That’s certainly what Canon Samuel Barnett and his wife Henrietta thought in 1881 when they established what would become the original Whitechapel Gallery. “The finest art of the world for the people of the East End.” The gallery has recently expanded and reopened, having usurped what once was a public library next door. The Whitechapel and the public library were both, in their time, efforts to bring culture to the poor masses of East London, a working class area that has been regularly inhabited by waves of recent immigrants.
Pictures “raise blessed thoughts in me — why not in you, my brother? Believe it, toil-worn worker, in spite of thy foul alley, thy crowded lodging, thy ill-fed children, thy thin, pale wife, believe it, thou too, and thine, will some day have your share of beauty.” -Charles Kingsley, Victorian Christian socialist, as quoted by Tom Lubbock in The Independent. [Link to article]
Those damned Christians — always on their evangelizing missions. Always bringing what is right, proper, and by implication, morally good to the poor heathen or unwashed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Art is the path of the creator to his work.” Emerson also said that art existed to make men better.
Edward C. Banfield, a Harvard government professor, writes: "The art museum was founded soon after the Civil War as part of a long struggle by the Protestant elite, which ran the large cities, to moralize their populations by eliminating vice and inculcating the domestic and civic virtues." [Link to article]
According to John Ruskin, the English writer and painter who was widely read and hugely influential in the 19th century, “Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth. All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.”
Ruskin paraphrased: Art is the expression of delight in God's work. From that, he glides to: “All great Art is praise; and, Art is the exponent of ethical life.”
And paraphrased again by art historian Kenneth Clark: The greatest artists and schools of art have believed it their duty to impart vital truths, not only about the facts of vision, but about religion and the conduct of life. [Source]
What mystifies me is the “morally good” part — that a leap is made from simply enjoying or being inspired, to being “improved” as a person by viewing pictures. These guys imply that art that is good (according to whom?) contains vital truths… and therefore functions as a signpost — a guide — for correct and better living. This is the part where I become very skeptical. If being educated at the best schools Western education has to offer doesn’t cultivate morality (look at all the white-collar criminals, and crimes against humanity committed by Harvard and Yale graduates), then what hope does looking at a picture have?
On the foundation of the National Gallery (in 1824, initially a banker’s picture collection), Sir Robert Peel said, “In the present times of political excitement, the exacerbation of angry and unsocial feelings might be much softened by the effects which the fine arts had ever produced upon the minds of men.” [Link] The Gallery, on Trafalgar Square, is located there because at that spot, the rich of West London could visit on their carriages and the poor from the East End could walk — thin pale wife and ill-fed children both. Significantly, admission would be free, further emphasizing that exposure to art could benefit all. Peel trusted that “the edifice would not only contribute to the cultivation of the arts, but also to the cementing of those bonds of union between the richer and the poorer orders of the State...” [Link]
It was thought that by exposing the poor and often uneducated to “culture,” their minds and hearts would be stimulated to deeper, more profound and noble thoughts. That exposure to culture is somehow morally uplifting, a bit like a church sermon, but presumably slightly less tedious. It also seems that culture was thought of as a kind of protective security device — from the angry and unsocial feelings mentioned above — and that exposure to it would alleviate the anger of the lower classes and thereby buffer the upper classes from their wrath. It was also thought that learning to appreciate culture would keep the rabble out of pubs and from pursuing other dubious activities.
In two senses this seems ridiculous — the first being that the modern art the Whitechapel was aiming to show was and is simply baffling to ordinary people, though in the UK arts current, shock and tabloid value is certainly a draw to many. Ordinary folks — and this is not a criticism — tend to like pictures that show evidence of skill and time spent in their production. Most folks also like to recognize what it is they’re looking at, be it a landscape, a face, a spear or an abstract pattern on a rug — across cultures, the forms may vary greatly. For poor English folks to be told back in the day that looking at wacky pictures would make them better people must have seemed like some sort of cruel joke — or that there was something profound in the pictures they didn’t yet understand.
The second absurdity is that this art, and the serious books that the library would deem to make available (libraries don’t usually stock porn or pulp fiction), were deemed worthy primarily by one’s “betters.” The higher, more educated classes naturally decided what pictures and books were good and capable of moral uplift. Given that the higher, especially the upper, classes of English society by nature had more spare time on their hands, there is at least some rationale that they would have had ample time to read and gaze upon pictures… and therefore might have some favorites to recommend — a service which might save those with less free time some precious hours, should they grow curious about those pictures or books.
Whether the lower and immigrant classes would be interested in the same pictures or books as their “betters” is never questioned — it is just assumed that the more “refined” taste of the higher classes is better and therefore more worthy. Why this should be so is not explained. For example, I find the machinations surrounding Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy amusing but somewhat disgusting as well — the lives of the rich and bored are often overrated, it seems to me. (However as a witty soap opera the book is hilarious.)
Likewise, the novel and convoluted new ways of interpreting the world, and the investigation into modes of visual perception and into art itself that modernism focused on, might also seem a trifle irrelevant to those struggling to stay afloat — unless some of those strugglers aimed to someday pass themselves off as being from a higher class. Good luck with that in the UK!
However, I myself can testify that being from an upper lower-class background in Glasgow, with parents who had immigrated and then worked and saved themselves into the middle class in suburban Baltimore, the local public library was invaluable. It was the Internet in a building — a building located down the road, under a bridge, past the train tracks, on a slight rise.
For example, in the late 60s, when I was in high school, I fell upon a copy of Naked Lunch, among many other strange and unusual books. I found it innovative, weird and slightly disgusting — though not in the same way as Pride and Prejudice. Even the book cover seemed to refer to some mysterious universe — the shadows and objects depicted are unclear. Maybe they are a junkie’s “works,” but I’m still not sure.
I also borrowed vinyl from the library — Folkways records of gospel, blues and Bahamian singers, Nonesuch recordings of Xenakis, Indian classical music and Balinese gamelan. There were also albums of pop music that weren’t getting played on the local rock station — The Kinks and Buffalo Springfield and many others. So, while some might have represented a rarefied academic and presumably more refined world — Xenakis, Varèse, Ives and Stockhausen, for example — even the academic composers were pretty trippy, and not all that different than what some of the pop musicians were doing, just less accessible. It was all a gateway into a host of new worlds. Lowlifes, highlifes and weirdness beyond anything I could imagine.
So, in a sense, the public library did do partially what the Victorians claimed — it made available to me a whole world I never knew existed. On the other hand, it opened my mind to realms of debauchery, experimentation and craziness that was like nothing else in suburban Baltimore. Nothing I’d seen, anyway… though I did go camping with some gal pals once, and their biker friends shot up a watermelon with vodka. That was pretty wild — and tasty.
I also took a liking to the visual arts at the time, stimulated at the outset mainly by album covers, psychedelic posters and underground comics. That was what was available to me. I was aware that some of those images and artists overlapped with what was deemed to be fine art, but that was not what made things interesting. I’m not sure if I went to an art museum more than once during high school — though I remember the Walters Art Gallery downtown had a very cool, small ancient carving of a man that seemed to be half tree. There was no modern or contemporary art there.
However, one thing led to another and connections, sometimes bizarre, were made. I painted a picture in high school of a phalanx of identical businessmen (who may have resembled my dad a bit), in a style reminiscent of George Tooker (I realize now) — standing against a wall of brightly colored, abstract empty picture frames and on a floor decorated with Northwest Indian tribal images, with hook-beaked creatures and densely packed biomorphic forms. It could have been a psychedelic record cover, and it referenced, or maybe simply imitated, everything visually available to me in suburban Baltimore that seemed wild and cool.
The big downtown art museum, with its Cone Collection of Matisses was, of course, a repository of high quality art — it had to be if it was housed in such a temple. I knew I was supposed to be impressed, but it was, at the time, nowhere near as inspiring as the counter-culture stuff that was exploding everywhere.
[Danielle adds: "Given these examples, another interesting question to pose would be, how has art changed — how have the values changed? And even if they have, has the role of art in social hierarchy changed or not? Because in fact you can now go Harvard on the basis of your Burroughs scholarship; counter-cultural art can give entrée into the privileged strata of society. There’s some interesting inversion that’s taken place where the avant-garde has been re-assimilated and the relationship between high and low has become infinitely more nuanced. Sotheby’s sold some of Manzoni’s shit for a couple hundred thousand dollars not so long ago."]
So, was art good for me? It got me out of gym class, that’s for sure. Working on these detailed and obsessive pictures took a lot of time, and the high school art teacher kindly sent a slip excusing me from gym. I made a bunch more of these pictures, and at some point they were “exhibited” in a display case in the school hallway. Probably due to their resemblance to record covers, they were deemed OK and even hip by some of the students, and I was cool for a day — which was pretty great for someone as shy as I, who managed to make this, and later music, a way to be in the world. So in this sense, art was certainly “good” for me at the time.
I think discovering and making stuff was good for me in another way too. Not only did making stuff give me, a painfully shy person, a way to communicate, but in the process I got myself sorted as well — at least a little bit. Expressing myself became a process of self-discovery and healing, casting out demons and finding joy. (Not that I’m done now, by any means.) The process was far from conscious — only in retrospect can I see what was happening. And it doesn’t mean the things I was making were all explosions and expressions of angst, terror, fear or guilt — though occasionally, yes, those things would surface. Making stuff gives someone like me a reason for going on, a focus, a pride in oneself. I’m not saying one has to be damaged to benefit from this kind of activity — but we all need a little sorting here and there. I’m not sure the creative process works for everyone — in fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. And I’m not saying that “everyone is an artist,” though I suspect many people have creative urges that go unacknowledged. I’m not sure everyone needs to make arty stuff as a path to self-discovery — home improvement, software development, getting dressed up and general problem solving are all immensely satisfying.
But back to the question as to whether art is morally uplifting. If idle hands are the devil’s playground then doing this stuff indeed kept the devil away — for a while. But what about looking at pictures, as opposed to making them? I love doing it — my house and office are plastered with stuff — but I don’t see how it can be uplifting, though I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. My friend C says that pictures are indeed a place, a forum, a venue for ideas, deeply felt emotions and radically new ways of looking at and being in the world. They are, she says, stimulating and inspiring — when they connect, at least. It’s certainly true for those of us who are part of that world. It seems to me that more consistently, it is the act of making stuff that changes a person, although with books, just reading them can certainly open new worlds. Looking at a Jackson Pollock is about as innately stimulating as looking at gum on the sidewalk — but that is not meant as a criticism. Reading about Pollock, his world, why and how he made his stuff and what kind of life he and his contemporaries had, might indeed be stimulating. Then one might see his picture as a kind of corollary — an adjunct piece of evidence connected to his story and those of his peers.
So, interesting that the Whitechapel displaced a public library. When I was there a month ago the crowds were immense, with a line to get in, and the galleries were chockablock. The work, mainly a show by Isa Genzken, was pretty kooky, and not at all “easy.” All the papers had run lengthy pieces on the re-opening. Everyone was making a pilgrimage to see the revived and improved space — one had to say one had been there and seen it with their own eyes. I’m not sure all these folks are experiencing self-improvement, and I’m certainly not sure they emerge or soon become capable of greater and sounder moral judgment. But they’re hell-bent on having the experience.
But where did the books go? Reading, the part of the Victorian outreach that involved more interaction and could actually be brought into one’s house for a while, is gone.
Maybe, with the sheer volume of text on the Internet, it isn’t deemed as important to make books available for free to the poor and newly arrived in the East End. Art you have to visit and see, for the most part, and books you can buy, browse at bookstores or now download. Maybe part of the museum or gallery’s attraction is the social aspect — reading is solitary. The Whitechapel was crowded, and people would presumably discuss their visit later over dinner, or at the office the next day. Picture viewing is also fast, while on the other hand, it takes many hours to read a book — which is another reason the literary experience has such a profound effect. Viewing an exhibition can be done in an afternoon or much less, and if you don’t like it you just walk out. The speed of the visit doesn’t make it less deep — a short experience can also be profound — and visual experiences can imprint if we are receptive enough. (Movies and music, I’ve noticed, are like books — you have to commit a sizable block of time to the experience.)
I can see that if exposure to culture brings the lower classes and immigrants into contact — indirectly and incrementally — with the world of the accepted and dominant classes, and thereby into the world of their values and morals, then yes, that exposure helps society to become more harmonious. Most moral values, in my opinion, are not absolute. They vary depending on the culture, and vary from place to place (though some moral commandments, like not having kids with your sister or mother, could be considered absolute — for humans anyway). Morals are rules that allow a society to function smoothly, or smoothly enough. By assimilating the implied values inherent in pictures, viewers are subtly brought into line with what has become accepted and dominant in a society. Although one might complain that what is acceptable and moral has been determined only by a portion of society — the portion in power — if harmony can be achieved without force, terror or fear, then maybe that’s nothing to sneeze at. Survival is better than pure chaos and destruction, though we seem to like those things too. Funny how things that may have once been attempts to overthrow the apple cart of power and dominance are now taught as fine literature or art at major universities. Some might say that this kind of harmony is like living ignorantly inside the Matrix — that it’s not “real” — but maybe that’s another rant.
While on tour in Italy a few weeks ago, our new friend Giorgio invited us to lunch at a restaurant in Modena, where we were playing in a beautiful old theater.
Little did we know this would be a culinary experience of a lifetime. The restaurant, Osteria Francescana, had been voted number 13 of S.Pellegrino’s top 50 restaurants in the world just the day before — which also made it the top restaurant in Italy. That’s saying something.
The whole band was invited to this incredible lunch, which featured Lambrusco, an amazing sparkling red wine. Sometimes touring isn’t so bad… well, actually, this tour has been a lot of fun so far. Massimo, the chef, uses local Emilia-Romagna ingredients, processed with the techniques of molecular gastronomy. This region is famous for its Parmesan cheese (as well as its balsamic vinegar), so one memorable dish had the cheese prepared 4 or 5 different ways — as a foam, a pudding, a sauce and a solid. It was a carnival ride for the mouth. There was also a dish that featured another specialty of the region, bologna, turned into something that looked like a dollop of whippy ice cream, speckled pink. Haute hillbilly food.
I glanced at the 50 best list online and saw that I had been to a small number of these establishments. A couple of them in NY, one in London and one in San Francisco. Yes, the food at all of them was amazing, surprising and innovative. But most of the winners are fairly “haute”… and while not necessarily fussy, they’re not what you would call casual. None are cheap (duh). Some are slightly more relaxed than others and forgo the elaborate serving rituals. Some do less as far as presenting food as geometrically arranged art objects. But in general these establishments are of a type. They are the kinds of places that stay more or less within a given range.
The chef of El Bulli, Ferran Adrià (whose restaurant was voted best in the world five times, including this year), was invited to participate in documenta in 2007, the curated art event held in Germany every few years. I don’t think they went so far as to christen his dishes "works of art" — but why not? I’ve never eaten there, but I have perused one of the large art books he publishes, illustrating the dishes and techniques invented over the preceding years. It’s art, all right — edible and ephemeral — I don’t know what else you’d call it.
After all that, I wondered, who decides that the "best" is all more or less of a related type? It’s almost always true, isn’t it — not just for food, but books, films, you name it.
While C and I were wandering around Barrio Alto in Lisboa a few days after the amazing meal in Modena, we stopped to eat at a nondescript lunch counter filled with locals on their lunch break. One outside window looked on to a flat grill, typical of any diner — though on this one, fish were grilling.
By the cash register, under the counter where the donuts might be in a NY diner, there was an array of fresh merluza, dorada and some of the famous Portuguese sardines. The special of the day was octopus stew, so we ordered that along with a couple of draft beers, and a fish. (These came with simple salads.) Here’s the point: the fish, simply grilled and served with olive oil and lemon, was one of the best I’d tasted in a while. The stews weren’t bad either. The beer was cold and delicious. I’d rate the place, on the strength of the fish alone, as one of the best I’ve eaten at — but of course the S.Pellegrino judges won’t give it a glance.
In Melbourne, Australia C and I joined some friends at Cumulus — sort of an unpretentious foodie lunch place.
We sat on stools and had plates to share. Here is the cauliflower, roasted with pine nuts on a bed of goat’s curd with fresh herbs, that had a surprising mix of flavors.
In Kyoto, Noriko Fuku arranged for us all to dine at a place near the university where she teaches. It’s not a highfalutin kaiseki place — the expense account restaurants that offer set menus of a series of tiny, super-refined dishes — but was maybe just as delicious. Here is an appetizer of preserved fish eggs in a slightly thick broth.
In Wellington, NZ their famous green-lipped mussels could be ordered almost anywhere — and they were both larger and more succulent than any of the ones imported to fancy NY restaurants. This plateful was from the local brewpub/restaurant.
C and I went to a fancier seafood restaurant for lunch one afternoon, Martin Bosley’s. Quite a bit fussier than the brewpub — which is saying something for NZ. Here is an example of some clam porn.
When the dishes are as fresh as they were at these places, sometimes there isn’t really any point in making the presentation or preparation too complicated or fancy — it would merely cover up the actual taste of the item.
There are New Yorkers (and Italians) who rate certain pizza places as favorites — and that doesn’t mean the pizza is arranged in a tower, foamed, frozen or gelled. Massimo from Osteria Francescana often goes out for pizza at the end of the day. Even high-end chefs love simple, fresh food that’s well made. In Japan there are fierce discussions over which soba and ramen joints are “za besto.” One could easily say that some of those places also qualify as being “best in the world,” but they’re not in the running for the S.Pellegrino list. One would need a huge number of categories in order to list all these places.
Maybe that’s OK. Maybe we have to take all these ratings and lists with a grain of salt (oops), or at least accept that there’s some implicit category and limitation being discussed in each one that’s not always mentioned outright. Everybody knows that certain genres of film will never be nominated for Oscars, and the books that win prizes are equally of a type — complex, weighty and “important.” Every “best of” list may be the best within a limited category, but not simply the “best” in all categories. We’re supposed to know, for example, that Oscar-winning films are often serious, and therefore somehow morally uplifting, which doesn’t always mean feel-good. Who determines what is morally uplifting, well… that’s another question.
In the late morning C and I walk around, buy CDs at a local shop, and stroll down a street selling wallpaper and fake wood floor coverings until we reach Cidade Baixa, the lower city. This area, which used to be called Commerciao, is a strange lifeless zone on a Saturday. It used to be filled with warehouses, trading companies, mercantile banks, and all the other businesses that had to do with the nearby port, but now it is mostly filled with charmless modern office buildings that house banks.
There are remnants of the old commercial spaces and buildings on some streets, scattered here and there, some in good shape but many decrepit and falling into disrepair.
At Caetano’s house C flips through a book of Pierre Verger’s photos of Bahia and Salvador from mid 20th century, and I am taken by a shot of this commercial district taken from Cidade Alta (the upper city). In this shot one can see the same grid of commercial buildings, but when the picture was taken they were all of moderate height, and all beautiful colonial edifices. “What a shame what has happened here,” I say.
Caetano agrees, and says that this legacy of incredible architecture — which existed in numerous places all over Latin America — should have been treated “like a European City.” I think he means that many European cities — London, Milano, Torino, Brussels, Lyon — also have what were once commercial centers that emerged during a historical era, but no one would have dreamt of razing those centers and replacing them with steel, glass and concrete office towers. But in the Americas, North and South, that’s what mostly happened — except in a few isolated spots.
I’ve been reading a book, “The Brazilian People,” by Darcy Ribeiro. He points out that while history may be written by the victors, and therefore what is often taught might contradict what he says, the fact is that most North American cities were slight and impermanent during the initial settlement, while Latin American colonial cities were substantial, grand, ostentatious, and built to last; for example, the churches that dot Salvador, its Pelorinho district, Old Cartajena in Columbia, the Zocalo and surroundings of Mexico City, Old San Juan, and Havana. Compare those with the clapboard houses, lean-to structures and log cabins of many of the early North American settlements. The Latins, though they may have claimed otherwise, were there to stay. They made mirrors of their European capitals in the New World while the Puritans were eking by in pathetic villages of wooden houses.
It would have appeared that the North Americans weren’t planning on putting down permanent roots. They didn’t build cities — not at first — but settlements. Except for a few exceptions — New York and Chicago come to mind — this impermanent way of building continued and continues in North America. There was apparently no need to build cities that announced “now, you are in it,” as Caetano put it. LA might be the apogee of that attitude, but all over North America you find cities and settlements so spaced out that you have little sense of being located — being in — anywhere.
Racism and Rainbows
C and I go for a ride on rented bikes heading north up the beach from the Ameralina neighborhood. There is a dedicated bike path along the beach that goes for at least 10km. We pass a zone of little cabanas in the sand with plastic chairs in front; later, a grassy area with massage tables dotted here and there; then an area where big men are flying little kites (competitively, I suspect); and, further on, larger cabanas that bordered on being actual restaurants (they take credit cards). There are kiosks with men pressing sugar cane, adolescents playing football (soccer), joggers and folks out for a Saturday early evening stroll.
C comments on the difference between the ride along this beach and the bike rides we took in Miami — one ride there took us from South Beach, with its bars, restaurants, boutique hotels and hotties, further up past the towering condos of Miami Beach proper. Mile after mile of almost identical, immense beachfront condos. There, as she said, one tended to presume that the joggers were all fairly well-to-do and probably lived in the nearby glittering edifices, whereas here the folks jogging or at the cabanas were middle class at very best, while the vast majority seemed fairly poor. They might be from the surrounding neighborhoods, but just as many may have walked or come by bus. It’s beautifully funky, relaxed and casual. People don’t consider the beach a luxury holiday spot here — it’s a place to meet friends, hang out, socialize, get a massage, eat, drink, kick a ball around, take a sunset stroll or get some exercise. In some ways it’s an outdoor living room or a communal backyard.
Most of the joggers, casual strollers and folks hanging out are black, as Afro-Brazilians make up the vast majority of this town. The rest feature a mixture of skin tones, which is typical of Brazil. Racism here is not exactly like it is up north. Everyone here is fairly comfortable with folks with lighter or darker skin tones than their own. Miscegenation has been going on so long and is so ingrained here that everyone, just about, by US standards, would be considered black. Here they might not consider Colin Powell black, for example. He’s way too light.
Here there are a myriad of words and phrases for the many gradations of skin color. Caboclo means a mix of European and Indian; Mamelucas are the 1st generation of this mixture. Mulattoes are a mixture of African and European, and pardo means brown, preto means black and branco means white. Moreno can mean simply mixed. There are pure Africans and of course remnants of the myriad Indian tribes who once covered the continent. There are pure Italians and Germans; and, in São Paulo, the largest settlement of Japanese outside of Japan. It’s definitely not just black or white. In some ways — like at the beach, on the street of the jogging path — everyone is comfortable mixing together, though it’s not exactly the post-racism utopia that some claim.
The racism is there, in other ways. In politics and on TV, for example, almost everyone is white, or very light. There is definitely a hierarchy based on color — a “light” person very often will act superior to a person with slightly darker skin. A branco might have a mulatta for a girlfriend, for example, but more than likely he wouldn’t marry her. Most “help” have darker skin tones. Nonetheless, the difference in attitude from the States is palpable. Since slavery was abolished here there was no legacy of overtly racist laws, as there continued to be in the States.
At Paulinha’s party and at Gilberto Gil's the next day the full rainbow of folks were present — dancing, drinking and chatting. C mentioned that she would make eye contact and say "hi" and "welcome" to guests of every hue and they smiled and responded in kind. Sad to say, this is not the usual situation in the States. Here everyone is just a little more relaxed around everyone else, whereas in the States when races meet there is always a slight tension, some fear, suspicion; and, from the Afro-American side, anger, envy, and resentment that colors everything. I’m generalizing, of course. We musicians don’t behave that way — at least in my dreams we don’t. The separation of worlds and the ghetto-ization of peoples — distinct music, food and culture — that exists up North and that poisons everything, is to a large extent much less prevalent here — but the racism still can’t be denied.
Here in Salvador there is also Afro-tourism. This city is so known for its strong African culture and its pride in that culture that it draws people from all over the world who savor a taste of that affirmation and positive outlook. Up North there are celebrations of sports heroes and great musicians, but here everything is celebrated, the whole culture. That acceptance and pride in Afro-Brazilian culture is evident everywhere — statues of the Orixas (Afro Atlantic deities) in the city park fountain, the Pelorinho paintings (as tacky as they are) the tourist ads that focus on Afro-Atlantic culture — the blocos, afoxes, the Baianas, and the syncretized Candomble rituals — all say that this city is more than proud of this element in its culture — this is its culture. For some Afro-Americans this might come as a bit of a shock — not being forced to the outside of society might be initially traumatic if one has, for one’s whole life, defined oneself and one’s identity as oppositional. Maybe Obama will help us Northerners edge away from that just a bit. A visit here reveals what is possible.
Why is it different? I gather it’s not exactly an accident. When the first Europeans arrived they were hell-bent on making money and getting rich quick, but they also felt that heaven had sent them to enlighten the local savages. Their interests may have been in gold and lumber, but they justified it by claiming that they were bringing the heathens to God and to Civilization (substitute “democracy and freedom” and you have the last 8 years in a nutshell).
The early European settlers found that if they married a local Amerindian they immediately had a large set of kinship relationships. They might acquire 80 relatives all of a sudden — many of which were extremely willing and able to help and assist their new relative, due to the elaborate and strong kinship rules among the tribespeople. The Europeans took full economic, practical and financial advantage of this — they could get their new relatives to help them hauling lumber and everything else. It became evident that there was a huge financial incentive to intermarry, and intermarry they did, unlike the Protestants up North.
So, within a generation or so the racial boundaries were already blurring and becoming fuzzy. It would be little harder to be racist towards one’s own children, for example. A few more generations and you have the rainbow in formation — though the Indians were fast dying off from European diseases.
Schopenhauer and the Tropics
In the evening a small group heads over to Gilberto Gil’s house where his daughter is having a birthday party. Gil and Caetano and I are talking and Caetano goes off on one of his riffs — this one about how the German philosopher Schopenhauer made some surprising statements about the tropics and race. According to Cae, the philosopher claimed that humanity was originally black — as we emerged from the tropics in Africa. This is hard to dispute. Of course we were. Schopes continued to follow this line of reasoning, saying that black is therefore our default skin color, the “true” color of humanity, and that other colors or non-colors are therefore marginal — notably, and especially, white. He claimed that from a global perspective whites, especially blonde blue-eyed ones, are a fringe group that somehow managed to survive in the chilly and forbidding Northern climate. This didn’t go down all that well at the time with his countrymen.
Not sure if it was Schopes or Cae doing the extrapolating from there — moving on, it was reasoned that such a harsh Northern clime would therefore foster an ethos that would necessarily evolve strict rules and behavior limitations. To stray from the norm — to be lax regarding time, sloppy, relaxed, indecisive or simply to be too flexible — would mean either death or turbulence in the social pond, which would be seriously frowned on. The inference is that the Northern ethos and character is what it is because it’s a survival mechanism.
This all came up because I asked Gil (and Caetano) where they wrote. (I didn’t see what one might call a music writing or project room at Caetano’s house). They both say they write anywhere — sporadically, every now and then, the place doesn’t matter. Caetano says he’s even written during a party such as the one we’re at. He’ll pick up his guitar and quietly work out some bits — with the party going on all around him — sometimes a whole song will get written, so he says.
This would maybe not be impossible but would be pretty unlikely for me. I offer that my “Protestant” character makes me more disciplined — I “go to work” in a specifically designated writing space (a room in my loft)… but of course that discipline and formality comes with drawbacks and limitations as well. I don’t write songs on the road, for example. “Pros and cons” says Gil.
The dancers are in the venue early, working on accumulating ideas for the two encore songs that currently serve as our finale. At present they aren’t dancing in those songs, and it seems a shame for them to essentially drop out of the show at that point — so that will change after our Thanksgiving break. Some of their ideas are based on the movements I’ve been doing during those songs, but both their movements and mine will probably get expanded, tweaked and organized during some dance rehearsals we have scheduled over the break.
It’s a rainy day here, and, as sometimes (but rarely on this tour) happens, we’re stuck at a hotel in the middle of nowhere because everything in town was booked many months ago for some massive convention. I wake up on the bus and look out the windows and see an expanse of highways, parking lots and identical building blocks. We’re 6 miles from the center of town and at least 4 miles from the venue. I inquire about whether there is any mass transit into town nearby — PHART (Philadelphia area rapid transit), as Paul Frazier refers to it — but it’s not close by, either. I hitch a taxi ride into town with Jenni and Steven, who are going to the Mütter Museum, a wonderful wunderkabinett of gross-outs and medical curiosities. I’ve seen it before, so I head to the Philadelphia Museum of Art where there is an exhibition of Gee’s Bend quilts and a retrospective of work by a man named James Castle, whom I suspect not many have heard of.
At the top of the steps to the art museum tourists strike Rocky Balboa poses, their fists up in the air. There are lots of Rockys today, as it’s a weekend — a black-suited Chinese man, a young black kid from a school group and a large white man all assume the position simultaneously.
The Gee’s Bend quilts are something special. They were previously shown at the Whitney in NY, and one can see why. They are made by a small community descended from former slaves on a river near Selma, Alabama. The website states:
After the Civil War, the freed slaves [almost all from one plantation] took the name Pettway, became tenant farmers for the Pettway family, and founded an all-black community nearly isolated from the surrounding world. During the Great Depression, the federal government stepped in to purchase land and homes for the community, bringing strange renown — as an "Alabama Africa" — to this sleepy hamlet.
From Seattle PI:
New York Times senior art critic Michael Kimmelman called the quilts "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced. Imagine Matisse and Klee arising not from rarefied Europe, but from the caramel soil of the rural South.
Thelma Golden, chief curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, took a contrary view. She wrote in Artforum that she loved the quilts but hated the exhibition, "which, with its shockingly politically correct tone, under the transparent cover of high/low intervention and demolished media categories, was the most culturally repugnant, retrograde moment I have ever experienced, perhaps in my entire professional life."
Kimmelman's reaction was widely shared. Golden stood alone, or nearly so, at least in public. The subtext of her argument seemed to be that she recoiled at the sight of white people exclaiming over black craft. Their admiration struck her as patronizing. For the same reason, some black people do not want to listen to black blues artists playing in clubs filled with white people "getting down," because white joy of that sort saps a black experience of its legitimacy, creating a chasm between the art and its original audience.
Kimmelman and Thelma’s reactions raise a whole world of questions. Does it matter where these objects — or others exhibited, recorded or written — come from? Does context and history determine the meaning of what we look at and see? In other words, are these quilts amazing because they are made by women unschooled in art history or are they incredible for what they are? Is a song by an unschooled self-taught musician any less moving, deep and wonderful that something by an academic composer? (There’s an amazing record of spiritual songs recorded at Gee’s Bend.) Is there any way to hear or see things free of history, class or context? Probably not. Does it matter? All of this sort of applies to James Castle’s work — and to lots of other stuff as well. We’re not just talking about some quilt makers here.
Here’s one made with leftover blue jeans:
When we see these quilts, do we see them through our knowledge and experience of Klee and Matisse? (I’d add Rauschenberg and Sigmar Polke to that, too.)
Here’s one made out of football jerseys:
And another that incorporates images and text “panels”:
Have we learned to experience these disrupted and “musical” patterns though our experience of fine art? Is that similarity what makes us stop in our tracks when we see these quilts? That certainly must have had something to do with why they have been exhibited in a series of high art institutions. But I would argue that’s not the whole story. The inventiveness, the mixture of African rhythm and Amish austerity, the humor and creativity visible in these quilts is not something only students of art history can experience. Those qualities, I maintain, are human, and they cross race, class and social barriers. I think that the erasing of those lines is part of what we’re seeing and experiencing as well, and it feels good. It doesn’t lessen the work’s context, the specific nature of the history of Gee’s Bend or of each artist in the collective, to feel that either.
Though part of the picture painted here is of an isolated community, separate from the contamination of the marketplace and the art world, that’s not entirely true, at least not the first part. Some of the Gee’s bend quilters were contracted by Sears, the giant mail order dept store, to make pillowcases in mass quantitites that were informed by their tradition. The remnants from the pillowcase material, particularly an avocado green fabric popular for one decade, found its way into the quilts as well. So they’re not “pure” in that sense, though we might wish they were in certain ways. But that lack of purity is often where the joy and creativity lie, and the obsessive need for authenticity and purity are often what saps the life out of a tradition or out of a person’s creative impulse.
James Castle was a deaf man born at the turn of the 20th century on a farm in Idaho. He refused to learn to read, write or sign, but he made lots of art. The work I’d seen previously were “drawings” of banal farm scenes — a barn with a fence, a shed with a chair — made out of soot and spit. This show, a retrospective, shows that he made a lot more than that, in a variety of styles and mediums. As with the Gee’s Bend crew, one can’t help but be shocked at the uncanny parallels to works by Warhol, Ruscha and a whole mess of others. Once again one wonders if those parallels make Castle’s work more incredible. Once again it would be hard to deny that those parallels are probably why his work is being shown here in a giant art museum.
Here’s one of the shack interiors. Completely banal and schematic. There are lots of shack drawings, as if he was cataloging a typology of shack interiors and exteriors. His world, maybe?
A kaleidoscopic rendering of matchbox labels:
And a similar kaleidoscopic rendering of a photo of businessmen:
In these works and in some of the quilts there is what is now called appropriation — using recognizable labels, texts, and images — grabbing them, re-working them, re-presenting them. It’s a recognition that the glut of reproduced images, photos, logos, typefaces and texts that makes up our world and that of the 20th century is indeed our environment….even that of rural Idaho.
Now, one of the qualities that is often brought up to separate Castle or the Gee’s bend artists from those who more regularly show in fine art galleries, auction houses and museums is intention. It is assumed that there is an awareness and intention in a work by Warhol, Ruscha, Betcher, Polke, whomever, that is not there in someone like Castle. I would suggest that his work proves that this is just not true. His intentions may not be geared towards the same marketplace, collectors and trade publications, but aesthetically it’s all there. The response to the world, a way of looking, a seriousness, and an investigation of phenomena, thoroughly done and from multiple angles — it’s all right there. I would argue that his work and that of the quilters proves that, well, nutty as it might sound, some part of the visual and material response to our world is innate — and like myths, a similar response might occur and recur across time and space — unconnected yet uncannily similar.
In an article in the weekend Financial Times, Jackie Wullschlager writes about a show of Renaissance portraits at the National Gallery in London. She makes a series of broad statements about the contemporary implications inherent in the changes portraiture went through at that time. Jackie says, for example, “the more human individuality is threatened — by biogenetics, global capitalism, the identikit personae of YouTube — the more intensely we turn to painted portraits.”
I remember hearing something similar in a YouTube video, “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube,” by anthropologist Michael Wesch and his class at Kansas State University. That piece is exactly what it says it is, and, of course, it itself is also a YouTube phenomenon that looks at other YouTube phenomena and back at itself. Anyway, one of the points he and his class make is that as certain values get eroded by phenomena or technology they simultaneously become more valued. They mentioned authenticity as being a value that is highly prized among YouTube denizens, as it is relatively easy to fake a posting. And therefore, the whole YouTube world prizes stuff that isn’t slick, or God forbid fake, but is “real.” When anything can be virtual, then “real” becomes precious.
So, I can see what Jackie is getting at — that the humanistic values implied by the new (at the time) Renaissance portrait styles might have contemporary relevance. Jackie also says that previous to the Renaissance, full frontal portraiture (not full frontal nude body images) were reserved for pictures of Jesus. So, by implication, to paint real people in that way was to say that the individual is no less than the God(s). That we each have a spark, a dollop, of Godness in us, and it’s always a little different. Maybe this was the beginning of the rise of the cult of individuality, of the idea that each of us is completely unique. Each a nation unto itself. Now science is telling us that maybe we’re not as unique as we would like to think. We’ll see where that leads.
Of course, portraiture was originally reserved for the rich and powerful — royalty, popes, bishops and powerful merchants. But eventually, the less wealthy merchant classes soon adopted it. Jackie quotes an Italian satirist, Pietro Aretino (1554), who laments that “even tailors and vintners are given life by painters.” God forbid. So, the rich and powerful did what they always do; they changed the rules of the game to maintain their distinction. They could afford to, so they had their new portraits done giant size. Or what was then giant size. It goes without saying that only they had the wall space for such large-scale works.
When is a painting not a painting? When it is a hot line to God. In another article in that paper, Robin Blake reviews a show of Byzantine works that includes a number of icons. These paintings were, he says, not revered for their painterly qualities and certainly not for their humanistic values. They were closer to sacred relics according to Blake. Like the bloody nails, bones, and wood fragments elaborately displayed in many churches today. “Any pious person who tried hard enough, it was thought, could establish a hotline to the divine through the painting.” Not only were these paintings powerful agents in this way, but also their power could be multiplied and transferred. (Walter Benjamin, take note). A copy, maybe every copy, maybe even bad copies, of the original icon was believed to somehow partake of the power of the original. This is digital technology from 1000 years ago! Where the copy and the original are identical — at least identical where it matters. I remember going into some Orthodox churches in Greece while there on tour and seeing women kissing the images on the icons. Not tongue kissing, mind you, but there was definitely passion of another sort involved. I wondered to myself how many contemporary artists might wish their work could elicit such a powerful reaction. Needless to say, one doesn’t judge these “artworks” in the same way one judges other portraits, just as a splinter allegedly from the cross is no mere chunk of kindling. Art criticism in this case becomes useless, and aesthetics too — it all becomes irrelevant.
It’s raining, so plans to bike down the lakefront to the new Calatrava designed museum are scuttled, but Lily has a school friend Andi here who has a better idea. A group of us pile into Andi’s car and head for the house of Andi’s friend Paul, who lives in a boat that was built on dry land. Paul, says Andi, is a bit of a historian of the rich local culture, so together they’ll take us on a mini tour.
Paul’s house was originally built by a man who accidentally sank an identical boat in the harbor. Out of remorse or sheer perversity, he decided to rebuild that boat, but on dry land, “where it could never sink again.”
When he applied to the local city board to build this structure, the approval was denied, so he built it off site and surreptitiously dragged it up here one night. Needless to say, it’s since become a local landmark; Paul says it’s not uncommon for couples to consummate their relationship on the lawn. After that, a dentist lived in the boathouse and is the current landlord. Not your ordinary dentist — a wacky dentist/inventor who among other things invented a dog-powered chariot and a dental hovering device, consisting of a series of bungees and pulleys that would allow him to perform dentistry while suspended ABOVE the patient! I wish I could have seen this device. Can you imagine being this dentist's patient? Paul said this dentist also performed a root canal on himself. “Those damn dentists are so expensive!” he was quoted as saying.
Paul said that when he was in 8th grade, he was hitchhiking and he got in a car and the driver was playing the song “Life During Wartime.” Young Paul found the music somewhat disturbing and told the driver he really didn’t like this kind of stuff and could he get out immediately. Of course, a year or so later, he changed his mind.
As in Pittsburgh, some parts of town that were deemed not worth “saving” in the urban renewal schemes in the 60s and 70s are now the neighborhoods that are the most full of life, the ones that are coming back in some fashion. Where Andi lives, there’s a food co-op that only sells organic and local foods, artists studios, and a Polish social club whose traditional mission was to provide gymnasiums for the youth of various cities. This one still has a gymnasium attached. Nearby is a tiny herring factory and downtown there are still big sausage works. The breweries that once dominated this town used to build little taverns on every corner, to feed and lubricate their workers. Some of these remain, but not very many.
We head over to the ghetto, to Satin Doll’s Lounge, run by Doll — Minette D. Wilson — a former dancer with Duke Ellington and others. She wasn’t going to let us in at first, as someone across the street had called her and said, “There’s a white man taking a picture outside.” That was me.
She did let us in, however, and we had a round of drinks while Paul caught up with her. Someone had poisoned her dog, which was not good news. The room was filled with Christmas decorations, faded photos of Doll with Duke and some more recent soul singers, stuffed animals and Milwaukee police patches. One door was labeled “sleeping room” which we guessed must be a place where customers who were too drunk to get home could sleep it off. Paul claimed that I was a gun freak, so Doll pulled a .38 revolver from under the bar and we passed it around. She removed the bullets before handing it to me.
Paul explained that Milwaukee experienced one of the last waves of Black migration from the South. And therefore, those who came only experienced about 20 or so years of the city’s industrial heyday. That’s not long enough for a second generation to get a good foothold. The 1st generation of newcomers are often just surviving and it’s their kids who more easily navigate their way into the workforce and build new neighborhoods. But just before this might have happened, Milwaukee, like a lot of other industrial cities in the US, went into a decline. The folks in this part of town were discriminated against and had little recourse or resources to enable them to rise. It became a welfare zone, which it still is to a large extent.
On the way back, towards the center of town, we passed the home of a Cherokee with a McCain placard in his yard. And what a yard it is:
Around the side there was even more. The planter in the foreground is a coffin!
We continued our Milwaukee tour with an impromptu stop at a Shriners Lodge, the Tripoli Temple. The building is a massive faux Arabic pseudo-Taj Mahal, designated a historical landmark. The side door was open so we went in. A woman, sensing our curiosity, generously offered us a tour.
She said they had recently renovated the place, at considerable cost, as all the walls were discolored from years of cigar smoke. Here’s an ashtray designed to hold multiple cigars.
The décor was, as is typical in these lodges, a hodge-podge — a mash up of what folks in the US must have imagined was oriental. Thus, in the Oriental theater here, Buddhas, camels, and Arabic motifs are all mixed together. Why the fascination with the Middle East? Was it because it was the “holy land?” Was it the birthplace of masonry (the pyramids) and of the weird and ancient mysteries — arcane links to the order of the universe once known only by the wise inscrutable ancients? An order kept hidden and encoded for centuries, not to be told to just anyone, but to be revealed to American businessmen smoking big cigars and doing good works? Needless to say, whatever it emerged from, it’s truly impressive. A grand physical metaphor for something, something we can’t quite put our finger on. A kind of syncretism seems to be at work here as well, a melding of opposing beliefs and a substituting of one set of symbols for another.
I gather that these types of places went into decline with the emergence of television. The rise of mass entertainment meant that these men (and they are mostly men’s organizations) could now zone out in front of the tube and forgo the dues and duties of these social organizations. Something was obviously lost — a community, a network, and the fulfillment of a biological need to be together in a large room. Now they hold weddings here. We were shown the room where brides could select from potential reception décor. And wedding parties don’t have to be dues-paying Shriners to be welcome anymore.
We headed for our last stop, the Calatrava designed wing of the art museum, situated right on the lakeshore. As in other cities, these architectural baubles are, I imagine, built to attract cultural tourism and also to give the city a visible “brand.” Don’t know how well it’s achieved those goals, but his work is certainly spectacular. Here’s the parking garage located under the museum:
The entrance foyer is the most alien biomorphic cathedral-like space in the building, pretty awe-inspiring.
There was one show in this particular “building,” although most of this building more accurately functions as a gateway to the older museum building alongside it (designed by Eero Saarinen).
The current show, of techie interactive art, had one spectacular and creepy piece. It was by Daniel Rozin, whose work more often consists of wall mosaic-like structures that mirror, by tilting their various “tiles,” the person who is looking at them. There was one of those in this show as well and there were a few in the “Machines and Souls” show I participated in over in Madrid.
This one was a little different. In a dark room, a sort of semi-transparent screen had a projection, which mirrored anyone who stood directly in front of it. But the mirroring was weird and disturbing. It saw the edges of our shapes, the outlines, and filled them in only if you stood still; and then if you moved, the pixels projected on the scrim would disperse, fall and disintegrate, as if you were crumbling like a pile of powder. In the way some insects only see things that move, this only sees things that hold still. Here is an image of Andi (Andrea Maio) who got up close…you can see a really creepy smile.
In the older museum building, Paul rushed us up to an upper room that had quite a few pieces by the late Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, the “outsider” artist from around here who worked in a variety of media and styles. He made vaguely, almost abstract, apocalyptic paintings by smearing paint with his fingers, baking tools, and his wife’s hair (!) into contorted plant-like shapes. They’re very colorful and slightly disturbing. He also made sculptures out of chicken bones. I’d previously seen little towers. Here, there were a couple of tiny thrones made of painted chicken bones.
He idolized his wife Marie, and had a unique way of showing it. He took lots of pictures of her, dressed and more often undressed, quasi-classically posed, a little like in girlie magazines sometimes, and sometimes wearing crowns he had fashioned for her.
Oh, to be worshipped, to be the muse and inspiration of a genius who fills the house with chicken bones.
Our show is at the ornate and beautiful Pabst Theater. The metal chairs in the top balcony all say Pabst in metal across their backs. During soundcheck, we started working on a new old song, “Air,” a song I haven’t played live in 30 years, I suspect. In figuring out the tune, I notice that the lyrics have no rhymes and that’s not the only peculiarity. The song moves back and forth from rhythmically stop-start sections in minor keys to lyrical sections in major keys. I can see a link between the approach to the text and the rhythmically abrupt sections and the band who some of us rush over to see after our show.
Deerhoof and a few other bands were playing at what seemed like a former social hall on the 3rd floor of a building downtown. We catch the end of their set. It’s pretty magnificent in a fractured way. Very sophisticated. There’s ultra precision in the drums and guitars — abrupt, perfectly timed short outbursts — while the vocalist, Satomi Matsuzaki, sings in a calm voice. Their lyrics have no relationship whatsoever to typical rock lyrics (though I can see a link to the non-rhyming lyrics of “Air”). The vocal melodies are atypical as well. I’m not claiming to be an influence on Deerhoof, though it would be flattering if I were, but more that songs like “Air” are part of a link in a chain, or drops in a small river, that approach music and lyric writing from a different, slightly mutated angle. As if to emphasize that none of their musical structures are accidental, the band sells sheet music at their merchandise table, as well as the usual t-shirts and CDs. They made the sheet music for one song available to fans before their new record was released.
Guitar Dance
I’m standing on a chair watching and listening and admiring the physical interplay between the 3 guitarists, and Greg the drummer, who sometimes rises out of his seat and even walks around his drums at times. It’s a kind of dance that’s evolved over the course of many performances, both consciously and unconsciously. I don’t imagine anyone says to the others, “When I do this sound and movement with my guitar, or drums, what if you did that, physically, in response?” but it’s a kind of emergent choreography all the same. Of course, I now think to myself, “What if we did a new thing with the dancers that made that 'guitar dance' more explicit?” I write to Annie-B, who it seems, is thinking almost the exact same thing. There are a few days in the November break when we can try something out.
Biked over to the new Libeskind designed art museum here in Denver. It looks like a boat from a Japanese animé comic — titanium skin like the Gehry buildings, but no curves, all acute angles. It was drizzling, and I wondered how those titanium flaps are going to manage keeping out the water. If water gets in via the thousands of joins and flaps, it will be a little visit to financial hell trying to sort it out.
The building has been criticized for not being very art-friendly, which is not a good thing for a museum. There are quite a few walls that lean in or out and there are pretty much no 90º angles anywhere. It’s a little bit of a funhouse. Oh well, architects and their egos know no limits. And the idea was probably not so much to make a place to show art as to make a cultural logo and draw for the city, following the Bilbao example. Rumor has it that now the museum is more than a little tight on funds, and staff have been laid off and asked to work fewer hours.
That said, these walls that are sort of unfriendly to hanging art were the exception. There were plenty of traditional upright walled galleries, although even in those, there were no right angle corners. The odd shape of the building combined with these angles effectively creates continuous disorientation, not entirely a bad thing.
This being Denver, half a floor is devoted to Western art, something we Yankees don’t see much of. We see the Hudson River School, such as Bierstadt and the others, who also painted the West and had a hand in luring settlers and travelers out there, but we don’t see much beyond that. And there is a lot beyond that. Western art goes for high figures, prices that are comparable to the contemporary art that gets all the headlines. OK, not the Bacon and Hirst prices, but well, up there.
Here’s one by one of the major Western painters, Charles M. Russell, called In The Enemy’s Country.
Russell memorialized the Native American culture as it was almost completely wiped out. In a funny way, I really like this stuff. It strikes a chord. They’re like movie stills maybe, scenes from a mythical film that never was. The color, the light, the “noble savages.” The mythology is potent, even when we realize it’s bogus. I recognize the same mythological impulses at work in the galleries lining the streets of Park City, where paintings of bears, mountain lions, and sweeping vistas celebrate the world that is being destroyed by the ski villages and condos that patronize these galleries. San Diego had similar galleries; in their case, with scenes of seabirds and windswept empty beaches. It’s a recurring theme — celebrate it as you cut it down. Do we all do that in different ways?
Here’s a lovely almost conceptual touch. Russell would borrow books from friends to read, and return them with little watercolors painted in the spaces where the chapters ended. I wonder if I doodled in a borrowed book, would the lender appreciate it?
Beautiful, no?
In another Western painting, it was pointed out that part of the propaganda effort was to portray the oppressor (the white invaders and settlers) as victims. Not that the settlers weren’t ever attacked, but the fact that they were usurping the land of others is conveniently left out of the mythology. Here, an Indian kidnaps a white baby while the father shoots one of the raiding party.
Something tells me these oppressor-as-victim stories are not unique to the settling of the West. As expansion propaganda and invasion justification, they seem to recur fairly regularly.
In one of the contemporary galleries (one of which was named the Hugh Grant Gallery!), I watched a couple of videos by a German artist named Bjørn Melhus. In one 3-monitor video, a man with a shaved head lip-synched to the re-edited words of a female TV newsperson. Occasionally typical corporate news graphics would explode behind his 3 heads.
The more popular video, Captain, used 3 actors — two men and a boy — who lip-synched to dialogue from Star Trek. They stand awkwardly on a crummy lunar set with space effects (planets and stars) green screened behind them. A little as if theater director Richard Maxwell had done a sci-fi piece. It was quite long, vaguely ominous, portentous and completely hilarious (though I was the only one laughing…why?).
Sometimes the little boy character was given the voice of the ominous
alien being who would threaten the crew in a deep voice; sometimes the
bearded man with the potbelly would be given the voice of a woman
speaking seductively to “Captain Kirk”.
“Lack of utility and rarefied exquisiteness are seen as the shortest paths to being art.” — Roberta Smith of The New York Times recently reviewing a show at the Museum of Art and Design in which many artists use everyday objects in their work. She doesn’t agree with the statement and by paraphrasing it, she doesn’t mean it as a compliment.
I would argue that art does, in fact, have a utility, but not always in the obvious functional way that, say, my bike racks for NYC do. Of course in Asia, functional objects like screens, teacups, tea wisks and other paraphernalia have traditionally been the closest to our notion of fine art, but they are also utilitarian objects. They are a version of a household item that is also a tool to focus and refine attention — a changed awareness that then resonates out into the world. And the objects are completely utilitarian, which makes the mundane daily activities they are associated with into small focused performances, little rituals. Tea ceremony is a refined example, but many more ordinary practices and activities are focus pullers as well. One performs the act, and is aware of performing the act at the same time.
While viewing art, at least in the western sense, is not the road to self-improvement some still claim — art is not “good” for you — it still has practical and psychologically positive functions. Making it, performing it (in the case of some art forms) and the various social links and connections that arise (or don’t) in the whole world of surrounding activity are where much of the usefulness comes from. Participation (whether making it, dancing it, singing along or being together) is so obviously psychologically cathartic that it’s hardly worth mentioning. It facilitates talk, flirting, hanging out, travel, and money exchange. Isn’t that useful? The object itself might be useless, but, like paper money, it has a kind of agreed upon exchange value — it’s a kind of social currency.
On the way up, I commented that our audiences, who are pretty much universally loving the dance elements, would probably, most of them, never go to see a contemporary dance performance if it was in town. We agreed that somehow this context removes any sense of pretension and fear from the viewer. There is none of the intellectual questioning and pondering by the audience that often occurs at a dance or at a performance context. No one is asking, “What does this mean? Do I get it? Do I like it? Is this over my head?”
Somehow mixed with popular music, these elements in the show bypass those critical and questioning centers and people receive them as part and parcel of the total performance. If they are enjoying it, then it must be OK. Lily suggests that dance, often marginalized but now increasingly so, needs to insert itself into other places and join with other media, as this show does in its own way. She mentioned some places dance might fit: fashion shows (which is a great idea to make those events a little more acknowledged as performance); film; fine art; and elsewhere.
Orpheum Theater
The renovated Orpheum Theater here in Phoenix is beautiful, as is its namesake in Memphis. I hope that with the changing fortunes and structures in the worlds of music and performance, these places, ornate palaces for performance, will flourish once again. Maybe, as people crave the authenticity of a live show and music in a world of virtual and limitless interconnectivity, these places will be increasingly well attended.
This one had a built-in lighting effect that mimicked clouds passing over the starlit sky. The giant murals are of Monument Valley/Sedona-type landscapes — God’s theater.
I’m here at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid to take part in a large museum show called “Máquinas y Almas: Arte digital” (“Machines and Souls: Digital Art”), which, as one might expect, includes a lot of contemporary techie work. The exhibition title presumes an opposition, and I suspect that many of the show’s participants might disagree with this implied duality since much of the work here demonstrates a symbiotic relationship between artist and machine. Just as Descartes once separated the mind and body, we now separate machines — which we see as extensions of our body and senses — from something we refer to as our souls.
What is a soul? Some suggest it’s what survives death, joining the other evanescent and matterless essences when our “machines,” our bodies, cease to function. Some claim it has a weight, that the body mysteriously loses 21 grams at the moment of our passing. In this view, it is not DNA but the soul that contains the true self, our sacred and immutable identities.
When a limb is amputated, is part of the soul lost? According to convention, no, it is not. When a lobotomy is performed or a person has a stroke is part of the soul “lost” or diminished? Presumably not — even a person in a vegetative state still has a soul, though we don’t know exactly where it is. Where do we draw the line? Would a brain kept alive but apart from its body still have a soul? Who cares?
I remember a comic book I read as an adolescent, Binky Brown Meets The Holy Virgin Mary, by Justin Green.
It’s an irreverent look at a young man’s tortured Catholic upbringing. In one section, after being inundated with Church dogma regarding the soul, young Binky tries to imagine what it looks like. Where is this thing they keep referring to, and what form does it take? Binky imagines his own soul is a small, amorphous lump located somewhere in the chest, tarnished and dirtied by his accumulated sins. In other narratives, evil scientists and Voodoo priests know how to locate and remove the soul, or to control it, while normal doctors haven’t a clue to its existence or where it hides.
What about machines? Will there come a time when machines have the characteristics of a sentient, self-aware being? Raymond Kurzweil believes that a day will soon come when machines and living beings will merge. He predicts that we will augment ourselves with machines to such an extent that our sense of self will encompass the silicon, the circuitry, and the chunks of titanium — we and the machines will become one, what he calls The Singularity.
During some intensely emotional portions of my recent past, I would dream that I either lost my laptop, or that the screen suddenly went blank, and I would feel traumatized and distraught. The laptop, it seems, was a stand-in for myself. Others may toss and turn when they dream of losing their Blackberries, or their houses burning down, or their cars mysteriously dying, but for me it was my computer.
Our identities can be tied to certain machines, though not just any type. A power drill? Probably not, but a luxury watch, a sexy car, a camera (for a DP, or photographer, maybe?), a typewriter (for a writer stuck in the last century?), and a computer for those like me who use it to store their personal information and to interface with others. The tools we use can represent — at least symbolically — our very identities: a Western gunfighter sees his weapon as a totem, a chef lovingly sharpens his knives, and the suburban guy washes his new car in the driveway for all to see. Though, it seems some of these machines might be standing in for a different organ, and not the soul. Oh, well.
I don’t think what I’ve addressed thus far really engages the supposed theme of the exhibition; many works seem to address the uncanny, the creepy, and the vaguely lifelike, though there are some exceptions. For instance, Theo Jansen’s marvelous giant walking sculptures are somewhat uncanny. Their insect-like movements make them appear to be alive since the artist didn’t rely on wheels or other common mechanical devices. A piece by the Japanese artist Sachiko Kodama creates weird shapes with iron filings suspended in oil, which, when subjected to massive magnetic forces, makes even stranger shapes, seeming to morph organically from one shape to another. These squirming shapes appear disturbingly alive.
A series of video projections resembles tiny deep-sea creatures or protoplasmic life, pulsing, slithering, and interacting with one another. The piece by Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen gathers blog texts, then filters and speaks them aloud, evoking a visible/audible manifestation of the hive mind, and makes me wonder if our the essence of our being is now scattered, dispersed into the ether, across the internet, and living in the computers of a billion people across the world.
Other pieces move away from the uncanny, addressing different ideas. Natalie Jerimenjenko’s hydroponic plants act as lungs to cleanse the air outside the museum. Antonio Mutanda’s map shows human connectivity around the globe, as does the work of some of the other artists.
Julio, the singing robot made in collaboration with David Hanson’s lab, fits in mainly with the creepy uncanny side of the show. Julio is old-school creepy — he resembles a person, uses lifelike motions, and — yikes! — smiles and looks around, mumbles to himself, and then bursts into song. He recalls a Frankenstein monster, although, instead of being outwardly and obviously scary, he’s quasi-friendly looking and bursting with emotion. I hope the sense of realism together with the singing make him doubly creepy. How can a machine be feeling what’s expressed in the songs?
I could have designed Julio to say “human” things like, “Hi there!” or “Wussup?” I thought of having him say more disturbing things like “Touch me,” “I’m so horny,” or “Come closer.” But instead I opted for singing.
Like many animals, humans sing for pleasure, for sex, for attention, to express pain, to relieve angst and to join and participate in a social group. All of these urges seem, if not uniquely human, at least not at all machine like. To see machines mimic these aspects of human life, is to watch some part of our imagined souls being appropriated.
While machines can mimic aspects of human, animal and biological processes, they still lack souls, or whatever it is that leaves us sentient, independent beings. Machines, even computers, are for the most part still modeled on digital, binary and logical thought processes, clutching the legacy of Descartes and the Enlightenment. For machines to truly simulate human beings, they will need to reason with their hearts, their emotions, as we and other animals do. We may like to think that cool logic guides, buffers, and tames our hot emotions, but many now believe that the amygdala and other emotional areas of the brain do most of the “thinking.” It seems that much of our thought process is unconscious, based on impulse, gut feeling, and instinct — and no less wise because of it. This is what’s absent in these machines.
For me, an important part of this show is about this lacuna, this missing part. Witnessing a machine approach being human — and for it to be almost believable, but not quite — can be a creepy and unsettling experience. [See Julio the Uncanny essay]
What would a machine that “feels” be like? I think it would have something like acquired instincts — a lot of them — coupled with a constellation of fears, desires, and loves. The machine would experience desire, hate, friendship, and inexorable ties to other objects and living beings. It would learn the art of deceit, whom to trust, and test the limits of its relationships. It would perform favors and help out, but might expect something in return. What a handful!
In order to think like a human, or like an animal, the machine would need the faults, foibles, and self-interests characteristic of living things. Of course, it would have mirror neurons too — or some equivalent capacity — allowing it to predict what people, animals and other sentient machines were feeling and how they might behave or react next.
We can guess the potential scenarios to follow. We’ve seen them in a hundred sci-fi movies in which the machines take over. In some of these, the machines are even arguably “better” than the people (and certainly better than some of the actors). They make more informed decisions, behave more altruistically, and are marginally less fucked up. In some dramas, the machines adopt the ultimate human foible, or strength, depending on your point of view — religion. They should be showing Battlestar Galactia at this exhibition.
Does this stuff belong in an art museum? Shouldn’t it be in the science museum, some might ask? Is it even science? Some would say that it’s engineering and innovative design, not true science, and certainly not art. I’d argue that their essentially useless content and attention to metaphor in these works suggest that they can only be shown alongside art — thereafter, let the deciders decide.
Participating artists:
Antoni Abad, 1956, ES David Byrne, 1952, UK & David Hanson, US, robot Daniel Canogar, 1964, ES Vuk Cosic, 1966, RS Evru / Zush, 1946, ES Harun Farocki, 1944, CZ, football Paul Friedlander, lights Pierre Huyghe 1962, FR, anime girl Theo Jansen 1948, NL, insect machines Natalie Jeremijenko, 1966, AU, recycling Sachiko Kodama magnet forms Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, 1967, MX Chico MacMurtrie John Maeda, 1966, US Antoni Muntadas, 1942, ES, map Daniel Rozin, 1961 Ben Rubin & Mark Hansen 1964, US, blog feed
