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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

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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

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 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.

Carole Feuerman, Grand Catalina (2005-11) oil paint on resin (o/r), 62x38x17"

My first encounter with Grand Catalina (2005-11) came unexpectedly, as I thumbed through the pages of the gallery section of an art magazine. Her uplifted face, eyes closed, suited and capped for laps in the pool, skin still moist with droplets of water as she appears to slip from the water, riveted me in an unexpected moment of intimacy with this life-like image. Lashes and brows neatly arrayed, the pouting lips appeared ready to gasp for a breath of pool-side air. If her eyes were to finally open, I wondered if she would be surprised to see me—a stranger, so close by!? The work conveyed a sense of strength and capability, while also offering an alluring vulnerability and sensuality. In the few moments that I studied the image, I imagined that this larger-than-life-sized figure, seemingly brimming with self-assurance, would have no difficulty managing whatever the world handed her, once she finally emerged from her momentary reverie. artes fine arts magazine

Carole Feuerman with Survival of Serena, Green Cap (2006-11), o/r, 38x84x32" Photo: Alvaro Corzo V.

This, I would soon learn, was the work of New York realist sculptor, Carole Feuerman. A veteran of over four decades of creative work in many sculptural mediums—including resin, marble and bronze—Feuerman sculpts life-sized, monumental and smaller-scale works that encompass her signature trompe-l’oeil technique. Feuerman shares a hyper-realism tradition with artists like Duane Hanson and George Segal, but with a critical difference: approachability.

Reflections (1985), o/r, 75x21x21" Photo:David Finn

When hyper-realistic sculpture first appeared on the gallery and museum scene in the 1980s, these iconographic figures served as a timely, three-dimensional narrative for a human condition steeped in stereotyping and emotional objectification. It was time for the Me Generation, characterized by self-absorption and enhancing personal status. Reflecting that contemporaneous motif, Duane Hanson’s Tourists or Queeny were works based on social and class-based stereotypes, to be mentally catalogued and observed from a distant, carefully-proscribed insular world—like characters in a wax museum—seen, but seldom touched. George Segal ‘s somber, unpainted plaster cast figures were often arranged in groups, appearing like actors in an urban drama, suggesting alienation, latent aggression and indifference; or as single, expressionless figures trapped in a world of secretiveness, isolation and emotional alienation—quietly-despairing characters in a disconnected world.

For Feuerman’s work—sculpted first in plaster, then cast in bronze or resin, before being meticulously painted—the effect is not alienation, but intimacy. Her mostly-female forms appear to radiate an inner life, one of both mysterious sensuality and self-possessed consciousness, all-the-while inviting inclusion in their personal space. If the eyes are the window to the soul, her sculptures, portrayed predominantly with eyes closed, are denying us access to those deepest realms-of-consciousness that might resolve the mystery. Instead, Feuerman tantalizes and seduces the viewer, offering a voyeuristic connection to the personal space behind the eyelids of her figures. We are invited to watch a lone female figure emerging from a shower as she wraps a towel around her hair; another floating languidly in an inner tube; another appearing to stand waist-deep in a pool, hugging a large beach ball; yet another grips the end of a surfboard as a wave presumably surges around her. The artist draws the line at the act of seeing; engaging the viewer, while depriving us of the ability to ever ‘know’ the true spirit of the character. Herein lies the power of the artist’s statement.

Blue Venus (1996), o/r, 36x24x16"

Feuerman’s figures, in spite of their nakedness or isolation, exude confidence and personal power. Freshly emerged from their cleansing bath or pool, her Eve-like creations are still dripping with fresh droplets of water—a symbol of their close ties to nature’s life-giving force. As David Rubin, of the San Antonio Museum of Art said, in a recent review, “As females, these figures personify heroic archetypes, women who are proud of their bodies and triumphant in their achievements. As metaphors, they are expressive of hope and determination, and of the faith that accompanies the drive to push forward on life’s journey, regardless of the challenges or obstacles that threaten to deter us.”

Paradise (1997), o/r, 26x16x9" Photo:Alvaro Corzo V.

In no small way, this critique of Feuerman’s work is a reflection on the trajectory of her career as a sculptor. Emerging as an artist in the early years of the Feminist movement, she decided early-on to produce work that challenged the tiresome cliché of the woman as ‘the weaker sex.’ From the beginning, Feuerman committed herself to working with the human form. The raw power of her imagery, more literal and figurative than symbolic, she worked to transcend the ascription of erotic or provocative and instead, represent personal power and the pure narrative essence of objective realism in her rendering of the human body. The risks in becoming a hyper-realist were great. Functioning artistically on the verge of the simulacram threatens to produce an empty, representational shell—imitative and convincing—but devoid of emotional intent. But, Feuerman’s sculptures exceed the bounds of mere mimicry to become powerful symbols for the human experience. The philosopher, Nietzche warned that any effort to imitate reality relies too heavily on constructs of reason and language, to the exclusion of the senses. The result, he claimed, would be a mere perversion of the truth.

City Slicker (1982), o/r, 31x21x14"

But, Feuerman’s hyper-reality, guided by keen sensory instincts, borne of life experience, and finely-tuned artistic sensibilities, results in sculpture that achieves a universal truth: a strong emotional tie between subject and object—between the viewer and the viewed—that invites an intimacy and level of empathy not often found in a creative endeavor such as this. Far from detachment, a figurative work like Paradise (1997), invites us all to imagine a time when we could once again (or wished we could) float thoughtfully on a raft in a warn sea on a languorous August afternoon.

On a recent visit to Carole Feuerman’s studio, we discussed the primary motivation for her work. While one of the foremost hyper-realist sculptors in the world, she is yet modest and unassuming. She does not view her work so much erotic or sexual, as sensual and meditative. “I want to capture the universal feeling of the fleeting moment. When my figures are rendered with their eyes closed and deep in thought, it’s like I’m presenting a story in the making. I want the viewer to complete the narrative, she tells me.” Her studio assistants busy themselves during the time I am there, shaping plaster forms, readying molds, applying base coats on nearly-completed figures, all under her careful direction. “I am the only one who can paint the final layers of the skin. The difficulty comes when it is time to represent those subtle features, like veins and blemishes, which lie just below the surface and help to create a feeling of authenticity.”

Feuerman studio, interior

Tree (detail), 2009-11, o/r, 62x37x29"

In fact, Feuerman’s studio is part gallery, too. Work from several periods of her prolific career are on display, offering up a gathering of now-familiar personas who have turned out to see what comes next! The sculpting room is generously confectioned, from floor to ceiling, with plaster dust. Row upon row of shelves are stacked high with errant body parts of every type: spare heads, torsos, hands, ears and feet—a surreal, contemporary laboratory-setting for creating the next Prometheus. A work-in-progress lies prone on a work table: a life-sized male figure in plaster, slated to become an athlete doing a hand-stand. Together, we lift and balance the figure against a column, as Feuerman checks for anatomical accuracy with a view to balletic grace in the final product. This is art by consensus, as the whole production team (including this author) weighs in on the details of the final execution. Nearby, a serene female figure Tree (2009-11), nude except for a bathing cap, patiently observes. As though having just risen from the sea, in a perfectly-proportioned, 21st century version of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, she appears to be quietly marveling at all the fuss.

Across from the showroom and office area, and far-removed from the welter of plaster appendages, is the painting room. There, Feuerman’s assistants sit meditatively—like monastic scribes toiling over illuminated manuscripts—applying layer-upon-layer of paint to figures now waiting patiently for their turn to be ‘brought to life.’ Mounted on panels or sitting on table tops, the addition of lashes, brows, hair and (in some cases) acrylic water droplets, the artist’s final touches, completed with her signature style, will be the jolt of creative energy that finally animates these figures.

Butterfly (2008), o/r, 21x22.5x21" Photo:Ali Elai

Feuerman’s sculpture walks the fine line between reality and deception, inviting us to explore our emotional response to this nexus. The syncretic link is the artist’s realization of the intense physicality, passion and sensuality found in her figures’ otherwise mundane poses. “My work is about relationships,” Feuerman explains, “exploring the secret interiority of the individual and a woman’s relationship to herself. I hope to touch an emotional level that might otherwise be inaccessible. My objective is to do more than breathe life into my sculptures, but to explore the inner life of the character, much like a novel might.” Is it autobiographical, I ask? “Perhaps, but, I like to think of my works as larger than life—gods and goddesses of the Everyday.”

Critic, John Yau addressed the material connection between the viewer and Feuerman’s figures in a recent review. He states that, “[her sculptures] evoke an inner life, one that invites the viewer’s speculation as well as signals the distance between them and us. We can never know what they might be thinking. And that perhaps is the point. […] We see their bodies, but not their souls. By having their eyes closed, Feuerman inflects a fundamental aspect of her sculptures: they exist in the same physical world as we do, but they are also removed from us. This inflection causes the viewer to become self-conscious; looking is framed as an act of voyeurism.” But, unlike the voyeur, these figures are inviting us to share in the ecstasy arising from the simple sensual pleasures of water, sun and air—leading by example, rather than inclusion in their private reverie.

Water Sports (2011), o/r sculptures with interactive floor projection of water

Feuerman has recently begun to explore the kinetic effects of water on her bathing figures. “Water is the universal connection to life,” she tells me. “An important new phase in my work will be to incorporate computer technology developed recently that projects an image on the floor or wall and will respond realistically to physical touch. Sculpted figures can be bathed in a large field of blue light that realistically ripples when the movement of a toe or hand is introduced. “This kind of interactive sculpture can heighten the sense of connection to the work and give the viewer a real-time experience with the installation,” she explains. Feuerman said the technology is ready and hopes to introduce it in a number of upcoming shows, both in the U.S. and Europe.

Hands on Face (c. 2008), o/r

This latest phase in Feuerman’s oeuvre represents another round of experimentation in hyper-realistic sculpture’s ability to extend beyond the boundaries of literalism and mimicry, to endure as a rich commentary on contemporary life. Her keen observations of the smallest gesture, the portrayal of flesh as a complex, viable organ capable of sweat, blemishes and myriad flaws, the private joy of sensuality, eroticism and self-assuredness portrayed through subtle gestures and the narrative elements of her work—inviting a push-pull between the visual and tactile— have continued to resonate. As the critic, David Bourdon wrote, “What makes [Feuerman’s technical proficiency] all the more powerful is that everything she does is in the service of the figure; all her attention is devoted to achieving verisimilitude. The works are like mirrors, but, like the mirror one encounters in fairytales and myths, they reveal a deeper truth about us.”

The General's Daughter (detail), 2008, o/r. Photo:David Finn

In her conversation with me, the artist underscored that she wants her sculptures to function as a book, revealing glimpses of the inner life of her characters. But, while messaging in the visual arts, unlike story-telling, is denied the luxury of unfolding over time, Feuerman’s work nevertheless embodies the element of time as an essential component of its impact on the viewer. Her narrative is never fully disclosed, often hidden behind closed eyes and self-satisfied gestures of confidence and eroticism. This rarified atmosphere of self-confidence, mystery and anticipation opens the door to a range of reactions and feelings. Each work, carefully crafted to defy simple interpretation and deflect full disclosure, becomes a Rorschach test—or perhaps a tabula rasa—onto which we project our own impulses, thoughts and emotions. Feuerman’s sculptures may seem frozen in time, but they persist in revealing themselves at particular moments of intimacy, heightened sensory awareness and vulnerability; thereby inviting us to consider our physicality, and our own stories, during an encounter with her work; asking whether we could embrace, once again, the sensual world that we, too, once knew this well.

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

Carole Feuerman’s awards and schedule of past, present and future exhibitions are too numerous to mention here. To see more of her work and learn more about the artist and her accomplishments, go to: http://www.carolefeuerman.com/

Or Jim Kemper Fine Art’s artnet site at: http://www.jimkempnerfineart.com/

Alfred Wertheimer, Going Home (1956) Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Wash. D.C.

From December 24th to March 8th, 2012, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts will host Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer, a collaborative exhibition developed by the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, and Govinda Gallery, and made possible through the support of the History channel. The idea of images of a pop culture icon displayed in such hallowed halls may raise the eyebrows of those whose sense of the Portrait Gallery is of a museum dedicated to the “art of portraiture,” or as an august arena for the presentation of such notable figures as the presidents. But–just as he did when he electrified the nation in 1956—Elvis at 21 will inevitably alter the beat of everyday Gallery life.

In photographs taken by Alfred Wertheimer in 1956, Elvis at 21 documents the explosive rise of a 21-year-old singer named Elvis Presley. A young freelance photographer, Wertheimer was hired to take publicity shots of Presley, but then “tagged along” and was able to capture Elvis’s transit to superstardom. For this exhibition, Wertheimer took his negatives to pioneer printmaker David Adamson, and the resulting 56 large format pigment prints provide a stunning storyboard of fame. fine arts magazine

Alfred Wertheimer, Starburst (1956) Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Wash. D.C.

The collection of Elvis images originally began its national tour at Washington’s National Portrait Gallery. Elvis at the National Portrait Gallery, you might ask?! Indeed! The Gallery is primarily a museum devoted to the personality of history, with a focus on those “who have had a significant impact on American life and culture” through “the art of portraiture.” Amidst this bipolar identity, the Gallery has managed to establish a reputable pop culture repertory with such major exhibitions as Champions of American Sport (1981), On the Air: Pioneers of American Broadcasting (1987), and Red, Hot & Blue: A Smithsonian Salute to the American Musical (1996). Located in the heart of the sports and entertainment district of the nation’s capital, the Gallery is working to spotlight its sports and entertainment collections: the recent Americans Now exhibition of contemporary popular culture stars has proved to be a magnet for visitors.

Alfred Wertheimer, Jump (1956) Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Wash. D.C.

Focusing on a pop culture icon also allows us to consider the idea of ‘portrait’ from a different perspective—that of “the image.” Elvis’s image fits well with the postwar intellectual framework established by Marshall McLuhan, in which ‘the image’ becomes a cultural medium with a specifically-crafted “message.” As these photographs of Elvis illustrate, the idea of ‘the image’ was a defining element in the rise of media-generated celebrity culture. In the late nineteenth century, the graphic revolution created a technology able to disseminate stories and illustrations of famous people in an ever-widening arc. The emergence of such mass media as recordings, motion pictures, magazines, radio, and ultimately television vastly expanded the audience for fame and celebrity. With the rise of modern celebrity, the selection of ‘the famous’ became an election, only instead of a ballot box there was a box office, a corner newsstand, a recording industry, and a pop culture media that made celebrities part of everyday life.

In the mid-1950s, television was the new celebrity-generating medium, and Elvis—through several live performances in 1956 that launched him to stardom—broadcast a message of cultural transformation. The photographs in Elvis at 21 depict an image of youth and newness, but also document the face of a personality who jangled the calm of ‘peace and prosperity. To a culture of conformity, conspicuous consumption, and cars with fins, Elvis represented an intrusion as shocking as Sputnik would be a year later: he energized the emerging youth culture and helped create a new consumer market fueled by radio, recordings, and movies. His popularity also helped catalyze a revolution in the entertainment industry, paving the way for rhythm and blues, gospel, and rock into mainstream culture.

Alfred Wertheimer, Entering the Warwick (1956) Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Wash. D.C.

When the keepers-of-tradition began to understand the message of the Elvis image, red flags of warning sprouted across the landscape. Elvis was lumped with such other threatening new pop culture figures as James Dean—clearly, the image of leather-and-denim-clad ‘juvenile delinquents’ clashed harshly with the gray-flannel suit generation. One cultural steward, popular television host Steve Allen, invited Elvis to appear on his variety show, but forced him to wear white-tie-and-tails and sing “Hound Dog” with…a hound dog.

Elvis’s rise to stardom happened in a single year—from January 1956 to January 1957—and reflected television’s emergence as a cultural denominator. These were years of enormous social change, a feeling well-captured by the photographs of Elvis’s 27-hour train ride from New York to Memphis. These images evoke a different America altogether in a journey that rolled through cities, small towns, and farmlands with ‘all deliberate speed.’ Elvis is shown still remarkably alone, mixing unnoticed with everyone else on board, family and strangers, black and white.

With a cinematic luminosity, the photographs document a time when Elvis could sit alone at a drugstore lunch counter or wander unnoticed in mid-town Manhattan. But then things change, and he walks through the door to the rest of his life. What is remarkable is that Wertheimer was there. The exhibition’s final image is a brilliant moment of culmination: Elvis is onstage, saturated by a light that Wertheimer describes as a ‘starburst.’ It is an epochal image—the literal flashpoint of fame.

By Amy Henderson, Co-curator, Elvis at 21

Historian, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

See more of what Richmond’s VMFA is exhibiting at: www.vmfa.state.va.us

Visit the Smithithsonian National Portrait Gallery at www.npg.si.edu

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Left: Chris Antemann (detail), A Tea Party (2010), porcelain, decals, luster. Kamm Teapot Foundation Collection. artes fine arts magazine

Fuller Crafts Museum, Brockton, MA

When figurines succeed in pushing the envelope of our assumptions, they do so because the radical social narrative staked out by much of today’s contemporary art has not typically considered the artist working in clay, particularly on a diminutive scale. But, this exhibit challenges that premise, doing so in ways that open doors for a powerful body of work from figurative artists working in the ceramic medium. According to Gail Brown, with a long history of curating in the crafts world, “the work of these contemporary artists features diverse ideas, arresting forms, and provocative subjects [which] illustrate the continually-evolving tradition of figurative ceramics. These monumental and meaningful statements in small formats hold a fascinating disproportionate power—adding dramatic resonance and a sense of intimate communication.”

Ronna Neuenschwander, an artist exhibiting in the show (below, left), provides a prospective on mankind’s long-standing fascination with the creation of figurative talismans: “Humans have had the urge to create and possess figurines since prehistoric times. The Venus of Hohls Fels, the first of the venus figurines was made approximately 40,000 years ago, and is the oldest example of figurative prehistoric art. This figure was presumed to be an amulet related to sexuality and fertility. Likewise, the Venus of Willendorf, created in 22,000 BCE holds a power mysterious and intriguing. It is believed that people created and carried or wore figurines to give protection or the powers they desired. The attraction of figurines then and now tends to be one of identifying with certain attributes one wants to acquire. Today we create and collect these figurines to identify with their qualities- be they elite, genteel and refined, or exotic and provocative-they are powerful and desirable. By taking the gamut of these images, and disassembling them, we may get a fresh look at who we are and what we yearn to be.”

Left: (far) Ronna Neuenschwander, Breaking  the Mold I (2011), ceramic mosaic, grout. Courtesy of the artist; (near) Venus of Willendorf (24-22,000 BCE, stone. Collection Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Inspired by the past, yet distanced from it, Fresh Figurines is redolent with contemporary political and popular cultural messaging, intent on recasting gender roles, social mores and self image; re-worked with a generous infusion of traditional glazes, eerily-familiar motifs (for those of us who remember that knick-knack shelf of our childhood) and re-appropriated classical themes. Curator, Brown, makes the point in her overview of the exhibition that, “Throughout history, small-scale, self-contained article endure: from artifacts, effigies and tomb objects to exquisitely-crafted handmade figures and scenarios referencing life style and social mores, the pop culture of the day and the celebration of tribal figures, in situ. From European porcelain houses, Chinese export porcelain, and English folk ceramics, to the glut of manufactured collectibles with retail goals focused on the mantle piece and, since the days of the Grand Tour, the unrelenting, international plethora of tawdry and ubiquitous tourist souvenirs, figurines reign. The presence and persistence of these formats—from objet d’art to the commodities of the day—inspire and/or provoke.”

In its historical context, the name ‘china’ is a direct reference to the origins of porcelain in China over 3000 years ago. In the seventeenth century, trading routes were established between the Far East and Europe introducing this refined and translucent ceramic to a new continent.

The Painting Room, Meissen Factory, ca. late 19th C.

Europeans were fascinated by the beauty and mystery of porcelain. The tremendous demand for porcelain as well as the inherent difficulty in transport inspired many Europeans to attempt to replicate its qualities. Unlike cruder forms of earthenware, porcelain is industrially made, specifically with the fine, white clay of decomposed granite rock. This white clay is what gives porcelain its beautiful translucency. It was not until 1709 that German chemist, Johann Friedrich Böttger, in collaboration with two other chemists, devised a formula for porcelain. The following year, production commenced in the small town of Dresden. The factory was later moved to the more metropolitan city of Meissen as insulation from the political turmoil that was taking place in the European countries, east of Germany.

In its first few decades, the Meissen factory manufactured mostly table service. It wasn’t until the late 1730′s that a talented young sculptor by the name of Johann Joachim Kändler created small figurines in porcelain. Soon, the entire royal court community had their likenesses reproduced as delicate figurines. For many generations to follow, these intricately-executed porcelain figures served as a principle main-stay for the original Meissen Company, inspiring many other manufacturers on the Continent and in England to follow suit.

Chris Antemann (detail), A Tea Party (2010), porcelain, decals, luster. Kamm Teapot Foundation Collection

Among the forty-two artists whose sculpture makes up the eye-opening Fresh Figurines exhibit, certain pieces garnered particular attention. The show’s pièce de résistance is a multi-figure work, clearly informed by the Meissen legacy: Chris Antemann’s A Tea Party. In a cleverly-conceived display of overstatement, a banquet table is heaped with confections of every imaginable variety. This is action-central for a gathering of naked men and barely-clothed, coquettish women, languishing over tea and titillation, reminiscent of the salacious dinner-seduction scene from ThomasFielding’s 1749 fictional narrative, Tom Jones. The drama and sexual energy being played out between party guests is skillfully captured by Antemann’s deft manipulation of clay at the subtlest level. The ‘fourth wall’ is clandestinely breached by an alluring seductress, who invites the viewer into the party. She sits astride her chair, semi-concealed from her naked courtier by a fan, making sly eye contact with museum-goers, as we vicariously—if only momentarily—become part of the festivities. The artist summarizes the work when he writes, “I am expanding upon my previous parodies of decorative figurines by delving into the darker side of relationships and domestic rites: twisted tales of master and servant, the innocence of the maid, the dominance of patriarchal desire. Tricked out in frilly camouflage, these characters disregard tradition, exposing society’s cistern of unmentionables.”

Pavel Amromin, The Photographer (2008), porcelain, glaze, underglaze, luster. Courtesy, the artist.

Another work that addresses the curatorial observation of “added drama and inverse power to the diminution of size by the material prowess, complexity of narrative, uninhibited natures and significant social comment,” is The Photographer, one of a series of works on display by Pavel Amromin. Benign-looking, floppy-eared domesticated creatures, depicted in soft, earth-tone pastel glaze, play out their small dramas on Baroque gold-trimmed stands, lush with delicate beds of grass and fanciful flowers. On closer examination, though, they are strangely hybridized human figures with dog-like heads, engaged in acts of atrocity and inhumanity. In one scene, a weapon-bearing creature, naked except for black combat boots, blithely photographs another naked, dead body—thoughtless and insensitive, perhaps; but symptomatic of our “war breaks out, details at 11!” cultural ethic.

For Amromin, the artist, “There is a long tradition in art, literature and film by which the act of war is venerated and integrated into the social fabric. Gore and terror of combat are transformed into a bittersweet adventure of shared courage, sacrifice and nobility. Chaos is turned into order and the senseless gains meaning. The same transformation occurs in the work, however while some things are sanitized and glazed over, some are left in plain sight. The figurine has long been an object representing the jubilant self-image of the patron. It asks: ‘Is this glory? Is this the dignity, purity and beauty of a soldier’s mission?’”

Cynthia Consentino, Virgin II (2011), commercial figurine, dolls legs, mixed media. Courtesy, the artist.

Fresh Figurines brings home the message of the sacred, as well as the profane. A piece by Cynthia Consentino offers a gently humanizing perspective on a familiar icon; although the artist expressed a concern at the show’s opening that it might offend some. Her Virgin II invites a reconsideration of the classic, prayerful pose of Mary, mother of the Christ Child, with parting blue robes and oversized legs in plain view. This theantropic interpretation is designed to shed light on our humanity, as well as on the subject, herself. It calls the question of idealizing our New Testament heroine and invites a more immediate (and perhaps genuine) connection to universal motherhood—someone without the trappings of myth, and capable of ‘standing on her own two feet.’

Consentino notes, “Virgin II is part of a new series of sculptures incorporating commercial figurines with sculpted parts. Taking the ubiquitous knick knack, or religious statue and altering it allows for new meaning and a broadened role for the familiar. Originally a white porcelain figurine (stopping below elbows) her lower body was sculpted and commercial doll legs were added to complete her figure. It is not meant to be irreverent but rather be a playful re-examination of an influential figure.”

Jeremy R. Brooks, Form-Form (2011), cast plaster, paint. Courtesy, the artist.

Equally as compelling as Virgin II, but for different reasons, is Jeremy Brooks’s Form-Form, an enigmatic work whose flowing organic, blue-gray painted form stands out in marked contrast to other more figurative pieces in the exhibit. Perhaps informed by Edward Tufte’s Negative Space studies or Rachael Whiteread’s 1993 groundbreaking, House, Form-Form explores a hidden construct that undergirds a familiar object: the space beneath a garden statue of Jesus. Denatured through transformation, this subtly-conceived form of rolling contours and intriguing shifts of light and dark becomes a discourse on one of many hidden structural underpinnings, forever unnoticed in our daily rituals (imagine: bridge girders beneath your commuter route; the shapes on the underside of your dining room table, the dank tunnel complex beneath a steam-emitting manhole cover).

Rachael Whiteread, House (1993), concrete.

Brooks challenges the viewer to find beauty in the mundane, in the same way that the visible Jesus that inspired his work—an iconic all-weather figure of Christian salvation—is slip-cast in Hydrocal and painted to achieve mimetic value as a model for beauty, truth and salvation. By virtue of its ubiquity, it then becomes a numbingly-familiar fixture in the landscape. What is hidden, and subsequently revealed, he believes, can also achieve renewed relevance and aesthetic appeal. He describes it this way: “Form-Form is a cast interior space of a slip-cast figurine (Jesus in the Garden). It testifies to a shifted use of material, form and concept. The work is categorized by a search for the tension that exists between an initial iconographic source […] and a related abstract form—the cast interior space of the figurine.”

Hide Sadohara, Untitled (2011), Recycled Stoneware. Courtesy, the artist.

Mortality may be the message of Hide Sadohara’s wall sculptures, Untitled: images of an aging Popeye and Olive Oyle, constructed of recycled stoneware. Reminiscent of animated cartoon shorts from the 1950s and 60s, we are asked to recall a pre-pubescent time when notions of immortality and invincibility went unexamined; a pre-politically correct period in our history when villains with black hats and curly mustaches could pummel the hero with impunity, only to then see him miraculously return to normal and save the girl! Sadohara stares into the faces of these mythic figures and imagines their humanity. No slick airbrush or forgiving artist’s hand here. In defiance of the once-heroic gods and goddesses of ancient Olympus, the tribulations of aging can be seen extracting a toll on our contemporary version of a muscle-bound, spinich-guzzling Zeus and demurring Aphrodite.

Abraham Lincoln said, “By age forty, you get the face you deserve.” For Sadohara’s once-ageless Popeye character, a hard life, fear and conflict—a roadmap of furrows, wrinkles and contorted features—seem writ large on the face of the figure. More a metaphor for the human condition than a caricature, Sadohara’s work reminds the viewer (who is compelled to make eye contact because of the way the piece is hung), that Popeye (and Olive, also on display) may have been heroes for another, simpler time; and that for each of us, the passage of time brings us closer to confronting our own frailties and demise. As the artist describes it, “My intention for this particular piece is to provoke the sense of irony by making them life size, especially when the (invited) artists were asked to execute their work within the context of the figurine format/size. I also decided to finish my work with the realistic rendition of the human anatomy. There is something unnerving about seeing cartoon characters brought to life when those same features are stuck on the face of a realistic depiction of that character.”

Paul Delaroche, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833), o/c. National Gallery, London.

I am reminded of Paul Delaroche’s monumental 1833 narrative painting, The Execution of Lady Jane Gray—a poignant study of adolescent innocence and courage in the face of royal predatory ambition—when I view Jessica Stoller’s Untitled, in the exhibit. For generations of National Gallery visitors, the work has served as reminder of the expendable role of women at the dawn of an age when enlightened thinking would not-quite-soon-enough redefine gender and social roles, as Western Europe inched toward modernism. Stoller evokes tales of risk and mortality linked to beauty and social station in her figurative representation of a severed head resting beneath the frivolous adornments of privilege. Vibrant and attractive women gone missing, later to be found dead and dismembered, could be story ripped from today’s headlines, and then rendered here in clay.

Jessica Stoller, Untitled (2010), porcelain, china paint, luster. Courtesy, the artist.

And so, Stoller applies the modeling techniques of another, more romantic era, to weave a tale of death and perverted ambition, proffering a dose of irony in the process. Deceptively charming and initially perplexing, it is only with more careful study of the piece does the realization dawn that something is amiss here.

Stoller’s oeuvre, as she describes it (only one piece appeared in Fresh Figurines), would likely resonate with the London crowds often found studying Delaroche’s Jane Gray—a painting with appeal to generations of museum-goers—as a study in the fine line between virtuous innocence and feminine ambition, power and its perversion. As she puts it, “The figures in my work range from Rococo nobility and adolescent girls in petticoats and bows, to women evoking religious martyrs of the past. The notion of these collected objects as predominantly decorative, weak and inherently female are subverted as the figures depicted are purposely innocent and sexual, self-sacrificing and violent, powerful and unaware of the power they possess. Through figures with contorted facelifts, bound feet with miniature dimensions and oddities which inspire imitation and awe, I examine cultural ideas of perfected beauty and its relationship to the grotesque. Through seemingly benign in content and size, my figurines hint at an alternate world of intricate perversion.”

Linda Cordell, Jolie Laide Masquerade (2011), porcelain, bronze, foam. Courtesy, the artist.

With just a partial sampling of the wide variety of works on display at the Fuller Craft Museum’s Fresh Figurines reviewed here, it is well worth the trip to discover, in Gail Brown’s curated show, the enduring power of small-scale works to enthrall in the world where the focus is often on BIG. Figurative ceramics appeal, for reasons linked to our collective unconscious as a symbol-rich civilization, for their effigaic properties, their paired-association to childhood memories and comforting domiciles long-vanished, as well as to our instinctive propensity to collect. This last point ushers in a connection to the work in Fresh Figurines worth underscoring. With many of the companies producing figurines for decades, if not hundreds of years (i.e.-Meissen, Hummel, Nymphenburg, Della Robbia, Chinese traditional porcelain, to name a few), links to a contemporary audience are well-established and well-known. But, once again, these are not your grandmother’s porcelains.

While glazing and firing techniques have remained largely unchanged over the years, contemporary works imagined and executed by ceramicists are extending the boundaries of the art form to new frontiers. Politically and socially informed, technically agile and heaped with narrative purpose, today’s Fresh Figurines are not merely anchored in the past, but act as powerful and compelling messengers about a post-modern world-in-flux. I believe exhibiting artist, Linda Cordell (above left), summarizes the agenda of the contemporary ceramicist best when she says, “Figurines are social propaganda; carefully displayed vignettes announce beliefs, ideals and desires of the owners. The artifice of portraying an animal in an idealized setting defies our unease and contentious relationship with nature. The distortion and abstraction of the platform contrasts with the diminished masked object—nothing is what it seems.”

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

Fresh Figurines: A New Look at an Historic Art Form

Fuller Crafts Museum, Brockton, MA

Now through February 5, 2012

View their diverse collection and exhibition schedule at www.fullercraft.org

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

Willem de Kooning, Woman III (1953). Private Collection

 “The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.”  —Willem de Kooning

They say that autumn is the time when the boundary between the living and the dead; worldly and other worldly; waking and dreaming; and the conscious and unconscious mind, is minimal. If so, the moment is right to look at Willem de Kooning’s layered retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Works are scraped, drawn, pastel filled and painted to elicit the passage of time, and in describing origins, merge the seen and unseen, and what no longer exists. In this space, the artist has poured himself throughout a lifetime of intertwining, which appears, like DNA in the final galleries. There can be no more graphic depiction of the intimate autobiographical workings of a man within his time…but also without time. artes fine arts magazine

W. de Kooning, Special Delivery (1946). Coll. Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Gallery, Wash., D.C.

DeKooning’s permeable works — figurative within abstractions, then abstractions at the end of his life that danced away like figures – lodge in the psyche. Once characterized as out of step with his contemporaries, the Abstract Expressionist of the New York School, de Kooning’s work conveys the sensation that everyone else was out of sync. His oeuvre was more personally exploratory, iconoclastic and multiple in approach than a movement. The art critic Thomas Hess wrote of de Kooning’s 1946 work, Special Delivery, “Shapes do not meet or overlap or rest apart as planes; rather there is a leap from shape to shape; the ‘passages’ look technically ‘impossible.’ This is a concept which comes from collage, where the eye moves from one material to another in similar impossible bounds. De Kooning often paints ‘jumps’ by putting a drawing into a work-in-progress, sometimes painting over it and then removing it, using it as a mask or template, sometimes leaving it in the picture.”

The most psychologically ambiguous works come midway through the exhibition in the seminal Women I, II, III series. Are they hostile? No. Are they kind? No. They resonate because they are the way that a woman can be. Never have I identified as closely with these paradoxes, or been clenched by as raw a visceral grip as through these paintings, whether viewing them for the first time, over twenty five years ago, for the duration of this show. Like the Archangel Michael, de Kooning’s Women carry the balance of heaven and hell, demon and goddess, both represented seductively in the schema of their personas.

(Left, near) Juan de la Abadia, St. Michael Weighing Souls(1490), Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunga, Barcelona, SP; (L,far) W. de Kooning, Woman with Bicycle (1952-53).

Of the Women series, de Kooning made references of a kind of transcendent influence: “First of all, I felt everything ought to have a mouth. Maybe it was like a pun…maybe it’s even sexual…I don’t know why I did it with the mouth. Maybe the grin. It’s rather like the Mesopotamian idols, you know. They always stand up straight looking to the sky with this smile, like they were just astonished about the forces of nature, you feel – not about the problems they had with one another.” The gaze is otherworldly.

Hess analyzed de Kooning’s works for their process and for their armature, particularly since in the case of the drawings Woman (Seated Woman I) and Untitled (Two Women), the narrative was essentially unfathomable. He said, “The vectors of the drawing seem to have become the parts of a giant watchworks which tick around the figure, hiding, revealing, then hiding her again as if she had become a part of time…perhaps some idea about the bending nature of space and time informs this image.”

W. de Kooning, Self-Portrait with Imaginary Brother (c.1938).

The’ jump’, a visual and psychological synapse through the void, the convergence of space and time as well as its ‘bending’ all point to a non-linear universe by which de Kooning was compelled. In April of 1937, John Graham published an essay in, Magazine of Art, entitled; ‘Primitive Art and Picasso,’ where the artist and African sculpture were discussed in the context of Jungian psychoanalytic theory.  According to the chronology in John Elderfield’s brilliantly comprehensive exhibition catalog, de Kooning remembered borrowing this article from Jackson Pollock. That February Graham had published System and Dialectics in Art, which weighed the impact of Carl Jung’s theory of the unconscious relative to art. A materialized unconsciousness appeared early in de Kooning’s Self-Portrait with Imaginary Brother (c. 1938). The personal unconscious and collective consciousness later collided and manifested themselves in de Kooning’s Women. A more gender ambivalent dialogue between animus and anima appeared in Figure (1944). Preceding depictions of Men examined the subject, together with what was felt. The emotional content was wrought by eroded or compounded layers that created an aura of the mystical feminine around the sitter. The effect is one of memory – simultaneously past and contemplated – that evolved in Men, then the Women, and finally became decomposed and deconstructed in the landscape abstractions.

W. de Kooning, Seated Figure (Classic Male), 1940.

Throughout this 200-work retrospective there are penetrating (early) and exhilarating (later) works. Undeniably, this is a landmark: it is the first major museum exhibition devoted to the artist’s entire oeuvre, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, is its only venue. (de Kooning’s first one man exhibition, at Charles Egan Gallery, opened at the time of his forty-fourth birthday, so this delay is perhaps symmetrical.) Less subjective are the quantifications: approximately 16,000 square feet, or, the museum’s entire sixth floor gallery space is given over to de Kooning: A Retrospective. Among the artist’s most famous paintings, Pink Angels (1945), Excavation (1950) and the celebrated third Woman series are presented, together with breakthrough black and white compositions (1948-49), where one discovers that a line is not a line, but rather a Rorschach test.

Every period and medium with which the artist was engaged is present, including the largely unseen (no pun intended) theatrical back-drop, the 17-foot Labyrinth (1946). Equally unguarded and sweeping was Jerry Saltz’s seminal review in the September 20 issue of New York Magazine which he concluded by saying “I challenge any of them (the curators) to name one thing wrong with any work on view here. What we see, from beginning to end, is a cosmos unto itself, visual wisdom for the ages.”

W. de Kooning, Black Untitled (1948). Coll. Metropolitan Museum of Art

The show begins with the primordial soup of de Kooning’s early cosmos – the deep and dark amorphic oil on paper/cardboard mounted on wood compositions like Nightsquare (c. 1949) and Black Untitled (1948), which seem animated by ghostlike forces and which were informed by events such as seeing Merce Cunningham dance, evading the too literal metaphors of developing Surrealism, and experiencing the bombing of Hiroshima. These curvilinear works flourished with an expressionist infusion throughout the years. As witnessed by de Kooning’s academic representational still lifes that toy with volume and the figurative drawings that hint at alienation, de Kooning was always interested in more than meticulous rendering where he felt he would “loose his mind.” He alludes to dimensions beyond the seen, metaphysics, and a fascination with vortices of space. De Kooning said, “The stars I think about, if I could fly. I could reach in a few old fashioned days. But physicist’s stars I use as buttons, buttoning up curtains of emptiness. If I stretch my arms next to the rest of myself and wonder where my fingers are – that’s all the space I need as a painter.” Stars as buttons summons the transcendent William Blake, whose power is revisited here.

W. de Kooning, Untitled XII (1982)

Once the viewer has penetrated the vast waves and oceans that constituted the artist’s unmediated mind, and is treated to the less seen, heavy and gnarled sculpture, an epiphany occurs. When one steps into the bright light of the late works – these accomplished while the artist was in the throes of Alzheimer’s disease – refine, rework and cultivate anew a lyricism to express the formless form, the unembodied volume, the definite indefinite. As de Kooning climbed closer to his own white light, the palette becomes sublimely light, innocent and pure, the lines uncomplicated and devoid of gravitas.

Tony Vaccaro, de Kooning painting in East Hampton, L.I. studio (1953)

Theodor Adorno, the writer on classical music had this to say about de Kooning’s final epoch: “The power of subjectivity in the late works of art is the irascible gesture with which it takes leave of the works themselves. It breaks their bonds, not in order to express itself but in order, expressionless, to cast off the appearance of art. Of the works themselves, it leaves only fragments behind, and communicates itself, like a cipher, only through the blank spaces from which it has disengaged itself. Touched by death, the hand of the master sets free the masses of material that he used to form; its tears and fissures, witness to the finite powerlessness of the ‘I confronted with Being’ are its final work.” de Kooning moved toward the infinite metaphorically, in afterlife; during life it was a concept he channeled and which sustained him.

By Diane Dewey, Contributing Writer ©2011

The exhibition is on view at the Museum of Modern Art through January 9, 2012

www.moma.org

Controversial Smithsonian Air & Space 2011 Military Unmanned Aircraft Exhibit

Editor’s Note: Here, Ken Yellis’ analysis of the museum world gains particular currency in today’s political climate: because, most recently, on Saturday, October 8, 2011, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington was closed after anti-war demonstrators swarmed the building to protest a drone exhibit. Security guards used pepper spray to repel them, sickening a number of protesters.

The museum’s exhibition, “Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” covers the history of unmanned aircraft and their current use as offensive weapons. Drones are often called the weapon of choice of the Obama administration, which quadrupled drone strikes against al-Qaida targets in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, up from less than 50 under the Bush administration to more than 220 in the past three years.

In an increasingly polarized political and social atmosphere of American values-in-transition, an exhibition of this kind can often serve as a hair-trigger for shaping public opinion. The questions surrounding the role of the museum, acting as a venue for an exposition of often-controversial facts—on display for public consideration—appears ever more cogent.

I have to ask myself: Did I let a teachable moment slip away? artes fine arts magazine

Col. Paul Tibbets, pilot of Enola Gay, plane that dropped atomic bomb on Hiroshima, waves from cockpit before takeoff, August 6, 1945. Source: Nat’l Archives

In my 2009 article, Fred Wilson, PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder], and Me: Reflections on the History Wars (Curator: The Museum Journal, 52:4, Fall, 2009), I predicted that an episode like the recent controversy about the National Portrait Gallery exhibition, Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, would soon happen:

“The field has to find a way to heal our professional PTSD. Enola Gay [a controversial exhibition project, The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, that roiled Smithsonian in the mid-1990s] was a cautionary episode. One of the lessons learned from it is that grappling with difficult and contested subject matter need not in itself be fatally toxic — but you’d better be ready. I think we are more wary, but I also sense and hope that we are lately showing a little more willingness to pick an occasional fight. The difference is that now when we go into the saloon, we make sure we are packing and that buddies have our back.”

A-Bomb exploding over Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

As it turned out, my optimism about how such an episode would play out was wholly unjustified. Hide/Seek demonstrated that in the current cultural landscape, you can’t just prepare for one bar fight and stay out of all the others: there are bars all over the place and the air is thick with truculence. To explore the Hide/Seek story in greater detail, a good place to start is the video of the morning session of a conference held on April 9, 2011, Hide/Seek: Museums, Ethics and the Press, organized by the Institute for Museum Ethics at Seton Hall University, available at http://www.museumethics.org/ . At this event, Sullivan described how NPG and Smithsonian prepared for a different fight from the one they found themselves in. The exhibition was intended to push the envelope on forms of gender representation. Smithsonian leadership had not anticipated that the envelope might push back on an entirely different subject: how religious symbols are used in art.

Poster Image of David Wojnarowicz (Silence = Death), Photo: Andreas Sterzing (1989)

A dimension of the story the conference did not fully address is what I have long considered the great unanswered—because unasked—question of the museum field: what do we mean when we make an exhibition? On January 20, 2011, the Huffington Post reported that Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough stated that he decided to pull A Fire in My Belly from the show, “because the controversy had overshadowed the exhibition and threatened to spiral beyond control into a debate on religious desecration.” Clough and the Smithsonian PR apparatus reiterated that mantra—one is tempted to say cover story—frequently over the following months. I am happy to report that if the removal of the abbreviated version of David Wojnarowicz’ video, A Fire in My Belly, was, indeed, intended to change the subject, Mission Accomplished.

(Editor’s Note: In December, 2010, a short, 4-minute edit of a larger film-work by late artist David Wojnarowicz was removed from the exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) after it was deemed objectionable by certain religious groups. The 4-minute film featured a 11-second sequence of insects crawling on a crucifix).

Once the video was gone, an entirely new—and potentially more productive—debate developed, centered on an issue Smithsonian was no less unprepared to address: will the Smithsonian—or any cultural institution dependent on taxpayer support—ever be in a position to defend the intellectual integrity of its work and, not incidentally, to honor its commitments to its lenders and private sources of funding?

The answer may turn out to be maybe. On the Smithsonian website, Clough reassured us that he is “committed to improving these processes so that this Institution can meet the challenges of its public mission, including our role in educating about complex topics that involve social transitions or incorporate, in art or objects, cultural or religious symbols.” Not so committed as to educate us about complex topics that incorporate in art or objects cultural or religious symbols in this case, it appears, but in a general way at some uncertain point in the not-so-proximate future, Smithsonian might be up for taking this on.

The B-29, Enola Gay. Part of mid-90s Smithsonian exhibit, The Last Act: The Atomic bomb and the End of World War II

Clough has said several times that if he had it to do again he would make the same decision “but…handle it better.” I suppose experience does equip us to screw up with greater efficiency and less collateral damage. But the Secretary may be wrong in both respects. A different process might well have produced a different disposition, however risk- and conflict-averse the decision-makers and fraught the political environment. For one thing, more of the consequences of caving might have been foreseen—and more allies might have stepped forward. For another, what’s the point of a different process if it doesn’t open up the possibility that you might wind up somewhere else? If Clough is right, however, to say that changing the process would not have produced a different outcome—except for making more people complicit in the decision—what purpose would changing the process serve?

In fact, there was a more deliberative process that might have been followed but was, instead, bypassed. My experience tells me that CEOs often get where they are in life because of their ability to take the hit now and move on, rather than subject themselves to what they perceive as prolonged agony. But future cases may have different outcomes for another reason: Clough and his successors as Secretary may find Smithsonian’s bureau directors less willing to allow their autonomy to be compromised, restoring something more akin to the power balance in effect in the Smithsonian of the 1970s. And there is some evidence that the Hide/Seek episode may have stiffened the Smithsonian bureaucracy’s backbone. The strident voices will not be stilled by attempts to mollify them—they will just find something else to complain about –and the Institution’s leaders may conclude that its support will prove sturdier and more robust if it were actually to stand for something—like, to pick a word at random, excellence. Pandering is no way to build a constituency and has no stakeholders.

It would be a pity if Smithsonian’s sole response to this faux-crisis proved to be organizational reforms, better internal communications, and a more resolute posture, however laudable those measures are. This, too, was a teachable moment when the spiritual dimension of Smithsonian’s work in the world might have been articulated and controverted, and the existing genuine constituency for that work bolstered. But that opportunity went un-seized and may not return; it is not for nothing that Gore Vidal calls this the United States of Amnesia. Still, it is not too late—or too soon—to prepare for the next time by thinking long and hard about that work.

Cri de Coeur and Battle Cry

When I submitted Fred Wilson, PTSD, and Me: Reflections on the History Wars, Curator’s Editor, Zahava Doering, asked, “Why did you write it?” I hemmed and hawed for five minutes without really addressing the question. The correct response would have been, “Beats me.”

The B-29 Superfortress, Enola Gay, with pilot Paul W. Tibbits, Jr. (1945)

But it was a fair question and one I still can’t really the answer. The essay had actually been gestating for a very long time. As it started to take shape, it became clear that it was at least in part about what happened to Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum’s proposed exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the detonation of an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, The Final Act. The project, which most museum people refer to in shorthand as Enola Gay (for the airplane that dropped the bomb) and about which much has been written, triggered a lacerating controversy that inflicted deep wounds on the Smithsonian. Its effect on the museum community, especially on history museums—by far the most numerous kind of museum, by the way—was chilling. Most of us seemed to have decided to avoid bar fights by staying out of bars.

A few years later, moreover, in the aftermath of 9/11, the national narrative seemed to have become murkier and the role of museums in clarifying it more uncertain. In that stressed post-traumatic environment, it was hard to know what to say that would be helpful—and all too easy to say very little. But by the mid-2000s, I had started detecting a growing discomfort about this reticence and the hesitancy of museums to tackle big issues and tell big stories. This unease was accompanied by a greater readiness to attempt something that might be contested, to, in fact, provoke controversy.

Behind this, from an emotional perspective, was the fact that life in the DMZ was both boring and tense, warfare with all the terror and none of the glory. More importantly, we were learning that silence on matters of consequence only seemed safe and that we got no points for not ruffling feathers. On the contrary, by making the work of museums less socially relevant and culturally salient, we risked consigning our institutions to the margins of the national debate. That was unsustainable: we were better off under siege than ignored. If museums sought to demonstrate that they were necessary, they had to take risks. Otherwise, who cares?

If we cannot always anticipate what will trigger these fights, it may be in part because we are not sufficiently self-reflexive. Susan Crane has written that: “The unfortunate lesson of the Enola Gay controversy was just how little publics know about what historians ‘really do’…and just how little-used historians are to having to defend their interpretations before non-academic publics.” I think that’s true but I think further that the museum field needs to be clearer about what we think we are doing when we make an exhibition. If we were, we could embrace these fights as opportunities to spend our prestige on something worth buying: a firmer public understanding of our work and why it matters. That’s ground worth shedding blood for.

Fred Wilson, PTSD, and Me

Above: Baby Carriage with KKK Mask, Mining the Museum, Maryland Historical Society (MdHS),1992-3. See End Note 2.

Yale Peabody, Ken Yellis, Curator, 'Mixed Blessings: The Complex Social Life of Cliff Swallows' (1992). End Note #2a.

My essay attempted to contribute to this process by raising questions about the exhibition medium and the way it is practiced. Is there something about the nature of the medium, or something about the way museums go about doing what they do, or something about the relationship between museums and their visitors—or, perhaps, all three—that makes these outbreaks more likely and, perhaps, inevitable? What are we missing about what we do? What is it about our medium that we fail to understand?

Fred Wilson, Curator, 'Cabinetmaking 1820-1960,' MdHS. End Note #3.

My method was an extended compare-and-contrast discussion of two exhibitions, both a few years before the Enola Gay fiasco: Fred Wilson’s much-celebrated but also much-controverted 1992-1993 exhibition at the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS), Mining the Museum, and an almost exact contemporary, my own, little controverted exhibition, Mixed Blessings: The Complex Social Life of Cliff Swallows, at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Both Mining the Museum and Mixed Blessings arose out of the same desire to challenge visitors. The fact that while both risked controversy, only one encountered any made the compare-and-contrast discussion a good place to start. The article’s second section, ‘Undermining the Museum,’ analyzed Wilson’s out-of-the-box methods and the theoretical issues they posed—the problem of memory and forgetting, the complex relationship and reciprocal responsibilities between institutions and their communities, the changing role of the museum, how museums can break through boundaries of presentation and chronology while being mindful of visitor expectations and needs, and more. (To follow that discussion, go to <<link>>.) The photos and captions that follow give a sense of the different ways in which these exhibitions challenged visitors.

Entrance, 'Mixed Blessings,' at Yale Peabody. End Note #4.

Though both Mining the Museum and Mixed Blessings were small exhibitions, both tackled big ideas. For Mixed Blessings that idea was trade-offs in nature. It had the potential to change the way visitors looked at the natural world: every characteristic and behavior of animals—or, for that matter, plants—would become the subject of the same sort of marginal utility analysis that cliff swallows do on the wing every day of their lives. If you looked at Mining the Museum with the same attention, it would erode some of the smugness or complacency you might feel about the American past. If you were a museum person, it was likely to shake you to the core and force you to confront the choices we make and the language we use. If, as I think and as others have said to me, people go to museums for insight and not so much for information, both exhibitions were worth the trip.

But only Mining the Museum aroused intense feelings among visitors, both positive and negative. There are several possible reasons for this, each of which may be somewhat true. One is the obvious one: nowadays, people are much less misty-eyed about nature than they are about the past. Mixed Blessings in presenting natural history unsentimentally, anticipated the approach that has become commonplace in museums and in other media, notably television. The settings may have played a role, too: visitors might expect uncompromising science in a university natural history museum.

'Truth and Metalwork,' Mining the Museum, MdHS (1992-3). End Note #5

But in an entity named the Maryland Historical Society they would look for a more traditional, even nostalgic or mythological, narrative about the past. It is pretty clear that, compared to natural history, the emotional stakes in public history are very high. Lisa Corrin, Wilson’s collaborator on Mining the Museum wrote that the exhibition “was about how deconstructing the museum apparatus can transform the museum into a space for ongoing cultural debate…. Our audiences told us that they want to be challenged.” But we know from the responses the Maryland Historical Society collected from visitors that at least some told them the opposite. And, as the feedback I received suggests (see below), Mining the Museum seems to have had more impact on how museum professionals think about their work than on how they actually practice it. It may be that in the current risk-averse environment, Mining the Museum remains a largely unrealized fantasy for museum professionals.

Cliff Swallow Colony, 'Mixed Blessings,' Yale Peabody (1992). End Note #6.

For many of us, too, the straightforward but hard-nosed approach taken in Mixed Blessings is more comfortable than the subversive, ironic and guileful cast of mind that created Mining the Museum. And there may be another reason why it is easier: while museums depend on text to convey their messages, lay people seem to understand intuitively that what exhibitions show is vastly more important than what they say about it. This disconnect, in my view, helps account for both the Enola Gay and Hide/Seek controversies—and it may be that to visitors the uninflected text and harsh view of nature in Mixed Blessings matched each other, so it was okay. Visitors, who live in the world, know that the impact of the visual cannot be wholly mitigated by explanatory text.

When we miscalculate this, we guarantee that the exhibition we intend will be very different from the exhibition the visitor experiences. I believe visitors telling us, either by their anger or their silence, that they come to exhibitions to have another kind of experience from what we typically offer. They are teaching us something about our medium that we ought to have known: that we are telling when we should be showing., that we are didactic when we should be seductive, that we are transmitting data when we should be offering insights.

Are our words saying one thing, our choices another? I think so and, apparently, I am not alone.

Image right: ‘Water Jug, Wicker Basket and Painting,’ Mining the Museum (1992-3), Maryland Historical Society. End Note #7.

Writing Fred Wilson brought two very gratifying rewards. One was the pleasure of working with Zahava, Curator Managing Editor Kay Larson, and the perceptive peer reviewers who read the piece to shape it into publishable form. The other was the response to the essay, the steady stream of scintillating and thoughtful emails and conversations.

One of the reasons for this latter phenomenon is that Curator is one of a small handful of museum publications able to accommodate long-form theoretical writing, a gap much felt by museum professionals. In the course of the correspondence, I was struck again and again by what my correspondents saw that I hadn’t quite seen:

The Carriage and the KKK hat were shocking, then put into context, but still not as shocking as the cliff swallows [in forced copulation] Image, left, Mixed Blessings (`92). See End Note #8.… When I first saw it, and read what it was supposed to be, it was disturbing on so many levels. At first, I thought it was just two dead swallows. That was upsetting enough. But when you read the explanation of their existence, the harshness, no beauty as I have been used to in my avid bird watching days. The savagery of the scene is adequately explained. But it does not take away the horror of that picture. It makes it worse.… When I compare the two exhibits, my first thought goes to your discussion of whether to read about the exhibit first, to be prepared, or to be given something on the way out so that you can digest what you have seen, have time to think about it.… My personal feeling is that I would get more from the Mining exhibit taking something to read away at the end. With your Cliff Swallows thou, I needed to have some kind of explanation as I looked at the picture.… I could not, however, have looked at the exhibit and then read about it entirely after I left. I would have missed much of the sensation that I think you wanted people to take away from the exhibit.

As a related outcome, since professional meetings have become so heavily programmed of late, there are fewer opportunities for conversations about these sorts of issues in general. In a series of workshops that Linda Norris and I conducted at conferences last fall, which grew out of an extended email exchange triggered by the article, we were thrilled by the eagerness of our colleagues to think about these matters. Fred and its companion piece, Cueing the Visitor: The Museum Theater and the Visitor Performance, which appeared in Curator 53:1 (Winter 2010), are now appearing on museum studies course syllabi as well, which is gratifying.

The correspondence and conversations suggest to me that a lot of us think or feel that the field is at some kind of a crossroads whose nature is unclear. At first, I was struck by the intensity, emotionality, and insightfulness of the responses. In re-visiting them for this article, however, I have been more moved by the powerful sense of loss and unrealized possibilities—although that sense was by no means universal. I should add, the same range of feelings ran through a discussion thread on the Museum Ethics Listserv that was in part a response to my article and from which I have taken some entries.

One media developer spoke directly to that sense of loss:

“I’ve been thinking about the sense of loss that I have developed during the birth of tech and a few things stand out. I think this sense of dramaturgy is one of the big casualties. In a world where everything is only two or three clicks away, we’ve lost a big chunk of time that focuses our thoughts, and organizes the drama of life experience. In the arts, it’s the loss of skillful narrative, good writing coming out of rigorous thinking, good films that play with the forms of storytelling (and last longer than three minutes)…. As someone who works in a media business I run the risk of being pegged as a dinosaur when I speak of the virtues of narrative film as opposed to web sites.”

Bull Snake Attacking Cliff Swallow Nest,' Mixed Blessings (1992),Yale Peabody. End Note #10

The internal dynamics of project development arose several times as a contributing factor, as these passages from several different correspondents indicate:

“I was lucky enough to see Mining the Museum and it left quite an impression on me as to what an exhibition could be.… I suppose that many of us wanted to use some of those subversive approaches in exhibits we were developing and designing- I know I certainly wanted to. But when it comes to actually putting those ideas into practice, it is far more difficult to get anything like that passed by a committee. There is nothing like a committee to drain an exhibit of poetry, dumb down an aesthetic and kill new ways of looking at things.”

“I recall casually strolling over there at some point during AAM…for a light break from all the hustle of the conference only to be floored by it all. The brave politics aside, I was simply thrilled to see each display as an explicit puzzle to be figured out, each with a clear ‘Oh, I get it!’ moment. I’ll admit that I even remember not ‘getting’ some stuff only to be clued in which was somewhat of a motivating challenge to ‘look closer’ at the other displays…. While most of our past projects have had comparatively tame themes over these past 25 years, I would like to think that they all have had explicit ‘concepts’ that are hoped to be uncovered by the visitor in some creative way.”

“Unfortunately, in museum schools or conferences or in our back rooms, there is too little awareness of how exhibition esthetics coupled with the excitement of intellectual discovery are a powerful combination. Museums ARE places to convey ideas to audiences in ways that are meaningful and engaging and sometimes uncomfortable and shocking. But in our desire to please, and plan by committee, and compromise, and to get things done with shrinking budgets, we’re not serving the public as well as we could. And many don’t seem to be aware of doing things any other way.”

Pikes Used in John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry and Reward Posters for Runaway Slaves, Mining the Museum (`92-3), MdHS. End Note #13

On the other hand, some of my correspondents and participants in the discussion thread were much more positive and inclined to be proactive about the state of the field in this respect:

“I can say that [Wilson’s] approach has directly changed the way I have worked as a curator and the way the museums I have worked in approach their exhibitions (temporary or permanent).… I believe viewers are often more ready to be challenged than museum staff give them credit for. In my experiences, the resistance more often comes from inside the museum (due to complacency, fear of risk, rigid departmental structures) rather than from audiences. I am a firm believer in providing viewers with an engaging and positive museum experience. But I also feel that museums must attempt to go beyond what audiences want or expect if they are really serious about ENGAGING their audiences. It is important to not only engage our audiences within their comfort zones but also to challenge them to exit their own comfort zones (which Wilson does) for deeper and meaningful learning. It is often in those locations of ‘discomfort’ that the most amount of learning needs to and can take place–and those locations can be frightening (both to museum staff and its audiences).…”

“[Mining the Museum’s]importance for me was in revealing that any artifact can be interpreted through different filters. In Film Studies, it is called ‘gaze’ theory — what you see depends on who is seeing it. When Wilson re-interpreted and re-exhibited the artifacts in Mining the Museum, he took the institutional authority away from the Historical Society and its traditional interpretations. But, he didn’t just use that borrowed authority to impose a[n] outside voice’s new interpretation. He challenged the visitors to interpret for themselves by provided two contrasting but accurate solutions to the ‘what is it?’ question. I found this very liberating as a fairly new museum professional. Looking back on the exhibit, I realized that it was liberating for the general audience as well. Much of the ‘imitation’ of Mining the Museum came in history sites and museums’ staff-led re-interpretations of collections away from “who owned it?” to “who made it?” or “who used it?” and the new value given to artifacts of slave and trade populations. There is also a new expectation in art and general museums for artist/guest curators. Rather than simply curating a show to reflect their tastes, they are now empowered to compile exhibitions from the permanent collections and interpret them in first person.”

'Nestling Covered with Blood-Engorged Swallow Bugs,' Mixed Blessings, Yale Peabody (`92). End Note # 14.

End of the Story—or not

So where are we?

Too early to say, I suppose.

Public Survey Responses, Mining the Museum, MdHS. End Note #15.

Because of the power museums are capable of exercising, it is appropriate and necessary that we have fights about what is presented there. Museums are, after all, where the national narrative is blocked out and staged and where our sense of the world is informed, if not shaped. “Perhaps,” Susan Crane writes, “we can also enjoy museums which confound and confabulate.” Perhaps, but the relationship between museums and their audiences has proved far more difficult to re-negotiate than we thought. We have learned to our regret that there is a torrent of rage and tears waiting to break through the fragile membrane of civility at any time.

Still, while for many museum professionals Mining the Museum has been a path not taken, for others, its rewards have transcended its attendant difficulties and risks. We are still aspiring to decipher what his methods reveal about our medium and its largely unrealized potential. So two years after its publication, Fred Wilson, PTSD and Me has made me more resolute in one of my core convictions.

It appears that for visitors as well as professionals museums can and should act as interlocutors between the past and the present, between ourselves and the other—and that we should be ready to take the consequences of doing so. After all, through our portals pass large numbers of people of diverse backgrounds and conditions and interests and learning styles. Their lives are in the process of changing, whether they know it or not; they are in the constant process of learning, whether they know it or not. Museums can, if we choose, assist in these metamorphoses by opening unseen windows on cloaked realities. Or we can retard them. Museum people, some of them at least, are thinking long and hard about who we are supposed to be in this moment. From my perspective, some at least have concluded we have the right and the duty to choose which role to play in this unfolding, epic drama.

By Ken Yellis, Contributing Writer

___________________________________________

End Notes

1. Fred Wilson (pictured left, in 1992) is an artist with an anthropologist’s cast-of-mind and a lot of experience working for and with museums. His exhibition, Mining the Museum, is only one of many he has created in a wide range of settings, but it has had by far the most impact on the museum community, at least in part because its installation coincided with the 1993 annual meeting of the American Association of Museums.

2. The methods Fred Wilson used in Mining the Museum challenged visitors to confront an uncomfortable reality without providing interpretive support or reassurance. Perhaps most upsetting was the placement of a Ku Klux Klan mask in a baby carriage, with a photo nearby of a black nanny caring for a white child. Randi Korn reports overhearing an angry mother saying to her daughter: “I don’t know why they put that thing in there.”

2a. Mixed Blessings started innocently with a flock of more than 150 sculpted swallows swirling through the gothic foyer of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, modeled on the donjon of the medieval Chateau Coucy. A Peabody curator observed that this was entirely appropriate since birds are commonly found roosting and flying in and out of castles, cathedrals, and other buildings.  Since coloniality was the main theme of the exhibition, it made sense that 150 cliff swallow sculptures would also usher visitors from the lobby, up the stairs, to the exhibition on Peabody Museum’s 3rd floor (see image, right).

3. Wilson’s ironically-captioned Cabinetmaking 1820-1960 juxtaposed Victorian chairs with a whipping post for disciplining slaves, making visitors unintentional witnesses of a historical crime.

4. The entrance to Mixed Blessings, conceived by exhibit designer Sarah Buie, frame the exhibition’s centerpiece, a detailed reconstruction of a cliff swallow community, built into the side of a bluff.

5. Juxtaposition and also irony are king here, too, as a silver globe and slave shackles are placed near a model of a slave ship in the Truth and Metalwork section of the exhibition. The visitor is confronted by the oppression that created the wealth that bought the silver.

6. The carefully re-created cliff swallow colony in Mixed Blessings—populated with the skins from the handful of ‘net kills’ (swallows accidentally killed during the course of the research project the exhibition was based on)—displayed the high price cliff swallows pay for living together graphically and unsentimentally.

7. Mining the Museum used typical museum exhibit strategies—object juxtapositions, labels, selective lighting, slide projections, and sound effects—subversively. Thanks to plantation owner inventory book found in the Maryland Historical Society archives, it was possible to add to a label for a rare painting of workers in the fields the names of the depicted slaves—listed in the ledger along with other household property and livestock. Nearby was a water jug and wicker basket some of them might have carried.

8. Another cost of living in a large colony—there are cliff swallow ‘cities’ of more than 4,000 nests—is reproductive interference, which takes many forms. In this scene, a male forces copulation with a female in a neighboring nest to his own, increasing the chances that his genetic material will be passed on and that another male will bear the burden of nurturing some of his offspring.

'Truth Trophy and Pedestals,' Mining the Museum (1992-93) MdHS. End Note #11.

9. “The term ‘mining’ in the exhibition title,” writes Noralee Frankel, “refers to Wilson’s culling of the MHS collections as he created the exhibition. It also suggests the intellectual land mines that place the concept of subjective reality before the visitor through the entire show.” The combination of a punt gun, duck decoys, a doll, and posters offering rewards for runaway slaves exemplifies both meanings of ‘mining’ at work.

10. A voracious bull snake invades a nest to devour eggs, nestlings, and adult swallows. Nests around the colony’s perimeter are especially vulnerable to this kind of predation, against which the birds have no defense.

11. Fred Wilson has said, “I look at the relationship between what is on view and what is not on view.” For him, the busts missing from the pedestals and the Maryland Historical Society collections—Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman—speak volumes about the museum’s unconscious assumptions about the past.

Swallow Destroying Egg from Neighbor's Nest,' Mixed Blessings (`92),Yale Peabody. End Note #12.

12. Many adult swallows remove eggs from neighbors’ nests and replace them with eggs of their own, letting unsuspecting adoptive parents pay the price of feeding their offspring.

13. Fred Wilson has said that “For me, juxtaposition is king. Context is king.” The placement of the pikes used by John Brown’s party in their raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry and reward posters for runaway slaves, whom Brown sought to free, illustrates this principle at work.

14. The highest price cliff swallows pay for their colonial way of life is severe victimization by a particularly nasty and prolific ectoparasite, the bloodsucking Cimicid swallow bug. The only defense the adult swallows have is to abandon the nest; chicks too weak to fly are left behind. The nestling in the photo has fallen out of the nest and is unable to get back in; it will succumb to the swallow bugs or be picked off by a predator.

'Swallow Watching Neighbor Feed Nestling,' Mixed Blessing (`92) Yale Peabody. End Note #16

15. Donald Garfield wrote that the title Mining the Museum “speaks of the effect of Wilson’s approach…to enable disenfranchised communities to at last call a part of the museum ‘mine.’” Randi Korn reported that in the visitor responses collected by the Maryland Historical Society. “There were visitors who were moved to tears by some objects and the meanings that had been hidden from view until now…. African American visitors [found] comfort in the thought that others will now know what they have known for years…. Visitors reported a range of emotions and realizations: some were saddened, some were angry.” Wilson’s colleague Lisa Corrin cited two particular visitor comments: “Mining the Museum has the ability to promote racism and hate in young Blacks and was offensive to me,” wrote one visitor. “I found Mining the Museum ‘artsy’ and pretentious,” stated another. “A museum should answer questions not raise questions unrelated to the subject…. It snookered me”

16. Aggression and strife, parasitism and predation are unavoidable aspects of colonial life, but for cliff swallows living in large colonies improves the survival odds for their offspring. As in the photo, swallows learn the latest whereabouts of insect swarms from their neighbors. In large colonies foraging cliff swallows collect 65 percent of their body weight in insects every hour to feed their young; birds living in solitary nests or small colonies do less than half as well. The more food, the faster nestlings grow, meaning that they will be able to leave the nest before the swallow bugs kill them and they will be strong enough for their long flight to South America at the end of summer.

The crowds at Comic Con `11

As a treat and a belated birthday present, I was fortunate enough to go to New York City Comic Con, one of the East Coast’s largest ‘popular culture’ events, including some of the best-known comic and graphic novel artists, and my favorite– anime and manga characters. The editor of ARTES e-magazine arranged press passes for the event for me and my parents (because I am under 18) and the first thing that stood out for me was how easy our access to the convention was. We had decided that it might be fun to use this opportunity to apply my writing skills to describe the event, becoming the youngest writer to contribute a feature story to the magazine. I was very excited about the possibilities to be at this amazing show and on my first official writing assignment, telling the story from a young-person’s perspective. artes fine arts magazine

Marel Comics' Super Hero Line-Up

My mother, father and I stepped from the subway and out onto the street, walking the four blustery blocks to the Javitz Center, on the city’s West Side. Once outside the building, we were immediately surrounded by a group of costumed, and delightfully geeky convention-goers. Some were just talking to their companions about comic book characters, many were in costume. Among the jovial, costumed pedestrians, one had a rubber snake wrapped around his chest and carried a yellow, construction paper fez. It was now ten a.m., and as we moved at a brisk pace to the main entrance, thanks to our press passes, people wielding megaphones and clad in lime green Comic-Con shirts directed us swiftly past a tight-packed line of people waiting to get in.  After registering and avoiding a half hour’s wait, we entered the main exhibition area, to discover that the size of the projected crowd was still manageable. By this time I was beaming from ear-to-ear, being a longtime lover of manga and anime (short for animation)—the American comics’ Japanese counterpart. Upon entry to the first big room, banners hung from overhead, and tables were loaded with Japanese merchandise. Some tables were edgy, like one that played eerie music and sold metal-studded everything.

That's me road testing an uber-cool Wacom tablet

Other tables were eye popping. One vended fluorescent cat ears, tails, and spiked, punk respirators that were props for cosplaying. Cosplaying is dressing up as a character from an anime or video game series. I loved pointing out to my parents my knowledge of anime characters. A lot of people cosplayed, even as American pop-culture characters. I couldn’t help hugging a few—like a person that cosplayed Jareth from Jim Henson’s movie Labyrinth.

Despite their being a lot of people zipping around, they were all very friendly. It was entertaining to hear them exclaim some of the same thoughts that I had been thinking to myself. If there ever was a term, “All geeks think alike” it would most definitely apply to this convention. There were people beta-testing the newest video games at desks lined with beautiful artwork, and people on a platform trying out the Lets Dance 3 game for the Wii .

Authentic, vintage Japanese hair pieces

Other electronics consisted of Wacom tablets where you draw on a track pad that was connected to a screen; or you could draw directly on a touch screen. While I was waiting to try out the touch screen, to compare it to my tablet at home, there was a lady that was drawing a character with expert strokes. We struck up a conversation and it turned out that she publishes a Internet comic. When I attempted to draw on the screen, I found it rather clumsy because it was an old model, but it also furthered my respect for the artist before me.

Prototypes of action figures in glass cases were swarmed with fans, and occasional uproars came from stages where they talked of video games and ‘fandom.’  The big thing for every vendor was Katanas – Japanese swords – that you could buy, along with other pointy ninja weapons. Unfortunately, you had to be eighteen to hold one, so I wasn’t allowed. Some stalls exhibited intricate action figures, imported games from Japan, and there was also shelf-upon-shelf of Manga.

Upstairs, after a quick lunch break at the cafeteria (where there was a lot of options for good food) we toured the main anime portion of the convention. This room was smaller, but wasn’t crowded and there was a lot more opportunity to talk to the artists.

Art by Zeiva

I was overjoyed to meet an artist that had been a longtime favorite of mine (username Zeiva) that I had followed on an art sharing website—Deviantart. She lives in California, but came to sell absolutely beautiful prints of her digital art. It was fabulous to talk to her about her art and she was very nice, and I couldn’t resist getting a couple of her gorgeous prints. I was star-struck to meet one of my idols. The tables on this higher level were mostly handmade craft artists, there was a lot of clay figures, stickers and buttons. One of the most reoccurring themes for pins were Hayao Miyazaki movies, such as Spirited Away, Doctor Who, Kingdom Hearts and oddly enough, the kid show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. This show, seemingly intended for young girls has earned itself a fan-base of much older viewers, mostly guys, but seems deserving of the vast variety of viewers. Internet centered video’s, called Memes, were also featured, such as Nyan Cat. Beyond these stalls was a big, open atrium with a fantastic view of the Hudson River, complete with food services and demos of card games. Cosplayers unwound at tables and there was a live show discussing various anime-related subjects.

art by Zeiva

Downstairs was another mammoth room, mostly featuring small comic book presses and reading areas. It was mainly focused around the drawn, American comics, which ranged from superhero to realistic dramas. This area connected to the first we had explored earlier in the morning. By this time, it was about three in the afternoon and the crowds were so dense, you had to plow through them, or possibly maneuver through them like a game of Tetris. My parents and I concurred that it was about time to leave, deeming that it was too busy to get anywhere. After soaking in all that I could, I knew it would be better to go, after enjoying myself to the fullest over those last hours. My experience was that it would be difficult to return to a stall later in the day because the isles became too dense with people. But, the turnout of all the fans and junkies was very good for these traveling artists who pay to have stalls and meet the spectacular people that popped up at this convention.

Whether you are a fan or not, this trade show is an amazing experience, and an experience you should have at least once in your life. Even after the convention, I have memories I will relish for years to come. Hope to see you at Comic Con 2012!

By Sasha Rubin, Contributing Student Writer