Art

Ruins

Art, Poetry
May 15, 2024
1 Comments

Over a decade ago I exhibited Fugue – The Poetry of Exile at Portland’s Artist Repertory Theatre, photomontage work that attempted to transform poems of exile and displacement, mostly by Holocaust poets, into visual images. The show ran in conjunction with a play by Diane Samuels, Kindertransport, produced by Jewish Theatre Collaborative.

It was early days in my montage-making efforts, with still limited technical skills. But the core components were already in place: visual translation of ideas that invite us, are in need for us to witness.

Here is one of the poems that I chose at the time.

My Blue Piano

At home I have a blue piano.
But I can’t play a note.

It’s been in the shadow of the cellar door
Ever since the world went rotten.

Four starry hands play harmonies.
The Woman in the Moon sang in her boat.

Now only rats dance to the clanks.
The keyboard is in bits.

I weep for what is blue. Is dead.
Sweet angels, I have eaten

Such bitter bread. Push open
The door of heaven. For me, for now —

Although I am still alive —
Although it is not allowed.

by Else Lasker-Schüler (translated from the German by Eavan Boland)

(Here is a link to the German original – it is even starker than the translation, requesting permission for dying)

The poet, Else Lasker-Schüler, is one of those people I’d elect to take with me to a deserted island, an artist, activist, risk-taking, and deeply independent woman who supported socialist causes all her life. She left Nazi Germany in 1933, and ended up eventually in Jerusalem, where she wrote some of her best poetry before she died in 1945. Her friends and literary circle there included German-speaking Zionists, such as Martin Buber, Hugo Bergman and Ernst Simon who, like herself, favored a bi-national Palestine.

I was reminded of the poem when I read the insightful ArtsWatch review of an exhibition currently at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, while staring at another defunct piano during my LA Sabbatical last month (today’s photographs.)

The Burned Piano Project: Creating Music Amidst the Noise of Hate is a collaboration between composer and pianist Jennifer Wright, her husband Matias Brecher and textile artist Bonnie Meltzer. The artists resurrect, refashion, in some ways rebirth a Steinway grand piano that belonged to three generations of a Jewish family whose house in Portland was destroyed by arson in 2022, fueled by antisemitic hate. The torched instrument reemerged as a kind of glassy phoenix from the ashes:

“The Glass Piano was designed to appear as delicate as a glittering butterfly, a creature more of spirit than of the earth, yet it possesses subtle strength and a range of glass rods and hammers and pitched sounds that can be orchestrally combined in unusual ways.”

Meltzer, in turn, created a large tapestry and a smaller banner with inscribed stitching, incorporating wood, torched strings and other bits and pieces of the charred piano into her work.

While the Holocaust poet looks at the remnants of her destroyed life, embodied by the defunct piano, and wants nothing more than for it to end, the two contemporary artists rely on joyful defiance, changing the ruins into some sort of vibrant reminder that the possibility of transformation has not been foreclosed.

One can speculate whether those divergent sentiments are the result of the intensity of the trauma, the actual threat to existence, compared to the reactions of concerned bystanders to the consequences of racist vandalism.

It does not matter, in my mind, though, as long as art forces our own witnessing, insists that we acknowledge the horrors brought by war and hate.

This is central to the work of Jorge Tacla, whose art I continue to explore. His focus on ruins is one of the main themes of another exhibition, A Memoir of Ruins, currently on view at the Coral Gables Museum in Florida. His paintings offer a veritable graveyard of bombed and destroyed architecture across the Middle East, war memorials of a kind that mourn the victims rather than celebrate the victors (if there are any, given the centuries of strife built into the conflicts.) I won’t be able to visit, but I strongly urge my readers in the Miami vicinity to go and take it all in – you have until October 27th, 2024. It is timely work in the light of ongoing destruction of entire swaths of land made uninhabitable by warfare, erasing life, mirrored in paintings devoid of human figure.

The imagery acutely remind us of the violent urge to reduce everything possibly connected to human habitation, urges acted upon by various warring powers. They spring from the wish to annihilate not just human beings, the declared enemy who shall be starved, maimed or killed, but also all that could provide a basis for resurrection of a group with a given identity. If you bomb houses of worship, schools and universities, the libraries, the museums, the archives, all the repositories of cultural, historical and personal memory into oblivion, you generate a displacement that goes beyond loss of place – you truly vanquish the soul of a people.

Tacla’s work is the opposite of what has come to be known as “ruin porn,” the depictions of desolation as a backdrop in artistic endeavors, be they classic paintings that centered ruins as moralistic symbolism, or the photographs of urban decay, or the film sets for dystopian science fiction movies. Capitalizing on the visual salaciousness of melancholic imagery, while ignoring the forces that brought the world to ruin, from poverty to warfare, stands in stark contrast of what Tacla does. Without being photorealistic, the canvases convey a sense of absolute erasure, seamlessly merging into the actual visuals from places like Syria and now Gaza, that hit our screens. There is nothing of the frisson we so cherish when observing something slightly alarming from a distance. There is just dread, slowly seeping into your system, if you stand for any amount of time in front of these monumental canvases.

Our fascination with ruins – as long as we don’t have to live in or next to them – has been an artistic staple since the Renaissance. The focus during romanticism shifted to the potential for renewal. After world war II it became a national rallying cry, like Auferstanden aus Ruinen, From the Ruins Risen, the title of the German Democratic Republic’s Anthem from 1949 to 1990.

We might do well to shift our focus yet again, from ruins to the looming possibility that at some point renewal is no longer possible. At an age where weapons of mass destruction can wipe out life as we know it, we can hit a point of no return. We have certainly gotten sufficient warning. If you look at the aftermath of Chernobyl, not just in the exclusion zone for Reactor 4, which has become a pilgrimage site for disaster junkies, but in the forests surrounding the nuclear power plant, you’ll find some stark revelations (hard now under Russian occupation.) The trees downwind from Chernobyl all died immediately after the disaster. With the entire landscape poisoned, the agents of decay and thus eventual renewal, have also ceased to exist. No more bacteria, fungi and insects that usually recycle a forest’s nutrients and rid it of debris to prepare for new growth. They, too have been erased, and so you are left with ruins that will practically last forever, dead matter that will not renew in any form, looming over our very own extinction when war descends in its final form.

As I have so often stated here – fully aware how many of my readers disagree – I don’t believe art per se can change things, be a political force of the needed magnitude. But it can be a canary in the coal mine, helping us to start questioning, figure out causal connections, and at least implores us to think about solutions that exclude future ruins once and for all.

The rest is on us.

Here is a Pavane by Fauré.

Spring, the umpteenth look.

Art, Nature, Poetry
May 6, 2024
3 Comments

Nostos
There was an apple tree in the yard —
this would have been
forty years ago — behind,
only meadows. Drifts
off crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor’s yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from tennis courts —
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

by Louise Glück

Gustave Caillebotte Apple Tree in Bloom (1885)

I do not agree with Glück’s assessment, “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” We look at the world – able to see it – a million times, if we only move about with intention. Or share in the wonder expressed by next generations. Or allow art to be more than representation, pointing us to the beauty inherent in the real world. Maybe we can’t return to the exact childhood tree, but there are plenty apples around.

In some funny way, the title of the poem, Nostos, makes that very point, doesn’t it? The term comes from ancient Greece and refers to the homecoming of the hero after a prolonged absence (one of the main themes of the Odyssey.) Not remembered, but re-experienced, connected again, the world seen, not just recalled. If it was only about a particular childhood garden, it should have been Nostalgia, the combination of Nostos /homecoming with the word Algos/pain, although nostalgia most often descends into this sentimental wistfulness that I can’t stand.

Back to spring: In today’s images, spring has returned, after a long absence. So has this viewer, in my annual exploration of spring’s bounty, seeing it afresh. And so have paintings, that are not molding in museums, but here, in front of our eyes, conveying a shared appreciation of this season. Forget memory! Here are this week’s perceptions, on walks punctuated by heavy rains and sudden reappearance of the sun.

Max Beckmann SPRING NEAR SÜDENDE (1907)

Hawthorne blossoms shimmered through the trees, or exploded in full view.

Dwight William Tryon Spring (1893)

David Hockney Hawthorne Blossom Near Rudston (2008)

Cows were curious as to what I had to offer…

Doris Lee, Blossom Time, 1959

Plants unfurled, echoing van Gogh’s brush strokes.

Vincent van Gogh, Green Wheat Fields, Auvers, 1890

Meadows exploded with Camassia, and other early spring blooms, many reminiscent of rockets, all shooting towards the light.

Janene Walkky Common Camas or Camassia quamash (2013)

Ruth Asawa, Spring, 1965, lithograph

Then there are the fruit tree blossoms, holding up their own against the orange bloom,

Vincent van Gogh Orange Blossoms (1890)

Claude Monet Spring (Fruit Trees in Bloom) (1873)

Walking through the woods was a green, dripping, wet experience, then sunbursts the next minute.

Abbott Handerson Thayer Landscape at Fontainebleau Forest (1876)

Did someone say birds? Ducklings! Orioles, yellow rump warblers (butter butts!), kill deer, wood ducks, geese, barn swallows and purple martins all showing off.

Magnus von Wright Mallard Ducklings (1841)

Tracey Emin Believe in Extraordinary (2015)

AUDUBON bird Red-Breasted Nuthatch Purple Martin (1890)

Even the turtles came out.

The only thing I could not find were these:

Franz von Stuck The sounds of spring (1910)

Maybe they went that way.

Music captures it all.

Art on the Road: Sculptures with stories.

Art
May 1, 2024
1 Comments

If you asked me if I prefer exhibitions that feature a single artist or those that display the work of many different ones, I’d have a hard time deciding. I always find myself drawn to retrospectives of a particular artist, because they allow me to learn how someone develops, how they are open to change or impress with continuity of a chosen theme, and how life’s experience(s) can shape the evolution of creativity and skill.

On the other hand, seeing the works of many different artists riff off each other, or provide comparison basis for relative judgements, allow an assessment of the current state of the art and often help me to understand my own reaction to art better, my own taste, if you will.

Art at the Cave gallery rooms

Luckily, today we don’t have to decide between the two approaches: I’ll just present both. I managed to see a riveting retrospective of Sargent Claude Johnson‘s work at The Huntington Library in Pasadena, CA, still up until mid-May. I also visited Shapes that Speak, work by multiple members of The Pacific Northwest Sculptors Group (PNWS) shown during the month of April at Art at the Cave in Vancouver, WA. (I chanced on it, just before closing. Some of the work is truly interesting and you might enjoy looking at the portfolios. Here is a list of the PNWS members with their websites for your perusal.)

Tony Furtado Hiro the Hare

Shapes that Speak is such a catch-all title, but I would be hard pressed myself to come up with something more specific for a group exhibition that is not curated around a particular topic. If these sculptures speak, then surely in different languages, with different degrees of precision, loudness and pitch. Structure varies, just as texture and modes of expression. I would not call it a cacophony, but the Tower of Babel did come to mind.

Tony Furtado Husk

In a way that is the one drawback, compared to all the advantages conveyed by being a member of an artist collective – in this case Pacific Northwest Sculptors, long a treasure for the region – that provides mutual support and exchanges resources and ideas, educates and connects. Group exhibitions of member work can so easily become byzantine, with the viewers having to make their way through a seemingly haphazard collection, trying not to be distracted by too many voices at once, to stick with the metaphor. That said, whoever hung this show did admirable work in grouping exhibits otherwise all over the map.

Left to Right: Laurie Vail Dancer – Bill Leigh Flight – Laurie Vail Kingfisher

Left to Right: Jeremy Kester A Drop in the Ocean – LB Buchan Elysia – Todd Biernacki Homage (c’est un Magritte) – LB Buchan Propeller 2

Note that I believe both to be true: the advantages of artist groups like these far outweigh the disadvantages, and exhibitions could be showing off the strength of each artist if curated around a shared theme, or some underlying principle. Simply putting up recent or favorite displays does a disservice to much of the work that would otherwise shine.

Sherry Wagner Mary

Leslie Crist Portrait (photographed from different angles)

Here are some more examples of the diversity I encountered, in no particular order or preference.

Susan Jones Laminar Flow

Anne Baxter Solar Flare

Sherry Wagner Chip

If the work of the Pacific Northwest artists tell many different stories, Sargent Claude Johnson‘s retrospective at the Huntington is devoted to a main focus: the dignity and beauty of the Black subject in an era that still legalized racial discrimination. It is long overdue to see work from a master, namely a quarter century since his work was surveyed at SF MOMA, and one wonders why an artist who was so prominent during his lifetime has disappeared into the recesses of cultural memory.

The Black modernist (1887 – 1967), often associated with the Harlem Renaissance, lived on the West Coast for most of his lifetime and worked primarily as a sculptor in contrast to his painting East Coast associates, which might explain why he fell through the cracks when this movement experienced renewed interest by contemporary art critics. (In this context it might be or interest to visit a wide reaching exhibition on the Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism that just now opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.)

Negro Woman (1933)

Johnson was born to a father of Swedish ancestry and a mother who was part Cherokee and part African American. While his brothers and sisters chose to be recognized as Native Americans or Caucasians, Sargent decided to live his life as a Black. Some of his work, like this portrait, focussed on the duality of his racial background. In his own words, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others… One ever feels his Two-ness, – an American, a Negroe; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body.”

Self Portrait (1950s)

This is about the most political statement by him that I could find. In general, the artist did not engage in propagandistic art, whether in his murals or in his work for collectors, and was wholly opposed to the social realism found in the work of other Black artists, like Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, and Charles White. He shared the somewhat apolitical aesthetic stance of a man he admired : Alain LeRoy Locke, the so-called father of the Harlem Renaissance, whose “New Negro” philosophy assumed that “a vibrant race tradition in art will contribute to American art and, in turn, this achievement will help bring about social equality.” (Ref.)

Langston Hughes, a former protégé of Locke’s, considered the Harlem Renaissance movement a failure because it was motivated by a fantasy that the race problem could be solved through art. He accurately wondered whether the contributions of an elite group of black intellectuals to American culture would bring about social change for the masses of African Americans.

Johnson drew from Southern Black folk-culture and African art as sources of inspiration, but also included aspects of Asian-Pacific art. Many elements of pre-Columbian or contemporary Mexican art can be found in his sculptures and friezes. He experimented with various modes, sculpture predominantly, but also painting and prints. A range of materials, wood, paper, metal, enamel, terracotta and more, can be found in his work.

Singing Saints (1940)

Dorothy C. (1938)

Johnson is probably best known for his sculptures, many of whom depict Black women, often with children inseparably attached, a valuable reminder that family separation is not just a thing of a slavery past. Immigrant families, separated at the border during the last eight years, are still not reunited, often due to (coincidental?) administrative omissions of identifiable characteristics that would allow tracing.

Standing Woman (1934)

Forever Free (1933)

Mother and Child (1932)

Some of Johnsons’ children’s busts received awards. Minor quibble for an exhibition that otherwise does a fabulous job in both placing and signage of work: why elevate the one non-Black head to central and elevated position? The little Asian girl was a playmate of Johnson’s children, but it feels weird that she is surrounded by the Black kids.

Clockwise from upper left: Head of a boy (1930) – Elizabeth Gee (1927) – Chester (1931) – Head of a Boy (1928) – Esther (1929)

Johnson worked all his life in side jobs to sustain his artistic practice. Money was tight, which had sorrowful consequences for his wife whose mental health declined and who spent the rest of her life in a mental institution. (The Huntington is truly helpful in providing much information of aspects related to the artist but not necessarily central to the art in its catalogue.)

Even though Johnson was picked for major commissions, including a 185-foot-long frieze for a San Francisco high school that displays an array of athletes, things never got easy. Other public artworks for the Depression-era Works Progress Administration included work for the California School for the Blind in Berkeley.

The following architectural installations were all made for the CALIFORNIA SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND starting in 1933. There are window lunettes and a stage proscenium. The pieces were dispersed and now belong to the Huntington, The California School for the Blind, the African American Museum at Oakland and UC Berkeley – here reunited for the first time. You are invited to explore via touch!

Here is video that describes the work.

Below is a video screenshot and sketches for San Francisco’s George Washington Highschool Athletics Mural from 1941. Here is a full video.

Johnson’s life did not have a happy ending. He struggled with the ravages of alcoholism and died in 1967 in a residential hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, a somewhat rough neighborhood. His legacy should serve as an inspiration: he told the story of the dignity of people who were ignored at best, despised and discriminated against at worst, art created during a time where this was an act of defiance as well as an expression of hope against hope to help change perceptions.

Alas, this particular story is still ongoing.

Standing Woman (1934)

Here is music from the Harlem Renaissance. Lift every voice.

Sargent Claude Johnson

Feb. 17–May 20, 2024

The Huntington – Library, Museum, Botanical Garden

1151 Oxford Road

San Marino, CA 91108

Art On the Road: Imagined Fronts – The Great War and Global Media at LACMA

Art, History
Apr 8, 2024
2 Comments

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” – Quote attributed to Leon Trotsky but actually coined by Fanny Hurst in 1941 while addressing a rally in Cleveland, Ohio.

“First time I wore thermal underwear and a down vest to work in April,” said the museum guard standing outside Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass—a 456-foot-long concrete slot constructed on LACMA’s campus, topped by a 340-ton granite megalith. I had not expected such detailed response to my friendly “It’s cold, isn’t it?” directed at the shivering man.

Two views of Michael Heizer Levitated Mass (2012)

Glorious blue sky and sunshine were deceptive. It was cold and extremely windy when I started my visit to LACMA, exploring the grounds first, evading palm fronds flying through the air. Crazy weather, with a few of Ai WeiWei’s zodiac creatures ignoring it all and the lamps standing like frozen tin soldiers..

The shivering, alas, did not end once inside. Not due to the temperature, though, since it was quite toasty in the Resnick Pavilion. Rather, it was induced by the realization that we simply have not learned the lessons from the past – or, alternatively, have learned them all too well: media manipulation plays a significant role in preparing people for war, luring them into support for war efforts, and pulling the wool over their eyes with regards to the consequences of war. Pretending that we can know war by imagining it, is, of course, one way to sell it to the public. We might make very different decisions if we lived through the actual experience which is never matched by the most vivid imagination based on media representations. Watershed events like World War I that changed the course of history, are these days remembered as statistics – if they are remembered at all. 20 million deaths, 21 million wounded, in the span of four years (military personell and civilians combined.) Hard to intuit the nightmare that was, when only thinking about numbers.

“Imagined Fronts: The Great War and Global Media,” offers some 200 exhibits chosen by Timothy O. Benson, curator of the museum’s Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Posters, books, rotogravure graphics, prints and excerpts from films combine to show the extent to which the public’s perception of World War I was shaped in ways beneficial to war efforts by state and private media. Inexplicably, one of the very few paintings on display was chosen to head the exhibition announcement and subsequent reviews, of which there are remarkably few. (You would think in our own time of war, the atrocities in Ukraine and Gaza, an exhibition about the interaction between media and war would be of heightened interest.)

Félix Edouard Vallotton Verdun (1917)

Maybe there is a pragmatic explanation for the choice, after all: Félix Edouard Vallotton’s Verdun (1917) spares you the reality of the slaughter that was unfolding across a full year in the French trenches (where my own grandfather fought.) It immediately lifts the gaze from the bilging smoke and fires to a bright blue horizon, as if there’s hope, something more likely to draw exhibition visitors than horror, I presume. A much more remarkable painting, Gino Severino’s Armored Train in Action (1915) is also reviewed with regularity. Based on a press photograph of an armored train, the museum signage tells us the painting is: “a celebration of a mechanized war, typifying the Italian Futurists’ extolment of the dynamics of energy and destruction.” What is conveniently left out is Severino’s eventual full-fledged support of Mussolini’s fascism.

Gino Severino Armored Train in Action (1915)

The exhibition wanders across four sections, roughly focusing on war propaganda (Mobilizing the Masses,) battle field representations (Imagining the Battlefield,) exhibits introducing the number of international forces involved (Facilitating the Global War,) and a few instances of the attempts to integrate the damage that was wrought between 1914 and 1918 (Containing the Aftermath.) Nestled in between are a few displays of those who made art or comments opposed to the war.

Overall the organization worked for me, but I found the fact that multiple movie screens, mounted up high and continuously rolling cuts of both documentary movies and propaganda films, incredibly distracting. Some of them were, as good propaganda tends to be, almost hypnotic. A German businessman encounters a woman who sells him a magic potion that will reveal “the truth” if poured on paper, before she vanishes into thin air. What appears on the previously blank page: a tank threatening armed Germans, persuading the business guy, visibly moved, to invest immediately in war bonds, so he contributes his bit as well….

The posters on display are probably familiar to many of us. Neither witty nor subtle, they capitalize on installing fear or indignation, or appeal to your compassion.

The photography section gets more interesting. There are a few memorable photographs documenting the war efforts, and the pride in new technology.

Clockwise: William Ivor Castle Canadian Troops ging over the top – James Francis Hurley Death the Reaper (ca 1918 )and Over the Top – (ca 1918.)

For me, the truly gripping parts of this exhibition were the lithographs and drawings. They can be roughly divided into those that educate, often by means of satire or inclusions of script, and those that speak to our emotions, depicting experiential suffering in hopes that it comes across.

George Grosz The Voice of the People (1927. (Money paid for the following propaganda: Hurray, Hurray!! every shot a Russian, down with Serbia, God punish England, and every Bayonet a Frenchman.)

Georg Scholz Newspaper Carriers (1922).

Otto Dix The Cardplayers (1920)

Käthe Kollwitz The Widow (1922) and The Survivors: War against War (1924)

Both trigger empathetic imagination, something that could provide a fertile ground to change views on war, realizing its futility and injustice.

Willie Jäckel Memento (1915)

“Memento 1914/15,” a blistering portfolio of 10 lithographs by Willy Jaeckel, made in 1915 when he joined the Berlin Secession to oppose artistic suppression by bellicose Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Jaeckel was just 27.) Inspired by Goya’s “The Disasters of War,” it features a reclining severed head on the cover page — the “sleep of reason” made permanent, its unleashed monsters manifold in subsequent sheets. (Ref.)

Of course, the very same mechanism, as used by propaganda posters, helps to sell war.

In some ways, this makes the exhibition thought-provoking: how easily can our imagination, needed to approximate a close representation of the war experience, be manipulated? How do propaganda posters, retouched photographs, censored prints affect our imagination? It is not just the official propaganda machine by governments, military and states, however sophisticated. It is also the art that tries to elicit compassionate imagination that played a role mostly in anti-war directions – and managed to be distributed, for the first time, in large quantities, made accessible through the modern printing presses.

ERNST FRIEDRICH WAR AGAINST WAR (1924)

The show is timely. The use of both, image manipulation for propagandistic purposes, and the employment of censorship to prohibit artists from eliciting sympathetic imagination that helps to support just causes, is ubiquitous across the world right now. Just a few days ago, the NYT reported about the chilling effects of the Gaza war on artistic expression and censorship in Germany. NPR reported on the use of misleading videos (old or from video games) flooding the social media to escalate tensions between Palestinian and Israeli supporters, just a few days after the horrific Hamas attacks. Pro-Israel sources claim “Pallywood Propaganda,” accusing Palestinians of staging or faking their suffering.

El Dschihad, no. 25, January 25, 1916, in German prison camp created for muslim soldiers – Raoul Dufy The Allies, (c. 1915) – Lucien Jonas African Army and Colonial Troops’ Day, (1917)

Our increasing awareness of AI’s power in creating deep fakes leads us to discount the veracity of purported eyewitness accounts, sent via videos out of the war zones, with few means of assessing what is real and what is false. That uncertainty, in turn, can lead to a general disavowal of visual reports, a lack of trust that opens doors to political manipulations by those who claim they, and they alone, can guide us to “the truth.”

Art is related to conflict in so many ways – during wars, art is looted as a trophy, art is destroyed as a way of demoralizing opponents, it is used, as mentioned before, as a tool of propaganda in order to generate both psychological and material support for the war effort. Can art that opposes war, as expressed in writing, visual representations, music, really make a difference in our day and age, given our distrust, our being overwhelmed, our dire need to avoid being flooded and wanting to distance ourselves from war imagery? When war defeats the imagination, can art rekindle it? Can it cut through hate, anger, resentment, violence and destruction, change minds? The debate is ongoing.

Sergio Canevari The Russian Peace (1918)

I have no definitive answer. This exhibition’s imagery most meaningful to me, a pacifist, namely the depictions of suffering and the satirical stabs at those who financially gain from war, will likely not speak to those eager to go to war, just like racist propaganda posters embraced by them do nothing for me. Maybe our ideological or political divisions prevent us to think through art that does not confirm our preexisting beliefs. To that extent, art will not be able to produce change, given the strength of our biases. (I have written about this at length recently, as you might remember.)

Pierre Albert-Birot Final study for The War (1916)

However, if I consider what happens when I share the art that appeals to me with other people who are open to it, it surely creates a sense of solidarity and feeling of belonging to that group. Maybe it guides you to find your kind, to strengthen a movement, to empower you to speak up for shared values. If controversial art models courage, it might spark you to be brave and resist, as well. Not a small feat.

Johannes Baader Dada-Dio-Drama (1920)

Right now we look from afar at wars in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Tigray, in Sudan, Syria, in Lebanon, with more on the horizon, should Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, the U.S. or Nato advance to increasing military action. We might not be interested in war, but war will be interested in us. And at that moment we will need allies to resist its pull, some of whom, just maybe, can be found through a shared appreciation of the relevant art as well as shared forms and intensities of imagination, allowing us to keep a critical perspective and fight manipulation.

Am I optimistic about this? Not really.

Hopeful? You bet.

Otto Schubert Watercolor, pen. and pencil on postcards he sent to his future wife. Off to War, November 18, 1915, Fire, Explosion, December 1, 1915 Evening Mood at the Front, January 24, 1916 Argonne, French Prisoners, April 1, 1916 Hot Day at the Front, April 7, 1916

Imagined Fronts: The Great War and Global Media

December 3, 2023–July 7, 2024

Resnick Pavilion

Los Angeles County
Museum of Art

5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Edward Kienholz The Portable War Memorial (1968-70)

Little Lizards

Art, Nature
Apr 4, 2024
1 Comments

““Precisely the least thing, the gentlest, lightest, the rustling of a lizard, a breath, a moment, a twinkling of the eye – little makes up the quality of the best happiness. Soft!” – Friedrich Nietzsche Thus spoke Zarathustra

I learned some days ago that a new gecko species, discovered in India, was named Cnemaspis vangoghi because the blue coloration evoked Vincent van Gogh’s iconic “Starry Night” (1889.)

Nothing quite that fancy to be found around here, but, in truth, I consider all of the lizards beautiful, and was tempted to name this dotted fellow below Lizard Kusama. If Yayoi Kusama, the princess of polka dots, had the least bit of humor, she’d probably be pleased, given that she specializes in weird, as The Tate once claimed on their kids’ page…

Lots of artists have attempted to capture what is special about these little reptiles, representing their respective mythologies, trying to depict their biological features, or using them as symbols for an array of concepts. In ancient Rome, lizards were a symbol of death and rebirth, given that the animals hibernated in the winter months and reappeared in the spring. The Etruscans believed that lizards went blind as they aged but could regain their sight by bathing in bright sunlight, making them a symbol for light and heat.

Maria Sibylla Merian Lizard with eggs and hatchling, butterflies and banana plant. (1705)

Native American tribes created lots of lizard representations across the U.S, both as petroglyphs and pictographs. Their shapes are also a dominant feature of Aborigine art from Australia and New Zealand and folk art from Mexico and Central America.

Leonardo da Vinci used them for stage settings.

Leonardo da Vinci Allegory on the Fidelity of the Lizard (recto) (1478)

Scientific treatises of the Middle ages mixed fact and fiction.

Konrad Gesner, Historia Animalium Liber Ii : De Quadrupedibus Ouiparis (1586.)

Some artist quite often added them as small details to larger compositions, here one of my favorites for its color.

Paul Gauguin Vairumati (detail) (1897)

Some were playful,

Paul Klee Eidechse (1926)

some were constructed,

Maurits Cornelius Escher Lizard (no.25) 1939

and some are simply allegorical.

Joan Miró Le lezard aux plumes d’or (1971)

Lizards’ rustlings are ubiquitous here at the Zorthian ranch where they abide in abundance. An old, abandoned piano on the patio is home for quite a number of them, begging to be photographed. Although none of these images can live up to what one of the most brilliant Mexican photographers, Graciela Iturbide, has captured across the decades, they, or perhaps the moments when they were captured, are of the quality – little, fleeting – that makes for the best happiness.

That said, do check out Iturbides‘ work – it is phenomenal.

Graciela Iturbide Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas (Our Lady of the Iguanas), Juchitán, México. (1979.)

Graciela Iturbide Lagarto (Lizard), (1986)

Music today by Sibelius. The Lizard, of course.

Tales of a far away land.

Frankly, I’m torn between my desire to report on a magical place, and my longing for just sitting here and let it all sink in. I am currently staying at an old ranch house, hand-built from sandstone boulders, filled with art by the Armenian immigrant Jirayr Zorthian (1911-2004,) who built it many, many decades ago.

It is located high up in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, reachable via a one-lane, potholed, hairpin-curved dirt road. Driving it down and up once a day is enough to get your adrenalin flowing. Except that levels are high already from the sheer beauty that surrounds you, the house nestled among olive-, eucalyptus-, and palm trees, old oaks and oleander bushes, overlooking Los Angeles in the distance.

It is one of many dwellings on a multi-acres compound that is populated by people who have decided to (mostly) live off the land, many of whom remind me of my own hippie days in the late 60s. You wander amongst trailers, make-shift living arrangements, a communal kitchen, laundry and store, multiple workshops for wood and metal working, and large vegetable gardens.

There is live stock, some of which is roaming freely and becoming my occasional visitors. In fact my 14 month-old granddaughter now consistently makes goat noises when she sees me, having seen them at my place. Old goat, indeed. Happy old goat.

The toddler might as well hoot, since the owls are singing me to sleep every night, the minute the sun goes down, three different species telling by their call, a pair of Northern pygmy owls among them, with their eerie staccato whistling. It is cold up here when the wind blows and dusty, likely hot in the summer. As with every ancient house, some windows don’t open, some don’t close, and there is a resident raccoon in the ceiling, which I have come to expect – every one of my extended California trips had one seeking proximity in the walls of my rooms. True story! (I also hasten to add the wonderful folks here are in the process of chasing it out. As I said, old house, many access points.)

The creativity of Jirayr Zorthian who build up this land, and whose son and granddaughter are currently managing the rentals for concerts, meetings, weddings and lodgers to bring in some funds – and most importantly continue his legacy of celebration of art – is evident wherever you look. PBS had a comprehensive account of the history of the artist and the place he imprinted, calling it a 48 acre art junk yard, in case you are curious. He worked as a muralist, murals which can be found among others at the Pentagon. He partied with the best of them, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Charlie Parker, Segovia, Richard Feynman, and many more included, and in his last years allowed people to deposit junk on the property, which his descendants are still trying to get rid off, 20 years after his death.

The house itself is filled with paintings, drawings, prints and small cultural tableaux made from found objects. I’ve been here over a week now and still discover new details every morning. The outside walls that surround the house flank walking paths or little hidden patios, overflowing with objects cemented into the field stones, with a recurring theme of insulators. They come in all sizes, shapes, materials like glass and ceramics, likely collected obsessively since there is not a single view, anywhere, that does not include one or more of these things that are used on telephone polls and wires.

I have been photographing them in all lights and times of day, hoping there will be some creative spark to use them for montages. I feel insulated here, protected from the horrors and sorrows of the world as long as a I stay away from my computer. Insulated from the internally imposed push towards accomplishing something, going to museums, writing reviews. I have literally not done anything other than soaking up nature, and glowing from the joy that is my family here.

Oh, and of course, I have photographed birds. They visit, morning and evening, on the surrounding car wrecks transformed into installations, and the juxtaposition of nature and man-made, rusty objects has been a thrill. They land on artificial trees, blossoming with, what else, insulators. They take birdbaths in discarded bowls and hubcaps. Finches, warblers, mocking birds, hummingbirds, ravens, hawks, sparrows, acorn woodpeckers, you name them.

I can imagine that it is not easy to live in the shadow of such a larger-than-life figure as Zorthian. Not easy to make it in a community that forever changes with people coming and going, with laws restricting the ability to capitalize on the land, an initial lack of experience with animal husbandry or food farming, changing climate conditions and unreliable sources of income to carry a group of committed tenants. As a house guest I reap all the benefits of the beauty, without the cost of the conditions that come with this unusual place. But I can see the absolute thrill of being part of a legacy, of driving (art)history forwards, of maintaining an actual and spiritual independence from the norms that society tries to impose on us all. This place is infused with purpose as well as levity, peacefulness as well as stimulation. I think it conveys, for those who maintain it, a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves, a social embeddedness. So important in times of experienced isolation and societal division. For those who visit: a true gift of insulation from the rest of our lives.

Here is one of the prior ranch visitors, Segovia, playing Bach. Then again, I could have chosen Charlie Parker…. but it felt like a sublime day.

What to do with the past?

· Stitching Stories at Art at the Cave Gallery in Vancouver, WA. ·

Art
Mar 11, 2024
2 Comments

“If nostalgia as a political motivation is most frequently associated with Fascism, there is no reason why a nostalgia conscious of itself, a lucid and remorseless dissatisfaction with the present on the grounds of some remembered plentitude, cannot furnish as adequate a revolutionary stimulus as any other: the example of [Walter] Benjamin is there to prove it.” – Fredric Jameson, “Walter Benjamin; Or, Nostalgia,” Marxism and Form, 1971

Bonuspoints for a gallery that makes you wonder before you even set foot into the building! At least that’s how I reacted when I arrived in Vancouver to meet with one of the artists currently exhibiting at Art at the Cave and was greeted by a sign sporting multiple promises – some of which were indeed kept by the work shown inside.

Stitching Stories features multiple artists, loosely connected by work using stitching and weaving, their work triggering immediate associations of past, present and future for me, the flow of time signaling change.

Sharon Svec, part of the gallery team and one of the exhibiting artists.

Sam Yamauchi‘s A Messy Book of Mistaken Identity symbolizes the hazards of both, a search for and communication of identity to others. The stitched collages unfold in the here and now, boldly describing a process affected by variables all too familiar for many of us, rightly questioning if there is a permanent, identifiable self to be found.

Sam Yamauchi A Messy Book of Mistaken Identity

Sharon Svec‘s The Eyes Have It is an enchanting set of three eye-shaped, sculptural mobiles intricately woven from roots of ivy, some starting to sprout leaves in the warmth of the cavernous room. The robust material (have you ever tried to get rid of ivy roots in your garden?) takes on a more filigree appearance when laced together, light suffusing in both directions. The combination of light and eyes, three of them no less, triggered amused associations of clairvoyance, the third eye predicting the future – and the evanescence of such attempts. The German word for clairvoyance is Hellsehen, seeing the light. I have always believed that that is a much more applicable description of our take on the past when we come to inspect it, rather than a grasp on the future. But what do I know.

Sharon Svec The Eyes Have it.

***

The past, as it turns out, is what I came for, drawn by two bodies of work by Ruth Ross, Yiddish and The Doll Dialogues, respectively. More precisely, I was interested in how the artist approaches the past. Honoring the past in an attempt to defy impermanence, holding on to it to prevent its loss, turning nostalgic to retrieve remembered affect? Her frequent use of discarded fabrics, beyond their prime and found in thrift store bins or yard sales, often applied back to front, had a material feel of things dragged up, preserved to last. Yet with all her work, things go far deeper than that.

Yiddish is, in some ways, the perfect vehicle for considerations of preservation and loss, not just in the intimate sphere of what’s spoken in one’s family to which Ross refers. The language itself is about 1000 years old, spoken by Ashkenazi Jews, with the name Yiddish itself meaning Jewish. It had other names as well, Taytsh (German), Yidish-taytsh (Jewish-German), Loshn-ashkenaz (the Ashkenazi tongue), and Zhargon (jargon,) but Yiddish remained the standard reference since the 19th century. Before the Holocaust there were over 10 million people in the world speaking Yiddish, a number that was, in addition to the murder of 6 million Jews, further diminished by processes of acculturation and assimilation in America and the former Soviet Union, and by repression of Yiddish and acculturation to Hebrew in Israel. (Ref.)

Ruth Ross Balabusta (Housewife) Details below

Feh signals contempt…

The language itself went through many permutations but generally allowed people who were living in the diaspora to have a shared means of communication. It consists of multiple elements from other languages, Romance in origin, German and Rabbinical Hebrew among them. Each new region where Jews settled after having been driven out from other countries, developed its own vernacular, creating hybrid words, just as we see in so many other languages. The different dialects spoken throughout different European regions were interspersed in American Yiddish, when the immigrants arrived, and standard Yiddish now contains many English words as well.

It has been a two-way street, clearly. Many of the words Ross chose, stitched with wit, subtle hints, allusions to childhood memories and an attentive eye for type-face design, are part of our own English vocabulary, used frequently without knowing their origins. That is even more true for the German speaker. I certainly grew up with everyday words that turned out to be Yiddish when I thought they were German, adjusted in their spelling. In fact there are over 1000 of them, with about 30 in heavy rotation, Schlamassel (Shlimazl – bad fortune or things gone wrong,) malochen (physical labor, from Maloche – work,) Ganove (Gannew in Yiddish, a petty criminal) or Techtel-Mechtel (a fling, derived from the yiddish word Tachti, which means secret) among them.

Ruth Ross Schlemiel/Schlimazel (A Schlemiel is the person who spills the soup and a Schlimazel is the person it lands on…)

Ruth Ross Nu? (Whassup)

Last year I reviewed Ross’ extraordinary series, Red Scare, about being Jewish, politically active and under threat during the McCarthy era. It had a strong political voice, something that is less obvious but still notable in the current exhibition. To draw attention to a language that has long served to identify yourself as a target for anti-Semitism is the opposite to what so many Jews, particularly of the artist’s parent’s generation, were told to do in order to assimilate. There are whole books written about the slogan Dress British, Think Yiddish that encouraged Jews to blend in, in order to be admitted to institutions of higher learning, in particular the Ivy Leagues. Keep your identity inside, think, don’t speak Yiddish. Variations on this can be found as recent as a decade ago, when the originally Jewish sartorial empire, Saks Fifth Avenue, teamed up with a company that made adjustable stays for men’s shirt collars, imprinted with Yiddish words, functionally hidden from view in their little collar slots. The special collection’s name? “Think Yiddish, Dress British.”

Ruth Ross Schmatta (A rag, or piece of clothing)

Ruth Ross Nudnik (A pestering or irritating person. As the artist related, her Papa used to call her that in exasperation when she disturbed his peace.)

Here is work that draws attention to identity, created during a time when people are physically attacked on the street just for speaking Hebrew, two months ago in Berlin. A time when, closer to home, Marjorie Taylor Green suspected that California wildfires were started by Jewish space lasers, and exhibited during a time where Gaza has become a killing field. Plainly there are people in the world who will suspect us, dislike us and maybe despise us because we are Jewish. This point is certainly amplified by many people’s reactions to the horrors unleashed upon civilians in the Middle East. And therefore, unsurprisingly, there is some apprehension associated with letting people know that you are Jewish, and a Yiddish speaker. In addition to concern about vulnerability, many Jews feel some sense of shame or rage about what the government of Israel is pursuing in reaction to the horrifying attack by Hamas, and know we will be called anti-semitic if we voice our anti-Zionism, call for a cease fire or add our voices to the chorus of Jewish voices for Peace. To embrace an essential part of your identity then, in public, is a political act.

Ruth Ross The Royal OY and Gevalt

***

Ross’ second body of work references personal history as well, her life-long relationship with her dolls. Where Yiddish is explicit, straight forward, easily deciphered work, the Doll Dialogues appeared to me to be the opposite. Gauzy layers, combining laser prints on silk, gel prints on silk organza, and lace appliqués with occasional embroidery make for mysterious tableaux each with an obscured doll at its center.

If you are so inclined, they invite psychoanalytical interpretations of childhood memories, symbolized by the dolls, long veiled and inaccessible. After all, here is what Freud wrote:

. . . In the so-called earliest childhood memories we possess not the genuine memory-trace but a later revision of it, a revision which may have been subjected to the influence of a variety of later psychological forces. Thus the “childhood memories” of individuals come in general to acquire the significance of “screen memories”and in doing so offer a remarkable analogy with the childhood memories that a nation preserves in its store of legends and myths.

—Sigmund Freud, “Childhood Memories and Screen Memories,” 1901

If you are like me, you will rather think about the symbolic value that dolls take on in their respective contemporary settings. They might not always be as explicit and creepy as the ones used by Hans Bellmer, who withdrew into the privacy of his obsessions in response to the Nazi’s imperatives about healthy rather than “degenerative” art. They might not be as culturally appropriated as Max Ernst‘s works derived from his collection of Katsina dolls of Hopi origin. But dolls do have a role within a political context, just as they had symbolic value since their inception so many thousands of years ago, first in religious settings, then as status symbols for the aristocracy and eventually as a plaything intended to shape little girls into their roles of care takers and mothers in the context of the nuclear family.

Ruth Ross On the Bus

Ross’ depiction of her dolls is shrouded in more ways than the visual one. Their titles refer to occasions down the memory lane of the artist, rather than serving as explanatory pointers. Their appearance is at times surreal, at times androgynous, hazy and dark. Lace and silk notwithstanding, there is no sense of an exaggerated female presence, a dress-up tool or emphasis on beauty. No hint of happy, innocent tea parties. These collages are blissfully free of nostalgia, even when tied to personal experiences of the doll’s owner.

Why do I celebrate that, you wonder? What’s wrong with a bit of nostalgia?

We live in an era where nostalgia for the traditional role of women, playing house, being subservient, acting doll-like, enjoying the kitchen (Senator Katie Britt, we see you!) is making an organized come-back. It is signaled to a receptive public, yearning for a “traditional past” by ever so many flags, a baby voice appropriate for doll play among them. It has, however, nothing to do with how the dictionary defines nostalgia: “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”

Rather, during (aspiring) fascistic eras it becomes a political tool: Reactionary nostalgia creates a cultural identity by mystifying past and present. The myths of racial superiority and the claimed heritage of a superior religion or immutable gender hierarchy promises succor to those who are feeling deprived and demoted in their present-day existence. That was true for historical periods in the last century, be it in Germany or Italy, or Spain. It is true now for Russian claims of rights to land and resources, and we see it in our own country when we look at the justifications for political movements, Supreme Court sanctioned and enabled, that try to turn the clock back and remove rights extended to those who did not originally occupy the top of a hierarchical ladder (for that matter, who still don’t…)

Ruth Ross She laid her Baby at my Feet detail below

Rather than engaging in nostalgia, we should acknowledge that the past cannot be completely retrieved, and should inform the present only in so far as it allows us to discern what parts of the past should not be repeated. Clinging to conceptions of power that should be assigned to certain people in perpetuity, at the expense of others, is unjustifiable. So is clinging to ideas of permanent victimhood, used as justification by people to become perpetrators regardless of the horrors that they will unleash.

Ruth Ross Love this Doll to Death

The dolls in this exhibition are ambivalent enough that they invite associations to both, object and subject, good and evil. They are a welcome reminder that we need to lift the veil that obscures some version of truth, a veil fashioned out of our clinging to an imagined past, blocking our vision of a more equitable future.

STITCHING STORIES

Ruth Ross & Sam Yamauchi

MARCH 2024: Artist Talk from 1-2 pm on Saturday March 16; a reading by Ruth Ross’ guest poet Leanne Grabel on March 23 at 3 pm.

ART AT THE CAVE, 108 EAST EVERGREEN BOULEVARD, VANCOUVER, WA, 98660,

Music today, how could I not, is the mechanical doll’s aria from Offenbach’s Hoffman’s Erzählungen.

Papageno

One way of cheering myself up when I am about to sink into a prolonged period of the doldrums, is to look at how other people created art during difficult times. It is pretty amazing how many insanely talented people were out there – and productive – when fascism, war, and displacement ruled the day. A reminder that it can be done, with the requisite discipline and defiant attitude.

One of them who you have probably never heard of before, was Lotte Reininger (June 2, 1899 – June 19, 1981) who lived and worked in Berlin until she and her husband left in late 1935 to escape the Nazis. From then on they stayed in multiple European countries as long as their respective visas allowed, with a short interlude to care for her ailing mother back in Berlin, promptly being forced by the Nazi regime to help with their propaganda machine. Eventually she settled in England and became a British citizen in 1961.

Reininger, a writer, director and film maker, was friends with numerous notable artists of the time, Bertholt Brecht and Benjamin Britten among them. Her main focus, though was on making animated films with shadow silhouettes (Scherenschnitt) and a first form of a multiplane camera that she devised in 1923. They were strange films, some short, some feature lengths, with topics ranging from fairy tales, to operas, to parodies, with the occasional advertisement to make some money.

Her films were successful for their novelty and their strongly erotic atmosphere, but many of them had so many references to classical music and/or literature, that a less educated public did not exactly get all the action, irony or satirical jokes. They are genuinely fascinating, craft and creative content alike. They are playful, and integrate a number of cultural markers from different countries, referencing western and non-western art alike. The idea that all of the intricate detail was cut by hand and assembled, a century before AI where something akin could be devised in a minute, is mind boggling to me.

She pioneered “paper and cardboard cut-out figures, weighted with lead, and hinged at the joints—the more complex the characters’ narrative role, the larger their range of movements, and therefore, the more hinges for the body—were hand-manipulated from frame to frame and shot via stop motion photography. The figures were placed on an animation table and usually lit from below. In some of her later sound films the figures were lit both from above and below, depending on the desired visual effect. Framed with elaborate backgrounds made from varying layers of translucent paper or colorful acetate foils for color films, Reiniger’s characters were created and animated with exceptional skill and precision.” (Ref.)

I chose one of my favorites, Papageno, for you to enjoy.

It uses a number of tropical bird silhouettes, some almost looking like squirrels, some parrots, some emus. So I thought I’d dig out photographs of something semi-exotic, the lovely peacock. The music and the references to Mozart’s opera are self-explanatory.

If you want to enjoy the whole opera, here is a link to a 1971 Hamburgische Staatsoper production that I actually saw live. Man, I’m old.

And here is a link to a 15 minute overview of Lotte Reininger’s genius, produced by The Met.

If you interested in the art of paper cutting, here is an overview essay, that describes different ways of doing it and their historical and geographic origins, from China in the second century AD to Aztecs in Mexico, to Ashkenazi Jews in the 17th century. Scherenschnitt, cutting with scissors, as used by Reininger, was likely developed in Switzerland and then Germany in the 1500s. Pennsylvania Germans brought it to the US in the 1700s.

So, if this miserable weather does not allow for photography, maybe I should grab a pair of scissors. Or not. Too tempting to use it as a weapon, given my mood and the politics du jour…. so maybe watercolor instead.

Songs from the Congo

· Black Artists of Oregon/Africa Fashion at Portland Art Museum ·

Art, History, Psychology, Racism, Social Justice
Feb 12, 2024
3 Comments

““I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos — and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo.”

– Franz Fanon Black Skin White Masks, 1952

Last week I visited Africa Fashion and Black Artists of Oregon at the Portland Art Museum, downstairs and upstairs in the main building, respectively. Downstairs was empty, upstairs was jumping, middle of a weekday, for a show that has been open since September. I started my rounds on top and my eye was immediately caught by a group of young women motionless, except for their heads.

What were they staring at? Bent over, studying, then four heads lifting in unison, looking at each other, then bending again, back and forth, like a silent dance. Once the young women left, I walked over to see for myself and found this:

damali ayo Rent a Negro.com (2003) You can listen to the artist explain the evolution of this work here.

What reaction would an interactive piece like this, riffing on the commodification and objectification of Black labor, elicit in high school students who are most likely not (yet) too familiar with conceptual art? One of the first satirical pieces of internet art, damali ayo‘s Rent-a-Negro is an ingenious take on the system that has progressed from purchasing and owning the Black body to leasing it (although prison labor needs to be considered a form of slavery, if you ask me,) to using token Blacks to satisfy demands for “diversity.” How would it be processed by the Black high-schoolers in contrast to those like me, old White folk? Rage and revulsion by those whose ancestors were subjected to exploitation and oppression, ongoing even? Shame and sorrow by those whose forbears might have wielded the whip and ran the auctions, with patterns of discrimination not a thing of the past?

Julian V.L. Gaines Painfully Positive (2021)

Ray Eaglin Maid in USA (1990)

Fanon’s insight that someone like me will not be able to understand certain forms of art as they would be by those from whom it originates, popped up in my head with urgency. And this leads to one of the elephants in the room that needs to get aired: how does a White woman review exhibitions of Black art with the depth and understanding they deserve, while aware that the racial, potentially distorting, lens cannot be abandoned? It is naive, bordering on ignorant, to assume that art can be seen, understood, felt in some neutral fashion, when our implicit stereotypes guide our interpretations, and when our lack of knowledge specific to the history of a community affects our comprehension.

Tammy Jo Wilson She became the Seed (2021)

Al Goldsby Looking West (ca. 1970)

Furthermore, any reviewer aware of their implicit biases and wishing to be an ally to those who are burdened with historical or ongoing discrimination, will walk on eggshells. You want to avoid harsh criticism, or piling onto stereotypes, or being overly deferential, despite all of that being already a form of unequal treatment, born from awareness of culture constructed around race. You so want to avoid putting your foot in your mouth and appear arrogant.

Or racist.

Thelma Johnson Streat Monster the Whale (1940)

Mark Little Despondent (1991)

Isaka Shamsud- Din Land of the Empire Builder (2019)

I vividly remember a lecture I gave about the psychology of racism on invitation by PAM in the context of a Carrie Mae Weems exhibition over a decade ago. I talked about the Implicit Associations Test – IAT – the psychological measure that confirms how many of us hold stereotypical assumptions associated with racism. It is a test that looks at the strength of associations between concepts and even the most liberal takers have gasped at their scores. Mind you, it does not mean you are a racist; it just tells us that we have all learned associations between concepts that involve stereotypes associated with Blacks. Some in the audience erupted in anger, astute, educated, intelligent docents among them. That could not be true! They fought against racism all their lives! I clearly failed in getting the point across: there is a difference between consciously acting on your stereotypes and unconsciously being affected by them. But even the latter was denied by these well-meaning citizens.

Jason Hill Lion King (2019)

In any case, one can have read brilliant work like Franz Fanon’s about the Black psyche in a White world, racial differences, revolutionary struggle and the effects of colonialism until the cows come home, it will not ease the task of reviewing exhibitions like the one currently on view. Not that that has kept me from doing so, most recently with Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems in Dialogue at the Getty and Red Thread/Green Earth which showed work of several members of the Abioto family at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts.

But it has made me aware of how much I already censor in my head, how worried I am about the reception of my takes, and the damage they could do, how my approach to work are colored by the political context, something that would not happen if I just walked into any old show of a collection of artists, race unknown.

Ralph Chessé The Black Women Work (1921)

Bobby Fouther Study in Black (2023)

***

The current exhibition was curated by Intisar Abioto after years of research into the spectrum of Black artists in Oregon, some famous, some locally known, some hidden in the embrace of their community. She put together a remarkable show, and her line of thinking as well as the expanse of the art is fully explained in a in-depth review by my ArtsWatch colleague Laurel Reed Pavic, who talked to the curator and listened to her podcasts about the exhibition. (You can listen to the podcasts yourself – they range from general introduction to a number of interviews with individual participating artists.)

My first association to the upstairs show was the contrast to what is exhibited downstairs, African Fashion. Previously shown at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum, the latter was hailed as a vital and necessary exhibition by eminent art critics. It felt to me, however, like one of those luxury fruit baskets filled with luscious and exotic goods, wrapped in cellophane with a glittery bow – something that often does not live up to its visual promise when you are actually starting to peel the fruit.

Contrast that with the show upstairs: like a farm-to-table box dropped off at your doorstep, stuffed to the brim, packed to overflowing, with produce you sometimes don’t even recognize, but all locally grown and, most importantly, invariably, truly nourishing.

Katherine Pennington Busstop II (2023)

Latoya Lovely Neon Woman (2019)

Packed is the operative word here, 69 artists and over 200 objects, sorted into categories like “expanse, gathering, collective liberating, inheritance, collective presence, and definitions. The art is competing for space, focus, time and attention, with those limited resources not meeting demand. I assume it was a conscious curatorial decision. If you have, finally, a public space willing to open up to a neglected or even excluded collective of artists (collective in the sense of a shared history rather than a shared goal,) you might as well grab the opportunity and allow every one in the community a shot. This is particularly true when you don’t know what the future holds and which opportunities emerge in times where the racial justice backlash is raising its ugly head ever more prominently. Yet you do early-career artists, no matter how promising, no favor when placing them among the hard hitters.

Henry Frison African Prince (1976-79) with details

Alternatively, the inclusion of so many art works might have been a conscious attempt to demonstrate the diversity that is offered by a community long segregated from traditional art venues, never mind neighborhoods. It might be an attempt to shift what psychologists call the outgroup homogeneity bias, our tendency to assume that attitudes, values, personality traits, and other characteristics are more alike for outgroup members than ingroup members. “They are all the same! Know one, you know them all!” As a result, outgroup members are at risk of being seen as interchangeable or expendable, and they are more likely to be stereotyped. This perception of sameness holds true regardless of whether the outgroup is another race, religion, nationality, and so on.

That bias certainly affects what we expect (particularly, when our expectations are driven by other cognitive biases as well.) Our unconscious expectation of less diversity in the creative expressions of the art were certainly put in doubt with the plethora of work put up by Abioto. In confirmation of the bias – and thus the value of her curatorial decisions – I certainly caught myself regularly looking for a common thread of political statements, however indirect, commenting on the experience of being Black in Oregon, a notoriously racist state.

MOsley WOtta Baba was a Black Sheep (2023)

The history can be found here in detail. Simply put, Oregon had not one but three separate Black exclusion laws anchored in the Oregon Constitution and it took until 2001 to scrap the last bit of discriminatory language from the records.

We are one of the nation’s whitest states, and had at some point the highest Ku Klux Klan membership numbers nationally. Of our 4.2 million Oregon residents only about 6% are Black, and many of these have been displaced within the state over and over again, making room for construction projects and/or gentrification of neighborhoods. Nonetheless, Black leadership and organizations providing support for education, including the arts, are resilient and effective. (A recently updated essay by S. Renee Mitchell provides a thorough introduction to these achievements. Another informative article about Black pioneers can be found here.)

Arvie Smith Strange Fruit (1992) Detail below

Much of the art reflects the history, referencing the pain and injustice of lived as well as inherited experience. But there were also pieces that simply depicted beauty, documented landscape, revered what is. No message necessary or intended. It is a conversation I would love to have about all art, at this moment in time, how our ability and willingness to make art outside the need to bear witness, or instruct, or frighten, or alert to social change needed, is obstructed by multiple internal and external forces – but that has to wait for another time.

Sadé DuBoise Collective Mourn (2023) with detail

For this exhibition there was more art on display than could possibly be processed during a single visit. But all of it was nourishing, even in passing, as I tried to express in my initial description – food for thought, yes, as well as a feast for the eyes.

Natalie Ball Mapping Coyote Black, June 12 and 13, 1987 (2015)

Natalie Ball Mapping Coyote Black , June 12 and 13, 1872 (2015) (Artist new to me, enchanted by the work.)

I felt at times as if I was, if not an invited, surely a tolerated guest at a family reunion – meeting of long lost friends and relatives, happy to run into each other, artists introducing each other. It was a vivid, social experience during a time where I am still socially isolated due to the pandemic, even if I was standing double-masked at the margins, observing so many people truly engaging with art, potentially new to them. Twice (!) I was asked to take photographs of people who had met at the museum by chance and talked to each other in front of this or that piece.

I left the museum more hopeful than after any of the recent shows I’ve been reviewing (and the last year included some real winners!). The vibrancy of the work on the walls and the liveliness, even giddiness of the social interactions of many visiting generations all conveyed a sense of resilience and optimism that somehow rubbed off onto me. I might not get the songs of the Congo, but I do have an inkling, provided by this exhibition, of what local Black art stands for: a community that refuses to let go of history, no matter how painful. A community that believes in a more just tomorrow as well, forever willing to fight for it, no matter how hard that is made by the rest of us. A community standing its ground, with art that reflects that strength.

Ralph Chessé Family Portrait (1944)

Guessing Game

Art
Feb 9, 2024
4 Comments

One of the great joys of parenting comes about when you realize your children actually share your interests, delight in the same things and show a curiosity for the world that matches your own. An even greater joy can be derived from realizing that they have outgrown you and know more than you ever did or will about some things – happily sharing their insights.

Just as I followed in the footsteps of my mother who introduced me to all things botanical, my son is now familiar with a lot of what grows and flourishes out there. It has become a joke between us that every time I think I’m detecting a mimosa – one of the earliest subtropical plants I was introduced to by my mother, at a botanical garden in Tenerife, an island south of Spain – I am completely wrong. What I am seeing instead is patiently explained to me by my son, often plants in the acacia family, or others I have never heard of before.

The joke has become so entrenched that every time I see something novel I’ll exclaim:”It’s a mimosa!”, met by satisfactory sighs and eye-rolling by the progeny. Luckily neither one of us has the characteristics of a mimosa (described in its name, Mimosa pudica (pudica = Latin for ‘shy, bashful, shrinking’ – for the plant’s characteristic to shrink and roll up its foliage at the slightest touch.) Joking is sweet with this beloved young man.

For his birthday tomorrow, then, here are some samples of mimosas – yes the real thing! – and just as I am guessing about things he knows, I will let him guess about things I’m still fluent with: the names of the respective painters – (truth be told, I was also too tired last night to type them and titles all out, can be delivered on request!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, mein Schatz – may nature, luminous colors, soft textures and creative juxtapositions be harbingers for what the year brings!