My original plan for today had been to show photo documentation of the damage to my immediate surrounds, wrecked by the ice storm. That will have to wait since a more immediate need has come up that got my attention and requires my solidarity.
Many individuals I know have suffered losses, neighbors and a dear colleague from OregonArtsWatch who had multiple trees fall on her house and destroy it among them. The folks at The Reser had to close the gallery – with quite a bit of the art on display completely destroyed – due to pipe breaks from the storm. And then yesterday I learned that Lillian Pitt‘s studio is under water with horrific destruction of tools, materials, and collections of art.
You may remember my review of Pitt’s last exhibition and her lifetime work in Portland’s public art spaces just 4 months ago. Resilient, flexible, forgiving: The Gifts of Lillian Pitt focused on the strength and determination of a Native American artist who forged her own way, while carrying lots of others with her, to make a lasting contribution by filling our lives with beauty. Importantly, she also kept the flame of memory alive, linking to the history of her people, often tied to losses and calamity.
Loss and calamity is what she is facing now, once again, late in life. What moved me to ask everyone I know if they can possibly help – as I do today, here, as well – is not so much the material loss, but the vision that this has made it impossible for the artist to create, to work, both to make it through this shock and also to provide the necessary daily livelihood. It is like taking the instrument away from the musician, the tools from the carpenter, the pen/computer from the writer. Something at the core of your being is forcefully blocked.
No matter HOW resilient, and that was, after all, the first adjective I used in my September description, something concrete needs to be done to remedy the situation.
There are several ways we can help:
Below are some images of works on sale (from the Star People series and three prints) that will also be shown in Eugene at the PRN Gallery until mid-April. If you are interested in purchasing one just from reading about them here, you can email Mary Rose at friendsfortvancouver@gmail.com, who is representing Lillian in this case. (Unfortunately I cannot link to this email directly.)
If you feel like acquiring one of them in person in Eugene, you can contact Analee Fuentes who will help make that happen.
Alternatively, you can plan an outing to the Friends of Fort Vancouver bookstore/gallery at Fort Vancouver. The Friends are the official non-profit partner of the National Park Service dedicated to supporting the educational mission of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. Executive Director Mary Rose also tends to sales on Lillian’s own website. There are many of the smaller items for sale at the historic site store and the Fort is always worth a visit in any case.
Finally, there is also a GoFundMe site for Lillian, organized by Analee Fuentes (another local artist whose beautiful work shown at The Reser was reviewed by me here.)
Here are images of the available Lillian Pitt art works: Star People sizes range from the smallest about a foot tall, to the largest at 26″. They are painted wood and some have embellishments including abalone discs or horn and tacks.
#61 $240 — — — — #72 $200 — — — — #62 $200
#63 $200 — — — — #64 $180 — — — — #65 $200
#66a $150 — — — — #66b $200 — — — — #67 $120
#68 $150 — — — — #69 $200 — — — — #70 $200
#71 $200 — — — — #74 $120 — — — — #75 $120
#76 $120 — — — — #77 $200 — — — — Star Person feeling grounded $300
Left to right: Star Person feeling peaceful $250 – Star Person feeling proud of his people $250 – Star Person feeling regal $250 – Star Person initiating four stars $250.
Lots of thoughts about dependency lately. Triggered by general sorrow about the ongoing wars, or specific preoccupation with weather-related problems, never mind an aging body necessitating caution. We are so intensely dependent on the actions and solidarity of others, their help and support, their wisdom, skills, presence and availability in our lives. “Nothing wrong with solidarity, support, wisdom, presence,” you say? I agree – but to depend on it also means to suffer if it isn’t available, and I experience a degree of helplessness just thinking about that scenario which bugs the hell out of me.
Antony Gormley – Horizon Field Hamburg, 2012, steel, wood, 25 m x 50 m, 60t (thereof 40t steel), 7.40m above hall floor, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, 2012
Autonomy is shrinking in a world that closes in around you, with threats to your physical safety, most pronounced in war zones, but similarly present with a climate that wrecks havoc on your immediate surround, or age that insists on limitations. I find it most upsetting in regards to freedom of movement – or absence thereof – again in the life and death scenario of incoming bombs preventing relocation, or floods and fires forcing relocation, or a simple ice storm keeping you stuck inside without your daily refueling in nature because you can’t afford to break a bone or two.
Probably not a coincidence that I was drawn back to a poem by one of my favorite poets of all times, a poem that celebrates the independence of the soul (relative even to us, its bodily container), and also of quotidian objects like mirrors that exist and work regardless of anyone’s attention. It drives home several points: independence is desirable and we simply have to accept that we can’t always call the shots – even our own soul might or might not attend to us, depending on its own whims and wishes. But the poem also comforts with the suggestion that there are nonetheless states where gifts – and closeness – are still available. Its speculation of likely interdependence, made in the last lines, somehow softens the burden of dependence.
My favorite stanza, though, is this:
We can count on it when we’re sure of nothing and curious about everything.
Since this is my perpetual state, frankly, I cling to Szymborska’s suggestion that soul will be regularly on hand.
A Few Words on the Soul
We have a soul at times. No one’s got it non-stop, for keeps.
Day after day, year after year may pass without it.
Sometimes it will settle for awhile only in childhood’s fears and raptures. Sometimes only in astonishment that we are old.
It rarely lends a hand in uphill tasks, like moving furniture, or lifting luggage, or going miles in shoes that pinch.
It usually steps out whenever meat needs chopping or forms have to be filled.
For every thousand conversations it participates in one, if even that, since it prefers silence.
Just when our body goes from ache to pain, it slips off-duty.
It’s picky: it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds, our hustling for a dubious advantage and creaky machinations make it sick.
Joy and sorrow aren’t two different feelings for it. It attends us only when the two are joined.
We can count on it when we’re sure of nothing and curious about everything.
Among the material objects it favors clocks with pendulums and mirrors, which keep on working even when no one is looking.
It won’t say where it comes from or when it’s taking off again, though it’s clearly expecting such questions.
We need it but apparently it needs us for some reason too.
—Translated by Clare Cavanaghand Stanisław Baranczak
If the soul is an independent agent leaving us soulless for years at a time, it is interesting that we are nonetheless so committed to pave the way for its escape – think of the customs so prevalent in many cultures to shroud mirrors in the house after a death occurred, for fear the soul might be trapped in one. Souls and mirrors have a long history of connection in mythology and literature (as does death and mirrors, come to think of it. Break a mirror: 7 years of misfortune, likely leading to death! Make a mirror: death guaranteed at a young age, as it turns out. Fabrication of this luxury item involved the use of noxious substances, quicksilver included, until very recently, establishing an average life expectancy of but 30 years for the members of the guilds in Italy and France that produced mirrors as well as glass ware.)
The largest mirror I ever saw was an installation in a huge former market hall in my hometown of Hamburg, Germany, as part of the Documenta in 2012. Called Horizon Field, it was one of sculptor Antony Gormley‘s ongoing explorations of the interdependence of humans and their environments, both regarding their spontaneous interactions, or their effects on each other.
Imagine 3800 square meters of empty hall with a platform suspended from the ceiling, about 25 feet above you in the air. Made of 40 tons of steel, it took a full month to install.
The whole thing was 82 feet wide and 164 feet long, dark as night from below, and coated with a silver mirror on top, reflecting the flood of light coming in from the arched glass windows. A single person walking across it (you had to stash your shoes at the bottom of the stair case, guards making sure of it) could make the thing vibrate.
It was fascinating to watch how visitors were preoccupied with their own mirror images laid out underneath them, rather than exploring the strange doubling of architectural features of an industrial building that had played historically a huge role in the enrichment of the Hanseatic economy. Built between 1911 and 1914, the hall is one of the few surviving examples of industrial architecture from the transitional period between Art Nouveau and 20th century design.
It was also a perplexing sight to see a large proportion of the visitors now in their socks, slipping and sliding with child-like amusement, centered on their proprioceptive senses once done with visual self-admiration. It was somewhat challenging to photograph it all given the swinging of the platform, and a slight queasiness induced by the oscillations. But staying underneath, in relative darkness, was not the best option either, wondering, with the mind of a skeptic, if and when that thing would come crashing down. Too many associations with the impending doom signaled by breaking mirrors….
Well, I was free to move, then, and walked off to wander the streets still familiar to me. No bombs or ice storms keeping me from it – unclear, however, if in company of soul.
Music today is by Arvo Pärt, his 1977 Tabula Rasa (and not Spiegel im Spiegel as one might have predicted.) I just love those meditations, and they fit the travels of the soul as well.
May I suggest that when the weather permits you plan a visit to the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton? I predict you’ll find it worthwhile, telling by my own reaction when I was there on Wednesday.
Dialogues: An emerging Artist Showcase, shown in the gallery until February 17, 2024, is an exhibition with a sufficiently catch-all title that makes one wonder who is supposed to be talking to whom. The one voice that mattered, however, was heard – the art spoke to me. Or shall we say a lot of the art – so many varied voices: painting, sculpture, woodworking, installations, fiber arts, ceramics and photography – some loud, some whispering, some tongue in cheek and some refusing to tell a story unless you invested enough curiosity to find out.
In fact, dialogue is offered on multiple levels – the artists, all still in training, self-taught, or recently graduated, reach out to the viewer in direct appeals to converse. Or they confer with imaginary representations of the past, unraveling narratives that cloaked something else. Or they are settling scores with departed lovers, or yell back at a world that is intolerably judgmental, or deliver simple, but insistent monologues. Then there are the conversations between those looking at the art and offering different takes. Or, if you’re lucky, you get to listen to the curator, Karen de Benedetti, explain some of the works that benefit from background information. Much talk in this gallery!
The Gallery at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts
The level of talent and expertise was as varied as the voices on offer, and that is a good thing. For me, one of the outstanding services The ReserGallery provides for the community is the approachability of art for populations that are not necessarily familiar with it or are shy to reveal their own lack of knowledge, putting “art” on a pedestal. Showing art by young people who are still in the process of finding their voice, or the facility with the tools to express their ideas, is so very encouraging for the rest of us who are drawn to it but might feel inadequate. It creates engagement and might spark artistic explorations for those who can observe here that work evolves and improves over time, far from perfect in early stages of a career.
Noelle Herceg Jellashells Installation
That said, there were creative ideas all around the building, and some serious beauty to be had, with or without narratives. I will not be able to talk about them all; after all you should visit and see for yourselves! Instead I chose a few of the story tellers whose stories moved me, and a few artists who helped me to stop thinking or forever running my brain, by presenting work that simply enticed with visual beauty, feeding my eyes and soul instead.
Jessica Joner Of What Was
Upstairs a table surrounded by chairs awaits you, quite literally inviting people to sit down and talk, with many following the invite during the opening night, by all reports. Everything on the table is made or created by the artist, Jessica Joner, who embroiders surfaces with encouraging messages, and offers pottery for a multiple course meal. I spontaneously use the word inviting, but that is really how her work feels on second thought: it invites you to be with her, her ideas, her audience, an act of sharing, opening dialogue in the community.
Jessica Joner Respite (left) Ceaseless (right)
Downstairs my eyes were drawn into a large, multiple-part installation that on first glimpse seems to tell one story, and upon closer inspection hides a second, underlying, much darker narrative. Katherine Curry‘s surface depictions, with computer-assisted cuts of wooden circles into the most intricate doilies next to a video of the slow unraveling of a delicately crocheted doily by the artists hands, tell of family traditions of specialized handiwork, patterns handed down from generation to generation. Behind the beauty and the shadow play of the wooden models lurks something uglier, seemingly making its way through the generations as well, with family represented in a large photograph behind the lacy screen, trying to put a conventional smile on the face of harshness, if not intimations of violence.
Katherine Curry A Nuclear Family Details below
A bit further into the room, handmade soaps covering photographs of family members echo the theme of a film of civility cloaking the tension underneath.
Jessica Joner Wash your Mouth out Again and Again and Again
One returns, if these are the interpretations that formed, almost with relief to the video where the unraveling of a pattern now takes on a restorative tone: there is an end of the line, the string freed, and the path to something new is open.
There are other stories to be found in the gallery: the miniature perfection of a dream meal envisioned by someone with allergies suffering a restrictive diet (Leah Yao well aware of the consequences of junk food down to the grave.)
Leah Yao Mini Memento Mori Details below
A letter written after having been abandoned, Eliza Williams‘ incantations feeling like an attempt at self hypnosis to get over the spell cast by the lover. You’ll see for yourself, if you have a chance to visit, how many variations there are of engaging in one or another form of speaking out.
Eliza Williams I used to know you Details below
Quieter work, or shall we say work absent a storyline, was also well represented. There were ceramic containers by Kelsey Davis Hamilton, carefully placed on chosen fabric echoed in some form or another in her voluptuous sculptures that reminded me of tropical succulents, their lack of restraint juxtaposed with these constrained patterns from tartans to the dot alignments familiar from eastern European stoneware.
Kelsey Davis
Kelsey Davis Her House of Laughter
There were Tanner Lind‘s works on paper, radiating joy, the smaller ones more successful than the larger ones. The former were not shy to allow background breathing room to provide a stage for the perceived movement of the affixed figures. It is terrific work, reminiscent of Alexander Calder or Joan Miró if you blink, but in no way derivative. Leaving space empty when there is a lot of space to fill is definitely difficult – but Lind’s unerring sense of geometry and color should propel him towards solutions.
Tanner Lind Microzone 1 (left) and Microzone 2 (right) (perfectly placed above the recycling containers that lend themselves to a Gesamtkunstwerk….)
Tanner Lind Microzone 3 Details
I was absolutely smitten by an installation of organic shapes that hung in the window on the ground floor. Noelle Herceg creates these ephemeral shapes from gelatin, a material that makes them prone to fading, breaking, given that Jell-O skins are not exactly meant to last. I first thought they were made out of glass. Learning that they were not, added a memento mori quality to the work that enhanced the appreciation. Herceg’s website (link above) explains both process and underlying thoughts about her approach in better detail, both concerned with memory of a past and a loss thereof.
Noelle Herceg Jellashells
A few months ago I had explored another exhibit with organic shapes hanging from above, albeit huge ones. Woshaa’axre Yaang’aro (Looking Back) by Mercedes Dorame is an installation at the Getty Center in L.A., conjuring the views of ocean coastlines of the Tongva People, with the suspended sculptures representing abalones – a culturally important mollusk for the Native peoples. This artist, too, relates work to memory and the constructs built around what gets handed down. I found the size overwhelming, though, and the opaque pastels too saturated.
Mercedes Dorame Woshaa’axre Yaang’aro (Looking Back) at the Getty Center
Herceg’s work, in contrast has a gentleness to it, a cautiousness almost, as if there’s fragility all around us, one sharp look potentially shattering skins. Really hard to convey, and perhaps just my personal echoing of the theme, but the installation is worth exploring, something digs deep.
Noelle Herceg Jellashells
Last but not least let’s make some room for talking with your hands… or at least one prominent finger extended to all those engaged in fat shaming – here’s to holding your ground! The zest for life depicted in this painting -oh grant me just a small percent of that!
I expect we’ll see many of these young artists more prominently in the years to come, if we are lucky to be around. The Reser show certainly raised hopes for that.
A scientific paper I recently encountered set off an intriguing line of thought about our reactions to art and artists. Let’s start with the obvious fact that artists are people, and so some of them are lovely folks with good values; and some are jerks. Should our assessment of the artist as a person color how we think about their artistic productions themselves? The article I read starts with a striking finding. The authors, Joe Siev and Jacob Teeny of the University of Virginia and Northwestern University respectively, surveyed 634 cases in which university faculty had been punished for some type of sexual misconduct, and went through an elaborate rating process to assess, first, how serious the transgression was, and, second, how serious the punishment was.
Helen Frankenthaler Skywriting (1997)
Skipping all the details, the blunt finding is this: at whatever level of transgression you choose, the artists received more extreme punishment than scientists. Specifically, the average level of punishment for the artists included the fact that they were suspended, or placed on leave, or their contracts were not renewed. For the scientists the average level of punishment was less severe. Honors were revoked or salaries reduced, but they were less likely to lose their jobs on average.
Helen Frankenthaler Free Fall (1992-93)
What is going on here? The authors of the paper offer the suggestion that, for artists, we cannot easily separate their professional output (their paintings, sculptures, compositions, etc.) from who the person is. This notion is rooted in the idea that artists’ output is, in important ways, a reflection of the artists’ emotional makeup, their perspective on the world, and their personality. For scientists, it is proposed that we can more readily separate who the person is from what they do professionally. Presumably this is a reflection of the assumption that scientific work is more likely to be objective, more likely to be governed by rigid rules about procedure and analysis, and in all of these ways just less personal. The authors therefor propose that a process referred to as moral decoupling, the ability or willingness to sever the work from the person, applies to scientists more readily than to artists.
Helen Frankenthaler CEDAR HILL (1983)
I worry that this explanation to some extent mythologizes how scientists work. I also worry, that there may be other ways to think about the data. (The article lists multiple follow-up experiments designed to exclude alternative explanations, something I do not have the space here to discuss.) And note: the contrast between artists and scientists disappears if the moral transgression is directly related to their work, for example an instance of outright plagiarism or fabrication of data. These work-related offenses costs scientists as well.
Yet the upsetting fact of differential punishment for the respective professions remains, and is troubling in a number of ways. As one concern, it raises questions about inequitable treatment, when some professional commits some moral offense. But the result also invites questions about whether we can, or should, separate our evaluation of the artist from our evaluation of their work.
Helen Frankenthaler Spoleto (1972)
One famous example is the huge condemnation of Woody Allen for his misdeeds, a condemnation that has led essentially to a boycott of his movies by many people, myself included. It is interesting to ask, whether this condemnation leads people to believe the movies themselves are less good, or whether the experience of watching a movie by Allen has itself become distasteful (I come down on the latter explanation.)
I wrestle with these issues in my own approach to certain art works and artists. For example, I took off my walls work by Emil Nolde, someone I had revered since childhood and had personal connections to, once his moral transgressions as a supporter of the Nazi regime, NS philosophy and virulent anti-Semitism became clear. (I wrote about all this previously here.) Even though my assessment of his work product, his art, has not changed – I still consider it brilliant – the man and the work have been canceled in my house. I simply refuse to be reminded of the betrayal.
Similarly, I had recently written a long diatribe in these pages in favor of canceling Salvador Dali, unable to decouple his work, still considered amazing, from the moral failures of that artist.
Helen Frankenthaler Westwind (1997)
Then again, I continue to listen to Wagner, even though he embraced Nazi ideology and was generally a pretty wicked human being. It is a guilty pleasure, listening to something that should be ignored if I were only true to my own standards. Not exactly a principled approach.
The possible connection between artist and their output was also felt in my reaction to the works on display in today’s photographs, the prints of Helen Frankenthaler currently on view at OJMCHE. Let me hasten to add I know of nothing she has done wrong, in sharp contrast to Nolde, Dali or Wagner. I just know that she was in a 5 year relationship with a critic who I despise for political reasons. I also know that she very much tried to make her mark as a woman in a field then dominated by men, even though her talent towers high over many of them. These bits of background information colored the way I read her prints, and how I experienced her work in ways that struck me as a tad too demonstrative and intellectually constructed (with one exception, a flowing print I really liked, below.) (For a positive, learned, detailed review of the show by my ArtsWatch colleague Laurel Reed Pavic, go here. I should also add that Frankenthaler’s work is incredibly beloved by most viewers. I seem to be the odd person out.)
I wonder how I would have reacted to the work if I had no idea who produced it.
Helen Frankenthaler Flirt (2003)
In sum, I wish I had a clear vision of why I canceled Nolde, but continue to regard Wagner’s music as tolerable even if listening to it has to be acknowledged as a guilty pleasure. These are mysteries to contemplate. In the meantime, and consistent with the article I discussed, it’s plain that, at least some times, I am unable to separate my views of the artist from my reactions to the work. Why this happens, and why there is inconsistency in how this plays out, remains to be answered.
Helen Frankenthaler Untitled From What Red Lines Can Do (1970)
Music today is in memory of a brilliant talent who died today 8 years ago. No guilty pleasure here with his last album, just pure, unadulterated longing that David Bowie could have lived and made music a little longer.
“I cannot help remembering a remark of DeCasseres. It was over the wine in Mouquin’s. Said he: “The profoundest instinct in man is to war against the truth; that is, against the Real. He shuns facts from his infancy. His life is a perpetual evasion. Miracle, chimera and to-morrow keep him alive. He lives on fiction and myth. It is the Lie that makes him free. Animals alone are given the privilege of lifting the veil of Isis; men dare not. The animal, awake, has no fictional escape from the Real because he has no imagination. Man, awake, is compelled to seek a perpetual escape into Hope, Belief, Fable, Art, God, Socialism, Immortality, Alcohol, Love. From Medusa-Truth he makes an appeal to Maya-Lie.”
When I visited the current exhibition at the Columbia Gorge Museum, a small portrait immediately caught my eye amongst the many large, scenario paintings by Christopher Pothier. Unclear how it ended up joining the selection of art brought together under the title Bring Your Damn Checkbook: Painted Visions. Most of the other work, spanning about a decade in the artist’s career, has distinct narratives critical of how life unfolds – or is manipulated – in our modern times under the pressures of capitalism and political ideologies, down to the commodification of relationships,
Christoper Pothier The Prenup (2022)
invasion of foreign countries,
Christoper Pothier My Vacation Nightmare: Self Portrait as a Political Prisoner (2016)
Riot Police encounters,
Christopher Pothier The Ultimate Cure for Stage Fright (2018)
and (mis)management of pandemic diseases.
Christopher Pothier American Apocalyptic (2020)
The portrait that drew my attention is simply called La Mujer en el Viento, the woman in the wind. No clue why the title is in Spanish, one of several mysteries surrounding the painting. Here is a wind strong enough to blow the entire mane of gorgeous blond hair towards the front of the person, completely covering her face, static electricity perhaps keeping the lighter strands in the air. Yet the slender figure seems to be neither leaning into the wind nor bent by it, wearing a white shirt too thin to protect from cold, too long-sleeved to be appropriate for sciroccos. The beautifully curved female upper body is situated against a body of water whipped into waves by the gusts, a backdrop of distant mountains, and a sky-scape that radiates rays reminiscent of medieval paintings’ practice to indicate a halo.
Christopher Pothier La Mujer en el Viento (2023)
Maybe just a woman in the wind. Maybe someone blinded by her own beauty. Maybe a kind of saint walking on water, we have no clue where the lower body resides. Or maybe a Medusa in the making, with all that sinuous hair soon transforming into snakes, petrifying us the moment they move to reveal her gaze.
It’s in the eye of the beholder, art finding its meaning by eliciting the viewer’s thoughts.
This is what makes this exhibition interesting: Pothier, who holds a bachelor’s in fine arts from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, MA, and has been working as a painter as well as a muralist, uses realism as an art form, depicting, however, visions that at times embrace magical scenarios.
My eye, of course, expected the Medusa. Remember the myth of the three Gorgon sisters? Raped by the God Poseidon in Athena’s temple, Medusa is punished by the Goddess, in true original form of victim blaming, by transforming her hair into snakes and cursing her with the ability to turn everything that meets her eyes into stone. Later on, a gaggle of Gods provides the Greek hero Perseus with a handful of tricks (Athena’s mirror shield, Hermes’ winged boots and Hades’ helmet of invisibility) to slay the Medusa and bring her head, still powerful even in death, back to grace Athena’s shield.
Medusa-Truth, as Jack London coined it, is about facts and reality – in this case the Hellenic invasion and destruction of religious shrines whose priestesses used Gorgon masks, apotropaic faces worn to frighten away the profane, in the 13th century B.C.
Gorgon, after all, means protector, and “the masks were symbols used to protect from and ward off the negative, much like the modern evil eye. She represents a dangerous threat meant to deter other dangerous threats, an image of evil to repel evil.” (Ref.)
It is an image that almost any half-way educated person can identify, through the ages. From Greek mythology, to Roman poetry, to Psychoanalysis, to modern Feminist scholarship, interpretations abound – all tied to fable and imagination and reiterated in art throughout the centuries, so decried by London in his despair over man’s unwillingness to face reality. Whether the Gorgon represents the fear of castration according to Freud, or the fury of raped, debased and victimized women according to more modern psychological accounts, one thing is obvious: her strength is boundless and her image has had staying power.
Christopher Pothier The Mafia Lawyer (2019)
As a scientist, I decry the way facts are ignored, dismissed, ridiculed, and replaced by wishful thinking, or “truthiness,” that sense of reality that is derived from the gut and based on emotions, never verified, given place of honor in defining our world, instead of being thrown out into the bin.
Yet I am the first to agree that art has something important to contribute. Imagination, whether anchored in the artist’s depictions or elicited in the viewer or reader of a particular piece of art, can help us to attend to facts, to understand the world or draw meaning from it, contrary to London’s assertions. In some ironic way, realism in art often coincided with imaginative idealization or caricature. It could be found in Greek depictions of life-like wrestling figures right next to the embellishment of vases with the Gorgon motif. 17th century painters in Spain and the Netherlands depicted true-to-life scenes next to imagined feats of mythological heroes or biblical scenarios. As an aesthetic movement Realism emerged in mid-19th century France, rejecting the tenets of Classicism and Romanticism, starting with Gustave Courbet. Closer to home, Thomas Eakins’ work in the U.S. was a prime example of this move to naturalistic depiction of accurately observed daily life.
Disillusioned by WW I, artists in Europe used realism to express their disgust with political forces, cynicism running high in that movement of “Neue Sachlichkeit” (New Objectivity.) During the 1950s there emerged a tendency to add imaginative detail to realistic scenes, a Magic Realism, with Chicago native Ivan Albright being one of the American painters often cited in that context. By all reports, he spent years on a single painting, trying to manipulate surface characteristics, which cannot be true for Pothier’s work, looking at the quantity of his output, and the contentment with relatively flat canvasses, more characteristic of photography. These two artists do share, though, a taste for revelatory titles, for the most part, a kind of narrative provided for the viewer, often imprinting the message of the painting with a dab of humor.
Christopher Pothier It’s Just another F***** Monday (2016)/Detail
Whether that practice makes sense is also in the eye of the beholder; after all, it might dilute or distance us from the visual message. Personally, I like humor, even – or particularly – the gallows kind, because it has helped me through the most catastrophic, life threatening events in my own life. The support of loved ones who can still crack jokes when you are trying to fight off overwhelming dread, anchors you. If the situation was truly existential no-one would dare to make jokes, would they? So it cannot be as bad as feared, leading to stress reduction and renewed commitment to fight.
For art depicting social dilemmas and political catastrophe, humor might have an analogous function. Rather than being overwhelmed and shutting down, we might be encouraged to look more closely and respond to the call to check out the facts, at a minimum, even if they are embedded in surreal depictions, or heed the call to action, in a best-case scenario.
Of course, The Woman in the Wind, to come back to the work that stood out for me, provides no narrative, humorous or otherwise, in the title. We can rely on the facts – windblown coiffure, the end – or we can supply our own imagination – tresses turning to snakes in a microsecond, symbolizing the strength of women so feared by the world that they need to be destroyed. Hair or no hair, she stands up to the storm and protects instead of slaying, gaze shielded. If hope is our perpetual escape, as London phrased it, so be it – hope for strength will manifest as strength, eventually.
In this particular instance, of course, it doesn’t matter if we choose fact or fiction. We are not asked to make decisions about pandemic policies, or workplace safety or declarations of war, all of which MUST be based on factual evidence. Instead we can relish art that provides us with a link to history rather than simple escapism, to ideas and ways to engage with the world that either affirm or question our perceptions and values. Exactly what art, after all, is meant to do, and what Pothier’s ideas ask of us in this exhibition.
The Columbia Gorge Museum
Christopher Pothier – Bring your Damn Checkbook – Painted Visions – until end of January 2024
990 SW Rock Creek Rd. – Stevenson, WA. 98648
Open Daily: 10:00am – 5:00pm
Closed: December 31 and January 1, 2024
Music today is a seminal piece by Henze, written as a requiem to Che Guevara and using a text by Ernst Schnabel and passages from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Not exactly easy listening, but a good final offer for 2023 since it depicts the horrendous consequences of war and/or colonial exploitation, in this case survivors of a sunk French naval vessel trying to make it on the raft of the Medusa and cannibalizing each other.
I figured, given all the doom and gloom this week, we’ve earned some amusement.
Meet Clive Smith, then, whose birds I find delightful. According to his website, he is interested in both genomic technology and art as a medium to envision possibilities of creation:
“While I was researching advances within genomic technology, I became enthralled by the progress biologists were making in the study of endangered animals. These molecular biologists had set themselves the goal of re-engineering previously extinct species and returning them to life. For example, The Flagship Project proposes to bring back the extinct Passenger Pigeon. To achieve this they would use the DNA of specimens found in natural history museums. These preserved DNA fragments would then be engineered with its closest living species, the band-tailed pigeon, to recreate a new breed that is as close as possible to the extinct bird.
I became fascinated by the creation of new, yet familiar breeds. By combining an existing bird, and mixing it with the DNA of a painting I wanted to create an entirely new, and wonderful subspecies. I have engineered these new breeds by thinking about how a certain birds’ patterning and color could match the DNA of a specific painting. There is an interesting correlation between brush-strokes and feathers. Plumage, like paintings, has evolved to evoke very specific emotions: aggression, warning, seduction, joy.”
His smart importations of other people’s paintings encouraged me to use his models as company to my own avian visitors – thus the band-tailed pigeons (now gone until they return in the spring.) (His other birds can be seen if you click the link on his name.)
Meet models and montages.
Clive Smith Richter Pigeon (Colomba Haus Sohl) (2022)
Clive Smith Richter Pigeon (Colomba Apfelbäume) (2022)
Clive Smith Dupré Dove (Zenaida the windmill) (2022)
Clive Smith Richter Pigeon (Colomba Wolke) (2022)
Clive Smith Malevich Pigeon (Columba suprematism) (2023)
Did you know that Antonin Dvorak loved pigeons? (For the musical history-inclined here’s an interesting essay.)
For the rest of us who yearn for the music, here is one of my favorite compositions. I don’t care that it is a war horse. Cellist’s shirt, depending on the light, is sort of pigeon-colored too…which is why I chose this performance. Below this one is the version that I have on CD.
We will never know the exact number of children traumatized in today’s world, with its wars, environmental catastrophes caused by climate change, hunger, disease, and violence empowered by entrenched racist and caste systems.
Artists have taken on the task of drawing our attention to the plight of these children in ways that make it possible to confront the horrors without being fatigued by pure statistic or scared by sensation-seeking news reports. One of the artists I most admire in this regard is JR (yes, he goes by initials only) who has created work that registers emotionally, makes us think about facts, and also generates income that he is donating to funds helping children afflicted by war.
An early series of his was Déplacé·e·s, a collection of super large images of refugee children that were shown in places that housed refuges who had fled from war, famine or social instability. Aerial photographs of 170-foot-long banners—carried by groups of people around the camp or a city—depicted the full image of a child. The project generated a lot of awareness about how many millions of refugees are currently on the move or settled under horrifying circumstances, in many cases.
Currently, the artist is exhibiting a different way of displaying photographs of kids in refugee camps across Rwanda, Ukraine, Greece, Mauritania and Columbia, among others. Les Enfants d’Ouranos shows images that are photographic negatives transferred directly on wood, producing ghostly figures in a reversal of light and dark. The children, now anonymous silhouettes standing in for all of the displaced rather than an individual child, are bright, luminous, carriers of hope. Ouranos was the Greek God of the sky, creator of the Titans, and I wonder if his fatherly role, alluded to in the exhibition title, is that of punisher or protector. These kids are seen primarily running – away from something or towards something? Did this primordial God unleash the disasters, or is he in charge of shelter? Some of the work can be seen at the facade of the Parrish Art Museum in Waterville, NY, until the end of May. (All images are work of the artist.)
I want to talk today a little bit about what we know of what might happen when these children who lived through traumatic events have children of their own. My field of psychology and also the area of psychiatry has seen an increasing research focus over the last 40 years on how trauma is handed down through the generations. I will relate the story at the most basic level, leaving out most of the specific scientific details, because it matters to me just to get the idea across. For an in-depth overview, go here. That article will also refer you to many other sources, for investigations of specific traumas or ways of transmission.)
What we know: children of survivors of traumatic experiences are more likely to have behavioral or mental and physical health problems than children of parents, otherwise matched for age, education, financial status etc., who were spared tragedy in their lives. These can be externalizing problems such as hyperactivity, impulsivity, aggression, and rule violation, or internalizing problems that are characterized by worry, anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal. They can be bodily ailments like immune system deficiencies, asthma, autism-spectrum diseases, obesity or the propensity towards diabetes and heart disease, presumed to be modulated by the way stress affects the second and third generation.
The original traumatic experiences that were studied in humans range from the Holocaust, the Japanese Internment experience, the Vietnam War, the Cambodian and Armenian genocide, European and African hunger epidemics, slavery, the participation in Israel’s war in 1973, Palestinian displacement, to the exposure of an individual to repeated, serious childhood abuse or being victim to a sexual crime. Animal models have also been used to push our scientific knowledge further. Many researchers agreed that some of the effects of trauma on the next generation (intergenerational trauma) or even subsequent generations (transgenerational trauma) could be related to how generation 1’s experiences affected their own behavior, subsequent adjustment problems, including addiction, violence or suicidal ideation, as well as their parenting styles, aloof or overprotective, leading to problems with attachment for generation 2.
Yet scientists were curious if something else was going on in addition to what happened in the direct, day-by-day interactions between survivors and their children, interactions that of course shaped the lived experience of the children. This triggered a flurry of research into epigenetics, the study of how external factors can change or affect the ways our genes work.
Remember that we inherit our parents’ genes, with the DNA from the male carried in the sperm, and the DNA from the female carried in the egg. When sperm and egg merge they form a single cell, which then multiplies to supply us with all the different cells required to live. Throughout this process, every single cell in your body has the same genes, the same DNA. However, in each cell, some of the genes are activated and some are not; that’s how a single configuration of genes, shared by every one of your cells, can function differently in different locations and at different times. What’s at stake here is called “gene expression” – with the pattern of gene expression in your liver cells making sure those cells function as liver cells should, with the pattern of expression in your nerve cells making sure neurons do neuron things, and so on. One catalogue of genes (i.e., one “genome”) throughout, but different expressions of that genome governing the function of the DNA in each individual cell.
What governs gene expression? Basically, it’s the immediate chemical environment of that specific cell, which in turn is governed by a variety of other factors, including factors in your environment. In other words, your environment has a powerful influence on gene expression, and so your environment has a powerful influence on how your genetic material operates.
But now we add two further steps: First, it’s crucial that, when the DNA is passed to the next generation (through sperm and egg), the DNA molecules that are passed onward are (like any DNA molecules) molecules with a particular pattern of gene expression. In other words, in the DNA that’s passed to your offspring, some of the genes are currently “switched on,” and some of the genes currently “switched off.” In this way, the pattern of your experiences (which – again – influences gene expression) can literally alter the specifics of the genetic pattern you pass on to your offspring.
Second, trauma turns out to be one of the experiences that matters for gene expression, basically changing how someone’s DNA functions. In particular, trauma changes the expression of genes important for glucocorticoid function – a body chemical that’s crucial for how someone responds to stress. The result? The person (because of this change in glucocorticoids) may be overreactive to stress, and may have unhealthy cortisol levels.
Putting these pieces together: Trauma influences gene expression, and (part of) the pattern of gene expression is transmitted to your children, through your DNA. As a result, parents who have expressed trauma literally change the biology of their children. And, again, this is a purely biological, genetic transmission, in addition to whatever ways the behavior of (previously traumatized?) parents can alter the lived experience of the children raised by those parents.
I am not a biologist, so a lot of the details go beyond my comprehension. But I did learn that multiple variables correlate with different outcomes. So, for example, both maternal and paternal trauma can affect gene expression that then gets inherited by the next generation. It matters how old survivors were at the time of trauma, it matters what gestational phase the fetus is in, if the trauma occurs during the pregnancy and not before. Boys and girls are differently affected. Some studies (with very small sample sizes, so caution) say that the effects of gene expression are even more detrimental in the 3rd compared to the 2nd generation.
What conclusions are drawn? “At the present time, the field has not sufficiently grappled with the meaning of the intergenerational transmission of trauma effects for the offspring. It could be argued that this transmission is indicative of increased vulnerability. On the other hand, this transmission may extend the adaptive capacities of offspring through a biological preparation for adverse circumstances similar to those encountered by the parent. Ultimately, the potential utility, and possible stability, of an environmentally induced trait transmitted to an offspring will depend on the offspring’s environmental context.”(Ref.)
Honestly, that seems a bit bland and falsely comforting by not confronting the fact that so many trauma survivors are part of a multi-generational system. When you think about the historical backdrop of Jews’ experiences across time in this world, or that of Blacks, or the inhabitants of the Republic of Congo, or large numbers of Ukrainians, or Palestinians who have been displaced, killed and oppressed for many, many generations, increased vulnerability through a lineage of multiple survivors is likely to trump adaptive capacity.
We know how war and famine have immediate horrifying effects for those experiencing them. Captivity, whether as a hostage, a prisoner of war, or a human being fenced in a concentration camp or a strip of land with closed borders, with death looming above you or raining down, will do irrevocable, life-long damage to those who survive. Starvation, whether through natural famines, or the intentional withholding of food, during Stalin’s purges of Ukraine or the Israeli war cabinet’s decision to cut off food to the Gazan population, will change the health status of several generations down the line.
Terror and war are, as we now know, generating wounds for those in the future, generations of children who will be affected by the suffering of their parents and grandparents and great grandparents, with gene expression turned on or off in ways detrimental to their health. It will potentially feed into new cycles of violence, perpetuating trauma.
Music today is a contemporary song about refugee children.
Also a modernist’s reaction to war: Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen.
I got my Covid booster yesterday and decided to cut myself some slack – my intended essay on Utopias can wait. They ain’t going nowhere…
I was persuaded when work by Angela Smyth, an artist from Yorkshire, popped up in my inbox. I found both, ideas and implementation, truly charming. (Came right after the announcement that conceptual Jesse Darling had won the 2023 Turner Prize. Like art from two different planets. Not a value judgement, just my ongoing astonishment at the range that is out there.)
Here is the easy chair waiting for me:
Angela Smyth The Easy Chair
Here is the perfect cat, (don’t you agree M.?)
Angela Smyth A Great Head for Hats
Here is me some decades ago.
Angela Smyth Playing With Fire
And here is what I will be doing now, albeit in isolation.
Angela Smyth The Bubblegum Collective – brought together monthly to share a love of blowing bubbles.
Gum, anyone? You can listen and chew at the same time – here’s Traffic, a band also from the U.K. (Birmingham) that enchanted us half a century ago…. Man, I’m getting old.
O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue To drown the throat of war! When the senses Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness, Who can stand? When the souls of the oppressèd Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand? When the whirlwind of fury comes from the Throne of God, when the frowns of his countenance Drive the nations together, who can stand? When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle, And sails rejoicing in the flood of Death; When souls are torn to everlasting fire, And fiends of Hell rejoice upon the slain, O who can stand? O who hath causèd this? O who can answer at the throne of God? The Kings and Nobles of the Land have done it! Hear it not, Heaven, thy Ministers have done it!
-by William Blake (1757 – 1827) Prologue, Intended for a dramatic piece of King Edward the Fourth (1796)
***
War was on my mind when I climbed up the footpath to the museum on the hill. War has been on my mind intermittently since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but now, with hell as well descending on the Middle East, it’s become a permanent renter in my head. The piece of art that brought the horrors of war most indelibly home to me this year was Jorge Tacla‘s Sign of Abandonment/Señal de abandono 34, a panoramic view of collective suffering, exhibited in the context of Portland’s Converge 45 biennial and reviewed here.
Jorge Tacla Sign of Abandonment/Señal de abandono 34, (2018) Oil and cold wax on canvas Courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery
A frontal view of city blocks reduced to rubble evoked the real-life catastrophe of the siege of the Syrian city of Homs from a decade ago. Tacla’s monumental painting bears witness to the past, but might as well have been prophecy, since the current images out of Gaza, bombed to shreds by the IDF, can be seamlessly superimposed on his painting, with no visual gaps.
I was on my way to explore the work of a different artist also concerned with the futility of war and the destructive power of oppression by state and religious actors. It turned out to be a remarkable exhibition, an international loan on view at the Getty. Organized by the Getty and the Tate, where the work was first shown in 2019, William Blake: Visionary presents several hundreds of his prints, paintings and watercolors, with museum signage that focuses on the diverse roles he assumed – printmaker, inventor, independent artist, poet – and the historical context of life in 18th century England.
The Getty courtyards sport larger-than-life images and banners of Blake’s imagery. The stairs approaching the exhibition halls are covered with what I believe to be a partial of Blake’s frontispiece The Ancient of Days, from ‘Europe’.
Sort of strange to stomp on work before you’ve even encountered it. Then again, the staircase looks pretty spectacular, and spectacle was likely the goal, certainly the result for some of the staging and lighting of the exhibition, in ways that struck me as a misshapen approach. The entrance to the show is painted and lit in deep glowing reds, visions of hell, fortified later by huge posters of some of the mythological figures that populate Blake’s work. It is attention grabbing, for sure, but attention should be on the fact that most of Blake’s work was done in small format and used tempera paints or watercolors, a softness he preferred to oil painting. More importantly, for Blake it was always about the dichotomy of good and evil, heaven and hell, trial and deliverance – so why augment the infernal side of the pair, if not for its more spectacular nature?
Minor quibble. Seeing so many of the prints and paintings in their original renditions, helpfully guided by introductory overviews of the different aspects of his work and artistic development, was just breathtaking. If I lived in L.A. I would surely return multiple times to take all of it in in more concentrated fashion. There is so much to process, beginning with the biography of an artist who lived in relative obscurity, mostly as a printmaker engraving other people’s designs, or executing his own for commissions that were topically constrained by the wishes of his patrons.
William Blake Plate from The Book of Urizen (1794) “I sought pleasure and found pain.” “Unutterable.”
Only later in life found the son of a haberdasher sufficient financial and artistic support to eke out a living producing his own books, using relief etching, a technique he invented. Everything but his images and words, written backwards, was corroded from the plate, the individual volumes later hand colored, differently for each copy.
He had one solo exhibition of his work in 1809 which failed miserably, not a piece sold, his exhibits derided as those of a “madman.” Even though contemporary romanticism focussed on individualism as well as historical themes, Blake’s visions of either struck the critics as “the wild effusions of a distempered brain.” In some way, his angelic creatures, ancients and monsters paved the way for the symbolist movement, heralded in Jean Moréas’ The Symbolist Manifesto which called for personal visions and a return to mythology in 1886, about a half century after Blake’s death. (I can only dream up an encounter, had he be been born later, between Blake and the daring symbolist Félicien Rops, recognizing each other’s vision for uninhibited love.)
William Blake (Clockwise from top) Nebuchadnezzar (1795-1805) – The Blasphemer (1800) – The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy, Hecate, (1795) Satan Exulting over Eve (1795)
In much of Blake’s work, there is more to both images and poetry than strikes the eye at first glance. His “personal visions” of monsters and mythological creatures were not just the results of an extraordinary imagination. They were a means to criticize the extant political forces in subversive ways, since direct criticism might have cost him his freedom or even life. These figures were creations that aimed squarely at the establishment and its lust for power and/or war. Blake was influenced by and greatly hopeful for the American and French Revolutions. He championed equality, the fight against oppression, was a radical abolitionist and longed for a world no longer ruled by clerics and monarchs.
William Blake Illustrations from the Book of Job (1823)
It is is weirdly contradictory, that he pursued the goals of enlightenment while being strongly against what it stood for: the rule of reason. The First Book of Urizen (1794) (a word he created that implies “your reason” – or “horizon,) if you say it out loud) challenges us to leave the rational behind, and devote ourselves to that more fluid part of our minds, the imagination. And if you look at his passionate strong argument in his poem Marriage of Heaven and Hell, to renounce traditional dichotomies, you wonder why he continued to dichotomize between creativity and reason. (Dreaming up another encounter: Blake meets Martha C. Nussbaum, contemporary philosopher and author of Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotion. Fascinating debate would ensue, you’d think? She argues persuasively that you cannot simply separate emotion from cognition, intuition from reason.)
William Blake Plate from Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion. (1804 to about 1820)
I had written about Marriage of Heaven and Hell and what it implied during the 2021 Jewish High Holidays, a time of contemplation and repentance.
“Blake insists that our existence depends on a combination of forces that move us forward (the marriage of the title.) It might be in the interest of those in power wanting to retain the status quo, to designate us into “Team Good” and “Team Evil,” but for progress to happen we have to acknowledge that we are “Team Human,” as someone cleverly said.
Being human is not either/or, all good or all vile. We are complex enough to accommodate impulses from all directions, to heed some more than others, or do so in different contexts or different times. We might be the just (wo)man at times, or the sneaking, snaky villain at others, going from meek to enraged or in reverse. Change, both in the personal and the political realm, depends on it. Change, in the New Year, will depend on embracing all of what makes us human, and not waste energy to isolate bits and pieces at the expense of others. Intellect and sensuality, rationality and emotionality, acquiescence and rebelliousness can and must coexist.“
William Blake Plate from The First Book of Urizen Fearless though in pain I travel on (1794)
The concepts came back to me when thinking through issues now impacting the world since the horrors of October 7th and the ensuing retaliatory actions. Evermore tempted to designate “team evil” and “team good” in times of contention, the notion of a shared humanity is destroyed by the force of emotions elicited by war: hatred, revenge, religious fervor, lust for power and the economic gains associated therewith. One plate of Blake’s work encapsulates the mechanisms and degree of suffering to prophetic perfection: an engraving of the statue of Laocoön with a torrent of phrases surrounding the image. The most notable aphorism at the base of the image says:
“Art Degraded Imagination Denied War Governed the Nations.”
The priest of yore dared to call out the the function of the Trojan Horse, “some trick of war,” which infuriated the Goddess Pallas Athena. She sent out two serpents who killed the priest’s two young sons in front of him, and silenced him as well. Troy was sacked, with thousands slain. Laocoön himself, a priest for the party of dominion, was in a way participant to the war, which goes to show that all can be destroyed who partake, even if they try to do the right thing. Had his imagination, his vision, been heeded, things might have ended differently. Note also the disproportionality of Athena’s retribution – the life of children taken as revenge for a disturbance of her plans.
William Blake Plates from Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion. (1804 to about 1820)
I find Blake’s lines cited at the beginning of today’s review more realistically geared towards the causes for so much horror in the world, having less to do with neglect of art and imagination, and more to do with tribalism, claiming superior rights and power:
The Kings and Nobles of the Land have done it! Hear it not, Heaven, thy Ministers have done it!
Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose – the artist is strikingly relevant at this very moment.
William Blake Plate from The First Book of Urizen Vegetating in a Pool of Blood. (1794)
—
There is familiar fare in the exhibition as well, for many of us, I presume.
William Blake Songs of Experience – The Tyger (1825)
Then there was work new to me. One of my favorite series, if only because it brings some light into all the infernal gloom in his work and in my head, were some selected illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy, begunin 1824, which show Blake at the height of his power, late in life. And Dante’s story ends with redemption, if you recall.
William Blake Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy (1824-7)
This is work that is visually deeply modern. Seen out of context wouldn’t you buy the notion that this watercolor is potentially by Matisse or Chagall?
William Blake Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy – The Ascent of the Mountain of Purgatory (1824-7)
What has me in awe of this artist is not that he was ahead of his time, though, in visual style or thought. Rather, he distilled, in image and word, the essence of the problems that need solving, across the entire span of humanity’s existence: how can freedom and peaceful coexistence be guaranteed for all, in a world competing for resources and serving diverging ideologies?
Slaughtered children are not the answer.
William Blake Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy – The Pit of Disease – the Falsifiers. (1824-7)
These are words I picked up from the museum signage. Not for Blake, it turns out, although they would fit to perfection. They addressed imagery of another exhibition that is currently on view at the Getty Center, Arthur Tress: Rambles, Dreams and Shadows.
The descriptors above were not the only parallel. Just like Blake, Tress depicts not what his eyes perceive, but what his mind creates, except that he does it with a camera instead of a brush or an engraving tool, in his series The Dream Collector.
Arthur Tress Boy in TV Set, Boston, MA (1972)
Arthur Tress (Clockwise from Left):Boy with Duck Deco, Passaic, NJ (1969)- irl with Dunce Camp, P.S.3, NY, NY (1972) – young Boy and Hooded Figure, Ny, NY (1971) – Girl in White Dress, Cape May, NJ (1971)
At a time where photography was determined to document the reality of American life, though street photography in particular, Tress started to stage photographs with the help of young participants. He arranged scenarios that captured our attention with their surrealistic character, again not unlike Blake, but also concisely chronicled the environmental and social conditions his young co-creators faced. During the decade of 1968-1978, the photographer integrated his ideas about dreams, fantasy and nightmares into the traditional documentary approach, with haunting imagery as a result. At times, it has ben described as social surrealism.
Arthur Tress Falling Dream, Coney Island, NY (1972) – Flying Dream, Queens, NY (1971)
The work is enigmatic, and was certainly cutting-edge at a time when sociological realism ruled photography. Worth a visit in parallel to the William Blake exhibition, to remind us that unbridled creativity can happen in all mediums, and menacing fears are not confined to the imagination of the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
If only the fears could be contained in nightly dreams and not reflect the days’ reality of war.
Arthur Tress Boy in Flood Dream, Ocean City, Maryland (1971)
My first visit to the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) began without expectations. All I knew was that the museum, founded in 1996, is dedicated to modern and contemporary Latin American art. I also remembered that there was some kind of brouhaha when it attempted to auction some 60 works from its permanent collection through an online e-commerce site three years ago (apparently unsuccessfully.) Given that the relatively small permanent collection was mostly provided by the late founder, healthcare executive Robert Gumbiner, an enthusiastic art collector but not necessarily a professional builder of museum collections, it made sense to find funds to diversify the collection (and perhaps off-set the pandemic-induced financial losses, although that was never said.) Others disagreed, scornfully so.
I arrived at the Long Beach, CA, location on a day with cloudless, blue skies, the light and coloring reminiscent of New Mexico, were it not for those imperial palms rigidly lining the building, its thrusting rectangular arches echoed by an equally thrusting sculpture. No softening, curved adobe in sight, just a pastel colored mural towards the back of the parking lot.
Mural by Sofia Maldo on the MOLAA walls.
Much to see inside the museum. Three current exhibitions provide quite the gamut of what art can offer. One of them is “Festin de Sabores. Banquete Mexicano,” a collection of genre paintings that center around themes of food, harvest and markets, still life and modern cuisine. Jointly curated by folks from MOLAA and MUNAL, the National Museum of Art in Mexico City, which provided many of the exhibits, it is a fascinating vehicle for time-travel through centuries of preoccupation with food and those who grow, sell, prepare and consume it.
From 18th century paintings to present day works, the Festival of Flavors contains a wide variety of artists and skill levels, all coming together to form a vibrant overall picture, a feast for the eyes. The center of the room is occupied with an installation of furniture that sets the scene: a table laden with colorful objects and utensils displaying craftsmanship.
Alfredo Marín Gutiérrez La Mesa Mexicana (2023)
The rest consists of primarily paintings of which I chose the examples below to give an impression of the variability of the work on display or because I particularly liked them ( I leave it to the reader to figure out which is which.)
Gustavo Montoya La Merced (Last third of the 20th century) Details below.
Clockwise from Left: Hermeneglido Bustos Still Life with Fruit, Scorpion and a Frog (1877) – Manuel Munoz Olivares The Offering (1996) -Xavier Esqueda Mechanical Still Life (1999) – Rodrigo Pimentel Lemonade for Michel (1997)
Benjamin Dominguez Not Titel (second half of 20th century) detail below
Ezequiel Negrete Lira Marriage on the Wheat Field (1959)
Alfonso X.Peña Mural of a Market Scene (ca. 1940)
***
Fast forward to the 21st century, and the second exhibition currently on offer, Argentinian artist Paola Vega‘s installation The Mystery of Painting, whose abstract patterns escape the canvases to continue onto the walls. Someone perhaps more knowledgeable than I called the site-specific work “aggressively pleasant.” I, unfortunately, only came up with “pleasantly innocuous.” Vega’s explicit goal (according to the museum signage) to immerse us until we are engulfed in enchantment, just doesn’t fit with the way my mind works these days. Not an aesthetic judgment, just an aesthetic preference.
I get enchantment when my brain fires, not when my senses are calmed down. And that – a rapidly heating brain – is precisely what the third exhibition triggered, Intersected Horizons, a retrospective of the work by Afro-Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea. For one, the number of artistic media expertly commanded by the artist and displayed across multiple large gallery rooms is impressive. Sculpture, painting, photographic installation, videos and even fiber art are all represented. Here are examples of some of the latter, I will then focus on the former, sparking my synapses.
Left: Alexande Arrechea Corner South (2022) Glass Beads Middle: Fish Bite (2022) Ink on Wood, detail below – Right: Habana (2016)Jacquard Tapestry
The galleries are filled with sculptures and installations that alert us to who owns space, how space is utilized, what price is paid for certain kinds of spatial usurpation and by whom. The artist communicates with wit bordering on parody, at least at first glance. He often uses scaling of familiar scenes and objects to make them smaller or larger than they actually are, eschewing all reverence for some of the mighty symbols of American achievement or pride: its sky scrapers, its sports arenas, its golf courses, its scientific achievements.
Alexande Arrechea Landscapes and Hierarchies (2022) 163 glass trees line the road and a singular golf club rests in between; a video in the background shot from the perspective of the golf club. And yes, one kid absconded with the club so far, but it was retrieved with no harm done.
Golf courses, often serving privileged clienteles, force nature into artificial patterns, rather than letting the land be as it was. They require immense amount of water to boot, no longer an unlimited resource, to maintain the shiny greens and thirsty plants. They potentially displace greenery that was accessible to all, tree shade that is increasingly important for our health in a world heating up at an unprecedented pace.
Genetically modified organisms might be a scientific achievement, but also creatures best kept in an unopened Pandora’s box – a hint of surveillance eyes creepily following your gaze in the watercolor of a scaled-up ear of corn points towards potential consequences of artificial powers unleashed onto all of us.
Alexander Arrechea Cornfield Watercolor (2007) Detail below
The desire for limitless growth, as echoed in the magnificent water color below (painted during an artist residence with water from the Delaware river drawn daily,) lets us loose sight of the subjects of creation. Only when you inspect the river do you eventually stumble upon the bird, the trees, the human being grabbing a bucket to hold on to. It is a remarkable fusion of stereogram-like tagging reminiscent of graffiti and the closer inspection of nature in distress with incredibly detailed paint marks.
Alexande Arrechea River and Ripples (2022) Water color. Details below.
Nowhere is Arrechea’s play with scale more obvious than in a set of maquettes that are small versions of New York City’s landmark building, in mutated forms. They are derived from his 2013 installation No Limits at Park Avenue in NYC, larger than what is on display here, at the time placed in close proximity to the actual buildings that provided the reference. The buildings named below were included in that outdoor exhibition.
The Seagram Building (designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson), the Helmsley Building (built in 1929 as the New York Central Building and designed by Warren & Wetmore), the MetLife Building (built in 1958-63 as the Pam Am Building, designed by Emery Roth & Sons, Pietro Belluschi and Walter Gropius). The Sherry Netherland Hotel from Fifth Avenue and 59th Street (designed by Schultze & Weaver with Buchman & Kahn), The Citigroup Center from Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street (designed by Hugh Stubbins, Jr.), The Chrysler Building from Lexington and 42nd Street (designed by William Van Allen), the Empire State Building from Fifth Avenue and 34th Street (Shreve, Lamb and Harmon), the MetLife insurance Tower from Madison Avenue and 23rd Street (Napoleon Le Brun & Sons) and the United States Court House from Foley Square (Cass Gilbert)
Critics raved about the ways he sent up the iconic architecture, converting landmark elite hotels, courthouses, the Empire State building and Wallstreet banks to utilitarian objects. The sarcasm of the rich devouring themselves (Helmsley building), justice tilting, firehoses in Pentagon shape cleaning up for the Empire, banks as safety hazard was applauded by quite a range of reviewers.
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“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline.” — Ayn Rand
I believe that the range of reactions to New York’s skyline and landmark buildings, at least for the newcomer, extends from awe to dismay, with everything in between. It is certainly no surprise that Ayn Rand, she of the “unfettered self-interest is good and altruism is destructive” philosophy, landed on the side of the passionate admirers, given how much the skyscrapers are associated with economic success, symbols of power and exclusivity, capitalism made good. But the rest of us who flocked to New York in our youth also fell for a certain propaganda value of the architecture while we did not succumb to similar messages that other power seats exuded – Berlin’s Reichstag, Mussolini’s fascist architecture, the Bastille, the Tower of London, or further back in time the strutting heights of Christian cathedrals or the Egyptian pyramids, all promising and oppressive simultaneously. In NYC you had arrived at the most exciting city in the world, a sense encapsulated in the un-abating virility and brinkmanship of its architecture.
Alexandre Arrechea Alamar (2015) Watercolor
According to one of the museum guards with whom I happened to chat, the artist had said in his artist talk that he, upon arrival, simply felt overwhelmed by the height and density of the buildings and wanted them cut down to size to deal with his alienation. The work is, of course, more complex than that. It asserts that we are the creators of architectural objects and can make them confirm to our will and our goals, be they playful, political, pragmatic or nefarious.
And we have – most often in ways that served a purpose beyond providing shelter or functionality for public needs.
What Arrechea’s sculptures – in conjunction with his large photographic installation of Black people whose mouths are covered and invisible, essentially rendering them mute – invoked in my head, was the way how architecture can exclude. I am not just talking about segregation via zoning laws, exclusionary convenants, or other legal mechanisms, nor about norms that people habitually adhere to when certain buildings or areas signal a get off my lawn vibe.
Consider how we design the physical environment – architecture of space – that we all move through, to enable discrimination. Take physical barriers, for example. Walled ghettos come to mind, but also barriers in modern cities, Detroit among them. The Eight-Mile-Wall segregating white from black neighborhoods, built there in the 1940s, still exists today. A 1,500 foot fence that separated a suburb in Hamden, CT, from a housing project in New Haven, was only removed in 2014. A modern version of all this are gated communities. Or other communities that have exclusionary amenities, like golf courses, tennis courts, concierges etc. (Ref.)
Residential parking permits have that function as well. I am renting during my visit in L.A. in a lovely historic neighborhood with friendly, interesting people, with lawn signs welcoming immigrants and professing inclusionary values, but you also get this besides parking permits to the tune of almost $100 a month:
Another scenario: If we configure the architecture of a place in ways that make accessibility hard – no sidewalks, one-way street-grid configurations that allow egress more easily that entering, it has consequences for certain populations. Here is a striking New York example: Access to the desirable parks at Jones Beach via the Long Island parkways was made impossible if you needed public transportation by bus. Architect Robert Moses had all the bridge overhangs built intentionally so low that busses could not pass under them. (Ref.)
Other examples include the fact that highways that separate neighborhoods prevent integration between them, in addition to favoring those who want to use their cars to get out of inner-city neighborhoods to the more exclusionary suburbs. (I was coincidentally reminded of that last weekend, when one part of a L.A. highway was closed to cars and permitted walkers and bikers to use the space for a few hours on a Sunday.)
6 miles of Arroyo Seco Parkway closed for people to actually be able to enjoy it on foot.
Arrechea’s varied ways of providing different perspectives of space and the buildings and objects occupying it, connect to history as well as the present.
Underneath it all rested an abstracted agrarian field with glass discs to represent water drops. Fertile ground, if we let it be and don’t waste what remains. Generating food, in theory, instead of symbols of domination; in practice definitely generating food for thought.
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MOLAA
628 Alamitos Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90802 United States
Alexandre Arrechea: Intersected Horizons until May 2024
Paola Vega: The Mystery of Painting
Festin de sabores. Banquete mexicano until January 2024
