Ekphrastic Writing at the Allentown Art Museum

Along with two other faculty members, I help to advise XANADU, the literary club at the community college where I teach. We usually produce a literary journal each semester. This semester, the students requested something different: They wanted to spend this semester workshopping their writings and works of visual art, then produce just one issue of the magazine in the spring. Of course, we were delighted! This new approach has opened up our schedule considerable and enabled us to pursue other adventures.

For the past month or so, we have been exploring EKPHRASIS: the tradition of writing about the visual arts. We had a guest poet, Lisa Alexander Baron, share six Ekphrastic poems and ideas for techniques to use when writing in response to paintings. I shared some Ekphrastic poems by the masters, along with images of the paintings that inspired them. An art teacher, Corinne Lalin, shared lots of prints. Then the next week, the students had a mini writing workshop, looking at paintings and writing pieces inspired by them. (Students! Share those pieces here if you will!)

Then today was the big event. Four students, two teachers, my husband, and my mom all went to the Allentown Art Museum this afternoon. Corinne took me around and gave me an amazing talk about modern art; she explained more to me about 20th-century painting than I have learned in my whole life. Here are some pictures of the works we discussed, followed by the poem I wrote in response.

Two-Part Invention

“Untitled,” about 1974, by Flora Natapoff

& “Moon Theater,” 1986, by Joan Snyder

Four feet stop in a gallery-space.

They point at a corner, two right and two left.

One voice asks a question, dwindles out flat.

“What makes a work like that, or like that, a work that's a work that's worth looking at?”

The other voice answers on an ascending scale,

picking out pieces of facts from her brain,

and fitting them into a musical frame.

Her own inspiration inspires her more,

and each idea strikes out another to sound.

Picking a fact, then working a theme,

she talks up a tune from the visual scene.

“The first thing we see is industrial space”—

that's tonic.

“Then notice perspectives that clash in your mind”—

that's intervals building.

“And see the confusion, our chaotic times”—

that's the melody marching, a dissonant row.

And thus the first instrument plays out its theme.

She riffs upon balance and triangulation, masses and edges, and ateliers.

She plucks out the color wheel, strums about lines,

and sets something humming in her neighbor's mind.

The other voice cannot stay silent for long.

When just the right resonance catches her up,

she offers as counterpoint differing notes.

“It's myth and tradition, this massing of gold”—

that's dominant pitch.

“The shape evokes presence and absences at once”—

that's harmonic hints.

“Both sorrow and cyclical meaning are here”—

and the voices dance pas de deux

all through the air.


After that, I went and sat in front of another painting that Corinne recommended, one about which she said, "If I were a writing, that is the one I would write about!" Here is the result:

The Glass Casts Back the Slanted Light
“Mary and the Studio,” 1924

by Sidney Edward Dickinson

In nightmares sometimes I have seen a room

where doppelgänger mirrors flank the space

and cast each other's pictures back and forth

in endless iteration. Into this scene,

the painter painted other works of art:

sketches, postcards, prints, and portraiture.

His repetition fools us into depth.

But Mary is not fooled. She knows the nude

(whose full-length figure points the artist's elbow)

is no more prop than she—no, nor no less—

and ladder, light, and skylight (all arranged)

are backdrop and reflection (both at once)

to magnify reception. Reputation.

Yes. She is amused. And she is bruised,

a little, delicate, and cool, and coldly used.

She knows her image was an afterthought.

She knows about the palette knife, the tools

for taking off the color from her face.

She knows about the angels and the beam.

And she has seen it, seen it all, has seen

why he would feign to hover in the back

when anybody knows—or ought to know—

the artists always takes the center stage.

Call all self-portraits false humility.

And so her gaze (the one thing she can will)

refuses him, amuses her, and chooses where

the viewer's gaze will linger. There,

beyond the structure of the mismatched frame,

her eyes' suggestion blanks the artist's name.

And “Mary and”—not “Mary in”—and Mary

heads the title. Not a little fame.

 

Desolation and Creation Speech

Speech for sale! Are you interested in a talk about spiritual problems and their connection to creativity? I would be delighted to talk to your church, college, high school, arts group, homeschool group, etc.  It is a speech I gave last night at Baptist Bible College in Clarks Summit, PA, entitled "Desolation and Creation." It was a much expanded version of this article I wrote for Comment. 

Here is an audio/screencast recording of the speech as I presented it last night. I could do it again just like that, or I could make it a more lively interactive presentation with live performances/readings, or I could present just part of that long talk, or I could provide a closer literary analysis of a few pieces. Contact me if you want to discuss this! 

 

Here is a summary of the material I covered: 

Many shadows lurk in the corners of the human mind; there are many valleys of darkness the soul may stumble through. These bleak phases have haunted human beings for at least as long as they have known how to record their thoughts.The wild varieties of desolation, depression, and despair have frequently haunted artists. Yet, for as often as artists have lain silent and exhausted through long periods, stifled under the weight of darkness, as often have others turned their pens or brushes against the shadows, describing the grief, capturing the elusive twilight, or setting the night raging through their works. What makes the difference? When both are plunged into a dark night of the soul, what shuts the mouth of one and sets free the songs of the other?

I do not know.

But here are some stories of people who overcame the darkness or at least captured it in their works.

TAXONOMY: catagorizing kinds of darkness. Discussion of the DSM, the manual for diagnosing and labeling mental and social illnesses. Confusion between “spiritual desolation and creativity” vs. “mental illness and creativity.” Artists and mental illness. Kinds of spiritual darkness.

I. MELANCHOLY

II. ACEDIA

III. DOUBT 

IV. Charles Williams and THE SCHISM

V. DESPAIR (Franz Liszt's “Czardas macabre”)

VI. DESOLATION

VII. THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

The “God gene” and the doubt gene.

Providence and choice, or, How to read the signs.

Darkness from external circumstances

Makoto Fujimura's Zero Summer

Bruce Herman's The Crowning

Nietzsche: “one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.”

Glen East Workshop Report #2

Tuesday afternoon we had a Visual Art Presentation by painter Ed Knippers, longtime Image collaborator and CIVA member. Ed is teaching the painting class this week.

Ed's work features the human body. It is because of our bodies that we can offers ourselves as living sacrifices to God, and it is through a physical body that God identified himself with us through Christ.

He doesn't work from models. All of what he paints comes out of his mind, from a life of keen observation of the human form, how it moves and bends. Most of the figures in his works are nude. His use of nudity is meant to catch the secular world off guard, to get people to rethink their rejection of the faith. He says the god they reject, we'd reject too.

After his wife died, he began using a cubist metaphor to depict another realm of reality, that world behind the veil. He also uses various symbols in his paintings. Ladders represent our attempts to escape from here. Circuses symbolize our tawdry attempts at transcendence; we're all performers.

When asked how he knows a painting is done, he replied that there is a sense of presence; it has its own being. "When I come into the room, I realize I'm an observer, not the creator." He quoted Matisse who said, "A painting is finished when, if you add one mark, you would have to repaint the whole thing."

Tuesday evening we had another Visual Art Presentation from assemblage artist Barry Krammes, who is teaching the assemblage class. Assemblage has been explained to me as "3D collage using found objects." Image's feature article on Barry says that he "uses found objects to create miniature worlds with cathedral-sized impact."

Some of his artistic influences have been De Chirico (particularly his juxtaposition of the ordinary with the extraordinary), Manet's Olympia, and Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. He also loves integrating works of literature, e.g., Alice in Wonderland, into his art.

He has done a series of pieces whose titles all start with the word "Of" - "Of Calamities" was inspired by a hurricane that destroyed a carousel, "Of Monotheism" is a meditation on holy war, "Of Wandering" deals with ideas of pilgrimage, "Of Innocence" reflects the vulnerability of children caught in circumstances beyond their control, "Of Longing" was inspired by Van Gogh's Starry Night which reflects the latter's desire for union with God. And there are many others.

Barry said, "The goal of any artist is to create images that etch themselves on the museum walls of the viewer's mind." His intention is to leave the viewer with questions that linger. He hopes that casual looking will lead to active meditation and engagement with the world.

I missed yesterday afternoon's poetry reading by Gregory Orr, who is teaching the poetry class this week, but am told it was wonderful. You can hear him reading some of his own poems here.

Last night, Lauren Winner, who is teaching the class on Memoir, read from her books Girl Meets God and Still. She claims that Still is not technically a memoir even though everyone calls it that, but admits that perhaps she's just being defensive because people tell her "You shouldn't write two memoirs before you're 36."

She finished by reading us a sermon of hers on the Ten Commandments, riffing off some rabbinic stories and teachings. The main idea running through it was that the Ten Commandments begin with the Hebrew letter aleph, which is a silent letter. God prepares to speak the commandments by silencing everything else.

Later that evening, after worship, we had Open Slide Night. We saw pinhole camera images by Wenda Salomons, encaustic art by Jess Greene, paintings by a couple of other people, an intriguing building by an architectural engineer, and "tombstone art" by a quirky guy who visits the graves of poets and artists and does his own combination of photography, collage, and assemblage on the tombstone. He brings along all kinds of props: a book cover if it's an author, or a photo of the artist, something symbolic to respond to that person's work, etc. He arranges these items on or around the tombstone and photographs it. He also likes to play with remaking the epitaphs using the technique of "found poetry" (framing the photo in the camera in such as way as to cut off some words and reveal new ironic meaning in what's left). He sometimes uses chalk to draw right onto the tombstones, pointing out that it will wash off in the next rain, but he does admit he's careful to make sure nobody is looking if he does that, as some people might think of it as desecration of a grave. His presentation was morbidly funny in an oddly uncomfortable sort of way. But it had us all laughing.

Today is a free day. Some folks have gone off to see the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, and another group has gone to see the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, the largest collection of Russian icons in North America. But I skipped out to do some writing and visit some friends in Amherst.

One of the other pleasures of the Glen this year has been the awesome piano playing coming from the lounge in the dorm where we're staying. As one of the pianists among us put it, "If God puts a baby grand piano in your dorm, you can't ignore it" (or something like that; she's now deleted the tweet so I can't verify it).

Here are the first few video postcards from Glen East, posted by Image:
Anna Johnson
Alissa Wilkinson
Laura Brown
Laura Lapins Willis

Glen East Workshop Report #1

This week I'm attending the Glen Workshop on the beautiful campus of Mt. Holyoke College, in South Hadley, Massachusetts. This is my third Glen Workshop, but only my first time at Glen East. Prior to last year, the Glen Workshop was held only once a year, in Santa Fe. Now there is both a Glen West and Glen East.

If you've never heard of the Glen Workshop, it's definitely something you should acquaint yourself with. Image Journal has been putting on this Christian writers and artists' workshop for nearly 20 years. It has achieved a reputation as one of the premiere artists/writers' conferences in the US, certainly the premiere one that is unabashedly faith-based. Drawing from all across the Christian spectrum (and a welcoming place for agnostic and spiritual types as well), it aims to blend Art, Faith, and Mystery. Attendees choose one of several morning classes (fiction, poetry, memoir, spiritual writing, painting, songwriting, playwriting, assemblage) or a seminar ("Icons: Prayer Made Visible") with recognized experts in their fields. Or they can do the retreat option which means their mornings are free but they still participate in all the other events which include talks; readings; corporate worship; open slide night for visual artists; open mike nights for poets, writers, musicians and the like; and communal meals. I'm doing the retreat option.

The theme of this year's Glen is "The Generations in Our Bones: Art and Tradition." Kathleen Norris (author of The Cloister Walk, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Acedia & Me, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, and The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work") is the keynote speaker and chaplain for the week. She started us out last night by talking about humility and hospitality. She drew from the Desert Fathers, including Abba Isidore who said, "Of all evil suggestions, the most terrible is the prompting to follow your own heart." We are blind to our own faults. Kathleen encouraged us to cultivate the practice recommended by Evagrius, of "thinking about your thoughts." Coupled with humility about our own weaknesses is hospitality towards others, a recognizable characteristic of Benedictine monks with whom Kathleen has stayed. Art must be hospitable to let the reader in. She has no patience with narcissistic writing. She also said, "Art does not argue, it does not seek to convince. It just is." She finished last night's keynote lecture by reading from several poets she felt deserved more attention: "Uphill" by Christina Rossetti, "Morning Worship" by Mark Van Doren, "Making Light of It" by Philip Levine, Kathleen's own "The Mourning (a November Song)" and "Midnight Gladness" by Denise Levertov.

We also heard a reading yesterday afternoon by essayist Scott Russell Sanders (who is teaching the spiritual writing class) on the theme of "Why write?" I can't remember the title of it, but it made me want to read more of his work. It was excellent!

One of the highlights of the Glen is always the book table, laid out by the inimitable Warren Farha of Eighth Day Books in Wichita, KS. I mean, seriously, you have never seen such an amazing book table at a conference anywhere. Here are some photos so you can almost have the browsing experience we have in person. And you can visit their website to buy any you want. Warren lets us build up a stack for ourselves off to the side during the week and pay for them all when we're ready. I've already got a stack about 2 feet tall!

To be continued...

Hair & Art

I've had another little piece appear in The Curator. This one is about beauty salons that display art in their space and/or host musical events that clients can look at and/or listen to while getting their hair and nails done. Have you ever been to a salon like this? Please share your thoughts!

IAM Regional Leaders' Conference

Before I get into reporting on my impressions of and perspective on this weekend, let me give some context. The International Arts Movement is a broad, grass-roots movement dedicated to being a third space hospitable to all people regardless of their faith, where everyone who shares a commitment to human flourishing can meet. At the heart of IAM's vision are people of various faiths, or no religious faith, making vital contributions to the movement. Even though many of the current regional leaders are Christians, and many are working in specifically Christian contexts, that is not the primary focus of the movement. In fact, there are people who do not consider themselves to be Christians, but who are very much part of IAM.

Because this blog focuses on faith-and-the-arts (specifically the Christian faith and the arts), I have rather emphasized my Christian response more than someone else might. There are even moments in here that might suggest an "us vs. them" mentality--which is not IAM's perspective at all. Indeed, it is hardly my perspective at all. My desire is to minister TO and FROM the Christian community--both into the church and out into the communities in which I find myself, whether artistic, academic, social, or whatever--rather than to emphasize stark differences between a putative "us" and "them."


I just spent a heavenly weekend in New York City. That's one of my favorite places to visit -- although I know I've said that about Jerusalem, Oxford, New Orleans, London, and maybe even Boston. I imagine I'd say the same if I had dear friends showing me around all the artsy sights, churches, or universities of, say, Chicago, Moscow, Berlin, or Timbucktoo.


I was in NYC to meet with 51 other "arts promoters," all leaders of regional groups affiliated with the International Arts Movement, to represent my regional group, Ekphrasis. The weekend consisted of inspiring talks by Makoto Fujimura, motivational presentations by each regional leader about his or her own art and/or what that particular regional group is doing, Edenic conversations with like-minded Christians about all things artsy and faith-related, and simply delicious (mostly homemade) food.

This all took place in IAM's Space 38/39 (38 W 39th street), where Mako had hung some of his works:
I am astounded by his generosity. Let me tell you a bit about these works. They are priceless. They are irreplaceable. They are glorious. In their presence, I thought they were more than glorious: I thought they were Glory itself made solid, made physical, and shimmering in my sight, near enough to touch, transforming the space and the people around them. They are painted on silk, made in the traditional way by a silkmaker who is no longer alive and who took his particular traditional methods of making the silk (include raising the silkworms himself) with him when he died. So it is now impossible to get silk just like that any more. And then Mako painted on them with his distinctive style: a unique blend of the ancient Japanese Nihonga tradition and modern abstract painting. And you know what he used? He used gold. Yes, the metal, gold. He grinds precious metals and minerals, and paints with them. His paintings shimmer as the Old Testament Temple must have done.

I have blogged about some of his other projects here and here, and discussed one of his books here. I thought I had reviewed his "Four Holy Gospels" exhibit, too (which I had the great privilege of seeing last August), but I guess not. Too bad.

Anyway, Mako's luminous work astounds me. It transports me. And I do think that it was one of the biggest factors in making this weekend a heaven-on-earth experience that I will never forget.

The other factor was just the people. I was talking with a colleague when I got home, and I was raving about the amazing people I had just met. I said, "I was amazed at meeting so many young, talented, teach-savvy, intelligent, educated, good-looking CHRISTIANS! How often does that happen?" And he replied: "Usually right before you see the lions!" Ha!

But seriously. I felt almost a little motherly towards these new friends. All but maybe 8 of the 52 are under the age of 40, and they felt like college kids who have actually already accomplished something with their lives. You know how college kids can be full of fire, revved up, ready to go, burning with dreams, bursting with energy to change the world: this group was like that. So I felt a bit worried, nervous about how life is going to be hard on them, kill their dreams, douse the flame of passionate ambition, crush them with disappointment and failure.

But you know, we are not in our teens and early 20's. We have already lived, a lot. We're not naive. We're not untouched. Most of us, I'm sure, have already been crushed and doused and dampened -- and we're still at it. We're still on fire. We're still going to change the world. They can reject our manuscripts, let our books go out of print, boo our concerts, negatively review our plays, misunderstand our exhibits, close our studios, lay us off, fire us, evict us, break our hearts, leave us, divorce us, bereave us -- and we'll still keep making art. We'll still keep starting initiatives. We'll still change the world.

(an example of the kinds of notes that get passed at an event like this. Bryan: "please define liminal." Me: "in the space between boundaries; the undefined space; limbo." Hooray for nerds.)

Beauty and Fraud in The Big Easy

As any faithful readers of this blog know, I spent my Christmas vacation in New Orleans, gobbling up food, music, and culture. I've already written about my visit to the New Orleans Museum of Art, and about how disgusted I was by the Vogel Collection.

Well, now I've had a slightly more official article published in Curator. I know my claims in it are controversial, and would love to hear from any of you who have seen any of the Vogel Collection, at NOMA or elsewhere.

Your thoughts are welcome!

Of Gods and Men

Outstanding review by Jeffrey Overstreet of the film "Of Gods and Men" in Comment Magazine. Just had to share it. (WARNING: Spoilers!)
Of Gods and Men

I saw the movie in 2010 when it first came out in the theaters, and it is well worth getting your hands on. Netflix has it, and here is the page for it on GoWatchIt, a great new site that lets you find where films are available, whether in theaters, online, or on DVD or Blu-Ray.



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Art in Brokenness

This past Thursday, I participated in an open mic session at the Allentown Public Library. I'm thrilled that the Library is creating great new artistic events; this is promising for the growing artistic life of that beleaguered city. It was well attended for such an event: there were maybe 20 people there? The offerings were from various media: poetry, prose, saxophone solos, a story-telling on the spot, choral and solo numbers from a musical, and one bi-lingual song.

Here is what amazed me about the event. Many of the people who attended were obviously troubled, broken people. They wore their painful pasts on their faces, on their bodies, in their clothes. Some shared about their troubles when they got to the microphone. I was a bit worried, wondering if people with such difficult stories would have had the advantages to learn what it takes to turn their sufferings into art.

That shows what a snob I am.

Because I was totally wrong. As soon as they began singing, reciting their poems, or playing their instruments, these struggling people were transformed into something beautiful. The most hurting person there, to judge from appearances, had the most powerful poetry and the most beautiful voice.

The group of upper-middle-class church-going musical-singers were lousy.

Those who were self-described as ex-cons and ex-druggies were amazing. One talked about how when his life was at its worst, "All I had was a pen and paper." Another time he said, "All I had was God." And the two worked together in his mind, his life, and his art. He was amazing.

Serves my elitism right.



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Rock & Roll & Abel in Allentown

Last night I attended the super hip preview party for two exhibits at the Allentown Art Museum:
"Who Shot Rock & Roll?" guest curated by author Gail Buckland
and
"The Mark of Abel" by Lydia Panas.
It was a hip crowd, hot music, good food and drink, and very, VERY impressive renovations to the Allentown Art Museum. What with the new hockey arena going in, the changes around and in Symphony Hall (both physical and in programming), the ambitious growth at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, I'm starting to believe that maybe the Lehigh Valley could become the arts destination it dreams of being. Wow! I'm surprised I said that, but I'm going to do some poking around and see what other people are saying, dreaming, hoping, and believing.

So, the party! The art exhibits!
"Who Shot Rock & Roll" is just bursting with color, shock, and motion. It's really an impressive show. There are works in it that have never been seen before. There are candid shots, backstage, at home, stepping off the plane. There are onstage images: Tina Turner in five blurred, overlapping silhouettes as she leapt and danced; the earliest photos of a very young Elvis; a virtuosic collage of Michael Jackson that practically danced by itself. There are album covers and portraits that are works of art in their own right. There is also violence, dirty nudity, obscenity, and sheer perversion. It's really a powerful show: don't see it right before bed, or you might have nightmares!

I think my favorite pieces were four close-up, black-and-white portraits of the Beatles by Richard Avedon. He somehow managed to capture nearly the same expression on each of their faces. They were clean, shy, expectant, before the rugged dust of fame greyed them.

Then the second exhibit I went to see was Lydia Panas's mysterious series, "The Mark of Abel." In these outdoor portraits of family relationships, Lydia washed out her subject's personalities, reducing everyone in the entire series into despairing, confused people with tragic histories and no futures. And yet they are still compelling, beautiful like rainy weather even when you wanted sun.

Her photographs are not narrative, but they provoke narratives. The photographer friend who attended the show with me, Nienke Izurieta, and I talked more about these images than about anything else in the museum. I found the titles thoughtful; Nienke explained to me the camera and exposures and focus, and we debated technique and content to our heart's content. So, go see it!





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New Orleans Swamp Tour

NEW ORLEANS, DAY THREE
WEDNESDAY, 21 DECEMBER 2011

SWAMP TOUR

OK, there's not really any way to make this post fit the "faith and art" theme of this blog! -- except to say that God's creation really does lick art hollow sometimes. After that very disappointing visit to the New Orleans Museum of "Art" yesterday (quotation marks mine), as we set out on the swamp tour into the misty beauty of the bayous, I said, "Wow, forget about art."

But as usual, it's not that simple.

We had a most marvelous day, photographing egrets, herons, turtles, and alligators. We didn't see any big alligators; they're asleep for the winter already. The more energetic young ones stay out and about when it is so cold that the great-granddaddies cannot function. Alligators don't technically hibernate, but they sleep all winter with a heartbeat of one pulse every 3 or 4 minutes! Their metabolisms slow down so much during that time that they can't eat: even if you forced food into their mouths, they wouldn't have enough energy to swallow it. Anyway, we only saw those that were about 4 feet long or less.

The really fun surprise came at the end of the trip, when the “captain” of our little tour boat pulled a baby alligator out of a bucket and handed it around! It's belly was extremely soft, like the most expensive leather. Its little throat was smooth, delicate, and fragile. It has a “nictitating membrane,” like a transparent eyelid, that acts as a windshield wiper over its profound bronze eye. I held the little guy on my shoulder and stared into his ancient face.

Because of that, and all the beauty of wind, sun, and water, this day was much more enjoyable than our visit to the boring art museum the day before, which is what led me to say that “nature beats art.”

But there is a problem. What we enjoyed was not really “nature.” Some of the time we cruised on the bayous—natural, endless waterways that flow into one another all over the word—but some of the time we were on man-made canals. And on Friday, we watched an I-Max movie at the Aquarium of the Americas that explained how the canals and levees have contributed to the depletion of wetlands, which used to protect New Orleans from the full force of hurricanes. In other words, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was in large part due to the ill effects of human “artistry” on the landscape: canals that bring in salt water and kill the trees (leading to severe erosion), levees that prevent annual flooding (leading to conservation of the silt and topsoil that used to flow down the Mississippi and build up the wetlands). So the temporary comfort of protecting New Orleans from little floods and the commercial benefits of canal-building contributed to a much bigger disaster.

The wetlands are still forming, but they are just in a low, narrow line at the very tip of the Mississippi, rather than spread across hundreds of acres of the Delta. The movie we watched talked about lots of things that can be done to rebuild the wetlands. All of that was interesting and challenging. But the way this whole thing affected me was to shock me a bit, that the so-called “nature” I was enjoying more than “art” was not only largely artificial, but even detrimental to itself in the long run. That's depressing.

I still enjoyed playing with the baby alligator.


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New Orleans Museum of "Art"

This series of posts is just a tad more personal than others in the past; that's because I'm spending the first week of my Christmas holiday in New Orleans! I'm posting each of these one week after the events each describes, and -- as usual -- I'm going to try to focus on arts, aesthetics, culture, and faith as I experience them in my little New Orleans adventure. Enjoy!



NEW ORLEANS, DAY TWO
TUESDAY, 20 DECEMBER 2011

NEW ORLEANS MUSEUM OF ART

We went to NOMA today -- well, we generally go to the art museum in whatever place we visit -- primarily because I'm going to be writing about it for Curator. I hope to produce something fairly balanced and coherent for that excellent voice of reason, so here is my chance to ramble, vent, and babble.

Ugh.

It's really a bit of a mess. There are some lovely pieces, but the collection is a gumbo, or a gallimaufry, or a mishmash. It's quite jarring to walk from a Picasso to a Rodin to a Warhol to a Boucher. OK, it's not quite that bad, because each room or at least each wall has some kind of unifying theme. But the collection is totally random. There is just one work by each artist; frequently just one piece from an entire culture or time period. The rooms are small, so even those that have some kind of reasonable scheme do not allow much time for that concept to sink in.

But I suppose I've been spoiled by having my taste formed, more or less, at the Met, the Louvre, the various National Galleries, the Smithsonians. Not that I have spent many, many hours at these, but that each visit to one of the biggies was at some impressionable, important stage in my life, and was therefore unforgettable.

Back to NOMA, though: the signature, advertized bits of the collection were the worst of all. The famed Vogel collection is sickening rubbish. Drops of watercolor on pieces of notebook paper. Three jagged lines in pencil on a white field. A badly made movie about the Vogels at home, talking to their "artist" friends on the phone, or revisiting their old co-wokers. It made me sick. Is it all a fraud? Is it a joke? Who is fooling whom? Did the Vogels fool the galleries? [they gave 50 pieces of "art" each to 50 museums]. Did the "artists" fool the Vogels? Are the museums fooling us, the admission-paying public?

These lines constitute a work of art?

This little piece of steel is a work of art?

Yup, those are pieces of notebook paper with blotches of watercolor paint.
Yup, they're in a glass case.

Ugh.

So I got worried that maybe I was just an ignoramus. After all, Picasso doesn't do much for me. I sometimes think Warhol was a charlatan -- and probably John Cage, too, although that's off-topic. I'm a bit terrified admitting this. Am I going to be tossed out of the arts world? Am I going to be labeled as one of those ridiculous throwbacks who never got over the 1940s? Sigh.

So then I started thinking about what I do get, what does it for me. It's basically stuff from the European continent from about 300 BC - 300 AD and then from about 1300 AD until about 1900. That's not much. Kind of pathetic, really.

Is it just a matter of education? Is that just how I've been trained?

Or a matter of genetics and cultural context: when and where I was born, to whom?

So then I walked up to the third floor of NOMA, where the "Pre-Columbian" floor, where there is stuff from Cambodia in the 700s, from the Mayan empire, from Africa in 1050, Zen Buddhist drawings from Japan.... And it was spectacular. Amazing stuff. Real artisanship, with intricate detail, profound feeling, wit, intelligence, insight, spiritual depth, humor. Wowie.

All it took was time, a very little time, to see into those pieces.

They licked the 20th century hollow.

And I'm going to stop now, but the thought that crossed my mind then was that this stuff was made for a practical purpose: for war, love, religion, or death. It was all useful. And the 20th century art was useless. And arrogant. And self-serving.

Hm. Am I on to something there?

Juztaposition of the Classical and the Crazy

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New Orleans's Aesthetic addendum

In addition to that unifying curve I wrote about yesterday, there is another, temporary, aesthetic binding New Orleans into one artistic whole right now.
It's Christmas!
The entire city is resplendent with wreaths, garlands, fir trees, red-&-gold ribbons, red-&-gold ornaments, red-&-gold bows, white lights, glitz and glitter and sparkle, but mostly very tasteful.
I don't know what the city looks like at Mardi Gras (OK, I'm looking at pictures online, and that's a whole other story!), but right now that color scheme of green, red, and gold, sparkling with white lights, really creates a visual continuity everywhere.
It also enhances every otherwise plain surface: garlands and greens etc. are on nearly every doorway, light fixture, lamppost, archway, balcony and so forth all over the place.

The restaurant where we ate lunch yesterday (Deanie's, which I highly recommend for glorified Cajun-touched pub food) was resplendent with Christmas decorations, and would otherwise have been rather plain.
And the jazz musicians scattered along the streets mostly play Christmas carols, too, which is sweet.
So if you can't be here for Mardi Gras, try to come at Christmastime.

And did I mention it's 70 degrees?






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New Orleans' Aesthetic

This series of posts is just a tad more personal than others in the past; that's because I'm spending the first week of my Christmas holiday in New Orleans! I'm posting each of these one week after the events each describes, and -- as usual -- I'm going to try to focus on arts, aesthetics, culture, and faith as I experience them in my little New Orleans adventure. Enjoy!


NEW ORLEANS, DAY ONE
MONDAY, 19 DECEMBER 2011

I haven't even been here for 24 hours yet, and I have already discovered a surprisingly unified aesthetic all over this city. It is as if all the architects, all the interior designers, and all the private homeowners have the same taste. I'm not talking just about the general European "shabby chic" beauty, but about something more specific: there is a pattern that ties this whole city together, from the French Quarter to the Garden District, through the Warehouse/Arts district, across the parks, and even into the Ninth Ward. There, or course, millions of Fleurs-de-Lis everywhere. But those are more like decorations than an essential style, although they contribute to what I'm talking about. It's an oft-repeated pattern of filigree, swirls, curlicues. Here it is:

It's all over the multitudinous delicate wrought-iron lace-work balconies on almost every house in the French Quarter. It's in nearly every other wrought-iron fence in the Garden District. It's on the ceilings, in the wallpaper, in the carpets, on the curtains, on the furniture. In our hotel room, it is framed in two versions above the bed. It's in the networked dome over the lobby bar. It twists and twines in uncountable varieties, beautifully and subtly, all over this town.

And it goes beyond just an identifiable pattern. This complex, delicate aesthetic has an influence on many of the shapes and curves of the architecture. There are ogees aplenty. There are arches. There are neoclassical columns that favor the more voluptuous capitals: the Ionic and the Corinthian rather than the Doric.

So the thought crossed my mind that maybe all this has something to do with geography, not just history. Take a look at this aerial view:
What do you think? Do you think that this curvy-ness comes, not just from the Fleur-de-Lis or from the architecture of Europe -- or, ahem, from the curves that are crudely displayed in the many houses of ill repute that blight this lovely city -- but also from the Mississippi River? I think it's a pretty notion, anyway!

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The Bard of Our Time?

Here are some selections from my current Curator piece, a review of Anonymous.

...Anonymous is little more than a showcase for pretty boys to strut about in gorgeous, historically inauthentic costumes, speaking anachronistic lines and participating in fictional events.

...I laughed through most of the movie, but for mostly the wrong reasons: I was incredulous, amused, and bemused by its clichés, its psychological implausibility, and its lavish big-budget spectacular emptiness.

...this movie didn’t make up its mind. It could have been an educational immersion in 16th-century England that plunged its audience into the sights, sounds, and society of Elizabeth’s and James’s reigns. Or it could have been a watertight case for the Earl of Oxford’s authorship, ravishing the minds of its viewers with compelling evidence that he was the man who wrote “Shakespeare.” Or it could have been just a good movie.

...Why this movie, why this message, here and now? ...The message of Anonymous is essentially that a normal guy, an average middle-class fellow, could not achieve greatness.

Please read the whole article, then leave me your thoughts here! Thanks!

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Interview with Bruce Herman part 5

Please read parts 1-4 of this interview, which are available on the sidebar of past posts. Your comments are welcome!

Interview with Bruce Herman
Part 5: The Global Picture

One of Bruce's earliest works: an undergraduate self-portrait

IA:We were talking earlier about titles and labels and what critics might call your work a hundred years from now. Well, let's not go there with your work; let's look at what is happening in North American art right now. So we've gone through what we called the postmodern period; some theorists say we're in the posthuman period now. Economically, a lot of the strength of the economy is going out of America and manufacturing is heading to Asia. Christianity is coming to life in Asia. What do you see happening in American arts right now? Do you see the arts responding to these economic and theoretical movements? What big changes do you see going on in North American visual arts right now?


BH: Two things come to mind in response to that question. First, a disclaimer: I don't think I can answer that very well. I'm not the most hip, the most current person on the planet. The older I get (and I think this happens to a lot of us as we get older and more deeply involved in what we're doing) we don't always pay attention to what is going on. You get rather focused, in other words. I am kind of focused these days. I am not paying attention to every last new thing that's being explored in the visual arts. On the other hand, I noticed a couple of things that I can comment on.

One very positive thing in my view, is the so-called “postmodern turn,” which looks at history with a certain kind of suspicion about metanarrative. Let me tell you why I think that's positive. I think history is always a whole lot more complicated, messy, wonderful, and complex than anyone could ever report on accurately. A number of filmmakers are representing this, such as P. T. Andersen’s work. He did Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love--he's done a bunch of great films. Magnolia is a great film, because it shows a day in the life of a about a half-dozen people who are apparently totally randomly chosen, supposedly, but in the end you see that their lives are deeply interwoven in a mysterious fabric. I think there are a lot of filmmakers who are exploring that technique: trying to look at narrative from the standpoint of a multivalance, rather than a univalent narrative. In other words, instead of having one story taking place, multitudes of stories are happening at once. And that is the way life really is.

When you write history, or art history in the case of the question you've raised, when you write art history as if there is only one linear narrative of growth and development and you end up with the Great Artist theory of history where you have someone like Pablo Picasso being called “The most important artist of the 20th century”—I am very skeptical of that. Skeptical, not that Picasso is a great artist, but that he is the greatest artist, or that someone one can even make that pronouncement about anybody! Or write a linear art history that seems to inevitably lead to someone like Picasso. Because while Picasso is making his paintings, there are any number of artists who are still working in what could be considered retrograde or traditionalistic modes by the art historians who are trying to make the case that art history moves only in one direction: forward. It can move sideways, and backwards, and it may sound silly but it can move is spirals. It's all over the place. In a round-about way, I'm trying to respond to your question about “What is the most important art that's being made right now?” My simple answer is; I haven't got a clue! But I want to say, I don't think anyone else does, either. It's a mess, and that's what's so wonderful about it. History and life are a lot more wonderful and complex than anybody could ever adequately and accurately record. As a case in point: walk into a room of, say a hundred people. If you had the time to look at their faces carefully the way a portrait artist would, you would be astonished at the fact that no two faces are anything like each other. The histories behind those faces are in every wrinkle on every face. The stories of those lives and the lives they have affected, their family history—it's just unimaginably complex. To just decide arbitrarily that one person in that room of a hundred people is important and the rest of them are unimportant! It's just silly! So I have a hard time with the whole–I'm not jumping on your question, but I think it's a question that has to be examined from the standpoint of, well, who determines what is important? What criteria does one use? I can't begin to impose my criteria on the current art world to decide what is important.

I hope that what I’m doing has some validity and that someone a hundred or two hundred years from now might look at it and say, “Wow! Bruce Herman was trying to communicate with this person, that person. Oh, I see Rembrandt, here; yes, I see Pierre della Francesco. Oh, I see Picasso! I see T. S. Eliot!” I would love for people to be able to see those things, because I am constantly in arguments with Picasso. I'm constantly in conversations with T. S. Eliot.


IA: I love that, and I love that you are able to find something so positive in the postmodern turn, because a lot of Christians are still feel threatened by everything postmodernism offers.


BH: This is going to sound really bold. I think postmodernism opens us up to a much more humble hermeneutic that actually allows us to see Christ more accurately.



IA: That is bold.



BH: When He washed the feet of His disciples and He said, “Don't be like the Gentile overlords who stand over their subjects in a domineering way. This is how you lead people; this is how you become great.” And He took off His clothes and He washed their feet. What He was doing was dethroning the “Great Man” theory of history. He was completely unraveling that hermeneutic, which says, “We understand history by looking at the great men.”


IA: That's brilliant! Wow! I love that.

Now, you said there was a second thing? You said you had a second point besides the suspicion of metanarrative?


BH: I guess I would say, this is my hunch, it's just a hunch, mind you: I think what may come out of this confusing period of globalization, as people are calling it, the multi-cultural, multi-valent, multi-narrative approach to art and knowledge and human life: what might come out of it, and I hope that the Holy Spirit is behind this, is a new kind of humility being exercised towards one another. When I saw “one another,” I mean Christians towards Muslims, and Muslims for Jews, and etc. Where we might actually learn from one another. It's not that I don't believe in the preeminence of Christ: I do. But i think His love and His humility reaches out to heal the nations. It doesn't reach out to become a nation. I don't think Christ leads us to become a kind of chauvinistic group who decides what goes and who writes the history books. I think it's quite the reverse. I think if we really followed Christ, we would be more interested in other people than we are in ourselves, and maybe that will be the outcome of the postmodern period, that we will say, “Enough, enough, enough!”—Of this beating of the tom-tom and beating of one's chest and making a big deal out of your nation, saying “America the beautiful.” America is beautiful, but so is Islam. So is Sri Lanka.


IA: So how does, or how will, that express itself in art?



BH: One way that it is expressing itself right now is a profusion of possible styles all being honored, all being accepted, all being appreciated. Modernism or Abstraction doesn’t have a dominant role. There are a many kinds of art as there are people. And that's fine. Just do it the best you can, and do it without using it as a means of making yourself feel important, but do it as a form of service. Do it as a form of foot washing.

one of Bruce's most recent works: from the Presence/Absence series

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