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Left: Tattered battle flag of the 4^th Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops- part of the ‘Divided Voices’ exhibition. artes fine arts magazine

A Prelude

On September 17, 1862, the armies of Lee and McClellan collided along the Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. In the brutal fight that followed, 25,000 soldiers were killed or wounded—the largest number of casualties in a single day in the history of American arms. The day after the battle ended, Mathew Brady ushered in a new era in photojournalism, sending two of his photographers, Alexander Gardner and James F. Gibson, to document the battlefield strewn with the bodies of the dead “so covered with dust, torn, crushed and trampled that they resembled clods of earth and you were obliged to look twice before recognizing them as human beings.”

Portable photo field studio, complete with darkroom and head-braced chair (see detail in Figure #1, below.).

That October, Brady opened an exhibition titled “The Dead of Antietam” at his New York gallery. Before descending to sentimental platitudes (“that crown which only heroes and martyrs are permitted to wear”), The New-York Times reported that “Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryard, and along the streets, he has done something very like it.” [FIGURE 1 HERE]

As visitors approach the Divided Voices exhibition, they encounter a display of period photography and photographic practice that foreshadows key themes of the exhibition: the critical position of border-state Maryland; the divisiveness that pitted neighbor against neighbor; the transformation of war’s romance and glory into horror and revulsion. Photography also establishes the exhibition’s design ethos and ambience: large photomurals in grainy grays, set off with vivid red, inflect the exhibition, evoking the war’s fog and fire, smoke and blood.

An Overview

'Divided Voices' floor plan. Fig.#2, below. Click to enlarge

Divided Voices occupies a large (4,000 s.f.) gallery. The exhibition is shaped like a large doughnut (see the accompanying floor plan), with an enormous glass case at its center, photomurals on the peripheral wall, and pylons, vitrines, and reader rails animating the landscape between the glassed-in core and the periphery. Visitors follow a linear, counter-clockwise path, returning at the conclusion to their starting point. [FLOORPLAN HERE]

Lincoln’s 1860 election generated fears for “the safety of the Union” Fig. #3, below.

The exhibition opens with a sweeping statement by Stephen A. Douglas (1854): “We are a people for Freedom and a people for Slavery. Between the two, conflict is inevitable.” The first section of the exhibition, “A Long Road to War,” exemplifies white people’s ambivalence about slavery in Maryland. Slavery persisted in some areas, but Maryland also had the largest free African American population in any slaveholding state. In fact, African American Marylanders were almost equally divided between slaves and freedmen, and Baltimore had the largest number of free blacks of any American city. The complexities of race in 1860 Maryland are briefly noted in a single large panel at the start of the exhibition: “Slavery and African American life in Maryland was as diverse as the state’s landscapes and cultures.” [FIGURE 3 HERE]

An April 1861 Baltimore riot caused first casualties of war. Fig.#4, below.

 The presidential race of 1860 and the election of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party candidate, precipitated the secession of southern states. Maryland, like the other border states of Kentucky and Missouri, adhered shakily to the Union, but conflict among Marylanders intensified. The second major section of the exhibition, Divided Loyalties, shows how deeply these divisions ran, leading to riots in Baltimore in April 1861 and disruption of a critical railroad junction just 50 miles from the Federal capital. Imposition of martial law by Federal forces followed promptly (and in Baltimore lasted for the duration of the war). Here, too, contradictions abound: Baltimore Mayor George William Brown, a Southern sympathizer, vainly tried to prevent attacks on Union volunteers passing through the city, while Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks, a staunch Unionist, was himself a slaveholder. [FIGURE 4 HERE]

Zouave jackets, popular in pre-war women’s costume and related military uniform. Fig. #5, below.

In the months after Lincoln’s inauguration, thousands of Maryland men flocked to the Union and Confederate colors, anticipating a brief, heroic conflict. The romance of war faded in the face of its brutal reality. The third major section of the exhibition, “Spontaneous Combustion,” traces the process of disillusionment and describes the actual conditions of war. An exhibit on camp life stresses war’s tedium (“then drill, then drill again”), while displays on battlefield tactics, medical care, imprisonment, and mourning underscore its horrors. A torn jacket worn by Major Richard Snowden Andrews, a Maryland volunteer in the Confederate Army, exemplifies the violence of battle: the lower portion of the jacket was ripped open by an explosion; its bent buttons show the impact on Andrews’ body. Astonishingly, Andrews survived his gruesome wound, though he wore a metal plate over his abdomen for the rest of his life. As Anne Schaeffer of Frederick, Maryland, observed, “So much trouble, expense and suffering to maim and murder each other.” [FIGURE 5 HERE]

African Americans at war: USCT battle flag and a Medal of Honor winner. Fig.#6, below.

The exhibition also presents the wartime experiences of sympathizers and supporters on both sides of the conflict, especially those of women. As one Maryland woman remarked, “Never again during our lives can such opportunities for noble deeds present themselves for women.” In addition to supporting their sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers, women served as spies and nurses, raised funds for relief, sewed banners and flags. One of the many striking objects on display is a magnificent, hand-painted battle flag presented to the “4th Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops by the Colored Ladies of Baltimore.” Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman were among the Maryland women whose wartime efforts are well known, but many less-famous others, like Maria C. Hall, could look back at their wartime service with satisfaction: “I mark my Hospital days as my happiest ones.”[FIGURE 13 HERE]

The concluding area of the exhibition, The Long Reunion, recalls the aftermath of the war. Veterans’ organizations, reunions, and encampments perpetuated wartime camaraderie. Maryland Confederates far outpaced their Union counterparts in creating memorials and monuments and in publishing memoirs and histories. In effect, having lost the war, the Confederate veterans “won the peace.” As a result, the Lost Cause and the role of Marylanders in service to the Confederacy were greatly embellished. Moreover, the disaffection of Union and Confederate veterans persisted for generations after the war. Despite the overarching quote in this area (“War does not determine who is right—only who is left.”) and despite a few exceptional friendships among former enemies, the veterans “have never mixed in any manner with the other side—have no joint reunions, no joint banquets, no decoration or memorial days in common,” according to William H. Pope, Superintendent of the Maryland Line Confederate Soldiers home (1893).

Some Highlights

Divided Voices is notably successful in major ways. First, the exhibition considers a broad range of topics. The recruitment and performance of African Americans in the U.S. Colored Troops is a subject that is too little known; in this project, black soldiers are given legitimate recognition. The home front, and the roles of women in particular, are moved into the foreground, rather than being treated as an afterthought. It was unexpected in this context to find glass breast shields used by nursing women paired with a chemise with nursing slits to allow for breast feeding. Technology is given its due, both in relation to the significance of railroads and evolving weaponry, especially the remarkably destructive Minié ball. The sheer terror of battle and the horrors of maimed and slaughtered men are treated here in a compelling way.

Embedded in the exhibition are profiles of more than 30 Marylanders—black and white, notorious and unknown. Their “voices” help to personalize the issues, while providing a variety of perspectives on key events and movements. The narrative is also dramatized for visitors by two costumed living history actors representing a sergeant in the U.S. Colored Troops and the actor-assassin John Wilkes Booth; the two alternate in providing in-gallery monologues, followed by Q&A and gallery tours. Though the living history presentations are offered on a limited schedule, they are engrossing, informative, and, judging from observation of four groups of visitors, highly effective.

The “vacant chair,” abiding symbol of wartime loss. Fig.#7, below.

The real stars of Divided Voices, however, are the extraordinary array of Civil War memorabilia, much of it from the Society’s own outstanding collections. The rarity, richness, and significance of these collections are astonishing. Notable objects range from a pike used in John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, to a single home-made sock worn by an ordinary Confederate soldier, to a “Vacant Chair” used in veterans’ ceremonies to honor those killed in the war. [FIGURE 6 HERE]

The exhibition narrative is substantiated, indeed driven, by its array of objects. In addition to the above exemplary items, Divided Voices displays a 34-star U.S. flag hung by a Lincoln supporter to celebrate his election in 1860; an apron made to resemble a Confederate flag created by a Rebel sympathizer; linen and leather haversacks and a bottle of Walnut Catsup; a mourning dress from Baltimore; a naval officer’s frock coat worn by Confederate Admiral Franklin Buchanan; and a Civil War surgeon’s kit of gleaming knives and saws, frightening in this context. The concluding section of the exhibition features two imposing and unusual objects–a large wooden cabinet that housed the “Records of the Army and Navy of the Confederate States in the State of Maryland,” displayed side-by-side with an analogous chest-on-stand from the Union Club of Baltimore (1863-1872).

Bucolic painting of Harper’s Ferry with memorabilia of John Brown’s raid. Fig.#8, below.

The objects and images are artfully displayed. At the opening of the exhibition, for example, visitors are confronted with a large, idyllic painting of Harper’s Ferry by Augustus C. Weidenbach (1863). The peaceful scene is powerfully juxtaposed with objects, images, and interpretive text that present John Brown’s violent attack on Harper’s Ferry and his subsequent execution. Brown’s abortive raid was launched from a Maryland farm and, as it happens, a Maryland militia unit were the first responders. Another artful juxtaposition is found in the exhibit on prisoners of war. A photo mural depicting a skeletal prisoner serves as backdrop for a wooden rosary, charms, bracelets, and rings carved by Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout Prison. The contrast in tone, scale, and materials is striking—and memorable. [FIGURE 2 HERE]

Other objects of folk art embellish the exhibition. The final object encountered by visitors is a shadow-box titled “Antietam National Cemetery Memorial” which was created in 1886 by John Philemon Smith, who, as a seventeen-year old, had witnessed the Battle of Antietam. This assemblage includes a list of Union soldiers who died in the battle, together with hundreds of souvenirs gathered on the battlefield. The centerpiece is a miniature replica of the Private Soldier Monument, placed at the cemetery in 1880. The effect is touching.

Quotes, photomurals, objects, and casework create a powerful effect. Fig.#9, below.

The exhibition’s clean layout and design are effective in showcasing the artifacts and in conveying the overall narrative. The enormous, room-size glass case in the center displays costume and related objects representative of the battlefield and the home front. Surrounding the central glass case are large photomurals, oversize quotes in first-person voice, free-standing reader rails, and casework displaying a wide range of military memorabilia. The graphics and quotes are well-chosen and well-executed, and the lighting and casework show off the objects and texts to great advantage. The exhibition and graphic design encourage close attention and somber reflection.[FIGURE 11 HERE]

The exhibition does have minor flaws, of course. The small size of some captions and tertiary texts makes them hard to read. The interpretive copy—main and secondary panel texts—are generally short and to the point, but some texts are choppy, assemblies of simple declarative sentences presumably written that way for accessibility. These could—and should–have been crafted as cohesive paragraphs. Here is one instance where a sharp editorial eye was needed:

“To Care for Him who shall have borne the battle”

Civil War medicine is often viewed as primitive. The source of infectious diseases had not yet been discovered and antibiotics did not exist. The truth is thousands of compassionate civilians and military men stepped up to make a terrible situation better. Anesthesia was commonly used and amputations were the best way to save lives. . . .

Here, meaning and clarity fall victim to compression, omission of contextual information and rigid sentence structure. Were amputations the “best way to save lives” from infectious diseases because “antibiotics did not exist?” Alternative phrasing such as, “Anesthesia was commonly used to provide relief, while amputation of shattered limbs saved thousands of lives,” might have resolved the mystery.

Interpretive Issues

But these minor defects in execution are not the primary concern: larger and more substantial issues color and distort Divided Voices. The first of these is the exaggeration of Marylanders’ role in Confederate service. The main text panel introducing the area devoted to battlefield combat baldly states that “Maryland sent 20,000 young men south and 60,000 more to Union regiments,” clearly signaling that three Marylanders served on the Union side for every man who served with the Confederacy. Although recent scholarship puts estimates of Maryland enlistments on both sides at a much lower level, they do agree that the ratio of Union to Confederate enlistments was three-to-one. In short, among Maryland men who served, a preponderance supported the Union cause, not the cause of secession and slavery.

However, the composition of exhibition elements would suggest exactly the opposite. Among white soldiers from Maryland profiled in the array of brief biographies, only one was a Union soldier, while seven are Maryland men who fought for the Confederacy, an imbalance only slightly offset by profiles of three African American soldiers in Union service. Similarly, Confederate sympathizers who are profiled outnumber those who were Union sympathizers.

Haversacks, tinware, and other ordinary objects of everyday life in the army. Fig#10. below.

The disparity is even more pronounced in terms of visitors’ experience of the exhibition and understanding of the story in the objects selected for display. Here large-scale Confederate items overwhelm their Union counterparts. From an experiential point of view, the objects far outweigh the interpretive texts. Any unwary visitor or, for that matter, any visitor who failed to read or remember the opening line of that one text panel would leave Divided Voices believing that Marylanders, certainly white Marylanders, mostly fought on the Rebel side. Southern sentiment was strong in Maryland (which had voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the presidential election of 1860), and especially in Baltimore and Southern Maryland. But it was nonetheless outweighed by sympathy, support, and service for the Union, among both white and black Marylanders. [FIGURE 10 HERE]

How did this misleading interpretation come about? For one thing, Confederate veterans and sympathizers were assiduous in preserving the memory of “the Lost Cause.” In their version of history, heroic Southerners led by dashing cavaliers and doughty sea dogs were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers and industrial strength of the North, hell-bent on destroying an idyllic agrarian culture which sought only to maintain its traditional institutions and ancient liberties. Invested in the past, those on the losing side glorified their efforts in an unequal struggle, relegating their Union opponents to roles as ciphers in mass formations led by blood-thirsty mediocrities. This mythic re-telling of “the War between the States”—the name itself a key element of the myth–was embodied and sanctified in monuments, memorials, and a vast literature that far outweighed those of the Unionists. The exhibition text is rife with ‘Lost Cause’ language:

“An isolated, rural South was strangled and overwhelmed by an industrial North. Manufacturing and manpower won the war.”

“Maryland raider Harry Gilmore epitomized the danger and romance of . . . hit and run cavalry tactics.”

“The embodiment of the Southern cavalier . ..”

And so on.

More fundamentally, Divided Voices, despite welcome attention to the role of African Americans in the Union forces, has mostly passed over the core issues of slavery and racism. In fairness, two large panels near the exhibition opening do touch briefly on slavery in Maryland and the efforts of Maryland slaves to secure their liberty by service in the Union cause. These, however, are compromised. The concluding sentence of the main text dealing with slavery reads: “Collectively, most slave owners viewed abolitionism and the Republican Party as a [sic] threat to their wealth, culture and political influence.”

This critical interpretive text fails to represent the views of the slaves; instead, the view of slavery presented here is that of the white masters. As if to underscore this problem, the caption of an image on the same panel (in much smaller point size than the main text) reads in part: “Free African Americans and slaves . . . saw the war as an opportunity to strike a blow against the institution of slavery. Resistance increased significantly during the war, and Maryland slaves took advantage of the turmoil by fleeing to the Union Army, to the North, or free black communities in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.” In 1860, Maryland blacks were not divided on the abolition of slavery, and blacks constituted 100% of those enslaved. Surely their “voices” should be the ones we hear first on the subject, rather than those of the minority of slave owners.

Notwithstanding other texts that evoke black Marylanders’ yearning for freedom—most notably the text panel titled “He Will Fight” and a second panel devoted to an African American celebration of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment (1870)—there is a conspicuous silence in this exhibition on what would seem to be an important theme: the impact of the war on black Marylanders, slave and free alike. The emancipation of Maryland slaves through ratification of a state constitutional amendment in November 1864, the first such emancipation among the loyal, slave-owning Border States and arguably the most consequential “impact” of the Civil War on the State, is noted flatly in a single sentence at the end of the text panel “He Will Fight’: “Maryland abolished slavery in November 1864.” (A second, elliptical reference to the abolition of slavery in Maryland is found in the panel on the Fifteenth Amendment—“Six years after Maryland freed its slaves . . .”)

It might be argued that the long and complicated story of Maryland emancipation is unsuited to interpretation in an exhibition and that the exhibition focuses primarily on the military conflict and its repercussions, but the primal issue of slavery is invoked from the exhibition’s opening panel (and in the first sentences of the Society’s exhibition publicity). And rightly so, since the abolition of slavery in Maryland is as direct a consequence of the Civil War as the casualties of its many battles.

Of course, the struggle for emancipation preceded the war. But over the four years of brutal, bloody war, the conviction grew that Union victory must bring with it the death of slavery. This feeling established itself not only in President Lincoln, his cabinet, and Congressional leaders, but also among the hearts and minds of the rank-and-file of the Union army. The ratification of the constitutional amendment emancipating Maryland’s slaves in November 1864 was due to the votes cast by the state’s white Union soldiers. In his magisterial study, The Battle Cry of Freedom, James M. McPherson notes that “the men in blue also decided the outcome in several congressional districts, and the votes of Maryland soldiers for a state constitutional amendment abolishing slavery more than offset the slight majority of the home vote against it.” So, if the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 is worthy of note, how much more so the destruction of Maryland slavery. Yet the voices of slaves and freedmen on this decisive issue are muted.

The silence echoes, most obviously because of the Maryland Historical Society’s sponsorship of Fred Wilson’s landmark exhibition, Mining the Museum, in 1993. As Judith E. Stein reflects in Sins of Omission (Art in America, October 1993), Mining the Museum used the Society’s artifacts “to raise our awareness of institutionalized racism, making visible the subtle and insidious ways these attitudes affect the decisions museums make about what to collect and how to display it.” But Wilson had another, more positive point to make as well: African American history is American history (and all Americans should know and understand that history).

After nearly two decades of progress in acknowledging the centrality of the African American experience in Maryland, the Society seems to have taken a pause in Divided Voices, and this has skewed its curatorial emphasis and the interpretive focus of the exhibition. If the Society had, perfectly legitimately, chosen to restrict its narrative to the experiences of those who fought and died, I would raise no objection. But instead, the Society has chosen to open up the subject—the Civil War in Maryland–and then not followed through as effectively as it could.

Neither the 1864 Maryland Constitution nor the Civil War itself brought an end to racism. Neither transformed the ingrained attitudes of the white majority or the awareness of those attitudes by the black minority. Decades of segregation, discrimination, and injustice followed the war and remain among the state’s legacies of slavery and racism. But the Civil War did have a profound and lasting impact in Maryland: it freed nearly 90,000 enslaved people and put an end to efforts to legally re-enslave 90,000 free blacks.

In Adam Goodheart’s new book, 1861. The Civil War Awakening, he quotes a July 1861 colloquy between the Unionist author Nathaniel Parker Willis and an elderly black slave at Arlington House, newly evacuated by Robert E. Lee and his family and now occupied by Federal troops.

Willis: “Well, uncle, what do you think of the war?”

Slave: “Well, massa, it’s all about things we’ve been so long a putting up with.”

One hundred and fifty years of “putting up” still stand between us and the Civil War, but we can see that, here in Maryland, the Civil War was a milestone on the long, challenging road to a more just and equal society. With some modest revisions, Divided Voices can provide an even more insightful, meaningful narrative for contemporary visitors, white and black alike, for the duration of the Sesquicentennial.

By Avi Y. Decter, Contributing Writer

Avi Decter is executive director of the Jewish Museum of Maryland, in Baltimore

Exhibit now at the Maryland Historical Society www.mdhs.org

April 2011 through Spring 2015 (with annual updates)

Main Gallery: 4,000 s.f.; Introduction Area: 950 s.f.

Curators: Burton Kumerow, Alexandra Deutsch, Heather Haggstrom, and Iris America Bierlein

Exhibition Design: Charles Mack Design

Graphic Design: PJ Bogert Graphic Design

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Figure Notes:

 Figure 1. A display of photography equipment and photographic practice, c. 1860-65, introduces visitors to the first war in which photojournalism played a major role—bringing in the carnage of battle home to the public.

 Figure 2. Floor Plan. As this floor plan indicates, Divided Voices is laid out in a linear fashion with a room-size glass case at its center. Visitors follow a counter-clockwise path through the narrative, concluding their journey back at the entrance to the exhibition gallery.

 Figure 3.Lincoln won less than 3% of theMaryland vote in the 1860 presidential elections.Lincoln’s victory precipitated a secession movement across the Lower South, raising fears for “the safety of theUnion” among border state residents.

 Figure 4. The Pratt Street Riot in April 1861, in which Southern sympathizers attacked troops traveling to Washington in support of the Lincoln administration, led to the imposition of martial law in Baltimore for nearly four years.

Figure 5. The exotic Zouave jackets worn by several regiments of Union soldiers (right) had come into women’s fashion even before the war began as seen in the woman’s dress with Zouave jacket to the left.  A remarkable display of Civil War-era costume is presented in this central glass case. The mannequin on the left reveals the underpinnings of fashionable costume, including the use of “pockets” that were worn under the wearer’s skirt

 Figure 6. One of the most compelling objects on view is this tattered battle flag of the 4^th Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops, juxtaposed with a portrait of Medal of Honor winner Christian Fleetwood.

 Figure 7. The “vacant chair” became an abiding symbol of loss. BothUnion and Confederate veterans set out empty chairs at gatherings in remembrance of lost comrades.

 Figure 8. A large, bucolic oil painting of Harper’s Ferry by Augustus C. Weidenbach (1863) dominates the opening of Divided Voices. The painting serves as backdrop for weapons and other memorabilia associated with John Brown’s polarizing raid.

 Figure 9. The interplay of quotes, photomurals, objects, and casework in Divided Voices create a powerful effect. Note the canvas litter used to carry the wounded from the field of battle.

 Figure 10. The accoutrements of everyday life in the army are effectively set off against the photo mural in the background. Note the haversacks at center right and a bottle of walnut catsup at the far left.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr Cindy Less Van Dover, Alvin pilot, Exhibit curator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Katherine Arcano, Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or contact the principles at:

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

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

Karen Jacobsen: insituart@gmail.com

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

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

Qianlong Garden Complex, photo: Dennis Helmar, courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

In 1644, just 24 years after the English Pilgrims arrived on what is today the Massachusetts coast of the United States, the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) was overthrown by the Manchu, a people from the north who were not Han Chinese. The subsequent establishment of the Qing (pronounced “ching”) Dynasty (1644-1911) signaled the end of Han rule and the installation of foreign rulers in the imperial palace complex, also known as the ‘Forbidden City,’ in Beijing.

Despite their non-Han origins, however, the Qing produced two of the greatest imperial patrons of art in China’s long history: the Kangxi (pronounced “kang-shee”) and the Qianlong (pronounced “chee’en-long”) emperors, the grandfather and grandson who ruled from 1662 to 1722 and from 1736 to 1799, respectively. fine arts magazine

Qianlong Garden Complex, photo: Dennis Helmar, courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City now offers visitors a unique opportunity to see a selection of artifacts commissioned by the emperor for the Qianlong Garden. This unprecedented loan by the Palace Museum, Beijing, of 90 art objects, furnishings and other elements makes, The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City, a landmark event (February 1, 2011 – May 1, 2011). The exhibition was first organized by the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, in partnership with the Palace Museum, Beijing, and in cooperation with the World Monuments Fund. Peabody Essex Museum’s links to China can be traced back to the last year of the Qianlong emperor’s life; its progenitor, the East India Marine Society, was founded in 1799.

A contemporary of Louis XV, Frederick the Great, George Washington and Ben Franklin, the Qianlong emperor (1711-1799) was also a devout Buddhist who enjoyed contemplative pursuits; a fervent admirer of the arts who enjoyed literature, writing poetry and practicing calligraphy; and a military leader and conqueror who expanded the Chinese empire to its greatest extent.

In 1771, three-and-a-half decades after he came to the throne, he began designing a compound for his retirement. It included a garden that he intended to be a tranquil retreat, first for himself, and later for subsequent Qing rulers. It was not his first garden, but it is the only one that has survived in its original form. It is this garden that we know today as the Qianlong Garden, and which is the focus of ‘The Emperor’s Private Paradise.’

Qianlong Garden Complex, photo: Dennis Helmar, courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

The concept of the garden as a space of contemplation set apart from the world, and which includes buildings as well as elements of nature, the latter often endowed with symbolic meaning, has a long history in China. Thus the Qianlong Garden might include trees, bamboo and other growing things, but it was above all the emperor’s tranquil, private space: a place for reflection; a place for cultivation of the inner self; a retreat; a place for poetry and painting; and a work of art in its own right.

In keeping with Chinese tradition, the Qianlong Garden was designed as a complex of architectural structures and spaces organized on a longitudinal axis and enclosed by a wall.  The buildings were placed either perpendicular or parallel to that axis, and the entire complex covered an area of a little more than two acres. As befitted the art-loving ruler of what was then the world’s most prosperous nation, the utmost care was lavished on both the structures and their furnishings, which were fabricated from the finest materials and which demonstrated the highest quality and craftsmanship.

Screen (one of 16) From Yunguanglou. Zitan, lacquer, jade, gold paint © Palace Museum, Beijing

The emperor, however, never took up residence in the compound he had so carefully designed. Instead, he chose to live the last few years of his life elsewhere in the Forbidden City. The Qing Dynasty came to an end in 1911; in 1925, the Forbidden City became the Palace Museum. Over the years, the roofs and exteriors of the structures in the Qianlong Garden were maintained, but as decades turned into centuries, the building interiors fell into disrepair. Nevertheless, unlike other gardens the emperor had designed, the Qianlong Garden remained intact, escaping both modification and destruction.

In 2001, conservation of one building interior in the Garden began: that of the Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service (Juanqinzhai). The work was undertaken as a partnership between the Palace Museum of Beijing and the World Monuments Fund, a New-York based organization that specializes in the preservation of significant cultural sites around the world. Completion of conservation work on the remaining interiors of the Qianlong Garden is anticipated for 2019. Most of the artifacts on display in the “The Emperor’s Private Paradise” exhibition come from nine of the structures in the garden complex and were commissioned by the Qianlong emperor.

Screen (one of 16) From Yunguanglou, Zitan, lacquer, jade, gold paint© Palace Museum, Beijing

The ‘The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City’ occupies the Peabody Essex’s six Special Exhibition galleries. It does not recreate specific rooms or spaces in the Qianlong Garden complex. Instead, each gallery presents a selection of furniture, paintings and other artifacts grouped around a specific theme: “Ruler, Conqueror, Connoisseur,” “Raising Mountains,” “Pursuing Virtue,” “Extending Delight,” “Cultivating Spiritual Harmony,” and “Assuring Longevity.”

Visitors enter the exhibition to find themselves face-to-face with one side of a long sixteen-panel screen decorated with bamboo, plants and flowers rendered in gold on a black ground.  The Qianlong emperor particularly admired the opposite side of the screen, which shows 16 luohan, or disciples of the Buddha known in Sanskrit as arhat.  Their distorted figures are rendered in jade, which contrasts strikingly with the rich black lacquered background. The stark beauty of the screen, which was a special favorite of the emperor, sets the tone for the exhibition, whose meticulously crafted objects are notable for their exceptional quality and magnificent workmanship.

The sixteen-panel screen also serves as a partition around which visitors must move to advance through the gallery. This is a device that is repeated throughout the exhibition, and it hints at the gradual progression and disclosure that are characteristic of a Chinese garden. While providing additional display surfaces for artifacts, the partitions also serve to restrict views, ensuring that a room and its contents are never visible in entirety from a single point. Instead, new views unfold as visitors round the partitions and make their way from one space to the next.

The first gallery introduces both the man who commissioned the Qianlong Garden and the Garden itself. A formal portrait shows the Qianlong emperor dressed in an imperial court robe and seated on a throne. A quote written on a nearby wall – which, like the imperial robe, is painted yellow, a color reserved for the emperor, the empress and the empress dowager – provides a more revealing glimpse into the emperor’s inner self. “Every emperor or king … should have extensive grounds to stroll in and lovely vistas to enjoy. If he has such a place, he will be able to cultivate his mind and refine his emotions.”

Portrait of Qianlong Emperor, Ink and colors on silk, 99 ½ x 59”, Peabody Essex and Milwaukee Art Museums only, © Palace Museum, Beijing

To help visitors understand the layout and the physical appearance of the actual garden in Beijing, a list of the buildings in the garden, a plan, and a bird’s-eye view of the complex appear on a nearby wall. At the far end of the room, a throne is flanked by two tall fans. Behind it is a tall throne surround screen which also functions as a display case; it was originally in the building known as the Belvedere of Viewing Achievements (Fuwangge). Like many of the wooden objects in the exhibition, it is made of zitan, a precious tropical hardwood. Visitors interested in conservation and in the “before and after” appearances of artifacts in the exhibition will want to remember to look at the panel on conservation in the last gallery. There they may view a photograph of the screen as it appeared at the start of conservation.

Visitors are also introduced to an essential feature of Chinese gardens: rocks and rockeries. Given the Chinese garden’s role as a microcosm of nature, rocks were often valued as miniature representations of mountains as well as for their irregular shapes and textures. A lingbi stone, mounted on a pedestal illustrates one way that a rock might be displayed and admired.

Another expression of appreciation of irregular shapes in nature appears in the display of rootwood furniture. The couch bed, footstool, and chair, which come from the Pavilion of the Purification Ceremony (Xishangting) near the southwest corner of the Qianlong Garden, demonstrate how gnarled wood and roots of trees could be shaped into functional objects valued for their natural beauty. In China, the attraction of rustic forms dates back centuries, and rootwood experienced considerable appeal during the Qing Dynasty.

Moving on to the next gallery, visitors encounter in the initial partition a cut-out that brings to mind the openings of various shapes that so often puncture Chinese garden walls. The theme of the gallery is “Pursuing Virtue.” A design of pine, bamboo and plum blossom motifs ornament a zitan throne, a pair of screens and a pair of stands. The three plants, which remain green throughout the winter or bloom in early spring, are known collectively as the Three Friends. This specific grouping of furniture comes from the Three Friends Bower (Sanyouxuan). Situated on the eastern side of the Qianglong Garden, the small structure offered the emperor a contemplative space well suited to the writing of poetry, which was an essential skill for a gentleman-scholar and one of the emperor’s acknowledged interests.

Nearby, a hanging panel from the Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service (Juanqinzhai) shows plum blossoms bursting from the branches of an ancient tree. The design is crafted from an array of precious materials, including sandalwood, zitan, jade, lapis lazuli and glass.

A display case in the same gallery contains a brush, a jade brush pot, a jade brush rest and other tools essential to the practice of calligraphy. Valued as an art form, calligraphy represents far more than mere handwriting. Two touch screens allow visitors to trace Chinese characters using a brush and interactive black ink.

Post Conservation Mural, Interior scene from Yucuixuan (detail), Ink and colors on paper, © Palace Museum, Beijing.

In the next gallery of the exhibition, “Extending Delight.” A gilt copper and enamel mechanical clock measuring 30 inches in diameter, with hours indicated by black roman numerals, hangs at the end of the passage. European mechanical clocks were introduced to China in the late sixteenth century and quickly became a source of fascination. The Qianlong emperor was an ardent admirer of new technologies and artistic techniques introduced from other parts of the world, and the objects exhibited in this fourth gallery reflect this passion. They testify not only to the ability of Chinese artists to master new techniques and methods, but also to marry them to Chinese tradition.

Also of interest is the emperor’s fondness for mirrors and illusions. A table screen from the Building for Enjoying Lush Scenery (Cuishanglou) features a reverse-glass painting incorporating a technique known as verre églomisé, which produces a mirror effect. The painting is mounted Chinese-style in a wooden screen and shows a European couple in a landscape, a subject matter familiar to eighteenth-century European rococo art. The piece was probably given to the emperor by an official in Guangzhou. The port of Guangzhou, which Westerners generally knew as Canton, was the center of Western trade with China prior to the 1840s.

Hanging panel with niches, From Cuishanglou, Zitan, painted and gilt clay, colors on silk, 65 ½ x 36 ½ x 1 ½”, © Palace Museum, Beijing

Also on view is a large, rare mural from the Bower of Purest Jade (Yucuixuan).  Executed in ink and colors on paper by a number of artists, including Yao Wenhan, a favorite painter of the Qianlong emperor, it depicts a room with women and a handful of lively children at the New Year. In rendering the altar table, wall, partitions, floor and ceiling of the room, the artists made skillful use of such techniques as Western perspective and trompe-l’œil. On the wall beyond the altar table and on the partitions and door panels, they painted and signed Chinese-style landscapes, creating, in effect, paintings within a painting. Once again, a single work demonstrates both familiarity with traditional Chinese subject matter and facility with Chinese and Western techniques.

An informative video shows some of the artifacts, including the mural, undergoing conservation in Beijing.

Not all of the foreign techniques that the emperor admired were of Western origin. A pair of black lacquered wooden cabinets, which like the mural come from the Bower of Purest Jade (Yucuixuan), are ornamented with gilding in a technique associated with Japan.

“Cultivating Spiritual Harmony,” focuses on artifacts related to the Qianlong emperor’s devout practice of a form of Tibetan Buddhism. On the initial partition is a shrine in the form of a rare hanging panel that comes from the Building for Enjoying Lush Scenery (Cuishanglou).  It combines elements of both Tibetan and Chinese art, and features a painting on silk that incorporates painted and gilt clay figures. The painting shows the colorful sky and landscape of a Buddhist realm and is punctured by a number of circular niches. An imperial temple dominates the center of the composition; in the center of the temple, there appears a large niche shaped like a lotus petal. A golden figure of the Qianlong emperor as the Bodhisattva Manjusri occupies the niche. In a smaller niche directly above is shown Rolpay Dorje, the emperor’s religious guide, and in a round niche further above is the figure of Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Yellow Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Small painted and gilt clay figures representing other teachers, Buddhas and deities occupy the remaining niches of the panel.

Mandala, Cloisonné, 22 ½ x 19” (diam.), © Palace Museum, Beijing

Further along, a mandala is displayed on a pedestal.  Mandalas, the geometric charts that serve as symbolic images of the universe and are used in certain Buddhist religious practices, are typically executed on a flat surface and are two-dimensional. This mandala, however, is a striking piece of cloisonné with a circular base that is rimmed in gold.

Advancing beyond the mandala, visitors encounter a calligraphic inscription from the Supreme Chamber of Cultivating Harmony (Yanghe Jingshe) written by the Qianlong emperor in 1777; it is one of his own poems. “I work hard at present and I wait for the future when I can roam at leisure,” reads the translation of one line. The paper on which the poem was written is decorated with gold motifs and was made specifically for the court.

Of particular interest to Western observers is an exhibition that speaks to “Assuring Longevity,” a theme that applied not only to the Qianlong emperor but to his garden and its future as well. As the artifacts in the exhibition show, the emperor appreciated a wide variety of art forms and decorative techniques. A number of these techniques are summarized in a zitan throne ornamented in jade, semi-precious stones and lacquer. Among the featured decors is bamboo inner skin. The technique, which is often associated with the Qianlong era, involves painstakingly removing the inner skin from bamboo.

Throne, from Yanghe Jingshe, Zitan, bamboo, jade, semi-precious stones, lacquer, 38 ½ x 46 ¼ x 33”, © Palace Museum, Beijing

Opposite the throne, a computer-generated video presentation simulates a visit to the interior of the Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service (Juanqinzhai) and enables visitors to imagine moving through it.

Visitors wishing to learn more about the restoration process of the Qianlong Garden will want to look at the photo display along one wall of this same gallery. The first photograph shows the throne surround screen, now on display in the first gallery of the exhibition, as it appeared on location in the actual Qianlong Garden prior to the start of restoration. Shortly beyond the photographs, the exhibition concludes with a large carved zitan window.

When Nancy Berliner, the exhibition curator and Curator of Chinese Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, was asked what she would like visitors to take away from “The Emperor’s Private Paradise,” she replied, “The concept of creating a place where you can focus on your own higher pursuit.”

It is this higher undertaking that the exquisitely beautiful objects now gracing the Metropolitan Museum of Art were designed to serve.

by Susan Schopp, Contributing Writer

The Emperor’s Private Paradise: ‘Treasures from the Forbidden City’ runs until  May 1, 2011. The galleries are wheel-chair accessible and are served by both a stairway and an elevator. A full-color catalog is available for purchase. The exhibition travels then travels to the Milwaukee Art Museum (June 11-September 12, 2011).

Susan E. Schopp is an independent scholar specializing in the shipping of the Canton trade, c. 1700-1842. She holds a Diplôme de recherches in East Asian art history and a Diplôme d’études supérieures in museum studies from the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Her current research focuses on chop boats. In her spare time she is a member of the volunteer crew of the full-size, fully operational reproduction East India ship Friendship of Salem.

I

Left: Robert Capa, Exiled Republicans marched down beach to internment camp, Le Barcarès, France (March, 1939), Negative, © International Center of Photography / Magnum, Coll., ICP. 

Cornell Capa, Robert’s brother and the founder of the ICP, had diligently tracked down each tale and vigorously sought out the negatives, but to no avail. When, at last, the boxes were opened for the 89-year-old Cornell, they revealed 126 rolls of film—not only by Robert Capa, but also by Gerda Taro and David Seymour (known as “Chim”), three of the major photographers of the Spanish Civil War. Together, these roles of film constitute an inestimable record of photographic innovation and war photography, but also of the great political struggle to determine the course of Spanish history and to turn back the expansion of global fascism.

One of three cardboard boxes of the Mexican Suitcase, containing Spanish Civil War images by Capa, Chim, and Taro. © International Center of Photography.

Jewish immigrants from Hungary, Germany, and Poland, the three photographers found a home in the culturally open Paris of the early 1930s. Friends and colleagues, they often traveled together in Spain. They published in the major European and American publications covering the war, regularly contributing to Regards, Ce Soir, and Vu, and then Life. Their combined work in Spain constitutes some of the most important visual documentation of the war. These negatives had been considered all but lost until 1995.

The Suitcase does not contain a complete collection of any of Capa’s, Taro’s, or Chim’s Spanish Civil War coverage, but includes many of the important stories. From Capa, we see images of destroyed buildings in Madrid, the Battle of Teruel, the Battle of Rio Segre, and the mobilization for the defense of Barcelona in January 1939, as well as the mass exodus of people from Tarragona to Barcelona and the French border. There are several rolls of Capa’s coverage of the French internment camps for Spanish refugees in Argelès-sur-Mer and Barcarès taken in March 1939. We have found Chim’s famous image of the woman nursing a baby during a land reform meeting in Estremadura taken in May 1936, as well as his portraits of Dolores Ibárruri, known as La Pasionaria. There are many images of his coverage of the Basque country and the Battle in Oviedo. From Taro, we have dynamic images of the new People’s Army training in Valencia, the Navacerrada Pass on the Segovia front, and her last photographs taken while covering the Battle of Brunete, where she was killed on July 25, 1937.

Robert Capa, Ernest Hemingway (3rd fr. left), NYTimes journalist Herbert Matthews (2nd fr. left), two Republican soldiers, Teruel, Spain (late Dec., 1937), Negative, © International Center of Photography / Magnum, Coll., ICP.

Exactly how the negatives reached Mexico City is not yet definitively known. In October 1939, as German forces were approaching Paris, Robert Capa sailed to New York to avoid capture by the Germans and internment as an enemy alien or Communist sympathizer.1 As far as we understand, Capa left all his negatives in his Paris studio, at 37 rue Froidevaux, under the supervision of his darkroom manager and fellow photographer Imre “Csiki” Weiss (1911–2006). In a letter dated July 5, 1975, Weiss recalled, “In 1939, when the Germans approached Paris, I put all Bob’s negatives in a rucksack and bicycled it to Bordeaux to try to get it on a ship to Mexico. I met a Chilean in the street and asked him to take my film packages to his consulate for safekeeping. He agreed.” Csiki, also a Jewish Hungarian émigré, never made it out of French-controlled territory and was interned in Morocco until 1941, when he was released with the help of both Capa brothers and arrived in Mexico late that year.

Csiki’s 1975 letter may be the earliest known document of the story of the missing negatives. Neither John Morris, a picture editor who first met Capa in New York in 1939 and remained a close friend and colleague until Capa’s death, nor Inge Bondi, who joined the New York Magnum office in 1950 and worked there for twenty years, recalls Capa ever mentioning the missing negatives or expressing any remorse that many of his most famous images of the Spanish Civil War had disappeared.

Fred Stein, Gerda Taro and Robert Capa on the terrace of Café du Dôme in Montparnasse, Paris (early 1936), Negative, © Estate of Fred Stein, International Center of Photography.

In 1979, on the occasion of the inclusion of Capa’s work in the Venice Biennale, Cornell published a call to the photographic community seeking any information on his brother’s lost negatives following the appearance of a text about Capa’s work by John Steinbeck in the French magazine Photo. “In 1940,” Capa wrote, “before the advance of the German army, my brother gave to one of his friends a suitcase full of documents and negatives. En route to Marseilles, he entrusted the suitcase to a former Spanish Civil War soldier, who was to hide it in the cellar of a Latin-American consulate. The story ends here. The suitcase has never been found despite the searches undertaken. Of course a miracle is possible. Anyone who has information regarding the suitcase should contact me and will be blessed in advance.” Unfortunately, no new information surfaced. There were discussions of a trip to Chile to seek out the “Latin-American consulate.” There was even a dig in the French countryside following reports that the negatives had been buried there.5 Nothing was found.

Gerda Taro, Crowd at the gate of the morgue after the air raid, Valencia (May, 1937), Negative, © International Center of Photography (ICP), Collection, ICP.

As for the suitcase, we now know that at some point it was turned over to General Francisco Aguilar González, the Mexican ambassador to the Vichy government in 1941–42. We do not know when or under what circumstances this happened. It is highly plausible that in the anxious, underground environment of the thousands of Jewish and foreign refugees seeking exit visas out of France in the south, Csiki sensed the danger of his situation and passed the negatives to someone who could either bring them to safety or immediately put them in hiding. Whether Aguilar was the knowing receiver of the negatives or whether he ever had any idea of their significance (or even that he possessed them) is not yet clear. It is perhaps because the value of the negatives was understood that they survived, yet it is also possible that they survived because it was not known what they were and they quietly escaped attention. Aguilar later returned to Mexico City, the negatives presumably packed among his belongings. He died in 1971. The whereabouts of the negatives were never known during Capa’s lifetime.

Chim (David Seymour), Dolores Ibárruri (La Pasionaria), Madrid, (late April–early July, 1936), Negative, © Estate of David Seymour / Magnum, International Center of Photography.

In the ensuing years, there have been three other stories of major troves of Capa/Taro/Chim work being found in unexpected locations. In 1970, Carlos Serrano, a Spanish researcher in the Archives nationales in Paris, uncovered eight notebooks of contact prints of negatives made in Spain by Capa, Taro, and Chim. The small notebooks, about 8 x 10 inches, contain some 2,500 tiny images from 1936–39 pasted onto the pages, which functioned basically as contact sheets. These notebooks were produced to show the full coverage of stories to potential editors and to keep track of which images were used by the publications. Some of the images are annotated with consecutive numbers, others with publication information and other markings; some are identified by photographer and some are not. In total, these notebooks are the most personal and comprehensive artifacts of the work by these three photographers. In Capa’s possessions was a similar notebook with images from August 1936 by Capa and Taro. This is now in the collection of the International Center of Photography. The eight other notebooks remain in the Archives Nationales in Paris.

The history of the notebooks is also interesting. The record numbers of the notebooks indicate that they are part of a collection from the French Ministry of the Interior and Security of the State, which were entered into the Archives in 1952 without any indication of when or why the material was collected. The record numbers of the notebooks fall between the personal papers of Gustav Rengler, arrested by the French police in September 1939, and a folder from the Agence Espagne, the Communist agency in France that distributed news and photographs about the Spanish Civil War, which may have been raided during the same period.7 Richard Whelan, Capa’s biographer, has suggested that since the notebooks were used as a tool to sell pictures, it is possible they had been borrowed by the agency and never returned.

Chim(David Seymour), Mother nursing a baby while listening to political speech, near Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain (late April – early May, 1936), Negative, © Estate of David Seymour / Magnum, International Center of Photography.

In 1979, about 97 photographs of the Spanish Civil War were found in the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This collection of prints was part of a case of documents and letters belonging to Juan Negrín, prime minster of Spain’s Second Republic, who lived in exile in France after the civil war until his death in 1956. According to Lennart Petri, the Swedish ambassador to Spain, a small suitcase containing the documents was delivered—we do not know by whom or in what circumstances—to the Legation of Sweden in Vichy. At the end of World War II, this case was sent to the Archives of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The documents and letters mostly date from the last months of the war, especially January 1939, and were organized into three sections: documents pertaining to the Ministry of National Defense, documents from other ministries, and general correspondence arranged alphabetically.

It is not clear why Negrín had the prints, although there is speculation that Capa actually gave him the prints in 1938 or 1939, possibly for distribution or for an eventual publication or exhibition. The images are from August 1936 through January 1938 and are by Capa, Taro, Chim, and the unexpected fourth member of this group of photographers, Fred Stein. The images span the war: Capa’s coverage of the bombing of Madrid in late 1936 and the Battle of Teruel in the winter of 1937, Taro’s of Segovia and Madrid in 1937, and Chim’s photographs of the Basque country. (Included in the group is one of two known vintage prints of The Falling Soldier.) The documents now reside in the Archives of the Spanish Civil War in Salamanca.

Gerda Taro, Republican soldiers, La Granjuela, Córdoba front, Spain ( June 1937), Negative, © International Center of Photography (ICP); Collection, ICP.

The negatives contained in the so called Mexican Suitcase were discovered among General Aguilar’s effects by the Mexican filmmaker Benjamin Tarver, which he inherited after the death of his aunt who was a friend of the General. After seeing an exhibition of Spanish Civil War work by Dutch photojournalist Carel Blazer in Mexico City, Tarver contacted Queens College professor Jerald R. Green in February 1995 seeking advice on how to catalogue the material and make it accessible to the public. “Naturally it would seem prudent to have this material…become an archive available to students and researchers of the Spanish Civil War,” Tarver wrote. Green, a friend of Cornell Capa, contacted Cornell and told him of this letter.

Cornell Capa subsequently made numerous attempts to contact Tarver and obtain possession of the film, but, oddly enough, Tarver proved elusive and disinterested. In the fall of 2003, in preparation for the 2007 exhibitions at ICP on the work of Capa and Taro, the late Capa biographer Richard Whelan and chief curator Brian Wallis launched a new effort to return the negatives to Cornell Capa. In early 2007, Wallis enlisted the aid of independent curator and filmmaker Trisha Ziff, based in Mexico City. Ziff first met Tarver in May 2007,14 and over the next several months helped to persuade him that the negatives belonged at ICP with the rest of the Capa and Taro Archives and a large Chim collection. No money was exchanged. On December 19, Ziff arrived at ICP with the Mexican Suitcase. The missing negatives had finally come home.

by Cynthia Young, Assistant Curator

The Robert Capa and Cornell Capa Archive

Visit this and other exhibitions at www.icp.org

For a critical review of Capa’s famous ‘Falling Soldier’ photo, go to: www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/robert-capa/in-love-and-war/47

‘The richness of textile traditions link people the world over, for fabrics are a non-verbal language that tell us the cultural history of a people, their place in the world and even their beliefs.’ (Dhamija 2006:266).

Meaning is encoded in cultural objects in many different ways and is never static. Objects continuously travel in and out of categories of meaning, particularly when the objects themselves also travel physically. Trade goods are the focus of this research paper, which will examine the Dr. Thomas J. Hudak collection of textiles, purchased in Indonesia. The textiles in Dr. Hudak’s collection resemble the Indian textiles found at the center of enormous trade markets in the 1600s. Dr. Hudak’s stunning collection was on display at the Arizona State University Museum of Anthropology in 2010 as part of the exhibit, Trading Cloth and Culture. Examined through the four themes of Technique, Trade, Aesthetics, and Cultural Significance, the textiles in this collection present us with the opportunity to study the nature of objects that have traveled great distances. “Textiles are an important medium in cultural studies because of their universality and mobility. They circulate within specific cultural milieus and also serve as a vehicle for the transmission of ideas between cultures” (Guy 1998:7). From Dr. Hudak’s collection, we can see the ways in which objects are given meaning and how these meanings constantly shift and evolve.

Above: Weaver in Mahasarakham Province, Northeast Thailand. photo by H.Leedom Lefforts  fine arts magazine

Technique

A batik worker with a wax stamp in a batik factory near Tasikmalaya, Indonesia (c.1930) Collection Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam

Before examining the widespread textile trade and the far-reaching impacts of this economic endeavor, it is important to first understa nd what these Indian cloths are, and what made them so immensely desirable in Indonesia and Southeast Asia as a whole. When the textile trade began, cloths were already being woven in Indonesian traditions using the natural resources available there. In Indonesia, “despite having an ancient and highly developed weaving tradition of its own, there was considerable demand for imported textiles, especially from India” (Barnes 2006:99). Differences in natural resource availability between India and Indonesia resulted in very distinct weaving and dying traditions, and created a significant difference in products. “The Indian subcontinent has been blessed with abundant supplies of the materials necessary for the production of cotton and silk textiles and of the dye-stuffs for their decoration” (Guy 1998:19), whereas Indonesian weavers perceived their available resources as less brilliant and exotic. “The delicate fabrics and dazzling colors of these Indian textiles would have contrasted dramatically with the local cloths of heavy cotton and the somber blue that seems once to have been Indonesia’s major dye” (Gittinger 1979:45). These exotic textiles, unable to be replicated in Indonesia and made more valuable by their scarcity, became strongly desired trade goods in the islands.

Dyers in Kalasin Province, Northeast Thailand, 1986. photo by H.Leedom Lefforts

In particular, the dye plants available on the Indian subcontinent were unrivaled in brilliance compared to the colors provided by Indonesian flora. Dyes were derived from raw plants, which would be chopped, soaked, squeezed, and boiled. A variety of plants were available to provide bold colors. The principal dyes used for Indian textiles were in digo (blue), chay and madder (red), but black, violet, green, and yellow could also be derived from Indian plants or imported from the Middle East. Dyeing also required a fixative agent, or mordant, to adhere the dyes to fibers. Mordants came from a variety of sources, such as urine, salt, or lime. Alum and iron were also favored mordants for trade textiles, and the mordants interacted with dyes to produce unique colors.

One of the most highly sought after textile exports from India was patola, a silk double-ikat from Gujarat, where both warp and weft were dyed before weaving into the desired patterns. In layman’s terms, the threads for weaving were tied together and dyed selectively. Making patola was “an extremely complicated process developed over the centuries [that] represents the acme of the weaver’s skill” (Sarabhai 1988:11). Mastery of this skill was highly guarded and many secrets were kept to prevent the profitable practice from spreading too widely. Textile patterns were also made through combinations of resist-dyeing and block-printing methods. In resist-dying, molten wax or moist mud was applied to areas of the cloth which were not intended to accept dye, and the cloth as a whole was dyed leaving behind a negative pattern. Wooden blocks or qalam pens were also used to print patterns onto textiles. Overall, the process of creating textiles for trade was very time-consuming and a cloth of 5-6 meters could take up to 6 months to make. “Cloth was spun and woven in one place, where there was raw cotton and labor, and then transported for painting and dyeing to an area with abundant supplies of clean water essential to the patterning process. The finished textile was finally taken to a collection point for grading, stamping, and marketing” (Guy 1998:21). This complex process for textile production added value to the cloths, making them highly sought-after trade goods for which the makers were well-compensated. However, the scheme under which these textiles were traded was more complicated than monetary exchange. The triangular market in which Indian trade textiles played a crucial role will be discussed in the following section.

Trade

Women stamping patterns on cloth in Indionesia (c. 1860-1900) Collection Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam

Although dating back as far the 5th century, the trade of Indian textiles to Southeast Asia peaked in intensity in the early 1600s. Many factors influenced the character and magnitude of textiles’ production in India and purchase in Indonesia. Trade is complex; “the path to achieve [trade] meanders through political factors, economic changes, business methods and relationships, not to mention individual propensities” (Kahlenberg 2006:35). Resource availability and cultural practices also become tied up in trade routes, and trading partners are never left unchanged by their encounters. “Textiles were traded from one part of the world to the other, linking people and transferring technologies, ideas, concepts, and philosophies” (Dhamija 2006:263). The impacts of the textile trade were far-reaching, deeply influencing the people and the objects involved in this economic endeavor.

As part of a triangular market, European merchants exchanged capital for textiles in India, later to trade these textiles for spices in Southeast Asia. Different spices were indigenous to various regions in Indonesia. In particular, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and mace were top sellers and of highest demand in Europe, the Mediterranean, and China. An enormous volume of European merchants traveled to Indian ports, obtaining the spectacular cloths, and continued on to Indonesia where demand for these textiles was strong. As described by Duarte Barbosa, a traveling merchant,

‘[Indian cloths] are held in great value here, and every man toils to hold a great pile of them that when they are folded and laid on the ground one on the other, they form a pile as high as himself. Who so possess this holds himself to be free and alive, for if he be taken captive he cannot be ransomed save for so great a pile of cloth’ (Gittinger 1979:15)

Merchant Ship of the Dutch East India Company (1782), Nagasaki School, published by Toshimaya, hand- coloured woodblock print

While capital was used to obtain textiles in India, selling prices of spices in Southeast Asia were expressed in terms of textiles. Cloth was accepted as “the most common form of currency. The reason that Indian textiles were used in this manner was because they were sufficiently scarce as well as standardized in size and their coloration set them apart from those produced locally” (Kahlenberg 2006:145). At the height of the textile and spice trade, one Indian cloth sold for as much as 40 pounds of nutmeg (Gittinger 1979:15).

The triangular trade was huge and sustained over many centuries. Weavers began responding to particular demands from merchants, as each region in the spice trade had specific desires for textile patterns. The market gradually became more formalized as export volume grew. While European merchants were primarily concerned with obtaining spices at the advent of the spice trade, it soon became obvious that great profit could be made by obtaining Indian textiles in exchange for spices in Southeast Asia. As the trade progressed, European trading companies exerted greater control over commercial activities of weavers, painters, and dyers. By mid 1600s the Dutch had forcibly secured control over the textile trade after recognizing its commercial potential, and made efforts to control trade in Indonesia based on a system of licenses and stamps for all imports. Although the enormous trade market lasted for centuries, textile currency was eventually driven off the market by coins after 1680. “Like Indian textiles, [coins] were scarce and standardized, but they were not perishable like textiles” (Kahlenberg 2006:148).

Textiles were a particularly convenient unit of exchange for merchants traveling long distances. Textiles are unique in their “convenient portability; while in the long term considered fragile, textiles are initially far more durable and easier to transport than, e.g., glass and ceramics. They were, therefore, primary sources of cross-cultural influences” (Barnes 2006:113). The impacts of the textile and spice trade are far-reaching and much deeper than economics. Trade has the potential to shape history, and “it was a direct result of these cloths, and the international hunger for spices that they helped satisfy, that much of the history of Asia, and indeed Europe, was shaped” (Guy 1998:16). Cultural impacts were also great; along with this trade came the spread of Islam to India and Southeast Asia, as well as influences on local artistic styles. The following sections will examine non-economic impacts of trade goods, first from the standpoint of art and aesthetics, and later through the lens of cultural significance.

Aesthetics

Indian fabric showing Chinese influence (contemporary weaving), courtesy ASU Museum of Anthropology

“Textiles have been—and still are—a major transmitter of design and technology, and they tend to convey considerable social meaning” (Barnes 2006:111). Trade objects have great communicative value, and the symbols and patterns found in trade textiles speak volumes about the producers as well as intended recipients. Textiles made in India for trade to Southeast Asia were distinct in appearance with a great deal of variation. Overall, the aesthetic was a mix of Indian designs as well as symbols and aesthetic elements desired by the recipient region. “Printed Indian [cloths] had been specifically adapted to suit each geographic, national, or cultural area” (Kahlenberg 2006:135) being traded to; the market strategy was to design for the taste of the client. While marked by regional difference, the typical composition of a trade cloth included a large center design bordered by a sharp sawtooth pattern on either end.

Indian fabric showing Persian influence (contemporary weaving), courtesy ASU Museum of Anthropology

As a result of the long-lasting textile trade, aesthetic elements were constantly traveling and being altered from both ends of the trade routes. “Traffic in imagery between the cultures [of India and Southeast Asia] must have been continuous, creating a melting pot of design elements formed and reformed through time” (Guy 1998:17). Designs from imported textiles were adopted in Indonesia; “cloths were so prevalent in cultural lives that motifs and designs became integrated into locally woven cloths” (Guy 1998:10). The impacts of aesthetic influence traveled in both directions; not only did Southeast Asian cultures adopt the patterns found in their imported textiles, but the designs dyed in Indian export textiles over time “adapted to [Southeast Asian] religious beliefs [and] aesthetics” (Kahlenberg 2006:148).

However, the adoption of foreign patterns into local aesthetics was not done without local cultural influence. “Indonesia accepted and absorbed elements of Indian culture in a selective manner and transformed them, through its own ethos and genius, into something uniquely Indonesian” (Sarabhai 1988:10). Indeed, through sustained international trade, “Indonesia could scarcely avoid massive foreign impact on its art forms, including its textile arts. Many of these influences were adopted, but usually on terms that recast them to fit a local aesthetic. What has emerged is an Indonesian expression that is both artistically rich and culturally meaningful” (Gittinger 1979:49). The cultural impacts of trade do not stop in the aesthetic realm, but many other cultural factors were impacted by the import of textiles to Southeast Asia.

Cultural Significance

Women in a small batik workshop in Java (c.1915) Collection Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam

The trade market for textiles in Southeast Asia was driven by demand for cultural needs related to textiles, such as social, ceremonial, and ritual uses. Typically, three main functions of Indian textiles could be seen in Southeast Asia: clothing (daily and ceremonial), ritual (ceremonial decorations, gift exchange, and rites of passage), and stored wealth (objects of inheritance and status symbols). Originally, upon the arrival of these trade cloths, they were most valued for their “glowing colors, complex designs, and exotic silk material. However, when their status was augmented by time and use, they acquired a sacred character as well” (Gittinger 1979:29).

Not surprisingly, textiles obtained through trade were often used as clothing. “In many parts of Southeast Asia, patolas were used for garments—waistcloths, trousers, shawls, scarves, and belts…[and] the ancient heritage of India has been wonderfully woven into the fabric of their own cultures” (Sarabhai 1988:14). However, numerous significances were applied to these textiles above their utilitarian use as clothing items, and

an Indian export textile acquired an acculturated Southeast Asian meaning quite distinct from that intended by the producer. The cultural boundaries in which it operated were very often localized and specific. The importance of the non-utilitarian uses to which Indian textiles were put in Southeast Asian societies is underscored by the sheer volume of the trade, which far exceeded the needs of the region, given that much of the clothing of the people was provided by inexpensive locally woven goods (Guy 1998:9-10).

A woman weaving while a child closely watches, Kalasin Province, Northeast Thailand, 1986. photo by H.Leedom Lefforts

In different regions of Southeast Asia, Indian textiles were put to culturally-specific uses. Each culture that encountered the trade items integrated these textiles into existing cultural practices in unique ways. For example,

in Java [textiles] are esteemed as garb for weddings and the rites marking other transitions in life, and at one time certain motifs were reserved for private use by the royalty in Central Java…On Bali patola are hung in the temples, and in times of illness small fragments of the textile are burnt for the patient to inhale or to put his feet into the smoke. On Sumba possession of certain patola remained the exclusive prerogative of the highest class, who had the designs copied into their own textiles, which were used together with imported pieces at royal funerals an important occasions…One could cite many other examples of past and present customs regarding patola in the islands of Indonesia to confirm the exalted position this particular Indian cloth held there (Gittinger 1982:153).

Indian fabrics showing global influence (contemporary weavings), courtesy ASU Museum of Anthropology

Trade textiles were adopted throughout Southeast Asia and became essential in daily life. Cloths “play a central role in the ceremonial and ritual life of most Asian societies, as signifiers of rank and as bearers of other social messages” (Guy 1998:7). The importance of textiles in Southeast Asian societies has been expressed even recently by an Indonesian weaver, with the strong statement “’without cloth we cannot marry,’ and one may add, nor die and be buried in a respectable manner” (Barnes 2006:102). Textiles have become so integral to cultural practices in Southeast Asia that the foreign character is all but lost; when accepting these trade items, each piece of cloth becomes an object of the recipient’s culture.

Another commonly found reaction towards Indian textiles in Southeast Asia was revering the cloths as wealth, which is logical considering they were items received through exchange. Textiles were elite and conspicuous consumption goods in Southeast Asia. Exotic goods, such as textiles, tangibly demonstrated rulers’ wealth as proof of access to international sources. Textiles literally came to embody the supernatural authority of rulers and were symbols of status and wealth. “Textiles are transcendental wealth, but they are real wealth too, and their display affirms possession of both to the society as a whole” (Gittinger 1979:39). Clearly, Indian textiles were given enormous value in Southeast Asia aside from the more obvious utilitarian values. Textiles literally wove together the cultural lives of people throughout Southeast Asia.

Traveling Objects

Young boy sleeps in front of a loom in Kalasin Province, Northeast Thailand, 1986. photo by H.Leedom Lefforts

As illustrated by the widespread exchange of textiles, spices, and currency in the 1600s, trade of objects has the immense capacity to transform those objects and the cultures that encounter them. Cross-cultural influences result from the transfer of objects. The objects, as well, are profoundly altered through trade. Objects are given meaning in culturally- and context- specific ways, and as the objects change hands they also change meanings. What served as a form of currency for European traders functioned as valuable cultural objects in Southeast Asia, capable of deeply affecting cultural practices and norms.

However, objects such as Indian textiles do not stop their journey of meaning upon their initial trade. The meanings of these textiles would continue to be altered as they were passed from person to person, throughout time and across the world. The textiles in Dr. Hudak’s collection have been ascribed new meanings when purchased by a collector and put on display in a museum. The meanings of these cloths are not finished changing, and one can only predict where they will travel to next. As illustrated by the textiles in Dr. Hudak’s collection, objects literally “travel” through spheres of meaning, and carry with them a great deal of baggage that is continuously being transformed.

by Hannah Kusinitz, Contributing Writer

Visit the collection of tropical artifacts at: www.tropenmuseum.nl

Read Part I of a series on weaving traditions, by Judy Newland in the ARTES, August, 2010 Archive 

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Works Cited:

Barnes, Ruth. 2006. Indian Textiles for Island Taste: The Trade to Eastern Indonesia. In Krill, Rosemary (ed). Textiles from India: The Global Trade. Papers Presented at a Conference on the Indian Textile Trade, Kolkata, 12-14 October 2003. Calcutta: Seagull Books.

Dhamija, Jasleen. 2006. The Geography of Texitles. In Krill, Rosemary (ed). Textiles from India: The Global Trade. Papers Presented at a Conference on the Indian Textile Trade, Kolkata, 12-14 October 2003. Calcutta: Seagull Books.

Gittinger, Mattiebelle. 1979. Splendid Symbols: Textiles and Tradition in Indonesia. Washington, D.C.: Textile Museum.

Gittinger, Mattiebelle. 1982. Master Dyers to the World: Technique and Trade in Early Indian Dyed Cotton Textiles. Washington, D.C.: Textile Museum.

Guy, John. 1998. Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Kahlenberg, Mary Hunt. 2006. Who Influenced Whom? The Indian Textile Trade to Sumatra and Java. In Krill, Rosemary (ed). Textiles from India: The Global Trade. Papers Presented at a Conference on the Indian Textile Trade, Kolkata, 12-14 October 2003. Calcutta: Seagull Books.

Sarabhai, Mrinalini. 1988. Patolas and Resist-Dyed Fabrics of India. Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishers.

Works Cited

Barnes, Ruth. 2006. Indian Textiles for Island Taste: The Trade to Eastern Indonesia. In Krill, Rosemary (ed). Textiles from India: The Global Trade. Papers Presented at a Conference on the Indian Textile Trade, Kolkata, 12-14 October 2003. Calcutta: Seagull Books.

Dhamija, Jasleen. 2006. The Geography of Texitles. In Krill, Rosemary (ed). Textiles from India: The Global Trade. Papers Presented at a Conference on the Indian Textile Trade, Kolkata, 12-14 October 2003. Calcutta: Seagull Books.

Gittinger, Mattiebelle. 1979. Splendid Symbols: Textiles and Tradition in Indonesia. Washington, D.C.: Textile Museum.

Gittinger, Mattiebelle. 1982. Master Dyers to the World: Technique and Trade in Early Indian Dyed Cotton Textiles. Washington, D.C.: Textile Museum.

Guy, John. 1998. Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Kahlenberg, Mary Hunt. 2006. Who Influenced Whom? The Indian Textile Trade to Sumatra and Java. In Krill, Rosemary (ed). Textiles from India: The Global Trade. Papers Presented at a Conference on the Indian Textile Trade, Kolkata, 12-14 October 2003. Calcutta: Seagull Books.

Sarabhai, Mrinalini. 1988. Patolas and Resist-Dyed Fabrics of India. Ahmedabad: Mapin Publis

Christus, Petrus (ca.1410-1475-6). A Goldsmith in His Shop, Possibly St. Eligius (1449), oil on oak panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection (1975.1.110)

A  visit to New York’s, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Old Masters Collection, provides the interested viewer with an opportunity to look closely at pictures painted on wooden panel, canvas, and occasionally, stone or metal. Here, we will refer to their collection and concentrate on the materials, techniques and physical history of European works from north of the Alps, with an eventual detour to Italy, which will be the subject of Part II of this article. The paintings being considered during the 15th-17th century belong to the genre now classified as “easel paintings” – rectangular in format, enclosed in a frame, and intended to hang or stand upright. Some of the very smallest pictures, especially those with a religious subject, might have been kept in a special box with other treasures. Other small pictures were originally diptychs or triptychs: two or three panels hinged together that could stand open during personal devotion and then be folded for transport or storage. Larger pictures, now all too often framed and presented in museums as separate entities, frequently belonged to multi-part structures – usually three parts or more (the latter referred to as polyptychs) – which functioned as altarpieces placed on or above church altars. Increasingly, as the Renaissance progressed, painters produced paintings with secular themes in single-field format, which also became the preferred form for religious pictures.Painting on wooden panels was a medieval practice that continued through the fifteenth century, although it began to disappear during the first half of the sixteenth century (more rapidly in Italy than in northern Europe). Hardwoods were preferred – oak in the Netherlands, and in other regions lime, beech, chestnut, and cherry among others, depending upon local availability. The fashioning of panels and wooden frames was undertaken by specialists: carpenters with their own workshops who were subject to guild regulations mandating high quality for their products, as were the painters in their guild. The wood was to be well seasoned and quarter sawn into planks, which were then joined with wooden dowels, and extra battens nailed to the reverse if the panel was a large one. The planks were usually aligned vertically if the panel was rectangular in shape. Looking closely at a painting on panel today, one may occasionally see the vertical joints of the planks, especially if a crack has opened along one of these seams. 

Panel supports were eventually supplanted by stretched canvas during the later part of the Renaissance, although for centuries past there had been an active industry producing painted works such as banners and wall hangings, often on linen. The canvas supports of easel paintings, of which there are numerous examples in any museum, were most often stretched onto wooden frames, although they could also be glued to panels. As the sixteenth century progressed, a taste developed for paintings on less traditional materials such as slate and copper. The nature of the support affected the finished appearance of the picture because paint layers tended to be fewer and thinner by then, and painters would exploit the roughness and more matte characteristics of canvas or the smooth and shiny surface of copper or slate. In the case of the latter two, the taste for these supports may have been prompted by their resemblance to the brilliantly opaque surfaces of expensive enamels. 

Christus, Petrus, Portrait of a Carthusian (1446), oil on wood, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Jules Bache Collection, 1949 (49.7.19)

Painters had been aware for centuries before this, however, that the color, texture and reflectivity of the ground on which they painted would affect the finished appearance of the painting. Panels were primed before the pigment was applied to create a smooth, non-absorbent and brightly white surface. Upon arriving at the painter’s workshop a panel would receive multiple layers of gesso, ground calcium carbonate mixed with glue (the Italian painters typically used calcium sulfate instead). The first layer might be a piece of fabric glued directly to the panel to help hide seams and knots. Canvas was also gessoed, although the layers were much thinner to avoid cracking. By the sixteenth century the gesso layer could be so thin that it lodged only between the interstices of the fabric weave, allowing the texture of the canvas to play a role in the achievement of painterly effects. By this time many painters had begun to tint their grounds by adding pigments to the gesso, with noticeably darker colors by the end of the Renaissance (ca. 1600). One may occasionally see the color of ground priming when tiny cracks – craquelure – caused by various kinds of damage and wear reveal the under layers. 

The next stage was to apply the composition to the prepared surface. Painters often executed highly finished preparatory drawings, which could be transferred by tracing or pouncing – pricking holes along the contours of the drawing and dusting charcoal through the holes onto the gesso ground. A common method of transferring a compositional motif was “squaring”, which allowed the artist to alter its scale while maintaining the desired proportional relationships. Some painters executed freehand sketches directly, using pen and ink, chalk, or a brush dipped in a diluted pigment; and architectural details were incised with a stylus, although this latter practice was more frequent in Italy. One may occasionally see traces of underdrawing if one looks closely, especially where paint layers have become transparent over time. 

By the Renaissance period many painters were making more than one version of their pictures, especially the smaller ones that could be sold on the open market or customized to suit a client’s taste. It was essential to keep detailed preparatory drawings in the workshop for this purpose. In addition to copies or versions of their own work, ranging from studies of individual heads or hands to compositional sketches for large-scale works such as wall paintings. many painters began to answer the demand for copies of works by “famous” artists. This became an important sector of the painting industry throughout Europe, and the copyists, often reputable painters in their own right, would use prints as their source if an original was not close at hand. 

Netherlandish painters were the first to move from the traditional tempera technique to oil, although the two techniques could be mixed in a single painting, with tempera used for underdrawing and for base layers over which oil glazes were applied, or tempera used for lighter-colored areas and oil glazes for the deeper colors. By the end of the fifteenth century the oil technique had spread to Italy and tempera gradually disappeared. Tempera, defined broadly, refers to all water-soluble binders to which pigment is added, but applied to easel paintings, it usually meant pigment mixed with egg yolk. The paint was painstakingly applied by means of small brushstrokes placed side by side with little blending – the various color hues and values were mixed beforehand and kept in separate containers. Tempera produced a hard and rather shiny finish, which was generally quite opaque. 

The early oil technique was based on glazing, whereby pigments were mixed in walnut or linseed oil (sometimes heat-treated beforehand to speed up the drying time), and applied in relatively thin layers that allowed light to penetrate. Light would reflect off the underlayers, including areas of the white gesso ground, and travel back through the veils of colored glazes. In general, while tempera technique worked from dark to light, beginning with the most saturated hue of a pigment in the shadows and adding lighter mixtures for the midtones and highlights, oil glazing worked from lighter underlayers through successive layers of glaze selectively applied to deepen midtones and then to create the deepest shadows. Needless to say, it is virtually impossible to see any brushstrokes – the painter’s application of paint is entirely hidden. Glaze layers are the first to disappear if a painting undergoes any surface damage, which can alter the hues and color relationships. 

Metsys, Quentin (ca.1466-1530), The Adoration of the magi (1526), oil on wood, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, John Stewart Kennedy Fund,1911(11.143)

Fifteenth century painting technique in northern Europe, most especially in Flanders, was based on the reproduction of minutely-observed details of the material world and on the play of shadow and highlight that enabled the viewer to perceive them. Looking closely at a fifteenth century Flemish painting will reveal the painting of individual strands of hair, the highlights on the tiniest pearl or the transparent sparkle of a drop of water . By the sixteenth century, however, many painters were exploring other possibilities offered by an oil-based technique. In addition to exploiting oil’s translucency, they were experimenting with its opacity and malleability, building up highlights with thick daubs of pure pigment – impasto – and dragging and scumbling small amounts of pigment with a dry brush. The resulting picture surface can be rough and three-dimensional in places when viewed close up, yet from a distance the effects are optically convincing and often quite spectacular. This painterly approach was championed from the sixteenth century on by such famous painters as Titian, Rubens and Rembrandt and, in the nineteenth century by Corot and Degas, among others. 

The pigments used by European painters, north and south of the Alps, changed very little until the invention of synthetic pigments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Pigments were derived from inorganic materials, mostly minerals, that often had to be refined or synthesized with other ingredients to produce colorants such as red and white lead, vermilion, lead-tin yellow, the blues of azurite and lapis lazuli, various colored “earths”, and copper greens. Other pigments were derived from organic sources: black from burned wood, oil or bone; greens, yellows, reds and blues from plants or insects. The latter often produced highly prized red dyes that were turned into pigments by extracting the color from previously-dyed fabric. Gold, silver and tin were all used to highlight details such as crowns, swords and embroidery, and especially for elements that were intended to radiate sacred light such as haloes. Gold was the most expensive and the preferred choice. Gold coins were beaten into thin sheets which could then be cut to various sizes and applied, or the gold could be shredded, mixed with a binder and applied with a brush. One often sees a reddish-brown color showing through damaged areas of applied gold leaf. This is a clay called “bole” that was the preferred ground on which to adhere the gold. Its red hue gave the gold an extra fiery glow, and it formed an extra cushion when the gold areas were “tooled”, that is, designs were gently pressed into the leaf with small stylus-like implements bearing geometric shapes on their tips. The taste for using real gold in paintings slowly fell out of fashion. By the sixteenth century the optical effects of metals, jewels, and even rays of light were created with white and yellow paint instead. More value was placed on the painters’ skill at creating optical illusions than on the presence of the real material. 

Framing was the last step in the production of a painting. By the Renaissance period the frame was usually the responsibility of the painter even if he subcontracted the actual construction to a carpenter or sculptor. Frames were often gilded or painted, sometimes with a special technique intended to imitate colored marble. The elaborate frames for large altarpieces in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance constituted a substantial part of the cost of the finished product, but as picture formats were simplified into the single-field, rectangular format, frames became considerably less important and often considerably less expensive than the image framed. The frames that presently surround older pictures are rarely original. It is only very recently that frames have themselves become objects of study and hence valued. For centuries, pictures were removed from their frames and re-framed according to the prevailing taste. This was easy to do with canvasses and panels with separate frames, but many early panels, particularly small ones that were originally parts of multi-part altarpieces, were constructed with integral frames, either carved from the same wood as the plank or molded out of gesso (often applied over pieces of wood molding nailed to the planks). These framed fragments are ubiquitous in museum holdings of late Medieval and early Renaissance pictures, and are invariably hung as separate and discreet works of art, having lost their original context entirely. 

Looking closely at pictures on museum walls provides us with glimpses of the process by which painters created their works. It also shows us how closely and carefully these painters regarded the world around them and sought to capture its appearances, including, one could argue, even the phenomenon of sight itself. Despite the damage caused by centuries of wear and aging, it is a tribute to the skill of their makers that these objects have survived as long as they have and still retain the capacity to amaze us. 

by Louisa Matthew- Contributing Writer

The Adoration of the Magi, 1585-91, Michael Damaskenos, 1530/35-92/93, egg tempera and oil on wood, 110 x87 cm

Seeing the known anew is the grace of every great exhibition. In front of The Adoration of the Magi, by Michael Damaskenos at “The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete,” at the Onassis Cultural Center in New York City, this belief strikes a particularly strong note. Painted in 1585-91, the sensation is of standing in front of the work of a contemporary young painter, fresh, a little cocky, defiantly regaling against the trend in a white box Chelsea gallery. A postmodern mash-up of Byzantine, Renaissance, Gothic and Mannerist styles, it appears so modern as to have been painted in this moment, yet sits entirely in its own time. With a central figure that seems to be a true portrait, a fashionable celebrity magus with courtly crew in tow, he stares frankly and directly out at us from dead center in the picture plane, the antithesis of the symbolic iconographic tradition. He seems to break through the “fourth wall,” caught by the camera’s eye and catching ours in a winking moment while his cast of characters goes on about their business, feverishly unaware.   

Triptych with the Second Coming, the Resurrection, “In Thee Rejoiceth,” and the Landscape of Mount Sinai, Late 16th century, Georgios Klontzas (ca 1540-1608), egg tempera on wood

Caught midway between symbolism and naturalism, the Byzantine mountains with their iconic inverse perspective lean gleefully over his head while a horse rears his buttocks in Renaissance naturalist perspective. To the left of the picture plane Mary peers out from a barely symbolist past while the Magi seem to have arrived fresh from the busy future. Dense and active, the compressed byzantine space is like a crowded multi-century, multicultural house party, figures leaning, gesticulating, conversing in Renaissance abandon while byzantine angels hover overhead, piously covering their hands. Across from these heavenly beings, scantily clad futuristic angels swoop an unfurling drapery over a building, reference to the traditional iconic symbol of an interior event, before our eyes heralding a new era. The congruous montaging of elements in the same space while keeping each style autonomous feels intensely modern.   

detail, center panel, outside (above)

Near the Damaskenos, a triptych by George Klontzas, features writhing figures packed in a dense world striving for a dark vision reminiscent of van Eyk’s heaven and hell, yet despite itself bursting with riotous life. The swirling emotional intensity of the scenes reveals its Mannerist style, with clear appropriations from multiple western sources, including the representation of Hell, by Domenico Campagnolo, apparently appropriated nearly in its entirety. The one shame is the possibly integral original frame that was carved away, a nineteenth century replacement added. Lovely in its own right, I cannot help but crave the original, although the frame keeps good company with the painting’s collaged postmodern quality.   

The exhibition offers us a sumptuous exploration of nearly 50 Cretan icon paintings, their introduction to and integration with western styles of painting, and the resulting birth of a great modern master, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as El Greco – the Greek. Icons as an art form are always intriguing, visually compelling, seeming to have a deeper and larger story to tell, one of tradition, meditation and prayer, liturgy and pure rapturous beauty contained in a strictly structured contemplative format. This exhibition offers a pinpointed twist in the narrative of icons; witness to the lineage of El Greco evolving lavishly in front of our eyes.   

Christ Pantokrator, Last quarter of the 14th century, egg tempera on wood, 91.5 x 63 cm

In 1541 when El Greco was born, Crete was an international late Byzantine Center, a Venetian territory since 1211, multicultural and religiously diverse. Artists working in the Byzantine style were familiar with Late Gothic, Renaissance and Mannerist work, especially through the distribution of prints of artists such as Giovanni Bellini, Raphel, Titian and Parmagiannino. Artists moved between Constantinople, Crete and Venice, and the Byzantine style incorporated strong Italian elements. El Greco was a colleague of Klontzas and Damaskenos, the three were notable Cretan artists of their time who traveled to Venice, and all incorporated Italian styles while somehow retaining their Byzantine heredity. They evolved in a Byzantine environment as talented iconographers, and each burst that shell with a vengeance in their own way. El Greco left its structure most completely, while never abandoning his iconic roots entirely.   

Saint Theodore Tiro, from Candia, Second quarter of the 15th century, egg tempera on wood, priming on textile, 122.8 x 70 cm

The tradition of icons, (from Greek εἰκών eikōn “image”), form an important aspect of Orthodox liturgy. A part of the practice of prayer, icons are a highly symbolic form, a sign or likeness that stands in for another. The stylized character of the forms, often based on a strict geometric structure, are specifically de-naturalized, a theological way of depicting the divine rather than human aspect of the narrative. Icons are symbols of holy events, they point the way towards rather than mimic. Space is compressed, gold backgrounds announce heavenly events, landscapes are geometric, perspective is inverted and multiple, expressing a spiritual vision rather than worldly. Figures are deliberately abstracted, flattened so as to not appear entirely “embodied.” Referencing the ancient ban on graven images in the monotheistic faiths, to depict holy events in naturalistic form would be heretical, for you cannot depict that which you cannot see. A great debate in Christianity, the birth of Jesus to a human woman would eventually justify the depiction of images in the Roman and Orthodox traditions. Controversial even today in some faiths and regions, Buddhas were only recently destroyed for the likes of this- in the Renaissance West the ban became loose and then lost completely, as Giotto depicts Christ walking recognizably along his contemporary streets of Italy. God is crashed to earth, and man becomes his likeness; mimesis takes hold and naturalistic forms become commonplace. Yet Orthodox icons maintained an essentially spiritual visual structure, often even through today.   

Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Late 15th century, possibly Nikolaos Tzafouris, (ca 1455-1500/01), egg tempera and gold leaf on wood

The exhibition offers astonishing examples of the tradition. Gems abound, each commanding attention no matter how humble. The extraordinary condition of many belie their age, these paintings have been well looked after. The earliest work of Christ Pantocrater, from the last quarter of the 14th century, shows him solemnly peering out in knowing mercy; the Hodigritia icon of Mary – she who shows the way- from around the same time, points toward the child in her arms in a motion of foreshadow. Saint Theodore Tiro stands large and triumphant over a slain green dragon, his courtly dress gleaming in Byzantine splendor while the hand of God offers blessings from above. The meeting of East and West is more apparent in some, as in Christ and the Woman of Samaria, where Italian buildings protect the iconic foreground narrative, or in a Pieta from around 1500, probably by Nikolas Tzafouris, which is a close copy of Giovanni Bellini and incorporates oil in a tempera grassa technique. Then there is the ever odd Virgin Lactans, mid to late 15th century, her tiny breast popping right out of her left shoulder. The child does not seem to mind.   

The Coronation of the Virgin, Ca. 1603-5, Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco, 1541-1614), Oil on canvas, 57 x 79.3 cm

No tradition, ban or not, is hard and fast, and variations, interpretations, and outright breaks appear throughout history. This exhibition gives exceptional examples of pure forms of Byzantine icons, as well as a kind of marrying, not quite a blending but a joining together of a Byzantine and Western understanding of the depictions of holy images. The result is El Greco, who appears as modern as painting can be. As one who has observed closely and studied hard the traditions of icons, this show was revelatory in its tightly constructed argument for Cretan icons and the unfolding of a modern master. To approach El Greco’s, Coronation of the Virgin, 1603-5, as the culmination of this narrative is to witness a revolution happening, yet one that does not seem to reject its forbearers but rather holds them within, while pushing paint into completely new places. I am always astonished at its modernity when standing in front of an El Greco painting, considering when he painted. His paintings persuade me that almost nothing that came after in painting was ever more modern in its expression in paint. Titian, Tintoretto, the masters who influenced El Greco in Venice, seem more fixed in their time somehow, firmly rooted in their place, while El Greco leaps backward and forward simultaneously, conflating time and place, body and spirit, East and West.   

“The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete,” on view through February 27, at the Onassis Center, does justice to these narratives, illuminating the themes of icon painting and their role in the life of El Greco as he ushers in modernity. We witness that precipice here, and can literally feel the excitement of the painters’ explorations. Accomplishing what only such notable exhibitions can, we drink in the work and see it anew. The Onassis Center has connected this subject to worlds beyond, and left me hungry for much more.   

by Patricia Miranda, Contributing Writer   

The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete,” at the Onassis Cultural Center, New York City.   

On view through February 27   

15,000 year-old prehistoric Altamira cave painting

In the 1990s, I recall watching Sister Wendy Beckett, the reluctant celebrity spokesperson for a popular PBS series on art appreciation. This sequestered nun, who for decades had lived under a vow of silence, had gained notoriety for her views on famous works of art and now stood in her nun’s habit waxing vociferously before the prehistoric Altamira cave paintings. Self-taught and passionate about the history of art, she gestured at the figures of stampeding bison and elk behind her and said, “These images are 15,000 years old. In the millennia that followed, art didn’t get any better than this, just different.”

In a few words, she summed up the argument for why we should not apply the word, ‘primitive’ to any artistic or material object from cultures far removed from our own tastes and values, simply because we do not understand them.

Yombe Maternity Figure, Republic. of Congo, 19th century, private collection

On this, All Saints’ Day (November 1st), cultures throughout the world travel to cemeteries to celebrate the lives of deceased loved ones and ancestors, long-dead. It is a joyous event, with food shared and offered up and tender care given to the graves of the deceased. As hard as this may be to understand, are these rituals anymore primitive or morbid than our pagan celebration of Halloween the day before?

So, as we seek to understand the art and cultures of other peoples, especially in this period of inclusivity in our own history, where does the word ‘primitive’ fit in our lexicon—or does it at all?

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907; Museum of Modern Art, New York

Nineteenth century adventurism and usurpation of far-flung lands led to many abuses. Western cultural ethnocentrism and misogyny, combined with common practices of tomb raiding, careless and heavy-handed archeological ‘digs’, amounting to blatant theft of cultural artifacts, led to the unregulated and unquestioning sale of untold priceless artifacts to countless private collectors and newly-founded museums in many western countries.

These illicit activities had the effect of bringing to public attention new categories of art and artifacts that defied aesthetic understanding and categorization, under conventional Western terms. The word, ‘primitive’ was often used to describe objects of great inherent beauty and value, but, as it happened, just not to those currently in possession of them! It became a term that was applied to cultural artifacts that people were seeing, but not understanding. The rich symbolism, iconographic significance and ritualistic import of these art forms were left behind, as surely as the societies from which they had been taken.

Only with the increased awareness that the emerging field of cultural anthropology brought to the table in the mid-twentieth century, did questions begin to be raised about the possible inherent beauty and significance of these plundered treasures, culled from worlds so far apart and unfamiliar from our own.

H.W. Janson’s well-know text (1962 edition), History of Art, devotes nine full pages to a discussion of ‘primitive art’. Featuring mostly African, Inuit, Pacific islands and native American sculpture, Janson’s narrative is a compelling and useful read—because it offers what I believe is a helpful definition of what ‘primitive’ is and how it can be independently and respectfully applied to cultures, separate from their art forms, in various parts of the world.

Karl Schmidt-Rottlull, Madchen aus Kowna, 1918, private collection

Thus, Janson defines ‘primitive’ in a social/cultural context as; “societies remote, isolated and set apart physically from the rest of the world; using Stone Age or ancient tool methods; rural and self-sufficient; tribal, not city-states; without written records, thus, ahistorical; static, not dynamic or progressively expansive; defensive toward outsiders and favoring ancestral worship.”

American graven image, sculptor unknown, 17th c., Wakefield, MA

This behavioral definition, while largely outmoded in today’s world of global interconnectivity, sheds light on a useful distinction between a particular set of shared cultural beliefs and behaviors that constitute a collective community identity, on the one hand, and the art and artifacts produced by those same societies, on the other. Though socially isolated, this particular definition does not detract from the fact that these ‘primitive’ communities may be capable of creating objects with all the inherent qualities of beauty, form and balance that rival objects more familiar to our Western eyes. Thus, primitive is a term reserved for the chosen lifestyle of selected cultures or peoples, not necessarily for their material output.

By the early 21st century, many art history texts had had relegated any discussion of ‘primitive’ to the primitivist movement of the early modern period. Then, artists like Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Henri Rousseau sought to capture the simplicity of form and composition seen in works from Africa, Columbian America and the pacific islands, as well as children’s art, folk and naïve art (now called ‘outsider art’) and even that of the mentally ill! Like other artists of that time (including Picasso), there was a shared assumption about the primal authenticity and purity of form that elevated these foreign objects to the realm of the mysterious and iconic—yet another likely disservice to their practical and functional indigenous origins.

So, elegant art and artifacts can emanate from so-called primitive cultures, although fewer such societies functioning in isolation from the rest of the world exist today. It is important to note however, that their art is not, by definition, primitive. Our view of it may be affected by our own ignorance or misinformation, but not necessarily by any limitation in their vision or ability to convey symbolic meaning through the objects they themselves value and revere.

by Richard Friswell, Editor-in-Chief

Check out this great discussion on ‘Primitivism” at: www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab19

Laura Bohn

Darren Henault

As the movers and shakers of the handmade rug industry, the interior design trade plays a pivotal role in shaping the end consumers’ purchasing decisions. After focusing on the greenness of the handweaving process from the manufacturers’ standpoint (See “Special Green Report—Handmade Rugs—The Original Green Floor Coverings,” ARTES (Oct. 13, 2009), this article takes a hard look at what the country’s most reputed and green-attuned designers and other members of the design community are thinking. Do they view handmade rugs as an eco-friendly floor covering as compared to machine-made?

Clifford Tuttle

Mary Douglas Drysdale

For many members of the interior design trade, any interest in a handmade rug’s eco-friendly attributes is clouded by the challenge in finding the esthetically perfect rug for the project. Explains Carl D’Aquino of D’Aquino Monaco, a premier Manhattan-based and internationally reputed design firm: “It’s so hard to find the right texture, colors, and patterns that adding the green parameter makes it even more difficult.” Continues the award-winning Jamie Drake of Drake Design Associate: “I’m aware of handmade rugs as being greener relative to their machine-made alternatives. However, at the end of the day, the green aspect is more of a bonus in addition to a rug’s quality and esthetics.”

Jamie Drake

Why is the design trade’s awareness of the greenness of handmade rugs so limited? For one thing, green floor coverings are not yet the primary concern for a majority of clients. “If residential clients were educated, it might help,” states award-winning and LEED2-accredited professional (AP) designer Clifford Tuttle of ForrestPerkins with offices in Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Dallas. “However, in the hospitality sector, the demands and constraints are such that handmade rugs, however ecologically desirable, are not viable.”

Alejandra Dunphy

In residential projects, Washington, DC interior designer and environmental design consultant Alejandra Dunphy of A/D Studio, Atlanta, GA, who also manufactures handmade rugs in South America states that clients’ understanding of rugs’ greenness “depends on how much you educate your clientele on the eco-friendly attributes of the rug production process.” Ideally, adds Ms. Drysdale: “Good designers are thoughtful people who educate their clients on the consequences of their decisions.”

Michael Larocca

In many cases, allergies to machine-made rugs have triggered designer awareness of the greenness of their handmade counterparts. Ms. Drysdale’s pulmonary reaction to the “toxic” off-gasing in her wall-to-wall carpeting was such that she could not move into her new home until it was removed. “Thanks to my little health problem, I became aware of carpeting’s toxic load and what it can do to us which most of us don’t realize.” From this unfortunate physical reaction was born an avowed passion for handmade oriental and decorative rugs and for their eco-friendly benefits.

Thom Banks

Those lucky few designers who have had the opportunity of traveling to the countries of origin and observed the hand weaving process first hand have fully grasped handmade rugs’ sustainable attributes. When in Egypt, internationally acclaimed New York-based designer Michael LaRocca of Michael R. LaRocca, Inc. discovered the fascinating process of hand dyeing wool and concluded that handmade rugs were far more desirable from a green standpoint than their machine-made alternatives. Early exposure to weavers in her native Ireland and travel to looms in Armenia and Nepal have made Clodagh passionate about handmade rugs’ greenness. “Oriental rugs are produced using human energy which is renewable,” states the legendary internationally known designer who has made sustainability her mantra. The handmade rug production process—from the spinning to the actual weaving—is part of “an energy circle that creates a win-win situation for all” which has a positive and humanizing effect on the craftsmen. Indeed, she notes: “Despite their poverty, they were singing while they were working!”

Clodagh is among the few designers who have expressed a true avocation for things green before it became trendy. “I was green long before the term even existed!” she exclaims. However, for a vast majority of interior designers, education will be key to their awareness of handmade rugs’ greenness. Is the rug industry responding to this educational need? The designers interviewed for this article responded with a resounding “no” and voiced the need for immediate action. States Mr. LaRocca: “It’s the moral responsibility of the [rug] industry to take the bull by the horns and educate people on the handmade alternatives in floor coverings.” Advertising, public relations, direct mail campaigns, and educational seminars offered by handmade rug vendors are among the key measures designers endorse. Moreover, Mr. Tuttle suggests that the handmade rug industry develop a type of green certification program3 as has been done by the Carpet and Rug Institute for machine-made carpeting.

Annette Stelmack

Clodaugh

Meanwhile, there are opportunities through the design industry for educating its members and ultimately the end user. ASID (American Society of Interior Designers) Deputy Executive Director Thom Banks in Washington, DC has been involved in the creation of the Regreen Program (www.regreenprogram.org), a partnership between the ASID and the U.S. Green Building Council whose goal is to develop the best practice guidelines toward the implementation of sustainable building and design projects. While their guidelines do mention the desirability of area rugs versus wall-to-wall carpeting, Mr. Banks feels there is a vital need for an additional educational program delineating the attributes of the various handmade products versus the machine-made. Meanwhile, Ms. Stelmack mentions initiatives such as the architectural 2030 Challenge—the global undertaking designed to transform the U.S. and global building sectors into becoming carbon neutral by 2030—as being key to raising awareness of handmade rugs’ green properties. Most critical, she remarks, is the Council for Interior Design Accreditation’s recent policy change dictating that interior design schools’ curriculum will soon have to include courses on sustainable design in order to remain accredited. Hence, the new generation of interior designers entering the workforce will be all ears for the green attributes of oriental and decorative rugs. “Manufacturers in the handmade rug industry will need to properly educate interior designers-it’s a matter of survival!” insists Ms. Stelmack.

Carl D'Aquino

Judy Swann

However, many designers believe that no matter how educated clients may become, they will still resist waiting six months to a year for custom wall-to-wall handwoven goods. According to Mr. LaRocca, this creates a problem in Manhattan buildings for instance which dictate that most floors be covered for noise. Installing sisal while you wait is a solution this designer has resorted in these situations or with impatient clients. Other designers point out that not all clients have the budget—particularly in these lean times—for handmade rugs and opt for the cheaper and faster machine-made alternative. However, these obstacles do not deter Clodagh who is convinced that people will listen if properly educated. In effect: “It’s simply a question of good planning and organization. If you order the rugs at the beginning of the project, they will come in on time!”

While still in early days, consumer awareness of things green is growing. Judy Swann of Green Interior Consultants (ASID, LEED AP) of Westport, CT, who advises the interior design trade on implementing green design, has seen the tide shift in the sustainable direction. “Up until last year, most designers would say ‘go away’ to me,” she notes. “People are starting now to ask questions on what’s sustainable,” adds Mr. Tuttle. “Ten years from now, this new awareness should enhance the growth of the handmade rug industry.” Indeed, concludes Mr. Drake: “Many residential clients will be demanding these sustainable products.”

1 Foster, Kari, Stelmack, Annette, and Hindman, Debbie, Sustainable Residential Interiors. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley (2007).

2 LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Green Building Rating System, a certification program and nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings.

3 The Oriental Rug Importers Association (ORIA) is currently developing a green certification program. Details will be announced in 2009.

Photography by Blaise Wayward

*Reprinted from the Fall 2008 issue of AREA Magazine, courtesy of the Oriental Rug Importers Association, Inc. http://www.orientalrugimportersassociation.org

'Through the glass, brightly', view of the Lyman Estate, Waltham, Massachusetts

As I pulled up the long drive, lined with sturdy, shag-barked Maple trees, the snow-covered fields and a distant copse of fledgling oaks and birches to my right offered a glimpse of a Boston of long ago. Suburban neighborhoods and office parks now surround this pastoral vista, a gently rolling reminder of what much of this region (and in fact, most of 18th century America) looked like when the Lyman Estate property (“The Vale”) was acquired in 17…

My destination was the non-profit organization, Historic New England, based at the Lyman Estate in Waltham, MA. From there, a small and dedicated staff manages and preserves 36 historic properties in five New England states. Constructed over the course of four centuries (1664-1938), each serves as a small, freestanding museum and cultural milestone along the road of American architecture,

The "Vale" or Lyman Estate, home of the Waltham, MA based Historic New England which manages 36 properties in 5 state

design and everyday living. In addition to their properties, the Otis House Museum, in Boston, houses their collection of over one-million records: historic photographs, architectural drawings, ephemera, manuscripts and other printed material pertaining to life in the region.

It was because of their historical archives and related research that I traveled to meet with Sally Zimmerman, Preservation Specialist, and an authority on historic paint colors throughout the period. Sally has devoted much of her professional life to investigating the composition, uses and fashion trends expressed by both exterior and interior paint in historic New England homes over the years. My goal was to discover how paint colors and technology has changed over the centuries and to learn more about the investigative techniques that are used to uncover this little-understood aspect of our cultural heritage.

Oldest of the properties, the rare 1693 Arnold House, in Lincoln, RI, has a massive south-facing stone facade that stores summer sun's heat and winter fire's warmth

The Walter Gropius Home, in Lincoln, MA, built by this Harvard Architecture faculty member and mid-century modernist in 1938

The American paint story, as it turns out, is a unique one and is affected in no small way by our founding history and the architectural trends that followed in its wake. “With so many properties under management by Historic New England, we have a unique opportunity to be able to catalogue paint and color use over more than a 300 year period,” explains Sally. “From early colonial salt box to a mid-20th century masterpiece by Walter Gropius, the range of architectural styles and the artifacts associated with them becomes vital source material for the research team.”

From the beginning of recorded history, pigmented materials have been used to record the experiences, beliefs and vanities of various cultures and civilizations. The earliest pigments used to tell a story in color were the cave paintings

Detail of the pre-historic cave paintings of Lascaux, France

of Lascaux, France, where earth-toned pigments of ochre, iron oxide (rust) and lamp black were ground and mixed with milk and lime. These were then used to create representations of wild creatures and the Neolithic human form. Soft rocks and soot from torches were literally the first colors employed by humankind to tell a sacred story of the hunt. Their representations of this event on cave walls throughout Europe 35,000 years ago was intended to both document and sanctify their close bond to and dependence on these creatures.

Over the centuries, water or milk-based paints remained in common use. A range of colors could be produced, using by-products such as copper oxide to make shades of green or brown; a rare mineral from Afghanistan, lapus lazuli, to create a brilliant blue; Egyptians were able to fashion shades of red, yellow and orange from pigments in the soil; purple was created from the crushed shells of millions of mollusks. Plato discovered that by blending two different colors together, a different one would result. This increased the range of colors available to the ancients. Some attempts were made to improve permanence in color with the addition of olive oil, egg, animal glue (these applications were called, distemper) and waxes; but most, especially those exposed to the elements remained impermanent, or furtive.

Enthroned in his crimson and ermine robes, Napoleon Bonaparte, a painting by

It was not until the Age of Discovery and the Renaissance that paint technology improved and new colors became available from foreign sources. Attributed to the Dutch painter, Jan van Eyck, in 1410, the addition of boiled linseed oil to paint made for ease of application and a mixture that dried to a hard, permanent surface.

New colors were soon introduced to the artist’s palette. From the Silk Route trade to the East came indigo, derived from plants and the shell of the Phoenician snail. The ships of Spain that plied the trade routes between the New World and Europe frequently carried in their hold millions of insect carcasses, known as the female cochineal beetle. Found only on the Prickly Pear cactus, the crushed remnants of this small insect was well-known to the Aztecs and produced a brilliant red dye, known to the Europeans as crimson. Expensive and rare, it was sought after by royalty for their best finery and soon distinguished them from the less privileged masses. A less glamorous New World import, but one that proved just as useful, was Indian yellow; made from concentrated cow’s urine mixed with mud to be transported to London for refinement. It is clear why royals ‘aspired to the crimson’ and not to the yellow!

Because the formulation of blue pigment had always been difficult and expensive, the 1704 development in Germany of Prussian Blue gave a boost to the world of art and industry alike. Known for its permanence and versatility, it quickly found its way onto the artist’s brush, the burgeoning ceramics industry which sought to recreate, en mass, the newly-discovered Oriental themes and landscapes on plates and other serving pieces and in the drafting field, where it became the accepted color for ‘blueprints’ and other architectural renderings.

This 19th century Japanese print by Utamaro pictures courtesans in their elegant, but deadly white-face makeup

The cruelest color, white, was one that did not emerge on the scene until well into the classical period, when Greek and Roman civilizations flourished. Lead oxide is superior to chalk, zinc and barium for pigmenting various oils to make inks, paints and most ominously, women’s makeup. Widely used in locations throughout the world over the centuries, the powdery dust of lead production, the handling of it in the formulation of products and even its seductive sweet taste, lead would prove fatal to thousands of factory workers, artists, craftsmen and femme fatales (including Geishas, who covered their faces with lead-based cream to stand out in contrast to their darkly-stained teeth). Lead-white paint remained in common use until well into the 20th century and the health effects of lead paint ingestion are still being seen today.

Victorian color choices were influenced by technology advances and color fashion of the time

“So, looking back,” –Sarah raises both hands to suggest an imaginary timeline between her palms– for much of the 17th and 18th centuries in the American colonies and early years of our nationhood, the exterior color choices and color ranges were limited to those that could withstand the elements and protect the wood-clad structures that were being built. Browns, red oxide, zinc white and black predominated. Some light blues and greens can be found, but they were rare. Interior colors were more striking and, mixed with wall papers, could make for a colorful habitat. Wall paper fragments offer us excellent clues as to how colors were used in combination,” she explains, “and some would be considered very bold by today’s standards.”

I asked Sarah to help me understand the sudden explosion of color that came into use during the Victorian period of the 19th century. She explained that this period, “coincided with the introduction of aniline or synthetic dyes.

• The first was mauveine, or mauve, discovered by Henry Perkins in 1856 and hundreds of others were to follow. The impact of artificial colors on the paint and fashion industry was dramatic; [author’s note: dark colors predominated in Victorian fashion and interior design to mask the soot produced by the newly-invented, coal-powered central heating system]

• Cromolithography, or color printing was developed at this time, spurring public interest in new colors;

• Paint tubes and re-sealable paint cans were invented (and the old-fashioned methods of mixing in small batches and storing paint in pig’s bladders was abandoned);

• Manufacturing methods allowed for uniformity and increased durability in paint coloration;

• The railroad allowed for wider distribution of the product to a broader market. After 1860, paint was no longer an artisanal product,” she tells me.

• “Paint packaging spawned a new generation of amateur painters who took up the hobby with enthusiasm;

• Steam-driven mills could turn out uniformly-sized construction material, including the new 2”x4”, in standard lengths, to hasten home construction. Harder woods could also be milled, promoting the development of stains to bring out wood grain.” [note: a boon to the Arts and Crafts movement of the 1890s and later, to Frank Lloyd Wright]

Interior of the Lyman House shows uses of strong color in decor to offset classical appointments

Sarah Zimmerman, Preservation Specialist for Historic New England and an authority on historic paint color

Sarah explains that, “Paint in the 20th century has undergone a range of chemical and technological improvements. Architectural colors, both inside and out, have a longer trend line, i.e.- they last longer. By carefully researching the range of paint colors from the past, we are educating people about the creative possibilities and encouraging them to go back and revisit their color choices on many of the historic properties that can be found in contemporary neighborhoods. When a house is correctly painted, it will speak to its heritage in a much clearer way. The right paint color captures the historic significance of the property and puts it in perspective for people.”

“There is a lot of information out there,” Sarah says, “through the California Paint Company, who committed to work with us to put this line of historic colors together and through the Color Marketing Association, who regularly forecast color trends in the design and construction trades. Painting has been made easy and low-risk. It’s a dramatic and fun-filled project that will enhance your life and doesn’t represent a huge commitment. The best part is that we are here to help. Just call us”

Color me convinced.

________________________________________________________

Historic New England is a non-profit organization. Once known as The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, it is the oldest, largest and most comprehensive preservation organization in the country. Visit the web site (and their sites!) at www.historicnewengland.org.

Owners and others interested in historic preservation should contact the Stewardship Program, a partnership with property owners at (781) 891-4882, ext 227 to arrange for an on-site meeting to discuss preservation strategies, or go to www.historichomeowner.org

To purchase the historic colors chart ($6.50), go to www.historicnewengland.org, go to ‘museum shop’, then ‘book store and click on ‘Reference/How-To Books’.

To learn more about how English historic colors differ from American, go to www.farrow-ball.com to see their paint and wall paper collection.