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Art

Watch: Call and Response

Help me out here. When you look at art, how do you judge if it’s good or not? Or, more importantly, whether it is truly art or not? I mean, I know when I like something, or dislike it. But I am often at a loss when I have to decide if something meets the criteria for being counted as good art. And sometimes I can’t figure out for the life of me if it’s art at all.

Of course I can do the relevant research, consulting those in the know, the experts, the books, the treatises, the critics. But that feels like cheating when I ask myself the simple question: is this or that painting, photograph, piece of music a work of art or not.

Jung Lee

My response

What should the criteria be? Beauty can’t be it – there are beautiful things that are not art, and art that is by no means beautiful. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines art as “something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings. Important ideas? That’s just kicking the can down the road by adding another concept that for the most part defies definition.

Should I be content with this? From the Stanford Encyclopedia: The definition of art is controversial in contemporary philosophy. Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy. The philosophical usefulness of a definition of art has also been debated. Maybe that’s the solution: not useful to define it, so why bother – go back to the like or dislike, as a purely subjective phenomenon?

My response

It all went through my head when I came across the work of South-Korean artist Jung Lee. She puts neon signs that spell single words, or phrases or whole stanzas into the landscape and then photographs them.

http://www.damnmagazine.net/2018/03/12/jung-lee-dwelling-with-neon-light/

There is certainly imagination, to come up with the concept. There is likely skill, if she crafts the signs themselves, or in the way she photographs them. They can, I guess, look beautiful if you like surprises in your natural environment, but we had already agreed anyhow that beauty is not a necessary condition.

Jung Lee


My response

What ideas are expressed? Is there some essential meaning conveyed in the combination of message of choice and placement in the landscape? Am I too dense to get it? I honestly find it obscure. What is the difference to graffiti words, put across the urban landscape? I actually went back to my own archives, selected somewhat similar landscapes that I had photographed across the years, and painted in the opposite messages, hoping to find some answers. No luck. To me, The End did not convey anything significantly different from The Start. Except that it came first, as a concept, a call, compared to my response. (And on a side note – the landscapes are called desolate in the description of her works, increasing the sense of enigma, perhaps. Note that all my “matching” landscapes were photographed during simple walks in the forests and the beach, and just made to look this way via manipulating of lighting.)

Jung Lee

My response

The Why question, why is something to be considered art, in the end met the Why Not…. I’m sure that will rile the serious folks among us, or reveal my ignorance, or both. Why not!

My response

PS – Before I get accused of forgery… these montages were only made for purpose of making my point, not to imitate someone else’s ideas. Here is a link to the relevant psychology research: https://medium.com/@inna_13021/art-forgery-why-do-we-care-so-much-for-originals-7ec4d88fd241

Last time I offered Liszt’s Feux Follets (Irrlichter/Will-o-Whisps) it was played by Richter. Today: Ashkenzy’s version:

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Consider the Thumbscrews

“If I were a man, this wouldn’t have happened to me.” These words are found in one of the 400 pages of transcription of a rape trial. Probably heard in court rooms across the world, across time. Except these are from 1612, during proceedings in Rome where an 18-year old Artemisia Gentileschi tried to find justice for having been raped by fellow painter Agostino Tassi. 4 months of trial transcripts are preserved in full, telling us it was she who was tortured with thumbscrews to tell the truth, while he sat by. It was he who, despite his eventual conviction, did not receive any punishment, since he was in the good graces of an equally vile Pope.

My example of a singular case of failed justice and misogyny does not stop here. Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the most gifted painters of the 17th century, was determined and able to convert specific gendered experience into art. Influenced by Carravagio and her own father Orazio, a successful painter as well, she made her own way – and history – by expressing female victimization as well as female rage on the canvas. Her paintings of Susannah in the Bath has two creepy lechers staring at her without shame. Her depictions of Judith killing Holofernes are a self portrait for Judith’s face, and Tassi’s face as Holofernes’. (She painted it twice, in one garbed in blue, in the other in a yellow dress.)

Furthermore, they show a servant actively involved in keeping Holofernes restrained – alluding to the power that women have if they combine forces in solidarity rather than having to go it alone.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/oct/05/artemisia-gentileshi-painter-beyond-caravaggio

She was married off to someone available, had multiple affairs, and tried to paint irregardless of how gossip, denouncements and malice of a baroque society, tried to make her life unbearable. Paint she did and brilliantly so. That is, in any case, what feminist art historians taught us, until there was some serious backlash.

A male curator at the Met argued in the context of a 2002 exhibition that her reputation was inflated by all that salacious stuff around her sexual experiences (!), dragged up by feminists who were biased in favor of preferred role models. She, he insisted, was a mediocre painter, while her father had not received the recognition he deserved. The catalogue, clearly trying to contain the dangerous power of Gentileschi’s art, portrayed her in two ways: as just another working artist, who must be assessed apart from her sensational biography, as if separating her from her specific history would somehow be more objective – or as her being a marvel.

A thoughtful description of how a strong woman is made small even after centuries can be found in the link below: “Look at Artemisia’s reception of today to understand what she went through in her own time. Once more, she is put on display, ostensibly to celebrate her artistic significance, but with the barely concealed covert purpose of trivializing her actual achievement by conforming her to conventional gender stereotypes.” 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/style/2002/03/31/artemisias-critics-painting-with-crude-strokes/c780b5d3-5cf2-4e4b-9bfb-d1c2b565c0c3/?utm_term=.0e31ca328139

That was written in 2002. Last year, there were at least some individual voices and some serious purchasing power that elevated her reputation as artist, when the National Gallery purchased one of her works.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jul/06/national-gallery-buys-artemisia-gentileschi-masterpiece-for-36m

Little, quite late. For some reason I keep thinking I wish Dr. Christine Blasey Ford would pick up a paintbrush….. Kavanaugh as Sisera, herself as Jael? Gentileschi did that one too….

Photographs today are the yellows and blues of Italy, so prominent in Gentileschi’s work..

And here is Vivaldi’s triumphant Judith…..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kFPc-lIrkI

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Kvetching

The yiddish word to kvetch refers to whining or complaining. A fun book by Michael Wex gives a good introduction: Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods. It contains nuggets like this: “Judaism is defined by exile, and exile without complaint is tourism.”  If you don’t trust me, read this review….  https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/books/to-provoke-in-yiddish-try-how-are-you.html 

So let me kvetch today: What is a woman to do when her art did not make it into an exhibit she had put high hopes on? Particularly when said exhibit was juried by someone whose curatorial eye she greatly respects? And concerned a theme, environmental threat from climate change, that is a  focus of her work? 

Why, eat a bag of Fritos and go for a long walk. Preferably simultaneously, although my camera is starting to complain about all the crumbs. Alas, the conversations in my head prohibited an escape from the emotional sting…

“Why not join the flock of sheep,” say the sheep. “Just fit in.” “I’m not a sheep,” say I,”I’ve always done my own thing. And besides who wants to have starlings on your back, stealing your persimmons treat.

“Why not join the gaggle of geese,” say the geese. “Just get in line.” “I’m not a goose,” say I, “goose-stepping not desired.” Besides, why walk across the road when you can fly?

“Why not try it straight up,” whispers the landscape, “your work is so obtuse.” “I’m not a photographer per se,” I whine,” I do montages. No matter how many straight lines I put in, the images are complicated.” 



“You’re just a speck in the landscape” hollers the eagle, “just like I.” “Which is my point, say I, ” a tiny speck in a sea of artists. But is that so because of the numerical odds, or because the quality of my work is just not up to par?”

Baldie on left hand side in the water

Imaginary exchanges aside, what is the psychological basis for such self doubt? In my professional and academic life, I never suffered from impostor syndrome, the belief of successful, high achievement people that they are in fact frauds who have managed to dupe their way to the top. (It used to be thought of as a female problem, which more recent research shows to be false. Men experience that syndrome too, and are hit harder by its negative consequences for performance, as it turns out.) The link below is to the classic Clance and Imes paper that paved the way, still quite informative.) 

http://www.paulineroseclance.com/pdf/ip_high_achieving_women.pdf

But I face a different scenario: rather than doubting the roots for existing achievement, there is doubt regarding the possibility of achievement in a new domaine. Doubt despite the fact, as kind friends point out, that recognition has already happened in the few years that I have been at it, expressed through numerous solo shows and feedback from artists I admire, who do not know me personally. Doubt that reminds me of the days as a professor when you had the entire class give you the highest points on evaluations and one single student dissed you in most aggressive ways. All that stuck, for days, was that negative comment; just like last week’s rejection for the exhibition blotted out the shows I was admitted to this year.

So much about art is amorphous, contextually charged, subject to ever changing tastes, rooted in familiar processes (of which mine deviate), Zeitgeist-dependent. Knowing all that why still the attribution to a potential failure of my personal ability?  You tell me. I need to get back to making more montages.

Photographs today were taken on Sauvie Island last Thursday. 

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Hanukkah in Miami

The Miami Art Week this year runs from December 3 -9. I won’t be there, so I’ll miss out on press releases that try to answer questions along the line of what’s the point? “Slowing down and paying attention to the art,” we are told, which makes me laugh. I guess that is a good thing. Also a good thing: I am not a gallery worker.

https://hyperallergic.com/416445/gallery-worker-glimpses-art-basel-miami-beach/

An even better thing is taking Miami in, prestigious fairs or not, when you manage to escape the crowds of hanger-on’s. I was there some years back during Hanukkah and had a blast;  the city is a mecca for street photography, the graffiti impressive and the angular nature of much of the architecture augmented by the stark, glazing light.

 

As is typical for me, though, the best parts were the nature experiences, whether at the Fairchild Botanical Gardens, or during a day hike with a guide in the mangrove swamps.

 

 

Close encounters with the local wildlife, alligators, iguanas and all, made it into the journal titled What to tell my imaginary grand children,

 

and a sense of gratitude for all those incredible sights made it into the journal titled Heuer’s life rocks.

 

Note how much pattern there is in the landscape.

 

 

 

 

Between red tides and rising sea levels those excursions will soon be a thing of the past, so instead of “Slow down and pay attention to the art,” my advice would be: “Hurry up and pay attention to the landscape.”  Photographs today are a placeholder for just that.

 

 

 

Below is a guide to the cornucopia of art offerings, for those who are on site.

 

Your Concise Guide to Miami Art Week 2018

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On a personal note:

The once-a-year mentioning of my annual calendar is upon us, or you, as the case may be. This year’s theme is

Tied to the Moon (a spectrum of experiences in women’s lives.)

I have been working on this series for most of 2018, generating montages that all contain a semblance of a moon, some materials like rope that bind different elements and a representation of women at different life stages. The sisters, mothers, young and old, the ones that mourn, the ones that love and long, the rivals, the curious and the skeptical ones, they are all there, 32 of them, appropriated in one or another form from paintings across centuries to acknowledge the similarities of women’s fates across time and place.

Price is the same $25 as the least few years, part of the proceeds go to Mercy Corps for refugee work; calendar shows one selected image per month, and I ship or bring over. Shoot me an email if you are interested.

Here are some sample montages: feedback much appreciated even if you are not interested in the calendar, given how everything works electronically these days or walls have shrunk with downsizing….

And here is the aria Casta Diva sung to the moon goddess (from Bellini’s opera Norma staged in Roman times) wishing for her to scatter peace across the earth.

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Akamai Brah

Akamai Brah means very smart pal in Hawaiian. I have one of those, although this Hawaiian has long since been transplanted to the US mainland.  Not only is he smart, but he is also one of the most adaptable and generous guys on the planet. Steve Tilden and I have been friends for over a decade and he has been a role model for me when it comes to working collaboratively on art and figuring out ways to manage when the ability to make art crawls into temporary hiding places for whatever reasons.

As a metal sculptor Steve has made a name for himself for his beautiful creations of both abstract work and, close to his heart, works representing Greek mythology.

A longstanding member of Blackfish Gallery, a cooperative art gallery here in town, he has not just drawn crowds to his shows. He has also been an integral part of the team that make all exhibitions possible, lending his technical skills and innovative fix-it talent to everything needed to bring complicated shows and installations to the walls.http://www.blackfish.com

His house and studio in North Portland, built by himself according to his specified needs, is like Ali Baba’s cave – a treasure trove where ever your eyes wander. Except no Open Sesame password needed: all you have to do is stand in the door, and he welcomes you in.

That has been true for many artists in Portland who were instructed by him, lent space by him or offered collaboration by him, so many that I have lost count. I do count myself among them, though. Not only have we done work together, I also have a place there where I can put a brush to canvas, without being ridiculed for my feeble attempts at painting. Below is a series of montages that he made possible by allowing me access to a commercial kitchen of his son’s who runs some terrific restaurants in town, including Olympic Provisions.

 

Steve is a renaissance man when it comes to the number of skills, passions and interests he exhibits; you’d never know, given his modesty. Having an abundance of interests, though, has helped him adapt when some recent eye problems started to interfere with the most important craft for his art: welding is no longer an option. Wait until you see what his artistic brain produces next….in the meantime, he is mentoring young artists and shares his studio space that is sometimes like a hive, with coming and going, and you can all but hear the combined creativity buzzing in the air.

 

His closest collaborator and friend has been poet and translator Paul Merchant. They have delved deep into ancient culture and foreign worlds and translated each other’s work, from word to sculpture and back; the most recent exhibit is described here:https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/life/2015/04/11/paul-merchant-crosses-eras-languages/25597835/

Tilden has also extensively worked with Jen Fuller, a glass artist, depicting mythological figures, see my photographs below.

On average days he teaches you something new, on good days he lends a shoulder to cry on and on really good days you can hear him playing the guitar and sing old Hawaiian songs, or plain folk music. Most importantly, though, every day he models how to approach aging when this or that capacity is deserting you: with courage, with flexibility, with a certain wistfulness that refuses to morph into self pity.  Mo bettah!

 

 

 

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TseSho – What’s That?

When your hope for humanity has reached a pretty low point, there is sometimes art that comes to the rescue. Case in point was Saturday’s rambunctious cabaret TseSho, performed by musically and artistically gifted young people who applied art to politics. The Ukrainian Teatr-Pralnia’s satirical take on current cultural issues and their heart-breaking descriptions of hatred and war were mixed up in an exuberant show using puppets, video art and vibrant music that made your heart sing and your feet dance. TseSho – What’s That? was a romp about urgent contemporary topics.

The show was both fun to watch and listen to, but also deeply thought-provoking. Four young woman on stand-up bass, cello, saxophone and accordion and one male drummer presented songs about love, gender issues, cultural clichés,

 

 

 

 

 

 

the need for affirmation (in a hilarious send-up of Facebook likes) and the desire to forget (alcoholic means included.)

 

Most profoundly, they described a world riddled by hate and destroyed by war through the eyes of a (puppet) child, who with ever increasing levels of fear recited alphabetically ordered words that defined the experience of those who are oppressed, imprisoned, threatened by violence and without means of escape. That takes courage, when thinking about the fate of some politically engaged artists in the Eastern Bloc. Just remember Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker imprisoned in Russia for allegedly plotting terrorist attacks, ended a long hunger strike about 3 weeks ago, with irreversibly damaged health.

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2018/10/ukrainian-prisoner-ends-144-day-hunger-strike.html

Living in a world where political art is not just censored but can be dangerous had me even more impressed with the cabaret performers on hand.

 

 

 

 

The performers used puppets to tell some bits of their stories, stories that had universal appeal, striking the distance between audience and actors from a foreign land. The props and other visuals, like lighting, costuming, and background videography were just as remarkable as the athleticism that accompanied the music. Texts were either in English or Ukrainian, with helpful, projected super-text translations. The one thing I could have done without was a smoke machine – it generated atmospherics that were not needed, given the rest of the theatrical trick bag on display.

 

Most impressive, though, was the sleight of hand (or mind) that led the audience into a happy, funky, slightly agit-prop romp reminiscent of the very early Frank Zappa concerts at the beginning of the show; the message became progressively darker without you quite realizing it until all of a sudden it hit the point where descriptions of conflict and aggressive war entered the room. Musically this was profoundly expressed by the instruments mimicking the war noise to perfection, a kind of musical onomatopoeia.

The show is part of the US State Department’s Center Stage cultural diplomacy initiative, presented by Boom Arts here in PDX.  This year numerous artists from Ukraine and Egypt are invited to present their work during a month-long tour. Government doing good! Who’d thought….

https://exchanges.state.gov/non-us/program/center-stage

The concert will repeat this Friday and Saturday (10/26/27) at the Paris on Burnside & 3rd.

Don’t miss it!

I’ll be there, dancing instead of photographing for the next round! Unless they display additional interesting socks….

Here is 2016 clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B88Q2Ng6oRE

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October Clamber

1680 feet elevation, coastal rain forest suffused by misty veils, a hidden treasure: what more could you want for the perfect day? Neahkahnie Mountain – also known as Place of the Gods in the Tillamook language – rises above the Pacific Coast a little bit north of Manzanita, OR.

Rumors of a hidden gold treasure, buried on or at the foot the mountain by Spanish sailors in the lat 16th century, won’t die. As the (gruesome) story goes, they put the gold in the ground, carefully watched by native tribe members of the area, and then killed one of their own black slaves on site, putting his corpse inside the hole with the treasure, knowing full well that the tribes were forbidden to disturb a man’s grave. Hundreds of treasure hunters have looked for the trove across the centuries, some of them dying when their excavations collapsed above them. Digging for treasure is now forbidden by law in this area.

The rumors were fed by the appearance of numerous artifacts of Spanish origin, including a cross with carvings embedded in slabs of beeswax. “Spanish archives list 33 ships as lost during the period of the Manila galleon. Five possible galleons from this list have been suggested as possible shipwrecks: the San Juanillo, lost in 1578; the San Juan, lost in 1586; the San Antonio, last heard from in 1603; the San Francisco Xavier, which sailed in 1705 and is known to carry beeswax; and the San Jose, which sailed from San Blas 16 June 1769.” This from the local historians. 

Where’s the treasure?

For me, the real treasure was right in front of my eyes: an incredible diversity of trees, mosses, lichen and fungi nourished by the up to 170 annual inches of rainfall (4.47 meters year!) at this point where a mountain and the sea meet (the definition of coastal temperate rain forest). Sitka Spruce, western red cedar, western hemlock and a variety of firs abound, all evergreen as is the Madrona tree.

 

 

 

 

Deciduous maples and alders are also in the mix, bringing some light and fall color into the dark forest.

 

Lots of Oregon grape and salal on the ground, as are ferns,

and epiphytes abound: you wonder how all that stuff growing on trees, particularly lungwort and cat tail moss, doesn’t suck the life out of them. But of course they are all part of a perfectly symbiotic system.

The quiet, when it is dry, is remarkable – when the rains come in the noise can be cacophonous. Yesterday, though, all we heard was a few single bird chirps, our own labored breathing at the steep uphill climb, the dull roar of the ocean somewhere in the background. The moisture in the air felt like someone was caressing your skin, and when the first sun rays broke through the mist, the fairy slides made this sentimental soul almost cry with joy.

And just when you thought you had gotten away with a happy blog for the day, here are some words of warning: this is what happens when you don’t manage these precious lands appropriately: habitat destruction, pollution, exotic species invasion and climate change lead to imperiled species:

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/publications/papers/TillamookReport.pdf

On a happier note: we have a wise dog who abandoned digging for gold for the pleasure of romping with sticks….

 

Lift off!

 

 

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Wave Jumping

Fall at the Pacific coast is another one of those reminders that nature rules, and even overrules the bad mood inflicted by too many thoughts about politics. This is particularly true if fall weather is as sunny as it has been this October, really breaking all norms. It makes for very happy bunnies,

intensely happy dogs

and extremely happy people.

It also foreshadows what is largely predicted now by all relevant researchers: a return of El Nino this winter, with warmer temperatures and less precipitation – maybe a boon for the coast but a disaster for snowpacks on inland mountains which serve as fresh water supply for Oregon all year long.

http://www.chinookobserver.com/co/free/20180725/climate-forecast-favors-onset-of-el-nixf1o-could-mean-warmer-winter-in-northwest

I have lived in the Pacific Northwest since 1986, and am still in awe, after 32 years, at the beauty of the landscape, its wilderness, its variety. I am also amused at the descriptions of this region – here is an example found in the Encyclopedia Britannica: …. the American Pacific Coast represented the western borderland area of the United States. As such, the people and the press of this region displayed over the years a degree of regional self-consciousness. Isolation from the rest of the country was early corrected by regional efforts to bring about a union of Eastern and Western lines of transportation and communication, an enhancement of maritime trade, and adequate coastal military defenses. Since then the Pacific Coast has been obliged to cope with many problems more peculiar to the West than to the East. For example, large-scale immigration from Mexico and Central America has been a major Pacific Coast concern, as has rapid urban population growth beginning during World War II. Another problem peculiar to this region has been the heavy dependence of West Coast business enterprises upon Eastern capital investment.

The people of the Pacific Coast are generally credited with being individualistic, casual in dress, and innovative in business management.

I arrived here yesterday and woke up to a misty sky this morning, just right for a planned hike on Neahkahnie mountain. There will be enough sweating as is, given the shape I’m in. I will take an individualistic tempo up hill, be casual in dress and innovative in my photography…..

This was yesterday’s sunset:

 

 

Thomas Moran’s Pacific Sunset (1907).

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Leaf Hopping

The leaves are changing color. Uniform green now glows in gold, chartreuse, orange, red and brown. Some of the patterns look almost like expressionist watercolors.

Change is generally in the air, or so we hope. Across the generational divide people are promoting change – look, for one, what young people accomplish. On the heels of Parkland and the political engagement of the shooting survivors, we have seen a surge on youth voter registration. Will the young actually show up at the midterms? Some think it is possible, again the traditional pattern of midterm apathy among the 18-30 years olds.

Young Voters Might Actually Show Up At The Polls This Year

 

 

On the other end of the spectrum is this example of musical exhortation created by friends at the senior residence in Boston.of my 90-year old mother-in-law.

https://youtu.be/IVOycHHr270

 

Walking these last days under ethereally blue skies with leaves seemingly floating in the air even if they were still attached to their branches had a certain feeling of unreality.

 

 

 

There was a world suffused with beauty in front of my eyes, about to change the minute the rains hit, or the storms come in, just as nature proscribes it. We might not be able to escape the changes imposed by nature, but we sure do, as a society, make it hard for other change to happen.  That is true on the individual level – attached is a thought-provoking article from the NYT -click on the picture –

as well as the general level. And no, I am not going to discuss voter suppression, redistricting, closure of voting locales, hacking and so on – you are aware of it all as well as I am. I am just going to hop around in big piles of leaves, camera in hand, wishing that the forces battling the midterm elections are as strong as the forces of nature.

And here are Autumn Leaves from 1924 by Georgia o’Keefe

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