“…a translocation with transformation indefinitely delayed” is today’s phrase that is somewhat haunting me. It comes from a perceptive and smart piece of art criticism by Kimberly Bradley whose writing I hold in high regard. The essay describes and analyzes Ai WeiWei’s 2016 exhibition in Vienna titled Translocation-Transformation.

Bradley openly describes her distaste bordering on disgust of Ai WeiWei’s “gimmicky instrumentalization of the refugee crisis,” alluding to narcissism and publicity seeking, but then is admirably open to give a positive review of the art in front of her. I know nothing of this controversy (assuming it is not just her own personal assessment,) but wished I had seen the work since it dealt with the notion that people who move need to change and adapt. That in itself is hard, but becomes particularly so when the move was involuntary and the host culture is hostile.

For sake of argument, assume you had to flee your country of origin and are tolerated in your new residence only if you forsake all of the customs that your religious or ethnic background demands. Let’s make it concrete: you are an orthodox Jew, and you are now required to eat pork and shrimp, not wear Kipot, shake women’s hands, and not to study Hebrew. As I said, for sake of argument. I guess we all agree that we would find it detestable if a Jew was forced to change his diet. Some would, however, possibly argue, that Jews needed to learn English for school and that Jewish girls would be required to share the classroom with boys. I guess most of us would also agree that certain customs – (now not Jewish but centered in African cultures) like clitorectomy for girls –  are an absolute taboo in a Western democracy. So we are drawing lines in the sand, and would be hard pressed to explain where we choose to place those lines away from the extremes.

Many, when asked why they require this or that transformation from the refugees, argue that if people want to live here they need to accept our culture and norms. Do they want to live here? Or do they simply not want to die over there?  Gives the fact of offering sanctuary the right to make demands? I have no answer to those questions, but think about them a lot since both sides have valid reasons to be wary.

https://frieze.com/article/ai-weiwei-2

Closer to home there is a new exhibit by the very same artist that I hope to visit in New York City before it’s gone. Catch it, NYC peeps!

https://newrepublic.com/article/145469/ai-weiwei-takes-migrant-crisis

For now, let me quote Bradley’s description of an exhibit piece in the 2016 show which also explains my choice of photographs for today – the wilted Lotus plants.

“Floating on the pond was the piece about which I was initially most sceptical. F Lotus (2016) comprises 1,005 life jackets discarded by refugees who landed on Lesbos (the island’s mayor donated the jackets to Ai). Ai’s refugee-related work has often been tone-deaf and self-centred, most notably the photographic self-portrait in which he posed as the drowned Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi on a Turkish shore, or the occasion when he wrapped celebrities in emergency blankets at a Berlin benefit dinner (both 2016). But F Lotus is a more considered commentary: one with a message beyond celebrity ‘solidarity’ or Instagram selfies with refugee barbers. Here, 201 rings, each comprising five life jackets in blue, red or orange, form lotus flowers symbolizing rebirth and transcendence – perhaps hopelessly optimistic sentiments in a country whose right-wing faction wants to cut refugee support and where refugees still wait months for asylum: a translocation with transformation indefinitely delayed. But, together, the lifejackets form the calligraphic letter ‘f’, which, in a twist on the kitschy lotus, is meant to play on the f-word in English and, in Mandarin, alludes to a phrase meaning, ‘F*** your mother.’ As the horrific causes of the world’s most recent mass migration continue, Ai has at last given us a piece that is provocative while it evokes contemplation.”

Today’s poem is Home by Warsan Shire

This poem is now the rallying call for refugees: “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”

Today’s phrase comes from an article about the difficulties faced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but could as well describe large stretches of my life (which is probably why it stuck in my brain):

“… the issues were compounded by a surfeit of dreams and a deficit of focus….”

http://www.vulture.com/2017/04/what-broke-the-met-museum.html

Details of the Met’s woes can be read in the link above, but I thought I’d rather offer more uplifting fare. I came across three articles on museums recently that made me smile, curious and (should that be possible) even more eager to travel.

The first is about a photographer who – or so it is claimed – patiently waited in all kinds of museums for the kind of shot we all dream of: a match between two subjects that is coincidental but happens to be right there in front of your viewfinder. The link offers many of his images, I culled a few below  just to give you a taste of what awaits. (They say his name, the rest are mine.)

Photo by Stefan Draschan

Photographer Spends Eternity Waiting For Museum Visitors To Match Artworks And The Result Is Worth The Wait

Photos by Stefan Draschan

The second gives you glimpses of various collections now displayed online by different museums.  I should be more precise (focus, Heuer, focus!): the video clips offer information on background stories, tricks of the trade, all kinds of things associated with what is going on in a museum behind the walls that display the art. There are some fascinating tidbits.

Go Behind the Scenes of 9 Museums With These Great Online Web Series

And then there are these secret museums, some of which actually do allow visitors, while others don’t, and some are simply hard to get to. But they all are way beyond run-of-the-mill and enticing, if you ask me (dream, Heuer, dream!)

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/essential-guide-secret-museums

And as a tribute to US Poet Laureate Richard Wilbur, who died last week, here is his poem:

Museum Piece

A recent encounter with a stranger yielded a gift. She had perused my art website, found it to her liking and saw parallels in choice of topics to a favorite artist of her’s, Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak. She gave me a catalogue of his recent show in Boston, Just Is, that pretty much blew my mind. The gallery website below contains biographical and artistic information.

https://www.puckergallery.com/artists/#/samuel-bak/

I had, of course, never heard of the guy. Nor had I heard of any of the women painters focussed on abstract work that I was able to see at a different exhibit in Boston two weeks ago. Today’s photographs give you a pretty accurate description of the range  – from boring to fascinating, traditional to truly inventive. The ones that had an implied narrative stuck with me for the longest – it is just easier for most of us to remember a story than to recall a pattern, no matter how beautiful.

Given the sheer number of people able to make art these days, and the number of real and electronic outlets available to bring the work to the public, it is of course not surprising that even people who are keen on painting or other forms of art know only a minuscule percentage of what is out there. Which brings us to a local treasure, Oregon ArtsWatch, an invaluable source of information when it comes to being better informed about art.

Beverly Hallam, Crossed Rock, 1966

About 6 years ago a group of the smartest journalists in town decided to fight the attrition of art news that went hand in hand with the downfall of local print journalism. Single handedly, without serious financial backing at the time, and for all I know around a kitchen table, they started publishing a nonprofit online arts journal,  orartswatch.org

Lest you think that a business model á la The Little Art Critics that Could is doomed, marvel at their success: the group has posted more than 3,000 stories that attract tens of thousands of readers every month. They have sponsorship agreements with more than 40 arts and education organizations, content-sharing partnerships with TravelPortland and Artslandia, more than 200 individual donors (most of them sustaining, annual donors), and an active social media presence.

Barbara Takenaga,  Tremolo, 2005

Writing is done by a diverse set of free lancers of whom 30 or so regularly contribute. Diverse indeed: the organization aspires to offer view points from a variety of writers in terms of age, educational background, active or passive involvement in the arts and political orientation. The only constant element is the quality of the writing. The founders focus on identifying contributors of younger generations and mentor them in what could otherwise be yet another endangered species: smart art criticism.

Meg Brown Payson, Drift, 2006

I learn much from them, beyond staying informed as to what’s going on around town. The essays make me think about my own approach to making art, my difficulties within the art scene, my desire to combine my political reasoning with my creativity as a photographer and writer. I am friends with some of them, owe all of them.

Christin Baker, Diaphanous Leverage, 2016

Do yourself a favor and sign up to their website http://www.orartswatch.org

or Fb  page https://www.facebook.com/ArtsWatch/.

Do all of us a favor by supporting them, if you can, financially, since every $$ comes back to all of us in added value of knowledge about art at a time when art education has dropped from the agenda. Nonprofits like this are never out of the woods – they need us, almost as much as we need them!

The earliest three-dimensional art was probably carvings, shortly followed by pottery. Ritualistic and functional purposes found artistic expression. Soon 3-D became large, representing religious ideals and worldly egos by its size – just think of the tomb carvings in Mesopotamia and the statues attached to Egyptian pyramids. The Greeks matched their sculptures to their view of the centrality of man – it had to be the perfect body…..

Early Christianity was hampered by one of the commandments forbidding the use imagery. Once they found a way around that by claiming this prohibition only referred to idolatry, the dam broke. Just look at the ubiquitous carvings, statues, reliefs in Christian churches – I will need a whole other month to blog about the beauty found there. Eventually.

Today I want to focus on the ways sculptures are used as monuments, specifically memorializing power. (Which reminds me I could also do a week on war monuments and comparative sites of unspeakable horror. Maybe.)  Today’s example was found in Innsbruck, Austria. My friends and travel companions who know e v e r y t h i n g about cool historical sites guided me to the Hofkirche, the church and (empty) burial site of emperor Maximilian I, surrounded by 28 of his favorite relatives…

Imagine: on his deathbed, in 1519, this guy expresses a wish to be sepulchered in some chapel, surrounded by 40 larger-than- life statues made of bronze. Well, the 28 who are eventually completed are too heavy for the chapel. So his grandchild Ferdinand builds a new church, the Imperial Court Church, puts a cenotaph (empty grave) into it, and flanks it by the “black men” as they are known. Never mind that about half of them are women. I am not kidding you.

Think how it must feel to come to services every Sunday being surrounded by this wealth, this overwhelming imagery, this size of those who rule you.

Attached link is a video of the church.

Here is another example of monumental expression, with a (from my perspective) lovely political twist. I have never seen the terra-cotta soldiers protecting the grave of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di. He, too, had plenty of company for his eternal rest. But I did see a feminist take on this army in Paris, some years back. Prune Nourry, with the help of artisan copyists from Xi’an, created an army of 108 girls, the Terra Cotta daughters, to question gender selection with a bias towards boys in China.  They went on a world tour before they were buried at a secret location in China. I was so lucky to be at the right place at the right time. Looking at all these girls’ faces was a powerful reminder of how selective abortion preempts female lives.

http://www.prunenourry.com/en/projects/terracotta-daughters

And last but not least here is a monument to the photographer, which concludes this week on sculpture.

If you ever want to go tripping without ingesting chemical substances into your body, travel to the hidden depths of Hamilton, New Jersey.  You’ll find a sculpture park there that immediately puts you into a state of altered reality, fake poppies included. Disney world for the arts, for lack of a better description.

Originally old Fair Grounds, the 42 acres were purchased by Seward Johnson, heir to the Johnson&Johnson medical fortunes and now a sculptor himself (having majored in poultry husbandry in college…) If you want to laugh today, read this NYT article about him; his biography in some way resembles the feelings you get in his park: larger than life, weirdly concocted, slightly off-color, hard to believe and at its core exhilarating for the sheer force of it.

This is said about his art:”Mainline art critics have not been kind to Mr. Johnson, whom they see as a rich guy who bought his way into the club. ”Kitsch,” ”Hallmark” and ”Norman Rockwell,” are barbs frequently hurled by those who feel that art should be cool, collected and at arm’s length. ”Johnson’s work is chocolate-box rubbish,” said the art critic and author Robert Hughes. ”It has no imaginative component that I can see and apparently appeals to dull corporate minds like his own — the sort of people who run American motels and malls.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/30/nyregion/seward-s-follies.html?mcubz=0

It actually appeals to those average people visiting the park, as the photographs of interactions with the sculptures show. It has elements of fun and accessibility that are inclusive rather than reserved for elites who “know about art.” They might mock it as Seward’s Follies – I’d say, more power to him!

Grounds for Sculpture was planted from scratch with thousands of trees and tens of thousands of plants, delicate grasses included. The collection, other than Johnson’s own work, is varied; it sure is large, though, and the only thing lacking is subtlety.

Actually, I had a fun visit there. Once you overcome the shock of being in this strange environment you cannot help but admire the chutzpah of the people putting it all together, combining serious three dimensional art with skyscraper-sized figures of Marylin Monroe in full skirt-lift mode. I also could not but marvel at the largesse of Johnson’s philanthropy which surely matches the size of his sculptures. I mostly read up on the sites I visit after I’ve been there, so that my eyes are open without being influenced when I first experience the art. But reading about the people who initiate these ventures as private persons gives me direly needed hope in humanity: there are folks out there who care, who are generous, who want to share their passion. The rest of us are grateful beneficiaries. And in Hamilton, New Jersey, getting high.