The Pugilist

Last night on my way to the National Arts Club, I happened to walk by the home of George Bellows on 19th street. I had no idea he had lived there, though I have walked down these streets too many times to count. Of course I thought of Stag at Sharkey's, his famous painting of two fighters during the period in New York when prizefighting was illegal, when athletic clubs like Sharkey's got around these laws as purported gyms but kept matches going with all the secret excitement of prohibition.

George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey's 1909

George Bellows had been a baseball player before becoming one of The Eight, a group of New York artists influenced by Robert Henri who thought that American Art should lose the influence of European Impressionism and its national glorification of the American West. Henri's book The Art Spirit is an easy and pleasant read, largely forgotten among the many writings on art produced across the 20th century–I definitely recommend it.

We usually separate art from athleticism, which is a mistake and shame because both require an incredible degree of competition on the part of their participants. Artists and athletes both have to see the terrain for what it is, with all the obstacles on their way to the goal, with all the unexpected cleverness of the other participants in the game. It is not just how good you are, but how well you play the game that provides the endurance to be a long-term success.

I know the young director Jay Bulger who is finishing a documentary on Ginger Baker, the genius on drums most famous for his time with Cream. Jay had been a boxing champion when he was younger, and watching him develop the financing, get the interviews with every major drummer alive today, and ensure that the film was true to his vision–even as it shifted–was to observe a passion that withstood every punch along the way. And, I happen to know there were some, though fewer than there might have been otherwise because he knows how to throw a mean punch too.

The Ancient Greeks included sports as a part of the education of a well-bred man. They also learned how to describe objects, ekphrasis, to be able to discuss a work of art. They competed on the field and at the podium, their education grounded in making them succeed at both. George Bellows has a great deal of respect for these fighters, though the faces of the observers suggests a keen awareness of the violence that spectators can embody. Both art and sports are largely a spectator activity, where the audience can be far uglier than any work of art or athletic performance. Art pretends to be refined, as if there were no sweat involved, but anyone who has sat down to write, or stood alone in a studio, or prepared for an audition knows that fear is laced with a will to fight, that nerves are stressed by sensory data, adrenaline pours through the body which begins to move, and as the body moves, the mind sculpts the action.

As a child, I danced. As a teenager, I developed a yoga practice. When I was twenty-three, I bought a punching bag and hung it in my living room. It changed my life.

Fayum portraits

If you haven't seen the latest issue of Smithsonian magazine (and really, how many people do get this rather light-weight but always interesting magazine of our own national museums in DC?), then you might not know about fayum portraits, those absolutely exquisite head portraits produced upon a person's death and fixed onto their coffin, or into their mummy wrappings.

See what a small section it is!

I would encourage you to go to the Smithsonian website and look at more examples, or if in New York City go to The Met where the young boy show in the middle above is currently on display in Gallery 38. They are also on display at the Louvre, British Museum and the small and often neglected Brooklyn Museum has one too!

The portraits seem to be largely produced in the 3rd Century AD in Egypt's Fayum region (see map to the left) and blend Greco-Roman portraiture style into their own technique of using beeswax and pigment. Analyses of the pieces have revealed the use of a plant-derived red pigment used for much of the clothing and a combination of a lead white and a blue pigment to create the striking eyes. Gold leaf can also be seen in the portrait above on the far right.

Having just seen the Renaissance portraiture show at the Met, I am amazed at how striking these portraits are. We tend to think of the Renaissance as the time of high-art. This is reasonable given some of the innovations (perspective, anatomy studies), the political support for the arts by the Church (Sistine Chapel) and families (the Medici), as well as the constant energy of the artists (Michelangelo, Botticelli). Nevertheless, these portraits remind us that powerful artistry is present even when least suspected.

Persistence

Although every writer dreams of getting it right on the first pass, very few succeed. Writing is craft and, like all craft, proceeds by stages: conception, material selection, rough shaping, detailed shaping, sanding and finishing. (That’s for writing nonfiction, which feels like woodworking to me. Writing fiction is more like throwing clay, and writing poetry more like watchmaking.)
– Richard Rhodes, from “Beware of that Voice in Your Head” in the Dec 10th, 2011, Wall Street Journal.

I sent this quote to myself in December and left it sitting in my email box until today, which is of course a very silly thing to do but then how easy I forget the motivating instances in life for the defeating and debilitating. The nature of doing any creative work, whether painting, sculpting or thinking is that when it doesn't happen just as planned the obvious problem is oneself and the stubborn resistance of the creative mind to produce on demand. Irritating insolence of the imagination!

I share this today because yesterday I was reminded by one of the writers that I most respect how important hard work always is, which includes working even when nothing seems to be moving. Though breaks are certainly necessary, returning to the work even when daunted is as well.

The fact is that if you have dedicated your life to your creative work then you are already succeeding at it. Though our culture values celebrity, success in the creative world is simply being able to practice your craft day in, and day out, supporting yourself on its occasionally meager, sometimes stupendous, and generally salvageable pay. And the only way to attain that type of independence is to work, work, work at it. That other jobs may sometimes be required, or even be an inspiration, is also a part of that work. The key is not to let the other job dominate to the exclusion of the time and effort necessary to cultivate your craft.

Seems obvious. But it bears repeating.

The Rhetoric of Conversion

Earlier this week, I was discussing with a friend the confusion that I feel regarding art that is political. In general, I find overtly political art tiresome. If I wanted a statement after all, I would read a pamphlet. And it feels disrespectful to me of the other, possibly more important but certainly disregarded, arena that fine art enters–that is, the ability to produce a non-linguistic experience.

Of course, to say that I do not like political art is simply false because much art that has been produced over the years has undeniable political content. At the Renaissance portraiture show currently at the Met, the political can be witnessed in the Giuliani Medici portraits that were produced after his murder as a testimony to Medici loyalty, and also as a warning to other plotters. Picasso's Guernica might have come to mind for some. I don't object to it. But I do mind Sanja Ivekovic's hyper-feminist work currently on display at MoMA. This concern on my part has me generally avoid any art, performances, or readings that are described as political, or seem to have an underlying political message that is being presented. In conversation with the friend, she tried to convince me how important political messaging is in art, how it has helped change the world, but I am bored and bothered by its lack of nuance, its emphatic rhetoric, that like hers did not change my mind about situations the way information clearly discussed can make me suddenly start donating to an Animal Welfare group, or the local homeless shelter.

With these issues of rhetoric in mind, I was hesitant to see The Convert currently at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ. That it was also running over three hours added to my consternation. But, someone I respect told me the work was excellent, so off I went to see the new play by Danai Gurira about the Shona rebellions in 1895-7, in the Rhodesia of Queen Victoria that we now call Zimbabwe. Gurira's introduction explains the conflict: "There is a grappling with home, place, space, and voice–on one side are the ardent keepers of culture and land and language and on the other there are those...glad to be free of the strictures of their forefathers...delighted to declare themselves the ambassadors of the new order, finally feeling significance and a purpose." Bafus, they are called by the Shona tribe members for having left the tribal ways: living in houses with cement floors like the Whites, spreading their Christian religion while neglecting the respect due to the ancestors, and making money incomparable to what can be made working in the mines. The Shona people are sons of the soil. The whites have destroyed that, and those blacks who have left are traitors, bafus, for forgetting or ignoring their past.

The cast of seven completely won me over. When the first intermission arrived, I could hardly believe that an hour had past. I was immersed in Jekesai's (Pascale Armand) extraordinary learning curve under the guidance of Chilford (LeRoy McClain), a young man who has left the savagery of the tribe to follow Christ's path, hoping that one day the Roman Catholic church will allow a Black to be a priest. Mai Tamba, the absolutely wonderful Cheryl Lynn Bruce, has her son Tamba, Warner Joseph Miller, bring Jekesai to work for Chilford instead of having her marry an old man. Jekesai agrees to be Chilford's Christian pupil under the name Ester (a good Christian name) and quickly memorizes long passages of the Bible, learns English, and embraces Christ's message of equal love with such sincerity that she  corrects the white priest for which Chilford has to remind her that is not permitted.

Ester is so content in her new life and role that Prudence, played with strength by Zainab Jah without any of the disdain or melancholy that her character could have lapsed into having, asks what is left of Ester. Prue has come to Chilford's in search of her philandering fiancée, Chancellor, whose sexual proclivities and social acuity are entirely likeable in Kevin Mambo until he permits his character the necessary smarmy turn. Prue was also educated, a rarity for women at the time which makes her a strange creature with no place. She has chosen however to continue to speak Shona to the tribal members, managing to engage with both cultures. Chilford's adamant stance that all elements of the savage life must be destroyed does not permit Ester that same option.

Of course, the civilizing colonialism is not successful and the tribes become angry for the change in their lifestyle, the menial labor in the mines, their polygamy disallowed, and the anger of the ancestors at the presence of the colonists. The uprisings include massacres on both sides, which conflicts create conflicts for the characters that are presented on an intensely personal level. I was never watching a story about the uprisings of Southern Rhodesia in 1897. Rather I saw Chilford angry that black men would cause the death of his beloved Father, the priest whom he writes every evening, and in that anger lose compassion for Mai Tamba whose work for him does not keep her from maintaining her ties to the tribe. Ester will undergo the greatest heartbreak as she sees the ethical lessons that she has gained in following the education and religion of the Whites disregarded by them in their treatment of the Blacks, regardless of justice. Pascale Armand's concluding monologue will break your heart as you see the chaos created not by religion, or race, or politics but by the complex web of a life lived among warring factions.

Danai Gurira's play The Convert has given me faith that art can be produced which is utterly engaging on all its aesthetic dimensions, even as it negotiates with the mind-numbing brutality of any sectarian belief. Emily Mann is known for being a director who creates an ensemble, working with the every aspect of the production to create a unit whole, one that this play in particular would need. The attention to detail was such that the show brought in a dialect coach to help the actors create their own nuanced sound of the English they were taught, allowing the very sound of the play to be embodied by the decisions the actors were making for their characters. Rhetoric did not convert me to the belief that the political can exist in art, but rather by the ability of the aesthetics to handle that additional weight. The art of theatre was present in every aspect of this show, perhaps out of respect for the heavy content, but certainly there in every piece of dialogue, lighting cue, background sound, acting moment, directing decision. I am profoundly moved by this play, not only because it made me think, but also on its own terms. And that, my friends, is a great play.

*******
The Convert at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ. January 13-February 12, 2012.
(Take NJ Transit to Princeton stop, not Princeton Junction, and walk across the street.)

Renaissance Portraiture

At the end of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini show there is a marble head by Antonio Rizzo of the Doge Christoforo Moro that is one of the most striking works of art I have seen since I saw the Chardin pastel of an old man sleeping in their pastel show last summer. I wish I knew more about marble to explain why this marble is slightly yellow and yet to perfect effect for this creased, aged face. Rizzo, who was utterly unfamiliar to me before, uses the natural lines of the stone to produce the lifelines in the face of the Doge. I would return to the show just to spend more time looking at this one head, which was once attached to the rest of a statue of the Doge, kneeling at one of the three altars of S. Marco that Rizzo was commissioned by the Doge to produce.

The show is extensive and for the casual viewer so many portraits can seem a bit repetitive, but that is all the more reason to wander, moving towards any one that strikes your eye. The first room includes several women by Botticelli, which I had expected and was the reason that I intended to see the show. Botticelli's Zipporah is the reason that Swann, in Proust's Swann in Love, becomes enamored of Odette de Crecy. The way she holds her head bring Swann into immediate contact with the blond beauties of Botticelli's pre-Savonarola days. Though we are all familiar with Birth of Venus, I wanted to familiarize myself with more of his work to imprint the style of his women which could then inform my reading of Swann's desire. As Venus has no shoulders, neither do any of these other women, is one among a number of other trite facts that I discovered in looking at his ladies.

For women, beauty was a sign of virtue and the pressure was thus great to be exquisite. The ladies are largely painted in profile, boxed by walls and ceiling, or a window, within the frame. It gives an extraordinary sense of constraint that given the absolute stillness of all these portraits begins to feel a bit claustrophobic. The men had no need of such beauty though their vanity also had them request artists to minimize their flaws, according to a few of the placards about particular paintings. How they know this remains unclear to me, but we shall assume/hope that this is not sheer fabrication. Such concerns about physical representation for posterity seems likely after all.

A 1475 portrait of an unknown man believed to be by Antonio Crevalcore struck my eye precisely because of its ornate details, including a red internal frame with colored, marbled sections in each half section, an utterly phony background scene, a book and a gold ring with a red stone that looks just like one I have. The painting was so rich in ornament that it naturally stood out in contrast to the other more staid portraits of important men looking serious with monotone backgrounds. My companion mentioned that she rather missed among these the type of portrait that displays some secret feature or characteristic of the sitter. Indeed they were all diligent commission portraits by artists who well knew who was paying the bill. But, just then we rounded into another room where we discovered a painting of a very interesting looking man whom we discovered was the doctor Battista Fiero of the painter, Lorenza Costa. He has a knowing look in his eye, as well he might since he treated the painter for syphilis.

There are of course marvelous works by famous artists that are worthy of appreciation and study. There are paintings and drawings, medals and metalpoint (which I discovered I enjoy a great deal and more on that some day), but of course the whole thing is faces. So if you want a good look at the faces of the financiers, religious leaders, and aristocrats who made the Italian Renaissance the foundational period that influenced the modern world, this show is well worth a wander. And if you could care less about the history or the name-brand artists, then before the show closes on March 18, 2012 go stare at these men and women with Oscar Wilde in mind: "A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her fiction."

Details in Reading

While reading Oscar Wilde's The Critic as Artist again, I started paying attention to another layer of detail in the text. This is normal upon multiple readings but since the text largely presents an argument in dialogue form between confident Gilbert and bewildered Ernest, I surprised myself by approaching it as a more literary text where character details can illuminate what is said, where monologues are not simply a dissemination of ideas but also a stylistic choice that provides subtler forms of the ideas on display.

As such, at the beginning of part 2, I noticed–for the first time, truly, though I have now read this four times or so–that Gilbert and Ernest have just finished a fine meal of ortolans before now continuing with their conversation on criticism. This second half will focus on the morality of art and criticism, with Gilbert judging that all art is immoral and important for that reason. But back to ortolans...

Ortolans, I discovered, are a rare, small songbird from France that have been a delicacy along the lines of foie gras. The birds are captured alive and kept in small dark boxes, with some descriptions stating that their eyes are to be removed. The darkness leads them to gorge themselves on the food provided: millet, grapes and figs. When they are three to four times their natural size, they are drowned in Armagnac. They are cooked in an oven for no more than six to eight minutes. But it is the eating of them that strikes the most repulsive picture.

First, apparently, you would cover your head with a linen napkin so that none of the aromas fade in the air. You then place the bird, whole, on your tongue with the head hanging out between your lips. This allows the fat from the bird to flow down your throat while also allowing the heat to disperse. Then the diner is supposed to bite off the head, discard and take as long as fifteen minutes to delicately chew the whole bird, bones, organs, all.

Picture taken from the cookingwithlittlebuddy.com blog, with thanks for his information on Anthony Bourdain's dinner

The French outlawed ortolans in 1999, because they are an endangered species, not because the French are skittish about their cuisine. The French ex-President, François Mitterand, ordered ortolans (as well as foie gras and oysters) as a part of his last feast in the week before he died; he ate two of them. I gather from the manner by which they are prepared and eaten that I am to understand how truly decadent Gilbert is in his aesthetic pleasures, his moral sense ignored in favor of bountiful sensual experiences. Nothing else in Wilde's text shows Gilbert's decadence so strongly, though his ideas are certainly suggestive, all of which makes this small feast, as it turns out, an important detail to reading the ideology underlying this Wilde text. So be it, I still think the text is wonderful and agree with large parts of it–to be discussed at another time.

While researching the ortolans, I came across this website: http://www.coldbacon.com/food/ortolan.html and can not identify the picture, which is not captioned or referenced. I can not find it any of my Miró searches and would welcome any information about this funny looking bird in the painting.

Seeing de Kooning

I finally made it to the de Kooning exhibit, the blockbuster MoMA show, on an afternoon when it was not too crowded, and alone so that I could float from piece to piece without needing to explain my preference for this one, or why I skipped that one. With such a large show, unless I know that I will return to see more at a future date, there is no choice for me but to let my eye wander until it lands on something, go see that picture or work, and then repeat. I can not absorb in one viewing as much work as was there displayed. And, though it is all there to be seen, I do not believe that the intention is to have each visitor absorb it all. Undoubtedly there are some well developed eyes and minds that are capable of slowly perusing each piece, as there are members of my gym who seem to be there when I arrive and leave no matter the time of day that I appear. The eyes are muscled as well, the brain is one big muscle and both need developing to be able to study art in such a studious method. For the rest of us, to show up at all is an important step.

So with that said, I can share that his early drawings were nicely presented to prove that he was in fact an incredibly skilled draftsman. The early work reveals the influence of Miró and Dali and Picasso in the exploratory manner that any artist who is looking for his or her style is likely to experience and so, show. The Seated Man and women sitting from the 40s are beautiful figures–the women are likely modeled from Elaine Fried who became his wife in 1947. The Montauk series in the 60s, however, delighted me (an example to the right). It is a wonderfully fun series. Light, pink, bodies, eyes, silly, sexy. I enjoyed it much more than his earlier series of women from the fifties when he was first exploring abstraction. Those are more earnest in their burlesque, ponderously intense (sometimes described as violent though I do not see it that) and bizarre as it moves into abstraction, which itself is studied, noticeably intentional. This is what is meant when we talk about development-the shift from intentionality to natural grace. It takes time.

Woman, 1948

If one expects an MBA to be making huge deals by 30 if s/he is to be a success, the same is simply not true of artists. Craft can be excellent while repeating what came before it. In fact, that may even be what differentiates craft from art. Art, on the other hand, requires that artists investigate their own response to the traditions from which they come or have embraced in order to be able to articulate their singular vision. And I do mean articulate as opposed to stutter or scream, if we are to use a vocal analogy. The young megastars of the art world rarely have something else to say besides their original "miraculous work" precisely because they stumbled upon it, got famous, and now what? De Kooning was 44 when he had his first major solo show at the Charles Egan gallery in Spring of 1948. He had been producing work, but it was then that the "breakthrough years", as described by MoMA, occurred, moving him into abstraction. I really like the black piece called Zurich though I would be hard pressed to explain why it is so called without a good biography nearby to explain the impetus of the titles he gave the works that made him famous.

Zurich, 1947

This brings me momentarily to the issue of titles in abstract works. I understand the first titles being concrete because he was actually still considering the impact and meaning of shifting into strongly abstract work. When he is settled into it, the pieces are called Untitled V, Untitled II, etc. He refuses titles. It is in the last years, however, that this gets pushed even further where the placards simply read [no title, 1983], for example. I realize that this might be explained by his personal disintegration, but it might also be understood as the most perfect acknowledgment of the sublimely peaceful visual works, like bright sunshine glaring down from a sold blue sky, where the spring air is crisp, clean and for a moment standing in the light everything is still.

[no title], 1983

Attic, 1961

After the dark paintings, of which Zurich is one, de Kooning was lauded for his white series, often posited as the "positive" side to his earlier "negatives" in black. The one below is called Attic, not because it looks like a cluttered one (though with more gray and brown it would resemble some attics I have entered) but rather because he put everything into it.
This is just to show that much can not be explained by a title, and though a plaque can give you information, it won't tell you how or why to appreciate it. That process is up to you, the viewer. There was so much work on display and I can hardly describe it all. Not only because hours have passed, but also because the expectations of writing are to produce coherent, causal language so that one thing, in some way, follows the next. This often means that things get cut because it does not "fit". We hope that our writers centered their writing on what they thought most important so that none of that gets cut, but in truth, from my own experience of writing, often good stuff does get cut for the sake of this one piece, with the hope that it will fit in another.

The experience of going to a show of this size is to embrace being overwhelmed. That is a good thing. There is not only great quantity, but also amazing quality. The artist is a phenomenon. That others participated in his process (studio assistants or Fried) is like objecting to Gertrude Stein's involvement in reading Hemingway or speaking to Picasso. If the artist stood alone, we would not be going to see the show. The best thing we can offer works of art is an earnest attempt to see it. This does not mean understanding what others have written about it (though that can be educational), nor what the author 'intended' (though that can be intriguing), but what happens to you, the viewer, when in front of this work. If you want to become a scholar, sure more is expected. But the grand majority of us can gain a great deal from simply walking up to any old piece that catches our eye, and seeing what happens next.