them on new (or as is often the case, new-old) paths, where they’ve strayed. Not all of us have this panache, but nonetheless, painter and gardener alike, work within, and push the edges of, a tradition of cultivation. Find an image of a late 1970’s Warren Rohrer painting, and observe the brush work. They are nearly of the same mindset as a plowman on his tractor, pulling the monster tool behind; glazing over in the pleasurable mundanity of the task: the familiar place; the newness layered on to the utter sameness. Is the danger also, as well as the redemption, evident in this? Each row is new, yet near to the previous year’s path. This harks to another seriously influential component of modern painting (especially of late Modernists such as Rohrer): the often minute changes between canvases, or works. That subtle change – tweaking – is the revelatory gap between one spark of discovery and subsequent experimentation, and another. And even though I hoe along with a multiple-thousand year tradition, I still teach myself – and the practice teaches me – because neither painting nor horticultural cultivation are static, but rather are continuums, subject to change, however glacial a pace it may be in some eras. Though we may stand and work in the same places, our experience is always glazed with that crucial, titillating layer of discovery.

TSA Essay: Jukkala and Rosenthal

2010-06-09T16:34:00.000-04:00

Wow, it's been over a month, folks...so here's a little taste of some recent writing I've been doing. This is an essay I was asked to do, for the June show at Tiger Strikes Asteroid: Clint Jukkala and Mia Rosenthal.

(below, Mia Rosenthal, General Mills 8-pack)

There are places to which none of us can ever go…or return. The past; others’ heads; the womb; the place to where loved ones have crossed over. Likewise, we all have talismans which impart a certain sense; a sliver of the unreachable place. For Mia Rosenthal, her straightforwardly sweet simulacrums of sent and received postcards impart a second, more spiritually acute layer to an already powerful metaphor for those places we cannot go, or cannot be, or are not – and those people who inhabit them, or are passing through before us. On the uncomfortable cusp of welcoming a new life, Rosenthal found comfort in celebrating a recently-departed life, painstakingly reinterpreting the talisman of shared postcards – those small purchased icons of travel and exoticism; the skimmed-off leftovers of a life’s memory.

For every sensory sliver from place to place, a vector is needed, and Rosenthal also sensed this correctly by making a postmortem catalog of part of her aunt’s stamp accumulation – bringing some coherence to what had been a haphazard habit in waking life. An even smaller icon of the connections between unlikely places, stamps like postcards, being quickly outmoded as they are, also impart a sense of nostalgia and whimsy to what could be an otherwise dour examination of life’s ends and passings.

An even more familiar rectangle, along with postcards and stamps, is the doorway. Likewise a domestic and familiar limnal presence, doorways are an even more fragile and immediate skin between spaces. Stamps and postcards bring home some of the exotic and unreachable to us; doorways allow us to be more active in movement through. In a way, they could be seen as the negative to the postcard’s positive: the closed card a symbol of the desire for the open door. Clint Jukkala previously worked more with the positive – shakily digital renderings of top-heavy bouquet forms; or slowly branching, slow-motion fireworks. Recently though, Jukkala’s bouquets have dissipated and migrated to the edges, and suggest portals, or doorways; the promising rainbows enveloping and bordering, rather than blossoming or branching bouquet or fountain forms.

Rosenthal’s approach is talisman, but clear; Jukkala’s more at-hand icons on the other hand, is ironically, more ambiguous: are we entering or exiting those doorways; portals? But not unlike many of the color and square studies by Josef Albers, the spaces and ways through are infinitely commutable. The essence really is the movement through – the process – rather than the direction. No matter what space or place our life is finding form within, a human yearns for a little of another – and we will continue to find talismans for that yearning. Jukkala and Rosenthal have found related, but aesthetically divergent, ways into that yen.

Check out their portfolios: Clint Jukkala and Mia Rosenthal

Brief: Max Cole at Larry Becker

2010-05-07T14:57:00.000-04:00

(P. A. Renoir, Before the Bath, oil on canvas, c. 1875, BF9)

Two very different artists (or are they?) connected themselves in my mind recently: Max Cole, and Renoir. I knew little about Cole until I saw the advertisement for the exhibit, now up through May at Larry Becker Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Max Cole is an older generation Minimalist painter, who uses traditionalist materials – oil, canvas, etc: even Renoir himself would recognize that if seeing her work from the beyond. She is, a la Agnes Martin, a rural Midwestern transplant to a New York oriented world, but who retains the Midwesterner’s sense of extremes: horizontal and vertical; smooth and rough; dark and light; ground and sky. One is almost even tempted to create a mini-school for them: AgroMinimalism. Or Fieldworks. At any rate, the affinity is noted, and helpful.

Renoir needs no introduction, but since the connection mentioned was painting-specific, that at least should be given: Before the Bath, BF9 in the Barnes Foundation collection. It is a classic Modernist bath scene, and a fine Renoir among Renoirs (and that is no small statement regarding the Barnes Foundation, which holds more Renoirs than any other institution, save for the Victoria and Albert in England). She is fixing her hair, with a sweetly demure smile, and is sitting before a bed with a mattress covered in ticking. Now, before I go further, there are two words which emerged while I was cultivating this connection: depiction, and intention. A bit dry, perhaps, but they are the double linchpins, so to speak, that hitch these two painters (and paintings) to each other. Hitching also creates friction, which as we know can begin lighting a fire in one’s mind. The ticking which Renoir depicted is brushed off fairly easily – a few broad strokes of a deep ultramarine; some thinner lines of an analogous color, with some white in there modulating towards volume, and there you have it: a supporting member of the cast. Renoir has intended this as no more than that; it is undoubtedly in service to the bathing girl; indeed, even the bed itself. And yet where would that corner of the painting be without the depiction of the ticking? Renoir’s intention enacted this depiction.

(Max Cole, Sandspit, acrylic on linen, 2009) Larry Becker Contemporary Art

The ongoing decades of Modernism rolled on, and painting’s role made several sea changes, until we arrived to the late 1960’s, where Cole’s and Martin’s method and interests have their origins, and indeed from where Cole’s current work still draws parallels. Intention takes a dive into Renoir, needing more, and sensing that it’s in there somewhere; still holding some oysters beneath the surface. What she has found, and then runs with, is a question of fundamentals. And fundamental is an appropriate way to approach Cole’s 2009 painting, Sandspit. It is a carefully, lovingly constructed matrix of thick and thin; dark and light. The aberrations of human touch is not rejected or suppressed (as neither was Renoir’s, as a matter of course) but rather incorporated and nurtured. Does the manner or mode of making these marks (depiction) analogous to Renoir’s ticking, have some grander (or deeper) possibilities for intention? No answer will be provided here, but like Martin, Cole frequently names – embodies, more like it – her works with natural and occasionally spiritually-infused titles: Starfield; Sandspit. Thus we always seem to be pushed (gently) towards another characteristic of AgroMinimalism: the loving analysis of those extremes mentioned earlier, through classification; dissection; grid-making and categorization. But on the balance, like most conclusions of science, an irreducible core of mystery remains solid, and the allusions always are suggested, never tyrannical: there is always wiggle room.

And wiggle room might just be a good descriptive phrase for painting’s continuing move through post-modernism and beyond – where Renoir, unquestioningly, stated “ticking!” Cole has loosened up the reins, and given us some Midwestern populist latitude. Po-pomo-western, anyone?

(detail, Sandspit, acrylic on linen, 2009)
Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia

A Wink and a Nod...

2010-04-23T14:50:00.000-04:00

Corey Antis, untitled (black room)

Three not entirely unrelated notes from this past week and a half:

Note 1: a Wink

I’ve been reading a book (much of my reading takes place on the bus these days) entitled Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, by Walter Wink. I won’t go into detail about the content right now, but suffice it to say it’s been shifting my worldview slightly…as well as my thoughts about the differences between “nonresistance” and “nonviolence”. For anyone interested in activist theology, neo-Anabaptist leanings, and a call to rid ourselves (as Christians) of the destructive myth of redemptive violence, I would highly recommend it. I certainly don’t agree with everything Wink is saying, but as the best writers do and the best writing does, Wink keeps the questions and discussions open. It is masterfully done, and highly thought-provoking.

Note 2: and a Nod

An artist whose work has been highly influential to my own over the last few months is Corey Antis. His work was featured in Tiger Strikes Asteroid’s January show, and its qualities have been resonating with me ever since. In fact, one Saturday as I gallery sat, I distilled some of what I thought was highly effective about Antis’ work, and re-defined it for myself as a form of several “New Year (work) resolutions” (it all centers on consistency and standards, essentially):

· Paintings all collared and edged in same white paint.

· Three at a time; colors between.

· More steps and more creativity with tape usage.

· More uniform sizes, and standard collar depth.

· Edges of found surfaces, also edged in white.

· Don’t be afraid of texture!

· Be more disciplined with periodic making of panels.

I’ll talk more about this once I upload some pictures of my recent work.

Note 3: Class

Some of my more dedicated readers may remember my postings from this past fall and winter on the class I led at the Barnes Foundation, Investigating the Spiritual in Art. I am working on a syllabus/concept for a new class for this coming fall. The (rough) working title is Humans and the Modern Landscape. Briefly, it will deal with the two overriding concerns (as I see them) in the Barnes collection: the ensembles, which are wall arrangements which are both internally constructed and didactic, and also connect with the collection as a whole, philosophically, psychologically and formally (and I’d add, unsurprisingly, spiritually); and the two dominant formats of modern paintings (the bulk of our collection), namely, portraits or depictions of humans, and landscapes or depictions of environment or the natural world. The class sessions will be constructed of contrasts: urban/rural; civilized/savage; European/American, etc.

The Spiritual in Art class was loosely arranged around a wonderful book, An Art of our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, by Roger Lipsey. The search is on for a book which could function in the same way, for this new class concept.

Any ideas?

March of the Romantic -- Jaya Howey at Marginal Utility

2010-04-07T13:06:00.001-04:00

The In Acts Out: Jaya Howey at Marginal Utility.

Mr. Howey, I’m confident, does create a “humorous contrast” between the highly-considered surfaces, and the flippant, banal titles of his paintings – but there was no way I could really know. Marginal Utility decided to hang the paintings – runic slabs of mostly wet-clay, warm-gray, over various brightly-colored underlayers – without any text or explanation, save a cryptic newsprint scrap such as Marginal Utility is fond of. Only the ebb and flow of Howey’s thicket of marks were there to guide the viewer – and I’m entirely fine with this. Though it may turn off the casual visitor, or the “post-painting” painting neophyte, those who are already very interested in both the materiality of painting and the nascent ideas of painting, will feel themselves drawn in regardless. (A risky hang tends to divide the art-adults from the art-children, anyhow).

As I discussed afterward with a friend along for the visit, my frame of references includes many artists whom I, upon meeting new work, will almost unconsciously associate and categorize them with. It’s a mental sorting which helps with both looking and articulating. Upon viewing Howey for the first time (and it must be said, that I only know this Howey body of work well; his practice is widely divergent in style) within a minute I was thinking of Warren Rohrer. Rohrer is one of the local painting scene’s best hidden secrets (unfortunately); he was at the height of his powers during the eighties, dying in 1995. He utilized a similar push-and-pull exercise as Howey with the materials of paint, and with the possibilities of surface as a repository of ideas and belief. Brightly-colored, heavily influenced by drawing, calligraphy and the agricultural landscape (a kind of Updikian painter), Rohrer’s work is decidedly painting; there is little credence given to the possibility of post-painting – he is still feeding fundamentally off the abstract expressionist’s tap. Whereas Rohrer created an internal language of marks within each piece – only incidentally connected to the whole, his personality really being the consistent touchstone – Howey’s works are strongly reliant on the whole. The sparseness of stimuli almost requires this, so it does not collapse under its own weightlessness. Indeed, as the press release states, Howey’s pictorial surfaces are pushed just shy of “compositional stability”. But again, whereas in Rohrer this is accomplished by an overwhelming flood of color, strata and mark-upon-mark, we’re given the most economical of means by Howey – but to the same end essentially: co-identification. Howey wants us to find a way in as much as Rohrer, but because each of them is drawing off quite different tributaries, their flow is divergent. But the same wide river of painting is nonetheless fed.

This paucity of “compositional stability” is what really appeals to me the most – that is of course, after the pleasingly moist-clay gray oil; the subtleties of brightness under the murk, and the beauty of the scratching – put simply, the gorgeous formality of it all. In fact, compositional stability increases, as the implication of painting being legion tells us, the more one takes in (or is taken in by) the entire show. Rather than being given a collection of short stories (there’s Updike again; how modernist!) we are seeing the chapters of a novel. In German, “novel” is Roman (pronounced roe-monn) – and the role of neo-romanticism is evident. The romance in Howey’s paintings though, is not of the hero, the hapless sidekick or the wooed woman – it is rather the story of painting itself. Each scratch into the paint, creating the buzz of moist burrs, tries to accomplish what all romantics are after – a direct line from the body to the heart…not a cord to be twanged at whim, but to function as a real tap for real emotion. In the current environment of high irony as craftsmanship, and winking, humorless humor, this is a tall order. But I believe this neo-romanticism will continue to march in, even if on matchstick legs such as Howey’s. Bravo to him for realizing it, and bravo to Marginal Utility for verifying it by making us rely on the old-fashioned gaze for information. How romantic is that?

(top, Jaya Howey; from www.marginalutility.com)
(below, Warren Rohrer, from www.locksgallery.com)

Art Thoughts, Week 46: David & Conflict

2010-03-31T15:35:00.004-04:00

Crucifixion Scene with the Virgin, St. John and the Magdalene, Gerard David, Netherlandish (1460—1523), oil on panel, BF123.

Even when writing about paintings, auto-pilot can attempt to take over. Whether through routine, boredom, distraction or stereotypes, occasionally the same words, the same thoughts, the same associations float to the top. For this particular painting, Crucifixion by David (pronounced Dah-veed), that particular temptation to be rote came from genre. This is firstly a religious painting, and secondly a crucifixion: a genre so ubiquitous as to elicit a whole corral of pre-programmed expectations. Ironically, my sculpture professor used to say the hardest thing to depict seriously in art is the cross: it’s just been done too many times, and too often poorly. But even though this happens, one must keep looking, and keep writing.

The important question which finally emerges is what is there about this painting’s unique voice which helps it rise above the babble? By what aspect does this piece distinguish itself? Though an academician, and subject to the whims of his patrons, David was nonetheless his own person, and most importantly his own painter. Otherwise (to grow momentarily snarky) how would one know if it was a Van der Weyden, Tintoretto or Gaugin crucifixion that we were looking at? You get the point: aesthetic signature is important; primary, even.

But what else – any particular emotional undercurrent which pulls or pushes the painting in one direction or another? There is such within this painting, animating it…and there is a companion set of color choices by David (supported by convention) which set up both a support and a denial of that emotional portrayal. In other words, the painting’s components take sides. Another professor of mine, this time in literature, stated that all fiction, at its core, has a driving force of conflict behind it. It is a raw touchstone for humanness. And really, what more conflicted scene could one imagine for a 15th century Christian? They, along with the figures here, are stuck between a promise and a reality. That is, the promise of resurrection and renewal, and the harsh reality of an expiring fleshly form.

To illustrate the basic conflict, look at two of the figures. The emotional conflict is primarily represented in the central figure, Mary the mother of Jesus. (Mary Magdalene, the third in the group, is sometimes shown at the foot of the cross, but the scriptural reference supports this being the Virgin, since John is comforting her). Not only is her entire gesture and weight attempting to hold Jesus down, but also the darkest colors in the painting are found in her cloak, causing the greatest balance of weight – compositionally and emotionally – to be on her side. And this makes sense: it is before the resurrection, when reality holds sway. Her emotional response of wrapping around the cross and Jesus’ feet and holding on for dear life, accentuates the necessity of Christ’s eventual ascent – here signified iconically by his outstretched arms, seeming like not so much a crucifixion as an attempt to fly up into the air, right then and there.

John the disciple, the figure on the left, is opposed to Mary emotionally and by color. He rushes in (by evidence of his flying, flaming cloak) and comforts Mary with the promise aspect of the equation –while likely being unconvinced of its verity. With his shocking crimson coat, he represents the passion with which he takes up the duty of looking after Jesus’ mother Mary…despite the doubt; he shows why he is the “disciple whom Jesus loved”: he is devoted despite overt emotion.

Mary Magdalene represents, I believe, the place where most viewers will (and should) find themselves (knowing, after all, how the story ends): at the place of sorrowful readiness. She has a vessel which most likely holds the embalming spices for the burial. That is, she is neither pinioning the promise like Mary, nor bemoaning the reality like John…she is rather, prepared to move on and step into the future, regardless of what the details may determine. She remains, after everything, that belittled – but far from little – giant of faith.

Folk + Abstraction: Core Aims

2010-03-26T16:42:00.000-04:00

For a long time, I’ve been fascinated with the overlap between folk art and abstraction, and so here comes a New York exhibit I’d love to visit: Approaching Abstraction, at the American Folk Art Museum. There are many stereotypes about what folk art is, or where it comes from, but at the same time, the definition really encompasses an impressively wide spectrum: everything from Pennsylvania German, my personal favorite, to Mexican "outsider"collage, and all stops in-between.

The question I’m most interested in however, is: why abstraction? The answer can often come too easily. By nature of the work being by the “folk” or the common person, this often is meant as “untrained”. And academically speaking, this is often true – but not always. And here I think a key statement can be made: abstraction in folk art, being a step farther past the normal stylization, must have another impetus. I believe that “step farther” could be called core aim. I mean this in the sense which caused medieval artists to be almost wholly unconcerned about scientific perspective (vanishing point, etc.), only to have Renaissance artists pick up the very same principle and crown it king not long after: core aim. That is, what was the prevailing sentiment among artists of that particular time, culture or persuasion? What did they care enough about, to be picky about? And for folk artists, ignoring verisimilitude is not simply a necessity (i.e. something they couldn’t do), it’s that it didn’t really matter that much to them – it wasn’t their core aim.

Now, as opposed to Abstract Expressionism, or even Color Field painting, abstraction was not so much a cause or a maxim, but simply a by-product. Thus the great inspiration of folk art to subsequent Modernists (the most famous example being African artifacts to Picasso, Matisse, Rouault, etc.) The Modernists and later artists picked up on the aesthetics of abstraction; saw its potential as a rallying cry and possibly an egalitarian tool, and they crowned it king, after overthrowing perspective. And that by-product of folk art, abstraction, seemingly emerged from certain limitations on the folk artist: training being one, but others being material limitations; narrow cultural beliefs, forms or distinctions, and of course time. Folk art in many cases was purely a sideline as far as commerce went; very little money was likely made. It was decorative; memorial/commemorative; life-affirming.

In my own work, I feel like those two core aims – that of a rallying call and egalitarian tool of the “high” abstraction and the formerly mentioned aims of folk art – come together. I am excited to see if this new exhibit sheds any more light on what that might mean for not only my work as it moves forward, but for artistic expressions writ large.

Amphibious Painter's Tape

2010-03-19T10:49:00.004-04:00

On many of my paintings, as you can make out if you look carefully, I use techniques and tools such as templates; stencils; compasses; scribing, etc. Another technique and material I use frequently is taping-off edges, borders, grids and lines. Much of this penchant comes from my interest in finding a balance between the effort towards "perfection", and the human errors (or "happy accidents") that result from pushing the painterly envelope. I'm also interested in traditional Pennsylvania German, and other folk-expression's techniques for decorative painting, but I'll let that topic for another post...

For years, I used a brown paper-based tape, with a low-tack adhesive on half the tape...this created, in my non-rigorous testings, the best edge. Unfortunately, I have only been able to find it at one local store, and that is in my old neighborhood. Your run-of-the-mill blue painter's tape had too much tack -- even the low-tack tape -- and it required sticking it to your sweater or jeans a few times, so as not to pull off layers of paint. That being said, I often used blue tape, since it was the easiest thing to find.

And then came along Frog Tape. I receive a weekly email on DIY home repair...and the writer often mentions products that he finds to be useful and superior...one week he mentioned Frog Tape, and I was intrigued. Up to that point, I'd not seen it in stores yet. Soon thereafter, though, Lowe's began carrying it, and I was tempted...despite the higher price. Well, I have to say, it's worth the extra price, now that I've tried it. It utilizes a "paint-blocking" technology which essentially soaks up excess water found in latex paint (my usual material of choice) and prevents it from seeping through, which is when it carries suspended pigment through, and makes an annoying feathered edge.

This morning at the studio I used it over a well-cured latex coat, over which a spray-painted grid had been applied...I taped off the lines I wanted, and scuff-sanded the spray paint to aid in adhesion. The green paint I used was fairly low-viscosity (I often up the water content in my latex paints to aid in flow). So, I applied the tape, painted the shapes, let it dry, pulled it off about an hour later, and voila! Nary a seep...except where I'd not pushed the tape down hard enough against an edge; that was all me. Happiness!

So...I would normally never endorse a product unless (like good ol' Paul Harvey) I used it myself. Well, I'm here to say, it's a fine product, and I will keep using it. Try it out; I'd be curious to hear if anyone else has experience with Frog Tape.

(By the way; the name? I'm guessing they are referencing how a frog drinks (takes in water): through its skin.)

Brief: Douglas Witmer at Blank Space, NYC

2010-03-16T16:49:00.005-04:00

Installation shot of Ring the Bells Anew

(Images below; top, A Trace of Something I Want to Feel Again; bottom, We'll Get Away With It.)

Douglas Witmer at Blank Space, NY

A pair of paintings in Ring the Bells Anew arrested my attention quickly upon turning the corner: A Trace of Something I Want to Feel Again and We’ll get Away with It. It was an impulse for which I couldn’t find a reason (not that it was completely necessary to)…until I spoke briefly with Douglas Witmer about them, and found out that they had two related common denominators. They were the same size canvas, and that particular ratio was a new one for Witmer. That said, they fit nicely into my resonation with the show’s title: Witmer is ringing a very old bell, but the tintinnabulum never grows old: in fact, the results feel as fresh as does every toll from a bell tower greeting a new day. The possibilities continue.

The delicately strong voice of A Trace… pulled at me first – a large, soft monolith the hue of a Japanese anemone…or who knows; perhaps the evanescence of peonies in May. Regardless, it was flowery in the best sense; an exquisite waterfall of delicately scented orchid that one keeps near so as to prolong its effect. Which brings me to the second of several strong (and strengthening) components of Witmer’s work: the activity occurring “behind” those soft monoliths – dripping; spreading; fading in and out – playing with the memories we are beginning to fall into within the frontal colors. It keeps us engaged; on our toes; keeps us from losing ourselves in our personal, nostalgic response to the dominant colored blocks.

A third strength is the vastly differing movements of the brushstrokes in the frontal colors – up; down; back and forth – all with their own particular evocations of emotion or memorial. Cascades – green, orange, red, light yellow – or strata lain like bricks. All this is really only noticeable upon long perusal – but that is crucial anyway, to really absorbing these pieces. That said, the intelligent and harmonious hang did remind me that Witmer’s work rewards varying levels of looks. Like a bold landscape, they can be enjoyed both very quickly – like a drive-by from a window (a quality I associate with Blinky Palermo – a promenade of flags), or painstakingly slow, pulled apart as a
portraitist might separate his sitter into individual components, and then reassemble them according to a new system. Regardless, Ring the Bells Anew will remind you of something which you treasure, and still shower with an affection long fostered.

Blank Space Art

New Paintings in Progress, March 2010

2010-03-13T19:59:00.005-05:00

new painting inspired by a Cezanne still life in the Barnes Foundation collection:

new painting in series of works incorporating old prescription slips:

Art Thoughts, Week 45: Seurat & Stability

2010-02-24T14:28:00.007-05:00

Port of Honfleur, Georges Seurat, (French, 1859—1891), 1886, oil on canvas, BF 942.

Anyone who’s stood at the edge of a skyscraper, dam or cliff and peered down, feeling that queer liquidity occur between their ears, knows firsthand of the connectedness between the physical and the psychological. As a youngster at the shore with my family, I often felt that same fear from a pier’s edge, accentuated by the mysterious, murky bay water, where one could see more of their reflection, than the bottom. The instinct was, as it usually is, to step back, and if even that is difficult, to find something to hold on to; something rooted and stable which will impart some anchoring.

In Seurat’s Port of Honfleur, he plays with this tendency to search for stability, and also questions the actual effectiveness of that ostensible security. A first look at this painting might raise the question, what is this form in the front of the sublime harbor scene, seemingly muddling the view? At least this was among my initial reactions, and until recently, this vaguely humanoid pier post consistently puzzled me, both as a form, and as a tactic by Seurat: why this, and why there?

One possible explanation might be related to that very human tendency to seek out stability in the face of an unfamiliar situation. At first glance, Seurat is giving us something to “hold onto” while approaching the obviously beautiful scene, with its simultaneously threatening depths. This post’s weirdly humanoid shape gives us a point of identification as we look into this scene from a vantage point outside it; it’s the liaison between us and the painted scene. And indeed, an anchoring hold is what we need, because at the same time Seurat is helping us identify with the scene, he is “clarifying” the diffusion of actual space.

We must remember the radical newness that this technique of pointillism represented: even a dedicated nineteenth-century viewer might be forgiven for confusion, distaste or vertigo. But the beauty of the scene assisted them, as it does us: Seurat, even while fiddling with the microscope lens as he did, does not sacrifice beauty to the god of novelty. He has entered into a severe irony, clarifying the reality of confusion. That is, we are really at the heart of it a collection of molecules – small, individual components – which maintain viability and structure through elaborate, mysterious chemical and physical attractions. Seurat is presenting to us our innate instability; including the very device he’s given us to hold onto while gazing out onto the water.

Of course, at the same time that pointillism was emerging as a new artistic technique, scientific discoveries were confirming those very things which pointillism reveals. This is typical of a brilliant artistic mind: when science bounds ahead, art is often not far behind and occasionally pushing. Vice versa, art pushing science is often also the case. Not only were color experiments being propounded, such as the interrelationship of adjacent colors, but also molecular discovery was burgeoning. And at the same time doubt began increasing about our long-held beliefs about human souls; the spirit: all simply a deus ex machina? If we really are just a collection of smaller pieces, albeit highly logical, where does this supposed wellspring reside? And so the familiar platonic division of spirit versus body reached another level. Yet…the beauty of even such a persistently questioning artwork points back to an even more original question. From whence does our attraction to the numinous arise, if not somewhere between these tiny components we are made from? Is it simply electrical impulses, arcing from one grain to the next? The calm of the boats on the water; the hazy glow of the colors; the highly intelligent composition of shapes: all this seems to suggest that, whether in the gap between parts, or the parcel, there is something which needs both a law of beauty, and the resulting stability possible from a strategic discomfort.

Three from Friday

2010-02-07T17:44:00.015-05:00

My time for visiting local shows (not to mention out of the city) has been limited recently, so I relished having some extra time this Friday to investigate several venues, some opening that evening. To keep this more succinct, as I tend to ramble and occasionally rhapsodize, I will allot a paragraph to one artist at each place. Let's begin, shall we?

1. Mary Judge, in Elemental/Ornamental, Moore College, 20th and Parkway.

I've actually written about Mary Judge here before, but had not been aware previous to this exhibit that she was a Moore graduate, circa '75. Regardless, I remain in my thinking that her work edges on timelessness and universality (despite the reticence to such assignations in academic circles). This is a tall order, of course, and was admittedly challenged by my own immediate thoughts. Various associations began spinning along with the work: cookies; lace doilies; compasses, crackers and clocks. Thus I was almost as quickly mildly ashamed by my first associations being largely domestic and feminized: I try to avoid this when knowingly approaching a female artist's work, as a male! But these images soon morphed and enriched under the great acuity of Judge's hand, and upon remembering her delicately rendered visual textures, and the quiet, ticking movements of her prints. The insistent circles roll like time, wall to wall, changing from piece to piece, much like the silent progress of a life; a life with a core interest, but with wandering eyes which glean from the available world like-entities, images and concepts. The circling is insistent, but the wide-ranging alacrity of Judge's associations are admirable, and keep it sane. Not approaching OCD insanity such as On Kawara's calendar paintings, but lovingly compiled, like a lifetime's collection of seashells; one genre with myriad possibilities, gathered with care in a lifelong walk behind the tide.

2. David Dunn, eReader, at Copy Gallery, 319 North 11th, 3rd floor.
Vox Populi, just next door, was boring, and I have to admit, I don't always expect a lot from Copy Gallery. David Dunn, however, caught me off guard, and got a hook in me with eReader. A thumping, oddly mesmerizing soundtrack pulsated along with an accompanying video track on back-to-back TV tubes, and the counterpoint offbeats of scanning lights, shadows of human forms, and suggestions of hidden or just-departed persons. Various mysterious and threatening elements created a sense of menace, and appealed to my love of the murder-mystery genre. Though, this was more Brave New World or Blade Runner than Agatha Christie. I kept having a sense of being watched, and actually found myself looking over my shoulder, not sure I hadn't seen a slip of a shoe or an eye in the blinds. A vaguely science-experiment-type installation in the corner facing the doorway was spotlit, and upon inspection looked to be ransom notes pulped up and reconstituted, and submerged into a formaldehyde tank, suggesting a further layer of threat and menace. Kudos, David Dunn; you made me stay for more than five minutes, and there's something to be said for that.

3. Robert Scobey and Yevgeniya S. Baras, at Grizzly Grizzly, 319 North 11th Street, 2nd floor.
A relative newbie among all the other upstarts in 319 North 11th Street, Grizzly Grizzly has until the 28th of February a video and installation by Scobey, and several paintings on canvas by Yevgeniya S. Baras; Baras being a New York transplant from the Russian community of Philadelphia (her comment). I scanned Scobey's video on my way out, and liked what I saw in a few seconds, but must admit I was (having the painter's bias) captivated by Baras's paintings right away. Her edges seemed almost high-school fare, with their exposed staples and unconsidered qualities, but the faces of the paintings demanded the most attention, and largely silenced the edges. They were all either shallow and dark, or shallow and bright; not forgetting their birth from the prosody of layers. The faceted and lozenged play of sheen variations in many of them were arresting; especially the darkest ones, eliciting thoughts of a smoky quartz twisted in the hand, or the mussed-up stepchildren of Constructivism. And I don't use that term lightly, since Baras is after all Russian: there is indeed a stalwart, ornery sense of betterment, even thought it has a more internalized logic, as opposed to the movement's original agit-prop aesthetic. It's as if the movement has been wrested by a self-aware female painter...which it has. Constructivism as a mode now hangs on with a fragile and cold grace, but it once was hot, powerful and poignant. Baras has revived some of that, funkily.

Clash of the blahgs

2010-02-04T14:13:00.005-05:00

"Imitation is the sincerest of flattery"

-Charles Caleb Colton

Blogs, that relatively new form of free communication, come in many different forms. Some of those are valuable commentary; personal online diaries; cultural critiques and reviews, and jeremiads of varying effectiveness.

When http://www.artblahg.blogspot.com/ first came on the scene, through a titillating email sent out to various arts-related people in Philadelphia, I first wrote it off as being childish, shrill and the anonymous rantings of a severely disenfranchised person. In order to allow it some credence, I did go back fairly far in the archival postings recently, and managed to find some sincere and valuable advice to artists who wanted to get noticed, and what they might try doing (search for We Listen to Our Critics, January 12th, on the site). All the vitriol (couched in pseudonyms and obscenities) against what artists such as myself and the co-op gallery I'm part of are trying to do in this city aside, there may be some value to what this blog and the person(s) behind it are doing. Even though I find the medium personally distasteful, since I stand behind civility and professionalism as being ultimately more effective, I'll still allow that there may be some value to what they are trying to communicate...along with their free speech rights, and all that. Hopefully, personal attacks will motivate those of us pilloried by this blog on to even more and better work. So, kudos when that is accomplished.

But then http://www.theartblahg.blogspot.com/ came along, and in a somewhat ham-handed attempt at an expose (I think? I'm still not sure) risked making even more of a mockery of the whole ridiculous thing. Pointless? Perhaps...but it has made me think, and for that I thank them, with a caveat. Taking up a pseudonym for yours truly (among other artists and writers) such as Wim Gershits, and then writing false comments and posting them with a link to this actual blog which attempts a stab at seriousness and will always remain open, not anonymous? This is clumsy, if it is an attempt to get back at the original blog, and pisses me off somewhat...but I'm still hoping that all of this leads to something better, for all of us and for the city's art scene. Granted, having grown up in a small town milieu, it comes off as being another example of an insider quibbling over crumbs, a pattern that one may find in many small towns. (Of course, if I get a flood of comments on this, it might give me an indication if anyone actually reads this blog!)

Still, I'll repeat, if it spurs us all on to better things and better work (and maybe even some adult dialogue), then I suppose I'll see it as a stone in the oyster. It remains to be seen if the pearl produced is worth anything, though.

Investigating Art and the Spiritual, Week 13: Where Do We Go From Here: towards continuing the investigation of the spiritual in art

2010-01-05T15:59:00.011-05:00

Theodore Gericault, A Portrait of a Kleptomaniac (discussed in John Berger essay).

Where Do We Go From Here: towards continuing the investigation of the spiritual in art.

Throughout our investigation into the possibilities of the spiritual in art, we have heard from many different avenues, directions and styles – we have heard from many different voices; we have listened to each other's voices. And still the most important thing to remember is that the strongest and most influential voice to our “quest,” indeed the reason for this course existing at all, has been that of the Barnes Foundation – the polyglot that it is. It has been both impetus and result; both informer and questioner; and has functioned as a door, as a window, and occasionally a wall. Nevertheless, throughout our time together here, we've centered on this place and its treasures, and circulated questions, answers and everything in between. We have attempted to do this through using a series of aspects of the spiritual as lenses, along with artistically formal “signposts” of the spiritual, to inform and guide us towards some possible answers. We've covered contemplation; harmony; revolution; transcendence, etc. I would like to briefly wrap up my class comments, by using two components. One: a short consideration of an additional aspect of the spiritual in art, and two: a question for us to absorb and ponder.

There's an aspect of the spiritual in art we did not cover (among others, of course; our selection was not exhaustive by any means) which I think is both an important aspect of all spiritual yearnings, as well as more specifically religious beliefs. It is a prime driver towards participation in a spiritual quest and expression. That aspect is hope, or hopefulness. We might begin with a rhetorical question: why would anyone exert effort to create spiritual wholeness in their lives and practice, and why would anyone continually ask inquisitively of, and act accordingly to, those things which are largely unseen, unless there was a throbbing kernel of hope driving them on to do so; unless there was something pushing them to keep searching for the needle of answer in a haystack of questions; to keep spending time brushing back layers from a buried treasure, which one simply knows bears great and powerful potential to alter one's life irrevocably? (This notion of treasure will tie into my question for us to ponder). I believe a sense of hope runs throughout this Foundation generally, and specifically in the underpinning philosophy, and pragmatic acting upon that philosophy, by Dr. Barnes. And whether or not a particular piece, or a particular ensemble directly addresses the aspect of hope, or sets up a contrast of hope which thus points towards it and creates a vacuum (a desire or need) for it – as I believe is happening here in the Rousseau Scout Attacked by a Tiger – a current or vein of hope runs throughout the entire place. Like we did to the spiritual aspect of hope, we might ask a similarly rhetorical question of the Foundation – why would Dr. Barnes invest untold amounts of time and money towards, firstly, educating the “plain people” of his factories and neighborhoods, and then secondly, establish an institution where serious, intense and unadorned, unadulterated study of art and cultures could be carried on; an idealistic, almost utopian vision of democracy, education and societal betterment – unless he had hope? Unless he had hope in knowledge and in the senses; hope in independent thought, democratic experience; the life-altering possibilities of art – why would he do any of this?

The story is often told of Dr. Barnes as a young person, being taken by his mother to the African-American revival tent meetings, and being overwhelmed, overtaken by a spirit of sorts, soaring him past the tent to a place both way beyond himself and within himself; a place to which he tried to return, and a sense he tried to foster, seemingly by every action involved in forming his foundation. And an important point can be made here, which again will lead towards my question for us to ponder: Barnes did not create this place solely for himself. In fact, any claim that this is the case couldn't be further from the truth; all evidence in the galleries, let alone the archives, shout against this notion. Certainly, he was subject to whims of anger and begrudging when powerful and influential people and institutions pooh-poohed his efforts. But redirecting him to the core, hope ran through his untiring efforts. This amazing, special place was created for many things: firstly, simple perpetuity of an idea and a time. But even more importantly, this place was created for continual prophecy to the hearts of the people. And when I say prophecy, I don't mean the stereotypical jeremiad: I mean a speaking of truth into the lives of people. Prophecy is much more often a vessel of hope, rather than its stereotype of a harbinger of doom.
To continue our focus on finding formal aesthetic avenues into the spiritual nature of these artworks, let's consider briefly the north wall (which we've discussed piecemeal before, but now we’ll consider it as a unit). Now, firstly I must say that, as I'd hoped for this class, the informing has been egalitarian – it's come from all of you as much as from me. So, even though I suggested that this painting is a contrast to the idea of transcendence in the Cezanne Large Bathers (a concave reality, rather than a convex possibility), one of you (Phyllis) pointed out then, rightly so, that the beautiful blue sky shining here, beyond the darkness of the strange, threatening jungle, is a certain, strong symbol of hope; the counterpoint to the vacuum created by the concave space of the dark forest – pointing towards the truth of hope beyond immediate despair. This is, interestingly enough, linked to that touchstone for Dr. Barnes' interest in the arts in general, and spiritual expression particularly: the spiritual songs at the tent meetings (which he was interested in for the rest of his life): those songs were often written in that same type of counterpoint/response to immediate despair (slavery and later discrimination alike), that we see here on the north wall, and in the Rousseau. But, as we know the center of an ensemble is usually only the beginning, so let's consider briefly how the aspect of hope may continue on into the wings of the ensemble. There seems to be two major allusions to, or symbols of hope in this ensemble. One of them is horizons, and other is flight. These two radiate out from the central, main struggle between hope and despair we see in the Rousseau. Firstly, the possibility of horizons, a symbol of protracted hope in the future, and related to both sunsets and sunrises (as we discussed in the talk on the revolutionary, with the Redon and Pippin in G 12). We can see the role of horizons in the Redon; the Renoir in the position opposite to the Redon; the Von Ruisdael; the Tintoretto (a companion to the Pippin, but with a different emotion). The theme of flight can be found in the Courbet; the small Cezanne at the upper left of a girl and birdcage; the Veronese (which also combines with the theme of horizons); the metaphor of flight can be found in the same Renoir as above, and so on, including the two Pennsylvania German carved parrots (Boppagoyen) below. In fact, the themes of horizons and flight are related; one flees (takes flight) to the horizon, which holds out hope for change; newness, and if nothing else, a change of scenery. Indeed, in paintings such as the Tintoretto (Woman at the Well), psychological as well as physical flight is implied: that age-old cooperation of the interior and exterior realities that we’ve discussed several times. Because of psychological stress, how many have fled physically? The refugees from spiritual and psychological turmoil are of an untold number. And the Renoir, though a more leisurely version of flight, corresponding more to the idea of escapism, akin to a pastime which allows temporary escape from pressure and pressing concerns of reality, is as much about finding psychological and spiritual release through physical flight. Flight, taken more literally with the symbol of birds, breaks off into two different possibilities: arrival and departure. In the Courbet and the Veronese, an arrival is shown: hope has arrived, from the horizon (not unrelated to Noah, of Noah’s ark fame, releasing then receiving back the dove carrying an olive branch, signifying the hope of peace from natural turmoil and divine judgment, and the hope of dry land!). In the Cezanne, we see an implied departure towards hope; a caged bird is let go, and happily too. I could continue, but I think the point is made, and the theme is established. Several of the paintings I'm unsure of how they fit into what I believe the rest of the ensemble is pointing towards and relaying, but this is not detrimental to the thoughts already put forward – an enduring element of mystery of the hanging's message and meaning is both incentive to keep questioning and connecting, and moving towards the hopeful horizon.

Now, on to the second part, the question which this aspect of hope points towards, and prepares a path for – What do we owe, having been given this treasure? And I want to stress that this is not my question, per se; it is rather a question I have felt; a question that I am asked by the Foundation. What is our responsibility as participants and receivers? What is our response; what is the price we should pay for our privilege? I will not put forward any more answers to this question; however I strongly encourage you to write it down, and return to it when you come back to the Foundation, either in body or spirit. There is one possible response I'd like to posit, and it's only mine by virtue of being chosen as a reading by me. I'd like to read this essay for you all, as a possible formation of an active movement towards answering the question I've posited. So here it is, “A Man with Tousled Hair”, chapter nineteen of John Berger's wonderful little book of essays entitled The Shape of a Pocket. Berger’s language can be a little thick, as well as highly original and thought-provoking, but I think once we near the end, hopefully you will see how it is related to our discussion; both our final aspect, and the final, closing question. So here it is; and I have copies of the essay you can take along with you if you like, to read and ponder further on your own.

(Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to include a transcript of the essay here, it is almost impossible to find online - at least when I looked. The best I can suggest is to find a used copy, or check your local library.)

2010: Janus and Ebenezer

2009-12-30T08:59:00.006-05:00

As if anyone could have a favorite Roman god, or as if it mattered, my choice (and I've probably mentioned this here before) would be Janus, the Roman god of doors, gates and doorways. And his namesake month, January (one of the last vestiges of his power, save the Janus Capital Group with its occasional television commercials) is nearly here.

So why Janus? Several years ago, a friend of mine pointed out to me that he noticed I liked hanging around in doorways...while conversing; while visiting; to survey both the room I was looking at, but also to have one foot in the space from where I was coming. Some might see this as wishy-washy or indecisive, and there is an element of that to it, I admit...but there is a particular personality that would be attracted to a limnal existence, object or space.

Without waxing solypsistic, allow me to explore this for a moment...I love tradition, but I equally treasure quality newness (not novelty...unless it's kitschy or over the top; for some reason that seems okay). The past is as rich (or often richer) with potential to be mined for experience and movement within life, as the future is...though neither is better than the other; it's a continuum.

In fact, especially in my work and practice, all new things (artwork, writing, etc.) have a deeply-set root in the past, no matter how unprecedented it may seem. And this is something I readily admit. Portions of two separate books I'm reading right now, On the Dehumanization of Art, a seminal essay by Ortega Y Gasset, and Markings, by Dag Hammarskjold, are informing my thoughts about the new year. In the Ortega Y Gasset essay, he references the inevitability and the sway held over contemporary artists, by the past, and the varying ramifications of one's approach to dealing with that fact. In his introduction to Markings, W. H. Auden is clear that a person is not able to really know themselves better than others can; there are always a few important details that only the person in question can provide, but otherwise, the largest percentage of our psychological outline, so to speak, our friends and acquaintances are able to fill in more fully. You would like to know yourself? Then keep in conversation with your friends and family. As good a resolution as any for the new year.

I think too, that the attraction to Janus is related to my additional love of the idea of an Ebenezer; a "stone of help"; a memorial set up in 1 Samuel 7 to acknowledge that "thus far, God has helped us". Another related tidbit, which accentuates even more the "almost, but not yet" aspect, is one of my favorite Scripture verses, where a man implores Christ, "Lord, I believe; help me with my unbelief". Seen this way, it's both an acknowledgment AND celebration of the double-edged reality of our humanness: our fallibility, and God's perfection. I think Janus comes from a similar impulse: a desire to both celebrate and acknowledge the past, AND what is to come.

So, all that said, I move forward cautiously into this new year, 2010 (and I regret I did not adopt the term "aughts" before now, as in "aught-9"), fully acknowledging that a step through a new gate does not mean a purging of all things from the previous year...we all carry the past years like dust on our shoes; some of it eventually causing a pleasing patina; the rest of it shaking off as we move through to better and different things.

What do I hope for this new year? I will only list a few things, and perhaps you will find some common to yours in this group...(in no particular order):

-increased health (I need to begin an exercise regimen).
-sufficient money to cover our bills (thank the Lord that, little by little, he's provided for us thus far...our personal Ebenezer).
-ability to get a new roof (desperately needed)
-either be able to keep my current studio, or find another appropriate space for my art work.
-pursue publishing of some of my writing.
-continuing success of Vicki's work, online business and otherwise (shameless plug: www.piccolotakesall.com)
-increased civility in the neighborhood, city, state, country and world (fostered by my very own actions and attitude).

AND, I think we'll stop there...I could go on.
Blessings to you, reader, and yours as you also move through the gate, and into a new year. Physically, it's "just another day", but psychologically and historically it holds much more import than that. And our psychological life looms larger than most of us like to admit.

So, raise a toast to Janus! And thank God for that Ebenezer.

Investigating Art and the Spiritual, Week 12: Visiting Artist, Zoe Cohen

2009-12-15T12:53:00.003-05:00

courtesy of www.episcopal-life.org

On this second to last meeting of our course, we hosted a Philadelphia artist for a presentation, Zoe Cohen. Ms. Cohen was trained at Haverford College, and received her graduate degree recently in New York. For more information and images, please visit www.zoecohen.com

Investigating Art and the Spiritual, Week 11: Student Presentations

2009-12-08T10:39:00.005-05:00

(above, some images of artists/works referenced by the presenters; top to bottom: Georges Seurat; M.K. Guth; Pam Taggart).

This week, three students presented to the rest of the class; two shared a presentation on a spiritual aspect related to the collection, and a third shared about the paper she is writing on a similar subject. Thanks to all three; you did an excellent job.

Next week: A visit and presentation from artist Zoe Cohen. http://zoecohen.com/home.html

Art Thoughts, Week 44 -- De Chirico and Collecting

2009-12-04T11:53:00.004-05:00

Charles Willson Peale, The Artist in his Museum, 1822.

Giorgio de Chirico, Sophocles and Euripides, 1925 (BF575).

NB: Since the class is winding down, my thoughts have returned to my unfinished project, 52 weeks of Art Thoughts; begun (believe it or not) January of 2008. SO, I wrote number 44/52 this week, not realizing until I'd written most of it, that I'd already done a piece on De Chirico. Ah well, "no hahm, no fow-el." Enjoy, and look for more of these throughout the rest of December and January.

Sophocles and Euripides, Giorgio de Chirico (Italian, 1888—1978), 1925, oil on canvas, BF575.

Collecting things – almost anything – seems to be an impulse common to the majority of humans. Amassing like things, according to particular definitions, criteria or guidelines, somehow finds constant purchase in the ridges of our brains, and tickles our fingertips. Charles Willson Peale, being a late-18th century artist of the highest order, as well as a thoroughly late 18th century man, had a bit of the nascent Wunderkammer bug about him. It wasn’t merely exoticism which drew him, though – a wealth of skeletons, artifacts and natural specimens was simultaneously a trove of painting and study props. Therefore not only was it zeitgeist, it was utilitarian – and undoubtedly a function of his delight. Consider The Artist in his Museum, a self-portrait of 1822 – with obvious pride and flourishing of demure delight, he offers us entrance. It is that held curtain, the pulling back of an obstacle to entrance (a symbol of imparted revelation), which connected me to Peale from de Chirico’s Sophocles and Euripides…

Here too, there is an implied slip of dark curtain on the right-hand side – though hardly enough to impede. Yet, there it is. De Chirico is thus inviting us into a strange and confused space – but unlike Peale’s space, this one by its nature is un-categorical. The figures, named after two ancient Greek thinkers, dominate centrally. And like many philosopher’s arguments, as well as many de Chirico figures, one is not sure whether the figure and concept is meant to seem solidified, or still animated – or somewhere in between? At the figures’ hearts, there is a sudden colorful blossoming of thought-form: inspiration that is fleeting; bright; and slippery. Tools are here to grapple with it – yet we wonder whether the hemlock has yet reached their hearts. De Chirico’s brush strokes seem to accentuate this psychological tentativeness: each stroke is a word in this narrative; compiled, they construct an illustrative picture. The assembled formal aspects create a narrative; though, like the brightly-colored shapes in the chests and backs of the figures, we are far more unsure of their purpose than we are of their form. What we might notice, though, is that the area of “thought-forms” is the most vibrant, free-form thing about this space. The buildings and space around them, even the figures, are as bright and vacuous as the common person’s stereotype of heaven. Additionally, the part of the body most often associated with this vivid flowering of thought, the head, is a dressmaker’s dummy head: a form only, stuffed with dumb filler, used only to imply a basic sense of humanness. The Greeks believed the bowels to be the seat of human emotion; perhaps the center of human thought for them was the heart?

Collecting thoughts rather than artifacts, these philosophers calmly gesture on in their evanescent and rarified scene – the most tentative and sketchy area of the already-tentatively painted surface. But how colorful and eye-catching their mental constructions are – there is obviously more thought spent on the interior collecting of thoughts, than on the world around them. Perhaps this really is their true purpose – but how much truth there is in this: the more appealing and grandiose our interiors become, the more hardened our external efforts may grow. Dostoevsky gave form to this idea when his Underground Man excoriated the current philosophers by “quoting” them as saying, “Everything is beautiful and lofty,” at the same moment their feet tread squalor.

Investigating Art and the Spiritual, Week 10: Subversive: Soutine, Italo Scanga, Rirkrit Tiravanija

2009-12-02T10:38:00.009-05:00

Chaim Soutine, (a painting very similar to Group of Trees; unsure of title).

Italo Scanga, Rabbit, 2000, cast bronze.

Italo Scanga, Lion Head Fountain, painted bronze, 1997.

Untitled (Still), 1992, Rirkrit Tiravanija

Untitled (Free), re-construction, 2003, Rirkrit Tiravanija

Subversive: Soutine, Italo Scanga, Rirkrit Tiravanija

As we've investigated over the past two months or so, finding the spiritual directions, aspects and focus of artworks, especially in the sometimes convulsive early-modern era, can take many different forms. Some of our aspects have been more traditionally aligned with spiritual meaning or purpose: transcendence; contemplation; timelessness – others have been more unexpected or controversial – formlessness; revolutionary. Our aspect for this week, the final one we'll look at, would most likely be in the latter group – especially at first glance. Subversiveness, like revolution, has both its pejorative and more positive spins. Revolution, seen positively through Pippin or Redon, has the power not just to purely revolt, but to allow us to tap into an ongoing, universal channel and pattern of personal and societal renewal. A question which arises from this realization may point us towards a positive side to subversiveness: what or who, if anything, allows us (or helps us) to tap into that renewing, refreshing universality? A subversive figure, folk hero (or trickster, as some cultures know them) or action may be just what is needed – a revolutionary to foment a revolution; a subversive personage or artistic practice to subvert the staled, powerless or harmful establishment, and reverse or revert things towards spiritual betterment and change. In his book Trickster Makes this World: Mischief, Myth and Art, author Lewis Hyde gives at least three culturally-diverse examples of tricksters: Coyote, the trickster figure of several Native American peoples, who is always being tricked and tricking; a figure who both activates and reveals through tricks into positive change and upheaval; Frederick Douglass, the African-American folk leader who was always alternately subverting and accommodating for the betterment of his people and his society; and Christ, the subversive Jewish teacher (rabbi) who recognized an authority separate from the established, earthly one, and invited people to, pied-piper like, follow him and together subvert, societally and spiritually. (Relatedly, Christ also obviated the fact that one's view of society influences your spiritual health and perspective, and vice-versa). All three of these examples were definitely vectors, or vicars of a sort, in the sense of a figure who channeled for our benefit, and objectified as an example, positive and powerful subversion of the Establishment for us. (The idea of a vicar may not be familiar outside of its ecclesiastical context, but its primary definition simply means someone or thing who is “serving as a substitute or agent”; we are generally more familiar with the related form “vicarious”). Our investigation begins with the preceding examples as images of what positive and successful subversion looks like, but our artists will specifically show us three ways of how the spiritually-linked idea of subversion might look in art and what that “look” means in reference to their spiritual insistence, voice and call. All three artists, as we will see, operate(d) as vicars, but each one takes a different tack with the idea of subversion – especially with defining what it is that needs to be subverted; and why and how that is to be done. Some did it deliberately; others more unconsciously, but each one fits into the category of spiritual, subversive fomentation one way or another.

We'll begin looking at our artists, and continue to unpack the idea of subversion as we go along. The first artist we'll look at is Chaim Soutine, here in Gallery 11 (Group of Trees on left; Landscape of Gourdon on right). Soutine has, in a way, become synonymous with a particular approach to painting, which was bold, unabashed and often deeply conflicted. Naturally, one would assume that much of this comes naturally from the artist's life situations and artistic questioning, rather than any particular self-imposed, subversive posturing or message-driven cause. Yet, to understand how Soutine might be concerned with a particularly subversive practice, let's consider the origins of the word itself. The Latin word “subvertere” means literally, “to turn from beneath”. So, here is that non-negative, un-baggage-laden beginning: to subvert means to simply turn over, as in new sod; a new leaf – the possibility of a new beginning. To develop this metaphor, think of the metaphor of plowing up the ground: this is a thoroughly positive direction for the idea of subversion – preparing a fertile area for renewed growth. The old layer is being put under, and the possibilities and fertility of another layer are replacing it (denoting a sense of purer originality beneath; an ancient untainted source). As far as Soutine goes, and his subversive action in paint, this is primarily a horizontal action, much like plowing – he is physically plowing the picture plane, turning over the paint to encourage new textural (and contextual) possibilities. Look at the tortured, overturned surface of these two paintings; its almost as if the previous generation's paint traditions have been plowed through, creating a new field for a new aesthetic. In much the same way, just as how the contemplative work we looked at (e.g. Tobi Kahn) with its gradual layering and piling on of paint begins to suggest an ancient, timeworn and carved/eroded surface, and causes us to become alert to the cavernous or carved feel (which is, in fact, its actual opposite), so this paint application also suggests its psychological opposite: after being piqued by the insistent and bravura application, one is drawn to its contrast – the thinner areas where it seems the paint has been turned over from. This contrast draws attention to the subversive act. (The reason I point towards the metaphor of plowing, rather than carving or erosion, is because plowing firstly, directly suggests new growth, and the metaphor is established by Soutine’s repetitive, insistent, parallel lines of application and attack, as is characteristic of plowed fields.) A second way that Soutine subverts aesthetics and thereby the psyche is through form: these are barely “trees” as we know them, but they are vicars of the idea and emotion of trees; they carry the twisted motion and emotion of a storm-tossed tree, and push it towards its psychological possibilities.

Not only were Soutine's paintings subverting metaphorically and formally through landscape, but he was also psychologically subverting the trope of portraiture. In Gallery 19, north wall, Soutine can be seen psychologically subverting the prevailing portraiture through these two flanking pictures. Again, Soutine seems to be plowing through the obvious surface (mask, top layer) of the sitter's psyche, and reaching down to something more essential, more primal and telling. He is subverting the traditional idea of a portrait being a record; a legacy; a promotion; an image-maker; or even advertisement (e.g. the Cranach in G 14) and turning it over into a psychological study, the likes of which had not been developed up to this point, in quite this powerful and combative a way. (This tradition will be continued by painters such as Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud, and Alice Neel: each subverted traditional portraiture in one particular direction or another, but all to more intense psychological possibilities). The distortion in the sitters' hands and faces; the similarly “plowed-up” paint surface, still revealing but covering over the previous layers with a new layer; the unrealistic movements and placements of the heads and features – all these elements belie both Soutine's new subversive pictorial aesthetic, and the mirroring of his own conflicts and psychological issues. If it is true that one often is agitated most by another who is most like oneself, then perhaps Soutine was as much subverting artistic tropes by looking inwardly as outwardly. A third aspect which Soutine begins to subvert almost simply by ignoring traditional color relationships is the overall color palettes of his portraits. Each one has a certain colored “cast” over it; the left with a bilious green haze over it, suggesting a deep-seated, depressive dis-ease or disenchantment; and on the right, a color scheme taut and tense, with a heating redness, alternately suggesting a high blood pressure; the sitter's face and position belying an intense stress of sorts. We are seeing opposite humors; extremes of human disharmony: implosion versus explosion.

Through all of this, Soutine continues to subvert the very tropes he chooses – landscape and portrait; imparting portrait-like qualities to landscape, and landscape-like qualities to portraits. In a way, all of artistic convention is game here for plowing under, and beginning again, to move past a spiritual barrenness and void sensed by Soutine in current art practice. However, he doesn't simply dispense with all convention – he keeps material and approach (i.e. application of a plastic material to a flat surface) largely intact. But as far as subject matter and psychological use of the formal means, he subverts freely the traditions of art, and of psychological revelation. He is metaphorically, formally and psychologically plowing under the pictorial and emotional planes, so as to plant a new order in the field of art – the fruit of which may be seen even now in artistic approach.

The second artist we'll be looking at displays another metaphor through which we'll investigate his particular type of playful and introspective subversion. Italo Scanga was an Italian émigré, who developed his sculptural craft in the United States in the middle of the last century (he taught briefly at Penn State and Temple's Tyler School of Art among others, finally retiring in California). Much of his work was made with a “found” sensibility; that is, he would harvest junk or discarded odds and ends, much like Rauschenberg began doing around the same time, and then either utilized them directly as material in his work, or cast whole ensembles of them, as he did with his much later work, in the form of bronze sculptural candlesticks. These candlesticks retain a very real sense of “collected meaning” about them – amalgamated, rather than monolithic. He occasionally worked within a decorative or communal (i.e. the collector participates) means, with something like a fountain or vase; incorporating movement and sound of water, and vessels of glass, and the interesting overlap created there between decoration, aesthetic function and utility. The work we'll look at for its subversive possibilities is from the series “Candlesticks”, his last series before his death in 2001. They are bronze casts, made up of stacked, balanced and seemingly-teetering found objects: they have a definite material and “contextual” commonality encouraged by the execution (i.e. bronze), but still ask provocative questions about the clash and interaction of contexts latent in the disparate objects and their sources. The piece is called simply Rabbit. There are various qualities which could be ascribed to this piece: whimsical; playful; precarious and, I would add, wryly subversive (as much of Scanga's work was – in a neo-Dada way, juxtaposing found materials for both their humorous and revealing properties.) We'll return to Rabbit in a moment, but firstly a quote, and then on to our second subversive metaphor. About Scanga's use of objects one essayist said,”…one finds not only the objects of his memory, but the scraps and fragments of the external world as well…they collect, stratify and, as if by some spell, begin to transform. The fragments that Italo gathers and amasses in his chosen spaces are not the 'objet trouves' beloved by the Surrealists; in other words, they are not objects which were consciously re-created and redefined through the action of the artist. In Scanga's case they are basic elements that represent the first stage in a creative process that is engendered by a fascination with marginalized, commonplace objects which eventually find connections” (Bonuomo).

For Soutine, we used the metaphor of plowing to investigate the subversive qualities of how he made and approached his work. For Scanga, however, we'll consider another metaphor related to the act of subversion, or “turning over from the bottom”: mining. The format and look of Scanga's work, predominantly vertical, recalls the subsequent form of totems, or totem poles. Totem poles were made traditionally (this is one interpretation) as hierarchical records of tribal ancestors or stories; it was a time-bound and historical “core sample” if you will, of that particular tribe's sensibilities, history and sense of themselves, past present and future. And the poles’ form relates directly to the form of the material itself; a tree, being a form which “mines” the earth for its purpose and strength. Scanga's Rabbit can be seen as relating to these metaphors of mining, core samples and totem poles, by the fact that it is made of “collected” objects laden with meaning and metaphor, placed together vertically as a collective statement of possible subversion (a turning over for positive change). This is an action analogous to plowing, but with different results in mind: whereas plowing is using old forms, agitated so as to plant in them new possibilities, mining is searching for leftover treasure with which to make talismans which in turn may point to a new arrangement: a new trope. Both though, it's important to realize, suggest a returning to ancient ways or means; not something entirely new, but newly re-constructed, or re-discovered.

Let's investigate the concerted possibilities of these forms for a moment. Each object in Rabbit has its own movement and purpose which contribute to the whole: the upside-down teddy-bear is a directly subverted symbol (suggesting an emotional “blood rushing to the head” of a prototypically cute symbol of childhood); the rabbit, conversely, is nudging up gradually and curiously as its nature calls for; wondering, but allowing the seemingly innocent bear to ask the difficult questions...then the spread-winged crane is a balancer between the cool wonderer (rabbit) and the hot actor/questioner (bear), his wing placement balancing out the two forces into a tenable, prolonged investigation into a subversive idea. Then the final (pinnacle) purpose of this exercise can be seen in the top urn (the business end of the candlestick) – the container of knowledge, history and light (candle) – a light by which to continue this renewing and renewable pattern of questioning (subversion) through all conditions. In a way, like the totem, and like Soutine and other subversive artists, Scanga's object “keeps the faith”; “keeps the fire burning” for the benefit of all those who will keep coming, ready and willing to turn the tables, plow up the fields for fertility; mine the earth's treasures; subvert the status quo in all directions, for a refreshed and renewed place to plant a new order, and to make a new future. Bonuomo says of Scanga's oeuvre, “In every work in his series...there is always a dimension of pathos that causes irritation, anxiety, and thought” – three emotions encouraged by (and encouraging to!) spiritually-renewing subversion.

Our third and final artist works less with traditional, tangible artistic material than he does with the stuff of relationships, sharing, memory and possibilities of the collective. Rirkrit Tiravanija is a Thai artist, who has lived and studied throughout the world and is currently based in London. His primary mode of creation is what might be called conceptualist happenings. A famous example is his Untitled (Still), an event which was held over several weeks in an emptied gallery, which consisted of the artist, and the occasional assistant, cooking Thai food for anyone interested in participating. And this raises a fascinating connection to the totem poles with which we associated Scanga's work: traditionally, at the completion of a year-long totem project, there is a potlatch (communal meal) held in celebration and honor for the project's completion. Listen to what a 1996 review of Untitled (Still) says: “Tiravanija is a Potlatch Conceptualist. The Native American potlatch banquet lasting several days, given by a member of the tribe: artistically speaking, that's what Tiravanija does for his art-world tribe. He cooks, you come; he gives, you take. The word potlatch means “big feed,” hence Tiravanija is a 'big feeder.' In the dialect of the Northwest Haida tribe, potlatch also means 'killing wealth;' in other words, to give something for free is to undermine wealth. Tiravanija seems to suggest that as wealth is accumulated, fewer and fewer people can enjoy it. To buy means to strike a deal. Things are clearly understood – a stasis occurs. A gift is different. A gift is more mysterious than property. The weight of a gift continually shifts from giver to receiver, creating reciprocal obligations” (Saltz). Compared with Soutine's metaphor of plowing, and Scanga's metaphor of mining, Tiravanija's tactic seems to combine both into one happily, wittily subversive movement: he plows into the surface of society (facile wealth and power on the skin of a true life); mines into history for its subversive possibilities (potlatch, totem ceremonies) and makes a nearly ephemeral, but extremely meaningful and powerful gesture. Much like a heartfelt and sacrificial dinner party, you have little left afterwards, tangibly or tactilely, but the impress of the event, relationships and conversation imprints you and will impact your perception for your entire life. From the review again: “It turns out giving things away isn't so easy: it's viewed as a subversive act that undermines notions of property and value” (Saltz). And this comes back to the image of the Trickster motif: someone receiving a free meal may think they're getting the better of the offerer or giver – but what the consumer takes away will most likely never leave him or her; persisting long after the food (the message's vector) is digested and disposed of. The receiver is the one tricked; the artist has the last laugh, but no one is the lesser: both are better off than before. Saltz again says of Tiravanija and Warhol, also a trickster of sorts, “Things happen around them: they are ciphers, drifters, village idiots who change the village.” The participant may enter feeling confused, and the food in the stomach may only last a few hours, but the inter-relational consciousness and widened world-view gained will be etched on the brain of those who consider it seriously. And isn't all subversion obvious mostly to those who are really paying attention? Those who miss the light allusion may question the need for subversion at all – that is it seems, why we have people like Soutine, Scanga and Tiravanija – to frame our questions for us, and posit life-altering, overturning, subversive possibilities to us, in the form of art.

Investigating Art and the Spiritual, Week 9: Video, Paul Klee: The Silence of the Angel

2009-11-24T10:25:00.005-05:00

This week the class watched and discussed the DVD, Paul Klee: The Silence of the Angel. We found it to be a well-crafted and illuminating, but not heavy-handed, biopic of this "artist's artist", as one class member called Klee. We recommend it highly. Following are the questions we considered after viewing the film; feel free to use them to establish some lines of thinking if you decide to rent the film (it is available through Netflix).

11/23/09
Discussion Questions on Paul Klee: The Silence of the Angel

1. Do you find the connection between Klee’s art and music to be convincing and meaningful? Does this connection inform about, or confirm for us anything about the Klee pieces in the Foundation?

2. What about the documentary do you think speaks most clearly about the spiritual in Klee’s art?

3. What spoke most clearly about timelessness (our investigation through Klee’s work) in the documentary?

4. A phrase in the documentary refers to Klee’s finding the “prehistory of the visible”. What do you think this means?

5. What does the documentary, if anything, get wrong, in your opinion?

6. It is mentioned that Klee’s aim was not to represent nature, but to find its essence. Do you think this is

accurate?

Investigating Art and the Spiritual, Week 8: Ritualistic: Rouault, Joseph Beuys, Tom Friedman

2009-11-17T09:44:00.011-05:00

Georges Rouault, Le Pierrot sage, 1943, oil on paper

Joseph Beuys, I love America and America Loves Me, action, 1972

Tom Friedman, Untitled, soap and hair, 1999.

Tom Friedman, Untitled, toothpicks.

Ritualistic: Rouault, Joseph Beuys, Tom Friedman

Why might ritual be important to a spiritually-attuned artwork? And especially why might it be important to glimpsing the spiritual (the transcendent) in early-modern artwork? Hadn't much of modernity moved past needing the reminders, repetition, reiterations; the keeping of “rites” or passages which earlier generations had considered so important? As mentioned before, there are some artists who merely suggest or casually point to a spiritual vein or aspect in their artwork; and there are others who display it on their artistic sleeves, so to speak, and establish it as the core of their practice (Klee, I’ve mentioned specifically, as falling within this category). The artist we'll begin with to examine that sideline of early-modernity is Georges Rouault. But firstly, a few more words on ritual itself and its importance as a means towards a spiritually-attuned artwork. Ritual is normally involved with specificity: specific in its place, time and manner in which it's done – appropriate technique, order and materials are all important to performing a ritual correctly. Writ large, a ritual is a practice (or rite/passing through) grounded in place and material, which removes us to things larger than ourselves; gives us a picture of purposes and realities outside of our regular routine, and reminds us that we are not the be all and end all of life. Prepositions are often used to describe the proper role of ritual: outside; beyond; above; between. Anthropologist Victor Turner says of ritual – be it ancient, traditional or modern – that it is “quintessentially, a time and place lodged between all times and places” (Suquet 151). With most traditionally religious rituals, the place where it is done is important, but even more important is the realization that, once begun, the ritual itself is essentially “time”-less and “place”-less – that is, an appropriate and powerful ritual is both specific and universal in its meaning, import and effect. It is a kinetic symbol; a symbol in action. Therefore, in an artist's work such as Rouault's, there are always certain aspects of it which will be consistently touching in their universality and timelessness (i.e. they touch our hearts and existence). There are, of course, critics, critiques and disparagements of ritual – those who say that it's antique in the worst way (a relic), is meaningless and rote; and should be dispensed with in order to let in fresh tropes and means. Interestingly enough, similar critiques were (and still occasionally are) leveled at the first artist who we'll look at, who used a fresh, re-imagined concept of ritual in the making of his art, and the forwarding of his beliefs.
Rouault was a lifelong, devout French Catholic, who surely became familiar with the pattern, style and meaningfulness of ritual early on. After his teacher Gustave Moreau died, Rouault began adopting the style for which he is best known even now: his thickly-applied and repetitiously layered paint; the recurring themes of grotesqueness in his use of prostitutes, clowns, acrobats and other figures which represent the extremities of human life and emotion. So, how is ritual made alive, active and prescient in the work of Rouault? I believe we can effectively divide his practice into three aspects which speak to and use ritual (and around which various techniques and formal elements will arrange themselves). Firstly, there is a ritual of technique (through particular means of creation); secondly, there is ritual of subject or theme (by what is depicted and addressed pictorially); and lastly, there is a ritual of repetition (directly ritualistic, to accentuate the two former aspects).
To illustrate what I mean by ritual of technique, we'll look firstly at his painting here in G 8, The Little Maid (by the way, this could be considered along with Acrobat and Dog, in G 19, which also shows a definite ritualistic technicality). To begin with a visual explication of what I'm after, let me show you what I mean by “raking light”, a technique used by conservators to gain a better sense of the actual topography, so to speak, of the painting's surface (proceed to demonstrate raking light). What had been fairly flat in the normal gallery light, suddenly takes on a new dimension; a new depth, explicating the actual process of applying paint, used by Rouault. In some ways, this recalls the technique and surface of Tobi Kahn's paintings – they have been built up so significantly over time, so as to seem nearly carved out or excavated from the paint – even though this is a definite additive process; not reductive. And that is a distinction which is important: an additive practice or technique in painting implies several points from which to choose: obsession; devotion; deliberation or decisiveness. For Rouault, it may have been a little of each of these, but I believe the dominant reason for the thickly repetitious layering-on of paint is due to his devotion firstly (ritual) and subsequently his decisiveness. That is, ritual is one of the means (tools) by which we reach a certain decisiveness or resolve, out of our residual indecisiveness of life. We pick this up like silt in our shoes by walking those well-trodden paths of doubt; denial and the idolatry of the new. So, ritual here seen in paint is firstly a devotion to a belief in line; used equally to remind, comfort, rejuvenate and reorient (in relation to the above disorientation). Besides layering of paint, however, we can note the devotional use of both luminous color, and the color being encased or “set” in a way, in visual “leading”, reminiscent of stained glass (probably a reminiscence of Rouault's first exposure to religious expression and ritual in the Catholic church buildings). The delineation we discussed last week in relation to Matisse and Prendergast, is here used towards a very different look and purpose (though harmony is still at work in Rouault as an impetus). The figure and objects (positive space); that which the “light” works through, is what is meant to be the subject; the carrier of emotion: the leading role, if you will. The “packaging” or delineation of the dark, leaded lines, on the other hand, is the “encouragers” of emotion: they are the core of the ritual; the place and material; the engine of that which Rouault and his work are conveying – or, the supporting role, to continue the theatrical metaphor. Thus, the thickly dark lines are often the very areas which are subjected to the most vigorous, ritualistic reapplication of paint, towards reiteration and reminder.

To illustrate the next connection between Rouault and ritual, let's move to G 11 (Clowns) to consider the idea of ritual of subject or theme. In an early (1953) review of a Rouault exhibit, the writer says “Rouault emerged from this period [after the death of Moreau his teacher] with a new style, his mark; violent paintings of prostitutes, clowns, jugglers painted in gouache and watercolor in a predominantly dark blue tone. The surfaces of many of these pictures were alive with a storm of violently expressive brush strokes, frequently at odds with the main forms, sometimes bounding them. The shadows and contours are often arbitrarily placed, vigorous gestures to nail down some feeling of disgust or horror. Yet underneath the furious surfaces these paintings have an extraordinary solidity. The figures sit heavy and firm in opposition to the movement about them” (Lansner 456).
Two words used in the page following this quote continue the two possible approaches to Rouault's work and technique: “obsessive”, and “repeatedly”. There is some gravitas, besides the loaded technical and formal choices, which clearly caused Rouault to continually revisit the subjects and themes of clowns, prostitutes, acrobats, etc; indeed, the head of Christ. But what might that be? Perhaps this is an iota of a direction: each one of these groups is involved in an entertainment or diversion: circuses are meant to entertain; escorts or prostitutes' services are meant to both divert and entertain – but each of these are also an exaggeration of their origins: the prostitute is meeting a natural need, unnaturally; the clowns and acrobats are certainly skilled, and of course entertaining, but they are so in an overly artificial way. They seem to be exaggerated surrogates for the real thing. In other words, the characters that Rouault chooses over and over to depict in his paintings are all involved in diversion of a vicarious manner. These characters are both antithetical to his depiction of Christ (considered a true vicarious figure; and also a repeated theme in Rouault's art) as well as ritualistic vehicles for Rouault to deal with his own feelings of discontent; disorientation; discomfort with the world around him. He dealt with a modern spiritual anguish, in an artistically modern way, but with a traditionally ritualistic manner. Lansner says again, “these subjects, particularly the degraded prostitutes, are only the necessary vehicles for Rouault's own intense feelings of revulsion” (456). And this anguish, both personal ennui and a malaise with the world condition, was revisited time and time again, through the figures of grotesqueness, carrying his emotions; acting out their opposites in a dark and subliminal manner, but effectual enough that Rouault kept calling upon them repeatedly. (Of the pieces by Rouault here at the Foundation alone, five of the seven incorporate one of the character types mentioned above). All of this, ironically, was pulled off with the greatest sense of “compulsive restraint”, the very opposite of what these exaggerated characters represented (Lansner 456). A final important point is Rouault’s strong identification with his revisited characters: he is never judgmental, but commiserating, and offers an alternative through the ugliness to a beauty beyond; within.
So, the third ritualistic aspect in Rouault combines these first two into one: the ritual of repetition. We've discussed this aspect in a sideways manner already, with the discussion of ritual of technique (being repeated to make a visual and metaphorical point), and the ritual of subject or theme (a deliberate revisiting of cathartic vehicles). In each of these, repetition was already an important element. But repetition should be talked about within its own relationship to ritual, outside of any particular means. This is because, as we've mentioned before, ritual is ritualistic partially by virtue of being repeated, and is most often repeated within a particular framework: specificity of time, place, materials and words if applicable; all arranged in a specific way. Here in Acrobats and Dog, in G 19, is an example of repetition’s power as ritual. An acrobat is an oft-visited theme for Rouault: a symbol of the bounded yet unbounded freedom within the paradoxical human dynamic. Acrobats follow a type of ritual according to a strict discipline; they soar, fly and spin – but they always come back down. (Transcendence is not useful if one never comes back “down” again.)
In a way, the repetition of a ritual is a dialing-back for the human psyche: we return for a time to previous state of timelessness and place-lessness. Dug deeply into a ritual in the here and now, we may dig right through to a fresh realization or fresh understanding. This, it must be stated, is the ideal for ritual. Some things and means called ritual have become rote, tired and powerless, through negligence or lack of skill. Indeed, some may say this about traditional art; others may claim modern or contemporary art to be this way. Unless we repeat a ritual for the right reasons, this seems to be an inevitable result of our efforts. Instead of repetition additively creating a place, texture and understanding for transcendence, we create instead a “rut”, which we get stuck in, repeating an empty, hissing note.
In the Rouault works we've seen continual repetition of mark-making and paint-application; searching for an assurance of transcendent possibility. We've also seen continual repetition of subject or theme, to therein understand ourselves and our emotional needs and foibles more clearly. Finally, while we have revisited briefly here the idea of “additive” practice in Rouault, let me mention the related but different ritualistic act we might see in some of the African figurines here in G 22. Several of these figurines you may notice have what seems at first glance to be broken off, or splintered limbs. But upon closer inspection, the breaks look very old, so that the broken edges have a similar patina to the undisturbed surfaces. This is partially due to a belief among some tribes that, if they broke or carved off a tiny scrap or splinter of this figurine, which to them was possessed of a life power, a portion of that figure's power would go with them, and benefit, heal and protect them. In contrast to the Rouault ritualistic technique, this one is clearly reductive, rather than additive. However, an analogous sentiment or belief is active here: rather than mentally or visually internalizing a concept through repetition on a surface (paint), the devotee is actually taking and themselves tangibly possessing a portion of that figure's power for alteration – on their person, and at their disposal. And actually, the community, through their mutual belief and action, is together acting to make this an even more powerful ritualistic activity. So, not only does the actual look of the Rouault works mimic and have some affinity with the look of the African figurines, but also a similar ritualistic response is happening; one additive and the other reductive: in both instances, the human core realizes the transformative power in a repetitious act (reminder/rite), both psychologically and physically.
Now that we've considered Rouault fairly thoroughly, let's discuss an artist of the latter part of the 20th century, who was immersed quite deeply in the concepts, practices and especially the possibilities of ritual in artwork; ritual to repair, revitalize and remind: all appropriate functions of true ritual, and connected with what Rouault was involved with, in his own more comparatively traditional manner. That artist is Joseph Beuys, a German artist who dealt with such diverse expressions such as Joseph Cornell-style box constructions; actions; as well as more traditional mediums such as watercolor, graphite and sculpture. Most famous for his real-time actions, Beuys considered himself to possess a shaman-type expression, sharing a message of healing and reparation to all people, all of whom he considered to be artists – everyone to a person. In his actions, which were replete with what were highly-loaded and symbolic materials and objects, he interacted with those materials and occasionally animals or other people, to create a sculpture-in-time, as it were, with a definite message and meaning. A few examples of his occasionally unusual but very deliberate material choices are fat (tallow), felt, honey, copper, iron and wax. He saw each of these materials, especially fat, as deeply symbolic and almost alchemically (tenuous/fugitive) engaged entities. For example, whenever he used the material of fat, it was directly related to a desire to instigate a dynamic of warming, and also a sense of change or organic fluctuation. Fat itself easily moves from solid to liquid with a slight temperature change; it is also paradoxical in that it is mildly repulsive to some as a pure material, but desirous in that it is consumed and craved after. We all are, after all, keepers of fat, if you will. Therefore, it is a material of highly transmutable and almost fugitive (easily changed/capricious) properties. It is influenced easily; and easily influential. Ritual for Beuys was a theatrical opportunity for invoking change and healing, within the message and manipulation of a limited set or group of materials, each of which had or carried a particular, significant body of meaning. And as he manipulated them, that desire, message or vehicle would be made more obvious. It was almost as if an alchemist was letting an audience in on the process, watching him work; there existed an explication of sorts by watching the action, but also a persistent and intriguing mystery, even though the materials may have been explained. In this way, the ritualistic expression in Beuys was both highly personalized (his way of working), and universally applicable (the egalitarian or workaday materials, requisitioned by Beuys's personality). All this to say, despite his desire to reconnect us to the natural world, the hovering spiritual world, and indeed to our own disenfranchised selves, there is a persistent, lingering mystery surrounding him and his work, which either serves to give him an aura of an artistic holy man, or a complete and utter madman and poseur – both of which he has been defined as being. This is related to Rouault’s desire to withdraw from the world, and so to engage life from a place of ritual, to re-engage with the imaginative natural world. To sum Beuys up, perhaps better than I have so far, is this quote from an article comparing anthropologic ritual and Beuys:
“All of Beuys work is oriented toward the idea of the 'transformational process of human consciousness' and of its relation to the world, by the effect of the methods that can show reality in a different light. It comes as no surprise that Beuys's strategy should have something in common with archaic rituals, if we accept that many of them are 'ways of saying and doing,' aimed at transcending the given and at conjuring up, through some 'exceptional perception,' a form of 'presence which common perception lacks.' Suquet goes on to say, “The imperceptible, the seminal reason of things, throbs at the very heart of the concrete. Archaic thought perpetually dwells on the matter that the world is made of, and so does Beuys. It is through matter that what cannot be represented can be experienced. The equilibrium of man's relation to the world lies in this experience that reveals to us the unpresentable from which we proceed and that comprises us. Creating the conditions for this revelatory experience – within the bounds of meaning, time, and space – is the aim of many archaic rituals and Beuys's work” (Suquet 151).
So as Rouault's work is involved with rituals of technique, theme and repetition, Beuys’s work takes the idea of a ritual seriously, to the point of actually performing a ritual, in the milieu of modern art. And his careful, material-specific preparation of a space in which to act, corresponds to what we noted as important to a ritual; an action or rite within a controlled space and time, which allows us to transcend that enclosed and defined place, to experience psychological, spiritual and ideally physical renewal and reorientation, and then a subsequent return to where we began, with the ability (and materials) with which to repeat the ritual as necessary for our equilibrium and well-being. How much we are open to the possibilities, in both Rouault's and Beuys's expressions, depends to a large deal on us. In other words, do we feel a need to respond to these invitations to contemplative, transforming ritual?
A third and final artist who we'll visit briefly, and who works with a ritualistic sensibility – again with common, banal materials, but this time with their own symbolic possibilities, uninfluenced by the artist – is Tom Friedman. (I will mostly introduce you to Friedman's work and thought, and you may investigate further if you are interested.) Friedman deals with some of the same ideas of ritual, repetition and intellectual and psychological prodding as our first two artists, but with a slightly more American, casual spirituality; more individualistic and 21st century: as if to say, if you respond to his obsession with materials fine, but if you don't there's no skin off the artist's back. Friedman employs household items or materials, such as glue, straws, pencil shavings and pencils, string, aspirin tablets, sugar cubes, laundry detergent and sheets of paper...engaging them on their own terms, but also mining them for any metaphorical, ironic or spiritually-questioning possibilities, in such ways as to make your household chores never be the same again. To really help explain Friedman's work, and its role in our discussion of ritual, let me read a portion of an interview with him: (read Hainley, et al, 11—13). (Quote on its way...)

To see a documentary on Joseph Beuys, in seven parts, please visit the following links:

Joseph Beuys documentary, Arena-1987, Parts 1 – 7 Links:

Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9_rYiBm_Qk

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk-zzCjGQy0&feature=related

Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL3wHr0FbVI&feature=related

Part 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZgZTHbHUAI&feature=related

Part 5:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zajVX_nPufU&feature=related

Part 6:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMIWBO-MB8Y&feature=related

Part 7:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HSugkIBy4k&feature=related

And for more images of Tom Friedman's work, visit:

http://www.gagosian.com/artists/tom-friedman/

Investigating Art and the Spiritual, Week 7: Harmonious: Matisse, Charles Prendergast, Robert Mangold

2009-11-12T15:12:00.008-05:00

Robert Mangold, Violet/Black Zone Study, 1996

H. Matisse, The Music Lesson

Charles Prendergast, Figures on a Mule

Robert Mangold, title unknown

Robert Mangold, titles unknown

Harmonious: Matisse, Charles Prendergast, Robert Mangold

Harmony, when first approached (and indeed when first looked up in the dictionary) seems to reference a musical sensibility first of all. And this sense will in fact be important as we investigate how spiritually-attuned artwork addresses (or utilizes) the idea, execution and look of harmony. And indeed, music plays a crucial part in the well-being of the spirit and the psyche, and the promotion of all levels of harmony: the notes play on our spirits as surely as they are played on an instrument; and as surely as the elements of a well-crafted artwork play upon our emotions. A first implication of something possessing harmonious elements, is that that thing must be composed of various components among which harmony is accomplished – otherwise, the harmony will not be contained or internal within the piece, and not emanate from it. An impetus for harmony may come from a single thing, but true harmony requires numerous constituents. In fact, both definitions of harmony I found in the dictionary used the word “parts”. In addition, the root from the Greek from where “harmonious” is derived, is the word for “joint”, as in elbow, shoulder, etc. This suggests our first implication, and suggests another: a joint is not only two parts, but it is two parts which may work together, to accomplish more than the individual part may – together, a joint (harmony) can encourage success; a means towards a better end. Our forearm and bicep can accomplish much more than just the forearm; and combined with the parts of the hand, wrist and fingers – the possibilities for working in harmony are almost endless. A third implication is a shift from here – for harmony to be derived, and thus for it to achieve something (even if only greater harmony) their goal needs to be a common one. If a joint (partners desiring harmony) work against each other – nothing will be achieved. On the other hand, what Jehovah said about those working on the tower of Babel, in the book of Genesis: with a common language, “nothing will be impossible for them”. So common cause and common belief – towards a particular end, even, like I said, if only more harmony – are necessary. (This brings to mind some of the early American utopian experiments, especially one named “New Harmony”, in Indiana.)

There are numerous signifiers in art that can point towards harmony, and a harmonious desire. We will turn to that next. And as I mentioned, music; dance; as well as pattern and repetition, will play their parts here in their investigation of spiritual harmony through artwork. Each artist we examine will utilize the idea and tool of harmony somewhat differently, but commonalities will arrange themselves around some themes: harmony within oneself (our individual parts); harmony with others (direct communal harmony as individual parts); and harmony with nature (a different party altogether, but inextricable connected to us – and often requiring reconciliation).

The first artist we’ll look at will be Henri Matisse. Now, even Lipsey admits that Matisse, if not fully agnostic, spoke little about a spiritual content or concepts within his artistic practice. (This can also be said about the last artist we'll look at, Robert Mangold). This however, does not dissuade us from noticing a very real pattern of desiring of (generally) a spiritual nature in his art, and more specifically a desiring and implication of true harmony in his expression. In fact, Lipsey states a belief that “the spiritual potential of equilibrium is easily overlooked. Nothing sticks out, no brows are furrowed, no weighty vows are taken, no grinding remorse is experienced. Yet the balance in Matisse's pictorial world is not slack or routine; it gives the impression of being earned over and over again by a return to first principles and rediscovery of wholeness” (Lipsey 263). And connected to this, Matisse himself said, “What I dream of is an art of balances, of purity, of tranquility, with no anxious or worrisome subject, which would be, for all cerebral workers – for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example – a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair that relaxes his physical fatigue” (Lipsey 250). (Notice any inklings of an early Barnes in that last quote?) In the first Matisse we'll look at, The Music Lesson in G 19, there is a strong current of harmony which pulls from two harmonizing elements we've noticed: the harmonious nature of a community (here Matisse's family), and the harmonizing nature of music (and actually, addresses how they might be connected, by showing two members of the family involved in making music together). In fact, a third element of harmony is implied here as well, which is internal harmony, which is harmony within oneself. Observe each of the figures of Matisse's family – each one is (besides the mother and son at the piano) absorbed with their own activity, and seem to exude an inner harmony, while at the same time implying harmony among the various family members – they are happy to be with each other, it seems, as Matisse has included all of them within his framing of the picture. In fact, some think that he included the violin as his own presence within the family portrait. (Framing, incidentally, will be come important as we continue, in achieving a sort of harmony; for one, within the painting itself, but also as a tool which encourages a harmonious feel or spirit within the painting's scene). But firstly, a few more words on the use of musical themes in spiritually-attuned art, and its use in the encouragement of harmony. Music, among many other things, draws together; attracts; it soothes, comforts, encourages and inspires; it levels out, democratizes (like all good art). Think of the story of how young David was hired as a skilled harpist to comfort the tortured soul of the Israelite King Saul. When music is present in an artwork's composition, much of this is inferred. We know that, as in many families, there was conflict in Matisse's. But music in The Music Lesson could perhaps be an emotional linchpin for an otherwise tenuously-relating group of people. In other words, music served to make them more of a family. Matisse may actually be implying this by the inclusion of his violin – music, he might be saying, is one thing that unites; helps hold us together as a family; soothes our emotions; draws commonality (mother and son, e.g.). And that is how I (he might go on) as the progenitor of both this family and painting, have chosen how to convey that harmonizing impulse. More could be said about this painting and its implied harmony: for example, by the inclusion of a garden – the touchstone, often, for human and nature harmonization – but music especially plays a large part in this piece and its harmony.

Another dominant element that Matisse utilizes in his paintings that evokes, or even reaches back to an important precedent for desire for harmony, is that of mythological themes. And this harmonizing element will allow us to continue on into our next artist – but first a few more words on Matisse. Let's look next at Joy of Life, to investigate this. In fact, this important painting again combines mythological themes with two other elements that we've already mentioned: music, and of course nature. By mythological themes, I refer to a particular type of Arcadian state; a Garden of Eden, with an idyllic spirit of freedom; the utopian harmony of a former, more pristine state, prior to inter-human wrangling – the kind of idea that was both attractive and insidious as exoticism in certain times. There are implications of classical myth in the playing of the Pan flutes, and in the agora-like philosophizing groups, free-thinking in free time. The overall feel, too is as said, of an idyllic space in which music, dance and free-thinking is both the result of, and the cause of, a great harmony; a self-perpetuating harmony of a self-reliant, enclosed place (as nature is occasionally viewed). This form of mythology seems to have acted as a touchstone of ageless consistency for balancing out or harmonizing Matisse's pictorial and aesthetic relationship with the seen world – it is an idealized standard of sorts; a visual and metaphorical pitch-pipe. Here too, is the place to reiterate how Matisse utilizes groups of figures, again encouraging the concept of harmony in his artwork. It can be seen in this painting, and in the last one, and combined with the further harmonizing of music; music shared between people, or the mere implication of space for sharing of those elements, such as we see here in the Joy of Life. That providing of space, whether natural or domestic, which we can see in this painting and the last, is in and of itself an important element of a spiritually-encouraging harmonizing. Space implies the availability of freely-associated or created communities – peaceful relationships that mediate; modulate; bring sanity and calmness to one's soul.

On this note, let's move to G 16 to look at Charles Prendergast's work on panel, Figures and Mule . We last mentioned appropriate space as being evocative of or facilitating to a harmonizing nature in Matisse's work. As far as color, the almost-shocking yellows, pinks and greens also serve to heighten the senses, and illustrate the unique opportunities afforded in this space of freedom: the color is at a high pitch. Space also plays an important role in Charles Prendergast's works on panel. Not unlike (and perhaps even more so than) his brother Maurice's works, Charles' utilizes a clearly frontal and flattened picture area – all the figures, foliage, even the crafted and geometrically undulating hills and streams are up in the front – delineated strongly by carving of the gesso layer. Here is an even more idealized natural space, to the point of almost feeling alien or other-worldly – but not negatively; heaven rather than Hades, or purgatory. There are several other elements, as well as connections to Matisse, which illustrates a sense of harmony as well. Firstly, like some of Matisse's works, Prendergast has created a new-world mythology; an Eden where figures, angels, animals and plants all are interacting and cooperating incredibly harmoniously. It is like a gilded, Transcendentalist version of Edward Hick's Peaceful Kingdom paintings. And even though Prendergast has populated it with varied figures, it is a type of personal yearning at the same time it is universal: an on-going Eden left from before the Fall, a place one may return to and re-mine for its spiritual treasure of peace, and co-laboring among sundry groups and elements. To convey this “treasured space” sense, Prendergast has utilized a material treasured for its value, and beauty as well as its metaphorical, mystical properties: gold. And mixed with the baser materials of paint, bole (an undercoat for applying gold leaf) and plaster/gesso, Prendergast is enacting a type of psychological alchemy; seeing if what is depicted may produce a gilded spirit as well as surface – and by using gold, suggesting that it might very well do so!

There are other signifiers of a desire for harmony: music in some of Prendergast’s paintings; charity between beasts and humans, as well as celestial beings – but by far, the most important formal signifier may be the clarity with which he conveys and crafts all of this within his framed Arcadia. By virtue of his talent, work and materials, Prendergast has both made all elements of the picture incredibly clear and therefore valued – each leaf, flower, limb, feature and detail of the panel is afforded equal value – and this I think conveys an incredible sense of and desire for harmony of a spiritual nature. Each detail is given equal clarity; and thus nearly equal devotion and time to craft. This may speak not only to the conscientious craft and technique of Charles Prendergast, but also to the spirit in which it was conceived and made. Along with this, the integral frame, also gilded, holds it together as a package; a place-away; a transcendent place of harmony, peace and good-will to all who desire it – not only for Charles Prendergast the person and artist, but also for all viewers who spend their own time perusing the space he has crafted so lovingly.

Since we have now mentioned the integral frame, and therefore the idea of delineation, packaging, and other forms of framing, let's continue with that idea, in front of a Matisse, again. Looking at Le Danse, here in the balcony, a thematic continuation can be seen, in the form of an arch, and subsequently, a repeated arch. One may protest that this was simply the space which Matisse was given, by Dr. Barnes, and that he had to aesthetically deal with it regardless – but I think both Matisse's spatial acuity and willingness, as well as Barnes' insight into the motifs and technique of Matisse, easily move us beyond that protest. In other words, an arch ended up being a natural boon for Matisse, and may even predict his later commissions for more directly religious spaces. The second thing the arch suggests, which is reiterated by the careful outlining of the forms with subsequent “edging” brushwork, is the neatness and care with which the dynamic dancers are flattened and delineated by the deliberate brushwork. This serves both to allow their activity to contrast, and fine-tunes, in a way, the poignancy of their expressive dancing. This is not unlike the seeming effective incongruousness of his later cut-paper pieces being incredibly and unexpectedly vivacious and animated. So, here as in many other Matisse works, the delineation and reiteration of edges and therefore shape/form show a care to harmonize not only internally within the composition, but also psychologically and spiritually – for are these not integrally connected, as we've been seeing repeatedly – the physical/formal with the spiritual/psychological?

Along with Matisse in the “internal compositional” harmony which seems to suggest a yearning, however verbally unexpressed, for a spiritual harmony, is the work of Robert Mangold. Among artists reticent to expound on their work, Matisse must be counted – but Mangold must surely be near the top of this list as well. In the spirit of mid-century trained Abstract Expressionists, Mangold adamantly refuses to talk about his work in any contextual, metaphysical or symbolic way – he insists all that is necessary is there, within the piece itself. So, why include Mangold in a discussion of how formal means may point to spiritual concepts? Well, in a way my response nearly answered it. The clues are already there for us to pick up on, so let's take Mangold at the rules of his own game. On the face of them, Mangold's paintings are formal arenas – color, shape, line and layering of paint are all extremely important, and really, are all we have to begin working with. The first thing we may notice, piqued as we are for it, is the arched shape of many of his canvases. Inspired by a painting by Pontormo, Mangold has incorporated this shape repeatedly. To me, this seems to suggest a search; a yearning for not only a compositional harmony, but also an “overarching”, and comprehensive, corresponding life harmony. An artist (almost) always does a piece (and here it's a series!) for more reasons than are evident “on the surface”, regardless of how they may protest. Case in point: Mangold responding to the classical harmony within the Pontormo. Someone reaching back for inspiration and answers belies a desire for something which is not in immediate grasp. An arch (as we discussed briefly in front of the Kulmbach last week) suggests a stability; an internal, pre-existing harmony, to which the rest of the formalism that Mangold introduces responds to (the ovals, for instance, or the color relationships) and move along with towards an even tighter, more peaceful, self-perpetuating (as in Prendergast) harmony among all elements, and I believe the artist and viewers themselves.

Investigating Art and the Spiritual, Week 6: Revolutionary: Redon, Pippin, Matthew Ritchie

2009-11-06T11:54:00.003-05:00

Matthew Ritchie, Proposition Player, 2005 (aerial view)

Matthew Ritchie, Proposition Player, 2005 (detail)

Revolutionary: Redon, Pippin, Matthew Ritchie

The concept of a revolution most often brings to mind a political revolution – in the guise of Karl Marx, who said fundamental change can only be brought about by the revolution of the proletariat masses against the government. And this type of revolution is normally seen as a one-time occurrence – something permanent, violently replaced by something else permanent. And yet, as a spiritual idea, that of hope in renewal, revolution has a somewhat different meaning or connotation. Revolution in this sense is meant as more of a “revolving”; to go or come around again; a pattern of re-cycling. It connotes the opportunity for our continual personal renewal and refinement, within the continually returning possibilities for such, much like the seasons, birth and life, etc. In this sense, the future comes from the past; and life comes from death – death never being the complete end it is often seen as, and the future not necessarily being brand-new as is often implied. For the seed to be viable, the fruit needs to die and rot away. The concept of revolution could also be seen as having the further permutations of continual refinement, or of a tearing down/razing – related, but one more negative towards a positive end, and the other more positive overall (a gradual tweaking or refinement). But put simply, to effect spiritual change, a revolution is often refreshing in three senses: firstly, as the good and timely opportunity for change in general, and two, the sense that it is a returning opportunity; that is, the person moving on to new things is renewed by the realization that they are involved in a grandly recurring pattern of often difficult, but necessary, change, upheaval and refinement. And finally, revolution can be a spiritually refreshing concept in it's implication that the opportunity is arriving as part of a community; revolution often being a communal opportunity. But, as we've already alluded to, this revolution – any revolution, really – has its own very real risks – physically, psychologically, and spiritually.
Taking with us this thought, let's first consider the Odilon Redon painting, St. George Slaying the Dragon, in G 14. There are several important elements in this picture which speak to revolution, and spiritual revolution especially, but we will begin by speaking a second about who St. George was, and how his story is usually approached; historically, mythically, as well as metaphorically – especially being in a painting by a known Symbolist such as Redon. St. George managed to get an entire city to convert to Christianity, by means of subduing a dragon who'd previously required appeasement by being fed the town's maidens, if no suitable animals were available. In one of these instances, the city's princess was drawn by lot to be this maiden, and was exiled to the edge of the city, to await her fate. St. George happened by on his horse, heard of the princess's plight, and stayed with her until the dragon appeared. He corralled the dragon; took and presented it to the entire city, and promised to slay the dragon permanently if the entire city converted to the Christian faith...which then transpired. However, many historians say that the legend most likely predates Christianity, possibly as far back as an ancient Hittite legend, among other possible sources. Now, in some ways it really doesn't matter how this is related to the legend of St. George and the dragon, since regardless of the legend it's associated with, we (1) have this particular painting here in front of us, asking us to consider it in its autonomy – it's own independent entity outside the legend, and (2) Redon has used the legend in a quite different metaphorical and symbolic way. We alluded to universality and the cyclical nature of a concept like revolution – that is more of how this story is put to use in this painting. Focusing firstly on the composition of the picture, we can note how the picture field is essentially composed of three dominant elements: the ocean; the group consisting of St. George and the dragon; and the agitated, luminous sky with a piercing sun. Two subsequent things become clear here, once we acknowledge this composition: firstly, St. George, as a symbol of the individual (or the ego, as Jung would put it) is significantly alone, and caught in a revolutionary struggle against the old; the past; the insidious; the individual's former self, or “old man”: the dragon, standing in the way of revolutionary change. Secondly, the sea and the sky subsequently evoke the necessarily lonely place that the psychic arena can be when faced with effecting necessary, revolutionary change and upheaval in one's life. In this place, St. George is no longer a religious icon, slaying the symbolic dragon bent on evil in front of a large crowd, to effect their change: no, here St. George is Everyman, attempting to effect personal change, psychologically and spiritually, in a seemingly risky environment.
A second element that is dominant in this picture is color. Essentially, we have a primary color scheme, complemented by some secondary colors, such as the green of the troubled sea. A word or two about primary colors, along with an association. Primary colors, firstly by nature of their name, carry something of the “primal” within themselves; they seem to possess an elemental drive. Thus, it is no surprise that primary colors are often associated with such things as flags (which are often, incidentally, involved in revolution), children's toys, and logos. Flags may make most sense in our consideration of revolution – they are rallying symbols for groups; identity points for ideas and drives: they are our strongest emotions and beliefs put to symbols; generalities that speak of larger, grander aims; they are of things larger than the individual, and even the family (seen by some as the building block of society). Looking at a guide to the world's flags, it becomes obvious fairly quickly that the great majority of them use primary colors to great effect; standing in for such things such as homeland; honor; bloodshed; peace and justice – as we said, “primal drives”. Just as an example, our country's first secretary of the Continental Congress, Charles Thompson, said of the colors given to the Great Seal (same as the Stars and Stripes) that red stood for “hardiness and valor”, and blue “the color of the Chief signifies vigilance, perseverance and justice”. To relate this to the Redon, we can contrast this with the idea of a personal, interior, psychological struggle; the red, blue and yellow, and the green which mediates between them, tell something of the psychological, largely internal struggle that Redon is portraying. We are a step or two removed from the transcendently challenged struggle in the Rousseau, Scout Attacked by a Tiger – there, there is hope shining past the oppressive band of jungle there is hope in the companion whom is able (ostensibly) to assist the scout in danger and peril. But in the Redon, there is nothing besides the dragon, the harsh elements, and St. George: a struggle against the accentuated, elemental consciousness; the past we are attempting to revolt against. After realizing the strength that is in these primary colors, we can begin to feel both the internal, personal revolution that is portrayed in the Redon, as well as the allusions to societal change that primary colors, extrapolated from the personal, seems to suggest. In the sense of Naturalism, this harsh, natural condition is not unlike a roiling ocean, battle or port scene of J.M.W. Turner, mirroring the upheaval of the soul in the forms of humans caught in those same forces of nature. Think of Marseault, Camus' hapless character in The Stranger, who is accused of killing an Arab on the beach, but seems utterly subject to the fateful whims of natural fate, to be condemned for something he barely realizes he's done. The main point to grasp on to here, though is that, despite sometimes manifesting themselves in very different ways, interior psychological revolution has much to do with the larger, societal “sea” changes through physical revolution: both are integrally connected to the universal phenomenon which is the revolutionary concept. After all, the spark of a revolution happens firstly in the heart of one or a few, then between the interpersonal sticks of a larger group or community, until it begins to consume vast forests of a society or a generation, in its conflagration of change. So, too, a spiritual change: both are alluded to here in the Redon.
A quite similar internal compare-and-contrast is active within the Horace Pippin painting in G 12 (Woman at the Well). A few words about the story related here may help us on our way. This was a woman with a history of having many partners, a life of being an outsider and societal pariah among pariahs (being a Samaritan, the much-hated race considered “mongrel” by pure Jews). Christ talks to her as an equal, at her everyday workplace, and offers her a new way, a way in contrast to her old ways. She is astounded at his insight and clarity, and is seen to accept the change, and share with her neighbors near the end of the story. As far as the composition used by Pippin, it's somewhat similar in elements to the Redon: there is a central group of interaction, composed of Christ and the Samaritan woman; the scene of the well and the copse, which is almost silhouetted; and the harshly-lit pinks and magentas of the sky in the background. And much like the Redon, through whose painting and composition style (colors, etc.) we can gather some sense of the psychological upheaval taking place – the point of spiritual threshold – so we can here too; and this sense is again accentuated as an image of the forces of nature: instead of the roiling sea and lonely beach, it is a somewhat secluded well on the edge of a village, which sits under this shockingly colored sky. From what we know about the story, we can know that the woman is being invited to make a change in her life; in a sense, she is a step behind the figure of St. George in the previous painting – she is still on the cusp of the crucial decision; not yet able to wield the sword, and slay the dragon of her former self. A few words about the colors in this painting: the pinks used in the sky, ranging from deep rose to cotton candy, definitely seem momentous; revelatory and important: mirroring the edgy feeling of someone with the opportunity to make an important life change. But can we tell whether it is a sunset or a sunrise? And is that clue important? Firstly, if it is a sunrise, then it is a beacon of hope; a symbol of a new day; a fresh start that we are all (ostensibly) given. This implies newness; and the former woman lost in the night that is nearly over. As a symbol of change, of personal revolution; this symbolizes the afterglow of revolution: a new day dawning – the rise of victory. If this is a sunrise, then, we like this woman, are hopeful for what is to come. However, if this is a sunset, it is a symbol of a revolution beginning: the old is about to be extinguished – the new is not on its way; there is still too much to be done. Spiritually, the change is beginning – the end of the old; the impeding ways and beliefs; the demise of that which has held us down for too long. A final point about this Pippin can be made, relating the discussion of sunset versus sunrise to Pippin's traumatic experience in the second World War. Pippin was severely injured in battle, and lost the use of one of his arms. This affected him deeply, and put him into a sort of depression. Of course, as we know, he struggled his way through that time, and was able to make the necessary “slayings” of his demons, or dragons if you will, to turn into a fine, deep and consistent painter. The specter of war can be seen in the light of a sunset or sunrise, being both a harbinger of terror, as well as a dubious spark of peace. Perhaps some thoughts of the conflicts he had been involved in were going through Pippin's mind when he was painting the picture of this story of quiet revolution.
Two additional things can be said about the similarities we see in these two paintings: for one, both of them are a visual door (pictorial door) of sorts into a metaphor of a mental, spiritual changing point – that is, we are viewing the pause before the sword enters the dragon and he is killed; we are seeing the pause before the Samaritan woman decides to leave behind her former life, and follow a new way. Secondly, both pictures attempt to portray the spiritual aspect of revolution, through especially strong and emotionally evocative colors. Both pieces, through these drastic, revolutionary colors, accentuate and exaggerate the momentousness of that mental, spiritual changing point mentioned before, thus reinforcing these paintings as beacons shining between the universally revolutionary, and the utterly personal. Instead of clearly illustrating one or the other, the viewer is reminded that each is really another version of the other, and they are integrally related and connected. Thus, these two paintings continue in the more illustrative pattern of paintings, as opposed to a more contemporary expression of “being” the quality rather than “showing” it. That is, in contemporary thought, a story is not absolutely necessary; the art work may already function as the plot in its entirety.
As far as revolutionary material, especially as far as incorporating the more holistic sense of revolution as an idea of “re-cycling” and “re-peating” – that is, the cyclical aspect of revolution – one artist that comes to mind, as being in this mold, is Matthew Ritchie. Ritchie is a British artist, currently based in New York. Rather than being illustrative of, or pointing to the revolutionary, Ritchie's work takes the very idea of universality and begins pulling it apart – looking for the seed of revolution. His work for Philadelphia's Fabric Workshop in 2005, called Proposition Player, is expressly interested in trying to engage all of human consciousness into its purview – a rash and bold motive, but the result of the work is a beautiful, layered and complex mix of the mystical and visual. Ritchie works with contemporary, industrial materials such as vinyl, and laser-cut tiles, both suspending the filigrees of visually-referenced material, and plotting them out on the floor like a map. When observing his work, one might get overwhelmed by the hugeness and complexity of the universe – past and present – and this might actually be right along with Ritchie's intent. The laser-cut vinyl ebbs and flows like a cloud of data and tortured charts and graphs; they roil like Redon's waves, carrying the possibility of revolution along with them. In Proposition Player, the ceiling-hung vinyl cutouts, evoking masses of woven thoughts, hover over the multicolored stream of interlocking colored tiles, flowing on the floor under the filigrees like run-off from a paint factory. But these two elements – upper and lower – are also connected by sticks or rods, which act as flimsy connectors between the collective consciousness of the filigree – the ephemeral universal belief and truth which we can tap into, invoking the call of revolution (fundamental change) into our lives. As Jung would attest, the collective consciousness, that vast, ageless amassing of myth, knowledge and unfathomable darkness and light, can be tapped by our egos for both detrimental bad, or revolutionary, life-changing / altering good. We, in a way, are this flow on the floor of Proposition Player, and the filigree above is that universality we tap into. A preview of the Fabric Workshop show says it well: “While the works contain seemingly chaotic arrangement of colors and forms, each piece is in fact a deliberate map of the limitless connections that make up the universe's implicit order. The visual and underlying order in Ritchie's work mirrors the chaos and order of the universe”. Another article states, “Ritchie...sees the whole universe as one big experiment”. And how more revolutionary can one get than that? Nothing is ultimately permanent; it is simply a continuing pattern of trying new things; improving our lives and others': a continuing, re-cycling, sublime revolution.