June 26, 2006
General Assembly Talk: "New By Old: The Role of History in Interpreting Contemporary Art"
This is the text of the seminar I gave at this year's General Assembly. You really need to see it with pictures. May I suggest opening a separate window and going to the General Assembly Visuals so you can click along? Or, click on the links to see the full-size image. Just remember to come back.
Introduction
We divide art by time. If you’ve ever taken a class in art appreciation or been on a tour in an art museum, chances are you did so in chronological order. For many of you, everything seems to be making sense until you walk into the room labeled “Modern: 1945-1970.” Perhaps you cope; “At least the colors are interesting,” you say, heading into the next gallery. But in the room marked “Contemporary,” things are even more unsettling. There is a pile of candy in the corner, a collage of magazines and prescription drugs on the wall, and a sculpture of the Pink Panther embracing a buxom blonde. Time seems to have warped, leaving little connection between these works and the paintings of waterlilies three rooms back.
Yet, before we can begin to unpack and tussle with the artworks that are being made today, we actually need to understand a few things about the past. Our emerging generation has often been accused of being a-historical, of lacking a knowledge of the past, and of being incapable of placing situations into broader historical streams. On the other hand, the church herself has a tenuous relationship with time. We tend to be enamored with the transcendent; time is something to be tolerated for now and escaped or overcome with death or the kingdom’s return. Still, despite both our own and our culture’s misgivings, time is good. Time is necessary. In fact, embracing a theologically sound and academically humble view of history may in fact be the lynchpin that enables us to meaningfully interpret and judge contemporary art.
Mark Tansey, A Brief History of Modernist Painting
In this discussion, history is vital for two main reasons. First, a broad, biblical understanding of history’s metanarrative allows us to interpret, judge, and appreciate art in relationship to the eschaton. Second, history gives us the cultural context of art, allowing us to judge art first according to the terms of its own historical moment and then again in relationship to the history of images.
Hard Knocks of a Metanarrative
Ask any good Presbyterian for a meta-framework of history and the answer will likely be: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation. And yet, we generally conceive of history as a linear progression with causality running forwards: what happened today is caused by what happened a few days before that. While history is in fact the unfolding of God’s sovereign plan for this world, it seems to make theological sense to understand causality as actually running backwards. What happens today, what happened yesterday, what happened two thousand years ago, is a direct result of the consummation that is yet to come. Dr. Louis Voskuil, professor emeritus at Covenant College, suggests this understanding when he writes: “Meaning in history, for the Christian, depends on a reality, perceived by faith, beyond history as well as in history.” Thus, as Christians, we possess rare hope, confident that creation’s existence through time (history) and productivity in time (art) is meaningful, directional, and ultimately worthy of study.
This eschaton-driven view of time is inextricably tied with a robust understanding of the implications of the Incarnation. In his essay “Traditional Christianity and the Possibility of Historical Knowledge,” historian Mark Noll suggests that Christianity seems to teach that “God intends historical understanding to be relative to specific times, places, and circumstances” as illustrated by Christ’s incarnation at a very specific point in human history. Christ submitted Himself to the constraints of a single culture. Though the record of His life, death, and resurrection is enmeshed with cultural particularities, the redeeming power of His work has universal and timeless application. This “dignity of particularities” frees the Christian scholar from the burden of imagined objectivity; being a finite, culturally relative being does not in itself discount her from pointing to truth. Scholar Mark Katerberg, too, emphasizes the importance of the Incarnation in his essay “Is There Such a Thing as ‘Christian’ History?” suggesting that, as finite beings, we were created to interpret, not to transcend.
Though perhaps initially disconcerting, this inextricable bond to culture, when soaked in an understanding of the Incarnation, transforms into a means of service. This connection engenders humility by forcing us to identify with the struggles and pains of our culture. Solidarity is not created through a narrative of a shared past but instead admitted as an inescapable facet of living as finite beings in culture. Art is made in time, responding to events in time. Are we willing to be tied to today’s culture, a nation that is cynical, critical, political, and, above all, uneasy? An Incarnational understanding of history and culture leaves us in a somewhat uncomfortable state but with a very clear mandate for self-denying compassion. This mandate extends even to the world of contemporary art.
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June 21, 2006
My Speaking Tour Begins Next Summer
I have decided that the PCA General Assembly -- ubiquitous blue button down shirts and khakis aside -- is a pretty cool place. There is the delight of running into old friends, the chuckling at the unexpected in the exhibit hall, and the sweet, humbling realization that there are, indeed, people who are continuing to push for deeper knowledge and application of Christ.
Morty and I had a terrific turnout for our hour-long seminar on contemporary art. Judging from the great questions that we received, it seemed that most people tracked our arguments and accepted our propositions. Or, if they didn't, they sure were nice about doing sympathetic head nods. I almost did a jig when a middle-aged woman told me that she was fascinated by this idea that shocking art could teach us about redemption. Woo!
I think this whole interaction of faith and learning could work after all. Graduate school, here I come.
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June 06, 2006
On History -- Art and Otherwise
I think I'm thinking:
For the church in particular, a thoughtfully-complex understanding of the unfolding of time forces theology into the sphere of everyday reality. Traditional history that affirms a meaningful and hopeful direction for every moment at all points in time mixes our too-often separate spheres of personal narratives and world events. God is more truly represented as the God who transcends time while working within it. An art history that understands "making" as a legitimate, culturally-entrenched response to God's own particular actions in time can provide new ways of interacting with a theologically dynamic view of the past, present, and future. Both disciplines can encourage anticipation in the church for the day when we will see clearly instead of through a glass dimly and respond appropriately, not clumsily.
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June 01, 2006
Contemporary Art: Now Entertaining Questions
Morty and I are doing a little market research in preparation for a talk we're giving at General Assembly this month. So, literate, thoughtful folk who I assume are my readers: what do you think about contemporary art? What are your hang-ups, your questions, your concerns? Do you find any of it helpful? Do you avoid it? Spit it out. You don't even need to be articulate; even "bleh"s would be helpful.
If no one answers, I'll try to convince myself that the silence indicates that my readership is actually *so* culturally literate that they embrace all contemporary art with wholehearted delight.
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April 12, 2006
Avoiding Sentimentality by Coming Inside
"No Greater Love," Hahlbohm
"Crucifixion," Rembrandt
Evangelicals at Easter are prime targets for sentimentality. In some ways, it's understandable. After all, how many pastel eggs and impressionist paintings of glorious sunrises can a man really endure without his internal aesthetic decomposing into the stuff of marshmallow Peeps?
In his second talk at the Wheaton Theology Conference on Theology and the Arts, Jeremy Begbie outlined three tenets of sentimentality in art. First, sentimental art misrepresents reality by evading or minimizing evil. Innocence is projected onto reality. Second, such images are emotionally self-indulgent, exercising emotion for the sake of emotion (see Kundera on "kitsch"), cocooning the viewer and making him unable to engage another's pain. Third, sentimental art avoids appropriate costly action. The sentimentalist wants emotion without the cost, but, by dealing only with generalities, he is forced to resort to banalities. An ocean sunset landscape with three translucent crosses hovering above the horizon eviscerates the horror of the crucifxion. It downplays the disfigured to embrace the warm peace of love secured, erasing any need for action. The figure sits, bathed in the golden light.
When it comes to Holy Week, part of our difficulty may lie in the fact that we rarely force ourselves to experience the days leading up to Easter from an "inside" perspective. We need to let Maundy Thursday confuse us. Friday should -- for a time -- be painful and broken, not "good." Saturday should weigh heavily. And, then, Easter morning's shock of joy is just that: an irrational, inconceivable surprise, an excess of grace vanquishing evil.
An "inside" perspective of Easter week guards us against the indulgence of sentimentality. "This is how God's idiocy outstrips man's wisdom," says Begbie. In Rembrandt's "Crucifixion" etching, the light exposes -- not softens or alleviates or romanticizes in a rosy hue -- the painful event. Rembrandt sparks agitated hurt, not serene reflection. He sets the viewer down in the ugliest of moments, refusing to assuage -- yet -- with promises of peace. After such a display of depravity, the resurrection does not erase pain. It confirms pain. Perhaps, Begbie says, by deferring our gratification, by extending the tension, by living inside Easter week, the power of promise will be rediscovered, and easy sentimentality will give way to the active work true redemption demands.
--- edit ----
Click here for a bigger version of Rembrandt's etching.
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March 20, 2006
Gray Day
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March 10, 2006
Reading a Theology of Art
I spent most of today sitting out on my trampoline, chomping away at my new pile of books-to-read-for-personal-and-professional-development. Noel and I are planning on going to the Wheaton Theology Conference (The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts)* in a few weeks, and, in preparation, I asked one of Covenant's Bible professors to suggest some pre-conference reading material.
He responded with a roughly three page bibliography.**
My trimmed -- and hopefully manageable -- list now contains:
Theology and Culture
Begbie, Jeremy. Beholding the Glory : Incarnation through the Arts. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000.
Dyrness, William A. Visual Faith : Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue, Engaging Culture. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2001.
Holness, Lyn. Theology in Dialogue: The Impact of the Arts, Humanities, and Science on Contemporary Religious Thought. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman's Publishing, 2002.
The Trinity
Augustine. The Trinity. Translated by Edmund Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Brooklyn, N.Y.: New City Press, 1991.
Vanhoozer, Kevin J. The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman's Publishing, 1997.
Christology
Greene, Colin J. D. Christology in Cultural Perspective: Marking out the Horizons. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2004.
Hughes, Philip Edgcumbe. The True Image: The Origin and Destiny of Man in Christ. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989.
The idea, should you be wondering, is to think about framing a broader and more theologically rich view of the visual arts. Ever since I took Historiography and read "Traditional Christianity and the Possibility of Historical Knowledge" by Mark Noll, I've been fascinated by the idea that the key doctrine for understanding and participating in culture may be the Incarnation -- not just "God as Creator" or the cultural mandate, as Reformed folk often suggest.
So far today I've finished off the Begbie book and have waded a couple of chapters into Dyrness. Oh, graduate school. Could you really offer such cerebral pleasures on a daily basis?***
--- Footnotes ---
* If you would like to help us fund this endeavor, feel free to buy this fabulous pressure cooker that we have up for sale! Just in time for all those summer weddings you have to lug a gift to!
** Christology and Trinitarian theology are, after all, two of his primary areas of interest.
*** Well, not the theology side. But I could be paid to read all day, and that would be awesome.
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March 01, 2006
Covenant's First Professor Portrait Gallery
As promised long ago:
The accompanying press release:
“Gang of Four”
A Portrait Exhibition
In the tradition of pop artists and propaganda posters,
these portraits capture the far-reaching, revolutionary essence
of our four longest-standing English professors.
See Foreman, Barker, Hesselink, and Wildeman,
each represented as the cultural icons you always knew they could be.
Come. Be dazzled.
(While you’re there, meet with a Writing Center tutor for all your
brainstorming, drafting, revising, organizing, and editing needs.)
The Writing Center.
Sanderson 119, by the vending machines.
Almost more culture than you can handle.
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February 15, 2006
A Purple Love Note
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February 13, 2006
Kaleo Conference on Gender and the Chuch: Gender and the Arts
The "faculty forum" on Gender and the Arts brought together art professors Jeff Morton and Kaybe Carpenter with English professors Pat Ralston, Gwen Macallister, Clif Foreman, and Jim Wildeman. Each gave a brief (okay, so Morty's wasn't that brief) statement and then the panel entertained questions from the audience.
Morton began by giving a brief visual history of 20th century feminist art. During a time when "pure form," minimalism, and literalism was all the rage, women artists reintroduced the body and the personal to art. Feminism, Morton argued, "can teach us something about how the Word became flesh." We have a God who is both God and human, and there is something significant in how that affirms the body. There is something about being human and exploring our differences.
Wildeman barked, "Imagine a life that you can live." When pressed to expand on this idea, he explained his fascination with Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre and how, in his view, it allows young women to imagine a life that they could live, a life where the heroine turns down two different men, once for moral reasons and once because her suitor "could not love her as she deserved to be loved." Reading such things, Wildeman argued, allows a young woman to say, "I can choose a path that is unpopular in my circles, but the important thing in the end is my integrity."
Ralston related some of her experiences in teaching Medieval and Renaissance Writers for the first time. Students, male and female, were amazed and skeptical that there were actually enough quality female authors during this time period to merit an entire course on their work. Through the course of the semester, Ralston was encouraged, however, by her students willingness to open the canon and to explore and champion these "hidden" writers. Too many students, Ralston said, think that feminism began in the 1960s and that it is a four letter word. The reality, though, is that many women throughout history have championed the cause of free speech and expression and development for women. We can all be taught by and find delight in these writings. The common notion is that we read in order to join the human race. If we want a clearer picture of the human race and hope to understand it in its wholeness, we need to be listening to the voices of men and women from the past and encouraging the publishing of women's voices from the past.
Carpenter began by framing the value of art. We know things by our experience, she said, and writers and artists give us a picture of experiences that we ourselves may never have. Thus, we need to hear (or see) women speak because it gives us a fuller picture of the human experience. Furthermore, the images that artists are creating affect what we expect of ourselves as men and women. The arts, whether we realize it or not, affects our views of gender and identity.
Macallister echoed Ralston and Carpenter, relating her own story of teaching 20th Century American literature and having a male student complain over how "many" female authors he had been required to read. (Four). She emphasized, too, the significance of reconsidering the canon.
Foreman mused on the strange contradiction that appears when we consider male and female writers: if women are generally considered to have superior verbal skills to men, then why have there been so many great male writers, given the fact that they are handicapped? He answered his own question. "Mainly because of a longstanding affirmative action program. We men engineered it so that we men got a better education than the women had... But, as we all know, affirmative action really doesn't work well." There have been a number of women writers that have snuck through and established themselves at being important in the American tradition (Anne Bradstreet, Phyllis Wheatly, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, etc.) So what do men do with the fact that some women have slipped through? They redefine literature so that writing by women can no longer considered "literary." For example, sentimentalism was painted as a cardinal sin of true literature. Women were essentially defined-out of the American canon. Foreman also made an interesting connection between our American "frontier culture" and American writer's inordinate fondness for writing about men. Thus, you have the likes of Washington Irving, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain, among others. Nathaniel Hawthore is an exception to this tendency, but his female characters were still tightly contained within the traditions of the "pure white maiden" or the "evil temptress." Not until Edith Wharton and Willa Cather did we begin to get great female characters. These characters are important because of what they teach us about ourselves as humans.
Though only a few of the questions that followed these statements were directly related to questions of the arts, one did stand out. A young woman asked, "How would you advise young women who are hoping to engage or become successful in the arts?" Carpenter answered, frankly, that sacrifice will be demanded. It's necessary, then, to define what success means to you. Is it being shown at the Whitney or balancing a productive career with motherhood? Most of the women at the top of the arts are either divorced or single and they rarely have children. Dr. Kapic, from the audience, made the helpful point here that men who are at the top of their disciplines often also sacrifice (or ignore) a family life. The issue of sacrificing marriage and family for the sake of career is not a question only for women. It is complicated, however, by the fact that motherhood is tied so closely to womanhood, while fatherhood is not considered a major component of masculinity. (I have more thoughts on this that will likely develop in a later post...)
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February 09, 2006
Serrano's Challenge: What Christians Can Learn From "Piss Christ"
While I think that John Piper makes a helpful theological observation in his February 8th article, I wonder if his application is a bit too simplistic. Piper says:
The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery.
After summarizing the divergent Muslim and Christian views of Christ and emphasizing the theological necessity of a humiliated Savior, Piper gives several modern examples of how the (expected) mockery of Christ continues to this day. I haven't watched or read enough to comment on two of his examples, but his mention of Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" is a misapplied criticism.
In 1989, the exhibition of "Piss Christ," a nuanced and richly hued photograph described succinctly by conservatives as "a crucifix submerged in the artist's urine," caused an uproar. Piper fails to mention the evangelical response -- in America and abroad -- to "Piss Christ," a reaction that was far from humble, loving, or winsome. Senator Jesse Helms's diatribe on the Senate floor is well known. The Senator declared that Serrano was "not an artist, he [was] a jerk," and railed, "Do not dishonor our Lord. I resent it and I think the vast majority of the American people do too." Large, not always peaceful, protests were staged, museums that exhibited the piece received numerous bomb threats, and the artist himself received violent warnings. The picture was called a disgrace, irreverent, and profane. But, especially now, we Christians prefer not to think about all that.
We also tend to ignore Serrano's own explanation of his artwork. In an open letter to the NEA, Serrano wrote:
The photograph, and the title itself, are ambiguously provocative but certainly not blasphemous. Over the years, I have addressed religion regularly in my art. My Catholic upbringing informs this work which helps me to redefine and personalize my relationship with God. My use of such bodily fluids as blood and urine in this context is parallel to Catholicism's obsession with "the body and blood of Christ." It is precisely in the exploration and juxtaposition of the symbols from which Christianity draws it strength.
Perhaps in our hurry to be "afflicted" and "insulted," we Christians thoughtlessly assumed that "piss" and "Christ" could not be juxtaposed in a meaningful or reverential fashion. Do we really believe that God became man and participated in all the disgusting, filthy, and thoroughly human stuff that makes up our daily existence? If so, if we do believe in a humiliated Christ, then Serrano's work can actually become convicting... even devotional. God Incarnate means God wallowing in our waste. What if this image was not an attack on our faith, but a challenge to those who claim it? What if we failed? What if we, too, have a history of refusing an insulted Savior?
So, yes, Christians have good theological reasons to react differently than Muslims in the face of humiliation. The reality, though, is that our doctrine often does not inform our actions. We, too, have wrongly tried to preserve a shell of honor, even when true grace springs from ignominy.
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February 08, 2006
When Images Offend
The psychological forces that lead people to be offended by an image are invisible and unpredictable. But when people set out to offend an image, to censure, denounce, or punish it, their behavior is out in the open where we can look at it. A kind of theatrical excess in the rituals of smearing, burning, mutilating, whitewashing, egg- and excrement-throwing turns the punishment of images into a spectacular image in its own right (the destruction of the World Trade Center being the most horrific example in our time).
A picture is less like a statement or speech act, then, than like a speaker capable of an infinite number of utterances. An image is not a text to be read, but a ventriloqiust's dummy into which we project our own voice. When we are offended by what an image "says," we are like the ventriloquist insulted by his own dummy.
-- W.J.T. Mitchell, "Offending Images," from What Do Pictures Want
An uncomfortably penetrating book to read in the middle of the Danish cartoon fiasco.
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January 17, 2006
Another Revolutionary
The idea came from Warhol: bestow the four longest standing faculty of the English Department with pop icon status. After all, at Covenant, they *are* our common, popular culture.
Unexpectedly, but perhaps even more wonderfully, the rest of the professors in the building are reading the potraits as stemming from the propaganda posters of Che Guevara. Oh, blessed postmodern art criticism that allows for the best interpretation to spring from the viewers, rather than the artist.
(Once we get these "squared" in carpentry and paint a fat black border around them, they'll be hung. They'll look sweet. And you will get another picture of them all together.)
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January 11, 2006
And the Beat Goes On
Three down, one more to go.
Dr. Hesselink has faithfully made a trek down to the Writing Center every day this week to check on his progress. He'll stop in front of the painting, nod his head a bit, and then talk to us.
I told him he looked retro.
"I'm a retro guy," he replied, walking away.
In other news, Dr. Foreman was spotted showing off his portrait to Dr. Lambert. "I'm not sure if it's my color," he told me. I assured him that he looked quite fine.
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December 14, 2005
Barker in Blue
An ode to a plaid shirt, Warhol style.
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December 09, 2005
I Haven't Been Blogging...
...because I've been painting.
(2'x2.5' on wood. Acrylic. Part 1 in the English Department series.)
* Foreman in red
* Barker in baby blue
* Hesselink in gold
* Wildeman in green
...Coming soon to a Writing Center near you.
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November 10, 2005
The Deconstruction of the Figure-Ground Relationship, or Witty Photographs
Traditional western art -- with its interest in creating three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional plane -- dictates a specific relationship between the figure (the main object of the painting) and the ground (everything else). The figure sits on the ground, in the ground, distinct from the ground. The average snapshot also echoes this relationship, with the figure being separated from the background by perspective, lighting, color, or sharpness. Look through your photo album for pictures of your last vacation. You are standing on the beach, in front of the Capitol, in a boat. You are a figure in space.
The Japanese were never as fascinated by this idea of inserting figures into space. Japanese ukiyo-e prints treat the paper as flat. There is little concern for illusionism, resulting in artworks that function as designs rather than mirrors of reality. There is no sense of progressing into space. Instead, a clump of peonies floats on a gold background. The crisp outlines of a tree, a river, and a bird give no hint of atmosphere or spatial relationship. The white of snow on tree branches dissolves seamlessly into the white of a blank background.
All that to say: while Noel was finishing his interviews at Carnegie-Mellon on Tuesday, I wandered between campuses, snapping pictures in the flat, gray, Pittsburgh light. While tremendously unexciting, this lighting also functioned as the great deconstructor of plane and space by removing one of the key ways that our minds perceive depth. Statues -- three-dimensional forms -- became decorative silhouettes that could be layered on decorative backgrounds as if making a collage of magazine cut-outs. And I discovered something: while depth-less photography is rarely praised, it does allow you to play with reality and scale in a weird, witty, almost surreal way.
The gist of all this formal theory is simple: look at the pictures and see for yourself. Sometimes, flat is just funnier.
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October 07, 2005
If you give a girl a cell phone...
(and a GRE book, and an hour and a half to study outside while waiting for her husband's class at ChattState to finish, and some killer lighting...)
She will amuse herself by setting up certain parameters -- no flash, must remain seated on the bench -- and taking pictures with the cell phone.
If she is tall and thin, chances are she will frame everything vertically.
(Except for the requisite self-portrait.)
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September 23, 2005
The Fragile Species (is apparently not gorillas, as previously thought)
“The Fragile Species” -- Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Nashville, TN. Through September 25.
Suspended by a web of threads, a papery, translucent blouse and skirt -- Barbara Yontz’s “Especially Considering Exposure” -- hover at the entrance to “The Fragile Species." The clothes seem simultaneously antique and ethereal: silken and wispy but still yellowed and brittle. This ghostly heirloom, with its secret and surprising origin, is a prime example of the ways that this show, at its best, is simultaneously confessional and reticent.
The exhibition sets out to contemplate “human frailty,” and the approaches range from intimate self-disclosure to whimsical flights of fancy and ironic comments on greater humanity’s finitude. The works are grouped into five rooms, and each room is prefaced by curatorial texts that introduce a common thematic element within the smaller gallery.
The pieces in the first room revolve around trauma, both emotional and physical. Erin Hewgley’s “Use It,” a latex sculpture of an inverted, headless, armless torso, is among the most striking. Meticulously rendered, the classically beautiful figure grows increasingly difficult to view as signs of violence and damage become more apparent. The limbs, hips, and head seem to have been ripped away, leaving raw, dripping edges and grotesquely crumpled stubs. The pain communicated is poignantly authentic, and, after reading that the artist herself was a rape victim, it becomes even more specific.
Barbara Yontz, whose delicate skirt and blouse hang at the beginning of the show, has two other pieces further into the exhibition. These forms are more evocative than representational and are fashioned from the same papery substance -- a material which, we are now told, is actually hog intestine. It’s an unsettling connection: the exquisite gossamer concoctions suddenly tie us to animals, to bodily functions, and to death.
Some of the most captivating pieces cluster in the exhibition’s final room. Lain York’s “Fing” is a gorgeously textured, layered painting that melts colors, symbols, and features into a “mask” that recalls African tribal crafts but also resonates with the contemporary viewer. Billy Renkl collages miniscule square fragments of maps into silhouetted children’s profiles, turning national borders into an outline of innocent features. And Mark Hosford’s brilliantly colored silkscreens are so visually entrancing that they have little need for their accompanying texts. The graphic, dynamic figures within could tell as many stories as the viewer can imagine.
Generally, the show boasts an arresting visual presence; many artists seem fixated on the possibilities of texture, and others use scale as a semantic ally. Thus, despite the breadth of media and presentation, the overarching aesthetic weaves the pieces with each other and with the undeniably intriguing theme. Unfortunately, the theme of frailty occasionally – and ironically – becomes a bludgeon, as the visitor is confronted almost constantly with texts that precisely spell out how the work “should” be interpreted. By giving primacy to the artists’ statements of meaning rather than descriptions of process, the individual placards run the risk of being irksome or, worse still, repressive and didactic.
While the exhibit aims to “explore” life’s transience but the human spirit’s resilience, it’s interesting to note how uncomfortable these artists seem to be with this human condition. The notion of frailty is embodied as something fascinating but fearful, a reality that is unquestionable but also undesirable. Even so, the range of optical pleasures left me delighted that my material body can see and feel, small and vulnerable as it may be.
(Read the extended entry for more descriptions of individual pieces)
Continue reading "The Fragile Species (is apparently not gorillas, as previously thought)"
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September 21, 2005
Field Trip Day!
No work today, hurrah! Instead, I get to go here and see this with these folks.
Sweet.
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September 15, 2005
Painting Memory
Last night, we walked to an old haunt of ours, a bluff on mountain that boasts a sweeping view of the city. The edge of the cliff bleeds into the textured darkness of the mountain and then splits into a swath of sparkling city lights. It's beautiful.
Two years ago, that bluff came to symbolize many of the hard, frightening things that God was gently, insistently pushing through my heart. Each time Noel led me there, each time I dangled my feet off the universe's rim, He made me less and less afraid. It was startling, breathtaking, occasionally painful, and demanded to be remembered. So I painted it; a water, pigment, and paper memorial.
I still love that painting, but I am overjoyed, too, to realize that the solitary, tense figure is no longer me. When we stood on the bluff last night, we stretched out our arms to the glittering valley below. Now Chattanooga, the twinkling strip that reached from outstretched fingertip to fingertip, is my home, and the man whose arms reached even wider is my husband. We are still trusting, He is still faithful.
(And, ironically, that painting now hangs in the school librarian's home.)
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July 28, 2005
For the Sculptor Who Loves Painting(s)
Oh yes, appropriation is alive and well!
J. Seward Johnson, Jr., has an exhibit up at the Nassau County Museum of Art. The sculptures in this show are all three-dimensional representations of well-known Impressionist or Romantic masterpieces. You can walk into Van Gogh's bedroom at Arles, spin around Renoir's dancing couple, and lounge next to the enigmatic and wardrobe-less female in Rousseau's dream.
See more fun pictures from someone who saw it first hand. This just sounds fun.
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July 15, 2005
Honesty Through Imitation
(Referenced artists or artworks open in another window. Click away, seeing is crucial.)
Roberta Smith of the New York Times has an excellent review of the Richard Pettibone retrospective currently at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. The 215 pieces shown are a kind of postmodern ode to modernism and all fit somewhere in the realm of derivative art.
Mr. Pettibone makes perfectly detailed and accurate copies of great modernist paintings and sculptures...scaled down to pocket size. Little Warhol soup cans, Marilyns, and flowers. Tiny Duchamps. Wee Mondrians. Some miniscule versions stand alone as completed pieces, while others are layered and combined together like mini modernist fruit tarts: Stellas on top of Lichtensteins.
Mr. Pettibone knows his modern art and references to other artists and artworks are layered thickly. The stacked triplicate copy of Warhol's soup cans is also a reference to Jasper John's "Three Flags." Armed with a familiarity with American modernism, the pieces rocket from being small, cute replicas of vaguely familiar icons to being a witty and personal interaction with a beloved subject matter.
Ms. Smith offers the reader a helpful -- and I think accurate -- apologetic for appreciating Mr. Pettibone's derivative art as original and valuable:
Mr. Pettibone is a connoisseur and careful explorer of the chief wellspring of art-making: the simple love of art. His work makes transparent the complex mixture of discernment, admiration, and competition that spurs artists to make something they can call their own.
She concludes:
[Pettibone's art's] emotional wisdom for the artistically inclined is bracingly clear: love art, love yourself, do what you have to do and what only you can do. Utter honesty is the only path to originality.
And, in case you were wondering, the answer is "no." What the Chinese are churning out is not derivative art. But we can discuss that later...
Posted by elissa at 04:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 05, 2005
Cut & Paste: Christianity Meets The Mash-up?
The Husband's latest issue of Wired has The Gorillaz on the cover and a chunk o' fun inside devoted to "remix culture." At this point, "remix culture" might be a rather tame title for the footloose frenzy of sampling, fan-edits, and unpretentious appropriations that are appearing on blogs as bootlegs and in museums as masterpieces. Today is not a good day to worry about recurring bouts of deja vu.
Though announcing, "mash-up, discuss!" could spawn countless conversations in innumerable directions, I just want to wonder about one thing: what could a theological framework for derivative art look like?
Continue reading "Cut & Paste: Christianity Meets The Mash-up?"
Posted by elissa at 03:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 21, 2005
"The Art of Sport" or "What To Do With Your Old Baseball Trophies"
I admit it. When Noel turns on an NBA game and rhapsodizes about the art of pure basketball, I sometimes pull out my watercolors.
But the current exhibit, “Sports,” at the Socrates Sculpture Garden in Long Island, NY, could meld our worlds together. The show, curated by Alyson Baker and Robyn Donohue, serves up a surprisingly nostalgic and personal perspective on sports. The focus is less on the extreme professional athlete and more on the you-that-won-the-Little-League-championship-trophy or the you-that-is-a-rapid-Packers-fan. Question if you will the merits of conceptual performance art, but you can't deny that these "projects" have a certain sympathy and an appealing quirkiness about them.
You might also want to check out Lee Walton's other projects and learn about his deeply passionate relationship with the little red ball. You can also help poor Tim Laun so that he can watch all Brett Favre, all the time.
Meanwhile, I'll be beginning my first Jock Art project: eat a piece of sushi every time fellow Asian Hideki Matsui strikes out.
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Edit 09:34 am: Fixed silly links.
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