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Ritchie started to think about the universe and its possible artistic representation in the 1990s by merging physics, art, mythology, philosophy, religion and history. His starting point was that science is the new art, as well as the new religion, creating multiple parallel mythologies and theories of creation, or cosmogonies. Ritchie creates a spectacular visual world guiding us through the stories of the beginning and the end.

Left: 1. Matthew Ritchie, Monster of the East (2011), oil and ink on linen, 74” x 56”. Monstrance, 2011, L&M Arts, Los Angeles, November 2, 2011-January 14, 2012 ©Matthew Ritchie. Courtesy of L&M Arts, Los Angeles. artes fine arts magazine

Artist, Matthew Ritchie, undated photo

He said about the beginning, “Since it is almost impossible to understand them as they were then; as infinite points, bound in an indecomposable continuum, let’s look at them as they would become. They were so many and they had waited for so long. Their bodies interleaved as closely as pages in a book, they slipped and slid in and out of each other, all through the endless day of the beginning, inside the heart of naked singularity. It was before years, before history, before time: it was the whole universe; the birth; the hope; the blame; the dream; the betrayal; the revenge: all waiting inside one tiny, hot little dot.”

Matinal (video still), 2011. Music, 'Augur,' by A & B Dessner; vocals, S. Worden. See End Note #2.

Ritchie thinks that the world is at its worst at the beginning and the end. In his apocalyptic video projections, like Augur (L & M Art, 2011) we see the sun from the deepness of the murky water, then closer to the surface a single cell outline and later, creatures emerge from the water and starting to move. Then tremendous winds whip over the landscape, fires burn living things into metal sculptural skeletons, while a huge wire ball—an atomic model of some chemical—rolls over everything. In this vision, the world remains, but without humans—a very sad conclusion. But this unpopulated world doesn’t ‘feel’ sad watching, while listening to the music of Bryce Dessner, with Shara Worden’s vocals: sounding sometimes ethereal; sometimes beautifully-baroque; sometimes merely a noisy, cacophonic composition that could be the sound of parallel universes. Ritchie makes the viewer think about all the possible complexities of life: physical, biological and socio-ecological.

Hard Way, Day 3, 1996 (detail), 1996. See End Note #3.

Ritchie started his career in London as a painter, with drawing as his base. But, after moving to New York,he expanded his work to include sculptures, digital images, light boxes, musical compositions, creative writing and structures that function as architecture. In 1995, in an interview with Owen Drolet, Ritchie described his Working Model. It consists of seven vertical and horizontal rows that include physics equations, colours, characters, emotions and/or typically human characteristics and physical properties of the universe. The equations line the top and the colors are listed vertically. Each shape can correspond to each color, which in turn can represent seven different groupings of three: character, emotion/human characteristics, and physical property. This matrix gives the artist 49 possible different combinations that he calls a map. The paintings of The Hard Way (1996) were among the first to use this map to create a mythological struggle of gods, fighting over the creation of Earth.

Ritchie stated that he wanted to break away from linear storytelling and create a more structured and formulaic narrative, a scientifically correct mythology as a base for his complex visual stories. He knows physics very well. In 2009, he was the only artist invited to speak to an audience of Nobel laureates discussing Einstein’s theories and how they can be applied in the 21th century. According to the laws of physics we only recognize one reality and it can be predicted. Edward Lorenz’s “Butterfly effect” that the “flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas” made chaos theory popular, bringing the idea of randomness into science. The Morning Line, among others, is an excellent example of how Ritchie transforms his scientific ideas into art.

The Universal Cell and Remote Viewing (2004). See End Note #4.

The Morning Line, a sonic, Gothic-like temple is an imposing 10 meters high and 20 meters long, built of 20 tons of black coated aluminum, intended to draw in the expanding universe that surrounds us. Ritchie started it all with black and white drawings that evolved into something really large (The Shapes of Space, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2004). The Universal Cell and Remote Viewing (2006) was the next step into a truly three dimensional structure. Ritchie collected all possible data about the human cell—the sacred unit of our measurement on the human scale. He recognized that everything was designed around this geometrical pattern. He saw a similarity between ‘imprisonment’ in our own genetic make-up and actual prison cell design. He made several different drawings of all these things, then layered the semi-transparent papers, one on top of the other, until they created a kind of information tunnel. In the end, he scanned them into the computer and created the final image, which he sent to a metal-shop to be cut out and assembled. The final product is an amazing structure which captures not only the dimensions of space, but its moving energies, as well. Ritchie’s artistic goal was no less ambitious than to represent the entire universe, as well as our beliefs and knowledge about it. Ritchie’s approach is philosophical, involving religion, occult practices and scientific principles. As he said in an interview, he wants to “describe the whole spectrum of experience, simultaneously.”

The Morning Line (2008-2009). See End Note #5.

The idea in The Morning Line is “drawing in space” and to make the drawing stand in space and become a part of the universe. Ritchie involved design innovators Aranda/Lash, the Music Research Centre of York University and Arup AGU to create a fully programmable three-dimensional sculpture, which is also moveable. From his drawings, they designed a structure in which each part can be replicated at a smaller and smaller scale, until it reaches the size of a nano-spectrum,and from that starting point, you can build anything. Ritchie called it a quantum building, because one piece (tetrahedra) can support 22 other smaller ones, and so on, toward infinity. With this method you can “build a cathedral which involves the universe.”

Interior, The Morning Line (2008-2009). See End Note #6.

The structure of The Morning Line is amazing! Standing in it is a once-in-a-lifetime artistic experience. You can see the sky, but what you are really looking at is the metal curves drawn on the sky. There is a glass wall as part of the structure and on it, images of the universe and apocalyptic videos are projected. You hear stories, told by various voices, about different situations, and above all is the music: classical music pieces mixed with sounds, created by the structure itself, or composed by contemporary musicians inspired by the sculpture and improvised, on-site. The Morning Line is also sensitive to time, street noise, you and the other visitors; so you can never have the same light and sound experience twice. It is a complex, amazing and really universal experience. It has been installed in three very specific sites: Center for Contemporary Art, Seville (2008); Eminönü Square, Istanbul (2010); Schwarzenbergplatz, Vienna (2011).

Monstrance (2011). See End Note #7.

While The Morning Line tries to reconstruct the universe in a physical way, Monstrance, Ritchie’s recently-closed show at L & M Art in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, returns to mythological interpretation. Monstrance—meaning show in Latin—is a medieval-period ritual vessel used in the public display of relics. In the performance at the opening, a masked singer represented the many forms of sun, including the setting sun. The show also dealt with one of Hollywood’s own myths: The Fallen Star. Upon entering the gallery, there were eight paintings of golden angels. These hybrids of feathered humans and gaseous nebula represented “high energy states” such as solar storms, pole dancers and female athletes. The figures were accompanied by dots showing the position of constellations over Los Angeles on the opening day, November 2nd, 2011, The Feast of All Souls. The lone sculpture in the gallery could be the figure of a fallen angel, or, more likely, what was left of him after falling from the sky. Stepping to the east gallery, it was a very different world, more like a dark, subterranean cave at the beginning of time. There were water pools projected onto the floor and their reflections on the walls. Prehistoric drawings covered the ground, interrupted by meteorite-like sculptures, while images floated and music played. There were also four paintings of monsters in this gallery: and their dots showed the position of constellations on October 31st, Halloween. They represented “negative energy states” such as terror attacks, ecological disasters, surgery and video games. In this show Ritchie combined all his previous artistic elements: drawing, painting, sculpture, video projection, sound effect and performance, to create a meaningful and complex site-specific view of the gallery and its place in the universe.

The Long Count (2009). See End Note #8.

Ritchie participated in two performances as stage designer. In the summer of 2009, Hypermusic Prologue, A Projective Opera in Seven Planes, debuted in Paris; then was performed again in 2010, at the Guggenheim in New York. The other was The Long Count, a 70-minute multimedia piece (Brooklyn Academy of Music, Next Wave Festival [2009]; Holland Festival [2010]; Barbican Art Centre, London, [2012]). Ritchie set the scene by projecting an apocalyptical video on three giant screens that enveloped the musicians on stage. These hallucinatory videos showed whole trees uprooted and other “mad tales of creation and resurrection.”

Ritchie said that, in the work of painters like David Salle and Julian Schnabel, he saw the last of the generation of artists who had to follow “the master narrative of the west.” For him, that meant a new artistic era had begun, thereby freeing him to start his own quest into the Universe.

By Emese Krunák-Hajagos, Contributing Writer

Emese is an art critic and on-line publisher living in Toronto, Canada. Read more of her views at www.artoronto.ca

Matthew Ritchie, Monstrance, L & M Art, Los Angeles, Venice Beach, November 2- January 15, 2012

The Morning Line, Schwarzenbergplatz, Vienna, Austria, Organized by Thyssen-Bornemissza Art Contemporary, June 7- November 20, 2011

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End Notes:

1. Matthew Ritchie, Monster of the East (2011), oil and ink on linen, 74” x 56”. Monstrance, 2011, L&M Arts, Los Angeles, November 2, 2011-January 14, 2012 ©Matthew Ritchie. Courtesy of L&M Arts, Los Angeles.

2. Matthew Ritchie, Matinal (2011), video. Animation Duration: 16:50; Animation: Nick Roth; Editing: James Case; Music: ‘Augur,’ by Aaron & Bryce Dessner. Exhibited: Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art, 2011.

3. Matthew Ritchie, Hard Way, Day 3, 1996 (detail), 1996, enamel on sintra, 114”x165”x90”. Courtesy Basilico Fine Arts, New York.

4. Matthew Ritchie, The Universal Cell (2004), powder coated aluminum, stainless steel, gypsum, 11’x 12’ 6”x 12’ 6” (installation view from : Remote Viewing: Invented Worlds in Recent Painting and Drawing, curated by Elisabeth Sussman, June 2 – September, 2005). Photo by Rob Kassabian. ©Matthew Ritchie. Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York RM Whitney 2005 Remote Viewing Installation.

5. Matthew Ritchie, with Aranda\ Lasch Arup AGU, The Morning Line (2008-2009). Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Installation view: Schwarzenbergplatz, Vienna June 7 – November 20, 2011. Photo by Jacob Polacsek

6. Matthew Ritchie, with Aranda\ Lasch Arup AGU, The Morning Line (2008-2009). Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Installation view: Schwarzenbergplatz, Vienna June 7 – November 20, 2011. Photo by Jacob Polacsek

7. Matthew Ritchie, Monstrance (2011), projected multi-channel, film vinyl and animation. L&M Arts, Los Angeles, November 2, 2011-January 14, 2012 ©Matthew Ritchie. Courtesy of L&M Arts, Los Angeles, CA.

8. Matthew Ritchie, with Aaron and Bryce Dessner, The Long Count, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, New York, October 28 – 31, 2009. ©Matthew Ritchie. Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York

9. Above, right: Matthew Ritchie, The Hour of the Apple (2011), oil and ink on linen, 74”x 56”. L&M Arts, Los Angeles, November 2, 2011-January 14, 2012 ©Matthew Ritchie. Courtesy of L&M Arts, Los Angeles.

10. Left: Matthew Ritchie, The Unconquered Sun (2011), aluminum structural units, epoxy coating, steel, sintered polyamid and enamel 135 ½ x 60” (overall). Photo: Joshua White. L&M Arts, Los Angeles, November 2, 2011-January 14, 2012 ©Matthew Ritchie. Courtesy of L&M Arts, Los Angeles.

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Left: Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Guáimaro, Cuba, 1957– Miami, Florida, 1996), Untitled (Last Night ), 1993, 24 10W/120V satin-white light bulbs, electric wire, transformer. MACBA Collection. Fundació Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. Long term loan of Colección Alfonso Pons Soler. artes fine arts magazine

Guggenhein Bilbao, Spain. A Frank Gehry design

The Guggenheim, Bilbao has organized the exhibition by way of six themes, some chronological and others conceptually or formally constructed. Each theme is intended to be a“probe”, examining a specific area of both collections. The show derives its title from Michelangelo Pistoletto’s, Archittetura dello Specchio, a work included in the exhibition, and, to quote the exhibition’s curator Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya, a piece that “summarizes the potentiality of collection, whilst the idea of the mirror is a metaphor for the accumulation, transfer and interference that are fundamental to the birth and development of the act of collecting and the merging of two independently-formed collections.”

Yet presenting two collections as a collaborative venture poses a number of compelling questions about the parameters and processes of such projects. The fact that this is not the product of a singular vision becomes an inextricable component of evaluating and understanding the work. Furthermore, deliberating upon artistic alliances, inevitably begs the question: what, in point of fact, constitutes collaboration? How do we differentiate collaboration between institutions versus collaboration by the artists represented? It seems relevant to seek answers when the artists in this exhibition are largely contemporary, and Contemporary Art practice continues to place enormous value on the artist as an individual.

Antonio Saura, Large Nude (Grand nu), 1960–61. See End Note #1.

This certainly appears to be a concept that the curators have grappled with, in a show that seeks to document both the rise of significant trends, and simultaneously, reveals meeting points and divergences between the two collections. The exhibition also attempts a dialogue between certain international developments and Spanish art, in, at times, a rather fragile and, it must be said, somewhat superficial guise. The works of fifty-two artists offer a survey of art from the late 1940s to the present to include painting, sculpture, photography, and video.

Antoni Tàpies,Two Black Crosses (Dues creus negres ), 1973. See End Note #2.

Gallery 304 concentrates on two movements that sought to renew the language of art in Spain after the Civil War: Dau al Set and El Paso. Dau al Set (1948-1954) emerged in Barcelona around the magazine of the same name and originally consisted of a set of Catalan artists and writers: Joan Brossa, Modest Cuixart, Joan Ponç, Antoni Tàpies and Joan-Josep Tharrats. Subsequently, a number of artists and art critics, among them, Antonio Saura and Juan Eduardo Cirlot, collaborated with the movement, in effect, advancing the development of contemporary art in Catalonia. For its part, El Paso was founded in Madrid in 1957 with the adoption of a manifesto advocating, among other things, the freedom of art and the artist. This movement, which dissolved in 1960, had as its principal members, prominent figures on the international art scene including Antonio Saura, Manuel Millares, Martín Chirino, Manuel Rivera and Rafael Canogar. Several fine examples of their work are display here, chief among them Antonio Saura’s Grand Nu (1960-1961) and Canogar’s Joyo (1959), both from the La Caixa Collection, and a 1959 Tàpies, Dues Creus Negres, which is showcased in the adjacent gallery alongside La Taula Blanca (1989), by Miquel Barceló.

The idea of gravity and levity is clearly the common denominator of the works grouped in Gallery 302: A series of sculptures and installations by Ernesto Neto, Gego, Tony Cragg, Damián Ortega and a painting by Ettore Spalletti. Reticulárea Square (1971), and a major sculpture by Venezuelan artist, Gego, use vectors, meshes and mathematical planes in three dimensions, contrasting the organic nature and novelty of Ernesto Neto’s installation, Globulocell (2001) composed of Lycra tulle. Besides the importance of the formal aspects of these creations, this section includes political, social and economic comment in Damian Ortega’s Movimiento en Falso (1999-2003); the artist´s reflection on the oil economy of our era. These, in turn, are complemented by the architectural modalism of Spaletti’s painting, Stanza, Rosso, Porpora (1992); a remarkable feat in its intelligent and innovate use of architectural form (image below, in End Notes, see #5). The swelling, curvature of the painting´s middle section creates a play on perception and relates structurally to the curving walls of the Guggenheim´s design.

Above left: Ernesto Neto, Globulocell (2001), see End Note #3; above right: Damian Ortega, Movimiento en Falso (1999-2003), see End Note #4.

Left: Julian Schnabel, Against God (Contro Dio)... (1989); right: Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mirror Architecture (1990). See End Notes # 6-7.

The architectural theme extends into Gallery 303 where The Architecture of the Mirror (1990), by Michelangelo Pistoletto, dominates a set of works of monumental proportions, executed between 1988 and 1990. These pieces have a commonality in experimentation through materials, both pictorial and non-pictorial, cinematic scale and the evocation of religious/altar-pieces in their design-structure of triptychs, and polyptychs. In the case of Gehry’s building, the architecture and the design of the gallery work in favor of this type of art—with the architecture assuming an active role in our perception of the work.

Sigmar Polke, Triptych (1989). See End Note #8.

In the triptych Gums I, III, II (1987), Enzo Cucchi investigates the appropriation of new materials like latex and metal, incorporating these into pictorial language problems previously confined to the medium of sculpture. Similarly, Julian Schnabel employs military fabrics from bedding to create four monumental works, Contro Mio, Contro Dio, Everyday is the Beast with Iron Teeth and Ten Horns and 70th Week (1989). Each of Schnabel´s paintings is titled with words and phrases taken from the Old Testament. Finally, in Triptych (1989), the artist Sigmar Polke, uses a lacquer-based paint on transparent fabric to inject an updated regeneration into the large color-field paintings of Abstract Expressionism from the late 1950s.

Andreas Gursky, Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (1994). See End Note #9.

Photography is the main exponent of Galleries 305 and 306, which constitute the ‘classical’ spaces of the Museum, where the walls maintain a regularity of design and are flat, rather than curving. This type of space adjusts well to smaller formats and allows for a different type of interaction, which is more subtle; based on visual memory rather than impact. In the first gallery, the genre of landscape is explored by the Vancouver School, German Objective Photography and others, working out with the movements, but adopting similar philosophies: Manolo Laguillo, Jean-Marc Bustamante and Xavier Ribas. The German contingent, Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky, developed the style of documentary photographic techniques which dealt primarily with the treatment of human groups and their relationship to architecture or desolate urban landscapes. Access to new technologies in photo printing allowed the use of large formats and Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (1994) by Gursky is an outstanding example of the conglomeration between corporate architecture and urban landscapes.

The moving focus of Photography is extended into Gallery 306 with a perspective that shifts from landscape and architecture to an introspective series of self-portraits exploring identity, race and gender. Spanning from the 20th Century to the present, Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing, Geneviève Cadieux, Craigie Horsfield and Vanessa Beecroft are some of the artists to explore the genre from varying points of view.

Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975). See End Note # 10.

The final exhibition space addresses a wide range of contemporary art media from the late 1960s and 1970s: photography, film, video, installation and performance art, with occasional props to document a medium that has several conceptual branches. These include Body Art, feminism in art, and the relationship between action and nature. Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) by Martha Rosler , Vito Acconci´s Three Adaptation Studies (1970) and Joan Jonas´s Wind (1968), video imagery broadcast loop from black and white television sets, are the most successful pieces in this group. This is primarily due to the incorporation of the television tube, which, when confined to black and white, can project a remarkably vivid illusion of three-dimensional relief suggesting tactility or the type of space in which tactile experience is possible. This, in point-of-fact, should be the main constituent of any successful Performative experience. In any case, Performative ‘abstract’ art has come out more successfully so far, in moving pictures than in still printed matter. As a consequence, works such as Angels Ribé´s Six Possibilities of Occupying a Given Space ,1973 (right- See End Note #11) which constitutes six Gelatin prints of a ‘hand in movement,’ only serve to emphasize the point.

In a culture now so largely dominated by ideologies of race, class, and gender, where the doctrines of multiculturalism and political correctness have consigned the concept of quality in art to the netherworld of invidious discrimination, and all criticism tends to be judged according to its conformity to current political orthodoxies, even to suggest that aesthetic considerations be given priority in the evaluation of an exhibition dedicated primarily to that of Contemporary Art, is to invite the most categorical disapprobation. Yet the success of this exhibition ultimately rests on the curator´s ability to do just that. By laying emphases on aesthetic worth, the Guggenheim Museum has successfully deflected the obvious disparities between the two collections, allowing them to present two eclectic ‘International Collections’ simultaneously, without diminishing the integrity of the artist’s critical voice.

By Natalie Maria Roncone, Ph.D., Contributing Writer

Dr. Roncone completed her Ph.D. in Art History at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, focusing on the work of Jackson Pollock. She is primarily interested in the relationship between Old Master Art and that of the Abstract Expressionists. Her doctoral thesis explored Pollock’s dependence on an infrastructure in the post1940 works built around the architectonics of paintings by Tintoretto and El Greco.

The Exhibition: The Inverted Mirror: Art from “La Caixa and MACBA Collection, will run from January 30 – September 2, 2012 at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain.

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End Notes:

Opening Image: Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Guáimaro, Cuba, 1957– Miami, Florida, 1996), Untitled (Last Night ), 1993, 24 10W/120V satin-white light bulbs, electric wire, transformer. MACBA Collection. Fundació Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. Long term loan of Colección Alfonso Pons Soler.

1. Antonio Saura (Huesca, Spain, 1930–Cuenca, Spain, 1998), Large Nude (Grand nu), 1960–61, Oil on canvas, 195 x 237 cm. Contemporary Art Collection ”la Caixa” Foundation.

2. Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona, Spain, 1923) Two Black Crosses (Dues creus negres ), 1973, Mixed media on canvas, 235 x 150 cm. Contemporary Art Collection ”la Caixa” Foundation.

3. Ernesto Neto (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1964), Globulocell, 2001, Lycra tulle, polystyrene spheres, and sand, 490 x 420 x 230 cm. Contemporary Art Collection ”la Caixa” Foundation.

4. Damián Ortega (Mexico City, 1967), False Movement (Stability and Economic Growth ) [Movimientoen falso (estabilidad y crecimiento económico)], 1999–2003, 3 oil barrels, rotary base with engine, and wooden platform, Diameter: 340 x 300 cm; 300 kg. Contemporary Art Collection ”la Caixa” Foundation.

5. Left: Ettore Spaletti, Stanza, Rosso, Porpora, 1992, 200 x 570 cm. Collection of the La Caixa Contemporary Art Foundation.

6-7. Julian Schnabel (New York, 1951), Contro Mio, Contro Dio, Everyday is the Beast with Iron Teeth and Ten Horns, 70th Week, 1989, Oil and plaster on cloth, 335 x 295 cm. Contemporary Art Collection ”la Caixa” Foundation; Michelangelo Pistoletto (Biella, Italy, 1933), Mirror Architecture (Architettura dello Specchio), 1990 Mirror and golden frame, 360 x 800 cm; 2 mirror: 325 x 184 cm; 2 mirrors: 325 x 200 cm; 2 frames: 360 x 201.5 x 10.5 cm. MACBA Collection. Government of Catalonia Art Fund.

8. Sigmar Polke (Oels, Silesia, Germany [now, Olesnica, Poland], 1941–Colonia, Germany, 2010) Triptych, 1989, Paint and lacquer on canvas, 300.5 x 675 cm. Contemporary Art Collection ”la Caixa” Foundation.

9. Andreas Gursky (Leipzig, Germany, 1955), Hong Kong Shanghai Bank , 1994, Chromogenic print, cibachrome, 225.5 x 175 cm (framed). Contemporary Art Collection ”la Caixa” Foundation.

10. Martha Rosler (Brooklyn, New York, 1943), Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975, Single-channel video, black-and-white, with sound, 6 min 9 sec. MACBA Collection. Fundació Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. Gift of Rumeu Family.

11. Àngels Ribé (Barcelona, 1943), Six possibilities of Occupying a Given Space (detail), 1973, Gelatin silver print, 2 prints, 43.2 x 60.8 cm each. MACBA Collection. Fundació Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. Gift of Dinath de Grandi de Grijalbo.

JJ Valaya, Paradox 9 (2011)

The idea of contemporary India, and a quintessential one at that—a conglomerate of many Indias, with its fluid social fabric and multitudes of people—is the paradox that confronts the photo-artist, JJ Valaya, an accomplished designer and pioneering fashion guru. Through his viewfinder, Valaya captures the fascinating multiplicity of a burgeoning city where he has lived and worked for decades, tantalizing us with loving and nostalgic glimpses of this place he knows so well: glamour and grime; sophisticated and commonplace; classical and popular; rich and poor; old and new—whether spontaneous or carefully-planned—all are framed by the photographer’s eye in different parts of Delhi, India’s capital city. artes fine arts magazine

JJ Valaya at work on streets of Delhi

Selecting his images after eight months of research and planning for cast, costumes and settings, the final shots offer telling comments about his belovedly-complex and multi-layered India, as seen through the eyes of an expert. His locations include historic sites as well as popular local dens. His characters and scenes feature some familiar people and happenings in and around Delhi. The context is contemporary and the images reflect an interesting mix of well-known personalities; but he also offers portrayals of ordinary people, spanning several generations. Original and authentic costumes, some created by Valaya himself (and others borrowed from private collections, including those representing India’s royal past), are pictured in his work. Valaya’s pictorial personalities include illustrious dancers, entertainers, actors, designers, social activists, athletes, hoteliers and models, as well as some common folks—tailors, embroiderers and master cutters—most known to the artist. “The idea was to engage anyone who projected the aura required to recreate a particular era,” explains the artist.

Prop on way to photo shoot as models stand by

The production of Valaya’s images involves long treks through the busy streets of old and new Delhi- with a five team member photography crew, camera equipment in tow. The energy and excitement that accompanies these adventures assumes unexpected twists and turns, the occasional u-turn and a frequent change of plan. The artist is quick to choose the “right site” at “the spur of the moment,” setting up an impromptu studio and installations for the shoot. The strikingly avant-garde photography team is usually followed by amazed crowds and amused onlookers, some of whom were keen to appear in the shots and happy to join in, whilst others find the whole exercise bizarre enough to offer a loud, liberal dose of hilarious comments, most wondering if it was all for a Bollywood movie! The artist notes that the palpable excitement and commotion of the spontaneous goings on around him always add another dimension to the atmospherics. In spite of this commotion, he is nevertheless able to add breathtaking images, with his signature surrealistic touch, to the collection, as if they have emerged from an other-worldly twilight zone.

JJ Valaya during shoot for Paradox 19

JJ Valaya, the Jodhpur-born couturier, has always been fascinated by what has been described as his fondness for “gold braid and tassel.” In pursuit of his passion for art photography, he shifts his gear from the manicured glamour of the fashion stage to the dust and heat, hustle and bustle of Indian streets. The quest to create a niche for himself as a photographer in the nascent fashion industry began modestly, as he could not afford to hire a professional crew to work with him. He began by organizing his own fashion shoots, editorials and campaigns. His fashion photography quickly turned to a passion, with financial success following thereafter. Gradually his fascination with the camera flowered into a full-blown affair with art photography, as well, reflected in this collection of vivid images of the city he calls his own. Using a high-resolution Canon 5d Mac 2 camera, he makes limited edition prints etched with archival ink on archival paper. His artistic imagery is closely linked to what Valaya does in fashion. Like the world of fashion, the subject, casting and costumes are all pre-planned; but unlike his fashion shoots, the frames and the locales are spontaneous. The characters wear no makeup and there is no additional styling or artificial lighting. Relying on natural light only, the emphasis is on the subject and his/her surroundings—as featured in the images of the artist at work.

Paradox 1 (2011)

Portraying the past-as-present and the mundane as high culture, Valaya encapsulates the shades and shapes of India into a series of seamless shots. His spontaneous shots freeze the moment. His discerning eye and ‘ways of seeing’ turn old dilapidated buildings, disbanded furniture and old streets in middle class neighborhoods—already buzzing and action-packed—into Art Deco curios with iconic importance. Ordinary people turn into performers for each shoot, as they adorn costumes, vintage robes and ornate jewels; seeming to relish playing the dressing-game to the hilt and assuming various roles set against carefully-selected backgrounds. While the choreographed images evoke impressions of the Indian royalty of a by-gone era, the grandeur and persona of Valaya’s images continue to live in public memory in various erstwhile states-of-mind. They also capture the intangible quality of today’s changing India, “harking back to the past, but also yearning gapingly into the future,” bringing the history and reality of the many Indias to life.

Valaya’s photo sessions sometimes entailed the occasional on-edge moment, as well as some fun-filled ones. The expedition to Jama Masjid that took place on Bakra Eid, the holy Muslim festival—one of the busiest days of the year— was one such experience. The street markets were busy, with those milling about earnestly engaged in selling and buying goats for sacrifice. A much-delayed start, given the model’s late arrival, got disrupted further when it began to pour rain just as the photography session was to start. With no readily-available shelter, the crew sat, waiting, for over two hours in the car. And just as Valaya was about to call it off for the day, the rain suddenly stopped and clouds parted just long enough for him to capture the mosque bathed in the most magical surreal sunlight. “There was a definite divinity at play!” the artist told me while describing the particular incident.

Paradox 2 (2011)

Trying to compose the picture with Neesha Singh sitting on the steps at Jantar Mantar— one of India’s most photographed monuments—was also a bizarre experience. As the artist stood at its highest point, looking down at the stairs and the shadows below, it immediately struck a chord with him. But there was a stray dog that kept following him and the model, refusing to leave them or the site. He kept coming back despite getting shooed away by people who considered the animal a nuisance. Finally, “as soon as my subject took her place, the dog simply ambled in and placed himself at her feet, as if it had just hung around to tell me that I needed him!”

And Lord Shiva as a Child, blissfully asleep, is featured in another image; while the caption accompanying it speaks of a temple dedicated to Lord Hanuman, the monkey god! The cycles parked against the railing on the sidewalk in the busy, buzzing Sarojini Nagar market made a picture-perfect backdrop for the young boy reclining on the bolster in the photographer’s frame. Assuming a look of innocence and with bare feet, he was otherwise majestically decked out in cap, jewelry, ring, necklaces and angrakha (long flowing robe), posing in a style that implied royal breeding. Captured in another frame, while the artist worked on this image, are hundreds of amused people, converging to watch the goings on.

The concept of wrestlers’ court, known as the pehelwan akhada in local parlance, is a familiar one in India. Some such wrestling courts can be found even today in the heart of Indian cities! JJ Valaya takes his viewers to one such court at Aya Nagar in South Delhi. He frames his photograph in a ‘tongue in cheek’ manner, juxtaposing the fully-decked out young urbane athlete, seated comfortably in an ornate chair in front of a line-up of well-built, bare-bodied local lads dressed in just a loin cloths or underwear. The image engagingly captures a scene of one of India’s still-relevant classes.

Left: far: Paradox 6 (2011); near: Shoot on streets of Delhi 

Paradox 8 (2011)

Another familiar Indian sight is the roadside barber, known locally as hajam or nai. His presence is another unique feature integral to the life style and culture of this country. He can often be found in the most precarious and unlikely locations. Positioning himself in the middle of a bustling, congested cityscape, he sets up his impromptu barbershop, so that passers-by— amongst the teaming millions—will find him both easy to access and affordable. With scant tools-of-the-trade, including a mirror often perched against a wall or tree trunk, a rickety chair placed opposite, shaving brush, cream and a variety of oils neatly arrayed on a shelf or table, these impromptu barber ‘shops’ can often be spotted at the boundary walls along crowded roadsides, at bus stops and railways stations—anywhere and everywhere. The barber in this Valaya photo eagerly left his customer sitting in the chair to pose for the shoot, gripping his cycle, with the fashion model perched upon it, her arm resting on the shoulders of the young woman standing by.

Paradox 17 (2011)

The artist then takes his viewers to another forgotten historic site—the Ugrasen ki Baoli at Hailey Road, near Connaught Place—in central Delhi. The dilapidated, multi-layered architectural marvel carries great social and cultural significance for India. The sunken steps offer an imposing, textural contrast to the scale of the carefully-groomed, imposing image and majestic posturing of the Maharaja walking up the stairs. The royal aura looks somewhat haunting, augmented further by the comparatively distant and diminutive appearance of the local band players who are more often spotted playing at Indian weddings. The solitary dove that, “appeared at the perfect moment in the perfect place…” right above the Maharaja’s head, seems to add another element of intrigue to the image.

Paradox 19 (2011)

The blatant play of caste politics in different regions of India is manifest in the numerous statues of the legendry scholar Ambedkar, popularly known as Babasaheb, that dot the countryside. Though born in a poor, untouchable caste, he rose to great heights and is credited with drafting the Indian constitution. Some of his statues were built to honour the great man; but hundreds of others are located at crossroads, more for the sake of form and to win votes. In this frame, the young lad, Aryan, is dressed to the hilt and seated with crossed legs in an ornate chair in the company of Valaya’s master cutter, with Ambedkar’s statue perched on a high platform in the background. Knowing that the photo shoot took place in New Delhi’s diplomatic enclave, adds complexity and interest to an already-multilayered story. And as an ironic note to the day’s shoot, ten minutes into the project, the six-year old son of one of JJ Valaya’s friend, took everyone by surprise, including his own parents, when he declared, “for the amount of work you’re making me do, you should be paying me.” It served as a jaw-dropping comment on the modern world: from scholar Ambedkar, gazing down from his lofty perch, to youthful entrepreneur, Aryan, in the mix and offering a harsh dose of reality!

Two beautiful ladies majestically seated and immaculately dressed in similar ornately embroidered sarees and elaborate jewelry, appear in another Valaya image. Representing two different generations and cultural eras, coming together despite the age gap, it also speaks of a woman’s unflinching love for shringar or adornments.  This generational play is taken to another level, spanning religious and professional interests, in the picture featuring young Ananda, grandly-attired and seated in a chair, watched over by the aged embroiderer, Mohammed, standing behind in what looks like a shanty home interior (See Paradox 9, opening image). The scene takes place in Dhobi Ghat (washermen’s colony), situated in the centre of India’s capital city!

Paradox 20 (2011)

In yet another image, a celebrated Indian artist is featured, decked out as an emperor. Wearing a sherwani (long flowing overcoat) and pagadi (turban or headdress), offset with pearls and jewels and pointed embroidered juttis (shoes), he is shown walking through the precincts of the historic monument Qutab Minar, a hot-spot for tourists (see image-in-the- making with JJ Valaya, above, right). The calligraphic markings in the background offer a nostalgic, vintage commentary on another India of an erstwhile era.

The couturier’s parallel creative voyage reflects a secretly-nursed romance with his camera which he describes as his “karmic connect.” His engaging narrative compositions reflect his ability to seize the moment, reconstructing in the real world, images that are at first, only ideas. His canvas is the vast expanse of Delhi and the cultural melting pot of the Indian nation: its spirit and atmospherics, layers of buzz and humanity all serving as sources for inspiration. Once a seat of imperial power for several dynasties—and now the capital of an independent, democratic and ever-changing India, Delhi is Ground Zero for JJ Valaya’s compelling images of India and its people, executed with cultural sensitivity and craftsmanship.

Paradox 21 (2011)

His visuals manipulate context, bringing to the fore the complex socio-cultural fabric of the nation—piercing through and poking at its seemingly inconsistent hierarchy and heroism, feudal legacy and democratic leveling—to reveal its hauteur (on the one hand) and its textural, Realpolitik, on the other. The concurrence of contrasting opposites in Valaya’s photographs represents a pastiche of different time periods, which, while not deliberately premeditated, seem somewhat stage-set, all the same. His goal of highlighting the realities, tensions and dualities of life in our contemporary Indias, is successfully portrayed in his work.

Valaya’s cyclorama rolls back and forth, creating a multi-layered collage of many Indias—inundated with a range of colours, smells, feelings, visuals and ‘happenings’—as the country’s gritty underbelly comes face-to-face with the elegant and sophisticated. Juxtaposing the grand with the simple, mixing the bizarre with the sensible, his photographs manage to replay history in a contemporary context. Valaya’s images also remind one of historically-sensitive Company Period artwork, including that of Raja Deen Dayal. In Valaya’s world, there are royals and commoners, palace precincts and street bazaars, pedigree pets and stray animals, well-known figures and teeming, unknown crowds, ornate settings and graffiti-strewn backgrounds— the sum of which creates a cultural free-for-all space, blurring the socio-cultural divide between this and that India, or the Indias of then and now.

By Sushma Bahl, Contributing Writer

………….

Sushma K. Bahl, MBE, is an independent curator of cultural projects, arts adviser and writer, based in Delhi. Until 2003, she led on the British Council’s cultural policy and program for India, spearheading several initiatives, including the first-ever Festival of India in Britain and the Enduring Image exhibition from the British Museum together with numerous associated events and collaborative arts-related projects. In recent years, she curated a series of art exhibitions, including Keep the Promise, raising funds for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals; Contemporary Chronicles in Miniature Art, featuring works from India and Pakistan; Vistaar and Convergence, two separate exhibitions involving collaboration between artists and designers; Annanya, an overview of contemporary Indian art and Ways of Seeing, winning the IHC Art India Award for best-curated group show. Read Shushma Bahl’s article on the Convergence exhibition here: http://www.artesmagazine.com/2011/01/new-delhi-critic-sushma-bahl-examines-link-between-art-and-applied-design/

She was also the co-director for Indian arts at the Gwacheon Hanmadang Festival in South Korea (2004); guest director for XI Triennale-India (2005); co-curator for V9/U9 Indo-UK digital art project and Art Link, Indo-German artists’ residency (2006, 2007), Project Consultant for Bharat Rang Mahotsav XII and jury member for the 14th Asian Art Biennale in Bangladesh (2010).

Sushma Bahl is author of 5000 Years of Indian Art (2011), by Roli Books (soon to be distributed in the U.S.). She has also edited and written for books on artists Thota Vaikuntam, Paresh Maity, Satish Gupta and Shuvaprasanna, amongst others, and is on the advisory panel of several arts institutions in India and abroad.

Contact her at: sushmakbahl@gmail.com

E

 Left: Tarshito (Italy), Applauses (2007) Made at Tarshito studio with Isabella De Chiara, Roma e Agnieszka Blazy, Polonia, Angela Ferrara,Bari; Martinelli Corato, and Bari, metal structure and ceramic hands. Photo: Edward Rubin. artes fine arts magazine

Marc Quinn (England), The Chromatic Archaeology of Desire (2008) Painted Bronze. Photo: Sergio Martucci

 The show was founded fourteen years ago by Paolo De Grandis, and cleverly scheduled by that chief curator to run alongside the Venice Film Festival and overlap exhibition dates with the Venice Art and Architectural Biennales; the exhibition hosts thousands during its month-long run. This year, OPEN 14 was co-curated by Carlotta Scarpa, Ebadur Rahman, Nevia Capello, Christos Savvidis, and Gloria Vallese. Vallese also curated the highly-touted Cracked Culture? The Quest for Identity in Contemporary Chinese Art , with Wang Lin. The Venice Biennale Collateral Event featured twenty-eight artists from Albania, Bangladesh, China, England, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iran, Italy, Romania, and Switzerland.

Feng Feng (China), W Fountain 2010 installation. Photo: Courtesy Arte Communications

The first work was visible even before the boat docked—The Chromatic Archaeology of Desire (2008), London-based artist Marc Quinn’s super realistic painted orchid. Perched atop a tall pedestal, it was an elegant poem in bronze, speaking to the beauty and fragility of everyday life. Down the road, were 3000 of Romanian artist Martin-Emilian Balint’s laminated cardboard figures, housed in a small, multi-level vitrine on wheels. Titled Embrace (2011), the marching figures stood shoulder-to-shoulder, seeming to offer an expression of love as they welcomed visitors to the island. Across the street, echoing similar sentiment, was Applauses (2007), above, a tall metal vase covered with hundreds of ceramic-crafted open hands. Created by Italian artist Tarshito, the vase was significantly placed at the entrance to the Grande Albergo Ausonia & Hungaria Hotel, where it appeared to applaud the arrival of its guests.

Filippo Zuriato (Italy), “Hey?!!” (2011), painted terracotta. Photo: Sergio Martucci

Several show-stopping and intellectually-challenging works welcomed viewers to the Lungomare G. Marconi, the section of the exhibition most densely arrayed with art. In city terms, it runs some five-or-six blocks. First to catch our eye, and especially hypnotic when lit up at night, was Chinese artist Feng Feng’s stunning W Fountain (2010), an intensely-bright yellow McDonald’s sign, the iconic form turned upside down. Also prominently featured in Vallese’s Cracked Culture exhibition, W Fountain is the artist’s comment on the rampant spread of Western culture—in this case, fast food. Some ten feet away, separated by a tree and some foliage—as were most of the works along this botanical stretch—was, Hey?!!, Italian artist Filippo Zuriato’s terracotta sculpture of a young Chinese boy enclosed in a wire cage. Dressed in the ubiquitous outfit of the American West—a T-shirt and jeans—the boy points to his almond-shaped eyes. The work, in which the boy boldly calls attention to himself, was open to a myriad of interpretations: possible loss of identity one; loss of freedom, another.

Ronni Ahmmed (Bangladesh), The Tomb of Qara Köz (2011), eggs, acrylic sheets, wood. Photo: Sergio Martucci

Across the avenue, enticingly situated at the entrance to the beach, was Bangladesh artist Ronni Ahmmed’s intricately constructed sculpture, The Tomb of Qara Köz (2011). Rooted in Opera Aperta, or ‘open work of art,’ as set forth by Umberto Eco’s book of the same name, and traditional Bengali theatre (both of which use history to tell their stories), Tomb was composed of three layers of 1254 glasses, each holding a cartoon-painted egg in the manner of Bassano, Veronese, and Tintoretto. The pyramidal sculpture, top-heavy in meaning, was meant to recall, as the catalog informed us, the campaign of the Mughal princess Qara Köz, who exerted powerful influence amid the Medici’s Florence. The sculpture’s three planes paid homage to Venice’s Bengali immigrants, the adventures of Pinocchio, and Fairytale, Ai Weiwei’s 2007 Documenta installation. This trio of influences inspired Ahmmed, in emulation of Weiwei, to invite 101 Bengalis visitors to his tomb, to record their secret desires, pay alms, and make their wishes come true.

Alfred Milot Mirashi (Albania), Do, Try (2011) - iron, aluminium, glue, plaster, jute, foam, gold paint, fibre glass. Photo: Sergio Martucci

 Back to the residential side of Lungomare G. Marconi—lined with a steady stream of stately mansions—could be seen Albanian artist, Alfred Milot Mirashi’s Do, Try (2011), a large, severely- bent, partially-painted golden key, reminiscent of Oldenburg’s sculptures of everyday objects. Though minimally constructed, it maximized the ideas it conjured, as everybody the world over, not only deals with keys, but uses that word in many contexts. ‘Key to my heart’ quickly came to mind, as did ‘key to the city’, among others. Though these are popular uses, according to curator Rahman, Mirashi, the artist is thinking about the human body— the twisted, tormented people “who reach out, body and soul, in their yearning for peace.” Given the key’s contorted anatomical referencing, it seems the artist’s wish for universal peace would be a long-time coming.

Marina Gavazzi (Italy), His Holiness (2011) tubes, digital print on plastic support. Photo: Sergio Martucci

Italian artist Marina Gavazzi set her incendiary sights on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, in her four-sided installation, His Holiness (2011), particularly the shameful attempt by the Vatican’s highest echelons to cover up sex crimes against minors by priests, especially in the United States. Digital prints of the pope were printed on plastic panels, the Holy See engulfed in flames. Presumably in hell, he faced punishment for centuries of violence inflicted by the Church, in the name of their creed, against the people. The artist cited the Inquisition in her catalog essay, but the legion countries—both past and present—complicit with the Vatican’s actions, remained unnamed. Perhaps there were just too many to list, especially in such proximity to the Vatican.

Puni (Italy), Openings (2011), wood, PMMA, brass, enamel. Photo: Sergio Martucci

 The conceptual works of Puni and Marilena Vita, two Italian artists, added a bit of levity to the exhibition. Openings (2011), Puni’s installation comprised a common door, set upright on a patch of green grass. Like Mirashi’s key, Do, Try, serves as an everyday object and a universal symbol; like the key and its many interpretations, the viewer was encouraged to make of it what they would. Our first thought, given the door’s bucolic setting, was one of freedom, entering a new world. On closer examination, the words ‘Emergency Exit’ appeared on the door, exposing the other side of the coin, alerting us to the ever-present possibility of imminent danger. Also playing with our minds, as well as our eyes, was Marilena Vita’s Legs (2011), a compelling, surreal photograph, printed on vinyl, of the artist’s long legs. One set of legs is real, the other, reflected in a mirror and appearing in reverse, seems to be growing out of the first set of legs. With our perspective disoriented, our eyes work overtime to make sense of what we were looking at.

Casagrande & Recalcati (Italy), Fiori (2011), oil on board. Photo: Courtesy Arte Communications

I ended my tour of OPEN 14—which began, upon my arrival in Venice, with an orchid, and finished in the lobby of the Excelsior– just in time for a cocktail at the hotel’s renowned Blue Bar, I might add—as I stood mesmerized in front of another floral work, Fiori (2011), an astonishingly beautiful painting of flowering peonies by Milan-based artists, Sandra Casagrande and Roberto Recalcati. Melding a color palette of luxurious creams and pinks, evoking the voluptuous imagery of French Rococo painters Jean Honoré Fragonard and Francois Boucher, together with the kind of lingering Hollywood close-ups that forever etched Greta Garbo’s face in our collective memory—the artists have rendered a cinematically-exquisite floral motif in paint, whose silky petals actually appear to be opening in slow-motion. It is here, imaginatively savoring the heady aroma of the perfumed bouquet, where we get to experience the magic of art in all its multi-sensory glory. . .

By Edward Rubin, Contributing Writer

OPEN, International Exhibition of Sculpture and Installations is held In Venice, Italy in the fall of each year.

Barkley Hendricks, 'Black River from the Elgin Road View' (2005), o/c. Courtesy the artist & Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

Before even seeing it, I made a judgment on this show. And I was right. The landscapes that Barkley Hendricks has made are revelatory in ways so precise and disarming that they trained me instantly. An enlarged capacity to respond to them was guaranteed simply by looking.

Eleven of these scenes share a single tight space in the gallery. Not crowded, the varied shapes of the canvases obviously invite congregation, like an assemblage of mezzotints on a Victorian parlor wall. Each tondo and oval and lunette is like a shifting image in a lantern slide show, introducing a distant country to a dazzled audience. artes fine arts magazine

'My Back to the Bulldozer' (2008), o/c. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

This is Jamaica, but it is also resonant of Vietnam or any colonial landscape with violence just beneath its fantasy of paradise. On one canvas where an unpainted edge reveals the impasto around it, there is a literal equivalent to the many strata of memory that the surfaces of things can keep from us. But the process of exposing this underground is not all the work of nature; Hendricks is reading excavation, and not erosion, in the piece entitled My Back to the Bulldozer. The machine is made visible by the damage it has done. One single gouge of red earth across a wounded field tells the story of every other ravaged ground. A human mark has remade in the earth, and is now remarked by the hand of the painter.

These multiple small panels move the observer from stone to meadow to surf to darkening clouds, all the fragments from which the world is assembled. But each one is as complete in itself, as any of John Constable’s studies for patches of sky. A separate series of larger watercolors achieves a similar effect by different means. In both Turquoise Sky and Three Trees, the thin edge of a verdant horizon forces the eye up to the airy processions that push out over the paper’s end.

’Turquoise Sky’ (Lovers Leap Series) (1991), w/c on paper. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

Two of Hendricks’ signature full length portraits are hung at either side of the landscape grouping, making a frame out of another of the artist’s visions of the world. Set apart that way, they even more emphatically evoke the tradition which celebrates those figures of self-confident splendor found in the court paintings of Goya and Thomas Lawrence.

There is a further variation on that theme in two large format color photographs (The Twins and Swimming Pool Attendant) which go beyond being a record of a tourist’s encounter – or an anthropologist’s – to measure out the balance of stance and demeanor in the human figure. They are a reminder that the mysteries of affect have long been one of this artist’s central subjects.

‘Swimming Pool Attendant’ (1977), Chromographic print. Courtesy W. Benton Museum of Art, Storrs, CT.

Another grouping of work assembles a small constellation of unfamiliar fruits, and although only one of them includes the term ‘erotic’ in its title (and suggested by its framing) all of them are sensually charged, their taste and smell made tactile. But these are not Nature’s version of adult toys. Rather, they might serve as sexual reliquaries or votives – especially where the image is touched with gold leaf – small, but deeply felt prayers of thanks for passion’s gift.

There is thanksgiving, too, in the banana leaves which are both botanical record and exercises in form. That these are domesticated plants is a surprise revealed in the delicate pencil outline of their clay pots.

But for all the varieties of mastery here, the landscapes are what I went to again before I left, making sure of my remembering. There should be room for them in anyone’s memory.

By Stephen Kobasa, Contributing Writer

Barkley L. Hendricks: Some Like it Hot, focuses on the artist’s work created in response to his travels to Jamaica and West Africa. With their compelling scenery and inhabitants, these tropical regions have provided him with a wealth of inspiration, and the resulting photographs and paintings represent a significant portion of his creative output. The exhibition includes large-scale figurative paintings, a series of landscapes on lunette and tondo shaped canvases, renderings in oil and watercolor of fruits and vegetation, and photographs selected from his prolific production in that medium—among them a suite of photographs of activist and Afrobeat icon Fela Kuti  (left) that will be exhibited for the first time.

Now, through December 18, 2011

The William Benton Museum of Art,

University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

860-486-1705

www.thebenton.org

The Kolb Brothers Hanging, Grand Canyon (1904). Photo by Ellsworth & Emory Kolb, courtesy Cline Library, N. Arizona Univ.

 The Grand Canyon is wild and unforgiving. But it is also one of the most stunning landscapes on Earth—a place for recreation, reflection and reverence. A beautiful Smithsonian exhibition allows us to marvel at this natural wonder without camping equipment, emergency rations or rappelling ropes.  

Featuring 60 framed photographs, Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and the Grand Canyon Association. The exhibition is now midway through its national tour, and can currently be seen at the Littleton Historical Museum, Littleton, CO, on view through February 23, 2012. If you can’t swing a visit to see this natural wonder in Colorado, perhaps you can catch a glimpse of the canyon’s beauty when the Smithsonian traveling exhibition comes to a venue near you. The exhibition tour continues through 2013, and the full itinerary can be seen at www.sites.si.edu. ARTES Fine Arts Magazine  

Jack Dykinga, Toroweap Overlook in Morning Light (1987). Photo courtesy J.Dykinga

Grand Canyon National Park, 2,000 square miles of snaking river beds and sheer rock walls, is a world like no other, where vibrant cliffs and flowing water create a striking complement to the Western sky. ‘Lasting Light’ reveals the dedication of those who have attempted to capture the Grand Canyon on film from the earliest days to modern times. Covering nearly 125 years of photographic history, the exhibition includes images of early photographers dangling from cables to get the perfect shot, their cumbersome camera equipment balanced precariously on their shoulders. More modern images are bold and dramatic, revealing the canyon’s capricious weather, its flora and fauna, waterfalls and wading pools, and awe-inspiring cliffs and rock formations. The stunning contemporary images were selected by representatives from Eastman Kodak’s Professional Photography Division and National Geographic.  

‘Lasting Light’ chronicles the development of Grand Canyon photography as we know it today. As revealed in the exhibit, Timothy O’Sullivan, a Civil War photographer and veteran, took the first pictures of the Grand Canyon on behalf of Congress in the early 1870s. It took a minimum of three and half hours to make a single image, and he had to prepare the plates in the field using potentially explosive production materials. The work was dangerous and unpredictable.  

Dugald Bremner, Travertine Terraces, Havasu Creek (1990). Photo courtesy D. Bremner

Three decades later, Ellsworth and Emery Kolb, two steel-working brothers from Pittsburgh, brought the Grand Canyon to the masses in the early 1900s. The brothers became known for their pictures of tourists on mule rides, and later made history in 1912 as the first Colorado River travelers to film their adventures with a moving picture camera. As the brothers pointed out, the journey was not always glamorous. One afternoon, Emery reported that the group had “walked 22 miles and climbed over 5000 feet,” each carrying 20 pounds worth of film. Yet “the pleasurable thrills we experienced . . . when we developed our plates more than made up for any discomfort we may have experienced.”  

With evermore remote and unexpected images, the brothers greatly expanded the breadth of Grand Canyon photography. Following in the Kolbs’ footsteps, the 26 contemporary photographers presented in the ‘Lasting Light’ exhibition have also changed the way we see and experience the Grand Canyon.  

“What you do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American should see,” Teddy Roosevelt urged. Roosevelt, ever the naturalist, was just one of the canyon’s devotees. There are millions of others, including the 26 featured photographers of ‘Lasting Light’, who ran the river and climbed the rocks to capture these breathtaking images.  

S & A Partners, Rainbow (1995). Photo courtesy S & A Partners

“The Grand Canyon taught me a way of seeing. How to see light and design,” said featured photographer John Blaustein. Grand Canyon photographer Jack Dykinga notes, “I think I’ve experienced every single mood of the canyon, from sandstorms to ice storms, to waiting out dangerous conditions in a cave. For a photographer, mood is what elicits impact and emotion.” These and other intriguing narratives accompany the spectacular photographs, giving audiences the artists’ personal insight into the power of the Canyon.  

As photographer Stephen Trimble points out in his book, Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography, “…as every other photographer who comes to the Grand Canyon, I’ve been humbled by the place and its checklist of challenges: vastness, remoteness, ruggedness- and on the river, the constant danger of water damage to equipment and the sickening sound of sandy grit in lenses and camera bodies.”  

Trimble also notes that the exhibition gathers these stories, the pictures themselves “and the tales behind the photographs, intimate moments from the lives of men and women in love with the crazy notion of bringing home in their pictures the light and space and rocks and river of the Grand Canyon.”  

Travelers who want to see the incredible scenic chasm in person can celebrate the National Parks during fee-free days in August of each year, when visitors aren’t charged an entrance fees to the Grand Canyon. http://www.nps.gov/findapark/feefreeparks.htm.  

Learn more about the Grand Canyon Association, a non-profit membership organization that supports education, scientific research and other programs for the benefit of Grand Canyon National Park and its visitors, at www.grandcanyon.org.  

SITES shares the wealth of Smithsonian collections and research through a wide range of exhibitions about art, science and history with millions of people outside Washington, D.C. For more information on exhibitions and tour schedules, visit www.sites.si.edu.  

by Lindsey Koren, Contributing Writer

Karen Jacobsen, Chorus of Tubeworms, w/c, 48x48" Photo:Muscarelle Museum of Art staff

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.”  ~Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

“The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.” ~ Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.” ~ Jules Verne , 20,000 Leagues under the Sea

Imagine, if you can, that your destination is a leviathan labyrinth, teeming with “never-before-seen” but now, “never-to-be forgotten”, vegetation, organisms and sea creatures, all thriving in abyssal sea vents, assuming a palette of cool, delicate gray and browns, juxtaposed with ochre, hot pink, red and oranges.

Experiencing Beyond the Edge of the Sea  is to embark on that deep ocean adventure –the thrill of the aqua-blue-through-black descent and search, primordial discoveries, and finally, the artful, intelligently-rendered seascapes that dramatically animate the voyage. artes fine arts magazine

Tu'i Malila Vents, Lau Basin, mixed media, 32x40"

The project is the other-worldly culmination of work by submersible pilot/ marine scientist, Cindy Lee Van Dover and artist/collaborator, Karen Jacobsen. The women have together pioneered numerous forays into the deep, culling their combined efforts’ trove to include 75 (plus five specially-commissioned) mixed media works, for the traveling exhibit–originally exhibited at The College of William and Mary’s, Muscarelle Museum. In speaking of the project’s import, museum director Aaron H. De Groft, references prehistoric cave painters and the likes of Darwin and Audubon, adding that “these two incredible women are as forward thinking and cutting edge for our time as earlier vanguards, Matilda of Canossa, Isabella d’Estes, and Maria de’Medici…”

“The deep sea is not an obvious place to dedicate a life to science . Few of us find our way there. It has none of the enviro-political cachet of an Amazonian rainforest, Alaskan tundra, or Arctic ice shelf. When I first became interested in the deep sea, there was not even the fantasia world tenanted by alien-looking and gigantically proportioned tubeworms to attract notice. Their discovery, among many others, was still several years away.” ~Cindy Lee Van Dover, The Octopus Garden, p.9.

Dr Cindy Less Van Dover, Alvin pilot, Exhibit curator

“My decision [as an artist] is to be in the field amidst my subject matter—this is not a novel inspiration. I follow in the footsteps of other naturalist artists, including the plein air painters, the Fauvists, and the others who have done the same thing for centuries. But my motif, my plein air, is plein eau (water), and I am submerged not at scuba depths but at bone-crushing depths of a mile or more beneath the surface of the sea.” ~Karen Jacobsen, Exhibition Catalogue: Beyond the Edge of the Sea, p. 20.

It was the mid-1970’s when three-person submersibles, Alvin and Cyana, were first built and available to the scientific community, allowing researchers to dive two and one-half miles down for deep sea exploration, revealing a “riot of life” thriving in sulfide-laden geothermal hot springs.

Aosisia species (probably new), Saguaro, Pacific Antarctic Ridge, 2334 meters (2005)

Not surprisingly, Cindy Van Dover was the first woman to pilot the Alvin and has availed her scientific mission of discovery of its technology in over one-hundred dives. Her technical expertise, paired with Karen Jacobsen’s naturalistic, creative sensibility in Beyond the Edge of the Sea, has gained the attention and respect of former NASA Astronaut and fellow-Alvin diver, Dr. Katherine D. Sullivan. She recounts in the show’s comprehensive catalogue, how her own admittedly stale memory of space travel only came to life when jogged, “like a bolt of lightening,” by a piece of inspirational music. And that from the first woman to walk in space! “Nearly a quarter of a century has passed, “she muses, “but this music has lost none of its effect: I’m instantly back in orbit when I hear it, completely absorbed in a flood of vivid memories.”

“Beyond the Edge of the Sea worked similar magic on me,” Sullivan continues, ”transporting me back to the pressure sphere of Alvin …nobody is ‘doing’ art or ‘doing’ science at moments like this. Instead, every fiber and cognitive circuit of your being is alert and active at once…open on all levels to learning, that most quintessential human activity.”

“Reaching the sea floor is a study in understatement. Although the technological feat seems akin to sending a man into orbit about the earth, Alvin dives up to 4,500 meters [14,000+feet] below the surface of the sea, day in and day out, following a routine that is stunningly anticlimactic. There is no countdown, no army of personnel to supervise the launch or recovery. Even the audience of curious scientists diminishes to naught after they have watched one of two launches […] The submersible’s and ship’s crews pride themselves on making the whole operation seem effortless. ~Cindy Lee Van Dover, The Octopus Garden, p.29.

Deep-Diving Human Occupied Vessel, Alvin. Photo: Mark Spear, Woods Hole Oceanographic Instit., MA

“The descent to the seafloor in Alvin is a lesson in the blue color palette, from vibrant tropical hues of cyan, cerulean, and turquoise, into more saturated cobalt, ultramarine, Prussian blue, indigo, anthraquinone deep blue, and on into inky black layers below 500 meters, where the last light fades away and there can be no more color. We sink further into darkness. Cindy slips a tape of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons into the player and the music seems alive as it rolls around the sphere.  Through the view port, small animal—zooplankton—flare like tiny shooting stars through space.” ~ Karen Jacobsen, Exhibition Catalogue: Beyond the Edge of the Sea, p.22.

The exhibition’s vibrant collection is especially attractive and effective in its uniquely intuitive blend of art and science– the “alien” life forms so sensitively and respectfully treated as to take on a naturalistic, rather than freakishly clinical, tone. Jacobsen confirms that she is devoted to striving to “emphasize a specific morphological attribute or behavior….once I immerse myself in an illustration, I always find some marvelous biological ingenuity, something beautiful and unique about the animal.”

Welk Snail, Hermit Crab, 6-Armed Starfish, Bering Sea (2003)

It is with a similarly respectful manner and sense of wonder that Cindy Van Dover shares her bottomless wealth of deep ocean knowledge and interpretation of its creatures, their behaviors and environments. She has also garnered the inclusion of several essays by other prominent members of the scientific community for Beyond the Edge of the Sea.

In his contribution to the exhibit catalogue, NASA’s John D. Rummel recalls chief Galapagos Rift scientist, Jack Corliss’ findings: “While details may be debated, this hypothesis offers a viable explanation of how life could both arise in an energetically and chemically dynamic environment capable of forming new organic molecules and, once established, survive recurrent asteroid impacts of Earth….then life might just as easily arise on other worlds where hot rock and water react to form hot springs.”

“The stunning implication is that submarine hydrothermal systems, fueled by the heat of volcanic processes, can support life in the absence of sunlight. Vent water may be the ultimate soup in the sorcerer’s kettle […] Deep-sea vents may have been the site where life originated on the planet.” ~Cindy Lee Van Dover, The Octopus Garden, p.56.

Eyeless Shrimp, Rainbow, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 2314 meters (2001)

“As we approach the periphery of the vent area, clues tell us we are getting close […] Soon we see the first white clams and mounds of mussels sitting in cracks between pillows of basalt. The sulfur yellow of the mussels against the blackness is a visual delight […] Small snails bejewel the mussels and lobster-like galatheid crabs perch like sentries atop the mounds. This is a warm and colorful oasis of life in a cold desert of black. ~ Karen Jacobsen, Exhibition Catalogue: Beyond the Edge of the Sea, p.23.

That possibility (or, if you prefer, probability) connects NASA’s astrobiological research for extraterrestrial life forms with that of man’s search for earth’s own biological origins.

Since Alvin’s earliest explorations, research from subsequent voyages has yielded and strengthened evidence suggesting that life on earth likely spawned in a young, deep-sea environment, and it has also strengthened Cindy Van Dover’s resolve to continue her ocean mission.

Lavender Octopus on Mussels, West Florida Escarpment Seep, 3293 meters (2000)

“Since the discovery of the hydrothermal vents in 1977,” says Van Dover, “the pace of exploration in the deep sea has steadily increased…Man has observed less than one percent of the seafloor…During the twentieth century, the deep sea became accessible. In this twenty-first century,” she predicts, “the deep sea will become known.”

And, thanks to the collaborative, innovative success of Cindy Van Dover and Karen Jacobsen in Beyond the Edge of the Sea, we, too, are able to share in that knowledge—and beauty—of the deep.

By Katherine Arcano, Contributing Editor

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Beyond the Edge of the Sea will be showing at the Ebling Library for the Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from September 16, 2011-January 31, 2012. Beyond the Edge was brought to UW in conjunction with UW-Madison’s Geology Museum, with funding provided by the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

Scientific & Expeditionary Illustrator, Karen Jacobsen, at her shipboard work station (2003)

This exhibition is a collaborative effort involving Cindy Lee Van Dover, U.S. Navy-qualified, deep-diving Alvin pilot-in-command and explorer, with more than one-hundred dives to her credit. She is currently the Harvey W. Smith Professor of Biological Oceanography in the Division of Marine Science and Conservation of the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, where she serves as Chair of the Division, Director of the Undergraduate Certificate in Marine Science and Conservation, and Director of the Marine Laboratory.

Dr. Van Dover is the author of numerous scientific articles, as well as The Octopus’s Garden; Hypothermal Vents and other Mysteries of the Deep Sea. New York: Addison Wesley Press, 1996.

Scientific and expeditionary illustrator, Karen Jacobsen, has worked jointly with Dr. Van Dover for 15-years, accompanying her on numerous dives around the world and recording the findings of the Alvin’s deep sea explorations, both while on board the mothership, the research vessel (R/V) Atlantis, and back in her studio.

Crab species found with Whale Fall #7, Sagami Bay, 923 meters (2006)

The exhibition, Beyond the Edge of the Sea: Diversity of Life in the Deep Ocean Wilderness, curated by Dr. Van Dover, highlights the findings of numerous dives and represents a commitment on the part of these two experts to merge the language of science and art in unique and innovative ways. They bring the little-known and rarely observed world of undersea life to light in dramatic and colorful terms. Cindy and Karen have candidly shared their thoughts, feelings and observations, providing the world with extraordinary documentation of their shared experience, in the hopes of increasing understanding and appreciation for our deep-ocean environments.

The exhibition, Beyond the Edge of the Sea is available for showing at select venues. Please contact traveling exhibitions at the Muscarelle Museum of Art at The College of William & Mary, museum@wm.edu

Or go to the Web site: http//:web.wm.edu/muscarelle/exhibitions/traveling/beyond/images.html

Or contact the principles at:

Dr. Aaron de Groft, Director, Muscarelle Museum of Art: adegroft@wm.org

Dr. Cindy Van Dover: c.vandover@duke.edu or http://oceanography.ml.duke.edu/vandover/

Karen Jacobsen: insituart@gmail.com

In collaboration with: The Muscarelle Museum of Art; The College of William and Mary; Duke University and The North Carolina Maritime Museum.

With financial support from: The National Science Foundation and the NASA Astrobiology Institute

Andy Warhol's, Marilyn, on display in Abu Dhabi Gallery

“Our best hope lies in our nascent arts. For if we are to be remembered merely as the people who lived, loved, made war and died; then it is for our arts that we must be remembered. Captains and kings vanish. Great fortunes dissipate leaving hardly a trace. Inherited morals, like inherited wealth disappear so rapidly, the multitudes flock away like locusts. Walls and the records tumble and the leaders, too. The leaders too, are soon forgotten unless they have the wisdom and foresight to surround themselves with doers, poets—artifices of things of the mind and the heart.” -Maxwell Anderson (c. 1935)

The words of this American dramatist and man-of-letters were penned more than a half-century ago and yet, they still resonate today. Political divisions, economic challenges and regional conflicts are felt more acutely now than ever before, given our emerging presence as members of a global community. In an important symposium on cultural diplomacy, in 2010,  sponsored by the Aspen Institute, of Colorado, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. and the John Brademas Center for the Study of Congress, the theme of human values, finding common ground between and among cultures and cultivating a richer understanding of the human condition were explored.artes fine arts magazine

Changing thought processes and attitudes is not an easy task. The common language that binds all of humanity can be found in our modes of creative expression, however. The task is to decide how best to deliver that message, as Americans, and how to shape the effort so it is not perceived as self-serving, but rather, invites an enthusiastic and equally well-intended reciprocal response from other countries. The best and least politically-charged approach to this task, the conference presenters agreed, was through the private sector, where governmental influences are effectively removed, or at least distanced from the core message.

Author, Azar Nafisi. Photo by S.J. Staniski

American cultural diplomacy depends more on the arts than ever before. Consider the following facts: The U.S. military is the largest and most prominent instrument for outreach to the world; the Defense Department budget for U.S military bands is larger than the State Department budget for diplomatic initiatives, worldwide; the budget for the National Endowments for the Arts (NEA) and the humanities (NEH) is a mere 1% of the defense budget and shrinking in terms of real dollars every year; the book, Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson is required reading for all officers serving in Afghanistan, making the point that winning the hearts and minds of the people is the only real way to win a war with a thousand-year history of tribal rule and ethnic clashes.

Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003), offers a refreshing perspective, as an Iranian-born woman who is now a U.S. citizen. She suggests that memory is the basis for individual identity and collectively, for any culture or nation. National memory spans generations and is not displaced by political or military repression. The physical manifestation of those collective memories lies in its cultural artifacts: its art, architecture, literature and poetry. Cultural memory is often ‘stored’ in repositories, called museums. But, in many countries, it can be a ubiquitous part of the national landscape.

Balinese dancers

Nafisi suggests that a Culture of Imagination transcends borders; knows no gender, race, or religious bias. Literature, for her, can serve as a universal language that offers a culture of recognition. We discover ourselves in the reported lives of other people. Our struggles and dreams, desires and hopes are the same. Any government or established political institution cannot possibly reflect the complexity of its people and their beliefs. For example, she points out that the use of the phrase ‘the Muslim World’ is an empty term. The expression attempts to encapsulate geography of thousands of miles and dozens of countries, lumping countless sects and local religious communities into one meaningless, but emotionally-charged image for most Westerners.

So, for cultural diplomacy to serve as an effective alternative to bureaucratic interventions , non-governmental organizations must be prepared to reach out to other countries and cultures as equals, understanding that information flow is a two-way street; a sense of history (collective memory) and knowledge of the intellectual and artistic contributions of those nations is essential and that the world is increasingly ‘borderless’, with technology and economics becoming the great levelers of the playing field and equalizers when it comes to understanding the shift in U.S. supremacy on the world stage. Cultural outreach, including the arts, literature, music and theater, becomes a key ingredient to assure ourselves, as a nation, that our lifestyle and values are represented in a way that neither threatens nor overwhelms, but that we meet our global neighbors and build bridges of understanding on equal and respectful terms. -

Explore programs and video streams of past events at the Aspen Institute: www.aspeninstitute.org

Visit the Phillips Collection at: www.phillipscollection.org

Learn about the Brademas Center at: www.nyu.edu/brademas

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Historically, Johnson’s work has been under-examined in the modern art literature, but awareness and interest in this artist has been on the rise in recent years. President Obama created a buzz when he selected four of Johnson’s works from the Smithsonian’s collections—the most by any one artist—to decorate the White House. Now, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) has joined with Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, to bring Johnson’s work to communities across the nation. This fall marks the opening and release of William H. Johnson: An American Modern, a traveling exhibition and scholarly book of the same name. 

(Above) William H. Johnson, Self Portrait (c. 1923-1926). Collection Smithsonian American Art Museum.  All other images courtesy Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD.artes fine arts magazine  

W.H. Johnson, Boats on Keterminde (1938)

Forty years ago, in 1971, after receiving a historic donation of over 1000 pieces of Johnson’s art from the William Harmon Foundation, the Smithsonian American Art Museum published the first book on Johnson, cataloging their collection of his work. Although Johnson had reached a level of fame and exhibited widely in the 1930s and early 1940s, his career came to abrupt halt in 1945 with the onset of severe medical issues, and his subsequent institutionalization. This book re-introduced Johnson’s art to the world through black and white reproductions, along with a biography of the artist and a brief analysis. Twenty years later, scholar Richard J. Powell published his groundbreaking monograph, Homecoming: the Art and Life of William H. Johnson. His biographical-critical overview of Johnson’s life and work was grounded in extensive research and brought Johnson to the fore—inspiring multiple exhibitions, articles, a children’s book, and new analysis of his art. 

Today, 20 years after Powell published Homecoming, a new book from the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and Morgan State University introduces a range of scholarly debate currently surrounding the artist. Thanks to the foundation of knowledge laid by Powell and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, William H. Johnson: An American Modern is able to present Johnson in a new light and analyzes important themes and patterns in his work. The book also examines Johnson’s work on a different scale: This volume considers just 20 paintings from Morgan State’s holdings. The Morgan collection encapsulates the pivotal stages in Johnson’s career as a modernist painter, including post-impressionist and expressionist works reminiscent of Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Soutine, and the vernacular paintings in which he articulates his specific, unforgettable voice as an artist. 

Aunt Alice (1944)

These works were acquired in 1967 by James E. Lewis, then the director of the Museum of Art at Morgan State. The terms of the Harmon Foundation donation to the Smithsonian enabled Mr. Lewis, along with representatives from a handful of other historically black colleges and universities, to select works by Johnson for their institutions’ permanent collections. Lewis was the first to arrive and had first choice of the works available. His keen eye aided him in selecting these specific 20 pieces, which together offer a concise overview of Johnson’s life and work. 

This new book presents Johnson as a quintessential modern painter firmly planted in the pantheon of great American artists. In this new text, some of the world’s premier scholars of William H. Johnson and African American art history examine the artist and his modern artistic genius in fresh new ways, including his relationship with one of his earliest patrons, the Harmon Foundation; the critical role played by scholars at the nation’s historically black colleges and universities; the context of Johnson’s experiences living in Harlem and his deep southern roots; and Johnson as a trailblazer in the genres of still life and landscape painting. 

Among the essays presented in his volume are two new works by Richard Powell, grounded in his lifetime of studying Johnson and his work: “Trembling Vistas, Primal Youth: William H. Johnson’s Expressionism,” and “Devotion and Disrepute: William H. Johnson’s Florence, South Carolina, Paintings, circa 1944.” Viewed as discreet analyses, each tells the story of a moment of change in Johnson’s style. Read in tandem, however, they tell a story of profound artistic growth and maturation. “Trembling Vistas” explores Johnson’s hesitant departure from his academic training into the realm of European modernism, and “Devotion and Disrepute” examines Johnson’s “vertiginous turn” away from the visual language of Expressionism to the neo-primitive vernacular employed in the final period of his career (William H. Johnson: An American Modern, 92). 

Cagnes, White Houses (c. 1928-29)

For many critics, the decisive shift in Johnson’s style discussed in Powell’s second essay constituted “mutin[y] against predictable techniques” (91). Powell acknowledges that the use of this vernacular was a significant risk for Johnson, as it “contradicted what many people expected from an academically trained, European associated artist” (90); however, Powell’s analysis of Johnson’s oeuvre throughout the two essays supports Johnson’s own explanation of his new style, which he voiced in a 1946 interview with the New York Amsterdam News: “It was not a change but a development.” 

Powell muses over the significance of this statement in his second essay (93): “Describing his French and Scandinavian landscapes as developmental works prior to the largely figurative paintings of the 1940s is intriguing, suggesting that the lessons learned as an Expressionist charted the path to becoming a neo-primitive.” 

His reference to “the lessons learned” during Johnson’s Expressionist days indirectly points to his earlier essay in this volume (“Trembling Vistas”), in which he presents Johnson’s first ten years abroad as a period of continued art education (albeit in the modernist tradition). In “Trembling Vistas,” Powell documents Johnson’s initially cautious “experiments in various forms of modernism” and attempts to “work out a style of [his] own” (29, 27). His cogent analysis reveals that over a period of one decade, Johnson’s work become progressively bolder, his paint thicker, and his colors more brightly hued as he absorbed various artistic influences and immersed himself deeper into the art and social scene of European Expressionism. 

Lofoten Island (1937)

Although Johnson eventually abandons his thick impasto technique and solid Expressionist approach in favor of an “emphatic[ally] two-dimensional” style, the impact of other lessons learned in his Expressionist period is evident in Johnson’s vernacular work (90). Of particular note, says Powell, is Johnson’s early epiphany that “to truly represent the world around them, the artist must become one with his/her subject” (24). Throughout his career, Johnson focuses on his individual subjective experience of his subjects, rather than trying to capture objective reality. He articulated this objective to a Scandinavian journalist in 1932, saying, “my aim is to express in a natural way what I feel, what is in me, both rhythmically and spiritually.” In doing so, Powell claims, Johnson is “articulat[ing] in line, shape, and hue the social and psychological dimensions of peoples and places and their interconnections”—a focus which he began to develop in his early days in Europe but which is seen most clearly in his later work (25). 

Danish Youth (1930)

In his 1946 interview with the New York Amsterdam News, Johnson asserts that, “In all my years of painting, I have had only one absorbing and inspired idea…– to give, in simple and stark form – the story of the Negro as he has existed.” While Johnson’s achievement of this goal is readily apparent in his later works, his early works seemed to deviate from this idea. However, Powell argues in “Trembling Vistas” that Johnson’s interest in “primitiveness and tradition” is evident even in his early years as a professional painter. For one image, inspired by a brief trip home to the American South, Johnson expresses his hope “‘to abstract’ and to put onto canvas that ‘something’ which the surrounding ‘little Negro boys and girls’ possessed” in a letter written to a sponsor in 1930, eight years before he begins exploring African American subject matter in depth (28). In addition, Johnson’s depictions of rural Scandinavian folk culture served as an important foundation for his later exploration of black folk life in the U.S. Although Johnson ultimately—in Powell’s analysis—came to find his voice as “an authentic community commentator,” highlighting the importance of the African American story his paintings told, his “attraction to the primitive was neither race-based nor specific to non-Western cultural traditions,” as evidenced by his earlier work in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (91, 31). 

Ring around the Rosey (1944)

According to Powell, “Johnson’s was a blackness that refused to proselytize for its inclusion in high society; that wasn’t about to apologize for its coarse honesty and intrusive, antithetical visibility; that stood, or tumbled, in its rightful universality alongside other races and ethnicities…” (95). In William H. Johnson: An American Modern, the “rightful universality” of Johnson’s work is celebrated as it is examined in the context of other modern painters of “other races and ethnicities.” The essays in this collection explore the ways in which Johnson marshaled the ideas and techniques of European modernism to create a highly personal visual language and capture authentically and respectfully the American story with which he was most familiar—that of the African American community. Powell eloquently articulates the evolution of Johnson’s singular style and the continuity of his philosophical vision from his early days as a bohemian Expressionist in Europe to his final paintings which offer a haunting and insightful commentary on rural Southern African American life. This new book brings to life Johnson’s conscious combination of formal training, international influences, and personal experiences to pare his style down to the very simplest, starkest terms. He achieves this without sacrificing the strength of his message or the profound emotional quality he could instill in his works, forever marking him as a truly American modern. 

By Robin Meyer, Contributing Writer 

William H. Johnson: An American Modern, by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and Morgan State University, published by University of Washington Press. Includes essays from Richard J. Powell, Leslie King-Hammond, David Driskell and Lowery Stokes Sims. The exhibition of the same name began a national tour September 10, 2011at the Gari Melchers Home and Studio in Fredericksburg, VA., and will tour the country through 2014. Visit www.sites.si.edu for a detailed itinerary.

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Many painters promote themselves as ‘painters of light’. The simple reality is that without light, there would be no subject matter to paint. Even non-objective painting relies on the play of color (light waves across the visible spectrum) in contrasting and complimentary combinations to reach your eye and attract your attention. The minimalists, too, voided their canvases of most chromatics as a way of saying, “Hey, look what’s going on here…no color!” Color theory was thus being leveraged, in that case, by virtue of is conspicuous absence.

(left) Claude Monet, Rouen Catherdral in the Evening (1894). Coll. Musee de l’Orangerie, Paris artes fine arts magazine

Claude Lorrain, Italian Landscape (1648). Private collection

So, light has served as an important compositional element in painting, especially since the Renaissance, when the use of light effects became essential for the portrayal of perspective and dramatic human action as an indispensible part of the artist’s skill set. Seventeenth-century painters, like Claude Lorrain broke with traditional bonds of studio painting and complex allegorical themes to sketch and paint in the Italian countryside. His work is identifiable for its skillful use of perspective and rich fields of slanting early-morning light which frame the pastoral scene, focusing the eye on highlights within the landscape, invariably including playful representations of everyday peasant life.

But not until the mid-19th century, when we entered the period of early modern painting, did the use of light effect in painting take on bold new meaning. For the Impressionists, painting en plein air meant that light was to become a central element in their work, rather than a studio technique to achieve dramatic highlights. Their fractured brushstrokes, flattened perspective, chiaroscuro-style paint application and indistinct rendering of central subject matter meant that light had to be deconstructed in the artist’s eye (and mind) and then reassembled on canvas in its component parts. So, the compositional or spectral elements of the light they were enveloped in as they worked became a critical factor in defining the finished product.

Charles Davis, Twilight over the Water (1892). Hartford Steam Boiler Collection, Florence Griswold Museum, CT

Thus, the question needs to be asked: Was the light of provincial France an essential and critical element in the production of a style and body of work we now call Impressionism; or could it have happened anywhere?

Drawing on the lessons learned in another part of the world where Impressionism flourished in the years that followed the French artist movement that bears its name, we turn to New England and the American Impressionists: J Alden Weir, Childe Hassam, John Henry Twachtman, Charles Davis and others. From two of these communities of artists who gathered to paint and critique one another’s work–in Old Lyme and Cos Cob, Connecticut–we have a genre that closely approximates the experience of the French Impressionist masters as they painted in the changing light of the day and the seasons.

Claude Monet, Haystacks, Sunday Morning (1891). Musee d’Orsay, Paris

The unique feature of Connecticut shoreline light is the moisture-saturated nature of its proximity to the sea. The humidity and air-borne particles of water prevalent near bodies of water make for denser air, thereby softening detail in the viewer’s eye. It also makes for richer colors in everything they saw there, especially warm whites, reds and yellows. This same effect can be found in the South of France, where the prevailing North African winds (seasonal mistrals) blow Mediterranean sea air far inland. As painters, they would have seen similar color saturation on their Grand Tours of Italy’s Tuscan Region and the Cote d’Azure in France—also close to the sea and similarly affected by prevailing breezes. By contrast, the light in the mountainous regions of the Alps or the American West would be crisp and dry, heightening the effects of cool blues, purples and greens and preserving detail, even over great distances.

Childe Hassam, The Nymph of Beryl Gorge (1914). Private collection

Claude Monet studied these light effects and produced a well-know series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral (above), where the impact of time-of-day was a key factor in his use of color and shadow. Identical subject matter seems to shift and change shape from morning, to mid-day, to evening in these works. A similar examination of light’s impact on a subject can be seen in his 1892-4 series of paintings of hay rooks. Monet repeatedly set up his easel in an open field, overlooking the pastoral scene. There, he worked on multiple canvases, over the course of many months, to painstakingly record the changing effects of light on the façade of his now-famous subject.

For a Connecticut artist like Childe Hassam, light play was an essential element in achieving a sense of intimacy between their subjects and the viewer. Interior spaces where filled with the warm light of summer, offering as much gravitas as the other physical objects in the composition. The female figure, painted outdoors in the dappled light of a garden landscape achieved an intimacy and vibrancy that is immediately associated with the warmth of human flesh. Nature and humanity are merged.

Light and form, form and light: the two essential and inter-related components of art that define the third essential—emotional impact.

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor