Someone once called propaganda the art of selling lies. It’s a catchy summary but obscures the extent to which communication can be used to influence public opinion. Sure, our beliefs can be manipulated with lies, but also with truths, half-truth, loaded language or simple omission of facts. Propaganda seeks to influence us, persuade us, and often drags us into emotional rather than rational reactions.
Now why would I want to muse about propaganda on 1/20/2025, when we should be celebrating Martin Luther King and the lives of Black Americans like Thurgood Marshall, Booker T Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Travon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Kendrick Johnson, George Floyd Emmett, Freddy Gray, Michael Brown, Ahmaud Arbery? Can’t quite put my finger on it.
Propaganda is, at its best, indeed an art, but it uses art as well. You may remember my recent writings about propaganda art which blossomed in the beginning of the 20th century before WW I and then surged to power in Russia and Germany in the years to come. The mass production capabilities of printing posters and the technical advances in the movie industry made it possible to reach millions of people.
Of course, visual propaganda had been around for centuries before that, with roughly two messages, still in action today:
“Be part of the struggle! Belong to those fighting for a better future! Join!”
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)
-or-
“Resistance is futile! Revolt and you’ll get crushed! Withdraw!”
Two Assyrian soldiers forcing Babylonian captive to grind bones of his family, 7th – 6th c. BCE. From Nineveh palace.
The topic called me again when I came across an enticing painting last week. It was posted on social media as Paul Klee’s An Allegory of Propaganda from 1939, obviously titled about propaganda, not propaganda itself. I was not familiar with it, and puzzled about the imagery in the context of the title. Ok, I thought, what can I make of it? (Screenshot of text and image below.)
Oranges and yellow dominate in a warm color scheme, a golden era upon us, preying on our need for hope? The person’s face looks rather androgynous, but is dressed and bejeweled like a woman. (“Propaganda” was actually a term for the most male of concepts: the name for a congregation of cardinals originally, established in 1622, charged with the management of missions. But in German, the word is female – perhaps because of the stereotypes of seduction and manipulative lying associated with the gender. Just speculating.) She holds a flower, often a symbol of magic (providing mystical powers in fairy tales). Or a symbol of innocence to be taken, the veritable deflowering. The woman’s dress is strangely configured. My first association was court jester costume shapes (they are hired to tell lies, amuse, distract, but ensure allegiance to the king.) Then I thought it could be a hint at rags, in German “Lumpen,” which immediately gave rise to the idea of Lumpenproletariat. The term, coined by Marx, can be roughly translated as the mob, a class of “outcast, degenerated and submerged elements that make up a section of the population of industrial centers. It includes beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers.” (Ref.) Well, mob and propaganda make a good pairing, as recipients of same, or, racketeers and propaganda, as seen in full view at the time of this writing.
OOPS.
Started to look at the date on the canvas. 1906, not 1939. Checked the title of the work on museum sites. Klee’s Allegory of Propaganda turns out to be an altogether different painting, created the year before he died, namely this:
Paul Klee An Allegory of Propaganda or Voice from the Ether,and you will eat your fill! (1939.)
(Some serious sleuthing revealed the 1906 painting as Klee’s Hesitation, which is a far better match between content and visual imagery. )
So here I was fooled into accepting false information, mentally elaborating on it in perfectly sensible ways to make it work (note, how you can make up an interpretative narrative out of thin air as guided by a presumed title…), and only rescued by an ingrained habit to look closely and to check the facts before I disseminate them to a larger circle of readers.
The true portrait’s subject is obviously salivating at the propaganda from the radio, words promising wealth and “Lebensraum,”( eat your fill!), as the Victoria and Albert Museum describes it, having purchased the painting in 1965. Alongside a matchstick that fronts fiery clouds in the back, his hair resembles barbed wire, his saliva could be mistaken for blood, his ears are open to the SS, and his cheeks flare pink in excitement of a new dawn, and a chilly palette overall, despite the prevalence of reds and browns.
***
The voice from the ether spills words, promising or threatening, dependent on the minute of the day and the target of manipulation. One of the most famous and most reproduced “art” works of the Nazi era, in itself propaganda but also about propaganda, was Hermann Otto Hoyer’s In the Beginning was the Word (1937).
Herman Otto Hoyer In the Beginning was the Word, (1937). United States Holocaust Museum, courtesy of U.S. Army Center of Military History.
The painter drew on two sources: the Gospel of John which reads: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” Secondly, the word is by Hitler, found in Mein Kampf, “All great, world-shaking events have been brought about, not by written matter, but by the spoken word.”
Hitler, now as the god-like figure, uses oratorial magic that keeps the listeners enthralled. In real life as well, not just an imagined painting.
We will be flooded with words in the coming years from on high, in the form of administration pronouncements, threats, executive orders, legislative proposals, commission summaries, Supreme Court contortions, brown-shirt fashion advice and media reporting that is already bending to the will of the newly empowered (and paying into oligarchic coffers in the meantime).
Flooded with words arriving from social media that spread disinformation far faster, and in higher frequency, than any posters and art reproductions in the history of politics ever could. Words from bots that proliferate like mushrooms, for every blocked one another one popping up in the next dark, moist corner.
Words from a state that, in the wonderfully sarcastic voice of Catherine Rampell, “now owns the memes of production.” Loathsome AI will make it (near) impossible to distinguish the false from the real, creating a sense that reality can no longer be grasped, just as Hannah Arendt predicted in the words I posted at the entry of this blog.
Yet we do not have to surrender to words.
We do not have to buy into propaganda. We do not have to believe every lie, every threat, every hint, every bribe, a tsunami of misinformation to the point where we throw up our hands, withdraw in sheer exhaustion, give up the good fight and quit, walking away fearfully into a steadily hotter sunset.
We still have the power to think and judge, (and check our sources critically, I’ll add, having myself been duped not just once.)
They might win their battle to enshrine inequality and forsake justice, but at least they will have to fight, if we don’t capitulate in advance.
Music on this Martin Luther King Day is chosen to celebrate hope. Let’s be a chorus to Sam Cooke’s “Change is gonna come.”
Last blog for this year, looks like. I am defying the impulse to offer a balance sheet of a difficult year, or prepare a battle plan for the even more difficult one ahead. Instead, I will write about things that made me intensely happy at one point or another during the last 12 months, in hopes to get the transition into 2025 off to the right start.
Let’s begin with the fact that I am embedded in or adjacent to a ton of people who are highly creative. The range runs from (inter)nationally renowned artists, to successful local ones who can devote their life to making art. From published writers, painters, photographers, ceramicists who have shows, to all those people who pursue their urge to create regardless how unacknowledged their efforts will remain.
People who work 60 hour weeks and then come home to teach themselves how to make lace. People who lovingly and inventively design little flower fairy scenarios in their front rock gardens, enchanting the neighborhood with their creativity. People who make a house a home by determinedly finding the right way to paint the walls and hang the art. People who create native plant gardens that weave and flow from a dusty, dry cement desert. People who fabricate the most imaginative porcelain containers, dainty and elegant, with painted details. People who knit to the point of carpal tunnel syndrome, or embroider little creatures onto grandchildren’s crib blankets. People who weave, and those who quilt, adding new ideas to age-old crafts.
One of them is a friend who spends much of her time writing grants and breathing life into the finances of her organization, dealing with PR and recruiting advertisement, organizing membership drives and donor meetings, never mind keeping the books and making sure everyone gets paid.
Laura Grimes needed a retainer wall in front of her house and decided it had to be more than just cinder blocks. It has become a project that is creative on many levels – constructing themed mosaics from shards, remnants, beads, toys, thrift- and dollar store finds as well as generous donations from the community of the local Buy Nothing web site. I can just envision her sitting night after night in a basement experimenting with the right cement glue, the appropriately sized cinder blocks, the arrangement of a thousand trinkets and marbles, the groupings by shape and color and category membership.
It is not Art with a capital A, and I assume was never meant to be that. It is a desire to fashion something representing joy if not beauty from lots of circles and dots, or to tell a story or two, as all creative endeavors end up doing.
Maybe all these creatives convey the history of a craft, maybe they account for the requirements of a climate zone, maybe they refer to fables in their porcelain work, or maybe they speak of birds, or mermaids, or vegetables embedded in imaginary landscapes. Maybe they depict the hard truths of our time.
All of it, however, is directed at an “other,” the viewer, establishing a connection across time and/or space, letting us “read” what they have to say, or just feel gifted by the expressions they had to bestow. Art or craft engenders curiosity, instills pleasure, perhaps even admiration, linking two minds for a moment, a first step toward community. Giving one’s imagination a creative form is an act of reaching forward, outward, the possibility of forming a bond, no matter how playful or artful the base. Nothing more important in times where loneliness and division are dark clouds threatening to engulf so many. I am so happy to be surrounded by creativity offering connectedness in this way.
***
Fast forward from dotted mosaics to dotted paintings. I have always admired the defiance of African-American painter Howardena Pindell who set herself the life-long task to decry racial segregation by using dots and circles in her art – originating in her childhood experience of red dots glued to the bottom of glasses and silver ware in public restaurants, to be served Blacks only, keeping the unmarked ones for Whites.
But recently I have been completely taken in, without ever seeing it in real life, by the dot-dominated work of a painter who started in her late 70s and whose visions exploded onto the art world horizon soon thereafter. Emily Kam Kngwarray produced about 3000 paintings during the 8 years she still lived after taking up the craft, about one a day. Those of my readers lucky to live in Great Britain will be able to see a retrospective at the Tate Modern, starting July 10th, 2025. What stirs me is not just the movement and exuberance that makes these canvases come alive, but admittedly also the very notion of “late-blooming.”
Kam Kngwarray’s works on show. Photograph: National Gallery of Australia
Installation view of Kim Kngwarray’s Batiks
Kam Kngwarray grew up in a remote area of Australia, with little contact to the outside world until she was 80 years old. She was as Anmatyerre elder, and a lifelong custodian of the women’s Dreaming sites in her clan Country, Alhalkere.
“Whenever Emily was asked to explain her paintings, regardless of whether the images were a shimmering veil of dots, a field of ‘dump dump’ dots, raw stripes seared across the surface or elegant black lines, her answer was always the same: Whole lot, that’s whole lot, Awelye (my Dreaming), arlatyeye (pencil yam), arkerrthe (mountain devil lizard), ntange (grass seed), tingu (Dreamtime pup), ankerre (emu), intekwe (favourite food of emus, a small plant), atnwerle (green bean), and kame (yam seed). That’s what I paint, whole lot.” ( Interview with Rodney Gooch, translated by Kathleen Petyarre.)”
Emily Kame Kngwarreye Summer Celebration (1991)
Kam Kngwarray Alhalkere – Old Man Emu with Babies (1989) Photograph: Courtesy of D’Lan Contemporary
The connection to place reveals itself even to the likes of me who are totally ignorant about Aborigine art. The abstracted vision, paralleling Modernism or styles found in Japanese calligraphy, grasps something universal, reverberating with many of us, lightyears removed from the artist’s existence. Universal: the concept that you can embrace place, the very part of the natural (or even built) world where you live, that informs and infuses you, providing a sense of belonging. It is there for all of us, even if Western culture during the last century has tried much to dull our sensitivity to its call.
***
From dotted paintings to pearly music: Y’Y, the new recording by pianist and jazz composer Amaro Freitas makes me goose-bump happy (here is the link). It, too, encapsulates a tribute to a place, a region, the forest and rivers of Northern Brazil, featuring legends, spirits and rhythms from the Amazon and Pernambuco, where the artist grew up. The piano score is ravishing and the way he manipulates the strings by inserting soft objects like seeds, produces a creative new sound, always echoing the water drops and rivulets of the subtropical environment.
For me the album registers on a different level as well, making it special – a link to personal history. As I have mentioned often before, I am not one to spend much time perusing the past and introspecting about how life unfolded. But occasionally some glorious moments deserve to be remembered, and the album delivers the impetus, with its compositions bearing resemblances to Armenian composer Aram Khatchaturian, and Egberto Gismonti, the Brazilian musical giant.
I swear I survived adolescence only because I could bang out Khatchaturian’s Toccata (here is the music). And I mean bang out, paying no heed to differences in dynamics, just hitting the keys with rage. And one of the best experiences of my life was a backpacking trip along the Rio Negro in Ecuador, first (and, alas, last) visit to the Amazonian rainforest, captured so well in much of Gismonti’s work, and now Freitas’. Art linking to personal history, then, invites to remember the past, which in turn contains the implication of a future, where I intend to spend my energies to help connect the dots, as best I can. Just keep the creative output coming!
Happy New Year!
And speaking of connecting the dots (since this blog is dedicated to art, nature and politics, after all): I thought we might as well end 2024 on a combination of laughing, crying, screaming, and gasping at the theatre of the absurd upon us: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n24/eliot-weinberger/incoming – courtesy of the London Review of Books.)
Walk with me. You have the choice of pouring rain (Tuesday) or bright sun, unseasonably warm (Wednesday.) On both days, the highlight of the visual riches in the woods and marshlands was the color orange – in many variations, sometimes subdued, sometimes fiery, at all times enhancing the cooler hues in the landscape with a pleasing contrast effect. Ever up-lifting.
In the visual arts, orange has been around for a long time. The Egyptians used it for tomb paintings, despite the fact that the pigment they employed, realgar, was derived from monoclinic crystals and was highly toxic. Medieval monks colored their manuscripts with it as well, ignorant of its effects on health.
Orange really took off in the 18th and 19th century, after Louis Vauquelin, a French scientist, discovered the mineral crocoite, which led to the production of the synthetic pigment chrome orange. The Pre-Raphaelites paved the way, with the Impressionists not far behind. Van Gogh took it to extremes, and Expressionism pledged itself to this intensive hue. Abstract artists of our own time made good use of the color as well. Below are some of my favorite examples, paired with what nature has to offer, in every which way as visually rich as what sprang from painters’ imaginations.
John Constable The Hay Wain (1821)
Sunsets are, of course, a perennial favorite. Not to be found this week, alas.
Caspar David Friedrich Das Große Gehege (1832)
Reflections rule.
J. M. W. Turner, Fighting Temeraire (1839)
The most famous of the orange suns,
Claude Monet Impression, Sunrise (1872)
and vineyards echoing the color choice.
Vincent van Gogh Red Vineyards at Arles (1888)
Light, captured,
Emil Nolde Coastal Landscape Date unknown
landscape abstracted.
Richard Diebenkorn Berkeley No 46 (1955)
Color reduction.
Mark Rothko Orange and Yellow (1956)
The strangest of them all – the man’s head below the woman’s face detectable in her lap only with a bit of help, covered by orange tresses, that might be the burn of love or loss, who knows.
Edvard Munch Love and Pain (1893)
Music today is dedicated by me to this ill-fated couple….
In a season where light during the darkness takes on a certain symbolism, (Hanukkiahs and Christmas trees, I see you!) the brightness of orange is nature’s contribution – gratefully accepted. Even when drenched in rain.
Here is a Long Read, suggested for the weekend. Elad Nehorai, a former orthodox Jew who writes for the Guardian, The Forward and Times of Israel, asks us to think through the implications of how the American public reacted to the murder of the healthcare CEO. He offers thoughts on how we can bring about change with non-violence and what the civil rights movement had to say about the challenges with such an approach. I thought this is a worthwhile topic during a season where Christianity celebrates the arrival of someone who was supposed to bring peace on earth, no luck so far, and Judaism celebrates a miracle of sustainability during a violent civil war …. https://substack.com/home/post/p-153227333
1: an exhibition of optical effects and illusions 2: a constantly shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined 3: a bizarre or fantastic combination, collection, or assemblage
- Merriam-Webster
Since March of this year I have been working on an art project that tries to capture where we are as a nation, and speculate about some of the factors that led us to our current status quo. Trying to think out loud about it today, so bear with me, it’s going to be all over the map.
It started by renting a house in L.A. that had belonged to artist Jirayr Zorthian (1911-2004). The living room was lined with small prints of an originally large mural, Phantasmagoria of Military Intelligence, which he had been commissioned to paint by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the U. S. Intelligence Agency preceding the CIA,) during WW II. How did someone who fled the Armenian genocide at age 11, received an MFA from Yale and studied art in Italy during the late 1930s, become enthusiastic about Psy Ops for the military, serving first in the 603rd Camouflage Engineer Battalion and then at Camp Ritchie, working for army intelligence? I guess – and it is only my guess – when you have escaped a murderous regime, and encountered the stirrings of early fascism, and now see the country that gave you safe haven engaged in a war against fascism, you surely want to give back and join the forces. (He went on to be a successful muralist and painter, a bon vivant on friendly terms with many of the rich and famous of his time. He was known for bacchanalian parties on his sprawling property in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, and a close friendship with the physicist Richard Feynman.)
In any case, I looked at the facsimile mural each day for a month, seeing depictions of legions of young men squeezed into pipelines of preparation for masculine jobs, a surrealist depiction of a process meant to harden and prepare them, both physically and psychologically, for battle. Allies and enemies were clearly delineated and the presented tribal conformity of the young men hinted at belonging, rather than necessarily brainwashing. Not that one excludes the other, mind you. Below is a short video about the history of the mural and provides a view of the panels.
As my readers know, for much of this year, a short burst of mistaken hope in October excepted, I had feared that this country would vote for a convicted felon and usher in the beginnings of a slide towards oligarchically-led authoritarianism. The question then and now is, of course, how this could happen. The margin of the popular vote was very, very small nationally – less than 1.5%, not a resounding mandate.
But he won news desert counties by a massive average of 54 percentage points. So there is the factor of what messages get sent, who gets reached and who has managed to find means of communication that seem to penetrate more (and are believed more) than the traditional media. The role of social media, talk shows and podcasts was important, depicting or even creating realities that would not be recognized by the opposing parties.
Of course, other factors might be equally or more important. I think one has to differentiate between a loss incurred because people did not show up to vote (1), and a victory secured because new constituencies moved towards the radical right wing (2).
(1) A lot of people who used to vote for the Democratic party or would have voted as first-time voters, decided to sit this one out. Why? Let me count the ways, all connected to varieties of hopelessness which made voting seemingly irrelevant. A large basis of the Democratic party experienced some degree of state-sponsored safety net during the pandemic, which was taken away from them in the early years of the Biden administration. What seemed to be perfectly doable was now gone, government once again forsaking a struggling group of people, and yes, the price of eggs went up. More importantly, though, since the price of eggs is not existential for the larger part of the Democratic base, solidly middle class, we were seeing no intervention by the administration regarding the skyrocketing prices of housing, health insurance, child-care support. There was no accountability – not for the industries given free reign to fleece the middle class, nor for those flouting the law, our President elect among them, who got away with everything from illegal enrichment to insurrection, thanks to Republican obstruction and AG Garland’s decisive running out the clock. The dread that the majority of Americans feel regarding climate change was ignored, for the most part, by the Biden administration, an existential fear for many that increased a sense of hopelessness. What the administration did to protect the environment did not get communicated sufficiently to the base either. And then there was Gaza – with significant swaths of voters incredulous that Harris would simply adopt Biden’s support of a state they perceive to perpetrate genocide.
(2) As it turns out, the Biden administration did pass the most economically progressive legislative agenda in two generations. Why did that not score? Because study after study finds that ‘racial resentment’ is a far bigger motivator to vote for Trump than ‘economic anxiety’. Which brings us to a factor that has nothing to do with economics: the psychological need, felt, and now expressed, by many to exist within a social hierarchy where someone is beneath them. The far-Right worked hard to reinforce and establish those structures. If you look at who benefits from turning back the clock to an earlier age of White male supremacy in this nation, you find who flocked to vote for everything promised by and associated with Project 2025, including abandonment of any efforts towards equality, diversity and inclusion: male voters.
Indeed, male Black and Latino voters as well, because they, too, are happy to abandon any notion of social equality if they can find a rung on the ladder that is not the lowest one. Anti-Black racism, the strongest historic impulse in our nation’s existence, can certainly be found in Hispanics as well, not just Whites. And who might be on the bottom? Why, a small new class of people labeled as enemies of our culture, namely trans people, an easy target. Immigrants, wrapped in narratives that were misleading at best and propaganda at worst, regarding their influx, their contributions and their purported criminality, never mind their racial origins. But then there was also a much larger group, some 50% of the population: women. Women who could be and were deemed unequal to men.
Again, the added new votes that led to the victory of the Republicans were not so much votes against the neo-liberal policies of the Democrats, but votes in favor of a promised world of domination, of identification with high-status males, and in hopes of belonging to some part of a tribe that knew to keep others in their place and keep them out of the professional realm in which they increasingly and threateningly competed with men.
Women have been deprived of the right to bodily autonomy by a Supreme Court dominated by Trump-installed conservative judges. Not satisfied by that, there are now calls for the death penalty for women who have abortions and the doctors who help them. Women have died from ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages not attended to, and infant mortality has gone up in the states that ban abortion after the Dobbs decision. Doctors are leaving those states in droves, with pregnant women increasingly deprived of gynecological care. Access to contraception has become more difficult, and there are laws proposed to hinder pregnant women from traveling to states where they can obtain an abortion. Texas is now suing health providers in other states who provide Texan patients with plan B medication. A federal complete abortion plan with no exceptions for rape or the life of the mother has been called for in republican circles.
Conservative voices are calling for a repeal of the right to no-fault divorce, and some even for abandoning the constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote. House Republicans will have not a single woman in committee leadership positions (nor any person of color.)
Last week a study identified 30 000 pieces of deepfake pornography-related content targeting members of Congress, 25 women and 1 man. 1 in 6 women are targeted compared to 1 in 386 men. The new administration has numerous members proposed for Senate approval that are associated with sexual misconduct allegations, either adjudicated as the President himself, or with non-disclosure agreements after payments, or still under investigation. This includes the Secretary of Defense, Health and Human Services and Education Department, as well as one of the advisors in DOGE.
Broader attacks on women’s rights have historically always been associated with democratic erosion.
Here is a summary from a Carnegie Democracy, Conflict and Governance program essay that tackles the linkage between misogyny and far-right authoritarianism. (It’s long, but a riveting read since it explores the issue internationally.)
” …authoritarian views—which are associated with an embrace of traditional values, submission to authority, and a perception that the world is a dangerous place—are linked to both paternalistic attitudes about women (“benevolent sexism”) and feelings of antipathy toward women who seek equality (“hostile sexism”). The same link exists for individuals who display a strong social dominance orientation, defined as a preference for inequality and group-based hierarchies. ”
So, voters who hold these traditional views are drawn towards candidates who espouse them, display strong masculinity, and sanction their sexist beliefs.
“..Trump made concerted efforts to appeal to young male voters especially, tapping into their economic anxiety and sense of cultural dislocation and taking advantage of liberals’ general reluctance to speak to the struggles of men.”
Once elected, the leaders push forward regressive policies and legislation on gender-related issues that are out of sync with majority opinion or threaten vulnerable minorities. They use misogyny, endorsement of gendered violence and hate speech to intimidate and silence critics and opponents.
***
Back to my art project, then. Zorthian’s pipelines of military recruits struck me as perfectly symbolic for the scores of young men flocking to authoritarian institutions. The indoctrination by right-wing radio hosts, piping fake news and hate speech through their channels, also seemed to be captured by the convoluted apparatus. I decided to bury snippets of those murals into classical still lifes for a number of reasons. For one, I never forgot a lesson received as a 12 year-old from a Hungarian refugee, trained by Joan Miró and inexplicably ending up as an art teacher in a small German village, about the role of still lifes. Firmly established during the Dutch Golden Age, with riches accumulating from colonial exploits, these paintings provided a voyeur’s description of what the rich possessed and the poor envied. They assured the wealthy, who commissioned and paid for those beautiful renderings of their belongings, of their status and reminded those who struggled that there was something to aspire to. A notion of hierarchy, class defined.
But still lifes also remind us of domestic beauty, care of the household with the provision of food or flower arrangements, all “women’s work.” This is particularly pertinent with regard to the current fashion of “trad” wives, women who long for the traditional role assignments of earlier times, trying to serve their husbands and family and create feminine beauty round them, preferably instagrammable for lots of clicks. It is about aesthetics, but with the hidden content of ideological beliefs, just as the early still lifes were.
(Let me flag one important exception: the phenomenal 17th Century painter Rachel Ruysch who was one of the few successful women artists of the time and whose botanical still lives sprang from a distinct interest in botanical and biological sciences. My European readers can visit a first major retrospective of her work until mid-March in Munich’s Pinakothek. By mid-April it will be available in Toledo, Ohio, and by mid-August at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Something to look forwards to! )
The combination, then, tries to capture the horrid regression of gender-related norms, the renewed assignment of gender-specific roles (battle-field/home) and our fixation on the beauty displayed in the foreground, at the expense of hate looming in the background and violence lurking in the shadows. Whether it is ignorance, indifference or fear: we blind ourselves to new realities at our own peril.
Last but not least, I added photographs of glass and porcelain electrical insulators to some of the montages. Zorthian was an avid collector of these things, and embedded them in all of his various building projects, inside and on top of walls. When I asked his foreman, who is still alive and active on the property that houses descendants and docents, what the story was with these antique beauties, he thought they just caught the artist’s interest when he bought a bunch of telephone poles to be wired for electricity lines on the ranch and they were lying around in the scrap yard. I have no idea if that is all that’s to it. They sure are perfect phallic symbols.
But for my own purposes the idea of insulation – something being prevented from affecting something else – made perfect sense for my question about the politics of the moment. We are insulated from half of the nation, not knowing what they believe or how they could possibly believe it (and vice versa), no longer experiencing a shared reality, with large swaths of the population living in some kind of phantasmagoria, a landscape of hate, sprouting conspiracy theories fertilized by denial of and hostility towards science, extending so far to question the validity of vaccines, and religious fervor that preaches the superiority of men over women, Whites over all other races.
I was surely not the only one who did not realize how many young, disaffected, perhaps economically, but certainly socially anxious men would be ready to shout “Your Body – My Choice” after the election, freed to voice misogynistic dominance by permission (and example) of the very leader they had chosen.
Today’s images are a sampling of the new series.
Music today is from Wozzeck. That opera tells the story of an impoverished soldier, abused by his superiors and traumatized by war, who murders the mother of his child for fear that she’s cheating on him.
The latest report on domestic femicides was published by the UN less than a month ago, on November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. In 2023, globally 140 women and girls died every day at the hands of their partner or a close relative, which means one woman killed every 10 minutes. Lives, stilled.
October, time for my annual sharing of the recent beauty I found in the woods.
I’m clearly not the only one preoccupied with mushrooms at this time of year. This coming Saturday, October 19th, Stevenson, WA offers its inaugural Mushroom Festival. In their words: “Whether you’re a seasoned mycologists, blossoming enthusiast or simply fungi-curious, don’t miss this unforgettable weekend in Stevenson, Washington.”
Loved that. Call me Fungi-curious!
There will be culinary attractions, lots of vendors for all things mycological, and workshops and demonstrations, including plenty of kid activities. Details here.
With perfect timing, the Columbia Gorge Museum opens its doors to the community once again with particularly interesting offers. Currently on exhibit is artist Julie Beeler, with works directly and indirectly driven by her passion for mycology. Symbiosis features, according to the exhibition announcement, “immersive ‘tree totems’ showcasing the vibrant hues derived from regional fungi, alongside textile pieces, mono prints, and photographs that illustrate their connection to the environment.”
Photo Credit Columbia Gorge Museum
Beeler derives dyes from mushrooms, forty varieties of fungi to create 825 vibrant natural pigments, dyes, and paints by some count, and creates sometimes wondrous textile configuration that capture the essence of the PNW landscape colors and configuration.
In addition, she conveys all that knowledge in a recent published book, illustrated by Yuli Gates, The Mushroom Color Atlas. The interactive feature on the link allows you to pick any specific color and then learn which mushroom provides that kind of dye. The book, overall, teaches us about the mycological world, drawing people into exploration of our natural environment.
The artist will be giving a hands-on pigments, paints and inks demonstration at the museum on Saturday. Columbia Gorge Museum | 990 SW Rock Creek Drive | 1pm – 2pm.
It will be followed, at 3:30 pm by Mycophilia In This Now, a presentation by mycology educator and facilitator Jordan Weiss. The educator will feature spectacular mushroom photography and explore the emerging use of technology for fungi as well as information about psilocybin. Weiss has been sharing his knowledge of fungi for decades, working with groups such as the Oregon State University Extension Master Gardener program and Telluride Mushroom Festival as well as mushroom clubs in Salem, Estacada and Bend.
If you can’t make it out to the Columbia Gorge Museum (it is a 50 minutes, beautiful drive, with easy parking, but I get it…) there is another opportunity to dive into the world of mushrooms. The Oregon Mycological Society offers its annual Mushroom Show at the World Forestry Center in PDX on October 27th, from 12 – 5 pm.
Photocredit: OMS website
Yours truly will seek the pleasure of the solitary (photographic) mushroom hunt instead. Blissfully ignorant about their classification, usage, or poison power, just attracted to their spectacular visual beauty, iPhone in hand, composing the next photo montage in my head.
Music today is the latest installment of DJ Farina’sMushroom Jazz, compilations started many years ago. One more delightful than the next.
Fall has arrived at Portland Japanese Garden. Yellowing leaves and needles shine golden when touched by the sun, moss glows chartreuse in the cracks of the stones where it prefers to settle, accentuating the imperfections of the otherwise smooth surfaces. I cannot imagine a more appropriate setting for the exhibition currently on show at the garden’s Pavilion Gallery and Tanabe Gallery.
Kintsugi: The Restorative Art of Naoko Fukumaru is mirroring the sights from the fall garden – attention-grabbing gold and an openness to blemishes rather than perfection of any given object. In addition, the artist offers us much more, introducing general ideas about Japanese philosophy as well as universal approaches to healing, so direly needed in a world torn apart by division and war, in desperate want of mending.
Kin means gold in Japanese, and Tsugi refers to the joining of parts. Fukumaru takes broken vessels or other damaged objects and restores their original shape as much as possible. Rather than hiding the restorative efforts, the contours of the breaks are accentuated with gold dust, now shimmering veins traversing the pottery. The mending consists of a multi-step, time-consuming procedure, applying multiple layers of the Japanese lacquer urushi, a highly allergenic resin derived from the urushi tree, mixing it with powdered gold or silver, and eventual polishing the joined surfaces at the seam.
Some say that Kintsugi can be traced back to Ashikaga Yoshimasa, a shogun of the 15th century. He sent a favorite broken Chinese tea bowl back to China for repair and did not like the outcome at all. Japanese artisans were instructed to develop a more aesthetically pleasing way to restore broken ceramics. The result was Kintsugi.
The essence of the approach is to convey the history of a given object and the beauty found in its imperfection. Mending reconstitutes what has been broken, with visible scars a reminder of the care we extend to what has suffered, and our belief that underneath it is still whole, now even more beautiful. The technique is clearly in line with a more general Japanese philosophy, that of Wabi Sabi. In the most basic form (admittedly my level of understanding), it acknowledges three simple realities:
Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.
Wabi refers to the essence of simplification, of cutting down the things to that which is important, whereas Sabi refers to the passage of time, and more specifically to the fact that the core of something remains the same, even though the facade or surface may change over time (Ref.).
Blue Moon (2023)
Samanid Empire, Nishapur pottery, ca. 10th -12th C. – Repaired with resin, calcium carbonate, 24K gold.
Fukumaru grew up in a third-generation antiques dealer family in Kyoto, Japan. She trained as a restoration expert for glass and ceramics in England and is in high international demand by elite institutions and museums to bring blemished pieces back to perfection. Her turn to Kintsugi happened by chance some 5 years ago, during an exceedingly difficult period in her personal life. She is now counted among the masters of the art form. Creating art that focussed on a narrative of resilience had a therapeutic effect. This is obviously true for all good therapies: we establish meaning through a close look at our history, we focus on what has been overcome, rather than what was harmed, and in the process nourish hope and emphasize strength simultaneously.
The very idea that scars can be beautiful and proud emblems of survival is empowering during times when hope is hard. However changed, the essence of us moves on.
The ceramics on display come from various parts of the world, different cultures and different time periods, all broken in one way or another, discarded from quotidian use, and now restored.
Dreaming in The Blue (2023) (detail)
Kashan Persian earthenware, ca. 11th – mid 1 4th C – Repaired with resin, calcium carbonate, urushi, and 24K gold.
Each vessel has its own story to tell, often helped by explanatory titles. The artist put some back together with added beauty,
combined others with found objects,
Born This Way – Driftwood (2023) Imari porcelain, ca. 1820-1860
Born This Way – Unwanted (2023)
Imari porcelain, ca. 1820-1860 Repaired with resin, urushi, and 24K gold
“Naturally degraded over time, unusually shaped driftwood interacts with human-made ceramics deformed from the extreme heat of the kiln. Both have undergone a journey of transformation, exhibiting an unintentional beauty forged beyond human control. Fukumaru’s Born This Way series looks into the harmony between human and nature’s creations, conveying arguments for what true beauty is in our modern world.” (Display Signage)
and experimented with more ceramic embellishments for a third grouping, adding elements of sculpture.
Beautiful Trauma – Persian Jug (2023) Persian terracotta jug, ca. 1200 – 800 BCE – Repaired with resin, urushi, 24K gold, and plaster “Crystals require high heat, pressure, and time to form. Fukumaru’s motivation behind this piece was transforming negative experiences into something empowering. Conserving the ancient and porous ceramic fragments of the Persian jug was delicate and time-consuming work to which she added dozens of individually cast crystal forms that were carefully refined, assembled, and attached. Created over many months, the process took on meaning: for each scar that heals, a crystal forms as evidence of surmounting hardship.” (Display Signage.)
Her art challenges the viewer to find meaning – as all good art does. The artist herself stresses the therapeutic value of retroactively working through trauma, and coming up healed on the other end. I could not agree more: her work exemplifies resilience. The aesthetics of scar visibility also reminded me of a related approach that we have started to see amongst survivors of surgical trauma, in particular breast cancer. Many women these days opt not for reconstructive surgery, but put striking tattoos over their mastectomy scars, a sign of acceptance of a new kind of beauty born from fear and pain that is overcome. My own relationship with scars, perhaps explaining my intense affinity to Fukumaru’s work, started early. Two symmetrical, L-shaped scars from lung surgery on my 16 years-old back were eventually accepted rather than self-consciously loathed through the beauty of healing words: a friend dryly commented, “I see, that’s where they cut off your wings.” Not that an angelic existence beckoned, but I never had problems with scars again. Embellished acknowledgment healed.
The possibility of reemergence from existential destruction is, of course, particularly poignant for a nation who lived through the horrors of Hiroshima and the 3.11 catastrophe, when on March 11, 2011, an earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, triggering a tsunami that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of residents of the Tohoku region in the northeastern part of the country, which in turn caused a partial meltdown of one of the reactors of the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima Prefecture. Various forms of art revealed the perseverance of the Japanese people working through trauma. Tanka poetry proliferated, describing ordinary people’s reactions and approaches to healing. Filmmakers captured the determination to overcome disaster. Here is my favorite short by Isamu Hirabayashi, a brilliant monologue of a cicada that survived the 66 years between the two disasters. It acknowledges that nothing lasts forever in face of catastrophe, but that forward movement is required to the very last moment.
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We live in this culture of endless extraction and disposal: extraction from the earth, extraction from people’s bodies, from communities, as if there’s no limit, as if there’s no consequence to how we’re taking and disposing, and as if it can go on endlessly. We are reaching the breaking point on multiple levels. Communities are breaking, the planet is breaking, people’s bodies are breaking. We are taking too much. – Naomi KleinThis changes everything (2014)
Back to the art on hand: the Kintsugi process does not just alert to the retroactive implications of healing, but also the proactive value of mending: preserving something in a world that is bent on overconsumption, the lure of the ever new.
Whether it is fashion or the production of cheap household goods, these days we encounter cycles of fast creation and quick discarding. We are caught in a mode of linear production. The line goes from extraction of the resources needed to manufacture a good, to production, to distribution, to consumption, and finally, to disposal. Eventually the resources we extract will run out and disposal of the evermore accumulating waste existentially harms the planet’s health.
What Fukumaru does for ceramics, many fabric artists do for those things that we consume and discard the most, clothing: rather than throwing things out, they are visibly elevated to works of art, by embroidery or other forms of visible mending. In fact the visible mending movement (the link provides multiple examples of the art form) often employs golden threads, and consciously refers to Kintsugi as a model for restoration. The Dutch fashion collective Painted Series, for example, started a non-profit clothing brand called GOLDEN JOINERY, where people were invited to repair garments with golden thread, showing the rips instead of hiding them. These fabric arts are also closely related to another gift Japanese crafters gave to the world: Sashiko, a Japanese mending technique involving a running stitch and geometric patterns.
Melting Sun (2021)
Excavated stoneware by Michael Henry, ca. 1970s – Repaired with textile, threads, and resin
“Sashiko, a traditional Japanese technique that uses embroidery to functionally reinforce fabric, inspired this piece. Fukumaru fused thousands of her hand stitches with a recovered bowl by Canadian potter, Mick (Michael)Henry. The stitches represent the manmade tension and strains on our world in contrast to the rustic clay bowl.” (Display Signage)
What we are really talking about here is a form of upcycling, when we change a linear system to a circular one, by reclaiming what already exists, and refashioning it into something that has more value: upcycling discarded clothes into new ones, or into different objects, or incorporating them into art. Upcycling broken pottery into restored vessels, or into different configurations, works of art. Fukumaru’s creative output, in other words, does not solely affect our concept of resilience, but also reminds us of the importance of sustainability.
Nothing lasts. Nothing is finished. Nothing is perfect.
Yet we can buy time, extend the life span, change our perspective on the value of imperfection. We can trust that some core will remain constant, even in the face of appearance change. This is true for pottery, for our emergence from trauma and loss, for the ravages of aging.
And it is particularly true for gardens: seasons and their respective offerings don’t last. No work is ever finished. All striving for perfection a futile exercise. Yet they are the very model of resilience and sustainability if we take care to restore them, nurture them, make the changing beauty visible for all to apprehend.
Just my luck. The randomly picked day for a visit to the Giustina Gallery at Oregon State University in Corvallis turned out to be move-in day for the students. Go Beavers! And their parents! And about every car in Oregon clogging the streets and making parking near impossible to find. No regrets, though. I soon left the chaos and the cacophony of competing marching band practices behind, entering a world that transported me quickly to a very different place.
Erik Sandgren Wreck of the Peter Iredale and Cape Disappointment Fort Stevens State Park 2014
On display until October 25, 2024 is an extravagant collection of works by numerous artists all centered around imagery found along the length of the Oregon Coast: Pacific Threshold: Sandgren & Sandgren- Painting the Oregon Coast with Friends 1978-2023. The selected paintings, watercolors and charcoals emerged from over 40 years of summer painting sessions at the coast, organized by Nelson Sandgren, a painter and printmaker who taught at Oregon State University for thirty-eight years, from 1948 until 1986. He was joined by his son, Erik Sandgren, who continued to keep the PaintOuts alive and kicking, while he taught art at college level and established a track record as one of Oregon’s most noted and collected painters in his own right.
Dee Vadnais Ecola Arch Ecola State Park 2019
I had written about the experience of being at a PaintOut previously; Sandgren opens a window into that world in more detail here. It is worthwhile reading his description either before or after you visit the exhibition, because it puts a context around the presented art that will make it easier to grasp the variety of works on display. Some are at the threshold of notable artworks, others have long crossed that line. Some capture the threshold between land and sea, others focus on a threshold where visual objects are translated into psychological experiences, (for both painter and this viewer, I should add.)
Anthony James Cotham Driftwood Shelter at Seal Rock Seal Rock State Park 2009
Curated around the geographical locations defining the coast, the salon-style – hung works allow you to peruse familiar and unfamiliar vistas, depending on your travel habits. Much joy in recognizing familiar scenery. The fact that different media are bunched together, diversity further emphasized by individual framing choices that eventually blend together in a lively fashion, sharpens the sense that we encounter here a collective at work. They all hone in on the way nature shapes the coast, shapes our perceptions, and informs ways of expression that need not be literal, although representationalism is the most frequent mode in this show.
Here is a helpful list of those artists exhibiting as well as of participants in the annual workshops. Those showing were invited to maximize the range of styles on display. As Sandgren told me, the goal was to present all possible styles, from abstract to expressionist to impressionist and California neoimpressionist approaches, all tackling a unified subject matter. The only regret of the exposition was the lighting – the rather dark rooms have plenty of spot lights directed at the art work. Since most of it is behind glass, as aquarelle and charcoals must be, the glare is a nuisance.
That said, there are interesting observations of how the styles of the teachers influenced those of the participating students and colleagues in some cases, and how others found quite independent voices while still adhering to the shared value: the connection to, appreciation of, and love for nature. I should add that there are also a number of perceptive nods to the fishing industry,
Nelson Sandgren Summer Harboring Depoe Bay Motif Depoe Bay
Carol Norton Yates Coos Bay Boat Repair Charleston 1985 — Susan Trueblood Stuart Yaquina Harbor Newport 1985
Erik Sandgren On the Hard at Port Orford Port Orford 2017
or the visual beauty of structures that define the coastal regions, bridges and light houses.
Bets Cole Yaquina Light Yaquina Head
Netson Sandgren Cape Blanco Light Cape Blanco — Erik Sandgren Visionary Light at Cape Blanco Cape Blanco 2017
In fact, there was barely a seascape that did not have some structural element prominently in view, rather than solely waves and water. Contrast helps visual definition, I guess. Who knows, maybe there will be soon another J.M. Turner in the making…. those unmatched seascapes that transferred the threshold between land and water into that of water and sky.
Erik Sandgren Barview Jetty Tillamook Bay 2010
Nelson Sandgren Florence Dunes Honeyman State Park 2000
I was particularly drawn to the many and varied depictions of trees. The rainforests along the coast have some of the toughest conditions of survival, battered by winds, salt water and rapidly changing temperatures. Artists captured the defiant nature of these gnarly giants well.
Debby Sundbaum-Sommers Sea Dragon Shore Acres State Park 2019
Susan DeRosa Overlapping, In the Woods Neptune State Scenic Viewpoint 2017— Gretchen Vadnais Big Spruce Newport
Cynthia Jacobi Grove at Neptune State Park Neptune State Scenic Vewpoint 2023 —Sally Bolton Resting Spot Cape Perpetua 2023
Threshold is often defined as beginning, and the PaintOut gatherings were certainly something new and obviously very desirable. They gathered a community of like-minded artists, with the shared commitment likely pushing individual participants over their own thresholds of insecurity regarding their art, or their threshold of willingness to get up regularly and defy the weather, something much harder when it is just yourself out there.
Nelson Sandgren Rocky Creek Rocky Creek Scenic Viewpoint: 2000 — Humberto Gonzales Rocky Creek Rocky Creek Scenic Viewpoint: 2007
Threshold is also the point where a psychological effect emerges, if certain variables all come together. The accumulation of paintings, so many all in one spot, really enhanced rather than detracted from the appreciation of any individual one. Just like the coast surrounds you with multiple varied stimuli, the light, noise, smells and sensory experience of the wind and rain, the depictions congregated into a representational landscape of their own.
Robin Berry Tide Tossed Seal Rock State Park
Jim Shull Elephant Rock 2 Seal Rock State Park 2005
Congregation, come to think of it, is an applicable term for the community of artists who, summer after summer, spend time together painting, critiquing, encouraging and learning from each other. Not a religious fervor, but a fervor nonetheless for capturing nature, pushing an individual’s experience across a threshold into artistic depiction. Makes one jealous in a world ever more bent on isolation.
Leland John Nelson and Friends at Bandon Bandon 2002
Here they were, some time ago, painting together, and each other. I photographed subsequent generations two years ago.
At least we can share the output. If you can’t make it to Corvallis to visit and explore this treasure trove, there is a book that serves as the catalogue for the exhibition. It is available on site or can be ordered here.
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Pacific Threshold: Sandgren & Sandgren- Painting the Oregon Coast with Friends 1978-2023
Exhibit Dates: Monday, September 9, 2024 to Friday, October 25, 2024
The Giustina Gallery: 875 SW 26th St., Corvallis, Oregon, 97331.
GALLERY HOURS:
The LaSells Stewart Center, Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., unless in private event use.
Please confirm your date and hours to ensure access.
Susan Rudisill Conversation on the Cobbles Neptune State Scenic Viewpoint 2016
Title image : Erik Sandgren Drift Log Fort Seal Rock State Park 2023
Sometimes you wonder – prominent art website announces fall line up for “art adjacent” events in NYC.
What is mentioned? Dance at the Whitney. Edges of Ailey will include over 90 live dance performances, classes, and engaging talks held in the museum’s third-floor theater, honoring the legacy of the legendary choreographer. Here is a blurb from the museum website about one of the performances I would no doubt want to see, if I still went into theaters…
DEATHBED: Trajal Harrell remembers the African American choreographer, dancer, and anthropologist Katherine Dunham (1909–2006), who toured the world in the 1940s and ’50s and developed a technique based on dances from African and Afro-Caribbean cultures as well as Vodun, ballet, jazz, and modern dance. Harrell wonders about Dunham’s relationship to the Japanese choreographer and dancer Tatsumi Hijikata (1928–1986), who is known today as one of the founders of the postwar Japanese dance Butoh and has been a major influence on Harrell’s work.
Art or Art adjacent: Dance?
Images from the Whitney terrace where Ailey’s work will be performed.
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Next up: a Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity, organized by the photographer, performance artist and 2023 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient María Magdalena Campos-Pons, will happen on September 20. Artists and the public will walk through Manhattan with stops at sites significant to Black, Cuban, and Cuban American communities, ending at Madison Square Park with a concert by Daymé Arocena. Here is a clip of her singing in Havana, Cuba, and here a longer concert from 5 years ago, best listened to without looking at the screen I find, too distracting a background. She has a phenomenal voice. Lots of poets performing during this march as well, so I ask:
Art or Art adjacent: Poetry?
Images from the African Burial National Monument on Duane St. As I have written elsewhere about this site that memorializes the dead slaves of NY, the second larges slave holding city after Charleston, SC:
15,000 to 20,000 in a “Negroes Burial Ground” then, and what do you see now? A strange little memorial, that does not really evoke the horrors of slavery and untimely death (scientists analyzed the bones of the 400 + skeletons they unearthed and found severe malnutrition, wounds from violence and for women childbirth to be the grim reaper. ) What was evoked for me, instead, was disgust when contrasting the modesty of this site with the close-by extravaganza of the 9/11 memorial. The burial ground plaza feels cowering under the surrounding buildings with an artificial quietness as if it does not want to complain loudly. The use of very reflective materials means that the present day world imprints itself on the monument speckling it with harsh light and reflections, as if full blackness cannot be tolerated. But at least the fight for declaring coveted Manhattan real estate as a National Monument was won.
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Last but not least: Film scores played live by the New York Philharmonic, while the movies are shown – John Williams, of course, wouldn’t you’ve guessed it? Jaws will attract plenty of visitors keen on reliving the blockbusters of their youth, as will The Empire strikes Back. Lure with the familiar, rather than truly amazing unfamiliar music made for films that never had the impact as those blockbusters. They could have chosen Ennio Morricone’s score for the 1986 film The Mission, here played by Yo-Yo Ma. Ok, I’m a fan of Morricone. What about The Power of the Dog? Here’s the soundtrack, composed by (Radiohead’s) Johnny Greenwood, with clear echoes of his fascination with Krzysztof Penderecki. Beautiful music. Disquieting too, like so much in that film. (I reviewed the film here.)
Art or Art adjacent: Music?
Images from Harlem, with various theaters and the Langston Hughes House.
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And to top it off: in the middle of Art Net’s fall recommendations pops up a shout out for a soon to be opened bakery on 1, Ludlow St: Elbow Bread.
Art adjacent: pastries!
In any case, lots of exciting things coming up. Photographs from my old haunts relevant to some of the communities called upon to participate in the Procession. Wish I could be there with my friends.
Using mundane, found objects as canvases for painting seems to be a trend right now. Some do it better than others, among them David Cass. Tins, cardboard boxes, beer coasters, old nautical maps and antique pulleys serve him well.
David Cass Ask (2023) egg tempera, watercolour & pencil on photo mount
David Cass Refuse (2024) oil on wooden box lid
David Cass Commit (2022-2023) oil on bus blind on board
David Cass Work in progress for ‘Where Once the Waters.’
David Cass “Pulley I – Rockport, ME” (2023-24), oil on marine pulley
His depictions of light on water are appealing, focussed on the structure and utility of water, rather than some etherial glow that uplifts traditional seascapes. According to reviews he is also concerned with climate change and pollution of the oceans, but that cannot easily be deducted from the paintings – at least not by me. (I also, admittedly, always wonder if we all, I am not excluding my own work, need to push an agenda, offer something that has “meaning”, rather than just focus on depicting the beauty that is. A topic for a different day.)
Cass is currently exhibited at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh. I wish I could see the show. From the images of the gallery walls, it seems that seeing the work in bulk, many paintings next to each other, helps to get a sense of representation, rather than abstraction – a curious mix in each individual painting, with abstraction dominating for me while looking at individual work.
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I tried to think if that combination was familiar to me from famous paintings of water. Of course, Turner comes to mind:
J. M. W. Turner Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth (1842.)
Or looking only at the water in Monet’s depiction (but there you are too distracted by the whole scene.)
Contemporary efforts:
Carina Francioso The Ionian Shimmers (2019) Oil on wood panel
In any case, it all reminds me of the fact that I have not been at the ocean once this summer, despite living so close to it. That tells you all you need to know about how my summer has gone…. the energy reservoir too depleted. Luckily there are the archives, allowing visual remembrance. Here, then, light not on but above the water, from previous excursions.
Well, I really meant to write bioaesthetics, but since today’s musings relate entirely to bees, we might as well go with bee aesthetics. Bioaesthetics is the scientific field that seeks to understand how humans develop an appreciation of art, derived from their interaction with the environment. Bees have been a large part of these explorations, with scientists particularly interested in the fact that humans depicted bees since art’s beginnings, long before we all became so worried about their potential extinction.
Most of what I am presenting today I learned from an international team of ecologists led by an Australian researcher who calls her self Bee Babette – how can you not love that name…. Kit S. Prendergast and her colleagues looked at representations of all kinds of bees and bumblebees across history, starting with cave drawings, and ending with contemporary film and video games, with everything in between.
They, like so many of us, are concerned with the fact that bees are on the decline due to a variety of factors including natural habitat fragmentation, urbanization, climate change, and pesticide use in agriculture. But they also observed that bee’s gifts to humanity – their pollination, their honey, their wax, made them important throughout the ages. I will leave out the discussions of “neuro-aesthetic appreciation of art in a biologically plausible evolutionary framework … (researchers) thus evaluate how early forms of meaningful communication may utilise existing neural mechanisms and enable contemporary aesthetic art appreciation.” Instead I’ll focus on forms of representation, interspersed with the photographs of (bumble)bees I took in the fields. (You’re welcome….)
The importance of bees is clearly in evidence cross-culturally, and found its way into the arts of many diverse population groups across time. You see bees in 8000-year-old Egyptian hieroglyphs, in European cave art in Spain and on ancient Greek coins, and in religious or spiritual representations across the globe. Bees were symbolized in the Americas long before the colonialists arrived, integrated into Mayan ceremonies. First Nations people in Australia have used the motif of bees for over 65.000 years, found in their oral histories, ceremonies and construction of didgeridoos and their rock art. Bees became an important design feature during the Napoleon era in France, the imperial bee symbolizing the higher-level hardworking goals Napoleon wanted the republic to achieve. Jewelry across the world has represented bees in various configurations.
You find paintings of bees in China even before the Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644. Architecture has used the structure of the beehive from domed Celtic huts, south African Bantu dwellings, Gaudi’s parabolic arches, to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hanna-Honeycomb House. Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes are modeled after bee habitats and found hexagonal heirs in the Eden Project Biomes by Grimshaw Architects (Cornwall, England; 2000–2001), and the world’s largest open air geodesic dome which serves as the headquarters of the American Society for Metals (ASM) International by John Terrence Kelly (Ohio; 1958). (Again, all this can be found in incredible detail with image sources here.)
Renaissance painters used the bee motif in landscape and religious paintings ubiquitously. Fast forward to the 20th century, Joseph Beuys was an ardent admirer of bees and incorporated them into his art practice in multiple ways, using bees wax as well as honey for his paintings and installations. In his wake, multiple artists across Europe started interactive installations with live bees and sculpture combined. One of the most integrated shows is now on view in Liverpool’s World Museum. Wolfgang Buttress’ Bees: A Story of Survival. The video clip show some of the audio-visual experiences that takes you right into the sight and sounds of the bees’ world. One of his previous installations, The Hive at Kew Gardens, is a favorite of mine.
The Hive’s mesh frame is constructed from 170,000 aluminium parts and 1,000 LED lights, which light up according to the vibrations of the bees in the surrounding wildflower meadows. In turn, it activates musical notes in the key of C – the key bees buzz in – with you standing inside this 17 meters high structure, as if in a hive. Check it out, next you visit! It’s awe- inspiring.
And if you can’t travel, the beauty of bees is all around you – easily observed in the late summer fields.
Music today is Schubert’s bee. And for good measure my favorite flight of the bumble bee version from the movie Shine.
