6 posts tagged “art”
Well, not so much a vault as thick manila folders by my desk.
I've been visually minded for a while, and have been clipping and keeping images since at least junior high. Being that I'm collaging a bit more, I'd like to revisit some of those older groupings, and see if the images still seem fresh.
Here's one that I found from my "2000-2003" folder, a 2002 piece in Vanity Fair on the newly opened LA Cathedral.
The piece is on the doors of the Cathedral, and the sculptor who created them, but I found the front facade in general to be quite compelling. Again this surprising idea of combining modernity, aesthetics and faith into one package. This can seem very foreign to someone participating in evangelical Christian culture, given their suspicion of both modernity and their post-Reformation mistrust and "dumbing down" of the arts. It's sad that patronage of the arts is so further advanced in Catholic culture, but supporting something like that is a luxury that frequently splintering Protestant denominations cannot afford, or do not have the hierarchichal authority to validate...
At any rate, take a closer look at this lovely sculptural relief above the door.
I take this to be a figure of Mary, based upon her pose on a crescent moon. This piece is very exciting to me. There seems to be a clear sense of spirituality communicated in the pose and expression of the figure, but there is no aesthetic sentimentality--she has been imagined in a completely new way. I particularly like the tastefully modern tunic she is wearing. Lightweight, appropriate to climate, evoking earlier depictions of her, but not slavishly bound to them. Very creative and new. I like it.
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On an unrelated note, I visited the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis over Thanksgiving, and saw some very interesting Russian artwork. This piece was not on display, but was represented in a hall display, and the gift shop:
Received just today... :)
I went to an art exibit tonight as part of Richmond's First Friday artwalk. I was at the 1708 Gallery, I walked in, and there were these dimly lit photographs on the wall. Upon entry, we were cautioned that there were pieces on the floor, art pieces, further in. The photographs were really interesting, portraits of people with their eyes closed, these small prints, 3 x 3 inches, and the lighting made them barely visible, so that you had to get up close, scrutinize to barely see them, peering into their faces. After a while, you realized the lights were slowly increasing in brightness, so that the portrait, over 30 seconds, slowly came into "focus" as more light was thrown upon it, but even then, very faint, very distant. It left me with the impression of the difficulty in really "seeing" people, the difficulty in accurately perceiving others, seeing them as they are, and the work involved in getting a clear picture of someone.
Further in, there was a series of portraits done over what looked like beds of sand. These were larger, maybe 24" x 36" vertically, and similar shots, people with their eyes closed, in meditation or repose. It looked like the images had been created through some kind of stencil or screen printing apparatus. You could see a tiny "dot matrix" pattern in the images, and it had the crispness of a mechanically produced image. The interesting thing was that each sand portrait had a small dish in front of it, filled with a variety of fluids or solids. Each print seemed to have a different substance in front of it. One of the first prints had been "defaced". The dish had been bumped or spilled, and water had splashed onto the sand in the extreme lower left. Other pieces had been trod upon, their edges were smudged by foot prints, or blurred slightly by being brushed. I should also note that the sand beds were about 3 inches deep, with a crisp bevelled edge on each side, about 2 inches wide.
So, I'm taking in the images. Also, they have no borders around them, no rope barriers, no caution signs, creating a fairly high risk of the beds being disturbed. I'm looking at the pictures, and really struck by the small dishes in front of them, dare I say provoked? I'm thinking "why did the artist include these dishes in front of the paintings?" For a work already so fragile, it seems provokative to say the least, to include these small items in the front. I start to wonder if the artist wants people to "interact" with the work by sprinkling the materials across the sand.
At first blush, this seems ludicrous to me, but as I move on to pieces 2, 3 and 4 among the ten, I'm getting a stronger and stronger impression of invitation in the structure of the pieces. This starts to make me nervous. What if I'm wrong, what if I'm misinterpreting, how horrible would that be? The pieces are priced at $5,000 each, specified that they would be sold in whatever condition they are in after the show, or something to that affect.
I start to feel kind of sick to my stomach with dread. This sense of excitement at the possibility of immersion, interacting with the art at such a destructive level. It seems exciting, such a novel idea of participation, but with it this sense of horror at the possibility of misunderstanding the situation. I purpose to leave well enough alone, leave without disturbing the images. We come to the fifth piece, and a gallery aide is talking with two guests about the fragility of the art, saying it is the artist's intention they be disturbed within the process of display. I had already expressed my uncertainty to a friend, and she noted this seemed to be confirmation of my impression. We look at #5, and still I don't dare to disturb it in front of these three strangers.
I move on to numbers 6 and 7, appreciating their fine application. I can see there are only three pieces left. I stop in front of number 8, taking it in, but thoroughly distracted by my inner tension at this point. I start to be pissed off at the artist, for the ambiguity they have left in the gallery space, and I feel like I am being screwed with, like this whole thing is a sociology experiment in which I've become an unwilling participant. I imagine leaving the gallery without trying the debris, and it kind of sickens me, to be this close to trying something this dynamic, when the environment seems to be inviting it. To be this close and not do it seems terribly cowardly, like being attracted to a pretty girl, and not saying anything, and going home the rest of the night, wondering what could have happened differently.
I'm looking at number 8, and I decide, "screw it, this is exactly what the artist wanted, and they are just waiting to see if people will be willing to transgress social protocol, and actually interact with the artwork, break this aesthetic taboo against "destroying" someone else's work." I reach down and dip two fingers into what feels like vegetable oil, lift it up and start drizzling it over the lower right hand corner of the piece, crossing between the white space and the shoulder/arm of the subject. Immediately, white splotches begin appearing where the oil is dropping interacting with the sand. I remain over the painting, letting all the oil drip off my fingertips, and working a general diagonal pattern along the intersect between image and background. I hear someone around me murmer, "oh, so that's what we're supposed to do with it." Five to eight people gather around watching me, and I keep my head down, nervous about making eye contact. The last oil drips off, and I'm left standing over the image, looking at the changes I've made to the piece. The texture is definitely disrupted, what had been smooth and uniform has now become pockmarked and splotched in the lower right quadrant. I still feel sick with worry, fear of discovery or rebuke.
I stand over the piece for a few moments, then move on to number 9. This is a photo of an older woman, in repose like the others. For this one, I choose not to disturb it, seeing what it feels like to leave one image undisturbed where I disrupted the other one. My fingers are still stained with oil, slick and glossy. I move on to the tenth piece, now kind of exhilarated at the possibility within this show, this feeling of transgression, like the A-ha video, passing into the work, interacting with it personally. It feels deeply wrong, but at the same time, I'm convincing myself with all the cues I'd received from the display. I see the tenth piece, and want to experience one more interaction. I reach down, it's honey this time, my already oil slicked hands pass into the honey, struggling to gain purchase, most of the honey slips off, but I get some, start dripping it over the lower right quadrant on this image again. It splotches down, gathering the sand to itself, glimpses of white show behind the lumps gathered around the honey. I think to create a diagonal intersection this time, where the last movement was parallel. I dip down into the honey for a bit more, complete my transept into the negative white space, observe my work.
At that point, I become curious as to what substance the sand is. Like a Latin American kingpin, I lick my pinkie, dip it into the edge of the bed, and bring it to my mouth: it's salt. At that moment an urgent voice speaks over me, "Please don't do that!" I stand up to see a gallery director looking me urgently in the face, "That's not what those are for. Please don't disturb the pieces." I'm thoroughly confused, flustered, telling him about the different dishes of materials. He tells me those represent "different elements," but are not intended to be interspersed with the portraits.
I must have a look of consternation and rage on my face, because he asks me "Are you alright with that? [leaving the pieces undisturbed]...because you don't look alright with that." I didn't realize how hostile my expression was. I start to apologize to him. He says, "These pieces cost $5,000." Implicitly suggesting, 'why are you doing this?' After a pause I start to apologize, he, uncomfortable, says "that's alright, just please don't disturb them," and moves a few steps away.
Initially after leaving the gallery--I'm not asked to leave, but feeling uncomfortable, and having seen all the pieces, we leave--initially after leaving, I feel incredibly guilty. The street is crowded, and I feel like word has already spread of what I did, and that every look is condemning. I think about my glistening right hand, now covered with oil and honey, realizing short of a handwashing, there is no way to get this viscous material off my hand. I'm shocked, silenced, I feel like the biggest rube, the most uncouth, backwater, troglodytic neanderthal, I feel like I've ruined the show, scandalized the gallery, crushed the artist, and made a fool of my friends.
I feel hot flashes of anger toward the gallery, for leaving the setting ambiguous, for not making the context more clear, and I feel crushing anger toward the artist, still in one sense convinced that my read of the situation was correct, despite the docent's rebuke. Above all, I feel this sense of transgression, of something irreversible that I have done, the oil and honey a persistent reminder of that. At the same time, I feel this electric adrenaline, this sense of having done something of consequence, of having pressed through a barrier that would have repelled other more timid people, and have entered this exclusive sphere of influence, filled with the actors, the agents of change, bold men and women. I feel this incredible sense of consequence, and suddenly the thought of every other piece of art I have observed without altering seems pedestrian and tame.
I go into the next gallery, and I want to smear my oily hand across those canvasses as well, I want to leave my mark on every gallery we visit that night, and I find myself having to actively restrain myself from reaching out and touching the canvasses. I'm horrified at myself, violator of the sacred trust between artist and public, the fundamental sense of respect a viewer gives a piece of artwork by leaving it unmolested. I feel like the most profane of men, an egomaniac. I think of the Mona Lisa, behind plexiglass, of slashed canvasses, Nazi book burnings, and of crazy men, mentally disturbed, taking a hammer to the Pieta. I realize with dismay that I now may be among their number as well, and my hand and my face burn in shame. I make eye contact with a few people, and everyone seems to know, they see right through me, they must have been there, seen me do it. Everyone on the street must be able to understand what happened, understand the residue on my hand, what it means.
Still shaken, I purpose to write the gallery upon returning home, apologize profusely for my actions, thereby leaving my information for any browbeating or legal action they or the artist wants to inflict upon me, to turn myself in, make my self known to the appropriate authorities in this matter. We walk on to the next gallery, and I find myself defending my actions with dismay to my friends. They generously side with me, agreeing with my perception of events, agreeing it was ambiguous, or even designed for such an occurance. Still, they have only thought those thoughts, while I have the slick hand, the circumstantial evidence. Oddly, I'm reluctant to wash my hand clean, it feels like both penance and trophy.
Later on in the night, we see some friends who visited 1708 after hearing my story. They report that there is no wailing and rending of garments taking place, that in fact, they observe the artist, present on the scene, talking about the exhibit. While he is speaking, someone at a piece nearby picks up grains of red material from the dish, sprinkles it across the image. The artist is asked if this disturbs him, and he seemingly expresses feigned dismay at the inevitability of decay. The recounter supports my reading of the artist's intent, and I feel encouraged. Heading home, I scratch my plans to write the gallery, now more convinced that my read was the accurate one.
Postscript: the artist's name was Young Kim, and the show entitled "Salt and Earth."
Via BoingBoing, artist Brian Dettmer is creating three dimensional sculptures by cutting away the pages of books, leaving strategic illustrations behind to created this topographical affect, and capture the cumulative visual impact of a book in a single view. This seems very cool on several levels! Wow. Link
Also see Georgia Russell's beautiful work, eviscerating books. Link
I have a set of 1974 Compton's encyclopedias I'm preparing to part with. I paid $3 for them, and have no sentimental connection to them (found them at a book sale). I've wanted to do some creative destruction with them. Nothing this sophisticated, but I find this inspiring all the same. I will perhaps do some collaging with my own sets. Certainly a fun way to think about books for someone who has grown up with them.
My chief concern now was to see myself in print. It was as if I could not be quite satisfied that I was real until I could feed my ambition with these trivial glories, and my ancient selfishness was now matured and concentrated in this desire to see myself externalized in a public and printed and official self which I could admire at my ease. This is what I really believed in: reputation, success. I wanted to live in the eyes and the mouths and the minds of men.
-- Thomas Merton, Seven Storey Mountain, p.236
There is something so convincing about this sentiment. I wrote it down on first reading the book last fall, and came across the index card again today.
It was as if I could not be quite satisfied that I was real...
Something about this...I'm reminded of Hemingway once saying that the reason he wrote was to become immortal. I've actually finished books before, closed them, looked at the cover, perhaps run my fingers across the author's name, and thought:
"Now there is a successful person, a person made large. Their mental life has been concretized into this book form, and distributed to all these other people to read. Now, there are all these fabulous people (like myself) basking in the light of his ideas and the strength of his personality."
Implicit within that is a sense of envy, a desire that I could somehow become like that person--enlarged, "made real" in Merton's language. It's a valuable and helpful contrast to consider this in light of Anne Lamott's comments on being published:
Publication is not going to change your life or solve your problems. Publication will not make you more confident or more beautiful, and it will probably not make you any richer. (Bird by Bird, p.185)
Both Merton and Lamott's insights are welcome doses of reality, in a sense of knowing oneself and one's own desires. That's important because writing is all about being in touch with inner worlds. It's alarming, then, to think of pursuing creativity without at least being aware of this inner, hungry part of the soul, yearning to live in the eyes and the mouths and the minds of men.
Knowing it's there doesn't necessarily mean it leaves, but at least you are aware of its presence, and can act accordingly.
I went to return to my reading the other day, and found myself recoiling at the thought of going further into Quixote. This was surprising for me as an avid reader, and I explored that feeling a bit further. I realized that within Quixote I had run into the same thing that disenchants me with modern literature: mainly it's own aspect of disenchantment.
As mentioned earlier, Cervantes wrote Quixote as a statement against the pablum of popular literature at the time, these fantastic tales of knights and damsels, wicked giants, powerful enchantments. Cervantes framed Quixote as a penultimate example of the dangers of these tales, someone gone out of their mind with a fixation on magic, honor and adventure. Clearly, Cervantes was not a moralist, censor, or alarmist. He seemed to think of chivalric novels, as they were called, as exceedingly banal, stupid, unrealistic, and non-reflective of modern life. So it is said that Cervantes writes the first modern novel by removing this shroud of myth, and by presenting a basically naturalistic story. There is no magic, there are no dragons, there is no enchantment. It's just normal people living life.
This is of course admirable on one level. It allowed literature and storytelling to become more serious, broadening the aspects of human life it could address. It, on one level is the reason that contemporary film and television is able to tackle life issues in a realistic format, like "The Wire", or "Kids".
But here is where my preferences enter the picture. I have read articles on both "The Wire" and "Kids", which praise them as incredible works of art, profoundly realistic and meaningful as ways of grappling with the challenges of inner city crime and poverty, as well as the challenge of kids being raised without support, adult relationship. I can appreciate both those areas of inquiry, but I have seen neither works. Why? Because I like enchantment, I like a filtered lense, some aspect of the story that is out of the ordinary. This doesn't mean that I don't like serious literature, but there is something about a purely naturalistic setting that seems boring to me.
I read books to learn about other places, ideas, things, and reading 20th century fiction has largely just taken me back to people. The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises both come to mind as books that I could recognize as significant, but which presented little emotional pleasure for me. In contrast, I found Lord of the Rings to be both wildly enjoyable and deeply moving. What's more, I think LOTR also had something to say about the human condition, it had some substance to it, but the Academy has yet to consider it "serious art". Which leads to my second thought...
Quixote seems to break ground in the area of "serious art" by doing what comic authors refer to as "breaking the fourth wall" (pvp link?), which basically amounts to undermining the mythical link in the story. In comics, this means the characters acknowledge the audience, and the fact that they are not real people, that they are actually characters in a comic, and on a deeper level, just arbitrary creations of someone's imagination, having in a sense no real "reality" within themselves.
This of course is Quixote's fundamental flaw. He believes that the knights he read about, and their exploits are in fact real, and sets out on his (mis)adventures in an attempt to emulate them. He does so within a world that is neither magical nor chivalrous, and his efforts are alternately mocked, misunderstood or exploited.
I digress, "breaking the mythic bond"... Cervantes undermines his story as a story through structural devices, downplaying the mythic significance of even his own work. I am about 150 pages from the end of book 1, and the characters in the story have come to a hotel. At this point, I as reader am eager to see existing storylines continue to build, and come to some sort of conclusion. Rather than delivering that, Cervantes introduces a manuscript, found in the hotel. The travelling party asks each other, "Do you want to hear this story?" Rather than going to bed, everyone says "sure, let's hear the story." The priest begins to read a completely separate story that I quickly grow impatient with. I flip ahead and realize it is 75 pages long! That half of the remaining story will be consumed with this novella that has no immediate relation to the events at hand, namely Quixote's "quest" and his neighbor's efforts to retrieve him.
This is Cervantes saying as author, "See, I don't have to follow any rules," and at a deeper level working against the expectations of his audience, denying them the sentimental satisfaction they desire. Modern art has been described as "any art that is aware of itself as art." The fourth wall in comics, Cervantes' denial of expectation both illustrate this point perfectly, in that they are playing against the expectations of their audience and "breaking the rules" of the story/comic.
This aesthetic development, of breaking the rules of one's own genre, makes art self aware, and represents a major development in asking the question of what art means, and what it can become. That said, it can be frigging annoying to read and experience, because it asks the audience to both appreciate the art as art, and also minimize, maintain skepticism about it's overall value and message.
Gerhard Richter, a wildly talented contemporary painter, talked about this process in describing one of his paintings. It was a photorealistic rendering of waves at sea, large canvas. Instead of having sky above the waves, Richter inserted an inverted image of the waves, so that "sky" and "land" were both images of waves moving toward the horizon. He talked, in the attached essay, about the viewers "hunger for beauty" and the way they would crave the satisfaction of the horizon and sky above it. By denying this satisfaction, Richter hoped to draw attention to the way our own hunger for meaning interacts with our experience of art. This is of course meaningful and thought provoking, but it is not satisfying.
And that is my beef, then with Quixote and modern aesthetic in general, is the absence of satisfaction. I understand it is valuable to ask hard questions, explore tough issues within art, but where do we find satisfaction? "Serious art” has consigned satisfaction to the realm of “pop art”, non ambitious film and literature. And to a large extent the popular genres have been happy to take that up. Witness the staggering popularity of romance and fantasy novels, Danielle Steele and Robert Jordan come to mind. They are popular because they keep their promise to their audience, of a story or artwork that delivers some kind of satisfaction, that doesn’t toy around with expectations, stringing the audience along.
I feel like pre-modern “serious art” does this same thing, and it is frustrating to me that modernity brought this divide between serious art and a sense of loyalty to one’s audience. One could of course say the author/artist is making a deeper promise to her audience by not “telling lies” in their art, but sometimes you just want a little satisfaction with your substance.
Cue Rolling Stones guitar riff...
