Friday, March 25, 2011

The End



Yesterday, my father Graham Hunter (a.k.a. Avid Vermont Reader) died at the age of 63. As he was (so far as I could tell) just about the sole reader of this blog, I have decided to end it here. Old Ken dies with my father. However, as life has to go on ...

Monday, February 07, 2011

What you learn from museums



The painting in the photograph above is John George Brown's Scraping a Deerskin (1904). Old Ken happened across this picture while strolling idly around the grounds of the Huntington Art Gallery not so long ago. Whatever you want to say about this painting (and no need to get that nasty!), it got Old Ken to thinking. While we have explored what you can learn in archives in several posts now, museum-learning - - asking questions and finding some provisional answers from art-objects - - has somehow lagged behind. Time to hop to it!



Where to start? The fiction of our picture is that we see a bearded, bespectacled man at full-length, leaning forward in what Tom Waits would call "pool-hall concentration" as he works on an unpleasant piece of drudge-work. His head appears in silhouette against the open barn window and that horizontal band of gauzy, rural landscape we can see through it. We might almost imagine that a luminous painting by George Inness has been embedded into this shady workshop-picture. Perhaps we could say that this is a picture pre-occupied by the past; we might catch an allusion to, say, Caravaggio's infamous St. Matthew in its posing of the concentrated bald pate at work on animal skins (if we allow that Caravaggio's evangelist is, in fact, writing on vellum). But, what is most striking to Old Ken is the powerful, multi-sensorial evocation of the task at hand - - the scraping of a skin whose fatty oils are pooling on the rough-hewn, barn-board planks below.



In composing his picture, Brown has used all kinds of clever graphic tricks to suggest the illusory presence of his scraper - - note especially the flickering white band of paint denoting back-lit highlights. But, he has also resorted to some techniques that put him in curious relation with his figural subject. What struck Old Ken up close (and as registers passably enough in this photographic detail) is how the canvas itself has been scraped. As along the figure's right buttock and midsection, the rough textile weave shows through where the washes of thinly-painted pigment have been abraded. Here, Brown seems to want us to compare between the mere feints of stress on fabric that he signals with the hole in the scraper's shirt at the left elbow - - a mark painted with thick, robust oily strokes - - and the actual wear and tear on cloth that he has performed in making this picture. So, is the painter making some kind of identification with the figure of the scraper? If so, what could it mean?



The oily pool of fat on the ground is also interesting. In the fiction of the picture, this oil has been scraped off the deerskin and is now sinking slowly into wood. But, it evokes the pools of oil-paint media that Brown himself would have created on his own studio floor by scraping down the picture on which we are looking. And, rather than being scraped from an animal skin and soaked into a wood support (both, of course, traditional supports for painting), oil media has been applied to canvas as a binding medium for pigment. If the painter is a scraper, the picture seems to suggest, he is also like a bather who salves or perhaps annoints damaged surfaces with oily films, healing the animal with the vegetal (and vice versa).



Now, this is where actual art historians would want to break off and test some of these wild hypotheses. But, the key for Old Ken is emphasize how a seemingly unpromising object like Brown's humble ditty can nonetheless generate and guide a sequence of observations and inferences in a most pleasant way. Similar kinds of fun can be found by looking at another unprepossessing object above: William Michael Hartnett's After the Hunt (1883). While the fiction of our scene is likely clear enough from our photograph ...



... look closely at the way in which the dented, gleaming hunting horn has been painted.



To create the illusion of brilliant light reflecting off the upper side of the horn's bell, Hartnett applied a thick, cakey smear of white paint softened with Naples Yellow at the margins. As under the raking light in the detail above, this crusty impasto actually juts out slightly from the surface of the canvas. So, the artist is using the "sculptural" properties of paint to render a purely optical effect - - while the thick, green cord next to it, which actually would project out toward the viewer were the objects depicted real, has been rendered in flat, matte paint. All of this causes a strangely doubled double-take. That is, we are looking at what seems to be a flat surface (the painted canvas) that is trying to pass itself off as horns, game, hats and other three-dimensional whatnot. But, in reality, the flatness is itself an illusion; what appears to be optically brightest is also (ever so slightly) physically closest to the viewer.

“Now ... possibly some may say," if Old Ken can quote one of America's leading seventeenth century philosophers, "To what purpose all this curiosity?” No purpose, really. Just that museums teach us things that we can't get elsewhere. While maybe Google Art Project or equivalents will eventually offer the requisite resolution, it's hard to beat the good old museum for making made-ness perceptible.

Labels: , , ,

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Thanksgiving ... okay, a bit late



I know what you're saying, and you're not wrong. "Old Ken," you're thinking. "Where in the world have you been? News has come and gone—from Julian Assange and Wikileaks to the mysterious awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. Yet, Nicebird has been entirely silent. Why haven't you been writing anything?"

Let me assure you, friend, that I have been writing plenty! Old Ken just ain't too sure if you want to be reading a bunch of lectures on Chardin, Gainsborough, Courbet and other protagonists of 18th and 19th art on a fine blog such as this one. But, as all of that is thankfully now in the past, why don't we open our hearts and minds together in a spirit of holiday gratitude in recalling a celebration now a month behind us? Thanksgiving!

As you may surmise from the photograph above, "turkey day" for the Dr. and Mrs. Digby was a low-key affair in which sweet potatoes, corn bread, cranberry sauce and vegetarian chili (still waiting to make its grand entrance when this picture was taken) took starring turns.



After the meal, we headed out for Joshua Tree National Park. As you'll recall ....



... the little lady and I have been to the JT several times now. Why not? It's only two hours' drive from LA and it never gets old. There you are, walking amongst these craggy piles of boulders ...



... and then you're surrounded by these wondrous, anthropomorphic yuccas called by the Mormon settlers (supposedly) Joshua Trees because their reaching, gesticulating branches suggested the arms of the prophet Joshua.



However you want to slice it, they are pretty incredible to look at.



And it's certainly not hard to find inspiration in such a place. As we approach the solstice-season and some other festivals of light, Old Ken hopes y'all are feeling inspired, rejuvenated and excited too. (Well, not too excited!)

Labels: , ,

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Nicebird Exclusive! Unrest in Ecuador



Have you been following all the political unrest in Ecuador? Well, Old Ken has observed it with some trepidation, thinking about our dear friend Carmencita (pictured above in happier times) who lives there. Upon contacting her, she has supplied the following description of the state of things in the capital Quito while setting the events in context. Exclusive to Nicebirdrox, here is her report:

"It all started out as a strike. The police force in Ecuador decided to go on strike on Thursday. There were some robberies in Guayaquil specially, a couple of things in Quito, but nothing too serious.

"Things got bad because our irresponsible president decided to go to the police headquarters, not willing to negotiate, but acting as complete macho, opening his shirt, and saying that he was ready to receive bullets on his chest! Things escalated, he was taken to the police hospital, and was kept there as a hostage. People in the government took advantage of this, arguing that it was an attempt at overthrowing the president, and that politicians behind the police were planning a coup (not true, apparently). The government then prevented independent TV networks to broadcast any news, and forced them to broadcast their own version of the events.

"In the evening, the army broke into the police headquarters and rescued the president, and sadly, a few people died. Now, we all have mixed feelings for what happened on Thursday. We are very sad because people died for no reason, some of us are angry at the President, others still think of him as a great hero! But anyway, everything went back to normal on Friday." Thanks Carmencita, and we'll continue to watch this unfolding story.

Labels: ,

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Lemons, Writing, etc.



The other day, for no reason in particular, Old Ken found himself reading some of the cultural criticism of early eighteenth century writer Joseph Addison. Most famous for his magazine The Spectator, Addison was a clever, sophisticated character. Take, for example, his distinction between true and false wit from Spectator 62 (May 11, 1711):

As true wit generally consists in the resemblance and congruity of ideas, false wit chiefly consists in the resemblance and congruity, sometimes of single letters, as in anagrams, chronograms, lipograms, and acrostics ... and sometimes of whole sentences or poems, cast into the figures of eggs, axes, or altars.



I'm sure our friend, the great Carolingian encyclopedist Hrabanus Maurus (whose work we see above), would have had a bone to pick with Mr. Addison on these claims! As indeed does Old Ken. For what Addison goes on to critique is, I think, one of the most witty pieces of Restoration English poesy—a period with no shortage of cleverness.



Let me back up for a moment and tell you about a friend named Abraham Cowley. Then, you'll finally see what Old Ken was on about with all the business about lemons from the get-go. Above, we see Cowley depicted by the irrepressible Peter Lely in around 1666-7 as a genteel philosophe in rural retirement. Yet, being a man cut from the Royalist cloth, Cowley had spent much of the Civil War era acting as a spy, communicating messages in cipher and other encryptions between members of England's exiled, Stuart-supporting community.

This context certainly informs one of his most clever poems called "Written in Juice of Lemmon." The poem opens with the narrator penning a letter to his mistress, and doing so in blindness:

Whilst what I write I do not see,
I dare thus, even to you, write Poetry.
Ah foolish Muse, which do’st so high aspire,

And know’st her judgment well

How much it does thy power excel,
Yet dar’st be read, they just doom, the
Fire.

Writing in the invisible medium of lemon juice, the poet pens a secretive missive that will have to be burned to reveal its truth. Destroyed by the flame that makes its message perceptible, the letter will either prove "an Heretick" in this auto da fe or a true martyr if the mistress reciprocates the feelings it bears.

But, as the sun’s vernal heat produces vegetation on earth — "A sudden paint adorns the trees/ And all kind Natures Characters appear" — so the warmth of flame to paper slowly causes individual written characters to flower into legibility: "Here buds an A, and there a B / Here sprouts a V, and there a T /And all the flourishing Letters stand in Rows." What is more, in a lovely fantasy addressed to the paper itself, the act of burning required to render the text visible is imagined as making the mistress-reader into the author or the agent behind this seduction:

Silly, silly Paper, thou wilt think
That all this might as well be writ with
Ink,
Oh no; there’s sense in this, and
Mysterie;
Thou now maist change thy
Authors name,
And to her
Hand lay noble claim;
For as
She Reads, she Makes the words in Thee.

Ultimately, then, the poet calls upon the paper to consume itself in open flame before the mistress's eyes as a sacrifice to the gods of love. I don't know about you, but Old Ken is pretty smitten by all that.



Not so Mr. Addison. Part of Addison's beef was probably political. He was a big advocate of the Whig-identified cult of politeness to which Cowley's crytograms and Royalism would have likely appeared tarred with the thick brush of Toryism. But, putting aside these speculations, what does he actually say about Cowley? Critiquing the monotonous obsession with symbolics of fire in Cowley's poetry, Addison complains of the mixing of metaphors: "Cowley, observing the cold regard of his mistres's eyes, and at the same time their power of producing love in him, considers them as burning-glasses made of ice; and, finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, concludes the torrid zone to be habitable. When his mistress has read his letter written in juice of lemon, by holding it to the fire, he desires her to read it over a second time by love's flame ..."

Here, then, is the substance of the critique: "The reader may observe in every one of these instances, that the poet mixes the qualities of fire with those of love; and, in the same sentence, speaking of it both as a passion and as real fire, surprises the reader with those seeming resemblances or contradictions that make up all the wit in this kind of writing." Ultimately, these strange slippages offen Addison's sense of literary form. Ambiguous shifting between symbolism and object-reference should, he claims, be confined to epigrams and not allowed to spread through the range of poetic form at which Cowley tried his hand.

Not surprisingly, this is where Old Ken and Mr. Addison part company. Surely, one of the most delicious features of seventeenth century wit—and thinking more broadly—is this ubiquitous mingling (dare I say generative confusion) between the idea being explored and the objective vehicle used to pursue that exploration. In other words, Addison: don't be such a sour-puss!

Labels: , ,

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Adventures in Greece and Italy



Where has Old Ken been, you ask? Not that anyone has really been asking; but, I'll tell you anyway, friend. I've seen some some places that would knock your socks off. Places where you'd want your glasses to take it all in—but maybe they got stolen (don't worry, I'll get to that story!). First, though, let's start on the Greek island of Amorgos where the missus and I went for a family wedding.



What we're looking at here is the monastery of Hozoviotissa, which dates to the eleventh century.



As the pictures may suggest, we made our visit there on a pretty hot day. And after the steep climb up this paved goat path, visitors (such as myself!) who happen to be wearing shorts or other skin-revealing clothing are required to put on more modest attire. Thankfully, I can't share with you any images of the XXL khakis I was required to wear over my shorts to make the visit ... and encourage you to take on some sense of the majestic views outside instead.



From Amorgos, we carried on to the island of Chios. Unlike the extremely rocky and arid Cycladic islands like Amorgos, Chios is richly agricultual. A key crop—a crop, in fact, apparently unique to the island—is the dried sap of the mastic tree seen above.



The branches of the trees are sliced and the sap that oozes out dries on the ground as these little sugary crystals. Mastic has a flavor something like peppermint or maybe eucalyptus. In any case, it was regarded as a delicacy by the nearby Turks, invading Genoese and others. So the story goes, the southern half of Chios is the only place in the world where mastic will naturally coagulate in this way.



After some sun and relaxation on the lovely, pebbly beaches of souther Chios, we made our way to the village of Pyrghi where the beautiful Mrs. Digby has family roots. Among the many cool things about this literally maze-like village are the elevated walkways used to move between houses (and to pour boiling oil on marauding pirates) ...



... and the ubiquitous geometrical wall painting, visible at right.



Walking around the town, Old Ken was fascinated to see various places where these geometrical forms seemed to be carved in process ...



... and inscribed in materials other than plaster as in the case of the wooden door seen in the photograph above. I'll look forward to sharing some more thoughts with you on the graphic stylings of this fascinating village in the future.



But, from a world of graphic inscription, we were then on to the land of sculpture: the village of Pietrasanta in Tuscany where the marble quarries of Carrara—where Michelangelo cut stone for the tomb of Pope Julius II—loom in the distance.



Pietrasanta itself is a very picturesque and pleasant place; the central piazza in the early evening is visible in the photo above.



From Pietrasanta, we made a brief excursion to the walled city of Lucca ...



... where I found this convenient map of the world.



Also in Lucca, I was pleased to see that they had an important collection of sculptures by Donald Judd ...



... that were finally being asked to do an honest day's work in holding up this old wall!



Mrs. Digby unfortunately had to return home at this point, but yours truly continued on to Florence ...



... and then to Rome. As I did in fact have my glasses stolen there, my vision of the place was a little blurred. So, I recommend that you might want to check out these very characteristic sketches of Roman environs that I happened across in a random web search.



From Old Ken's point of view, this was one of the most pleasant scenes in Rome—walking to the Vatican Museums along the Tiber early in the morning in Trastevere. Maybe a hint of autumn in the air and just takin' it all in.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, August 01, 2010

Death and Life, in that order, at LACMA



Poet Susan Stewart once wrote a fascinating essay called "Death and Life, in that Order, in the Works of Charles Willson Peale" on the tensions between the impulse to preserve and the act of destroying in the museum of Philadelphia-based, nineteenth century artist Charles Willson Peale. That article came to mind while visiting an exhibition now on at LACMA examining another nineteenth century artist from Philadelphia: Thomas Eakins. If the image above does not make the point sufficiently, let me make it crystal: the place was deader than a doornail!



So, Old Ken decided it was time to take a stroll around the museum campus, passing by the famous La Brea tar pits.



Well, as yours truly was doing so, I happened to glance up at the modernist pavilion that caps the top of the little hillock overlooking the tar pits. "What a ridiculous, heavy monstrosity," I found myself thinking. "Not only has it created this absurd band of stone in the air ...



... but it has marshaled a graceless army of girders to do so. And still the vegetation keeps getting the best of the situation." Such, at least, was the spirit of my musings.



But, as I made my way around to the west corner of the pavilion where the light was more favorable, I happened to look up at this frieze I had been internally ruing. It is truly a morbid spectacle! Here, saber-toothed tigers fight over rights to a poor mammoth trapped in a tar pit.



There, in a veritable tableau to the tune of "et in Arcadia ego," a cattle skull at lower left and hungry vulture above signal the inevitable fate that awaits both the blithely grazing horses and us gazing viewers.

Of course, we might say, all of this incessant artistic representation of death and coerced reflection on mortality is only too appropriate at LACMA. Our attention is being called to the pre-historic deaths that produced the rich petroleum deposits, which lie below our very feet. Without these deaths, there would be no fortunes reaped by J. Paul Getty and his buddies that could, in the midst of LA's post-War explosion, deliver LACMA and its artful bounty.



Indeed, once you begin to notice it, this apologetic narrative seems to be sprouting up everywhere across the LACMA campus. This work of genius by Didier Hess is called Food Pyramid. It reclaims land consecrated to the sublimely useless (art) to produce that which is (theoretically) edible: fish tacos.



This apparently self-sustaining ecosystem grows all the materials required for fish tacos, including the jalapenos we see here.



While the most relevant project of this variety is Lauren Bon's Reclaimed Strawberries—she's made a self-sustaining "flag" of strawberries with found fruit and collaboration with casualties of the military—easier on the eye is Fallen Fruit's on-site garden tressel. Even though gained at the cost of death, in other words, art making life right before our eyes.

Now, it might be interesting to consider this almost compulsive performance of artists' ability to create (or facilitate) life against the waning of older ideas about art's vitality or liveliness. Not only am I thinking of ancient and early modern tropes of images so illusionistically rendered that they seem to be alive, but conversations certainly present through Abstract Expressionism about the art-object as a living being. Has a loss of belief in art's vitality, in other words, come to compel these concretized performances of its alive-ness?



Strolling back into the museum with these admittedly mandarin questions in mind, this object brought the issue right down to brass tacks. Described in the gallery (but in much more detail here) only as a "Skull Rack" from Papua New Guinea ...



... this stylized, quasi-humanoid art object has reduced the humans to rat-like skulls with cowrie shells for eyes. And it literally has them by the nose. Old Ken doesn't know too much about the art of New Guinea, but I'm guessing that you don't need a PhD in anthropology to begin understanding who controls death and life, in that order, in this piece. If only that LACMA was equally transparent about the issue!

Labels: , , ,