Inktober Day 4: Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller

When Meta Veaux Warrick Fuller showed up to train in Paris in 1899 at age 22 she earned herself the nickname, "the Delicate Sculptor of Horrors." It could have been that she presented such works to her mentor, Rodin, as Man Eating His Heart, or it could have been her taste for horror stories from her childhood. But Paris loved her and her sculpture became incredibly popular. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Mary Cassatt organized a one-woman show for her work while several pieces were shown at the prestigious Salons. She thrived under the guidance of Rodin and his expressive conceptual style (you may have seen Rodin's most famous piece, The Thinker, a man hunched like he's sitting on the toilet, with his chin resting on his fist).

 

The Wretched, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1902. (image via). You can really see the influence of Fuller's teacher Rodin. Rodin was known for combining a slight amount of looseness or sketchiness (i.e. the lumpy surface texture) with expressive poses to create incredibly emotional, evocative sculptures.

Another crucial Paris friend who shaped her future was W.E.B. Du Bois. They met through a family friend (the famous Black painter Henry Ossawa Tanner) who let Fuller stay at his house when she was refused lodging at a women's club because she was Black. Through them she amassed a social circle of Black intellectuals, something she had missed since she left her home in Philadelphia, where there was a thriving Black middle class community. She, Tanner and Du Bois discussed the importance of creating an art that centered Black experiences and presented Black identity with pride. 

She was hesitant at first, concerned that it would limit her scope as an artist. She was already battling the constrictive "woman artist" label and didn't want to be constricted even further. But Fuller began to incorporate painful themes of Black experience into her repertoire of "delicate horrors" and was relieved to find that the Parisian public didn't find her gender to be an impediment to appreciating these difficult pieces. Parisians did express shock that a woman could have created such "masculine works of primitive power," or depict such "horror, pain and sorrow," but the pieces were appreciated and her reputation flourished.

 Returning to Philadelphia in 1903 was tough. The art world rejected Fuller because she was Black and her sculpture didn't get much appreciation. But she kept working and secured a large Federal Government commission (the first Black woman ever to receive one) for the Jamestown colony Tricentennial, to create plaster figures and dioramas depicting the Black lives in Jamestown from arrival of slaves through modern life, showing Black businessmen, newly freed slaves building a house, and a college commencement among other scenes. Other work of hers was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and in the segregated "Negro area" of several World Fairs. 

Her work at this time that centered Black experiences with empathy and value, was absolutely revolutionary. She didn't focus on glorifying the heroes of Black history, as much as to convey experience as something worth portraying, boldly in bronze. She worked directly from a point of view which she never tempered. That is, her sculptures didn't say "please allow me to change your point of view, here's why you should." Instead her sculpture said, "this is what I've seen, this is how I feel-- here, now you feel it too." The shock and sorrow of violent acts were presented in the tradition of Parisian sculpture, as part of the long tradition of expressing shock and sorrow of any other group, right back to antiquity. The everyday lives of Black people she treated as traditional genre painting, neither idealizing nor pandering, but simply showing it because it was absorbing and worthwhile. This just wasn't done at the time; the pressure-cooker of raging racism on one side and respectability politics on the other had largely prevented such a reasonable endeavor.

 

Two sculptures by Meta Vaux Warrick Harris. (image via). I couldn't find much information about these but they are lovely. I would guess they're from the early 1900s.

 

Self Portrait by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, undated. (image via).

In 1909 Fuller's husband moved the family from Boston out to Framingham, MA, a small town outside the city. He planned for Fuller to give up sculpture to be a full time mother and society hostess (the newlyweds would go on to have three children together). But Fuller saw sculpture as her divine calling. She continued sculpting at the back of the house, which her husband hated. Dr. Solomon Fuller, a psychiatrist, really should've known better because when he proposed in 1907, after knowing Fuller only a month, she accepted but insisted up front on a three-year engagement so that she could develop her art career before settling down. What did he think was going to happen?

To make matters worse the next year nearly all of her work was destroyed in a warehouse fire. She was devastated for years by the loss of her life's work compounded with her husband's lack of support. "You never should have left Paris," wrote an old friend dolefully. 

Emancipation by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, views from three different angles, 1913. (images via here, Pinterest and here). The monument stands in Boston and was commissioned to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (i.e. the legal end of slavery). Most representations of Emancipation, especially at the time, involved broken shackles, humble kneeling men who lift their heads dramatically toward heaven. There's also often a priest-like white man standing over. Fuller's is quite different, featuring a man and woman standing proudly around a tree with a third woman weeping on the other side of the tree. Fuller wrote, "I represented the race by a male and a female figure standing under a tree the branches of which are the fingers of Fate grasping at them to draw them back into the fateful clutches of hatred. [There is also] Humanity weeping over her suddenly freed children who, beneath the gnarled fingers of Fate, step forth into the world unafraid."

Bust of a Young Boy, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1913. (image via) As a young woman Beaux had studied portrait art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts before studying in Paris. She continued occasionally with portraiture alongside her allegorical art throughout her career.

Sorrow or Mother and Child by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1914. (image via).

She found Framingham to be somewhat hospitable and supportive of her art (many of her public commissions are still displayed around the town), but also quietly hostile. Her white neighbors started a petition to try to force the Fuller family to move. Despite Fuller's increasing dedication to religious themes and involvement in church productions, her family eventually left their church due to racial discrimination. While in Framingham Fuller wrote plays and designed sets and costumes for Black theater groups back in Boston. She wrote poetry and painted. She became highly involved in activism for women's suffrage as well (but stopped once she realized the movement was exclusionary toward Black women). But she was isolated from her old contacts in the Black intellectual circles of Philadelphia and Paris. Preeminent members of Black society visited their home, but she was feeling cut off. Between this and her time spent in domestic work, her sculpture production slowed. Still, most of what remains today after the 1910 warehouse fire is from this period. By then, with children, Fuller was financially dependent on her husband and stuck in a depressing situation. World Was I began and her mood sank further.

Danse Macabre by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1914. (image via). "Danse Macabre" means "the dance of death," and it has been a theme in European art since the Middle Ages. The "dance" is usually shown uniting everyone, king or peasant. This was sculpted during World War I, a war that changed the generations's understanding of war and carnage. People enlisted expecting dignified battle and instead found thousands upon thousands of boys used as cannon fodder, living and dying in muddy trenches. The Danse Macabre has always struck me as the kind of poisonous sarcasm that is sometimes the only thing left to express, like when someone is so horrified they laugh. The cloak is beautifully sculpted, both enhancing the movement of the dance and resembling an engulfing ball of flame.

 

 

A sculpture (now lost) called Immigrant in America, created for an exhibition about immigration. Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1915. (image via) These sorts of commissions for world fairs and government-sponsored exhibitions were Fuller's bread and butter.

 

Peace Halting The Ruthlessness of War, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1917. (image via). This was created at the close of World War I. This use of allegory (representing Peace and War as individual people) was much more traditional than in her more famous Ethiopia four years later. The efforts of Peace to stop Ruthlessness look pretty futile in this sculpture, and that's how it must have felt at the time; that's how it still usually feels. I love how War on its horse looks like it's rising from hell or out of the sea. The composition is really beautiful; there's a lot going on but it isn't crowded, just a nice sense of movement and form. 

 

A sculpture bust by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (image via). I couldn't find information on this sculpture, but it might be a self portrait because that looks like her nose.

 

Mary Turner, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller. Painted plaster sculpture, 1919. (image via) MaryTurner had been murdered in Georgia by a seething mob the year before this sculpture was created. It was one of the most gruesome lynchings ever, and frankly one of the most elaborately violent murders I've ever heard of, anywhere. The mob had been searching for a Black laborer who had shot a white plantation owner who had beaten and exploited him. The man fled and vengeful white mob began murdering any black bystander they suspected might have anything to do with helping him, which was at least 13 people. Mary Turner's husband was one such victim. Turner was eight months pregnant at the time. She cried out publicly at the injustice and shamed the murderers, threatening to have them arrested. The mob, then consisting of around 700 white people, tortured her then murdered her unborn baby and then her, then mutilated the corpses. The mob continued their "manhunt" and committing more murders, causing over 500 people to flee the area in fear of their lives. No justice was ever done for any of the victims. White newspapers characterized Turner's protestations about her husband's murder as "attitude." The NAACP brought the lynchings to the attention of Congress to introduce anti-lynching legislation. It passed the House of Representatives overwhelmingly, but then Southern senators united to filibuster the legislation repeatedly. It never passed. It's especially lucky that Fuller memorialized Turner in bronze because as the decades passed the episode was erased: local museums and historical organizations denied knowing anything about it and schools didn't teach it. There was a grassroots effort in the 1990s-2000s to re-research the event, publicly memorialize it and educate the public. Fuller herself likely would have been made aware through the NAACP newspaper's investigative reporting. [As an aside, I can't imagine a more terrifying assignment than being that investigator sent by the NAACP].

Black soldiers and workers returning from World War I had finished the bloody battle that was ostensibly for freedom and democracy, only to return to an America that was even worse in terms of racial oppression and violence. Conservative whites who had been steeped in the violence and trauma of trench warfare, aggrieved by social upheavals like women's suffrage and youth culture, their daily lives and hopes held in interminable suspension by WWI and the flu pandemic, released their pent-up rage and fear on Black people. In the 1920s white emotions exploded with hair-trigger massacres, lynch mobs, deadly race riots (not only in the South) and rampant domestic terrorism. The KKK, which was largely fading, came back with a vengeance, nationwide, more powerful than it had ever been. Social reform and community building became nearly impossible in an atmosphere where failure to maintain the illusion of docile submission, even so much as eye contact, could result in multiple murder.  

Black people migrated north to big cities in droves, seeking employment and and a better social situation. That made Harlem the unofficial capitol of Black American culture. Just as Fuller moved to Framingham the Harlem Renaissance was aleady beginning in New York. Black identity could suddenly be big and bold, shouted from the rooftops in poetry, music, activism and fashion. Even something as simple as living a bourgeois life was a deeply transgressive part of the movement. The phenomenon spread across the country to other cities, to Black colleges, Black churches, small Black towns founded by freed slaves-- anywhere that Black people had made safe-ish communities. That's why some historians prefer "The Negro Movement," but I, like most people, prefer the poetic "Harlem Renaissance."

Artists such as Augusta Savage turned to Fuller's work as inspiration. Other artists took inspiration from folk art and African art, rejecting the idea of upholding Eurocentric traditions. Aaron Douglas (perhaps my favorite), for instance, married a cubist-folk style with African motifs in his murals, looking to Latino artists like Diego Rivera for inspiration; while Jacob Lawrence's paintings blended German expressionism with bright African colors and modern American subject-matter. The art world changed immensely between 1910 and 1940 , and Harlem changed right along with it, with influences changing from fauvism, cubism and expressionism at the beginning of the movement, to surrealism, socialist realism, and abstract expressionism toward the end. But artists of the Negro Movement always offered an interpretation via Black identity, from African-inspired or jazz-inspired style to cultural commentary. 

An influential writer and chronicler of the Harlem Renaissance cemented the idea that Fuller ushered in the movement with her Ethiopia Awakening in 1921. But that isn't quite true; the timeline is a bit off. And it was her entire body of work dating back to 1900 which had such influence. This same writer also expressed disappointment in Fuller as a black artist, however, because although she dedicated herself to showing Black experiences, she was also dedicated to the traditional European style of Rodin. The reduced Fuller's legacy in art history to something of a "one-hit wonder" phenomenon of Ethiopia. 

Fuller was older than many famous Harlem Renaissance artists, some of whom weren't even born until 1915, and her work is more old-fashioned. If her sculptures had a soundtrack it would be French Impressionist piano; the iconic art of the movement would sound like jazz. Among the stodgier moments of the movement were somber memorials to the dignified heroes of Black history, such as relief sculptures and memorial plaques which documented individuals and events in a straightforward style. This history certainly needed memorializing, but as artwork I prefer Fuller's experiential, more conceptual take. Despite her Edwardian style I actually find Fuller's approach to be more forward-thinking in this sense than some of the Harlem Renaissance's more literal takes on "Black issues."

Two versions of Ethiopia, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1921 (Encyclopedia Britannica puts the date at 1914. Some versions of this existed before 1921). (left image via, right image source unavailable). This piece was later retitled Ethiopia Awakening, by someone other than Fuller. I have no idea if she approved or not. However the added "Awakening" helped the sculpture serve its retroactive purpose of ushering in the Harlem Renaissance. It had originally been commissioned by W.E.B. Du Bois to symbolize the musical and industrial contributions of Black people to the US, as part of a larger 1921 exhibition called "Americans of Negro Lineage." Since Fuller had studied under Rodin and had made complex emotionally-driven group sculptures similar to Rodin's famous Burghers of Calais, Du Bois probably expected a similar take. But Fuller used the Egyptian figure as an allegory, and its striking simplicity have given it enduring fame. The one flexed hand is asymmetrical, something you never see in ancient Egyptian sculpture, and brings the sculpture squarely into the present. It's also sweet and delicate-- another unexpected twist on the figure of a Pharoah or Queen. “Here was a group," said Fuller, "who had once made history and now after a long sleep was awaking, gradually unwinding the bandage of its mummied past and looking out on life again, expectant but unafraid and with at least a graceful gesture.” Because of the allegorical figure representing the African American people, the sculpture is considered to be the first "pan-African American" art. Full disclosure, I grabbed that last factoid from the Smithsonian's site, but I don't quite understand what they mean by "pan-African American." Something representing all African-Americans as a people? The first incidence of pan-Africanism (of the international Alfrican diaspora, I assume), in America? I had trouble learning about this term and its use in 1920s art history because there was another movement in the 1960s called "pan-Africanism" that had more to do with African independence from colonialism. If I had to guess, it's linked to Garveyism and the idea of uniting and lifting up the Black race across different countries. Before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s this was the most prevalent concept in Black activism in the early 20th century.

Around 1928 Fuller actually created a secret sculpture studio. Without her husband finding out, she bought property with her inheritance, oversaw the construction and maintenance of the property, and would sculpt and paint there for the next 40 years. She taught sculpture classes here as well. She turned her attention to religious art (still often with Black themes, such as a Crucifiction dedicated to a four Black girls killed in a church bombing in Birmingham). When he did eventually discover the studio, he underhandedly told her he was impressed-- not with her dedication to sculpture, but that she managed to do a real estate deal all by herself. He looks like a pretty bad husband on paper, but I don't know what their relationship was actually like. In the decade preceding his death, when he was ill and blind, Fuller dedicated herself to caretaking. After he died in 1953 she remained in Framingham, continuing to exhibit her work at Howard University, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and other institutions, until her death in 1968.
 

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller in her home studio in Framingham (bottom) and the reassembled studio in the museum in Danforth (top). Yeah, you can visit it. (images via here and here). I think this is the "secret studio" but it might be the one she'd built previously at the back of the house.

 

Jason by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, undated. Painted plaster. (image via).

 

Dark Hero, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller. (Image via)

Lazy Bones, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1930. (image via).

Reverie, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1930. (image via). 

 

The Talking Skull, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1939. (image via). The title comes from an African folk tale in which a boy finds a talking skull. "Tongue brought me here," the skull tells the boy-- tongue, meaning talking-- "and if you're not careful tongue will bring you here." The boy doesn't understand but he runs to the village and tells everyone he sees that he found a talking skull. They behead him for lying and the skull reiterates the warning. In another version he brings them back to the skull but it won't say anything. Everyone leaves and the skull says, "you talk too much." Given the date (the beginning of WWII) it might be about history repeating itself. Of course, it could simply be about secrets and being indiscreet. She wasn't a stranger to keeping secrets like her studio or having to wear social masks at times because of her race and gender. It may be an exploration of life and death, or of confronting lost ancestry and the passage of time.

Here's my drawing of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller for Inktober. There are some good photographic portraits and snapshots of her around but I ended up using the hazy one in the studio that I showed above, because the atmospheric lighting effect would make a good drawing. I also thought such an incredibly lightweight lighting effect (especially in her hair) would be an interesting way to portray a sculptor whose work is solid mass. There's not much data there-- you can barely make out her features-- but I was able to use other pictures of her to fill in the details. I cropped the pose in a way that uses the implied movement and drama that Fuller's sculptures often employed. And I tried to keep the pen markings in little directional clusters that recall the hand-worked surfaces of her clay sculptures.

 

This post is part of a series of posts from Inktober 2020 about women artists of the 17-early 1900s who each had some significant connection to Paris, France. Each post focuses on the art-historical context of the artist among her colleagues and ends with a portrait I did in ink of the artist in their style (roughly). Other posts in the series: 

 

Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun

Claude Cahun

Cecilia Beaux

Bessie MacNicol

Sonia Delaunay

Rosa Bonheur

Inktober Day 5: Build

I had fun designing this bust of Victory, combining all the Classical symbols of victory into one messed up Victory-monster.

Bust of Victory. Inktober 2019, Day 5, prompt word "Build." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen [Image description: Drawing of a sculpted bust in Classical Greek style. It's a woman's neck and shoulders with a man's bald head wearing laurel leaves behind the ears. One small wing protrudes from his forhead, squishing one of his eyes and brows, and the other wing protrudes from his nostril. His mouth and chin are a lion's muzzle. He stares ahead of him, to the right out of frame, and the background is plain white.]

Avant garde clothing by Iris van Herpen

[video: a profile of fashion/costume designer Iris van Herpen, showing clothes that are extremely impractical, ethereal and surprising. Lots of laser cut shapes and high-tech materials manipulated so they look organic or alien.]

Too Many Statues? A Response to Martin Kettle.

As you may know, a few days ago a bronze statue of English suffragist Millicent Fawcett was unveiled in London's Parliament Square. It is the much-celebrated first female statue in this public square of national importance which already features statues of notable historic kings and political figures such as Winston Churchill. And today in The Guardian, Martin Kettle penned an article calling for fewer statues, not more.

Of course he has no objections to commemorating Fawcett, Kettle explains, and proclaims his goodwill toward Tuesday's celebrants. But the thankless job of raining on their parade falls upon his shoulders. To add to the statues in London, he fears, is to fuel an arms race of power and influence that statues represent. What's to stop Trump or Tony Blair from commemorating themselves in statue form to express their power, just as commemorative Reagan fever swept the US a few decades ago as an expression of conservative power? After all, he points out, one need only look at the statues already in Parliament Square to see how conservative they skew-- hardly representative of the legacies of liberalism and labour movements (or the existence of Scotland). To only the most power-hungry of the victors go the spoils. Modern Britain is a pluralistic society, writes Kettle, yet its statues do not-- and indeed cannot-- reflect that. No new statues in Parliament Square, proposes Kettle. What we need is fewer statues-- to remove a few of the real stinkers.

 When I read a news article I always keep in mind that authors rarely get to write their own headlines and bylines, and are under immense pressure to remain topical and grab attention. So I'm willing to look past the article's function as a knee-jerk "Nuh-uhh!" to a feminist achievement, in order to consider the real meat of the article. Look past it, but not ignore it. After all, how fishy is it that the midst of a celebration for a feminist statue just happens to be the moment when Kettle feels enough is enough with the statues-- or at least the point where The Guardian feels the public will be receptive toward that view? Only a few years ago a Gandhi statue was unveiled in Parliament Square, and before that Nelson Mandela. If Kettle is right about London being in the grips of a statue-fever, more are surely to come. Perhaps Kettle could have saved his article for one of them and avoided participating in the spurious phenomenon of declaring that things have Gone Too Far the second women approach equal representation in film, academics and the corporate world. Unless the next few sculptures to go up are also popular and well-deserved, in which case Kettle's entire point would be more challenging to make.

However Kettle makes an excellent point about statues as the inevitable expression of power-hungriness and dominance rather than popular merit or moral courage. Even with all the care modern generations give to commemorating only the worthy in statues, will our values hold up through future generations? Or will they seem as backward and oppressive as centuries past appear to us? At the same time, when one considers 2018 as merely part of an endless ancient cycle of struggle and renewal, why would Kettle imagine the struggle to express dominance would stop with us? Why would our generation stop striving to leave our enduring mark on the world?

While "dominance and power" might conjure images of a feudal warlord, it's surprisingly also an excellent framing of what Millicent Fawcett helped achieve. Suffrage is about power: the power to participate in one's own government and society, to lead, to resist, to excel. It's no mere feel-good "empowerment," as the word is so often overused today, but the very tangible power to move through society as an equal citizen. And while feminists abhor accusations of seeking dominance over men, the fact is that a belief in equality and civil rights must be socially dominant in order for any citizen not to be oppressed. How can a woman access crucial services if the majority of those services subscribe to male supremancy? Fair interactions with police, judges, medical workers, educators and the rest of society would be impossible, and so would be equality.

The presence of a bronze statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliamentary Square is likely more about cementing and defending that dominance for all to see, than about Fawcett herself. To those who support male supremacy, the Fawcett statue is precisely the Trump statue scenario that Kettle fears. Likewise those more radically progressive citizens for whom Fawcett's activism was hopelessly milquetoast are taunted by the more moderate dominance represented by the statue. Under-served pluralism, indeed.

Yet despite nods to "plurality" and "both sides," no British person of any political faction has gone unaffected by what Fawcett helped to achieve. If anything, marking the magnitude of women's suffrage with her sculpture a over century later is too little, too late. Is it really fair to say we need a new approach to public art because statues like hers "emphasize our differences"? Isn't that just a way of erasing history to avoid controversy? Do women really need to be "brought together" with those who deny their equal humanity?

But when Kettle sets up a false division between banal statues and public sculpture with more artistic merit, I beg to differ. Sure, statues often fall victim to the bland yet offensive bad taste of art-by-committee, simply because so much money and municipal posturing are involved. But so does much of high-profile public art. Are we really going to weigh the social value of Trafalgar Square's giant bronze thumbs-up against the hard-boiled civic blandness of the Fawcett statue? To what end? When I think of a great statue I think of a sculpture that is also a great work of art. The Einstein memorial in Washington, DC., comes to mind: an expressively lumpy hulk luxuriating in his quiet, intimate hideaway, as inviting and accessible as he is lost in thought. Or the lesser known elegant bronze punks of Berlin, forever occupying the steps of a local government building in their aesthetically marvelous simplicity, relatable yet eternal. Or Rodin's lyrical memorial to the Burghers of Calais. Unlike art-by-committee, great statues like these don't give the public what it wants so much as give the public what it didn't yet know it wanted. They teach and connect because they're visually expressive as sculptures. What we need are more of these. Not less.

With his call for public art instead of statues, I think Kettle is also too quick to dismiss the cultural value people continue to place on statues. Most folks don't have the money or clout to influence what gets cast in bronze for the town square. But if the popularity of Madame Toussad's is any indication, statues still matter to people. Hardly any vacation or weekend downtown is complete without a selfie with the local statue, especially if it's physically accessible. Popular bronzes of Marilyn Monroe and Jimmy Hendrix demonstrate that people still want to see their generation's heroes celebrated as statues. Sales are strong for pricey handcrafted figurines of fictional characters. Since Planet of the Apes, films have relied on the pure shock value of the beloved Statue of Liberty getting damaged. The playful Italian film Garibaldi's Lovers shows life with public statues in a warmer light.

But what I'm especially surprised Kettle neglected to mention, given its topical relevance, is the current movement to remove offensive statues in the US. Protesters recently toppled a statue commemorating Confederate soldiers in front of the Durham County Courthouse which had originally been erected in the 1920s heyday of the KKK. Police had greased it up with cooking oil to prevent protesters from climbing on it, but following the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally and murder, the statue met its end, appropriately enough, when protesters managed to fasten it in a noose. Meanwhile in New York City a statue of Dr. J Marion Sims, the "Father of Gynecology," is no more. Enough New Yorkers found it untenable to glorify a man who experimented on and tortured enslaved women in the name of medicine, that they successfully petitioned for its removal. Many traditionally celebrated figures who contributed to Native American genocide or who were among the most egregious proponents of slavery are also up for removal. There's a tradition of toppling statues-- Hussein in Iraq and Stalin in the former Soviet Bloc come to mind-- and the US is having its moment.

While on the surface a tendency to topple bronzes may support Kettle's call for fewer statues, in fact I think it shows just how deeply connected people remain to these sculptures and the symbolic power they represent. I don't see this moment as the moment when we all calm down and, for the first time ever, stop struggling for visibility in the town square, stop caring so much about statues, stop striving to adjust the public displays of power to something that more accurately reflects our lives and times.

The "arms race" that I see happening is really a different sort, a race between nonspecific public art and specific statues. That is, between sculptures commemorating enormous groups or ideas versus individual heroes. The lure and moving power of less specific, more abstract sculptures is undeniable. Take for example Käthe Kollwitz's powerful Mother and Son (Pietá) in a Berlin memorial to all victims of war and tyranny. Or Yinko Shonibare's new abstract "Wind Sculpture" in New York exploring migration, the African diaspora, and the American mixing of cultures. I'm glad to share a world with these sculptures. But the case for celebrating individual heroes is becoming ever more difficult-- and not for lack of unsung inspiring people. The idea of the Hero is increasingly removed from reality, placed into superhero movies, sci fi, fantasy, or even the distant past. Today's "badass" female character exists in mythical realms, has supernatural powers, does violent things that would be illegal and impossible in our real world. Never does her world threaten to intersect with reality. In our increasingly bureaucratic, anonymous world the idea of a real-world hero-- indeed, that individual people just like us can make a difference-- threatens to disappear.

A miscellaneous handful of Kettle's points still stick in my craw. If the 1970s unveiling of a statue of Winston Churchill in Parliamentary Square was "inevitable," why is it still so surprising (through no fault of Kettle's) to commemorate those who won liberty for literally half of all citizens? Why does Kettle approve of the US policy of waiting over 50 years after a president's term to commemorate him in statue, yet considers the Fawcett statue an imprudent (though honorable) move over a century after she made her mark? And finally: what, exactly, is so horrible about having an abundance of statues?

Storefront with an Elephant, Paris, photo by Ciana Pullen

Storefront with an Elephant Head, Paris, photo by Ciana Pullen, 2014.

Happy Halloween.

Jack-o-lantern party. I made the big one in the middle; husband made the one on the right with the pentagram eye. My inspiration was Leland Palmer.

Andy Goldsworthy

A natural artwork by Andy Goldsworthy. Red leaves floating in a small icy tidepool, arranged with empty black space at the center.

On oldie but goodie: clips of the film about land artist Andy Goldsworthy, "Rivers and Tides," set to music from CocoRosie. Video features Goldsworthy constructing impermanent natural structures and their slow deterioration: beehive shapes from stacked slate or ice and the tides around them; long chains of leaves left to float in a current; shockingly bright graphic shapes made by rearranging natural elements so their colors are grouped together; icicles broken and reattached as a snaking form attached to a stone; Goldsworthy lying on the ground in the rain and standing up to reveal his own crisp dry outline; the artist stacking a dome of driftwood that lifts as the tide comes in and floats out with the outgoing tide; and other natural materials rearranged into striking and precarious forms.

ETA: Goldsworthy working reminds me of playing with my friend Stella in elementary school. Stella had some woods behind her house and we spent a good deal of time trying to make things out of what we found, with a fantasy of being some sort of medieval woodsy hermits. We never got very far, but we did things like extracting the "glue" from osage oranges ("mock oranges") and using it, or weaving tiny things with pine needles, or extracting the orange color from the inner bark of the osage orange trees, or making food from wild onions and stuff in the yard. So even though we never made much I recognized Goldsworthy's process from a very long time ago. All this to say, having this realization made me think of when people see contemporary art and get angry and say, "my kid could do that!" Well, I actually recognized something I did as a kid in contemporary art, and it was pretty exciting. 

Nathalie Djurberg's "The Parade"

This exhibit, Nathalie Djurberg's "The Parade" (2011) at the New Museum in NY, looks quite worthwhile. I especially appreciate Thomas Micchelli's vivid descriptions and thoughtful interpretation, especially since I'm guessing the show won't be stopping through Charleston any time soon.

Nathalie Djurberg's "The Parade" 2011. New Museum, NY. This shows only the sculpture; there were also claymation films projected on all the walls. [Image: cavernous white gallery filled with colorful sculptures of exotic or tropical birds ranging from knee- to head-height, standing around in pools of light cast by spotlights. The birds look quite solid, like they're made of metal frames, then covered with textures-- the feathers stick out individually-- and cloth and painted to be somewhat cartoonish while retaining a theatrically realistic look.]

Liz Miller at REDUX: Picturesque Evacuation Ploy

You walk into REDUX to see Liz Miller's installation and you're hit with a shocking orange wall at the same time that a friendly front desk person greets you with brochures. Then you notice the title off to the side of the orange wall: "Picturesque Evacuation Ploy."

You walk timidly around the wall through the opening to the gallery and are hit with this:

The rhythmic part of the installation that greets the viewer when they walk in the door. This is the part that reminds me of the gym. Other people were reminded of dragons. [Image: A wall about ten feet long painted shocking tangerine orange. Seven or eight identical 3-D structures made of thin flat felt emerge from the wall, each about six or eight feet tall and reaching six or eight feet from the wall toward the viewer's walkway. The felt is black, robin's egg pale blue, tangerine orange and blood red. Each piece is cut into intricate decorative shapes made from silhouettes of pistols, rifles and other shapes I cannot make out assembled in a kaleidoscopic manner. The felt pieces are attached using brads with tiny orange heads. Together the structures give the effect of a giant 3-d crepe paper banner than has been made of folded cut paper. On the perpendicular wall the white under-paint is left visible in some spots. At the orange-white border little black shapes march like ants. They could be mice, birds or something else entirely.]

And you say, "Woooooowwwww!"

 You can see the scale of the sculpture in relation to this viewer and her stylin' blue-lined boots: probably fifteen feet tall, like the branches of a giant fir tree.

Then you wonder aloud how she did it, then you gingerly step in between some shapes and briefly fantasize about living in them.

My friend noticed the pistol and rifle shapes first, then I could see them everywhere. At that point I decided to read the Artist's Statement. Miller writes that her installations, "...recontextualize shapes, signs and symbols from disparate historical and contemporary imagery to create abstract fictions. Existing forms from a multitude of sources are co-opted, altered and spliced to create hybrid identities...." 

A small portion of one of Miller's felt shapes where you can see the revolver motif that is otherwise obscured through kaleidoscopic repetition (the revolver points to the left in the image). [Image: flat black revolver shape viewed from the side on a flat white wall]

Dear Readers, at this time I should also explain, as I see it, an art historical/theoretical concept involving deconstruction and post-structuralism generally called, "Death of the Author." The term comes from a 1967 essay of that title by Roland Barthes.

Let's say that Wile E. Coyote is about to fall off a cliff. He holds up a sign that reads, "HELP," drops the sign, and vanishes over the cliff. But a few minute later, along comes a hiker who sees the sign. What does it mean? Well, that depends on what the hiker and their culture brings to the table. "Help Wanted?" The Beatles' "Help?" An offer of help? A meaningless sign in a foreign language? A reminder of their job as a 911 dispatcher? Wile E. Coyote's intentions and psyche become irrelevant and the mesh of meanings and contexts to any given sign, symbol or word, along with the viewer's experience, provide legitimate sources of meaning and interpretation for the sign.

Culturally, for example, this is significant because this essay (and the work of Jacques Derrida, postmodern linguists and others) became popular in the academic world at a time when Western culture, previously seen generally though the lens of middle- and upper-class white male society, was experiencing movements for decolonization, civil rights, women's rights, and GL (later BTQ) rights, as well as foreign involvement in Vietnam, Cuba and Latin America, and massive immigration from Southeast Asia, all of which persistently revealed myriad points of view. I can think of many times when someone has made an offensive cultural joke or comment and tried, unsuccessfully, to follow up with, "...but that's not what I meant!" Death of the Author, in action.

Artistically, this idea was central to the transition from Modernism to Post-Modernism. Whereas objects of art had been viewed as distinct objects unaffected by a viewer, both physically and contextually, created by an artist whose psyche and intent is up for artistic interpretation, PoMo subverted this. Some artists, like the pristine minimalist sculptor Donald Judd, erased the expressive brushstrokes and fingerprints of the artist, so prized in Modernism, so that the object stood on its own in meditative coexistence with the viewer. Other artists took an interactive approach, such as Felix González-Torres, who made piles of candy in galleries that the viewers could take. Artists sought to make viewers aware of the act of interpretation. Other artists emphasized the power of the viewer in relation to the artistic intent by making themselves pawns in their own art: putting themselves through documented ordeals, for example, or using their own body as sculpture or artistic tool. Still others emphasized the shared physical space of a work of art and the viewer by making intrusive or interactive art or working with installation, which envelops rather than confronts a viewer, as a way of undermining the fixed fortress-like connotations of Modernist paintings and sculptures.

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So now you can see why, when reading Miller's Artist's Statement, I immediately thought of Death of the Author.   Miller has chosen to literally deconstruct symbols by physically obscuring them and actually bending them. She has stripped the gun symbol down to its physical components and used those components to create a pretty, softly tactile modern fairy-tale environment which suspends disbelieve through sheer craftsmanship and scale. She has also made flat shapes emerge from the wall into the third dimension. Merging painting/2-D with sculpture has been a hallmark of Post-Modernism but is particularly relevant to Miller's physical manipulation of symbols. The lacework of shadows on the walls from the felt recalls Dan Flavin's neon sculptures and their emphasis on the immaterial interaction of artwork and environment. Because the installation is so large and you can step between some of the shapes it is also somewhat interactive. The viewer's space is sufficiently invaded. At this point I interpreted the title, Picturesque Evacuation Ploy, as yet another symbol that had been stripped of its meaning and context, and recontextualised in an abstract fictive manner by putting disparate words together in a nonsensical way. What, now, does "picturesque evacuation ploy" even mean besides the title of this specific show?

But I think there are other conflicting messages in this show that make it much more than an homage to the Death of the Author. For instance I mentioned that my friends and I immediately wondered how she created the installation. Hand-cut or laser-cut? How was it assembled, etc. Because of the level of in-your-face craftsmanship the viewer's attention is immediately diverted to the artist creating the piece. What was her process, what were her intentions? Moreover, even as I appreciate how Miller has stripped the symbols of their meanings, I still wonder, why those symbols? I revert back to the generally acknowledged meaning of "gun" as a weapon while I wonder why she chose that symbol to deconstruct. The repetition also poses a problem for me: making a marking into a symbol is supposed to add meaning rather than remove it. And repeating an image ad nauseam a la Warhol's "Marilyn" can make an image into a symbol. But repetition can also, like Warhol's repeated $ sign, strip a symbol of its meaning. The title is beginning to recover some, if not much, of the words' former meanings and becomes, like the show, attention-grabbing and complicated, evocative of a beautiful emergency.

The gun is in some ways an apt metaphor for the show: it's a visual assault in bright colors that creates a "Bam!" effect when you walk in. The shapes seem machine-like and, along one wall, rhythmically echo a military drumbeat. Walking through the gallery feels a little like walking through the interior world of any given addled person with a gun who makes tragic headlines: sort of crazy, poundingly rhythmic in some places, culminating in a frenzied upward spiral of jumbled shapes.

The irony is clear: fuzzy soft pretty gun shapes in felt. Pretty guns dominating an environment created by someone who, because of her gender, is more likely to be a victim of gun violence, and because of her nationality (I assume she is American) willingly or unwillingly, benefits from massive military violence perpetrated by the US.

A portion of the less structured side of the installation, showing how the shapes continue fluidly from 2-D wall images to a 3-D structure. Also shows the full height (fifteen feet?).

Miller's Artist's Statement goes on to read, "...Forged relationships between benign and malignant forms confuse the original implications of each while revealing the precariousness of perception and how easily it can be tampered with. Recent projects pit Baroque and Gothic pattern and ornament against forms derived from armor and weaponry. Seemingly oppositional pairings create duplicitous environments where conflicting messages are conveyed." 

My mind was already heading down the rabbit hole of military actions and public perception: the Iran-Contra Affair, the CIA, proxy wars, police actions, the military-industrial complex, war-time bans on free press, censorship of images of dead soldiers, the complicit media. At this time the meaningfulness and meaninglessness of repetition began to sink in. How Miller, like the media, has numbed the symbol of the gun and created something vibrant and attractive in its place. The small symbols that march ant-like around the orange/white borders suddenly leap off the wall-- or out of the distant space of our television sets-- and clash in three dimensions, in a way that invades our physical space. How it all takes place in an installation that looks fun and contemporary, like an anime future-world or Tord Boontje for Target. I reconsidered the title: "picturesque," attractive, staged; "evacuation," escapism, vacuousness; "ploy," conspiracy, coy persuasion. A misleading invitation to escape into attractive fictions. 

A portion of the less structured side of the exhibit showing the orange paint on the floor and the play of light and shadow cast by the felt.

I stupidly missed the Artist Lecture, so this whole post could be way off base, but the show will remain up at REDUX through November 26, 2011. Go see it!!

Leo Osborne: Juxtapose at Martin Gallery

Leo Osborne. "Gathering of Owls," burled wood sculpture, 23x17x12." This sculpture isn't at Martin Gallery but is representative of what's there. [Image: a hunk of burled, or knotted, wood left dark and uncarved in some spots and carved and sanded in other spots to reveal owl heads and body parts in a smooth light maple color.]

If you are like me you have daydreams of the set of The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband and Whistler's "Peacock Room" in the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery. So if you're like me you should head to Martin Gallery to see Leo Osborne's animal paintings. You might have already seen his sculptures at Martin Gallery: gorgeous burled wood sanded down to a smooth buttery finish in most spots and left jagged in others, formed into swooping abstract shapes or somewhat abstracted animals, often stained with paint that works with the wood's natural pattern and color. You can see more of his work at his website.

Leo Osborne. "Rumi K," burled maple wood sculpture, 14x15x6."

But at the opening last night Osborne was showing paintings of animals that accompanied his sculptures. Most were acrylic and encaustic on gold leaf and very decorative. Each painting was accompanied by a handwritten short poem on lumpy handmade paper that was clearly meant to indicate the magical poetic meaning of each piece. But because I'm a weirdo who doesn't like most poetry (or maybe I just don't get it) I thought they were a little superfluous. The paintings themselves were already full of mystery and were deeply connected to storytelling.

Leo Osborne. "Silent Wisdom," acrylic painting. It's about 1.5 to 2 feet square, if I recall. The accompanying poem read, "In clutter and clamor/ our lives now entwined/ constant information/ no peace do we find/ / but sometimes/ between all that frazzled dumb noise/ a silent wisdom above/ speaks only to love." [Image: painting of an owl's head looking over its wing at the viewer like The Shadow peeking over his cape. Head takes up most of the frame. The background is a halo- or moon-like gold circle and the owl is thinly painted so you can see through the layers.]

His paintings and sculptures were much more complex in person so these photographs unfortunately don't pull you in in the same way (so go check them out in person!). The owl above, for instance, is on a gold leaf background with a negative circle incised in some sort of mystery material. The owl figure is painted on a crackled base where the crackles show through as brilliant red veins. The complimentary greenish brushstrokes on top are so thin that you can see the layers of paint but also fluffed up with some sort of medium so they literally create a texture.

Carmelo Gannello, John Bramblitt, and Petros Roukoutakis

"What is art, anyway?" asks Elisabeth Axel in this video. "Is it the image in the artist's mind or the painting hanging on the museum wall?" Axel isn't talking about post-structuralism or Death of the Artist. She is instead introducing art education for blind people and how it works.

The late Carmelo Gannello was a severely visually impaired artist whose vision was obscured by flashing, intense or dark orbs in his eye. He incorporated the orbs into his work at the suggestion of his doctor. It was hard to find examples of his work but I really love his stark graphic abstractions. Creating an image of an eye that isn't grandiose or cliche is a tall order but here you go:

Carmelo Gannello, Running River. Woodblock print (9" x 11"), 1977.

[Image description: A bluish-black and white geometric abstract print with obvious carving marks. A cube, multiple circles and concentric circles intersect each other in front of a body of water with crude mountains and sky in the background. On the left a pair of scissors morphs into what could be an eye so that they both become the outline and the blades appear to be encircling the eye as if to cut it. The eye also functions as a sun whose beams enter the cube and shine on a fish. The style is similar to Paul Klee and Joan Miro.]

I found some more videos of artists who are working completely without vision, by feel only. John Bramblitt, who lost his vision later in life, does some absolutely amazing portraiture. I really wish I could find more video showing his and others' working process (most of these videos understandably focus on how inspirational the artists' efforts are). Intensely valuing color was another common theme, which surprised me considering some of the artists featured had never seen color before.

Petros Roukoutakis, a Greek sculptor who is blind. [Video shows Roukoutakis at a table sculpting a one foot tall clay female figure who looks like an early Picasso figure or a more representational Henry Moore figure. He uses his fingers only, no tools, creating a smooth rounded surface. The effed up music is not really descriptive of what's shown in the video.]

Another video of John Bramblitt, who does a great job at describing what he's doing (ahem, not all artists can do that well). [Video description: it shows him feeling a plaster mold of a face, then making some preliminary sketches using a paste or paint that he squeezes onto paper, creating a raised line. He then prepares a canvas, creates such a raised outline in white, then using a brush fills in colors which are very precise realistic colors for a very realistic looking face. He creates the portrait on the left side of the horizontal canvas, then fills the right side with fluid, loose, thick vertical dashes of bright blues, greens, and yellows that correspond to the music notes he describes. He then stretches the canvas.]

The first video I linked to, "What is Possible: Art Education for the Blind," depicts how a blind gallery goer can appreciate an art object by feel if such a tour program is available. It occurred to me that conceptual art and art that eschews the object-hood of artwork would be particularly accessible to not only blind people but people with other sensory disabilities or people who cannot leave their homes easily to see a piece of art in question.

I'm happy to say I think large portions of this blog are very appropriate for someone without sight, so I'm going to try to make this blog more accessible: image descriptions under the pictures I post, descriptions of how the work in question is situated within a gallery. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.