The Berlin Requiem – Red Rosa.

· Beyond the Tree Line ·

History, Music
Aug 28, 2024
2 Comments

“Die rote Rosa nun auch verschwand / Wo sie liegt, ist unbekannt / Weil sie den Armen die Wahrheit gesagt / Haben sie die Reichen aus der Welt gejagt.” – Bertolt Brecht, Epitaph to Berlin Requiem.

I think I reported on this here before, some years back, but the memory repeatedly pops up. On my 11th birthday I received a book with the title Famous Women in History, or some such. Probably meant to be inspirational, or teaching history through human interest stories – but I bet the bank my parents never read a line of it, otherwise they would have reconsidered. The heavy tome included an accumulation of bloody fates, either executed by powerful women, or experienced by powerful women, or both.

There was Judith (dead Holofernes, a head shorter), Cleopatra (dead Antony, falling on his sword, dead queen, self-poisoned), Queen Boudica (80.000 dead Roman legionaries, dead queen by suicide), Jeanne d’Arc (a lot of dead soldiers, a martyr burnt at the stake), Queen Mary I. a.k.a Bloody Mary, (beheaded competitor, Lady Jane Grey, countless executed protestants), Charlotte Corday (dead Marat in the bathtub, guillotined Charlotte), Marie Antoinette (off with her head), Catherine the Great (murdered husband, Peter III, innumerable dead after she extended and harshened serf conditions from Russia into Ukraine,) Typhoid Mary (dead everybody) and so on. One notable exception, and the only scientist mentioned: Mme Curie (dead by radiation exposure.) You would think famous women were all naturally born killers.

I have, of course, no clue how accurate and complete my memory is for a book likely written in the 1940s or early 50s, if not earlier. The book itself is long lost during my many moves in the ensuing decades. Maybe only the horror examples stuck, and I forgot the chapters about happy princesses, humanitarian nuns, or outstanding female artists. Maybe the selection of prominent bloody endings was intended to instill fear of power into impressionable little girls, keeping them in their place. Or maybe it just happens to be historically accurate that the few women who made it into the history books had, indeed, to be ruthless to join the ranks of male rulers, religious zealots, (anti)colonial fighters and tyrants.

I do know, though, who was not included, because I was introduced to the name only when my interest in politics awakened: a female intellectual and revolutionary who left a mark on her world and/or the future. She’d fit the pattern: a woman who supported an uprising, murdered in the most heinous way, her mutilated body dumped into Berlin’s Landwehr Canal: Rosa Luxemburg. (Her comrade Karl Liebknecht, who was executed the same day, was granted a funeral, because he was not Jewish. Käthe Kollwitz was asked by his family to visit the morgue and created one of her most famous memorials.)

Luxemburg, one of the first women to receive a doctorate in law and economics, a brilliant philosopher and fighter for justice, has been on my mind because we have been hearing the word Freedom brandished about in the election campaign. One of her most famous quotes (criticizing the new Russian regime, no less, in a book written in 1918 and published in 1922, The Russian Revolution,) was this:

“Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of ‘justice’ but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege.”

Also on my mind has been the fact that she and Liebknecht were killed by soldiers from the so called Freikorps, a group composed of former officers, demobilized soldiers, military adventurers, fanatical nationalists and unemployed youths hired by right-wing extremist von Schleicher, a staff member for President Paul von Hindenburg (who later appointed Hitler as chancellor.) The Freikorps was explicitly founded to fight left-wing political groups and Jews, deemed responsible for for Germany’s problems, and pursued elimination of “traitors to the Fatherland”.

“The Freikorps appealed to thousands of officers who identified with the upper class and had nothing to gain from the revolution. There were also a number of privileged and highly trained troops, known as stormtroopers, who had not suffered from the same rigours of discipline, hardship and bad food as the mass of the army: “They were bound together by an array of privileges on the one hand, and a fighting camaraderie on the other. They stood to lose all this if demobilised – and leapt at the chance to gain a living by fighting the reds.” (Ref.)

I don’t have to explain why images of violent losers and wanna-be heroes ready to incite bloodshed are on my mind. Never underestimate the danger from a militia.

The montage is trying to reflect Kurt Weill’s 1928 composition The Berlin Requiem. Weill included Bertolt Brecht’s poetic memorial Epitaph upon Luxemburg’s death: “Red Rosa now has vanished too…. / She told the poor what life is about, / And so the rich have rubbed her out. / May she rest in peace.” (The second movement.)

I chose a wide path bordered by crooked trees to celebrate a woman’s courage to leave the straight and narrow one proscribed, pursuing an ideal of radical democracy instead, her thinking opening windows into a brighter world. She reached high in her pursuit of social justice and freedom for all, just like these trees are reaching for the light, defying the storms that bend them. They were photographed in Holland at the North Sea, but same can be found in coastal Poland, the country where she was born.

Here is the Requiem.

Tree People

· Photographers Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo at the World Forestry Center. ·

I have to admit, it’s been ages since I visited the World Forestry Center. No more explaining to my (now grown) kids that the fake logger climbing a fake tree with a fake goose and owl calmly sitting on branches below him, are there for educational purposes, and maybe, just maybe, meant as a joke. Or to stimulate discussions how museum exhibits not necessarily reflect the real world. Don’t get me wrong, they and I loved the place during too many rainy days in Portland, Oregon, and some of the educational displays did promote meaningful conversations.

As it turns out, there are now more and better reasons to visit, than simply looking for bad weather diversions. The place is changing at a fast clip, with an ambitious plan to update and modernize this Portland treasure. Among the important improvements are a program of new art exhibitions that should attract a wide swath of visitors who are interested in both, information about the environmental conditions of our state as well as of international forests and how contemporary issues of changing nature is represented by serious artists.

Let’s face it: today’s cultural institutions have a near impossible burden to carry. Besides the particular content they are supposed to display in aesthetically appealing ways – here forestry in all its permutation and history – they have to engage in educational missions, social outreach, community involvement, and simultaneous financial juggling between higher cost and decreased funding. To fulfill all these imperatives you need innovative thinking, creative solutions, and a vision that extends beyond the safe, habitual offerings we’ve come to expect from specialty museums. Judging by the current exhibition, the Discovery Museum at the Center has found someone who fits the bill. Stephanie Stewart Bailey, the new experience developer (unfamiliar title to me, but makes sense when you look at the intersection of art, science and nature) has managed to mount a show that combines stellar international photography with an educational mission to help us understand better the central role and function of trees in numerous civilizations.

Tree People by Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo was the first installment of a three part artistic collaboration between these two prize-winning Finnish photographers interested in the interrelationship between nature and those that populate it. For over three decades the duo have explored the mythology associated with trees and forests, (Tree People, 1997) the way forest management and silviculture affect both land and people, (Silvicultural Operations, 2009) and now how primeval forest look (and act) differently from those that have been exposed to centuries of human commercialization (Forests of the North Wind , 2024).

The visual work is compelling (as is their environmental activism), but the deeper attraction to me lies in the artists’ rigorous research, amounting to an anthropological tour de force across these 30 years, including field interviews and archival exploration. Each of the three installments stands on their own. I found the choice of Tree People for the Discovery Museum timely because they speak to some issues that are currently of great cultural interest in the Pacific Northwest as well.

The exhibition is divided into topics, photography always accompanied and enhanced by written explanations of the historical context. One section explores the destruction of sacred spaces, groves believed to be hallowed, once Christian proselytizing started in earnest, cutting down worshipped trees and replacing them with churches. One of the most appealing aspects of the curation was a circle of fabric panels, printed with trees, that you could enter as if it was a grove. It was mounted by Stewart Bailey in a clever way, hanging from a braided wreath of twigs and branches, which stayed with the topic of trees, and were visually harmonious. More interestingly, they projected shadows onto the semi-permeable canvas, doubling the sense of being close to trees.

There is a part on forest spirits, and traditional fare around how to combat them and keep a boundary between human civilization and the forest.

There is an introduction to good luck/sacred trees that are associated with a particular homestead. One of the photographs depicts a houseless person who had made his home under a tree in a Finnish park. It was a comforting thought to one of the younger visitors feeling they would never be able to afford a piece of property where a legacy tree could serve multiple generations. Stewart Bailey told me, that the idea to choose a tree in one’s general environment was visibly uplifting. Must be the Zeitgeist (or more likely the housing market…): the Washington Post just last week had an article strongly encouraging us to select a favorite public tree and tie our own life events to frequent visitations.

Last but not least, there are two sections devoted to memorializing the departed, humans and animals alike. These provide a direct link to a big question raised in the contemporary Pacific Northwest where competing interests fight over the preservation of certain trees that were culturally modified.

***

Oregon, like Finland, has an important history linked to the ways we have handled forestry, claiming ourselves to be the state that timber built. The natural riches of fir trees, cedars and Ponderosa pines were there for the taking, and taken they were, generating winners and losers along the way. Depending on one’s perspective you could think of pioneers conquering the wilderness, or robber barons using illegal timber sales through the rail road contracts to make a fortune. Here, as well as in Europe, opposing interests fought over legislation that promoted their often contradictory goals.

Logging throughout the first half of the last century provided great pay, secure employment and boons to the infrastructure of many growing timber communities. When private timber reserves dwindled in the late 1950s, the Forest Service and Bureau of Federal Land Management were pushed to permit increased harvesting on public lands and allow clear cutting and use of chemical herbicides. Eventually environmentalists started to fight back, and during the 1990s the “timber wars” ensued – protection of endangered species like the spotted owl was weighed against the fate of the many communities that lost their livelihoods with stricter federal regulations on logging, or the earnings of the lumber industry, respectively. (The link brings you to a fabulous OPB series on the history of the law suits.) An early verdict prohibiting national forest timber sales in potential spotted owl habitat in May 1991, set off years of litigation over animals and plants that had been listed as endangered and severely curbed logging.

The attempt to change the rules and regulations governing timber harvest and protection of old growth forests is ongoing. The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan is in the process of being amended, partially due to fast changing environmental conditions. Catastrophic wildfires and tree-killing pests have done intense damage to all habitats. Barred owls are conquering spotted owls’ habitat, ever diminishing their numbers. A committee working under immense time pressure has made numerous recommendations, several of which were slashed by the Forest Service, deemed irrelevant to the amendment. There is also a planned amendment for all national 128 forest plans, a draft of which was release in June. In theory the public has 90 days to comment, and the timeline declares hopes for a decision and implementation by January 2025. Many of the parties involved in this joint effort to find compromises for forestry management have expressed worries that different national election outcomes would affect the planned amendments in various ways. (Ref.)

Most of us have probably an inkling of this history, although the extent to which it is related to violations of treaties with tribal groups who had to cede old growth forest in land swaps or were simply dispossessed, has rarely been stressed. New to me, and bringing us back to the context of the exhibition and its focus on the function of trees as keepers of memory, archivists of entire civilizations, is the call for protection of individual trees in the fight over the right to harvest large swaths of timber by the industry. What is at stake here is the fate of culturally modified trees (CMTs), living trees that have been visibly altered by indigenous cultural practices. They were related to food production (peeling the bark), cultural traditions (weaving, producing ceremonial regalia, building shelter or carving of paddles and canoes.) Trees were selected for memorial or mortuary poles as well, and many exhibit drill holes that tested the strength of the tree so that sustainable harvesting could be completed, not hurting future growth.

These trees are of cultural and spiritual significance, sacred memorials to tribal ancestors and living archeological sites that allow insight into historical practices. Equally important, they are of legal significance. When indigenous rights are challenged, carbon dated trees with indigenous modification can be testament to the occupancy and forest stewardship of tribes at a given point in time. For cultures that existed without much written record, whether the indigenous Samis for Finland, or the first nations, tribes and bands in the North American sphere, these trees are archives that can be precisely dated and are a rare historical source for archeologists, anthropologist and historians alike. The question is how they can be legally protected from clear cutting, before they die a natural death given their age in old growth forests. (Here is a great book for further information about the research and the political debate around CMTs.)

It would have been fascinating to link the photographs of the Finnish memorial trees with their arboglyphs, those carvings of dates and numbers, to the contemporaneous questions raised by the protection of modified trees in our own backyard. But I am sure those connections to place and universal issues will be made once the museum has found its stride with traveling as well as independently curated exhibitions.

As is, I cannot recommend a visit to see this work strongly enough. It is like falling into another time and place, yet eerily familiar. Then go home and (re)read Richard Power’s The Overstory. The winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction is a paean to trees, nature and environmental activism, one of my favorite novels of all time. Or, alternatively, just hang out under a conifer it Forest Park. The trees will speak to you.

World Forestry Center Discovery Museum

4033 SW Canyon Rd, Portland, OR 97221-2760

Juneteenth 2024

Today is Juneteenth. We mark the day in 1865 when the last of enslaved Black Americans in Texas first learned of the Emancipation Proclamation – more than two years after it was issued. It is a day that reminds us that change is not just desirable, but possible. That liberation is to be celebrated as a shift from a status quo – slavery – to a goal, however compromised in its evolution: freedom and equality for all.

Photographs today were taken 10 years ago when I still worked as a volunteer photographer with dance groups for teaching kids African dance, drumming and customs.

Seems like the perfect day to ask the question why so many powerful forces in this country, most densely represented in the current Supreme Court constellation of judges, want to revert from the change that we celebrate to a situation that enshrines the status quo at the very time when slavery was alive and well.

I am, of course, talking about the embrace of Originalism, the legal theory that judges should interpret the Constitution exclusively in ways the Founders meant it.

Let me count the ways in which this approach, heavily promoted by right wing forces across the judiciary, is problematic. For a more in depth discussion of the issues I strongly recommend a new book by Madiba K. Dennie, The Originalism Trap. The legal commentator, previously a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and professor at New York University School of Law, is now a deputy editor and senior contributor at the critical legal commentary outlet Balls and Strikes, which I follow closely. Her new book reveals the many inherent faults of this supposed intellectual theory that treats civil rights gains as categorically suspect, eager to roll them back, reverting the country to the inequitable version of the past.

Here are the bullet points as expressed by her:

Originalism is the idea that the meaning of the Constitution is fixed in time, locked in when the Constitution’s provisions were ratified. If you asked an originalist how you should interpret the Constitution today, they would tell you there’s only one way you can legitimately interpret it: the way it was interpreted 200 years ago. Originalism is ostensibly tied to a single point in time, and as a result, it bakes the biases and bigotries of that time into constitutional interpretation.

Even if there was a single objective historical meaning of the Constitution (and there isn’t), and even if the Court relied on the finest historians to unearth that meaning (and it doesn’t), it would still be irresponsible to cast aside all the ways democracy has evolved in the intervening centuries and relinquish our right to self-governance. A well-intentioned liberal originalist would still be outsourcing constitutional interpretation to 18th century men who couldn’t possibly imagine a modern pluralistic society. That does a disservice to the whole nation, and poses an unique threat to historically marginalized people.

Dennie favors an alternative approach dubbed inclusive constitutionalism. It focusses on the fact that our nation adopted the Reconstruction Amendments in the wake of the Civil War. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were added to the Constitution and abolished slavery, granted equal rights to formerly enslaved people, and enshrined the right to vote for people of all races.

In the scholar’s words:

“They instruct us to create an equitable multiracial democracy in which everyone can live freely, equally, and with dignity. Inclusive constitutionalism argues that the whole Constitution must be interpreted through that lens. Legal interpretation should be guided by the Reconstruction Amendments’ expansive principles and their unfinished mission to foster a democratic society with equal membership for all.

Inclusive constitutionalist courts would protect people’s right to make decisions about their own bodies and to live with dignity. They would protect people’s right to make decisions about their communities and participate in the political process. And they would recognize all people as legitimate members of their communities.”

Of course all 300 million of us are currently ruled by nine unaccountable people, the majority of whom want to turn back the clock and have the power to do so for the rest of their lives. There will have to be structural reforms like court expansion and term limits as some limitations on the court’s authority in addition to demanding a retreat from originalism as selectively applied as it is right now. It would truly be in the spirit of Juneteenth, or the promises of democracy, providing equal rights to all marginalized or hierarchically locked in place groups.

Happy Juneteenth! A federal holiday. Never mind that in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, Republicans have passed laws to prevent teachers from teaching kids why. It’s not just the Judiciary …..

Ok, time to turn away from doom and gloom to celebrate the spirit of Juneteenth: here is Jean Baptiste to the rescue, with music to dance to!

Art as Witness.

Art, History
Jun 12, 2024
7 Comments

These are the woes of slaves;

They glare from the abyss;

They cry, from unknown graves,

“We are the witnesses!”

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Witnesses

Just a 50 minute drive from Portland, OR, you enter an entirely different world – old growth forest covering the mountains, steep cliffs, the majestic Columbia slowly making its way through a gorge that was carved millennia ago into the landscape. If you happen to visit the Gorge Museum in Stevenson, WA on your way East, you can currently immerse yourself in yet a different world still – a collection of quilts that witness the life, skills and wisdom of a 19th century slave, handed down to next generations. Named the Hartsfield Collection after the family who preserved the legacy of one of their ancestors, a former slave, it serves as an entry into the patterns of both slave life and quilting.

Crossroads Quilt, Late 19th Century

The accumulated heirlooms are part of a collection created and persevered by a family dedicated to witnessing history, including that of their very own ancestor(s.) The current generation is represented by Jim Tharpe, who realized that the quilts, made by five different seamstresses across four generation from 1850 – 1960, were of enormous significance and able to tell a story that resonated beyond what we know theoretically about quilting during slavery. His insights and persistence to bring something of significant historical value to our eyes made it possible that these quilts are now making their rounds in museums keen, among others, on teaching history.

The exhibition is expertly guided by signage that tells you about the provenance and meaning of each quilt (as displayed in my photographs.) You can learn even more detail in a book written by Tharpe and available at the museum, that explains the family history, the creation of the collection and his purpose in investing his passion, time and energy into the preservation of the collection.

The earliest quilt, the Slave Quilt (1850), was made as personal bedding by a thirteen-year old slave, Ms. Molly, who was sold away from her family to a plantation in Whitlock, Tennessee. Close inspection reveals not just use and tear, but also bloodstains. We will never know if from the whip, rape or childbirth – she bore two sons to her Master, who were fortunately not sold away from the household. Faded, easily overlooked, they nonetheless instill a sense of the horrors of the life that then-child must have experienced.

She taught her skills to her own children and in-laws after the Civil War was won. Eventually the family relocated North, but still trecked to Tennessee many years later to visit relatives that remained there, often under the shadow of racism that put travelers in danger.

Danger while traveling was, of course, one of the hallmarks of the Underground Railroad movement, helping slaves to escape their masters and start a new life somewhere supposedly more safe, if not free. One of the ways to prepare, or to warn, or to help people finding their ways and supportive allies, was a language of communication contained in quilts. Specific patterns indicated specific requirements or signals to those on the move.

Expert quilters might be well aware of this history, lots written about it. For the rest of us, even though we are aware of forms of communication not contained in written words – just think of the knotted messages of the Incas, Semaphore or Braille, sign-language or Morse code – we might not know about the meaning of patterns around in quilts. I certainly had no clue, even though I count two expert quilters among my friends.

The exhibition then, really opened my eyes not just to the creativity of individual seamstresses and the beauty of their resulting work, but the meaning behind much of what was in front of me, guiding me into a world that lacked all the privilege of my own and that holds historical lessons we should well heed.

In general, there were ten quilt codes to be used for the journey, with just one displayed at the time. A sampler with all the codes in small form, secretly passed around, served as a teaching device for memorization of the patterns. The quilts were displayed in windows or hung out with the washing to inform the travelers. The backs and fronts were joined by twine tied two inches apart, with patterns of knots mapping the existence and distance of safe houses along the route. (Ref.)

Here are some of the patterns used in the quilts on exhibit (note, there are variations in names across states, not captured here):

The variety of the artistry shown is helpful for us to understand how form, function and aesthetics go hand in hand. The dedication of this family to relating the skills to subsequent generations and preserving, despite many moves across the U.S. what is a treasure, makes it very clear that they know about the importance of history, and the ways its official telling needs to be supplemented by people who’ve actually experienced it from diverse perspectives.

I was particularly moved to see the oldest and most recent of the quilts exhibited in juxtaposition. The latter was a graduation present to Jim Tharpe, with an inconspicuous love letter stitched into the sidebars, just as the blood stains were inconspicuous on the former. It brought home to me that it is not enough to be exposed to something in order to witness. You have to look. Look carefully. Not leave it to those lying at the bottom of the ocean.

The effort to bury parts of our history, efforts yet again sweeping our country in the form of curriculum changes, prohibition of certain books, elimination of programs dedicated to Black History studies and the like, is hopefully counter-acted by exhibitions like the current one. It brings history alive in front of your very eyes and encourages conversations with those you bring to this show, children included, about what is contained in these beautiful quilts and why it had to be kept secret.

Columbia Gorge Museum

Ms Molly’s Voice: Freedom and Family Spoken In Fabric

June 1 – July 31st, 2024

Open Everyday: 10:00am – 5:00pm

990 SW Rock Creek Dr, Stevenson, WA 98648

Special Event:

“In celebration of Juneteenth, the Columbia Gorge Museum will be hosting an open event where attendants will focus on creating quilt patterns in a dialogue with the patterns and skill of Ms. Molly. Take a guided experience through the quilt exhibition and thanks to some amazing Columbia Gorge quilters, create your own family document in a quilt square.

This event takes place June19th between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. All are welcome!

If you would like to attend this event, simply RSVP here!“

Here is the full poem from which I took the quotation at the beginning of the review.

The Witnesses

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

In Ocean’s wide domains,

Half buried in the sands,

Lie skeletons in chains,

With shackled feet and hands.

Beyond the fall of dews,

Deeper than plummet lies,

Float ships, with all their crews,

No more to sink nor rise.

There the black Slave-ship swims,

Freighted with human forms,

Whose fettered, fleshless limbs

Are not the sport of storms.

These are the bones of Slaves;

They gleam from the abyss;

They cry, from yawning waves,

“We are the Witnesses!”

Within Earth’s wide domains

Are markets for men’s lives;

Their necks are galled with chains,

Their wrists are cramped with gyves.

Dead bodies, that the kite

In deserts makes its prey;

Murders, that with affright

Scare school-boys from their play!

All evil thoughts and deeds;

Anger, and lust, and pride;

The foulest, rankest weeds,

That choke Life’s groaning tide!

These are the woes of Slaves;

They glare from the abyss;

They cry, from unknown graves,

“We are the Witnesses!”

Kairos

History, Literature
May 24, 2024
2 Comments

Kairos: a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action : the opportune and decisive moment. – Merriam-Webster Dictionary

A video has been making the rounds in Germany for the last few days, depicting a group of wealthy young people at one of the country’s most exclusive bars engaged in laughing, singing and shouting racist, nationalistic and even fascist paroles, one of the revelers seemingly giving the Nazi Salute, filming themselves with glee and later posting the recordings. (I refuse to share, giving them more exposure…)

Most commentators remark on this as something that is not novel for the sentiment depicted. What is new is the pride accompanying a brazen openness about one’s ideology that was previously subterraneous in a country blanketed with shame over past sins. There is also a shift regarding who comes forward with explicit racism – once a province of beerhalls and most often associated with lower-education populations mainly in the East, it now seems to be fashionable among the elite. Think a five star drinking hole in the Hamptons, visited by Nepo-babies and their entourage. For Germans who were happy to assign Nazism to poor yokels, this is an unwelcome occasion to have to admit extremist sentiments in all sectors of society across the nation.

Of course, we see an inclination towards unapologetic flaunting of ideologies previously kept close to the chest and only revealed in like-minded company here in the U.S. as well. Just think of Justice Alito’s various flag demonstrations. Or that of evangelical House Speaker Johnson, who displays the Christian nationalist flag in front of his office, signaling his theocratic agenda. The Appeal to Heaven flag is part of the symbolism of the far-right New Apostolic Reformation, a movement fighting for a hegemonically Christian America.

Apparently it is a crucial moment in time, propitious for the public flaunting of racist and nationalistic agendas we thought banned for good. Or at least hoped. It signals a qualitative shift, in my opinion, fostered by increasing desire for and acceptance of authoritarianism colored by religious fervor, whether Christianity or Hinduism as just two example, internationally.

Crucial moment in time is also the title – Kairos – of Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel, translated by Michael Hofmann, that won this year’s international Booker Prize. You can read ubiquitous reviews here, here and here. Be warned, though. It is an incredibly sad, cruel, and bitter tale that is unfolding, both in descriptions of a May/December love affair, and a reckoning with German history set at the time of approaching reunification of East and West in the 1980s.

I was grateful to read the original language, having always thought the author has an incredible skill with words to both lure you and distance you at the same time to and from her preoccupation with time. Much of her work is concerned with how time takes things -as well as bodies – apart. Now she shifts to the concept of time as that moment that changes everything, and it dawns on you, slowly, eventually, that we willingly overlook the signs that point to that moment of change, until, basically, it will be too late. True for relationships as much as politics of nations.

By all reports, the English translation is formidable. I, on the other hand, have been struggling to find the right word for an adjective I associate with the author, who was by the way, trained as a director of opera: unerbittlich. In English it is translated as unrelenting, but the German word has more of sense of “without mercy” attached. Not just not giving in to pleas, but exhibiting a punitive streak. She mercilessly holds the mirror to German society preoccupied with “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” a reckoning with the past, showing how often we still look away, or keep things at a surface, too fearful to look deeper. Exactly the situation that the reactions to the video alluded to above seem to reflect. The same pattern emerges for acknowledging signs of domestic violence and abuse. We ignore the creeping signals around us as long as we can, since it can’t be true what we don’t want to be true.

This might not be the moment in time to focus on entropy, Erpenbeck’s continual concern. Do we really want to burden ourselves with yet another downer, a hair-raising, deeply sad tale, when we are so emotionally vulnerable from all the trauma around us?

But if not now, when? Disentangling the lessons of history from wishful thinking will always be hard. Her writing is as brilliant a guide as any. Maybe this novel rises to prominence with the Booker Prize at exactly a propitious moment, before it is too late.

Kairos.

Music by John Dowland today.

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)

Desert Beauty

· Exploring Anza-Borrego Desert State Park ·

History, Nature
Apr 2, 2024
3 Comments

“Certain desert areas have a distinctive and subtle charm, in part dependent on spaciousness, solitude, and escape from the evidence of human control and manipulation of the earth, a charm of constantly growing value as the rest of the earth becomes more completely dominated by man’s activities. This quality is a very vulnerable one …. Nowhere else are casual thoughtless human changes in the landscape so irreparable, and nowhere else is it so important to control and completely protect wide areas.”

– Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr in a 1928 survey for the California State Park Commission.

And here I thought almost 5 hours in the car to get from Los Angeles to Borrego Springs, CA, was a long stretch. Take the amount of time – decades and decades – it took to establish the nation’s second largest state park, the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and the drive was but a blink of an eye. Beginning in 1927, a group of visionaries tried to protect several desert areas for future generations, alert to the destruction of natural habitats by encroaching civilization that parceled up open spaces. Fierce opposition by many interested in economic development stretched out the process across years and years. For once, those concerned with environmental and ecological preservation, prevailed. Since 1974, some 585,930 acres (237,120 ha) of the Colorado Desert, located in San Diego County, are now protected. (For a riveting account of the history of the fight to create this marvel, go here.)

The desert lies along the western margin of the Salton Trough. This major topographic depression with the Salton Sink having elevations of 200 ft (61 m) below sea level, forms the northernmost end of an active rift valley and a geological continental plate boundary (Lots of earthquakes with high magnitudes, every 5 years or so.) (Ref.)

Imagine a large bowl of badlands, surrounded by mountains, with the Vallecito Mountains to the south and the highest Santa Rosa Mountains to the north. The badlands, ancient lake basins, are the result of both, erosion and sediment deposition over 5 million years. what you are seeing is literally what the Colorado river excavated from the Grand Canyon. The eroded and pretty much plant-less areas make it easy to see the dipping layers of siltstone and sandstone. They are filled with fossils, and populated by big horn sheep, neither of which I glimpsed during my visit. What I did see was breathtaking beauty of wide open land, cloudy sunrise, and the tail end of the wildflower bloom, providing endless delight to the searching eye.

No wonder that eco-tourism flourishes here at this time of year: the population of Borrego Springs, where I stayed, increases by about 580% in peak wildflower superbloom season, an increase from around 3400 long term residents to around 200,000 tourists. According to the government’s park survey, 932 plant taxa belonging to 387 genera in 98 different families documented within the park. The plant family Asteraceae (sunflower) is most abundant with 135 taxa identified. Rodents, hares, rabbits, fox, coyote, mountain lion, bighorn sheep as well as many species of snakes make up the fauna.

The region was home to two Native American groups, the Kumeyaay and the Cahuilla for thousands of years, semi-sedentary residents of certain favored locations or base camps. From there they would travel to outlying areas seasonally to harvest food resources and to avoid inclement weather, like winter snows. Leave it to the forces that be to name the park instead for sheep (Borrego) and a colonizing explorer, military officer and politician, 18th century Juan Bautista de Anza.

The progressive vision to protect open spaces was not matched by progressive visions in other domains either: when César Chávez came to Borrego Springs to support local workers who wanted the National Farm Workers Association as their union in 1966, they tried to chase him out of Borrego Springs by not allowing lodging or camping in the usual spaces. He and the union organizers eventually camped at Borrego Palm Canyon Campground, the start of my hike last week, with a lone supervising ranger defending their rights against the town folks who loathed the idea of unionizing workers.

The hike, starting at 7 am with an otherworldly light bathing the landscape, went up to the palm canyon, at my speed taking about 4 hours there and back.

That left a spare hour to visit some additional strange sights, before the threatening rain storm set in. (It dropped over 2 inches in 24 hours for the L.A. region.) In reversal to my earlier complaints about the length of time, these 5 hours felt way too short!

The clouds formed an appropriately dramatic background for an unexpected piece of art, a humongous, corrugated steel sea serpent crawling through the desert. I could not but marvel at the strangeness of the sight and, truth be told, at the skill of the designed and steel welded creation by sculptor Ricardo Breceda. However, there was something odd about plopping some 130 creatures in to the landscape, with people and cars crawling around them like ants, with few of the sculptures true to this natural environment. I mean, elephants and camels? Dinosaurs and tigers? The whole thing was the idea of Dennis Avery, the late land owner of Galleta Meadows Estates in Borrego Springs, adding free standing art to his property and, I guess, attracting tourists this way. and if that’s what draws people to the region, exposing them to the barren beauty of the desert for most of the year, more power to them!

Music reflects John Luther Adam’s view of the desert. Quails and sky reflect mine.

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)

From Grapes to Gentrification: L.A.’s Art District.

Walk with me. A slow amble under a hot November sun through strangely empty streets in central L.A. on a Saturday morning, with visual input galore.

Where are all the people? This was around 11.am.

Frequent stops for photographing – not enough, as it turned out, or not always focused enough.

As is my wont, I went into a neighborhood without having read up on it, always hoping to have a fresh eye. More educated now, I wish I’d had added stops for this or that landmark, oh well. Still captured the essence, I think.

A lonely tagger.

I had chosen L.A.’s art district for my outing because it is generally advertised as a haven for graffiti, and it did not disappoint. Its history, now that I have read up on it, is generally more interesting than most of the murals, however. More distressing as well. Much of the graffiti is simply tame.

The area was actually the center of California’s wine industry in the 19th century, L.A. then known as the City of Vines. Not only were the vineyards located on land taken from the indigenous Chumash, Tongva, and Tataviam tribes, but tribal labor was used to build the business in systems not unlike slavery. When native Americans came to the mission and were lured in baptism it brought with it a bidding contract that they could not leave. They were forced into indentured labor, including winemaking, and lived in subpar conditions that introduced and spread European diseases. When the mission systems were secularized, their land was given to white settlers instead.

The Earth Crew mural, a community mural from the 1980s, renovated 5 years ago.

Displaced, they roamed the area and many of them turned to alcohol to drown their sorrows, which led to horrid consequences.

(Ref.)

Eventually the vineyards gave way to the citrus industry, which was later destroyed by treatment-resistant parasites. During its heyday, it needed a shipping network, provided by the railroad that arrived in 1876. First Southern Pacific, then the Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railroad and finally the Union Pacific. By 1905, Los Angeles had become the western terminus for three major transcontinental railroads. All three railroads built depots, transportation buildings, warehouses, and rail yards in and around the Arts District. Many cheap hotels providing single rooms for the workers followed. Some of the photographed buildings capture the old architectural structure.

By WW II the rail system was replaced by the trucking industry, with the industrial nature of the area permanently ensconced until the 1960s or 70s, when artists moved into many warehouse now vacant, because smaller businesses had been absorbed or displaced. The alleys had also become too small for ever increasing truck sizes. By all reports the urban environment was decaying and dingy, but increasingly dedicated to art- making and -living spaces, once the City of Los Angeles passed the Artist in Residence ordinance in 1981, which allowed artists to legally live and work in industrial areas of downtown Los Angeles.

Looked to me like the little scooters were longingly staring at the mega truck…

Some 50 years later, gentrification rules the neighborhood. There is enormous loss of inexpensive lofts to developers who have converted some former loft and studio buildings into condos.

New high-rises change the character of the neighborhood.

The district is still one of the most filmed locations ever, with as many as 800 filming days a year. The movie industry knows a good thing when it sees it. Chic bars and restaurants around many corners. Weed dispensaries everywhere.

Privately run and decorated dog parks as well – probably a good thing, for dogs and neighborhood alike.

Some landmarks remain, but are also undergoing changes, something that was true through the centuries for the American Hotel. That building and its occupants alone is a living testament to the changing times – a fascinating, detailed summary (with a link to a documentary movie) can be found here. It was the first hotel that was legally open to Black people, with a bar that was shut down in 1914, when it became obvious that Whites and Blacks mingled and partied together.

Ownership changed hands, and was Japanese, as were most of the guests, until they were brought into the camps after Pearl Harbor. A Mexican immigrant bought and operated hotel, bar and market in the mid 80s, and the artists moved in, using the exterior for murals as well. Here are the current ones:

“La Abuelita/Má’sání” (2015)(Portrait of a Navajo weaver by El Mac. The geometric pattern above Abuelita was painted by Augustine Kofie and the lower left portion was painted by Joseph Montalvo AKA Nuke One of the UTI Crew.

White paws below on the other side of the building.

A pioneering social activist, Joel Bloom, opened a General store on the ground level in 1995 and fought for years against the forces of gentrification before he died in 2007. It looks like 16 years later that battle is still ongoing.

Lots of buildings are shuttered and For Lease signs everywhere – prices waiting for investors, I suppose.

Part of the attraction of the Art District is/was the music, always at the cutting edge before commercial appropriation. The only music related mural I found, though, commemorated murdered rap artist Nipsey Hussle, shot in front of his store in 2019 in a gang dispute. He was a rising musical talent and also revered as someone giving back to his community and trying to revitalize the neighborhood.

Mural by Mister Alex, Biganti26, Hufr – Hussle and Motivate (title of a track)

And memorialization of Kobe and his daughter is found here as well, as so frequently across this city that still mourns the loss, the sun providing a kind of halo.

Not much political art that I came across, maybe that needs to be explored in different neighborhoods.

But there was plenty of reference to comics and a certain affinity for portraits.

My eye, of course, was over and over caught by the saturation of the colors, even those in the pastel range. The light here is so different from up north, and it affects everything.

Yup, a lot of visual load. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Music today is by L.A. music ensemble Wild Up, playing a rousing piece by Julius Eastman.

Bold Bandits and Breathtaking Boulders

History, Nature
Oct 26, 2023
1 Comments

As hide-outs go, you could do worse. Particularly when you have attempted to escape prison four times, sentenced for stealing horses, and finally succeed, in 1862, with ten men dead in the process. When you are a poet at heart, you’re surely sensitive to the indescribable beauty of your surrounds.

Who and what am I talking about? Tiburcio Vasquez, son of a founding family of San Francisco, born in Monterey, and drawn to Southern California in the wake of the gold rush. He wrote poetry, he operated a gambling saloon, and eventually he robbed stage coaches when he wasn’t seducing everyone with a skirt on, married or not, apparently quite generous with the spoils of his thefts to those in his crew and needy people in the region.

Eventually he was caught, after multiple feuds and shoot-outs, hanged in 1875 after spending time in San Quentin. He might or might not have been the Robin Hood-like figure who Zorro was modeled after, but he was the one from which the otherworldly landscape neighboring the small town of Aqua Dulce derived its name.

The strange formation of sandstone is a park today, some 45 minutes north of L.A. off Highway 14. You drive through the Sierra Pelona into Santa Clarita valley, then through Aqua Dulce, a small town advertising the high school Fall Festival,

and then reach Vasquez Rocks where the Pacific Crest Trail intersects with multiple other hiking loops, all opening to awe inspiring vistas.

The rocks were formed by runoff from higher mountains, dirt, sand, plant remnants and so on, layer after layer for millions of years – 25 million, I believe – compressed by the weight of each additional layer, compacted into sandstone. Underneath it all runs the Elkhorn Fault which was actively shifting tectonic plates, thus elevating the rocks into angles as steep as 40 – 50 degrees (and pushing some of them up to 4 miles underground, in equally angular formations, it is believed.)

The main rock formations within the 932 acres of the park can be divided into those that are hard and brittle, called hog back ridges and others that are soft and round, full of holes (often occupied by owls!), eroded across time. There are also grinding holes to be found in these rocks, signs of the presence of the Tataviams (originally linked to the Shoshone) who inhabited the region for some 1300 years, from 450 BC until the 1800s.

When the Spanish missionaries arrived and founded the Mission San Fernando Rey de España some 20 miles away, a lot of them were brought in, converted, and forced to labor for their colonial masters. Within a few generations their language was lost. Today, the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians instruct us about their history and heritage and are working towards official recognition by the federal government.

There was much archeological evidence that informed about the Tataviams’ lives as gatherers, hunters and traders, including pictographs. Near the nature center where you enter the park, you can see exact replicas of many of them, all in one place. The original pictographs are in a section of the park that is closed to the public so they will not be destroyed. The originals have been there since 450 AD.

When I visited, the area was dry, suffused with light, filled with shrubbery that tenaciously clung to rocks, and a shining color palette from the greens and reds of the lichen to the orange glow of some of the boulders.

It was also relatively empty, not too many people hiking mid-day, but some climbing the formations, which provided perfect scale for the photographer.

At other times the landscape was booming with people: it has been used as a backdrop for Hollywood films since the 1920s, when it was still private land, leased to the film industry. Below is the list from Wikipedia, and that does not even include a far longer one for TV shows….