Surreal-metaphysical imageries and mystical symbolism

Exhibition: ‘South Calcutta Artists’ Academy’
Aurelec Cafeteria & Art Gallery (until 16 March) ::: 8:00 AM 17 February to 16 March 2008
Exhibition by members of the South Calcutta Artists’ Academy
Aurelec Cafeteria & Art Gallery
The ‘South Calcutta Artists’ Academy’ is an artists’ organization, consisting of painters, sculptors, graphic and ceramic artists, and so on. It is the quest for empathy, for togetherness, that led us to establish the Academy in 2001.
Our Academy aims to provide a broad platform for artists to overcome their personal and commercial handicaps, without compromising their individual identities. Just as parallel lines can progress together, similarly different ambitions and thought-processes are sought to be accommodated under the umbrella of our Academy.
Representation at ‘Aurelec’ Exhibition :
The members of the South Calcutta Artists’ Academy aspire to represent the Eastern Region, especially Calcutta, at the Pondicherry Artists’ Workshop. All the members of the Academy are upcoming contemporary artists, experimenting with the various genres of both contemporary and traditional Indian art.
Calcutta as we all know is known as the cultural capital of our country. It amalgamates the traditions of Indian classical and folk art forms along with the influence of colonialism.
The artists of the Academy seek a forum to bring international exposure to the artistic traditions of Eastern India, as well as to exchange knowledge of existent and emergent art forms and techniques.
Ten painters will exhibit their work in the forthcoming exhibition in ‘Aurelec’:
Sujit Karmakar seamlessly blends Indian traditional art symbols and monochromatic colour schemes with contemporary themes and concerns.
Pinaki Acharyya’s surreal-metaphysical imageries are juxtaposed with Indian spiritual and mystical symbolism.
Sharmistha Acharjee likes to experiment with lines and form. She focuses on inanimate objects, which she then invests with a new dimension.
Ashok Kumar Dey draws inspiration from folk art forms. His lines are cleanly and firmly etched, giving his figures a certain fixity of purpose.
Sujit Saha uses primitive art forms and animal motifs to highlight his contemporary concerns.
Tapan Biswas likes to place spiritual art forms against contemporary images.
Pradip Laha goes back to Bengal folk art and figurative style for inspiration. The female images in his paintings create a new niche to highlight feminine forms and feelings.
Mahua Roy mixes her fantasies and innocence to express herself.
Amitava Banerjee amalgamates bold brushwork with his simplified folk forms.
Rajib Deyashi works with naturalistic forms and realistic colours.
Lal Malsawma is from Mizoram (North-East ). His paintings portray with honesty the environment to which he belongs.
Aurelec Cafeteria, Auroville, is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
posted by Franz

Paintings, silk screens and drawings by Monique Patenaude

Exhibition: "The Blue Invasion"
Pitanga (until 12 March) ::: 8:00 AM
The Blue Invasion and other unseen art works
Paintings, silk screens and drawings
by Monique Patenaude
21 February to 12 March 2008 at Pitanga
Daily open: 8 – 12:30 & 2 – 7 pm Sundays closed
The English version of the book “Made in Auroville, India”,
translated by L’aura Joy, will be launched at the same time.
posted by Pitanga

Still can the vision come, the joy arrive

Archetypal matter-spirit mysteries set for debate again
S. Dorairaj Other States - The Hindu - Puducherry
Three-day meet organised by Sri Aurobindo World Centre for Human Unity
— Photo: T. Singaravelou The brochure of the three-day meet, ‘Sri Aurobindo…The New Dynamism of the Material and the Spiritual’ that will be held in Puducherry from Friday.
PUDUCHERRY:

“When the circle will be completed, when the two extremities will touch, when the highest will manifest in the most material that the experience will be truly decisive.” – This is how The Mother throws light on the dynamism of the material and the spiritual.
Fathoming out the mysteries of the relationship between matter and spirit, Sri Aurobindo says:
“There Matter is the Spirit’s firm density
Where sense can build a world of pure delight.”

But an attempt to find answers to questions such as “Are these poetic images?,” “Or, do they reflect the nature of changes taking place in our world?” and “Can we discover links to them? And weave them together to form a rich tapestry of our lives?” has been made by the Sri Aurobindo World Centre for Human Unity by organising a three-day meet, “Sri Aurobindo…The New Dynamism of the Material and the Spiritual.”
The meet to be held at Bharat Nivas in Auroville will commence its deliberations on February 15.
The first day will be devoted to the broad topic, “Our Frontiers of Scientific Research.” It will have presentations by experts on the irreversible discoveries in physics, the new findings in biology, economics taking a new look, in search of new organisational structures, how technology impacts the human psyche, how globalisation affects individuals and societies and climatic change and its far reaching imperatives.
Topics such as art as expression of the spirit, the multi-dimensionality of the literary canvas, architecture as form and consciousness, design and its changing contours, education seeking new methods and goals, search for a greater psychology of man and society and the meaning of ‘embodiment’ and evolutionary purpose would be discussed on the second day under the broad subject, “As Life recreates itself.”
The third day would have the session on “Spiritual Experience and the goal of Transformation.” Issues such as “A new sense of the ‘spiritual’ in life-in-matter, its many forms and practices, the supra-mental consciousness and the substance, the supra-mental manifestation, its moment of evolutionary presence and the path of internal yoga” would be discussed.

24 speakers
A total of 24 speakers will make their presentations. Each session will also have collective interaction.
The deliberations on the first day will start with recitation from ‘Savitri’ and conclude with the chanting of “OM” with Narad at Sri Aurobindo Auditorium. The second day’s session will begin with recitation from ‘Isha Upanishad’. Exhibition
An exhibition on “Infinite Matter” would be inaugurated at Kala Kendra.
On the third day, the session would commence with meditation with music of ‘Sri Aurobindo’s Centenary 1972’.
It would culminate in a power-point presentation titled, “A Presence of Roger Anger.”
A power-point presentation on “How the Body’s Development Supports Higher States of Consciousness” in the forenoon at the audio-visual room of Kala Kendra and contemporary dance and live music programme “An Infinite Matter” by Grace and Nadaka at the Sri Aurobindo Auditorium in the evening are slated for February 18.

Nishikanta-Dilip Kumar combination that resulted in memorable compositions

ALL THE BEST: Tale of two legends

It is not often that one encounters so many legends in a single week. Art lovers speak of Ramkinkar Baij with the same reverence that connoisseurs of music refer to Dilip Kumar Roy. At the same time came a living legend in the world of dance from Germany, Pina Bausch who had taken Kolkata by storm more than 12 years ago with a production called Carnations. Her performance has been discussed elsewhere and hence we can concentrate on the two who have their roots n Bengal but whose legacy is cherished all over.

Dilip Kumar Roy was born in the same year as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and while the latter spend the better part of his life striving for the freedom that came when he was not around, the former strived for freedom of music compositions that stood apart in an era dominated by Tagore. The point was stressed in an absorbing lecture by Sudhir Chakraborty which was the highlight of Sura Kavya Trust’s 111th birth anniversary programme on Dilip Kumar Roy at the GD Birla Sabhagar. The idea was to emphasise the “parampara’’ that made Dilip Kumar what he was ~ a scholar with a universal outlook but whose creative genius distinguished him from Tagore and who found his métier in several thousand songs which have not yet been comprehensively compiled.

It is left to organisations like Sura Kavya Trust to preserve the heritage through publications, music albums and, most important, getting the new generation to imbibe the power and passion of Dilip Kumar’s music. The programme revealed exciting new talents. One of them was Sujata Majumdar who accompanied Sudhir Chakraborty as an illustrator of the musical legacy handed down to Dilip Kumar from his father Dwijendralal. The raga-based compositions were illustrated with Sujata’s rendering of Barasha elo which was followed up with the Nishikanta-Dilip Kumar combination that resulted in memorable compositions like Tomar andhar nishaye and tunes adapted from the Scotch, Irish and English compositions. The speaker, an acclaimed musicologist, covered different phases of the musical careers of father and son with such depth and perspicacity that the audience consisting mainly of admirers of Sri Aurobindo’s ardent disciple must have returned with a clearer understanding of the musical genius.

The second half was also devoted to the musical spirit handed down by father to son, this time resulting in a visual delight. Alokananda Roy made a stunning presence with movements that were wonderfully in tune with the songs rendered by Shikha Basu and Prabuddha Raha reinforced by Debraj Roy’s commentary written by Biswajit Ganguly. The DL Roy selections were in the patriotic mould but there were images of sheer joy reflected in songs like Ami eshechhi. There were also beautifully nuanced compositions that Shikha Basu used her experience and competence to give the audience a taste of the spiritual strength that went into all of Dilip Kumar’s work.

An equally comprehensive view of Ramkinkar Baij is presented by Anant Art Gallery. This is the most well curated show one has seen in recent times. The highlight is a series of photographs taken by Devi Prasad when he was a student of Ramkinkar at Santiniketan. Most of the photographs of the sculptures were said to have been taken at night with controlled lighting and they produce an ambience that is just right for appreciation of Ramkinkar’s memorable sculptures ~ the Yaksha and Yamini statues, studies of the human form, a study of Rabindranath that has been discussed again and again and images of mother and child, love and innocence.

Along with the sculptures come original paintings in water colour and oil. Most of these have a spontaneous flourish ~ village scenes and quick sketches that carry the energy and universal humanism that he brought to all his work. The credit for all this must go Naman Ahuja of the School of Arts and Aesthetic, JNU, who first presented the show in Delhi to an overwhelming response. In Kolkata there is an audio-visual section that includes an unfinished film on Ramkinkar by Ritwik Ghatak. It adds up to the most intimate portrait of the man who revealed so many shades to a colourful life.

POSTSCRIPT: Perhaps the least talked about side of Satyajit Ray’s creative genius was his contribution to the visual arts. If the show mounted by Ray Society at the Academy was any guide, there is no doubt that the energy and inventiveness Ray displayed elsewhere is reinforced by the plethora of illustrations, book covers, posters, typefaces, set and costume designs, advertisement art works and much more. The question is, where do all these get preserved? Swapan Mullick the statesman.net Saturday, 9 February 2008

Money Museum

Where the Capitalism Is (Always on Display) By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Museum Review NYT: February 2, 2008

At a time of uncertainty — as the market quavers, the dollar sinks, sub-prime lenders go belly up, and the Federal Reserve Bank rapidly twists its dials — money becomes more puzzling and more unpredictable, demanding closer scrutiny. So while opening the Museum of American Finance on Wall Street last month might at first have seemed like bad timing — like buying a stock at its top, or selling at its bottom — there was actually no better moment to mount this tribute to the “forces that have made New York City the financial capital of the world” (as one of the museum’s displays puts it). And if our city’s status and the currency that backs it are more contested than they once were, that only makes the enterprise more urgently intriguing.

In fact, the museum was founded just after the 1987 market crash, because John Herzog, chairman of a trading firm that has since become part of Merrill Lynch, said he felt that there was no “institutional memory” on Wall Street. Moments of crisis require that expanded perspective, and, as the museum’s founding shows, they also inspire it...

One display reminds us that Willie Sutton famously explained that he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is.” But we come to this former bank to see exactly what money is — and what America has made of it. That doesn’t really happen. But enough is seen so that money starts to seem less like a material object than like something more ethereal, affected by sea winds and psychology, faith and risk. And at this uncertain moment its mysterious powers seem all the more uncanny: it’s a perfect time to see it in action. This museum is not a bad place to start. The Museum of American Finance is open Tuesdays through Saturdays at 48 Wall Street, Lower Manhattan; (212) 908-4110 or www.financialhistory.org More Articles in Arts »

Art is also a supreme comfort because it gives credence, by its very attention, to the various moods and modes of being

The Practice of Appreciation Posted on December 28th McFawn

In the New York Times the other day, Roberta Smith wrote an article titled What We Talk About When We Talk About Art about the obtuse and pretentious language in art criticism today. Smith takes issue with three words: privilege, reference (both used as verbs) and the term practice used to describe what artists do. Smith seems particularly uncomfortable with the word “practice,” claiming that it characterizes art-making as a white-color activity, that it implies that artists need license to practice (of which she disagrees) and, most interestingly, that “practice” indicates that art is ultimately a problem-solving activity. Here’s how Smith puts it:
Second is the implication that an artist, like a doctor, lawyer or dentist, is trained to fix some external problem… Art rarely succeeds when it sets out to fix anything beyond the artist’s own subjective needs.
Smith’s issue with the word practice is less interesting than the bold claim it leads her to about the purpose of art. She seems to believe that art is most successful when it doesn’t try to tackle any problem outside the artist’s psyche or aesthetic aims.

Sunil Gangadharan at Art and Perception wrote an insightful response that makes the point that art often draws attention to global problems, perhaps encouraging “the viewer to think about (and in the ideal case, acting to alleviate) a problem hitherto unknown or underrepresented”–thereby tackling an “outside” problem. Certainly this would be the goal of most political art.
I have never thought of art as a problem-solving activity, outside of the inherent problem-solving in bringing an intention to realization. Art may gesture towards problems in the world, but I agree that the best art does not aim to “fix” anything. The purpose of art will always be debated, but my natural response is that art, rather than solving problems, is a means to a greater valuing of the world, problems and all. The best art is a sophisticated and distinctive appreciation of the world, and the best art criticism is a sophisticated and distinctive appreciation of art.
Without art, what we would appreciate in the world would be limited. We would no doubt appreciate food, water, shelter, family, and any personal relationships that benefited us. But our pleasures would likely be restricted to only what contributed to our survival and immediate happiness, and our way of ordering the world would probably consist of a simple dichotomy: good and bad. Good things help us survive or feel good, and bad things impede our survival and hurt. Art, however, gives us the ability–and the permission–to appreciate the unclassifiable details of the world. For instance, without art, we might find the natural world beautiful, or we might be drawn to a hard-to-read feature in someone else, like a sardonic yet shy smile. The appreciation of such things perhaps existed before art, but it is art that encourages us to dwell in and value these perceptions.

Art is also a supreme comfort because it gives credence, by its very attention, to the various moods and modes of being. Joy, triumph, contentment all seem real to us because these are the things we want to feel as real, and suffering is real because of the vividness of pain. But the more subtle states of being–bittersweet melancholy, self-amusement, mischievousness–these states and every other, art argues, are just as real and just as capable of being valued.
When I find art or literature moving, I feel as if the art is elaborating on something I once felt briefly. For instance, Hawthorne’s “My Visit to Niagara” explores the numbness and intimidation and loss of self we sometimes feel in the presence of natural phenomena. I felt, when reading “Niagara” that I also had this experience in the presence of nature (my visit to the Andes in Peru was one example). But like so many sensations throughout the course of life, I let myself be swept along to the next experience without pausing on the significance and singularity of that moment. Good art slows the world down and shows us the dimensionality in even the most transient of experiences. Art is perpendicular to life: if a lifetime is a horizontal and forward-moving, art is vertical–showing us the heights and depths in moments from which we are compelled to move on. Art may not fix the problems of the world, but it shows us the fullness of what’s at stake. Trackback URL Some Responses to “The Practice of Appreciation” :

Art certainly is “perpendicular to life”. It is a time out from life as we usually live it, and when it is good enough, the “supreme comfort” McFawn talks about is there to enjoy. Roberta Smith makes quite a few good points too, until her last paragraph, where she blows it by conceding that she, like many many others since Leo Casteli exhibited a fake Fountain in the 50s, no longer demands to see art. It is as if the very lack of discipline Smith “refers to” ultimately consumed her own experience of art. Commented catfish on December 29th, 2007.
About Hawthorne’s visit to Niagra, I think it would be very hard to make outdoor scullpture if I lived in the Rocky mountains, say around Gunnison. Not because of “numbness” but because it would feel like what’s the use when you can see a landscape like that everyday. Commented catfish on December 29th, 2007.
And finally, one the web site for the school of art at the University of Illinois, it says that the studio curriculum prepares students for careers in social activism. (! ?) They forgot to note whether or not jobs in social activism come with fringe benefits, but the way it was presented could lead one to expect they do. Theirs is a good example of the enlightened, 21st century art department doing what it does best - putting an academic wrapper around the multi-thousand year old instinctual activity we label art. Commented catfish on December 29th, 2007.
“Art is perpendicular to life” is brilliant! It’s going down in my quotes to remember. Commented Steve Durbin on January 5th, 2008.

Great art often comes from an artist thinking – and wanting to solve something – beyond their subjective selfhood

Art & Perception authors drawing painting photography being an artist a multidisciplinary dialog
Art - self healing or big picture? Posted by Sunil Gangadharan December 27, 2007 8:38 pm

Roberta Smith wrote a lively piece in the Sunday Times last week titled ‘What we talk about when we talk about Art’ (link here). She weighed in on the use of commonly used clichés used by the artworld that inherently reflects and harbors intellectual insecurities. As an example, she talks about the oft over-used ‘Referencing‘ (as in the statement “this work referencing male chauvinism uses…”), ‘Privilege’ (as in “privileging the leftist agenda”) and ‘Practice’ (as in “my studio practice”). I have seen these used and sometimes abused in many artist biographies, statements and exhibition descriptions. While Referencing really means ‘referring to’ and Privilege means ‘favoring’, it is the term Practice that has the biggest potential for being misconstrued…
She makes three assertions:
#1. First off, there’s the implication that artists, like lawyers, doctors and dentists, need a license to practice. Many artists already feel the need for a license: It’s called a master of fine arts. But artists don’t need licenses or certificates or permission to do their work. Their job description, if they have one, is to operate outside accepted limits.
#2. Second is the implication that an artist, like a doctor, lawyer or dentist, is trained to fix some external problem. Art rarely succeeds when it sets out to fix anything beyond the artist’s own, subjective needs.
#3. Practice sanitizes a very messy process. It suggests that art making is a kind of white-collar activity whose practitioners don’t get their hands dirty, either physically or emotionally. It converts art into a hygienic desk job and signals a basic discomfort with the physical mess as well as the unknowable, irrational side of art making. It suggests that materials are not the point of art at all — when they are, on some level, the only point.

While I completely agree with #1 (that a formal degree while definitely useful is not essential to the development of an art mindset in an individual) and #3 (the subversion of materials around an artist constitutes an important part of artistic expression), I do have questions about #2 (the assertion that artists have a self-help, therapy based relationship with their art and it serves to solve personal, subjective problems rather than focus on larger global issues)…
I would say that in a large number of cases, the output produced by an artist may be directed to induce the viewer to think about (and in the ideal case, acting to alleviate) a problem hitherto unknown or underrepresented (sewer cleaners in India or a film about plantation workers in Dominica are two cases that come to mind). I might also add that artistic expressions such as the above stems from strong sincerity that the artist must have for the problem rather than being an accidental by-product while the artist indulged in self therapy…
Feedback appreciated. 5 Comments

Comment by Steve Durbin — December 28, 2007 2:26 am
Sunil,
Thanks for calling this one to our attention; it’s quite apropos for a site that’s so full (too full?) of talk about art.
As a language fan, I don’t believe in synonyms, though I certainly see plenty of poor word choice. “Referencing” may have roughly the same denotation as “referring to,” but it is used in quite different contexts and suggests a whole postmodern theoretical framework. It’s a much better word (because it conveys so much more) IF one wants all that, and IF one has understood correctly the audience’s reaction. If used only to impress, without awareness of how pretentious it sounds to most, it will probably have the opposite effect.
Smith seems most bothered by “practice.” I never took this in the sense of a professional practice, but rather as meaning one’s habitual way of working, which I think most artists have, despite the unpredictabilities of it. Perhaps the New York usage is different. If I trust her ear on this, then I conclude there are different language communities even within the art world. Not necessarily a bad thing if we just remember it.

Comment by Birgit — December 28, 2007 8:16 am
Ms. Smith’s verbal perception is only ‘So so!
ALLEN VEANER’s letter to the NYTimes editor
Ms. Smith, referring to a work by the German painter Martin Kippenberger, writes that it is ‘’labeled with ‘preis,’ the German word for price.'’ While it is true that preis means price, the word has many meanings, one of which is prize or award. I suspect that the title ‘’2. Preis.'’ is an expression of irony referring to ‘’second prize.'’
Allen Veaner is correct!

http://kunstverein-bs.de/jahresgaben_2001/martin_kippenberger_2_preis.jpg

Comment by McFawn — December 29, 2007 8:39 pm
Sunil-
Good response. I started to write a longer reply here but it became so long & ramble-y that I posted it at my site, http://www.litandart.com with the appropriate citing/shout out to your post.
I thought it was strange that Smith was so bothered by the word practice…and I thought you made a good point about how great art often comes from an artist thinking–and wanting to solve something–beyond their subjective selfhood.

Comment by June — December 30, 2007 11:57 am
Hi Sunil and all,
I am only bothered by the use of “practice” when it is clearly referencing the licensed utilization of artistic skills priveliging those with academic credentials.[add snort here]
And I am thoroughly frustrated by “referencing” since I don’t think the referral to deconstruction and high-tone theories is meaningful, except to those who have already imbibed the dregs of the vinegarish wine of Derrida (sorry, Steve). It’s very like the business use of “utilization” where it has become the word of obfuscating choice (see above”) We may be stuck with it, but I don’t have to like it.
“Privileging” I think is better — it has a very specific kind of connotation and is shorthand for what would be a mouthful to explain. I think it is useful even if it does reference an academic sort of techno-speak.
But back to the main question that Sunil broaches: what is the aim of art? I have to bow to McFawn’s emendation of Smith’s concepts:
“Good art slows the world down and shows us the dimensionality in even the most transient of experiences. Art is perpendicular to life: if a lifetime is a horizontal and forward-moving, art is vertical–showing us the heights and depths in moments from which we are compelled to move on. Art may not fix the problems of the world, but it shows us the fullness of what’s at stake.” http://www.litandart.com/
I like McFawn’s concept because it sidesteps questions of self-examination or political statement, both of which can exist in given works of art but are essentially beside the point. I don’t think Sunil’s portraits will change anybody’s mind or actions vis-a-vis tragic lives. But they do arrest us, stop us in our tracks and make us consider — consider what? well,possibly his technical prowess, or the plight of the human condition, or the nature of “progress,” or the irony of digitized portraiture in a hungry world, or the disgusting state of our own braggadocio or whether we can send more money to the local food bank.
The stopped state that art provokes can go in many directions — the important thing is that we get stopped.
And this may be why we all resent the 15 seconds or so of viewing that most art gets from viewers. But that’s a different subject altogether.

Comment by Martha — January 3, 2008 2:30 pm
I think the word “practice” has also come to have the positive implication borrowed from meditation, zen or otherwise. In the literature about that, one’s meditation work is often called one’s practice.
R.S. is privileging a tempest in a teapot, as far as I can see.
But isn’t it also funny how, if you read an artist statement before seeing the work, 99% of the time the words would not anticipate what the visual reality is…

Art rarely succeeds when it sets out to fix anything beyond the artist’s own, subjective needs

Is self therapy a reason for taking to the arts?
Roberta Smith in a short essay in the back page of the Sunday Times art review made some assertions as regards art as a 'practice'.The assertions are as follows:

#1. First off, there’s the implication that artists, like lawyers, doctors and dentists, need a license to practice. Many artists already feel the need for a license: It’s called a master of fine arts. But artists don’t need licenses or certificates or permission to do their work. Their job description, if they have one, is to operate outside accepted limits.

#2. Second is the implication that an artist, like a doctor, lawyer or dentist, is trained to fix some external problem. Art rarely succeeds when it sets out to fix anything beyond the artist’s own, subjective needs.

#3. Practice sanitizes a very messy process. It suggests that art making is a kind of white-collar activity whose practitioners don’t get their hands dirty, either physically or emotionally. It converts art into a hygienic desk job and signals a basic discomfort with the physical mess as well as the unknowable, irrational side of art making. It suggests that materials are not the point of art at all — when they are, on some level, the only point.

While #1 and #3 are very much agreeable, I questioned #2 over at Art and Perception in a post yesterday. Link to the post here. Posted by Sunil at 11:39 PM 0 comments Labels: Art as a driver for change

They often don't know what to say about their art

WHY WRITE? Kris Tiner

This is where the well-informed critic or historian usually steps in to correct the balance of information, and thank goodness for them. But at some point we have to let the artists speak for themselves.

Historically we are at a point where information is so rapidly and easily exchanged that artists can no longer afford not to speak for themselves, and students, educators, and critics of the music can't afford not to listen. The field is so exceedingly diverse and the technology is so exceedingly simple to make the kind of idea-sharing and community building that's only been dreamed of in the past a definite and immediate reality. Imagine if Rothko or Charlie Parker had a blog, if Anthony Braxton had posted his Tri-Axium writings on a website instead of printing them in a prohibitively limited (and costly) edition, if Charles Ives hadn't had to wait patiently for the publication of his music - what if he could have recorded it himself and distributed it freely over the internet?
There are so many ideas whose importance has been overshadowed only by their obscurity. Posted by Kris Tiner at 2:57 PM Labels: commentary, writing on writing 4 comments:

James Sproul said...
wow, brilliantly put as always. Sifting through the many ideas one strikes me as interesting. The artist that owns up to the responsibility of sharing their ideas about their art, do they also have a responsibility to share their ideas about their art form in general (this may or may not include talking about other artists). I think you are on that road, and I think it is a fantastic path to take. especially given, like you say, the speed at which we are able to communicate and even discuss (blog) about our ideas, and perhaps even argue our differing points of view. I have often heard people (mostly composers) say they don't want to explain their work in program notes or talking, they want the music to speak for itself.

I think this is just an excuse because they often don't know what to say about their art. Which is a little silly in my mind. I don't talk much about my work, but that is just because I don't like talking in front of people. so I write weird program notes. And often times I feel bad because I often can't express myself adequately enough to feel like I did it right, but that only comes with practice. I feel like it shouldn't be that difficult to explain your art-form (assuming one thinks about their art-form). I really dig your ideas on the difference between self-interpretation and self-representation. Someone doesn't have to explain their piece to where someone will listen to it and say "oh yes, that IS what I hear".

I don't think that is necessary, and many composers go to great lengths to explain to people who great their piece is, but I think there does need to be some expression (or to use your idea, representation) about what you believe and how that belief has been integrated into this particular piece. Which i think still allows an audience member to have a totally original experience for themselves with the music that is happening. I think this is more difficult in music that has no improvisation as it is a much more static situation and people tend to want to hear the story behind the piece (or often just the title). Anyhow, fantastic paper/blog, I truly enjoyed reading it. I think you are on to some really interesting ideas about how artists should, or can, express themselves.oh, if Ives only had a blog!!!! January 21, 2008 5:23 PM

Kris Tiner said...
Thanks! And I should clarify, in terms of the interpretation v. representation issue, I am talking about the artist's expression of "ideas about art", worldviews, systems, methods, things like that and not programs, or the kind of thing where you might say "this sound represents a waterfall here" or whatever. That, to me, is going a bit too far and we could just as easily get into a discussion of when does the composer cross the line and start trying to do the job of interpreting for the listener. Maybe we will.

When it comes to program music as such, I tend (once again) to side with Ives, asking (in the Prologue to Essays Before A Sonata):“How far is anyone justified, be he an authority or a layman, in expressing or trying to express in terms of music…the value of anything, material, moral, intellectual, or spiritual, which is usually expressed in terms other than music?”

In fact, this is as good a reason as any to write (and likely a self-justification of Ives' own writings) -- to say in words all that the music can't express or isn't saying on its own. When we try to explain what the music is saying that's where we cross the line and get into self-interpretation. January 21, 2008 8:33 PM

James Sproul said...
ah, thanks for clarifying, that is what I was thinking about. I think it is also of a certain responsibility, or maybe just an unwritten "hey, you should do this" but in expressing their views it should be more inclusive than just "composition is this" or what have you. I hold a firm belief in allowing all art-forms to converge in ones life, and allow those things to influence your decisions about your specific art-form, allow that poet to affect your art, or that painter, or even a specific painting or even philosopher (as I believe you have done to great extent with say, Ken Wilbur). They are going to influence it anyway just by having the experience, you might as well embrace it and allow it be as rich of an influence as possible. I believe, at least for myself, that is the only way to gain a richness in your personal art. I really like Ives' ideas on interpretation. Program notes, to me, and this is how I write mine, should express what the music won't. Often this constitutes technical things for most people, I try to leave as much of that stuff out as possible, unless there is just something that I used that they really should have at least basic knowledge of.

But often times I use program notes to express things that perhaps surrounded the piece during its conception and writing, that didn't necessarily go into the piece specifically, but did have influence, perhaps on my mood, or what-not, during. I find it interesting to understand what was going on during a writing of a particular piece in that persons life (or painting, or novel etc...). I find it often lends itself to an interesting point of view for me to experience and interpret what I am hearing. That can have a tendency to leak into crossing that line. so often people write six paragraph program notes about the piece and it's minutest details that are so unnecessary to the experience, but are there to show how "clever" the composer was. I don't like that. And it is interesting when the audience wants that interpretation done for them, they want the ENTIRE story of what is happening, mostly because they are perhaps lazy and don't want to do the work, or perhaps just uneducated about what you are doing (not implying stupidity, just not acquainted with that particular brand of whatever it is you are doing). What do we do as artists when they want that explanation?

I often refer them to the program notes, but that doesn't satisfy them, and if you say something aloof you sound like a pretentious jerk. it is a fine line. But I agree that the expression is not the expression of this piece or that one. It is the expression of the artist as a whole (their artist self, religious self perhaps, maybe even father-self) and through this self-expression have that original experience and interpretation instead of asking for it outright, which is much more satisfying. I had a lot of that experience in grad school, of people wanting to know what this meant or that etc... I honestly didn't know what to tell them. I just explained what I think about, perhaps a technique or something, but as far as interpretation, I had no idea what to say, because what the piece really means is something that is quite inexpressible for me. I could never explain what that piece means, nor do I try or hope to be able to. January 21, 2008 10:05 PM

James Sproul said...
one more thought. So if all this is sort of justifying writing about writing, doesn't this lead into a comparison of why we create in the first place. To express... something? Doesn't the representation of ones self through the music also carry over into the representation by the written word? Although simply expressing the same entity through different means, or perhaps different views of the same rock that sort of thing? Surely we get as much out of Ives from his music as his writing. Should we not examine both and examine him as an artist with all of it in mind? Are they not all artistic expressions? So in answer to the initial question "Why Write?" perhaps we write because we "compose" (because the phrase "we write because we write" seemed a little... ), they are essentially fulfilling similar needs within ourselves. the expression, or representation and we do it in whatever way we can. January 21, 2008 10:53 PM

Why has the artist, so skilled in deploying the Khajuraho motifs, never used them for icons of Islam?

Home > Op-Ed > SPECIAL TO THE EXPRESS Hindutva and radical Islam: Where the twain do meet

Arun Shourie Indian Express: Friday, December 28, 2007

M.F. Husain. He is a kindly man, and a prodigiously productive artist. There is no warrant at all for disrupting all his exhibitions. I am on the point of sensibilities. His depictions of Hindu goddesses have been in the news: he has painted them in less than skimpy attire. I particularly remember one in which Sita is riding Hanuman’s stiffened tail — of course, she is scarcely clad, but that is the least of it: you need no imagination at all to see what she is rubbing up against that stiffened tail.

Well, in the case of an artist, that is just inspiration, say the secularists. OK. The question that arises then is: How come in the seventy-five years Husain has been painting, he has not once felt inspired, not once, to paint the face of the Prophet? It doesn’t have to be in the style in which he has painted the Hindu goddesses. Why not the most beautiful, the most radiant and luminous face that he can imagine? How come he has never felt inspired to paint women revered in Islam, or in his own family, in the same style as the one that propelled his inspiration in regard to Hindu goddesses?

‘In painting the goddesses, he was just honouring them,’ a secular intellectual remarked at a discussion the other day. ‘It was his way of honouring them.’ Fine. It is indeed the case that one of the best ways we can honour someone is to put the one skill we have at the service of the person or deity. But how come that Husain never but never thought of honouring the Prophet by using the same priceless skill, that one ‘talent which is death to hide’?

‘Has Mr Shourie ever visited Khajuraho?,’ a member of the audience asked, the implication being that, as Hindu sculptors had depicted personages naked, what was wrong with Husain depicting the goddesses in the same style. Fine again. But surely, it is no one’s case that the ‘Khajuraho style’ must be confined to Hindu icons. Why has the artist, so skilled in deploying the Khajuraho motifs, never used them for icons of Islam? The reason why an artist desists from depicting the Prophet’s face is none of these convoluted disquisitions on style. The reason is simplicity itself: he knows he will be thrashed, and his hands smashed. 5:17 AM

Heaven and earth, round above square

Chinese Unveil Mammoth Arts Center By JOSEPH KAHN nytimes.com: December 24, 2007
The new National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing is meant to establish a cultural core next to Tiananmen Square, a political center.

BEIJING — Compared variously to a floating pearl and a duck egg, the titanium-and-glass half-dome of the National Center for the Performing Arts formally opened its underwater entryway to Chinese officials and dignitaries here over the weekend.
The $400 million complex, a concert hall, opera house and theater under one space age span, is designed to be the center of Chinese culture, just as Tiananmen Square next door was designated this country’s political center.
The complex’s lush, dazzling interior, sophisticated acoustics and mechanical wizardry rival any hall in Europe or the United States, its promoters say. Chen Ping, the center’s director, proclaimed it “a concrete example of China’s rising soft power and comprehensive national strength” during the opening ceremony on Saturday night.
Yet the center, designed by the French architect Paul Andreu, has attracted at least as much attention for its cost overruns, safety concerns and provocative aesthetics.
And the hall’s artistic directors, appointed after prolonged bureaucratic squabbling, had to scramble to line up a credible schedule of performances for the premier season, which runs from late December until April, organizers said.
The opening event was an eclectic sampler of Chinese and Western musical classics, with two conductors, two orchestras, four choral groups and a half-dozen soloists, a mélange that showed off the building’s acoustics but underscored its continuing search for an artistic mission.
Li Changchun, a senior Communist Party leader, was the guest of honor at the event, broadcast on national television. At each interlude in the program camera operators hustled to the row in front of Mr. Li to record him clapping.
The center joins a list of monoliths designed by foreign architects — the bird’s-nest Olympic stadium and the cantilevered towers of China Central Television’s new headquarters among them — that have remade the Beijing skyline and projected the soaring ambitions and bulging coffers of the Communist Party leadership.
Mr. Andreu’s creation joins the Shanghai Grand Theater, designed by another Frenchman, Jean-Marie Charpentier, as one of the top performance halls in China.
That field will grow crowded, however, as other cities pour hundreds of millions of dollars into their own cultural showcases. Zaha Hadid, the London architect, is building an opera house for Guangzhou, a provincial capital. The architect Carlos Ott, a Canadian born in Uruguay, has four contracts for performance halls in smaller cities.
Whether this adds up to a cultural renaissance or an edifice contest remains unclear. China has produced first-rate classical musicians, including the pianists Yundi Li, who performed a solo on Saturday night, and Lang Lang. Yet its musical groups, ballets and symphony orchestras have received far less attention than the concert halls. They face financial constraints, political censorship and public indifference.
“China needs a top national performance hall of this kind,” Wu Zuqiang, who heads the center’s arts committee, said in an interview before it opened. “But promoting national culture will take extended efforts, and will require some adjustments in our approach.”
Officials call the complex the largest performing arts center in the world, twice as big as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. It was designed to be conspicuous.
Mr. Andreu said that he envisioned the hall as a tribute to the traditional Chinese image of heaven and earth, round above square. His bubblelike soaring glass dome encloses several performance spaces and is suspended above a shallow pool. Viewed at night, illuminated from within, the dome resembles a spaceship hovering over a calm lake. But on dim days when the haze and dust of Beijing cover the silvery titanium shell, the hall can look no more distinguished than an airport service hangar.
A few years ago a group of Chinese architects organized a vocal petition campaign to protest the design. They said it blended poorly with the Stalinist Great Hall of the People next door and high vermilion walls of the imperial Forbidden City across the street.

Global symbol for the promotion of utilizing rainwater

21_21
21_21 DESIGN SIGHT SCHEDULE PROGRAM NEXT PROGRAM INFORMATION COMMUNICATION MEMBERSHIP 21_21 Q FOOD & GOODS
Exhibition 2Directed by Taku Satoh “water” 2007.10.5 (FRI) – 2008.1.14 (MON)
Exhibition 2 Directed by Taku Satoh “water”
2007.10.5 (FRI) – 2008.1.14 (MON)
“THIS PLAY!” (Display) 2007.9.11 (TUE) – 9.24 (MON)

Current Program
How can we use design to respond to and address issues related to our natural or social environments? 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT is dedicated to addressing themes that are rooted in everyday life. In keeping with this, we are pleased to announce the title of our second major exhibition, water.
“water” image : Tamotsu Fujii 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT director and graphic designer Taku Satoh will “curate” the exhibition. Mr. Satoh has put together a team of experts from a wide variety of fields including anthropology, photography, lighting design, and design engineering. The water project is a result of extensive research and is comprised not only by an exhibition, but is also an attempt to engage the five senses by creating different points of reference between design and water. The latter will be in the form of publications, websites, talk shows, and workshops. Our hope is that the exhibition will not just be a display of new design, but rather will be an experiment in ways to "expressing water through design."
“water” image visual (Mauritania) PHOTO : Tamotsu Fujii
Director's Statement Taku Satoh
Statement by exhibition concept supervisor Shinichi Takemura
DATE: 2007.10.5 (FRI) – 2008.1.14 (MON)
TIME: 11:00~20:00（Entrance until 19:30）
CLOSED: Tuesdays (Except Oct. 30th) and Dec 30th through Jan 3rd
ADMISSION: General ¥1,000/ University student ¥800/ High and Junior high school student ¥500/Ages 12 and under may enter for free*¥200 discount for a group of over 15 people
Organizers: 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT,THE MIYAKE ISSEY FOUNDATION
In Association with: Agency for Cultural Affairs/ Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry/ Ministry of the Environment (scheduled)
Special Cooperation: Taku Satoh Design Office Inc.
Creative Directors: Miyake Issey, Taku Satoh, Naoto Fukasawa
Noriko Associate Director: Noriko Kawakami

[Creative team]
Taku Satoh Graphic designer, Exhibition Director
Shinichi Takemura Cultural anthropologist, Concept Supervisor
Kazutoshi Amano Graphic designer
Arakawakensuke Interactive Media Designer
Tamotsu Fujii Photographer
Hiroaki Ide Sound Space Composer
Haruki Kaito Lighting designer
takram Design engineers
[Special Participants]
Kenya Hara Graphic designer
Yasuhiro Ishimoto Photographer
Yoshihiro Kawasaki Sound artist/designer
METAPHOR Design engineers
Nozomu Miura Programmer
Makoto Murase (“Dr. Rainwater”) & the NPO People for Rainwater
Taikan Oki Hydrologist ＊Alphabetical order back to page top

About the exhibition logo – by Taku Satoh
“water” Logo The silhouette of a man holding an upside-down umbrella.This symbol, the logo for the water exhibition, was also designed in the hopes that it will become a global symbol for the promotion of utilizing rainwater as a means of conserving and enhancing our natural resources.
One of the biggest issues facing us all today is how to effectively harness and benefit from rainwater. True, rain, when it falls torrentially and leads to disasters can threaten our livelihoods. But if we can find ways to use it we will not be forced to rely solely on groundwater or water from polluted waterways or water that's pumped horizontally from faraway dams that uses precious energy. Rather, we will be able to use "vertical" water that flows freely from the sky above. Thinking about how we can make the best use of water means thinking about design in the 21st century. The silhouette of a person holding a common umbrella upside down signifies the relationship between water and human ingenuity, but also symbolizes a drastic change that must take place in our way of thinking about the manner in which we treat the environment.

Terms of use for the water exhibition mark back to page top
Related Events
In conjunction with this show, the Aoyama Book Center will hold a water-related book fair and talk series. Details to be announced. Details back to page top Publications
Exhibition catalogue
Planned release: early November 2007 Text in Japanese and English
Related publication: water (provisional title) Planned release: October 5, 2007 Publisher: World Photo Press Co., Ltd. back to page top
21_21 DESIGN SIGHT 9-7-6 tel:03-3475-2121 info@2121designsight.jp © Copyright 2007　THE MIYAKE ISSEY FOUNDATION, 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, Inc. 6:34 PM

By now everyone knows that art is business, the art world a public relations machine

Art Celebrating the Intangibles Money Can’t Buy

By HOLLAND COTTER nytimes.com: December 23, 2007

With Wall Street shaky but art prices sky-high, even the art world’s professional boosters started sounding moral about art and money in 2007, as if opportunistically positioning themselves for a fall. Too late. By now everyone knows that art is business, the art world a public relations machine. The sheer bulk of hyped product made the past season look not eclectic and textured but sleek and flat. What did give it texture and color in memory were the intangibles: individual acts, gestures or encounters...

Audio Slide Show The Year in Arts Reviews: Dave McKenzie Paul Chan David Hammons Terrence Koh Mark Wallinger (tate.org.uk) " Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution" Detroit Institute of the Arts: Review Slide Show The Met's new Greek and Roman Galleries: Review Video Interactive Graphic Times Topic Documenta 12: Review

Fifty-four paintings

When Huta first exhibited the paintings she has now collected in her new book Pictures of Sri Aurobindo's Poems the Mother had written: "Those who appreciated the illustrations of Savitri will surely like to see these paintings." After the New Publications section, we offer a brief glimpse into the book and a look at a few of Huta's paintings inspired by lines from Sri Aurobindo's poems.

Pictures of Sri Aurobindo's Poems
— Paintings by Huta with verses from Sri Aurobindo's poems and relevant quotations from the Mother and Sri Aurobindo ISBN: 978-81-87372-17-2 Publisher: The Havyavahana Trust, Pondicherry Binding: Soft CoverPages: 118Price: Rs 400

In March 1967 Huta began the work of expressing some of Sri Aurobindo’s poems through paintings. Under the Mother’s inspiration and guidance she selected certain passages from the poems and completed fifty-four paintings, which were all shown to the Mother in September of that year. This new book presents these paintings along with the lines which inspired them from some of Sri Aurobindo’s most well-known poems, such as “Invitation”, “Who”, “Thought the Paraclete”, and “A God’s Labour”. Appropriate quotations from the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, some comments on the paintings by the Mother, and background information and photographs accompany the plates. The entire book is printed on art paper.

SABDA SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY 605 002 INDIA

Tel.: +91 413 2223328, 2233656 Fax: +91 413 2223328 Email: mail@sabda.in

Web: http://www.sabda.in New releases: http://www.sabda.in/new.php

Masonic stamp is visible throughout the city of Washington, DC

The Initiated Eye in 2005!

What do the international best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, the hit movie National Treasure, starring Nicholas Cage, and the upcoming Octagon exhibition The Initiated Eye have in common? All three reveal the little known contribution of Freemasonry to American culture and history. In an unprecedented collaboration with the Grand Lodge of Free And Accepted Masons of the District of Columbia in Washington, DC, and artist Peter Waddell, The Octagon, the Museum of The American Architectural Foundation is organizing an original exhibition focusing specifically on the interesting and significant contributions of Freemasons to the design and architecture of Washington, DC.

The tradition of Masonic architecture in the United States is grounded in a history far older than the establishment of this country. Many of this nation’s founding fathers were themselves Freemasons and the Masonic stamp is visible throughout the city of Washington, DC, the surrounding metropolitan area, and the entire country.
Featuring 20 original paintings by history painter Peter Waddell complemented by original Masonic artifacts, the exhibition will tell the story of the city’s design from a new perspective and shed light on the Masonic connections of many historic buildings in the nation’s capital. These paintings and objects will explain some of the secret symbols of Freemasonry and provide an understanding of how Masonic symbols were and are used as powerful symbols of this nation.
Original artifacts from the rich collections of the metropolitan area’s many lodges, many never seen before by the public, will accompany the paintings. George Washington’s leather coffin strap decorated with Masonic symbols will be paired with a painting of a 19th-century funeral cortege depicted outside one of DC’s oldest lodges. An exquisite Klismos-inspired chair designed by architect John Russell Pope for his architectural masterpiece, the House of the Temple on 16th street will be shown with a painting depicting the interior of this magnificent structure. The intention of the exhibition is to demystify the role that Freemasons have played in this nation’s architectural history and to provide a new perspective on various historic events.

The exhibition remains on view through December 31, 2005. Extensive educational programming is planned to accompany the exhibition, including walking tours of area Lodges and Temples, musical performances, lectures, and workshops.
Peter Waddell, well-known for his work as a history painter, has created several series of paintings that have served as the foundation of popular exhibitions at The Octagon, including most recently, Inside the Temple of Liberty: 19th-Century Interiors of the U.S. Capitol Building (2002). A group of masons is working closely with Mr. Waddell to identify topics for the paintings and assist in the research necessary to ensure the accuracy of the work.
Freemasonry is one of the world’s oldest and largest secular fraternal organizations, whose members are concerned with moral and spiritual values. Freemasonry dates to the Middle Ages as an organization for stone masons, very similar to other craft guilds. Implements of architectural craftsmen are used symbolically in the organization’s system of instruction. Many American architects and builders have been and are Freemasons and the ceremonies of Freemasonry are still used at the dedication of the cornerstones of important buildings.
The Octagon, the museum of the American Architectural Foundation (AAF), is a nationally recognized museum of architecture and design located two blocks from the White House. One of Washington, DC’s earliest residences, the building is a National Registered Landmark (1960) and is accredited by the American Association of Museum (1973). The Octagon’s mission is to educate the public about architecture, design, historic preservation, and stewardship of our architectural heritage. These goals are accomplished through on-site exhibitions, traveling exhibitions, collections and a wide variety of creative public programs. 7:39 AM Also The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital : The Masons and the Building of Washington, D.C. by David Ovason

Most contemporary art, critic Robert Hughes once observed, is clumsy, narcissistic and obscure

A humanist philosophy for art Posted by D.K. Row

The Oregonian December 06, 2007 08:22AM Categories: Seminal NW Artists, Visual Arts Top Stories

Most contemporary art, critic Robert Hughes once observed, is clumsy, narcissistic and obscure. Which is why the sure-handed, unequivocal work of Portland artist Debra Beers is so refreshing and important. From her well-known images of downtown life to her newest works of gnarled, barren trees and natural life near her home in Southeast Portland, Beers paints and draws with an uncommon authority and a feeling, clarity and commitment that are also increasingly rare.
In her latest show of drawings at the Mark Woolley Gallery opening tonight during First Thursday, Beers has moved away from her unofficial documentation of downtown life to the natural world that has inspired countless Oregon artists. Despite the shift from urban to rural subject matter, the new work still powerfully showcases Beers' artistry and affirms her standing as one of this city's more accomplished, if under-recognized, artists.
Since arriving from Washington roughly 20 years ago, Beers has charted a career path that's been both praised and elusive. On one hand, each show has marked a deepening exploration of subject matter and technique. On the other, wide public recognition and sales have eluded her.
There are reasons for this paradox. When she started showing her paintings and drawings in Portland, Beers' subject matter, in the most general terms, was the socially and politically oppressed: homeless people, at-risk youth and other inhabitants of a pre-gentrified downtown where Beers lived for 17 years. Often made on slate, tin and other salvaged materials that symbolized the discarded nature of her subjects, the portraits refused to objectify. They were deeply felt, poignant interpretations that reflected influences as far-ranging as Asian art, the British graphic artist Sue Coe, mid-century expressionist Mark Rothko and the socially minded artists of the Ashcan School.
Beers' subject matter gradually enlarged to include portraits and scenes of those with little connection to the world of social services. These lively street scenes, images of war protesters and portraits of downtown denizens extended the scope of her art, which has never been driven by the art-world dialogue of the moment but has instead aspired to something more enduring and personal: to penetrate people's souls.

"It's the rare person and collector who wants to put up a painting of a homeless man in their home," says Linda Tesner, a friend of Beers' and director of the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art at Lewis & Clark College, where Beers teaches part time in the art department.
That humanistic philosophy isn't surprising if you know something about Beers. Born in San Diego and raised in Phoenix and the Tri-Cities area in Washington, Beers, 53, is like her work: dignified, free of irony and sarcasm. A protestor of the Vietnam War, painfully shy and a vegan who doesn't use leather, she has also worked and volunteered at the soup kitchens and shelters that have influenced much of her art.
Her newest work is inspired by the foliage and nature surrounding Johnson Creek, the urban watershed immediately behind her house. Instead of street kids, Old Town shopkeepers and homeless people, she has drawn majestic, looming cedars, muscular branches and rugged vines, tree-cutters in the midst of dangerous business and assorted hanging roots. Beautiful without flirting with prettiness, these drawings in one respect remind us of the fine tradition of drawers that exists in Portland, one that includes George Johanson, Bob Hanson and Lucinda Parker, among others.
In another respect, the drawings reveal an essential characteristic of Beers' work, no matter the subject matter she's addressing: She's always been rooted formally in an exploration of the human figure. The writhing, sinuous trees and branches, for example, outline a bodily presence. They're human, alive.

In Beers' paintings made on found detritus, there had always been a tension between the materials used and the finished image, one that often left viewers too focused on her choice of unusual surfaces.
But in these drawings, the drama between materials and image has been eliminated. Drawing, which is art's version of poetry, has allowed Beers to work directly, to follow without distraction the line from her head to her hand. In the show's several drawings of an immense Port Orford cedar suffering from root disease, Beers also shows us why some fellow artists compare her to Albrecht Durer, the Northern Renaissance master of prodigious skill.
Drawn from several fundamental points of view inside the tree, the drawings crescendo brilliantly from whiteness to darkness and then back, while capturing, piece by piece, the evolution of a death.
Beers chose to make these new drawings about nature partially because of circumstance. About three years ago, she left her downtown studio because of rising rent. Then, she and her boyfriend bought the house near Johnson Creek. Those events, as it turned out, also coincided with an internal shift in her thinking.
"I was becoming less engaged," Beers says about living and making art in downtown Portland. "I was tired of living in a world of concrete. I found myself spending more time in Washington Park."
Now, she lives away from downtown and has a studio next to her home. The garret-like studio is pure Beers: It has few of the creature comforts or idiosyncratic flourishes that animate many art studios.
In January, Beers will be part of a faculty show at Lewis & Clark, where she'll exhibit a single series of drawings that collectively are about 70 feet long. The frieze of drawings documents the recent death of Beers' father from multiple myeloma.
Beers says viewers might be compelled to make a connection between those drawings of her father at Lewis & Clark and these pieces of nature at Woolley's gallery, especially the drawings of the diseased Port Orford cedar. They would be right, she says. Both bodies of work are about reverence.

Which returns us to the existential core of Beers' work. From protesters and street kids hanging out downtown to proud, dying trees, the artist is reminding viewers of something that's easily forgotten in a world in which self-examination has evolved into a form of New Age mumbo-jumbo and plain old narcissism: Life is fleeting and fragile. And she's reminding us that art, while not a religion or an official school of spirituality, can connect us to a feeling, a recognition, in which, even for a moment, the limits of the physical world hardly matter. Permalink (Learn More)

Rebellion, transformation, re-evaluation, and renewal

The Cult of the Difficult Terry Teachout commentarymagazine.com December 2007

The history of Western art in the 20th century is a tempestuous chronicle of rebellion, transformation, re-evaluation, and renewal. For those of us who lived through its latter half, it hardly seems possible that the story is now over—that modernism, to put it another way, is a thing of the past. Though a few major protagonists remain alive and active, the mainstream of artistic endeavor has moved on, leaving to critics and historians the retrospective tasks of narrative and stock-taking.
As yet, no real attempt has been made to supply a comprehensive chronicle of modernism, one that would cut across media and genres to explain how a movement whose original hallmark was the deliberate repudiation of easy accessibility came to dominate the world of art. The reason for this is that few writers, if any, are competent to discuss with equal assurance the works of architects, choreographers, composers, filmmakers, novelists, painters, and poets. Yet how else can one produce a full-scale account of the modern movement in art? The only alternative, to focus on bits and pieces, elides the very idea of modernism, whose significance lay in the fact that it exerted its transformative power on art and artists of all kinds.

For this reason, Peter Gay, the author of Modernism: The Lure of Heresy, deserves much credit for having taken on the daunting task of making sense out of the whole phenomenon and for doing so with some success.1 This success arises in part from the fact that Gay, who is a historian rather than a critic, has chosen to emphasize description over evaluation, mostly accepting the common estimates of the relative importance of key figures. In addition, he has been extremely selective in his choice of these figures, thus making it possible to compress and simplify the story in the interest of greater intelligibility. As he explains in the book’s preface, his aim was
not to compile an expansive catalog of all the strands and leading figures in modernism, but to examine their presence in culture and to discover, if possible, whether they coalesce to define a single cultural entity.
The problem with this approach, however, is that it runs the risk of becoming over-obvious and even tautological. “To the best of my knowledge, no scholar has ever tried to map all the manifestations of modernism as making up a single historical epoch,” Gay claims. This may be literally true, but, from the privileged vantage point of late 2007, the fact that modernism constitutes a “single historical epoch” is surely all but self-evident. Moreover, Gay’s account of its rise and fall, though it has the great virtue of conceptual clarity, is far less successful at telling us which of modernism’s best-known practitioners are most deserving of our attention today, or why some of them now seem so much more compelling than others.

The most impressive thing about Modernism is the apparent ease with which Gay discusses so wide a range of artistic activity. “To appreciate two of the arts in a discerning manner is not unusual,” the novelist Anthony Powell once remarked. “Where three are claimed, more often than not, grasp of the third shows signs of strain.” The author of Modernism would seem to be an exception to this rule. Not only is Gay absolutely secure when talking about literature and the visual arts, but he writes almost as fluently about music and dance (which he treats, not altogether convincingly, as a single topic).
Similarly admirable is the frequent good sense that Gay brings to his description of the modernist project. He is quick, for instance, to note that the “bourgeoisophobia” (as Gustave Flaubert called it) that was so prominent a part of the modern artist’s self-image was inconsistent both with the complex reality of middle-class life and with the receptivity to modern art shown by the hated bourgeoisie itself:
The infuriated balletgoers who in 1911 noisily disrupted the premiere of Nijinsky and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring were followed by audiences that found this potent amalgam of radical score and radical choreography far from indigestible and really quite enjoyable. It is an apparent self-contradiction but a historical fact that modernist works, produced to provide an aura of heresy, should end up being called classics.
Conversely, as Gay also points out, modern artists were themselves quick to embrace the middle- and upper-middle-class style of life made possible by the bourgeoisie’s lucrative embrace of their art. In similar fashion, their pose of radical individualism was contradicted by the “desire for companionship and reassurance” that led them to form schools and factions and to hammer out new aesthetic orthodoxies that were in many cases at least as rigid as the old-fashioned ones they had previously sought to overthrow.
In describing the emergence of these orthodoxies, Gay proves willing to describe modernism as it really was instead of taking the claims of its proponents at face value. But when it comes to judging the modernists, he is far less fresh in his thinking. Thus, Arnold Schoenberg is for him “the undisputed leader of the 20th-century upheaval in music”; Virginia Woolf is the peer of Henry James, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust; and D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, Charlie Chaplin, and Orson Welles stand at “the summit of modernist moviemaking.” Each of these individual claims is defensible—but taken together, they suggest a straight-faced artistic equivalent of Flaubert’s satirical “dictionary of received ideas.”
Nor does Gay have anything especially original to say about the actual output of the artists he discusses in Modernism, though the urbane patina of his prose helps to mask the commonplace quality of his observations. (“Debussy’s work,” he writes in one example that can stand for many, “was a delicate search, perfectly fitting into the world that modernist painters and poets were pursuing in their own way—the inner life and its felicitous portrayal.”) Even when he moves beyond the realm of the certified masters to the contemporary scene, his assessments prove equally predictable: we are invited to accept Frank Gehry and Gabriel García Márquez as direct successors to the giants of modernism past.
To repeat, Modernism is a work of history, not criticism. But because art is his subject matter, Gay cannot shirk the making of critical judgments; they are implicit on every page. And it is difficult not to question the taste of an art historian who can, among other things, call the second-rate English choreographer John Cranko an “interesting competitor” to George Balanchine, declare with a straight face that Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum is “a historic masterpiece” and marked “the most sensational debut of a novelist since Flaubert’s Madame Bovary,” or put forward Casablanca, Citizen Kane, His Girl Friday, La Femme du Boulanger, and The Third Man as his personal list of the great films of the 20th century.

No less questionable—especially when viewed from the perspective of 2007—is the omnipresence of Sigmund Freud in Gay’s narrative.
That Freud should figure prominently in a study of the idea of modernism is, of course, entirely appropriate, since his ideas were powerfully influential on many modern artists—though by no means all. Vladimir Nabokov, the quintessential modern novelist (and one who, perhaps not coincidentally, goes unmentioned in Modernism), curtly dismissed Freud as a “Viennese witch-doctor” who reduced the fruits of the human imagination to a set of “standardized symbols,” of interest only to “the credulous and the vulgar.” But the thinking of numerous other modernists was strongly shaped by Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind and its effects on human behavior. Thomas Mann went so far as to call psychoanalysis “the greatest contribution to the art of the novel” to be made in modern times.
It stands to reason that Peter Gay, Freud’s biographer and the author of many other books about the man and his times, should have chosen to emphasize the role of psychoanalysis in the development of modernism. What is more revealing is the near-obsessiveness with which he does so. Time and again, Freud is gratuitously dragged in, usually in order to bolster a cliché:
All in all, Cézanne’s artistic reactions to his inner turmoil shore up Freud’s assertion that try as they will, humans cannot keep their secrets. . . . Freud seems not to have commented on the Expressionist dramatists of his time, but if he had, he could have used their work as persuasive evidence for the existence, indeed the virulence, of the Oedipus complex.
It is as if Gay thought that the imprimatur of the master were needed to legitimize even the most banal of his own opinions.
One would never suspect from reading Modernism that Freud’s theories are now regarded as obsolete by the vast majority of medical practitioners and scientists, or that their erstwhile popularity is widely thought to have slowed the emergence of what the psychiatrist Paul McHugh has termed “evidence-based psychiatry,” a discipline rooted not in theoretical speculation but in empirical research. In a telling metaphor, McHugh argues that modern-day psychiatry “can no more return to the old [Freudian] orthodoxy than Russia can revive the Soviet Union.2
Yet Gay stubbornly persists in presenting Freud not as a figure of historical significance but as a thinker of continuing contemporary relevance, in much the same way that aging Marxist historians like Eric Hobsbawm write about the 20th century as though the events they describe had not themselves demonstrated beyond the possibility of contradiction the nonsensicality of the Marxian theories they use to explain them. The gentlest thing to be said about Gay’s passionate belief in Freud’s relevance is that it lends to Modernism an air of quaintness—one that sits oddly alongside its author’s equally passionate belief in the permanent immediacy of modern art.

What of the “big picture” of modernism painted by Gay? It is, at best, a partial portrait. For him, modernism consists of radical technical innovation placed in the service of “insubordination against ruling authority.” This is a standard to which he hews so rigidly that even Anton Chekhov, an unambiguously modern writer, is said to have “worked at the margins of modernism” because he “did not modify the traditional theater” (a claim that will come as a surprise to anyone who has sat through one of the “well-made,” plot-driven 19th-century plays that Chekhov helped to render as obsolete as Freud’s theories).
Nor is Gay comfortable with those tradition-conscious modernists, like T.S. Eliot and Igor Stravinsky, who used the sharp-angled language of modern art to express their deep and paradoxical longing for a supra-rational authority with which to oppose the chaos of modern life. “It does not follow,” Gay writes strenuously but unbelievably, “that Stravinsky abandoned originality while he searched, as he put it, for order. . . .[T]he religious meanings of [his] Symphony of Psalms, if any, must remain indeterminate.” No less strikingly, Gay devotes just one paragraph to Eliot’s Four Quartets, the religious-themed masterpiece of his middle age, while spending two pages on After Strange Gods, the 1933 lectures in which Eliot allowed free rein to his anti-Semitic views.
Just as Gay ignores or misinterprets the quest for order, so does he appear willfully to overlook the possibility that some branches of modernism were more successful than others. Why did the art-loving public embrace Stravinsky’s neoclassicism but not Schoenberg’s serialism? Why did experimental novels like James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake fail to exert the same enduring appeal as the paintings of the abstract expressionists—or, for that matter, the distinctively modern jazz and popular music about which Gay has nothing at all to say in Modernism? Could it be that, as I have previously argued, there were “in fact two modernisms, one deeply conservative and tradition-based, the other profoundly radical and antinomian,” and that the first of these modernisms, not the second, is the one that has prevailed? 3

Such a possibility seems not to have occurred to Gay. Though he acknowledges the attraction exercised by modernism on the middle class, he persists in dividing the art-consuming public into three distinct groups:
The cultured elite that alone nourishes modernism, the philistine bourgeoisie that professes not to understand the movement, the benighted masses that have no use for it, still exist. But their boundaries have been scrambled. With steady advances in the modern technology of leisure and its apparatuses, the artistic choices of the masses reaching deep into the middle classes have become more pronounced as they are increasingly subjected to advance testing and manipulation.
It is, in short, the old, old story: difficulty per se is a meaningful index of the validity of modern art, while those modernists who opted instead for what Aaron Copland called an “imposed simplicity” are by definition unserious panderers to the philistines. Having made the fatal mistake of supposing that art need not be rebarbatively complex in order to be truly modern, such benighted figures are accordingly excluded from Gay’s pantheon. Small wonder, then, that the word “postmodern” is nowhere to be found in Modernism. Instead, the book ends with a modest hope: even though we now live in a recessive “age of musical comedies,” it could yet be that “a revival of massive modernism” will someday bring about the welcome return of “concerts of difficult composers, exhibitions of difficult painters, printing of difficult poets and novelists, clients for difficult architects, even consumers for difficult movies.”
To be sure, the author of Modernism is pessimistic about the prospects for such a renaissance of difficulty married to the spirit of “insubordination against ruling authority.” Yet no other kind of art, it seems, would be sufficiently demanding for him or satisfy his taste for the arcane delights of “heresy.” In the end, this says more about Peter Gay than it does about modernism. Respond to this Article (page 1 of 1 - view all) Footnotes

1 Norton, 640 pp., $35.00. 2 McHugh’s journalistic writings on the subject of Freud and his influence have been collected in The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry (2006). 3 “Jazz as Modern Art” (Commentary, January 2003).
About the Author
Terry Teachout, COMMENTARY’s regular music critic and the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal, is writing Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong. He blogs about the arts at www.terryteachout.com © 2007 Commentary Inc.

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