Education and Kelly's Barnes Totem

http://www.philart.net/art.php?id=799

“It is in fact the play of the sun on the building and the sun on the totem, and the interaction of the people at its base that is really magic.”  -Ellsworth Kelly, on Barnes Totem

The symbol of a sphinx and the symbol of a totem have two very different sets of ideas and meanings. And yet we see the two of them interacting in the visual symbolism associated with the Barnes Foundation building on the Parkway. The image of a sphinx (discussed last post), incorporated into the look and mien of the building, emphasizes the Foundation as a keeper of light; knowledge and wisdom – the sentinel if you will, of the temple of culture and education (for what is education but “appropriate culture”?) as constructed by Dr. Barnes, and in this building’s case, a figure leaning into the westerly winds of the future.  However, the sphinx, though here beneficent and worthy, is still nearly always a lone figure – an individual creature.

A totem, referencing mostly the familial sculpture of Northwest Native American peoples, but having precedents in other cultures, always emphasizes community. The very form is familial: a sculpture, both from a tree and tree-like, which in its most common form, shows a cross-section of numerous generations, almost as a “core-sample” of a society’s, village’s, or family’s peoplehood and history. One other important distinction, which appeals to a formalist like myself: the sphinx is normally horizontal, and the totem is always vertical.

When we get to Ellsworth Kelly’s use of the totem in Barnes Totem, this familial sense, colorful in both hue and emotion in the traditional totems, is greatly simplified, stylized, and cooled; but the communal aspect is, if anything, even more important. In a way, the verticality emphasizes community directly. The sculpture is a bead-blasted steel totem, one rectangular element dog-legging from another about halfway up the entire structure’s height. When this sculpture was dedicated this spring, as part of his comments surrounding it, Kelly emphasized the sculpture’s importance as being directly related to its two distinct elements, despite it reading at first glance as one large, fully integrated piece. Not a direct quote, but he said something to the effect of, “one part is lifting the other above itself”.  And in the quote at the beginning of this essay, Kelly emphasizes another aspect which both extends the idea of the Barnes sphinx (gatherer, keeper, and distributor of light) as well as speaks to the core aim of the Foundation: interaction, and therefore the possibility for education. The best of families are always partly about education – the totems were made, after all, for later generations’ memory – and this totem is no different. It is one element lifting another – presumably for a better vantage point; to share knowledge; to teach a lesson; to impart the best of what they are after, what they are looking at; to extend one generation’s limited view further than they themselves could see, through subsequent generations. Isaac Newton said “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” It might even be said that the sphinx is looking after – a caretaker, mostly – and the totem is looking at: together; communally. In this way, the totem further extends the forward-looking lean of the sphinx, and also connects the building, like a key, to the original Barnesian core of education, and indeed the very core of the idea of education itself: continuation, imparting; betterment.

I’ve long believed that the more simplified the form in art, the greater the message that can be imparted – the caveat being that this places the onus on both the artist to be conscientious, as well as on the viewer to be paying attention to their reaction to it, and the context in which the artwork’s intent is found. (Viewing art is a type of education, and all education requires concentration, and time – not to mention enjoyment, which can cause one to forget the former two). A formally simple artwork is capable of carrying the weight of great intent – but craft and concept must meet nearly flawlessly, otherwise there will always be an uncomfortable gap between artist and viewer. The Barnes Totem rides this line tentatively – it is not Kelly’s strongest work, in my current estimation – but the context, if one is paying attention, helps the inquisitive viewer. Knowing about the Barnes’ aims will help one realize the importance of the totem – as well as vice-versa. I can imagine a new visitor being confused about the totem, and after absorbing the spirit of Barnes’ collection, having it finally make sense – “lifting up” and inspiring their understanding and absorption about what Dr. Barnes was trying to accomplish, and what the collection – and now the building – attempts to carry on. 

Part of the original role for totems was that they would disintegrate over time, uninterrupted, and in that perhaps, is the final lesson that not all is worth remembering…in a Zen way, to educate, many things must be forgotten. One thing implicit in the Newton quote “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” is that Newton himself became a “giant”, and that giants, even sculptures of them, die, or at least decline: are we as a generation becoming giants for the next to stand upon, to see past us? Both the Barnes and the Totem built for it, ask this question; and offer opportunity.

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The Sphinx of the Parkway

The Sphinx of the Parkway

Much has already been written about the new Barnes Foundation building on the Parkway: about its brilliance, or short-sightedness; its accessibility or inaccessibility; its attention to craft, or not. Little however, has been mentioned of its symbolism, as such. Of course all buildings carry something of the symbolic in them: they are, after all, at their best an extension; an extrapolation of both the human body and of nature and landscape: a good (read: successful) building, in other words, is a tranquil compromise. This in itself is greatly symbolic. But that’s writ generally; what about the Barnes Parkway building specifically? Buildings have a way, through their form, of being labeled with all sorts of colorful street monikers: the “Gherkin” skyscraper in London is a good example of this. Of the Merion Barnes building, by Paul Cret, one could say it’s, depending on your viewpoint, a coffin; mausoleum; shoe box; hoagie, and so on. I’ve heard it called a “jewel box”.

The symbol I’d like to suggest for the new Barnes Parkway building is the sphinx – and specifically, the more beneficent, enigmatic Egyptian sphinx. I mean this both formally, and symbolically: that is, the form influences the symbolic nature of what a “sphinx” entails, both historically (as much as can be known) and in the more generic parlance and understanding. The basic form of the Parkway building is of three parts, all long and rectangular: one side (right, or south if facing the west) being the close interpretation of the Merion galleries (or “Merion bar” as it was called early on).The second side is the left, or north side, deviating slightly from the pure rectangle, by wrapping around the back, or east end, but not touching: this is the institutional support section: conservation; offices; restaurant; exhibition gallery; lobby; etc. And thirdly, at nearly the same dimensions, is the light-box, suspended over a covered courtyard between the first two sections; made of white steel and frosted glass throughout. The light box is pushed westward, approximately thirty feet out over its two limestone-cladded “posts”; a light-bearing “lintel”, creating an exterior patio beneath.

So then, when observing one day from the west side while sitting in the adjacent Rodin Museum gardens, I realized the building has a form surprisingly reminiscent, though simplified, of an Egyptian (couchant) sphinx. The light-box head, erect but on a reclining body – here projecting rather than the normal receding – from the two strong front legs: a revived myth straining forward on its haunches. But not just a myth: it’s remarkably like the most famous sphinx, the Great Sphinx, extant and enigmatic among the pyramids of Giza. And the Barnes building cooperates in this mythos. The sphinx has always been an enigma: in some stories giving riddles to inquirers; speech which required discernment; cunning; interpretation: experience, in the term of John Dewey and Dr. Barnes.

And so with the Barnes building: the left leg symbolizes the past of the collection galleries; a legacy with which all participants and viewers deal with through interpretation and engagement, but also linked to a particular time and person through its present, preserved form. The right leg, the support building, symbolizes several layers of progress – treatment; research; development; new amenities; support in the broadest psychological, institutional and physical sense – but always and in every way connected to the left leg (the gallery). And what connects them? The sphinx’s head, or the light-box: always looking west, towards a gathered and joint future: past and present gazing ahead to what’s next. Light is imparted to both sides by this gatherer and distributor of energy and inspiration in the form of physical and spiritual light (and isn’t light always a combination of the two?). The center is the light, and light is always now: the present. In this way, the head, or light-box, of this modern sphinx, is an eternal torch, by day and by night, for concentrated perpetuity. There always has been and always will be riddles endemic to the Barnes collection and foundation – but riddles may be solved. And the hope is that, like the curious androgyny, this sphinx also has ambidextrousness: neither past nor future pulling ahead, but always remaining balanced in this symbolic, future-gazing sphinx of the Parkway.

(Next post: investigating how Ellsworth Kelly's Barnes Totem extends this symbol of the new building, and the human experience therein.)

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Art Thoughts, Week 29 -- Modigliani & Shape

Boy in Sailor Suit, Amadeo Modigliani (Italian, 1884—1920) 1917, oil on canvas, BF 369.

Modigliani’s portraits seem custom-made, in a way, for the Barnes Foundation collection: they tend to be symmetrical, playing off Barnes’ own erratic symmetry. Additionally, they excel in all ways within Barnes’ four “plastic elements” – light, line, color and space – the components which, being present and in balance were, according to Dr. Barnes, the hallmark of a successful and fine artwork. Here’s the rub though – for the longest time, I was convinced that shape was also one of the plastic elements…somehow it seemed as if it must be. What are the lines in a Matisse without the primacy of shape? Where do the colors go or stop in a Rousseau, Soutine or Rouault without shape? But, shape is not a part of the elements. I will not back down that easily though; artists like Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden and Elizabeth Murray mean too much to me for shape to capitulate.

And shape is primal in Modigliani’s work. Without strong shapes his paintings would disintegrate into a mass of skillful scumbling. But more than simply using shapes, Modigliani utilized a network of repeated lines to emphasize pattern and the power of opposites. How do I mean this? In Boy with Sailor Suit, there is a dominant shape pattern, and that is the arch, or vault, both closed and open. Over and over the point is reiterated: the boy’s collar and eyebrows; the background shapes; the chair back and posts; the negative shape between his knees, and so on. All of these are curved and vaulted like a church apse, and are the dominant shape-makers in the painting. Opposing these arched elements is the other important group of shape-making lines: the anti-vaults. They create a mirrored arrangement, mimicking the vaults – the rosy facial highlights under the boy’s eyes; the curvature of his nose; the cuffs of his jacket; and the hair by his part. And the most important of the shapes created by the vault/anti-vault relationship are of course, the eyes.

In Modigliani’s portraits, all roads eventually lead to the eyes. They may not even be that striking– in fact, in many of his portraits, the eyes are hollow, or are painted in with a white or colored glaze, rendering them masklike. However, our tendency to be drawn to eyes – the mirrors, after all, of our own viewing – coupled with Modigliani’s setup of them, cause the eyes to be the focal shape in his portraits. And this is certainly the case in Boy with Sailor Suit. Not only are his eyes riveting and clear, they also epitomize the vault/anti-vault relationship so dominant in the piece. In effect, they create the perfect harmony of the two shape-making lines into the almond shape, balancing out the two forces in the painting’s composition. Indeed, the eyes anchor and stabilize the entire piece, like a bridge and its reflection creating a harmonious visual calm over a body of water. And not only do the eyes convey stability and balance, they also emit an energy that flows into the rest of the painting. This is not always the case in Modiglianis, but here it is. The delicate eyebrows, the pink ears and the blush below the eyes radiate from them like a force-field; like a diagram of pulsing magnetic waves. So, in a way, instead of simply being the goal of the painting’s composition, the eyes seem to emanate the energy which animates the rest of the picture, continually recreating the dynamics which originally attracted Modigliani: from the eyes in, and back again, ad infinitum.

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