The Best American Poetry

Postponement of Rand & Shapiro Collaborations at Bravinlee Gallery

The March 19 reception at Bravinlee Gallery for the show of collaborations between the painter Archie Rand and the poet David Shapiro has been postponed. Which gives us this chance to exhibit one of their works from the "Kiss" series.  -- DL

Met Percent: Week Seventeen [by Alec Bernstein]

Ornament , Automata & Crime

Left: Two Spherical Clocks, George Seydell, Germany, 17th c. 
Right: Caricature of Engravers "in the Greek Style", Jean Charles Delafosse, French.
Bottom: Ostrich Egg Ewer, Hans Claus I, German, 1630. Sawtooth gravity clock, Isaak Ourry, 1710. Multi-faced Equatorial Sundial, Wolfgang Mayr, 1604. Cryptological Code Dividers, Joachim Deuerlin, 1633.  All in exhibition gallery 999.

The “Making Marvels” exhibition is a technical side-car of the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts galleries. The elite add machines to their sculptures, as if movement automatically makes decor virtuosic. It is a clear case of just how complicated one can make something when unlimited resources and desire meet. Ornamentation, according to Adolf Loos, “is a luxury that is slowing down the human evolution because men are wrongly focused on things they do not need”. - Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, 1908-13. “Less is more” - Mies van der Rohe, 1947. In the language of my comic book childhood, of which this exhibit reminds me,  ‘Nuff said.’ 

Then again, ornament has been a key element for unconscious release, linked to fantasy and desire*, embodying the never before seen, heard, thought. It has lived on artifacts since there have been artifacts.“Less is a bore” - Robert Venturi, 1966.

* Ornament, Fantasy, and Desire in Nineteenth Century French Literature, Rae Beth Gordon, Princeton University Press, 1992.

 

Angel Action

Miraculous Writing Machine, Friedrich von Knaus, 1760, Austrian, gallery 999.

The video is worth the watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLUoDSNDj4U. Or scroll down to the miraculous writing machine at the Met videos of all automata at https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/making-marvels-science-splendor/art-in-motion.

 

Subtleties: Molded, Pulled, Blown, Pressed, Sold

Left: Harlequin, Fürstenberg Porcelain Manufactory, 1764, after model of 1754, gallery 538.

Right: Designs for a pastillage pièce montée in the form of a putto in a chariot being drawn by a hunting poodle and (above) hunting poodle “at rest”, watercolor, 1820, The Bowes Museum.
Bottom: A view of the Empire dessert setting. https://www.historicfood.com/Royal-sugar-Sculpture.htm.

Initially, European porcelain figures were permanent versions of the very popular sugar sculptures. Sugar  table decorations for special occasions were called subtleties* and used by European elites from the Renaissance to the 18th Century. At the meal’s end, they were eaten or taken as souvenirs. The Bowes Museum sugar sculpture archive has 47 moulds for a total of 730 different objects, with 62 tools and 26 drawings.

In the developing bourgeois society, porcelain figurines found a permanent place on mantelpieces and side tables: an entirely new market success. 

* see Kara Walker’s sculpture Sugar Sphinx A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, 2014; and Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History by Sidney N. Mintz, Penguin, 1985.

Kick Up Your Heels and...Relax

Boiserie from the Palais Paar, 30 Wollzeile, Vienna, Austria, architect Isidor Canevale (1730–1786),1765–72, gallery 526. Inset: Palais Paar, exterior, 1907.

The Baron’s Suite, info@chateaugrandluce.com.

In case you need an extended, more personal experience of this style, you may rent The Baron’s Suite at the Chateau Grand-Luce in the Loire Valley. Only $15,000  per night, complete with “private library stocked with French literature.”

 

Or Just Kick Up Your Heels . . .

Dance Movement "G", 1910–11 and Nijinsky, 1912, Auguste Rodin, gallery 556.

Stravinsky said in his autobiography that the riots at “The Rite of Spring” premier were not because the music was “radical”; it was because the dancers could not keep up with Nijinsky and stumbled on the stage. 

Rodin’s two captures of the dance in this gallery felt like seamless extensions of the earlier expressive terracottas (see gallery 552 in Met% week sixteen), particularly the bas-reliefs. “Nijinsky conceived a strict two-dimensional limitation; his dancers moved as in a slot, with abrupt profile turns. Poses recalled Greek Vases and stone reliefs. . . . Sculptures of draped maidens from Egypt or Phoenicia”. - review of Afternoon of a Faun, 1912.

Rodin said he had “captured movement” in this work. Once in a meeting on neuro-marketing at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior in Los Angeles, I was told they had discovered a small single area of the brain that is only activated when a still object - that appears to be moving - is seen. A message center for false danger . . .  

Titian, a Limerick from London

When Titian was grinding rose madder,
his model was posed on a ladder.
Her position to Titian
suggested coition
so he climbed up the ladder and had her.

Very English -- instructive on pronunciation of challenging words (Titian, coition) so it combines a didactic function with a titillating one. Above is the master's Venus and Adonis at the Met in NYC.

Posted by The Best American Poetry on October 03, 2013 at 01:42 PM in Adventures of Lehman | Permalink

When Titian was grinding rose madder,
his model was posed on a ladder.
Her position to Titian
suggested coition
so he climbed up the ladder and had her.

Very English -- instructive on pronunciation of challenging words (Titian, coition) so it combines a didactic function with a titillating one. Above is the master's Venus and Adonis at the Met in NYC.

Posted by The Best American Poetry on October 03, 2013 at 01:42 PM in Adventures of Lehman | Permalink

Met Percent: Week Sixteen [by Alec Bernstein]

And Away We Go

Model for a Proposed Monument to Commemorate the Invention of the Balloon, ca. 1784, Clodion (Claude Michel) French, gallery 552.

I had walked by this exuberant monument proposal without at first seeing its story. 

Consider this marvel: “This airy Rococo flight of fancy - in which putti pile bundles of hay to launch the balloon, guided by Fame and propelled by Aeolus - is difficult to imagine in marble. Gradually, hot-air ballooning spread to the point of being commonplace, and the project was dropped.” - MetText

This celebration of balloon flight seems a perfect opening to the ESDA department (European Sculpture and Decorative Arts): Hotel rooms, boudoirs, often gilded, and sculpture raw and cooked in bone, wood, silks, marble, crystal. . . and some with all of the above.

I knew there would be surprises.

 

Raw Ideas

Above: Children and Satyr Children with a Pantheress and Her Cubs, detail and (inset) complete, ca. 1781, Clodion (Claude Michel) gallery 552. Below: Pieta, 1864, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, France, gallery 552.

The terra cottas in gallery 552 feel like the first captures of ideas.

“Modelling in clay is to the sculptor what drawing on paper is to the painter… In the soft clay the genius of the artist is seen in its utmost purity and truth…”

 - Johann Joachim Winckelmann, History of Art, 1776.

“Mounding the clay pellets and pressing them into shape in mere seconds, Carpeaux’s entire attention is on the Virgin Mary's maternal embrace, to the virtual exclusion of Christ's legs.” - MetText

It is my favorite 3D medium.

To be well read on the contradictions (classic theme vs. modern  expression) of art in the age of reason is one thing. To walk into a gallery and feel it is yet another. Is excluding Christ’s legs rational or raw?

 

 

Hyphen-Love

Le Trait d’Union, June 1872, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, France, gallery 552.

“The term trait d’union is French for hyphen, the sign linking the parts of a compound word. Here it poetically signifies the familial ties that were renewed when Carpeaux and his wife reconciled after their little son Charles recovered from terrifying convulsions. Amélie is on Carpeaux’s lap. Charles binds their heads in an embrace. The reconciliation was brief and Carpeaux himself was soon jealous all over again and already desperately sick.” - MetText

Poetic hyphen? Desperately sick? Again? On this text description, I would have preferred either much more or much less. Their arms, in this context, look like parentheses, which I love.

 

“Real” Portraits

Left: Hypocrite and a Slanderer, ca. 1770–83, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Germany, gallery 548.

Right: Child Portrait, Jean Antoine Houdon (French, Versailles 1741–1828 Paris) gallery 552.

After early commissions and rising stature, Messerschmidt’s late portrait sculptures were at first considered outsider art - exhibited as a freak-show attraction at a carnival - but much later seen as important precursors to both Modernism and Expressionism.

Houdon’s intense naturalism has an equally accurate sense of realism. His children’s portraits express Jean Jacques Rousseau’s “Childhood as a golden age of unconscious happiness”.

“What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he should waste part of his life? You would say, ‘He is mad; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself of part of it; to avoid sleep he is hastening his death.’ Remember that these two cases are alike, and that childhood is the sleep of reason.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile; or, On Education, 1762.

I feel like I am in a thought gallery. . . .

Taming “digital art”: Gaïté Lyrique chooses cultural context

Where, when, who for?: Adrien M. & Claire B., “Faire Corps” © Romain Etienne

Until the other day I associated with the Gaïté Lyrique with music & sophisticated light and sound shows; last year, among many others, the venue featured the inimitable Alice Phoebe Lou  and a fifth annual music-film festival (F.A.M.E). So it was really good to see Adrien M. & Claire B’s digitally-generated Faire Corps (“All Together”) installation – material sculpture, virtual visual, public and performance interaction, sound, music and environments.

Even more through-provoking, in some ways, than the Faire Corps installation – which is proving a big attraction – was to hear Jos Auzende, Gaïté Lyrique’s artistic programmer, take the opportunity of the Faire Corps opening to clearly place “digital” in the context of culture and creative achievement.

Nearly 10 years ago, the city of Paris re-inaugurated the historic Gaïté Lyrique – Jacques Offenbach was once its director and Diaghelev started his Ballets Russes there – as a “center for digital art and culture”, without, I think, knowing what that could mean.

Now, Auzende seems to say, just as we all see Fantasia as the achievement of Walt Disney animators and storytellers working, say, in a “pre-empire Americanization culture”, not just as the result of applying color-film technology, so we should see that the achievement and interest in digitally generated work such Adrien M. & Claire B.’s lies not in how, but in where, when, for whom they have re-invented or appropriated digital technology to make it work.

Taking a stand for cultural context as the primary lens through which to look at esthetic achievement where contemporary digital technology is involved seems to me really challenging.

For music, for example, no matter how it is generated, we take the centrality of creation and culture for granted. “Digital music” means “music generated using digital technology”, not “music that is (somehow) digital”; it is indeed hard to think of any music generated in any way that is not essentially viewed and critiqued through its cultural context.

But, when it comes to “digital art”, the same casual assumption of cultural primariness is not true. People do often mean “art that is digital”, dropping culture all together and identifying the creation with the technology the creators used to achieve it.

A Simulation: Adrien M. & Claire B., “Organismes Typographiques” © Laurence Fragnol

The tendency to squeeze creation and culture into the tool is due, partly, I think, to intense commercial promotion of digitalized stuff (saleable) and digital uses (rentable), of course. But more especially, I think, digital technology is seen to be and is presented as, a competitor to humans.

Contemporary digital technology simulates human physical and mental movement: repetitive gestures such as driving or abstract processes such as judgment. Most funded digital R&D in industry and entertainment (and a lot of institutionally-funded Middle and high-brow art) turns around substituting digital technology for (saleable) movement and behaviors: slicing off and splicing up bits of recorded human movement and converting it into a saleable catalogue of products, services, tasks and processes – think consumer-service robots, virtual reality video, micro-targeted advertising, automatic public security identification.

It is not just difficult to get people to look at digital technology (or any technology for that matter) through the lens of cultural achievement. Looking at anything is to betray critical interest. Looking at digital technology through a culture – from where, when, for whom – is automatically “political”: what kind of cultural context generates a market for automatic public facial recognition; what kind of people systematically mistake the mediums for messages and vice versa?

In terms of intention, achievements and content, in Faire Corps, Jos Auzende chose a good talking piece for her speech.

As creators, Adrien M. & Claire B. declare an intention to “resist corporate colonialism”, inciting creators and audiences alike to remember both that digital technology is just technology and that, just as for other technologies, who controls and who uses digital determines why and how it gets used.

Adrien M. & Claire B. take digital technology use a step further than, say, a savvy contemporary choreographer such as Mourad Merzouki would do. Comparison of Merzouki’s dance-performance Pixel and Adrien M. & Claire B.’s sound-movement-performance Equinoxe speaks to their will to move away from technology as show-enhancement and -support to technology as sensory interaction with the show (without its becoming virtual reality). Pixel’s wow-me tech stuff was created by Adrien M. & Claire B.

Overall, each of the different parts of the Faire Corps installation, much like the Equinoxe performance piece, emphasizes sensory interactions with its onlookers. But each of its magic lanterns, its pools, patterns and projections suggests increased potential creative interface and esthetic interest in available technology.

Auzende’s Gaïté Lyrique’s approach to “digital art and culture” come in the context of a recent change of management – the current energetic director, Laëtitia Stagnara, was appointed only at the end of 2018. She has apparently determined to use Gaïté Lyrique’s existing noos: Jos Auzende, for example, is the originator of the theater’s popular children’s arts workshop Les Voyages du Capitaine Futur, billed, unsurprisingly, as “art taming technology”. Stagnara was formerly in charge of “digital development” at Cité des sciences et de l'industrie (La Villette). La Villette does a notably good job of getting past wow-me promotion of amazing (must have) technology to actually popularize science and technical achievement.

My hat is off to Jos Auzende, Laëtitia Stagnara and the esthetic team at Gaïté Lyrique.

Met Percent: Week Fifteen [by Alec Bernstein]

Tear Catchers (?)
Swan-Neck Glass Bottle, Iran, 19th c., gallery 462;   Christie’s South catalog.

“It is unclear how bottles of this shape were used, though sometimes they are known as ashkdans and were supposedly for collecting the tears of wives whose husbands were away at war”. - MetText

It seems that the use of a tear catcher or lachrymatory bottle is probably not ancient nor even Victorian. More likely they are a romantic myth based on the “eye shaped” openings: The bottles hold funeral tears, and when they evaporate, the mourning period ends. No science here, but so beloved by enthusiasts of the Victorian art of mourning that they are sold and collected even now. Christie's sold two 18th c. bottles in 2014, very like the 19th c. bottle at the Met. 

For tear enthusiasts, see https://tearcatcher.com/tear-bottles/tear-bottle-history/.  “With each tear bottle, you will receive an elegant organza gift bag and a small story card that explains the intriguing history and meaning behind the tear bottle”. 

 

Pilgrim Flasks

Pilgrim Flasks; Left: India or Deccan, early 17th c., gallery 463, Right: Turkey, early 17th c, gallery 469.

Unlike the tear bottles, these pilgrim flasks have a clear function, and appear in many regions and eras. These Islamic vessels were designed to collect and bring home holy water, sanctuary lamp oil or sand from a sacred site. Sometimes called a Zamzameyyah, because pilgrims took holy water from the famous well in Mecca called Zamzam. The word derives from Zomë Zomë, meaning "stop flowing" - a command repeated by Abraham’s wife Hajar attempting to contain spring water in the desert. 

Pilgrim flasks (not on view): Left, Pasargadae, Iran, ca. 4th–3rd century B.C., Middle, Ctesiphon, Iraq, 8th c., Right, Iran, ca. 3rd c. B.C.–A.D.

These early ceramic versions are found in Islamic, Jewish and Christian cultures and are documented in the Crusades. The twin strap-eyed design has a marvelous continuity over millennia. 

 

Parrots

Top: Finial in the Form of a Parrot, Northern India, 17th–18th century, gallery 464
Bottom and detail: Dagger with Zoomorphic Hilt (India, Deccan, Bijapur or Golconda), 16th c., gallery 463.

In Tutinama (A Parrot’s Tale) the parrot tells 52 stories to his owner Khojasta, to prevent her from having an affair while her husband is away. A mynah and a parrot are her guards. The wife strangles the mynah for advising her not to indulge. The parrot, realizing the gravity of the situation, narrates distracting stories over the next fifty-two nights: a more indirect approach.

I lived under flocks of these fine birds in Pasadena, CA and often woke to their extreme calls. I understand their assigned role as storytellers.

 

Textiles Underfoot

The Emperor's Carpet and detail, Iran, 16th c., gallery 462.

Ushak Medallion Carpet on White Ground and detail, Turkey, 17th c., not on view.

Part of Shah ‘Abbas’ (r. 1587–1629) program for restructuring the economy and attracting European merchants was the expansion of both the production and international trading of carpets. They were traded to Europe and the Far East where, too precious to be placed on the ground, they were used to cover furniture or hung on walls. 

The legend of Sir Walter Raleigh putting his cloak on the ground - to help Queen Elizabeth I over a mud puddle - is part of the mystique of textiles underfoot.

 

Vermeer, Ram’s Horns and Hands on Hips

Full page and detail: A Maid Asleep, Johannes Vermeer, 1656-57, gallery 964.

Many carpets from the Middle East are today called by the names of European painters who depicted them: Lotto, Holbein, Ghirlandaio, Crivelli, and Memling. 

Vermeer’s famous A Maid Asleep depicts two different seventeenth-century Anatolian carpets. Within the patterns, one can find classic Kilim symbols: The Ram's Horn - Kocboynuzu - the symbol of fertility, heroism, power and masculinity and Hands on Hips - Elibelinde - the symbol of motherhood and fertility.

 

 

Met Percent: Week Fourteen [by Alec Bernstein]

Beauty-Writing (Callos-Graphia)

“Handwriting is jewelry fashioned by the hand from the pure gold of the intellect.” - treatise on the penmanship of Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi, 9th century.

The diacritical marks indicate vowels (the alphabet has consonants only). The text is always cursive and has no upper or lower case (although shape variants are used in the beginning, middle or end of a word). Proportions are determined by a pen-stroke dot “grid” system within a circle.

How the Arabic letter “teh” is written: in its positions, and with its “isolated” proportion guides.

 

Chat with a Lampstand

Lampstand, Iran, 1578-79, gallery 462

Inscriptions are often verses of conversations. This lampstand “speaks” to its owner/viewer in a dialog of flame.

“I remember one night as my eyes wouldn’t sleep

I heard a moth speaking with a candle

Said the moth: Because I am a lover it is right that I should burn

[But] why should you weep and burn yourself up?”

Planning, Truth and Happiness

"Planning before work protects you from regret; prosperity and peace.”

“It seems worthless to me, even after all the terrible things we have had to go through, if we writers do not tell each other the truth.”

"To its owner happiness, security and life as long as a dove coos.”

The bowl with Arabic inscription (top left) has an abstract, almost contemporary, minimalist design, inscribed with a proverb on planning. It is stunning. Iran, 10th c., gallery 450.

The plate (top right) 2007, is from the Oskarmaria Brasserie inside Literaturhaus Munich, the cultural institute promoting education and literary events. After the salmon was enjoyed, a writer at our table discovered the phrase on writers and truth on the plate. At the end of the meal, a German colleague went to the kitchen and returned with the plate in a brown paper bag. She forced it from the hands of the staff. The Brasserie’s namesake, Oskar Maria Graf, was a German writer who, when the Nazis did not have his books on the Munich book-burning list, published an article entitled “Burn Me”. He got on the list.

The pen box (Qalamdan) (bottom) sends praise to the “owner”,  fashioned from brass and inlaid with silver and gold. Iran, 16th century, gallery 462. May there always be cooing . . .

 

Amulets and Talismans

This shirt was believed to be imbued with protective powers and may have been meant to be worn under armor in battle. Its surface is decorated with painted squares and medallions and the entire Qur'an written out and bordered by the ninety-nine names of God written in gold against an orange background. Talismanic Shirt and detail, Northern India or Deccan ,15th–early 16th c., not on view.

The power of the names of religious figures (Mohammed’s relatives), the Qur'anic verses, and the Shi'i prayers endow this standard with its amuletic properties. E.g. the “Protective Throne Verse”: “His Throne doth extend/ Over the heavens/ And the earth, and He feeleth/ No fatigue in guarding/ And preserving them . . .”.  Silver Standard, Iran, 18th century, not on view. 

When I was 10, my Great Uncle Harry - in the back of his wholesale underwear store in Galesburg, IL. - gave me amuletic advise on the battle of life: “To attain your natural leadership, bring your ‘lucky marbles’, and play to win.”

 

Invisible Rules

Left: Ornamental ceramic star, Iran, gallery 453. Center: a set of 15 furmah and 3 zillij. Right: M.C. Escher’s study of a Moorish tile pattern, 1936.

One of the technical design languages in Moorish art is the Zillij (or Zellige) set based system. It combines geometric tiles (furmah) with complex rules (no holes, no parts of a furmah permitted, etc.). There are at least 360 known furmah and an uncountable number of Zillij constellations. These Moorish geometries inspired Escher’s interest in tessellations. For me, they recall the set technique of 20th century serial music. Lots of rules all around.

Left: Met Moroccan Court, gallery 456,  inspired by two fourteenth-century madrasas of Fez. Right: Pattern generated by ruler and compass only. 

These patterns, as noted above, are generated by ruler and compass only. The four basic shapes, or “repeat units,” are: circles and interlaced circles; squares or four-sided polygons; the ubiquitous star pattern, derived from squares and triangles inscribed in a circle; and multisided polygons. I have had a recurring dream since high school geometry, in which I alone discover the way to trisect any arbitrary angle with only a ruler and compass. This was proven impossible in 1837. It is still impossible today.

I was against high ornament in my youth (“youth” defined as adolescence). The Baroque, Mannerist and Islamic patterns were ”over the top”. I was at home with Classic, Renaissance, and Modern. Over the years, I understood this as a need for balance and structure. I liked simpler rules. As the complexities of life became comprehensible - I could admit it - the complex, expansive, and decorative became newly appreciated. Tiepolo and Bernini were joys to grow into, and the door to over-stimulating art has stayed open. 

“I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me.” - Montaigne

 

 

Kiss: Archie Rand collaborates with David Shapiro (2017)

"Kiss” consists of six units with David Shapiro's text written in his hand with his drawn additions. 

Met Percent: Week Thirteen [by Alec Bernstein]

Ancient Anatomies

“Abstract” rendering of an Assyrian leg, gallery 401.                     “Conceptual” 3D digital lower leg.

The Assyrians are often critiqued for their artistic expressions of violence. I see only strength and beauty in the style. I love the anatomical languages of the Near East, regardless of interpretation. 

“The anatomical landmarks and contours of the leg muscles are prominently depicted in an exaggerated manner (just like a bodybuilder’s), to convey the powerful nature of the creature. The skin folds on the right patella and the hypertrophied calf are well expressed (had the sculptor studied anatomy?). There is (or what appears to be) a prominent superficial vein “beneath” the skin of the lower right leg.” - Osama S. M. Amin, http://etc.ancient.eu/?s=Anatomy&submit=Search

“Fools that you are; you do not recognize that the limbs of your ancestors are still present therein.” - Montaigne

Detail: Statue of Montaigne by Paul Landowski, Square Paul Painlevé, Paris, France.

“ON THE POLYSEMY OF THE FIST”

Left: Copper Object in the form of clenched fist, ca. Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (Turkmenistan), late 3rd–early 2nd millennium B.C., gallery 403.
Center: Abecedario - https://phmuseum.com/francesca_seravalle/story/the-fist-photos-on-the-polysemy-of-the-fist-d883b7a49
Right: “The tiny hands measure 1-1/4" long (right fisted hand) and 1-1/2" long (left hand open palm) with a forearm circumference of 1-7/8" and diameter opening of 1/2". If you have a project requiring (lots of) little hands, this is a wonderful find!” - Etsy

There is no understanding of this ancient clenched fist - not its use or any related information. My speculative fist research led me to contradictory semantics, including black power and white supremacy, to the Masonic fist of capitalism to the communist fist of the Spanish Revolution. 

Babies clench their fists for the first few months of life. A surprisingly similar number of explanations are available, from the palmar grasp reflex to the immaturity of the nervous system to “evolution” (primates hanging from their mothers in the trees).

I had a collection of plastic baby hands. In those days the avant-garde considered any found object art. More contradictory semantics. 

 

Cylinder Seals: Identity Theft & Immortality

Top: Cylinder seal and impression: winged horse with claws and horns, Middle Assyrian, ca. 14th–13th B.C., gallery 403.

Left: Cancelled check stub J. Paul Getty. 

Center: J. Paul Getty’s French Driving Permit, 1930. J. Paul Getty Family Collected Papers, The Getty Research Institute.

Right: A cancelled check for three million dollars from J.P. Morgan to the Northern Pacific Syndicate, 1896

“Some seals depicted one's occupation but others . . . revealed one's personal identity, even one's name. The seal was used to certify important transactions. It is no wonder that people worried over the loss of their seal: it would have been as serious to an ancient Mesopotamian as the loss of one's personal identification is today and the threat of "identity theft" just as great then as it is now.” - Ancient History Encyclopedia, https://www.ancient.eu/article/846/cylinder-seals-in-ancient-mesopotamia---their-hist/

There are complete cuneiform protocols for the process of reporting and replacing a lost seal. The bureaucracy is phenomenally similar to replacing a driver’s license at the DMV.

These seals are the first tools and documents of commerce and individual traders. Both JPs, Getty and Morgan, personally collected ancient cylinders. Morgan’s collection has 1,157 Near Eastern seals (within a total cuneiform tablet collection of 3,000 pieces). 

Both collectors have been described as “art addicts”. Getty’s philosophy of collecting, for example, “inextricably linked art to business and business to immortality.” These seals must have resonated well with our famous traders. . . “PAID IN FULL”

 

 

Hair-Loom

“Rayyane Tabet's great-grandfather left behind a goat-hair rug given to him by the Bedouin of Tell Halaf in 1929. It was his wish that the sixty-five-foot-long rug be divided equally among his five children, with the request that they in turn divide it among their children, and so on, until the rug eventually disappeared. As of today, the rug has been divided into twenty-three pieces across five generations.” MetText, gallery 400.

 

 

Storage Jars and Fainting Goats

Storage jar with mountain goats, ca. 4,000-3,600 B.C., gallery 403.

The myotonic goat, otherwise known as the fainting goat, falling goat, stiff-legged goat, and nervous goat is a goat that temporarily seizes when it feels panic. The fainting episodes are known as "bizarre attacks of stiffness and rigidity" upon locomotion. See https://faintinggoat.com. Despite fainting, they have been bred continually, going back to the earliest goat herding days, for their generally superior qualities: they are alert, good-natured, and heavily muscled.

Twenty years ago, I had a fainting episode. No seizing, no panic. This happened to be during a dispute over brush clearance methods in our California neighborhood. “Can grazing goats prevent wildfires?” “Or are they inefficient?” I was given the “tilt-test”, strapped vertically on a board to induce fainting. Very inefficient diagnostic. Some art is admired as memory. 

Met Percent: Week Twelve [by Alec Bernstein]

“mow tall, mow often.” 

Met floor plan: Yellow highlighted galleries have been viewed, 11/22/19

I have visited 43 times and viewed all galleries up to 399 (~300 out of ~900) - one-third complete.

“The one-third rule means that when you mow, you want to cut off the top one-third of your grass blades . . . Mowing more than a third of the total height of your grass can stress the plant and make it more susceptible to common turf problems.” - https://lawnpride.com/one-third-rule/

The remaining two-thirds will find their own rules.

 

The Letter (an indivisible sound)

Top: Babylonian translation of “Met Percent” into the Cuneiform Alphabet
Bottom: Cuneiform tablet: Sumerian dedicatory inscription from Ekur, the temple of the god Enlil, Mesopotamia, ca.16th–15th c. B.C, not on view.

These writings are some of the earliest found. The “origin of writing” documents both the origins of the world and the first symbolic capture of emotions and thoughts “on paper”. Cuneiform is by far my favorite alphabet. 

The seven Sumerian debate poems (below) are world origin myths. When something was recognized as important, its origin became important, and it was given a myth. “The earth first appeared barren, without grain, sheep, or goats. People went naked” (Debate between Grain and Sheep).

Debate between bird and fish

Debate between sheep and grain 

Debate between the millstone and the gulgul-stone

Debate between the pickaxe and the plough

Debate between silver and mighty copper

Debate between Summer and Winter

Debate between tree and the reed

These myths are not universal and have significant variations throughout the regions and eras. No continuity, no Biblical standard, no problem.

“It becomes evident that he (Ring Lardner) was deeply concerned that the vast majority of mankind had no idea, earthly or otherwise, where it was going or for what reason”.  - Buford Donald Fisher, Ring Lardner as Dadaist, 1970.

“How can you write if you can't cry?”
- Ring Lardner

 

“An Archeologist of Morning”

Cuneiform tablet: a-she-er gi-ta, balag to Innin/Ishtar, ca. 2nd–1st c. B.C., Seleucid or Parthian, not on view.

“This tablet contains a lament by Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of fertility, over the destruction of her cities and shrines, and contrasts her present humiliation with her previous power.” - MetText

Left: A page from Melville’s “Marginalia”. His constant annotations were studied in depth by Charles Olson. Right: summary counts of the words marked by Melville in his Set of Shakespeare. Decoder rings come in many forms. 

Charles Olson described himself not so much as a poet or writer but as "an archeologist of morning."

Assyrian Beards

Relief Panel from the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (r. ca. 883-859 B.C), gallery 401.
Cover photograph of Melville on Call Me Ishmael, Charles Olson, City Lights, 1966.

Detail, “The Artist's Studio, a real allegory summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life.” - Gustave Courbet, Musée d'Orsay, 1854-55. “Myself painting, showing the Assyrian profile of my head.” - Courbet.

Speaking of Olson: “Not since Gustave Courbet grew an Assyrian beard has any Western artist attempted such a sweeping rejection of the roots of Western civilization and identified with the Ancient Near East ‘beyond Homer’ and ‘beyond’ the Bible. For him the Sumerians were crucial to the attempt.” - John R. Maier, Charles Olson and the Poetic Uses of Mesopotamian Scholarship, Journal of the American Oriental Society.

“You're too much influenced by Greek and Latin already. Go beyond that, to the Sumerians, and before. Break the hold time has on you; get outside it . . since Western civilization has gone awry, we had better work with what we have from before the degradation.” - Olson quoted by Ralph Maud in his Charles Olson’s archaic postmodern. 

Trotsky, Custer, Zappa and Baraka

Rebellious generations often look forward but go back in time for hair styles. I know great beards when I see them.

 

Rock and Clay (Emergent Figures)

Relief Panel from the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (r. ca. 883-859 B.C), gallery 401.

If I free associate, as Montaigne did, I must include my forbearers of influence. I cannot see these ancient bas reliefs without a ghost of the magnificent emergent prisoners by Michelangelo . . . or the Rock Men and the Clay People from Flash Gordon who appeared and disappeared into earth. I connect them, by their nature, their symbiotic relationships with the mineral world. 

 

 

Met Percent: Week Eleven [by Alec Bernstein]

Best Gauntlets, Hands Down

Maximilian I’s Gauntlets, from The Last Knight Exhibit, gallery 899.
Gladys Cooper as the formidable mother in Now Voyager, from the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty (Sylvia Plath’s patron).

From the very start of this project (see Week One), my MetPercent plan was: Move to NY, go through the entire Met, room by room in numerical order.When I described this, every colleague and friend asked, “Even the Armor?”

“Yes, even the Armor.” 

It is upon me. Blades, bludgeons, and blunderbusses abound in the Arms and Armor Collection. 

Weapons again.

 

Arms and the Man¹ (I Sing)²

Warhorses

Assorted Shaffrons (Horse's Head Defense), 15th-16th c., galleries 371, 373, and 379

In Old Arabic, the word for “Chivalry” (Furúsiyyah as horsemanship) (فروسه) was also the word for “Virtue” and “Honour” (Múruwwa as chivalric values) (مروه). Romantic chivalry in medieval Europe is widely considered the continuation of al-furusiyyah al-arabiya. Horsemanship and Poetry were two of the foundational requirements.

Muru’ah and the Code of Chivalry

— Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi’i, the founder of the Shafi’ite rite in Islam.767–820 CE.

If you want to live free from harm’s way
And in good fortune and honor,
Your tongue, if it utters something indecent, stop it and say,
“Oh tongue other people have tongues.”
If your eyes see something immoral, close them and say,
“Oh eyes other people have eyes.”
Practice beneficence and be magnanimous to ones who attack
And depart with that which is better.

Montaigne was a dedicated horseman and wrote an entire essay “Of Warhorses, or Destriers”, covering the War- horsemanship of the ancients. His wish was to die either in his garden working the cabbages or on horseback.

 

Chivalry-Now (and then)

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Honoré Daumier, French, 19th century (not on view).

Warrior, religious, and courtly love chivalries. Created and debunked, and yet these chivalries are desired, and return and return, the code usurped and adorned.

From Don Quixote, Ivanhoe, abortion bombers (“Protectors of the Code”), the KKK, General MacArthur. . . to the International Fellowship of Chivalry-Now (http://www.chivalrynow.net/sitemap.htm).

 

Hats Off

A 1947 survey for the Hat Research Foundation (yes, a real entity) found that 19 percent of men who did not wear hats gave “because I had to in the army” as the main reason. The general belief is that when a formerly functional item of clothing becomes purely decorative, it usually doesn’t last more than a generation or two. 

Not Quite the Knight

Montaigne’s Cenotaph, Prieur and Guillerman, 1593, Museum of Aquitaine, Burgundy. 

Montaigne was late to Knighthood. “He probably never wore armor during his life, at least not on a battlefield. It must be seen as a final homage to his father, the only member of the Eyquem family who actually waged war. The transformation of Montaigne into a noble gentleman was completed only after his death.” (See Montaigne: A Life by Philippe Desan, 2019).

In his cenotaph, his representation is unusual in that his helmet and gauntlets are not worn but placed “nearby”. 

Weapons, Status, Luxury, and Guilt

Smith and Wesson New Model No. 3, .44 Caliber Double-Action Navy Revolver, ca. 1891–92, side and butt views, gallery 372. Winchester Model 1894, Takedown Lever Action Rifle, 1895-1900, gallery 372. Winchester House, Palo Alto, CA.

Tiffany & Co. adorned a series of revolvers for Smith and Wesson with gems, in this case turquoise and lapis lazuli. They are spectacular. The Met has several: https://www.metmuseum.org/search-results#!/search?q=Smith%20wesson&orderByCountDesc=true&page=1

As for Tiffany’s Winchester rifle: It was technically able to fire bullets . . . but the thick silver cladding made it impossible to disassemble and clean, and the ebony wood made it too heavy to use effectively. 

After her husband's death in 1881, Sarah Winchester inherited more than $20.5 million (equivalent to $532 million in 2018) and nearly fifty percent ownership of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, giving her an income of roughly $1,000 per day, equivalent to $26,000 a day in 2018. 

A Boston medium told her (while supposedly channeling her late husband) that she should leave her home in New Haven and travel West, where she must continuously build a home for herself and the spirits of people who had fallen victim to Winchester rifles . . .10,000 windows, 2,000 doors (including the one to nowhere). Wow.

https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/sarahs-story/   

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Work from David Alexander

We hear from the artist David Alexander:

<<<<
A selection of digital art pieces related to a recent print project of mine can now be seen on the website of the literature and art journal The New Engagement.

https://thenewengagement.com

 

The opening art on the site is a detail of one of these.  To see all, scroll down to the visual arts section.

 

[About]  the method involved in many of my larger pieces: I start with a photographic image and do many (many!) variations in Photoshop.  Then I take parts of the best and combine them collage-wise to create the final work.  What is on view is a selection of some of the individual transformations, something I don't usually show.  On paper the finished version is 74 by 12 inches in four sections. >>>>

 

 

 

Met Percent: Week Ten [by Alec Bernstein]

Sonrientes

Smiling Figure (Sonrientes), 7th-8th c. Remojadas, gallery 358. 

Not much is known about this happy figure. There are mixed cues: male and female, old and young, spirit and human, dwarf and child. It’s too small to stand alone and too large to admire in the hand. Emotional facial expressions, as in this figure, are very uncommon in Mesoamerica. I was captured by it from across the gallery and spent a good amount of time with that smile . . . 

Variations On An Ancestral Theme

Left: Purrukuparli, Enraeld Munkara, Tiwi people, 1955, gallery 354. The sobbing Purrukuparli is an ancestor from the Dreaming (primordial creation period). He chooses not to bring his dead son back, but instead announces the concept of mortality and creates the Tiwi burial rituals. “Humans too will someday die”. The very beginning of ancestors. 

Center: Ancestor Figure (Tsmas), 19th–early 20th c., Paiwan people, gallery 354. Of the Paiwan high nobles, minor nobles and commoners, only the high nobles were allowed to commission human ancestral images. These ancestors have powers, but their influence (help or harm) is controlled by the nobility. Class spirits. Very clear. 

Right: Male Diviner's Figure, 19th–mid-20th century, Baule people, gallery 352. High artistic achievement, the “more expensive the better”, presents not only the wealth and status of the diviner (and owner) of the image, but also “Dazzles the potential clients” of the artist, building his reputation and social position. The professional artist.

 

“   ”  Art

Upper left: Seated Figure, Djenne people, 13th c., gallery 350, Upper right: Constantin Brancusi, Mlle Pogany version I, 1913, MoMA, NYC, Bottom: Recumbent Figure, Henry Moore, 1938, Tate Galley, London.

“The term primitive is to be avoided or used in quotation marks”. - Tate, London. 

Originally, Nelson Rockefeller’s collection was called the Museum of Indigenous Art and later the Museum of Primitive Art. His museum and private collections became the Art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the Met in 1984. The Met had previously turned down the collection - considered by critics an American "Salon des Refusés".

 

Lime Paraphernalia

Lime Spoon with Seated Figure, Inca, 13th–16th c., not on view.  Lime Container, Usiai Island, late 19th–early 20th c., Lime spatula (Tap), Latmul people, late 19th–early 20th c., Gallery 354.

This container (center) was designed to hold powdered lime made from calcined seashells. The lime was removed through a hole in the top by a spoon (left) or a little spatula (right). Lime was a necessary part of the ritual of coca-leaf chewing; the coca leaves were put into the mouth to form a quid, and the lime was added to activate the drug. 

got montaigne? - 8oz Hip Drinking Alcohol Flask, Black (right) by Knick Knack Gifts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Foot Jars ‘n Cowboy Boots

Pair of Ceramic Foot Jars, Peru, Inca Valley Paracas, 2nd-1st c. B.C. Gallery 354

      “Some boys went to look for his feet. His toes are made of crystal, so he can hide them, and the boys could not find them. Then the boys threw stones at the rainbow.

      When he enters the body of a man or a woman they become very sick and to cure them they are given a ball of seven-colored wool to unwind.”

From “The Rainbow”, Anonymous, Quechan, Peru, translated by W.S. Merwin.

Plastic cowboy boot cups, 1950s, U.S.A

As I pondered my interest in these charming foot jars, I recalled the three cowboy cups from childhood. My two siblings and I each had our own color cup. Mine was red. I loved that cup.

Met Percent: Week Nine [by Alec Bernstein]

In Situ (Ex Situ)

(Left)  Asmat Tribe, New Guinea. 
(Right) Bis (funerary) Poles, Asmat peoples, 1960, gallery 354 (Nelson Rockefeller Collection).

The question that surfaced, after 3 trips to the Africa, Oceania, and the Americas galleries was one of context. Who were these made for? 

“Two polar types [of art] stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work. Artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view.” - Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility.”

(Left) Prestige Stool: Female Caryatid, Buli Master, possibly Ngongo ya Chintu, 19th Century, gallery 352.
(Right) Prestige Stool: Female Caryatid, Songye Peoples, possibly, 19th-20th Century, gallery 352.

Many Important ritual items were not made to be seen. For the powerful leaders, prestige stools were wrapped in white cloth and hidden in a distant village. As exhibition value has increased (by capital according to the Marxists) cult value is harder to access. The artifacts are gorgeous, even when clearly not viewed as they were meant to be.

“I leave you my portrait so that you will have my presence all the days and nights that I am away from you.” - Frida Kahlo

 In Absentia

Michael C. Rockefeller, son of Nelson Rockefeller, adjusts his camera before taking pictures of Papuan men in New Guinea in 1961.
Revenge: Ber, head of one of the Asmat villages, was related to the men who killed Michael Rockefeller.

In 1969, the journalist Milt Machlin investigated Rockefeller's disappearance. Several leaders of Otsjanep village, where Rockefeller likely would have arrived had he made it to shore, had been killed by a Dutch patrol in 1958. This provided some rationale for the tribe’s revenge against someone from the "white tribe". Neither cannibalism nor headhunting in Asmat were indiscriminate, but rather were part of a tit-for-tat revenge cycle. So it is possible that Rockefeller found himself the inadvertent victim of such a cycle started by the Dutch patrol.

“After having a long time treated their prisoners very well, and given them all the regales they can think of, he to whom the prisoner belongs, invites a great assembly of his friends. They being come, he ties a rope to one of the arms of the prisoner, of which, at a distance, out of his reach, he holds the one end himself, and gives to the friend he loves best the other arm to hold after the same manner; which being done, they two, in the presence of all the assembly, despatch him with their swords. After that, they roast him, eat him amongst them, and send some chops to their absent friends. They do not do this, as some think, for nourishment, as the Scythians anciently did, but as a representation of an extreme revenge.” - Montaigne, Of Cannibals

“I am not sorry that we should here take notice of the barbarous horror of so cruel an action, but that, seeing so clearly into their faults, we should be so blind to our own. I conceive there is more barbarity in eating a man alive, than when he is dead . . . ” - Montaigne, Of Cannibals

 

“Warming the Dance Space”

(Left) Helmut Mask, 19-20th c., Mende or Sherbro peoples, Gallery 350.

(Center) Headdress  Janus Mask, 19-20th century, Ejagham, Bale peoples, gallery 352. 

(Right) Moon Face Mask, 1880, Baule peoples, gallery 352, worn to “warm the dance space” at the beginning of a sequence known as “gbagba” or “mblo”.

Worn during funerals and initiations. Some are startlingly naturalistic and may be portraits of known individuals; others are highly stylized. There are three overall types: helmet masks that cover the wearer's head entirely, headdresses that are attached to basketry caps worn on top of the head, and masks that cover only the face.

Pre-Colombian Gold

Significant precious metalwork from the early Americas surpasses local 5th Avenue Retailers . . .

“The practice (from 2000 BC) only ceased when indigenous American societies lost access to gold during the Spanish Conquest in the sixteenth century.” - Met Text

Nice way to put the economic workings of colonialism. After 3,000 years of brilliant design, all gold ore went directly to Europe; do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Read Before Traveling

“These stick charts are memory aids used to navigate island positions and wave patterns. The exact significance was known only to its maker, and they were never carried to sea. That would question the navigator’s skill. They represent a system of mapping ocean swells, which was never before accomplished. 

Marshallese navigators used their senses and memory to guide them on voyages by crouching down or lying prone in the canoe to feel how the canoe was being pitched and rolled by underlying swells. there are four main ocean swells: the rilib, kaelib, bungdockerik and bundockeing.” - Met Text

Imagine figuring out that by lying in a canoe, you could feel the cross currents and tell where the islands are . . . .

This is impressive. 

Or . . . You can use your Hos for weather magic. With its legs of Sting Rays and a chant. As the climate crisis grows, if you can’t navigate it, pray.

Weather Charm (Hos), Caroline Islands, Micronesia, 19th-20th c., gallery 353

What Picasso Saw (1940) [by David Lehman]

after fifty-nine years
he saw
the woman
with two faces

there was no such thing
as an ex-Catholic
or an ex-Spaniard
living in France
first Paris with Max
then back to Madrid
an old guitarist

what can you do
with blue, blindness
and the female nude
with two faces

Ma Jolie Fernande
Eva, Gaby, Pacquerette,
Irene Lagut, Olga,
Marie-Therese,
Francoise, Jacqueline

I the harlequin and the minotaur
you the women in the mirror

10 / 25 / 19 (Picasso's birthday)

Met Percent: Week Eight [by Alec Bernstein]

Medallion with Christ from an Icon Frame, Byzantine, 1100, gallery 303

At the Met, lingering in the darkened galleries of the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, I select a few favorites:

Eikonomachía - literally, "image struggle" or "war on icons" - is a controversy over the proper use of religious images, and it results in the destruction of icons in all media. 

Iconoclasts - "breaker of icons" - is the deliberate destruction within a culture of its own symbols . . . for religious or political motives.

Iconolater, Iconodules, and Iconophiles are derisive terms for those who revere or venerate religious images.

Electric Chair, 1971, Andy Warhol [Met, not on view]. Gold necklace with Cross, Byzantium, 6th century, gallery 301.

“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.” - Lenny Bruce

 

“Guillotine of History”

Head of Christ, Netherlands, 1480-1520, gallery 306; Head of a Cleric from a Tomb Effigy, France, 1450-60, [not on view]; Head of Emperor Constans, Byzantine, ca. 337–40, gallery 301.

Throughout the image wars, the destruction of the head, face (and nose) was rampant, because the head was the most potent symbol of the body. 

“During the High Middle Ages, portraiture did not rely on likeness . . . thus individual selfhood was subsumed in broader forms of corporate identities.” - The Face in Medieval Sculpture - Met Heilbrun Timeline of History. 

In my  twenty years of business air travel, I would study Tiepolo or Raphael and draw heads - of no one in particular - a flight attendant, a sleeping passenger, the occasional celebrity . . . by abstract construction or memory. Apparently my “corporate identities” philosophy is in accord with the Medieval masters. Nice to know.

Montaigne concludes Of Physiognomy with a pair of anecdotes in which his life was threatened, but his kindly demeanor and honest words saved him. “If my face did not answer for me, if people did not read in my eyes and my voice the innocence of my intentions, I would not have lasted so long without quarrel and without harm.” But he also writes, “The face is a weak guarantee.”

 

Bread Branding

A ceramic Bread Stamp, Byzantine, 500-900, gallery 300. Inscribed in Greek in reverse,“IC, XC, NIKA”: Jesus Christ Victorious. Used for The Eucharist breads. Interesting the “victory” (NIKA) stems from Nike in the Greek.

The Uzbek still carries the tradition of bread stamps: now decorative and secular, the stamps appear all over Etsy for “lively flatbreads” (advertisement below).

-  We guarantee you'll love our bread stamp(s) or your money back 

-  Makes an ideal Central Asia-theme gift 

-  Added durability (made from walnut tree) 

-  Safer from injury (blunted pins) 

-  No chemical or artificial substances used 

-  Comes with a short maintenance guide 

-  As a bonus, you get Uzbek bread recipes in pdf format

-  By buying this product, you contribute to a better quality of life for rural Uzbek craftspeople 

 

 

 

Nike, the personification of victory, late 5th century B.C., gallery 156

 

 

 

 

 

Your Skull Here

Abbey Head-Shaped Coffin, France, gallery 306

This carved wooden coffin was for an important skull. And in the next display case, a “valuables” coffin. Important to preserve both. But not together. I note how different the terms “coffin” and “sarcophagus” feel.

Valuables Coffin, France, gallery 306

 

Paul Klee Anyone?

Footed Cup with Falconer, Byzantine, 15th century, gallery 300. Angelus Novus, Paul Klee, 1921, Israel Museum.

Walter Benjamin bought Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, an oil transfer drawing with watercolor, for 1,000 marks in Munich. Benjamin passed it to Theodor Adorno, and Adorno to Gershom Scholem.

Benjamin’s friend Charlotte Wolf then recalled how this “gauche and inhibited man” had “behaved as if something marvelous had been given to him." By simply looking at the drawing.

This is the first time I have seen the word “humor” in the MetTexts. The  cup has a “sense of humor”, according to the museum documenters. But to Benjamin, “This is how one pictures the angel of history.”

From Eroticism to Extinction 8 | 83 | 22 | 00 | 44 [by Katie Peyton Hofstadter]

8 years | 83 days | 22:00:44

I recently gave an art-tour to a group of graduate design students. It was the week of the Climate Strikes, Greta Thunberg was at the UN, and our President was mostly skipping school for a discussion of "Religious Freedom" (unless you're Muslim, I'm assuming).

After some soul scratching, I decided to twist the classic theme of love and death, in a way that spoke to this week. Here are a few stops in the tour, From Eroticism to Extinction.

The first stop is Greene Naftali gallery, where we see Paul Chan's The Bathers Dilemma. Industrial fans blast air upwards into nylon air dancers, which dramatically stiffen and wilt, over and over again, in a simulation of sex and flags and, hey, let’s say freedom (religious or otherwise).

In other words, they respond to pressure by dancing.

The androgynous bather's tiny (tiny!) suits draw attention to what is hidden (the tiny, but oh so important, bits these turgid tube balloons definitely do not have). "Progress takes a toll, especially on those who want it most," writes Chan. From his statement:

Resistance wears down the spirit, and makes a mess of the body and mind. It is a shame that it feels natural to expect suffering in oneself for the sake of ending it in others, and commonplace to accept this terrible symmetry as the price one pays for progress.

The bather in art breaks with this terrible symmetry by offering an image of another way forward. Works that take up this motif invite us to reflect on how pleasure renews us. They are reminders that pleasing and being pleased – without aggression or guilt – expands our capacity for fellow feeling. 

This "other way forward" channels the words of poet Audre Lorde, who said in 1978:

In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.

The most-discussed piece is an air dancer in a glass case. Is it happy, my students want to know? Is it trapped in the display, or does it enjoy being watched? We spend a moment watching the wiggler in its double bikini bottoms, contemplating our own gazes. It feels like we are in school and getting away with something.

We end with a passage from writer, scholar and activist adrienne maree brown (from Pleasure Activism). "Feeling good is not frivolous," writes brown. "It is freedom.”

The exit leads through a beach installed outside the gallery. Our feet crunch in the white sand. Across the street, we climb up to the High Line, Chelsea’s award-winning park, built on an old elevated freight rail line.

Ruth Ewan's monumental Silent Agitator is installed at 24th Street. It celebrates historic labor victories, like the five-day work week and eight-hour workday. (Victories being eroded by the decades-long right-wing assault on labor unions and the more recent rise of the "gig economy”) 

Ewan’s installation is inspired by Ralph Chaplin's classic turn-of-the-century illustration for the Industrial Workers of the World labor union. They feature a call-and-response, echoed in Ewan’s work: "What time is it? Time to organize!" The illustrations were distributed as “stickerettes” (drawings and slogans printed on small slips of gummed paper), which were also called "silent agitators."

Ewan’s Silent Agitator is funded by members of the Mugrabi family, whose 5-billion-dollar empire and aggressive art-trading and market-making (think: 800 Warhols in a warehouse) pretty blatantly undercut the idea that an hour's work entitles a laborer to a fair slice of our planet's finite wealth and resources.

Speaking of the planet's finite resources, we are now on to the Extinction part of the tour.

Earlier that day, a group of artists (full disclosure: I regularly see one of them naked in my apartment) had launched ClimateClock.world, an effort to put carbon budget countdown clocks up all over the world. Responding to a special request, they’d also custom-built one of these clocks for Greta Thunberg, but when she attempted to bring the physical clock into the UN for her speech, it was confiscated by security. (It did, after all, kind of look like a bomb.) Anyway, the clock is up and running here. It's open-source, so you can install the digital clock widget, or use the maker-kit to build your own physical clock.

This climate clock was erected in Berlin by Fridays for the Future just a few weeks ago.

 

Every morning, my phone tells me exactly how much time has passed (2019 years, 10 months, 9 days, 8 hours, etc) since some god-like dude was born in a manger. It's standardized for our global techno-capitalist economy, and accurate enough for high-frequency trading—but is it helping us survive?

Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory, painted in 1931 96

 

My students love clocks. They love Dali’s Persistence of Memory. They love Ewan’s Silent Agitator. Since they were young, they've been told they were going to "save the world." How about a clock for that?

 

 

Event: Tomorrow at 6pm, comedic performer Morgan Bassichis will host an event at the Silent Agitator monument, called "There's a better life and you think about it, don't you?" The title is taken from Dolly Parton's 9-5. The event will feature Tayo Aluko, Ruth Ewan, Brooklyn Women’s Chorus, the New York City Labor Chorus, the Sing in Solidarity Chorus, and Lynn Marie Smith “aka” The Motown Diva. It will celebrate "the uplifting significance of song in the exhausting work of labor organizing,” and it’s billed as an “evening of fun, lively performances” that “invites musicians and organizers from across the city—and the world—to come together in affirmation that the time we have together need not be all work and no play."

Credits:
Paul Chan, installation shots from The Bather's Dilemma
Ruth Ewan, "Silent Agitator," photo by Timothy Schenck
Fridays for the Future, carbon clock at the Gasometer, photo by Euref AG/Schwarz
#ClimateClock widget available here

Elizabeth Turk, Sculptor Extraordinaire [by David Lehman]

Do you know the work

Of Elizabeth Turk?

You should!

It's awfully good.

http://www.elizabethturkstudios.com/

Met Percent: Week Seven [by Alec Bernstein]

Byzantine Leads to Gothic

Sarcophagus, Byzantine, early 300s, gallery 300    Capital with Four Heads, Gothic, 1225–50, gallery 304

Just never saw it that way

1,000 years from the end of Rome to the Renaissance: the gigantic new Christian colloid of Rome, Greece, Persia, Scandinavia, England, Syria: no wonder I never saw the connections . . . and the imagery was a continuum of  controversy. 

 

“The human spirit cannot keep on floating in this infinity of formless ideas; they must be compiled for it into a definite picture after its own pattern.” - Montaigne

 

Break bitter furies of complexity,

Those images that yet

Fresh images beget

 - “Byzantium”, William Butler Yeats

 

“As a living man does not have to give reasons for his breathing, he does not need to explain his beliefs.” - Montaigne

 

“It’s Byzantine”

 

Keystone from a Vaulted Ceiling, Germany, 1220-30, gallery 300

It’s too too complex is the consensus.

• “Pension savers caught out by ‘byzantine’ tax-relief rules,” reads a headline in The Times of London.
• “Experience in byzantine water policy key in elections at Coachella Valley agencies,” says an editorial in the Desert Sun.
• “It’s Complicated: Bosnia’s Byzantine System Of Government,” puns Radio Free Europe.

 

The Formats of Old Friends . . . The Storyboard

Ivory Altarpiece, ca. 1390–1400, Italy, gallery 306

Stories in units in framed cells. Time divided into sequence in space. Grids of progression. The DNA for films, graphic novels, cartoons, comics . . . 

Stories in Light

Stained Glass Panels, 15th C., German, gallery 306

Q: How do you tell those biblical stories - Mary as Virgin, Queen, Bride, Mother, Intercessor - to a largely illiterate congregation? 

A: Stained glass.

I have heard that the origin of the term kike comes from Jewish immigrants at Ellis Island who would not sign their names with crosses (X), and signed instead with small circles: kikel or kikeleh in Yiddish shortened to kike, i.e. the people who make little circles.

 

The Articles We “Know”

The Last Supper, ca. 1500–1530, German or South Netherlandish, gallery 305

Yes, of course. The Last Supper, The Apostles, The Annunciation, The Madonna, The Child, The Pieta . . . familiar, the stuff of Western Civ. Not “chapter and verse” to me, but by osmosis in school, by television, and my childhood neighbors on their way home from Catechism.

In Los Angeles I discovered all the freeways have articles; a Spanish influence. New Yorkers take 95 to 395. Angelenos take The 405 to The 101.

Un-naming modern primitivism and Beauty in Mondrian’s abstraction [by Tracy Danison]

Rene Rimbert, "Nature morte au jeu de cartes"©Musée Maillol, Paris

Two lovely and intriguing painting exhibitions ongoing at Musée Maillol and Musée Marmottan Monet offer more than their titles suggest. Les Grands maîtres naïfs: du douanier rousseau à Séraphine at Musée Maillol debunks the notion of “naïf (primitive)” and does a great job of showing color, shape, form in daily life in France 1920-1940 by outsider painters. Mondrian Figuratif at Marmottan Monet uses some lovely figurative painting to anchor a well-made walk-through of Piet Mondrian’s painterly quest for Beauty.

Piet Mondrian, "Crépuscule", 1906 © Kunstmuseum Den Haag

 

The thing one learns from Les Grands maîtres naïfs is that modern primitive painting applies not to style but to painters who didn’t attend official art schools. Whether the subject is the outside or “natural” world, food or male desire, the Grands maîtres in question paint “what they see and what it feels like”.

 

André Bauchant, "L'Hibou" © Ewald Graber © Adagio, Paris 2019

What they see becomes visual lyric: intimate, even indiscrete, warm, colorful. Visitors will enjoy the little irony of tourist-targeted views of Montmartre by these often commercially struggling artists as well bigger and more recondite ironies such as Dominique Peyronnet’s slipping of the iconic La Femme à la Perle into the sharp symmetry of a modern urban landscape.

Camille Bombois, "Nu de face"  Courtesy Fondation Dina Vierny © Adagio, Paris

And there’s plenty more work by these marginal maîtres that just enables the eye to enjoy while the mind wanders: feathery flower bouquets by Séraphine Louis (which put me in mind of Shaker prints, even Jung drawings), Le Douanier Rousseau’s powerfully-imagined “exotic natural” scenes (which put me in mind of William Blake prints), René Rimbert’s bistro-inspired still lifes (which brought Cezanne’s to mind), the graded colors and perspectives of sea- and landscapes by André Bauchant and Ferdinand Desnos, or Camille Bombois’ good-tempered almost-porn.

"Le Douanier" Henri Rousseau, "Deux lions à l'affût dans la jungle" © Archives de l'Hôtel des Ventes de Monte-Carlo

And if Grands maîtres naïfs puts pay to the notion that modern “primitive” painting is anything more than a nasty little kick against painters of “marginal” social origins, Mondrian Figuratif  puts in doubt the “Father of abstraction”’s parental role in that particular style.

Piet Mondrian, "Composition avec large plan rouge, jaune, noir, gris et bleu ", 1921 © Kunstmuseum Den Haag

Marmottan Monet’s exhibition in fact highlights Mondrian’s personal spiritual quest for beauty. I mean “Beauty”in a Neo-Platonic, 19th-century sense, with a capital B, the one that was supposed to exist with Love and Truth at the core of the universe and Christian society. “Mondrian figuratif”’s walk-through arrangement makes the visual case that painter Mondrian knows in his heart, like poet Keats, that Truth is Beauty and Beauty is Truth. This puts a lot of water between him and a painter like a Picasso, or Jasper John’s who knows who else in the modern era whose search is mostly for new and satisfactory expressive style(s).

Piet Mondrian, "Moulin dans le crépuscule",1908 © Kunstmuseum Den Haag

In the entry way of the Mondrian Figuratif  walk-through sits a ‘still life” of a “naturalist” dead hare in the Dutch Renaissance style, made by a 19-year old Mondrian. Next to it is the painter’s very first “abstract” painting. The hare’s ‘naturalism’ is on its head, subjected to the effect of light on a graded color and texture (the hare’s fur) while this first “abstract” work is clearly a study of the subtle line and color of tar and worn tiles in somebody’s floor.

Piet Mondrian, "Ferme près de Duivendrecht", 1916 © Kunstmuseum Den Haag

Turning into the exhibition from there, some wonderful examples of Mondrian’s figurative work greets visitor eyes. But raise them, look right. There at the bottom of the exhibition is Mondrian’s 1921 Composition avec large plan rouge, jaune, noir, gris et bleu, which definitely isn’t somebody’s tile floor! But then, those colors, those lines! Why, of course, it’s the Beauty of all tile floors! Of all windmills! Then, catching their breath and looking back and forth, there certainly seems a relation between the capture of the exact chromatic quality of early moonlight in the 1906 Crépuscule and Large plan, between the swathes of horizontal color and “natural” geometry of the 1908 Moulin dans le crépuscule and Large plan… The walk-through between these paintings is a visual discussion of Mondrian becoming toward Beauty and, maybe, Truth: all we need to know.

Mondrian Figuratif runs at the Musée Marmottan Monet until 26 January 2020.

Les Grands maîtres naïfs: du Douanier Rousseau à Séraphine runs at Musée Maillol until 19 January 2020.