A Round of Poetry-Slam Snaps for the CIA!

Enjoy this article in The Independent (UK) about recent evidence of the CIA's heavy involvement in promoting American Abstract Expressionist art in the 1940s and 50s. What surprised me even more than the cultural promotion itself was that at one time the CIA was so full of art enthusiasts.

The writer, Frances Stonor Saunders, describes the newly-formed post-WWII CIA as "staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover's FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA."

Saunders describes the main goal of the program as promoting the US as a haven of liberty and free expression, and New York as a major cultural center, in direct opposition to the heavy-handed, conformist USSR. Despite the legacy of truly radical Russian and early Soviet art movements, leaders in the USSR had quickly created an atmosphere where only the stereotypical "propaganda poster" artwork style we think of today was accepted and where literature was generally aspirational, utopian political writing in the Socialist Realism genre (though Saunders inexplicably passes up the opportunity to use the phrase, "boy meets tractor"). The CIA worked closely with mega-wealthy patrons in the US and abroad, such as Nelson Rockefeller, who readily lent them "Mummy's museum" i.e. the MoMA. People who worked for the CIA also held key positions on museum boards, as cultural promoters, such as Fodor's travel guide writers, and were instrumental in promoting travelling US symphonies, art shows and the like.

A Soviet poster in an acceptable style. [Image: A realistic but idealized poster of Stalin in official uniform holding up a happy blond toddler in front of a sunny blue sky with hints of those puffy Important-Moments-in-History-clouds. The baby wears a white romper, socks and Mary-Jane shoes and holds some white flowers in one hand and a tiny hammer & sickle flag in the other. Stalin looks stern yet avuncular and the whole thing resembles Mufasa presenting Simba in The Lion King. The paint (or lithograph?) style itself is crisp and thinly applied, vaguely reminiscent of prosaic 1950s US advertising illustration. It is slightly painterly, with just enough brush-stroke and strategic unfinished-ness to reference the tradition of European Academic painting.]

Willem de Kooning on the cover of Newsweek in 1965 photographed painting a semi-abstract nude woman. Now I'm wondering if this cover is CIA promotional handiwork. According to the article, the artists themselves had no idea of the involvement. [Image: color photo of an oldish white man in a paint-covered smock mixes paint with a giant palate knife on a giant palate in front of a giant (seven foot?) painting. The painting itself looks messy and violent because of the slashing red brush strokes as well as cartoonish because of the "childlike" crude outlined black eyes and red mouth and the exaggerated boomerang-shaped hips and breasts-- the only discernible features of the otherwise completely abstract collection of oversized pastel brush strokes. The Newsweek logo is printed across the top, with the headline, "Art in New York" superimposed on the painting with the small subheading, "Painter Willem de Kooning," all in black.]

Saunders doesn't mention that the CIA's promotion of AbEx has an obvious precedent in the US government's worldwide promotion of US movies, particularly in the 1910s and 20s when the silent medium was easily shared in any language and Hollywood gave the US a jump-start on worldwide cultural hegemony. I suppose it would also be comparable to the many governments which pour money into their Olympic teams, touring ballet companies and cultural performance troupes as a method of promoting nations. If "ping pong diplomacy" can prove culturally significant, it's hardly surprising that a government would promote its art world-wide as well.

It also makes a certain amount of sense that AbEx would be promoted. I've written before about the link between money, power and the actual form of AbEx art (the relevant part begins about halfway through just after the image and the ***). The art itself is monumental, housed in imposing museums that doubled as displays of wealth and power, creating the same sense of security-meets-fear as when one walks into the lobby of a fancy bank. And the paintings were purported to be universal, to cut through language and historical relativism to affect the viewer on an exciting "primitive" level. If you forget about the eye-rolling with which AbEx tends to be met even today outside of small art-loving circles, AbEx would be a wonderful tool of propaganda even as it was often seen as an act of rebellion. Going back to my previous linked post, the actual involvement of the CIA with Modernism adds another layer to the reactive socio-political motivations I ascribed to the beginnings of Post-Modernism.

What is puzzling, though, is that the job would fall to the CIA and not, say, some completely mundane and transparent Bureau of Culture and Diplomacy or the like. This was all well before the Robert Mapplethorpe kerfuffle when the so-called Moral Majority permanently hobbled the idea of the NEA and more generally the idea of the government subsidizing the arts at all. So why hide that certain people who work for the government also work in the arts? Why would one need to be a CIA operative in order to acknowledge that promoting Pollock might benefit the nation?  Have we really always been that backward? Saunders hints at the extreme unpopularity of AbEx among ordinary tax-payers presenting an obstacle, but shit, that never stopped the US government before.

Ultimately I had several reactions to this bit of news. First, it is so ridiculous. But reading this on the heels of the NSA spying and Edward Snowden "treason" talk (give me a fucking break, he's a whistle-blower not a traitor), it seemed almost quaint. Second, I want to know all the details: who was responsible for what, who knew and who didn't, which shows were endorsed and why, so many questions! Third, I wish Kurt Vonnegut had been able to include this stuff in Bluebeard. Because you know he would have. And fourth... well, the NSA thing again. We're supposed to trust them as Professionals Who Know What's Best and Are Protecting Us, but the more we (are allowed to) learn about secret operations by the various US bureaus, the more farcical their efforts appear. Bay of Pigs? Exploding cigars? Stong-armed art critics who couldn't even win over Congress? Hmmmm....

PS: Hey NSA, since you're reading this, between you and me if you decide to fire up that cultural promotion thing again I volunteer to tour the world on your dime painting portraits. Just consider it.

Anne Bonny

[This post has been edited for brevity].

From my Notable Charlestonians series, professional hellion Anne Bonny.
 

Anne Bonny, by Ciana Pullen. A charcoal drawing of what I imagine Bonny would have looked like circa 1720. Drawn completely from imagination. [Image: realistic, somewhat detailed black & white charcoal drawing on a sepia-grey background of a young white pregnant woman leaning insouciantly against a ship railing. She wears a dress and man's coat, as well as a sabre and pistol holster slung over her belly. She wears a slouchy hat over her loose stringy hair, which was purported to be red. The ocean stretches behind her to the horizon and meets some advancing drizzly nimbus clouds.]

Sometime Charlestonian Anne Bonny (8 March 1702 – 22 April 1782) was a pirate. As a girl she moved with her family from Ireland to Charleston, SC, where she was noted as a “good catch” in the marriage department (we know only that she had red hair). However her notorious temper became infamous; on one occasion she stabbed a family servant with a table knife. Over the objections of her family she married a sailor, whom she soon abandoned. Much of what we know of her time in the Caribbean is from an early 1700s Dutch book called A General History of the Pyrates, which includes the one and only contemporary portrait of of Bonny, likely idealized or imagined:

Image: An antique black & white full-length engraving of Bonny pointing a gun. Her hair blows in the wind, she wears a sword, an ax, another pistol, and another sabre. Some of these weapons are hard for me to identify, but there are a lot of them strapped to her. She wears a hat and men's clothes, including long loose pants, boots, a saggy jacket that reminds me of a revolutionary soldier, and a loose blouse that, for whatever reason, bares her breasts. In the style of the day, her head is very small and her breasts are positioned really oddly. Her features look neither particularly pretty nor distinctive, but rather stereotypically eighteenth-century-ish. Several pirate ships sail in the background.]

Bonny had affairs with several others engaged in illegal smuggling, most notably “Calico Jack” Rackham (with whom she had a child in Cuba), on whose ship she was a frequent crew member. But most interesting was her affair with another female pirate, allegedly disguised a as a man, named Mary Read, also in Calico Jack's crew.

Skilled in combat, Bonny, Mary Read and one unknown pirate were the only crew to fight and defend their ship against attack in 1720, as the remaining crew were simply too drunk to fight, including Calico Jack himself. The crew were tried as criminals, but Read and Bonny “pleaded their bellies” and were excused from execution because they were pregnant. Bonny visited Calico Jack in his cell and reportedly uttered that she was “sorry to see him there, but if he had fought like a Man, he need not have been hang'd like a Dog."

It is unknown what she did upon being released-- return to her husband, resume piracy under a new identity-- but most likely her well-connected father secured her release and she returned to Charleston to give birth, presumably to Rackham's child. In 1721 she married a local man named Joseph Burleigh, and they had 10 children. She died “a respectable woman,” at the age of eighty.

The portrait I drew above is purely imagined based off her description and how I imagine a habitually violent, unwashed pregnant woman living off hardtack biscuits and liquor might have looked. Prints of the drawing are for sale on my Etsy store.

Portrait Artist on LSD (not me though)

[Video: text appears explaining that in 1955 a portrait artist was given a dose of LSD and some drawing supplies, then drew a series of sketches of the doctor over the course of several hours. The black & white drawings then appear in succession for the rest of the video. The first is simple and realistic with cross-hatching and a three-quarter profile view. Then they appear successively cubist; some recognizable profiles appear to be vibrating and composed of expressive shapes like a Kandinsky painting; some are simple, expressive contours; one is completely abstract and most like a Kandinsky, O'Keefe or early abstract expressionist painting; and gradually they become more realistic again.]

Artist Is Shocked To Discover Postmodern Theory May Be Relevant To Real Life

I recommend Joshua Alston's thoughtful piece in The Feminist Wire, "Confessions Of A Black Morrissey Fan." I had some immediate thoughts about it but ultimately decided to leave Alston's comment section free of abstruse reflections from this particular long-winded White person. So I'm writing them here instead.

Alston brings up that classic predicament of enjoying art by an artist who personally is odious in some way, whether they violate one's core principles or they are bad, bad people. (I've written about this issue before). Though Alston doesn't mention it many such articles weigh the guilt of giving money and support to the odious artist through CD purchases and the like with the enjoyment the listener or viewer gets from the art. Many also point out that there are many other, better artists out there to whom one could devote time and money, people who could use the money and publicity. So there are typically three considerations for consuming art by odious artists:

1. The effect on the artist,
2. The effect on the viewer, and
3. The effect on (and existence of) the cultural climate in which the art exists and is consumed (i.e. the other artists, what the act of consumption means to the outside world, and even the cultural context in which one may try to judge how relevant the particular act of odiousness is).

For Alston, though, there is the added predicament of not only disapproving of the artist, but also being the object of the artist's aggression because he belongs to a class of people who are made out to be "The Other" by the artist's actions (Morrissey is "probably" racist according to Alston's analysis*, and Alston is a fan who is Black).

When I (a woman) consider the experience of consuming art made by egregious misogynists, of being The Other while involving myself with the artwork, it is different than, say, reflecting on Caravaggio's murderous personal life and thinking, "What an asshole. But this painting is nice." Because Caravaggio's crimes had nothing to do with me it is easy to assume the role of Any Given Viewer of his paintings. He intended his paintings to be seen by viewers, and I'm a viewer.

But when the odiousness is misogyny I am not Any Given Viewer. I am The Other and the object of alienation. And yet there I am, seeing and judging the artist's work as if I belonged in their very closest circle. It is akin to being accidentally invited inside someone's home when one knows one is not ordinarily welcome. As a viewer that can put one in a position of unexpected power, or it could feel eerie or gross. Even when the viewer puts aside their personal involvement and adopts a clinical interest it is impossible to have that no-questions-asked feeling of invitation into the direct experience of the art.

To put it another way, I said "[Caravaggio] intended his paintings to be seen by viewers, and I'm a viewer." However when an artist's othering mindset is shared by their culture, and often by the viewer's culture as well, they probably think of a generic "viewer" as automatically not inclusive of that Other. It's a type of attitude which many people are unaware of having in which they categorically speak of "people" and the Other as two separate groups. For instance, "All these immigrants are making it really hard for people to find jobs," ("people" isn't inclusive if "immigrant") or "What nobody understands is that when women say one thing they really mean another," ("nobody" means "no man").

So when the misogynist artist makes art for a "viewer," they don't mean me, and why would they?

It's also an attitude that precipitates the tendency of TV producers to cater to a generic "audience" of imaginary middle class white men, although that is beginning to change. Yet Others in the audience experience this alienation (often as skepticism) at the same time that they get swept along in the emotions and narratives that the artists intend to create, which ultimately distances the Other from the direct experience of getting swept up. The Other instead experiences "getting swept up" as relative to his or her feelings of alienation, and relative to his or her relationship to the artists within society.

A rare flipping of the "audience is automatically male" script: famous "sweater girl" Jane Russell enjoys the other side of the sexually objectifying gaze in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The scene is unusual in that, I assume, it was written for the benefit of women in the audience at the expense of male audience discomfort. [Image: A sporty white woman holding a tennis racket frolics through an array of muscled white men wearing tiny skin-colored swimsuits and sticking their butts up at her. In the background more Adonises in tiny swimsuits strike showy poses while "working out" on gym equipment.]

***

Which brings me, as always, to postmodern theory.

Website Re-Launch

I just re-designed and massively updated my website (not this one but the one where all my artwork is shown). It is byoooooootiful, and there's new work up:

http://cianapullen.com

Guess who?

Who could this be taking a bath? [A painting of a man sitting in a full bath tub with the faucet running, painted from his point of view and showing only his thighs, knees and toes above the water. A green stripe surrounds the tub, which is built into a corner, with a black "back-splash" forming a thick black line across the top right and a dynamic trapezoid on the left, due to perspective. The very top quarter consists of a beige wall with a white thing (towel?) on it and curtains, possibly bamboo, on the left wall, where soft natural light appears to be filtering in.]

Same guy, better angle. But who?! you may ask. [Image: amateur painting of a white grey-haired man in the shower. His body, shown only from behind and from the waist up, is somewhat beefy and completely naked, appearing to lean from the hips into the picture frame. His face is reflected in a small round mirror clipped to the shower head, which shoots small jets of water straight down the center of the image. Glass doors are visible just at the left edge; the rest of the picture is the wall of the shower, covered in large pink-beige stone tiles; the grout runs parallel and perpendicular to the edges of the painting. There are no really dark darks, even in shadow.]

Ladies and gentlemen, former President George W. Bush. The poor guy's email got hacked and these paintings he did are no longer private.

So, how do you feel?

I admit that my immediate thought upon unexpectedly glimpsing W in the shower, in the nude, was neither considerate nor edifying:



[video: an episode of The Simpsons where Marge is hired to paint Montgomery Burns's portrait. He moves into their house so she can get to know his "inner beauty," which is when she walks in on him in the shower.]

If you don't remember how this episode of The Simpsons turns out, the desperate Marge is unable to find any inner beauty in the inimitably evil Burns. Eventually the museum gala rolls around and the portrait is revealed:

[Image: portrait of Mr. Burns naked, skinny and hunched over in front of a purple background in a spotlight]

The audience is shocked and appalled until Marge explains that she wanted to convey the humanity, the fragility of Burns. One museum-goer sums up, "He's evil-- but he'll die. I like it." People warm to it, acknowledging that Burns is straight-up evil, but the humanity and fragility helps them see the good in him.

I continued to draw this unflattering comparison as I read each response to Bush's paintings (all from left-leaning people). Basically, everyone found him completely irredeemable until he displayed his humanity and vulnerability in these somewhat pathetic (though not terrible) paintings.

Jerry Saltz showed off his turdlier side by writing about these as serious Whitney-ready art, dropping the bomb, "even from someone who obviously has zero natural talent" amidst his facetiously "glowing" review. Really, Jerry Saltz? You lose your license to be the Everyman's Critic when you behave like that.

Yet even as I was typing the description of the shower painting I found myself lapsing into serious criticism, catching myself just before I described W's naked torso as a pictorial simplification that melds the cartoonish plastic GI Joe figure with primitive paintings of Christ on the cross. GI Jesus: an apt description of his public persona while in office.

I also think it's interesting that each painting is so light and soft-- really, they're downright feminine. The famously transgressive pinks of de Kooning's paintings of nude women come to mind when I see the pink tile and pink body of one; the other reminds me of an ad for a spa. They're also very meditative; he and I may be similarly afflicted by doing our best thinking in the bathroom. One imagines W had little time for splashing around in the tub or leisurely showers during his 8 years in the White House; I think the world sighs its collective relief that he does now.

Much has been made of the content. People have suggested the tub is evocative of water-boarding, with the running faucet signifying guilt. Others, that he is attempting to cleanse himself from his deeds as President. Saltz writes, "These are pictures of someone dissembling without knowing it, unprotected and on display, but split between the promptings of his own inner drives and limited by his abilities. They reflect the pleasures of disinterestedness. A floater. Inert." It's worth noting, of course, that lots of amateurs and high school students paint bathroom scenes because the bathroom is just an interesting place, visually and psychologically. It could also be that he did these as assignments for a class or instructional book. Basically, I think this: that his stuff is amateur but not beginner, promising but not there yet, nice composition, interesting subject matter (though very probably by accident).

I've gotta admit, he took some risks and it sucks that his paintings got released to the public. But hey, at least it happened to a man and not, say, Hillary Clinton or, God help her, Michelle Obama.

Bush also made public (on purpose) this painting in memory of FDOTUS Barney:

Barney, by George W. Bush. [Image: head and shoulders of a grey-black Scottish Terrier, I think, on a white background, signed "43." The dog turns to look at the viewer, and the brushstrokes describe the direction of the fur. It's not bad; technically, probably the best of W's paintings]

Poor Barney. Even though I have absolutely no recollection of this dog I miss him just a little now.

Quote:

Peter Schjeldahl, on the writings of Mondrian, Malevich and Kandinsky following MoMA's survey of 20th century abstract art:

"The simpler the art, the more elaborate the rationale."

Self Portraits by Mary Cassatt

One of my husband's family members passed away recently and we inherited some of her belongings. Because she was warm, interesting and fun she had a great collection of art books-- Rembrandt, Degas, a folding copy of 100 Butterflies, Cezanne, and van Gogh.  I'm currently making my way through the Degas, and the author pauses to described Cassatt and sing her praises as an extraordinary artist and dinner companion of acidic wit. She and Degas were great friends. Both were selective in their company and described as difficult to get along with and highly motivated. Cassatt's mom is quoted complaining about Degas procrastinating and ultimately dropping the ball on a magazine the artists had planned on launching to showcase prints of the modern world. "As usual," she grumbles.

Self Portrait by Mary Cassatt. This is so cool because everything about her process of posing is visible-- it's obviously a straight mirror image of her at her easel-- while the painting style is also transparent with visible brush strokes and outlines.

Self portrait by Mary Cassatt. The process for this one is a little less clear to me as she can't have been painting in that getup (all white, with gloves!). Did someone else pose for the body? [Image: Impressionist painting of Cassat, a youngish white woman, leaning with one elbow on a pillow or piece of striped brown and red furniture. She clasps her hands softly in front of her and looks to the right out of frame. She wears a white dress and gloves with a dark burgundy flowered bonnet. The background is solid sea-foam green mixed with cream., probably an interior wall. Her face and body form a thick white diagonal shape from top left to bottom right, somewhat triangular. The head is at the top two-thirds mark, her hands at the bottom third mark. Brush strokes and wrinkles form very subtle concentric circles around her head and shoulders.]

A photo of Cassatt.

Portraiture is dead, again.

Jeffrey Augustine Songco has a post up at the art:21 blog called "The End of Self Portraiture." The idea-- that self-portraiture is "dunzo" because it wasn't represented at Miami Basel*-- is pretty silly, but the run-down of the contemporary high-art self portrait is pretty good. I noticed the focus was on photographs, but painted self-portraits could also have been mentioned, such as Jenny Saville's.

I would add only one group: the melding of the self portrait with "identity politics," i.e. asking, who am I as a Cuban-African woman? or what gender am I? These sorts of issues are usually explored through self-portraiture, but as sort of an inside-out approach where the viewer is presented with how the artist is seen, rather than simply seeing the artist.

Samuel Fosso, self portrait as an African chief. Photograph. Says Fosso of this self-portrait, "I am all the African chiefs who have sold their continent to the white me." [Image: Fosso, a youngish black man, sits in a chair in front of a backdrop of kente cloth panels, a yellow panel surrounded by black and white panels with large ovals on them. He holds several large sunflowers in one hand, the other draped regally over the arm of the ornate Western-style chair, which is upholstered with leopard print. He wears a leopard-print garment (sarong?) on his bottom half and is topless, but his chest is covered by a mass of gold necklaces. He wears bracelets and rings on his hands and a half-white half-carmel fur hat shaped like a ski hat. His eyes are obscured by thick white-rimmed glasses with narrow slits instead of large lenses. The pose is calm and formal yet relaxed.]

And then there is the vast army of self portraits by women who grapple with being seen, being objectified, and manipulating one's own image. I'm showing the legendary Ana Mendieta's work below which is old, but she was ahead of her time and this sort of stuff is still very current (I'll take any excuse to show her work).

Ana Mendieta, "Facial hair transplant," 1972. Photograph. [Image: head-and-shoulders photo of the female artist wearing a brown beard staring into the camera.]

Ana Mendieta, "Untitled, Glass on Body Imprints-- Face" 1972. Photograph. [Image: grainy black and white photo of Mendieta's face pressed against glass, her lips huge and distorted]

Those two groups are quite contemporary and relevant, but even without them, considering both the youth and the egos that emerge from art school every year, I just don't see self portraiture going anywhere. Even if Facebook and the like have challenged the fine art establishment to differentiate its portraiture from the common "selfie," particularly photographers, that's really more of a rebirth than a death of the self-portrait.

*Self-portrait artists: before you rend your garments and cast yourself into the sea, please consider that the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery , MoMA, New York City’s National Academy Museum, and The Whitney have all managed to caugh up major exhibits containing self-portraiture in or near 2012, to name just a few.

The Rachels, Music for Egon Schiele

[Video: a song by Rachel's from the CD "Music for Egon Schiele." Shows a still image of the CD cover while music plays, a black & white sepia-purple-toned Schiele painting of three small winter trees or saplings on a hill in front of a cloudy sky that is drawn as a series of horizontal lines, framed in dark mustard yellow.]

A piece by Egon Schiele, I couldn't find the title of this one. [Image: a black & white line drawing on white paper of older European village-style town-houses on a hillside. The shapes in the top middle houses are filled in with scratchy yellow and brown paint and small areas of red. The linework begins in the top right and the groups of right angles tumble downward across the horizontal page. The final effect is of an unfinished sketch or possibly an unfinished quilt made of burlap.]

Kleinstadt, by Egon Schiele. 1912-1913. [Image: dark square-shaped composition of houses in city blocks. The bottom third is solid black; the middle third is several rows of houses; the top third is another row of houses behind a street or canal which forms a horizontal line then veers off diagonally to the top left and is the same black as the bottom. All the shapes are outlined in black, with many lines appearing hasty or crooked. The shapes of the houses are filled in with blocks of muddy brownish colors-- red, green, ochre, thin white paint--and all roofs are black. The effect is of a quilt or collage.]

Sunflowers, by Egon Schiele. [Image: color painting done without black outlines showing a column of sunflower plants in front of a bluish-putty-colored sky. The plants, mostly large greenish brown leaves with a few flowers sagging over the top, are so visually packed into a rectangular area which takes up most of the picture plane that they seem to be a figure or monolith rather than a group of plants.]

Suburb, by Egon Schiele, 1914. The date of this piece, the beginning of WWI, makes the rows and red posts look like trenches and barbed wire to me. Hard to look past that, but worth it, as it's a beautiful composition. [Image: Squarish horizontal composition of houses and horizontal stripes of pale smoky blue and charcoal grey, possibly roads, bodies of water or rows of plants. The style is similar to the two house pieces above but completely colored in. As with the other two the lack or confusion of a horizon flattens the piece into a quilt-like arrangement. The houses themselves are muddy white, yellow and red, and the fields in front are dotted with thin bright-red posts.]

Egon Schiele, "The Bridge." [Image: A square composition of a bridge that stretches from the horizon toward and slightly left of the viewer where it exits the frame. To its left are empty spaces, maybe fields or river banks. All the shapes are outlined in black but filled in with monochrome icy wheat colors, making this piece less like a quilt, more like a Japanese woodblock print or old sepia photograph. The bridge is made of repeated gridded pylons and a a repeated grid of guard rails, topped with broad, flat linear rectangular structures that repeat four times into the distance and are echoed by a few telephone poles to the right. The top third and right half of the piece are simple flat shapes that balance out the busy criss-crosses and diagonals of the left.]

Egon Scheile, "Boats on Ruffled Water." [Image: vertical color painting of boats on water. Though linework is involved it isn't the quilted technique of the house pieces above. It looks much more like a straightforward Impressionist Monet or Whistler painting of boats at dusk, except that the reflections of masts and rigging on rippling water turn the bottom two thirds into an abstract pattern that Schiele emphasizes by keeping the linework sharp and even, creating what looks like texture by dragging a pencil through thick paint, but I can't be sure of that from the 2-D image. The boats are arranged to create a line cutting from the middle left to the horizon at the top right. The water is pale turquoise, the sky is soft sunset-pink,and the boat hulls are pinkish white, jade green and reddish brown.]

Duchess Kate Middleton Gets Her Portrait Painted

South African artist Paul Emsley's portrait of Kate Middleton. [Image: Squarish painting of the head and shoulders of Kate Middleton perfectly centered and directly facing the viewer, her hair perfectly coiffed and falling over the shoulders of her conservative blouse. She smirks or barely smiles a tight smile. The background is midnight navy; she wears a slightly lighter navy blouse or dress with an ascot and matching stud earrings. The style is photo-realistic and incredibly detailed, yet also has a meticulously hazy "airbrush" "soft lens" or "memorial montage" appearance. The colors are heavily on the cool blue side, creating an almost deathly pallor, though judging by the snapshot from the painting hanging in its environment it may actually be warmer and livelier than it appears in this particular photograph.]

A snapshot from the portrait's unveiling, showing the large size as compared with people in the crowd, and a brighter, warmer and crisper color palette.

So, in case you don't recognize this woman or her name, congratulations! You probably live a fulfilling life that excludes garbage tabloids. She's the woman who recently married Prince William, Britain's heir to the throne (did I use the correct title there?) and whose clothing, behavior and body have been scrutinized (such that we need to invent a new word with a much stronger meaning than "scrutiny") by the international press and legions of People With Opinions. I sometimes enjoy a bit of tabloid gossip and often enjoy picking apart some person's sartorial choices so long as I'm not that person, but I'll be quite honest: the attention paid to Middleton gives me the heebie-jeebies. When I see photos of her dressed in absurdly stuffy, age-inappropriate clothes and primly yet fearfully clasping a matchy-matchy handbag in front of her groin I want to take a deep breath because it feels suffocating.

Anyway she commissioned this portrait and has gone on record saying she thinks it's "amazing." (Quipped Jeanne Becker, a Canadian TV commentator, “Interesting to hear that Kate thinks her new portrait is ‘amazing’. Shows she’s not vain.”) Middleton studied art history in college and, together with the director of the National Portrait Gallery, chose Emsley as the artist. Judging from his past work one can see why:

Nelson Mandela, by Paul Emsley. [Image: highly detailed photo-realistic black & white portrait of Mandela's head and shoulders. He's lit softly from the side, and the thin application of paint and the web of wrinkles illuminated on Mandela's face create a delicate lacy effect. Mandela gazes directly at the viewer with a thoughtful, resolved expression.]

Michael Simpson, by Paul Emsley. [Image: color portrait of the artist, and elderly white man, softly lit from above. The application of the paint and the facial expression create a similar effect to the Mandela portrait but the overhead lighting creates a medical or scientific effect, as if the subject is under examination yet fully aware of what he is and what the viewer will find.]

Emsley explained to People, “If you are working with someone [...] whose face is just a lovely face, it’s harder to find something in the portrait that gives it some sort of gravitas. In this case I’ve tried to do that with the smile and the dimples and the shadows around the face.” Art critics and the masses have found rare common ground in generally hating it. I've gotta say, I'm not totally on board with this portrait either. As pretty much everyone else has pointed out, the real Middleton is much prettier and younger, "fresher" looking than in this painting. Were one not a professional artist and blogger with a reputation and Google history to consider, one would perhaps point out that she appears constipated, to boot. She could have her pick of virtually any portrait artist in the world, and this is what turned up?

But as my comment policy proclaims angelically from the sidebar, "[...] any artist who has taken the time and considerable expense to plan, make, fix, remake, market, network, defend, and show their art-- no matter how shocking, expensive, or crude it is in appearance-- is deserving of consideration." So the following is my critique.

The portrait is a large square-shaped realistic painting of a young white woman (Middleton) from shoulders up on a navy background. The style is extremely detailed yet meticulously soft-edged. It brings to mind contemporary traditional Korean and Chinese official paintings which feature perfect tonal gradations and perfectly defined shapes:

An unknown couple stands in front of a huge official painting (mural?) of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

One of legion official Mao portraits.

 The Kims share a soft muted tone with Middleton's portrait, implying dignity and stateliness, perhaps suggesting statuary or an ethereal rather than carnal body. I chose this portrait of Mao because of its size and head-and-shoulders composition. Even the frame is similar to Middleton's portrait. These kinds of political icons-- and at this point they cease to be portraits, exactly-- are the theoretically rich subject-matter for thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard, who argued that the simulacrum of the 20th century was its own truth, i.e. "hyper-real," an idea which Warhol thankfully expressed in a much breezier format:

Mao, by Andy Warhol. [Image: three black-and-white screenprints of Mao's official portrait, each colored with different silly Easter-egg color combinations.]

Returning to Middleton's portrait the (probably accidental) references to both iconic dictatorship and the hyer-reality of the simulacrum (and theoretical issues of mass reproduction) are quite witty. Middleton, though a monarch (I think?), is probably not that powerful, as rulers go: she wasn't uber-royal before marrying William, she is a woman in an antiquated monarchical system based on male heirs, she is objectified as (to put it crudely) a royal breeder, and most of all she is stripped of nearly all privacy and autonomy as the most public of public figures, ever on the verge of the public turning against her. Middleton smirking through these classic signifiers of authority could be read as a postmodern ironic twist on 20th century iconography of power, a "cult of personality" representation in a time when "cult of personality" has mostly vanished. Yet one could call the media frenzy over Middleton (and, by extension, Diana) a modern day cult of personality; in this modern version, rather than push his or her image onto the public, the public extracts images from the (seemingly reluctant) leader.

If one makes the associative leap from dictator-icon to Warhol's famous commentary on reproduction and media, Middleton would be an interesting parallel to Warhol's famous "Marilyn Monroe": she's a female symbol, a persona whose face is reproduced daily in media all over the world.

The painting's style could also refer to studio photography. Yet another postmodern irony: we've entered an age of photography, yet this painter was hired to do the same thing as a camera simply because of tradition and unadulterated posh-ness. We know from media reporting that the painting was composed of thin glazes of oil paint, and though Middleton sat for the artist twice he also used a series of photographs shot for the portrait. I'll leave it to those who are interested in the theoretical implications of photorealism to finish this thought because frankly I'm too lazy to do anything more that spit out the name, "Gerhard Richter."

Blue. There's quite a lot of blue in this portrait, particularly navy. Navy is the color of power, a hue typically recommended for business women who are trying to be taken seriously by their co-workers. It's also, obviously, the color associated with The Navy. Older associations between blue and power include blue and purple as colors reserved for royalty.

Blue is also the color associated with the Virgin Mary in Western iconography. Ties between British and English royal women, virginity, and the cult of Mary are many, the most obvious being Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria (of the respective eponymous eras).

Blue is also the color of abstract thought. I don't know if it is listed as such in any guidebooks to symbolism, but one cannot help but notice that blue is very strongly associated with technology and science, featured in many logos. It's often representative of spirituality (as opposed to Earthly existence), perhaps because the sky is blue. This portrait not only features blue clothing and background, it also seems to have a cool blue tinge to the entire composition. I've also noticed this practice in portraits from the late 1700s and very early 1800s together with a haziness and softness which seems to express the ideals of the humanist Enlightenment and Neoclassical era: that Man is a rational creature with a soul, that humankind is both capable of and destined to rise above our Earthly, carnal bodies, that our real self is our ideal, best self. People still use these conventions to represent loved ones who have died; the haziness and sky or clouds traditionally represent the immortal soul, with blue signifying heaven or angels. With this association in mind Emsley's representation of Middleton could imply an intellectual portrait of the abstract Kate, a personal, insightful endeavor which stands in direct opposition to the constant flow of tabloid commentary on Middleton's body, appearance, clothes and adherence to royal manners. To further bolster this interpretation of the artist's intent, there is the exclusion of anything below Middleton's shoulders and also the dark background which hints at Emsley's Middleton existing in some abstract intellectual void, a darkness which also implies a hushed calm.

However, I believe that if this is the artist's intent he as failed. The emphasis is still too much on Middleton's face. For example the straightforward evenly-lit mugshot position echoes typical magazine shots of models which allow for the visual dissection of facial features, each fully rendered to be consumed and judged by the viewer. This representative convention in fact serves as an invitation to judge, as in an advertisement for mascara or a list of top 10 most beautiful women. As an example of this sort of representation of women, this portrait fails to offer up Middleton's features in their best light.

That would not be a problem if Emsley had somehow prevented the portrait from being read this way, but he didn't. He should have known the enormous emphasis on Middleton's prettiness, but it appears he did not anticipate either that this portrait would fall short of the public's expectations of prettiness, or that it would be read as an exposition of prettiness. Were there movement, it would have counteracted this "map of the ideal female face" aspect, but movement is conspicuously absent from both subject and composition. Even the movement provided by the dynamic directional lighting in the Mandela and Simpson portraits has been discarded in favor of diffuse straight-on studio lighting, a move that confuses me given Emsley's dilemma of Middleton lacking wrinkles and imperfections. I think the real issue might be that because she is the Duchess Emsley was afraid to paint her wrinkles and imperfections; I think he should have gone farther in that direction, incorporating side lighting and highlighting her irregularities but he instead stopped short and stifled his expression thinking the soft-lens approach would be more flattering.

Given the statue-like stillness, the artist could have exploited the authority, stoniness, strength or unassailable nature of the statue, yet the straight-on or very-slightly-above position of the viewer makes Middleton the undeniable subject of the downward or level gaze. Though she smirks and holds her lips closed tightly as though sealing her thoughts inside herself, she is ultimately submitting to scrutiny-- a reality that is already evident in any paparazzi photo of Middleton and which this portrait fails to transcend.


Follow-up: Ha! Of course:

[Image: Middleton's portrait on left, the same portrait on the right but with the face of the famous recent botched or "restored" Jesus fresco, also commonly known as "Beast Jesus"]

Katie Henderson

Fashion illustration by Katie Henderson. [Image: a full-body semi-realistic drawing of a Black woman wearing a vanilla-beige dress, strappy heels (possibly espadrilles), gloves, scarf, hat and umbrella, carrying a matching purse (?) and wearing matching sunglasses, sporting a swipe of cherry-red lipstick. She is in mid-stride, a side- or three-quarter view, turning to look at the viewer. Even as her limbs are quite thin her neck, head and torso are widened to produce a flattened image in a general triangular shape. The linework and shapes are the crystallized, woven style I describe in the caption for the picture below. The outfit, drawing and subject altogether create a mature desert-chic look that mixes the "Hollywood star incognito on vacation in the late 40s in Greece" look with the pre-Arab-Spring perpetual-1980s confidence of Muammar Qaddafi, with the timeless art of Black women in the American South who dress for church and don't take it lightly.]

Hayley Phelan has a piece up at Fashionista.com about Katie Henderson, a woman with Downs Syndrome who taught herself fashion illustration and now has a business selling her prints. There's a slide show at the end of the two-page article; you'll definitely want to click through.

This detail from an illustration reminded me of another portrait I'd posted recently:

Detail of a fashion illustration by Katie Henderson. [Image: A drawing in fine-tipped marker or colored pencil of a blonde white woman wearing a brown dress, hat and gloves. The outfit is strikingly similar to the one described in the picture below. The woman faces the viewer with one hand on her hip, looking slightly down at the viewer with lowered eyelids and a pursed mouth. She leans to the right of the frame. She's drawn in a pencil or thin ink outline and the folds or incidental texture of the cloth is made of perpendicular patches of linework which gives the image a flattened, woven effect similar to a Jean Dubuffet piece, but a little more realistic.]

Detail, Portrait of Princess Olga Orlova by Valentin Serov. 1911. [Image: head, shoulders and torso of a middle aged white woman wearing an enormous Gilded Age / My Fair Lady black hat with an off-the-shoulder brown fur stole, a strand of pearls and some rings. She is pictured in profile with her face turned three quarters toward the viewer, leaning slightly forward and clasping the fur stole languidly to her chest. The hat and its translucent bits contrast lusciously with the pale pinkish background, the wall of an elegant paneled room. A painting in a big gold frame is in the top right corner. She leans from the bottom left hand corner to the center of the cropped image, her face marking slightly above center. The dark fur stole, tilted hat and dark painting create a diagonal thick dark line from bottom left to upper right. The oil painting is realistic and fluidly applied.]

Merry Christmas.

[Video: black & white film of a cat spoofing French existentialist films. Henry the cat (a serious sounding adult male voice) narrates in French and the subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen. Slow melancholic piano music plays throughout the film.
(unvoiced): "Henry 5: The Worst Noel"
(voiced): "The holidays are just another excuse / For the world to intrude on my solitude. / I live with a few other cats [camera pans across four tiny stockings hung from the mantel each with a picture of a cat's face looking adorable, taped to the stocking] / and each annoys me in a unique way. [camera reaches Henry's stocking, with a picture of him looking annoyed] / They lend no credence to my major awards [shows the leg lamp from A Christmas Story, a bulldog figurine and a trophy with a gold leaping cat figure] / Naps are my only respite [shows him drifting off to sleep]. / In my dreams I can finally be alone. / [dream sequence begins, showing Henry in color with out-of-focus colored lights falling behind him in an abstract background] No, no, no. What are you doing here? [camera cuts to white cat with same background] / I must have eaten something bad / There's more of whitefish and tuna in gravy than grave about you / So, why are you here? / [white cat paws around, then looks over its shoulder into the distance] Look, it's me as a kitten. I was so innocent then. [snapshots of the kitten Henry appear on screen screen one by one] / I knew nothing of the cruelty of the world / Your simple mind is much the same as I was then. / [to the white cat] Perhaps I am too harsh with you. / I suppose- oh! come on... [cuts to white cat licking its own butt] / [white cat dissolves, grey cat appears] Do I know you? You look familiar. / Wait, are you that grey cat that lives here? / Pardon me, but you aren't around much. / I feel as though I never see you. [Camera lingers on grey cat as the background morphs into a TV or computer monitor with grey snow in the background enclosing the grey cat, who looks around at the edges of the monitor. Cuts to Henry, also alone in the monitor frame.] Here comes another lesson. [shows clips from past Henry films on the monitor. Each clip shown reveals that the grey cat is in the background near Henry looking intently at him or the camera] My apologies. Perhaps I have overlooked you. / I rarely appreciate the moment. [grey cat, again with colored lights background, looks away.] / [in a breathless voice] I'm alive, and I'm not a dog. / Perhaps I should be thankful. / [grey cat dissolves into a speckled cat] Ah, the old one. / Are you here to teach me something as well? / you've already taught me the most important lessons of all. / Never let them pet you. [shows a black and white clip of Henry avoiding an outreached hand] / Never expose your belly. [shows Henry twisting in a person's grasp to protect his fuzzy white belly] / Never sit on a lap voluntarily. [shows Henry scooting out of someone's grasp and off their lap, then running under a piece of furniture] / I see you are still in good form. [black and white clip shows Old Cat swatting repeatedly at a hand that is attempting to pet it, then nipping at the knuckles with its teeth] / But no. I can see it in your eyes [the clip continues, the Old Cat looks up into the camera, and sudden slow motion captures the Old Cat's piercing gaze] / You want nothing more than to be petted and loved. [Old Cat, now with a colored lights background, looks ashamedly or pathetically down and away from the camera, with a soft expression in its eyes] / Yet you cannot bring yourself to allow it. / Is this my future? [Old Cat gets up and walks away] / [Dream sequence ends, a black and white Henry opens his eyes, the piano music sounds slightly hopeful] Perhaps the other cats are right. / The life of a philosopher cat means nothing without friends. / Perhaps I should give away my treats to the others. / [The scene fades to black, and another scene opens of the three other cats looking on in a group from the top of a couch. The camera pans across a floor strewn with opened cat treats, tissue paper, cat toys, cat food cans, and finally reaches Henry, sitting alone amidst the orgy of feline luxury with globs of some sort of goopy cat treat stuck to his head, licking his whiskers. He looks gluttonously toward the camera.] I regret nothing." The piano music concludes cathartically and the scene fades to a black screen reading, "fin" then "un film de Will Braden"]

Depressing story about obliterated mural

The Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia is still trying to figure out why and by whom this mural was obliterated. It was apparently a job by hired professionals. The article is also interesting for the information they provide about the history of the artist depicted and of MAP.

[Image: the side of a light putty-grey stucco building with a black and putty-grey mural on it probably around 2 stories tall. It depicts Dox Thrash, an artist who invented a printing technique that produces velvety blacks and dark colors. The mural itself makes witty use of velvety black contrasting negative space, showing the artist at work and including several vignettes. It's painted in a 1930s folk-cubist style which immediately calls to mind the Harlem Renaissance and African American art of the era, and the vignettes are knitted together in a seamless graphic angular flow. The image below shows the mural completely painted over in black.]

Image: Mural Arts Program via theartblog.org

Oh, the blog.

I just remembered, I have a blog. Sorry for the lack of posts; I've been on vacation in a place so remote it evades the clutches of the Internets' tubey tentacles. And now I am at the beach. Will post more when I return to society.

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.

Kelsey Elisabeth Nelson on Zadie Smith's critical showdown

This is a great essay. Kelsey Elisabeth Nelson discusses Zadie Smith's writing in which she compares two approaches to art (and writing) criticism: the poststructuralist method favored by Barthes and the more old-fashioned method favored by Nabokov. She takes two complicated theoretical schools and applies them, but the essay itself is quite simple and easy to read (I promise!). I guess this is what post-postmodernism is: postmodernism is now just another completed tool in our toolbox.

Artistic Process and Scotch Tape: An Epic

I.

Though my guilt-fear, rendered humdrum through bad habits,
dictates this day I'll purge from My Big Binge,
I am on strike for a barrier that prohibits
time from slipping through my stumpy digits.
The moral stand-off lapsed in early hours
per a dentist and hygienist with a syringe,
who, as scheduled, drilled and filled my chompers
and in doing freed my overburdened arbiters.

Still rolling on catharsis-high, though illusory
yet lucid too and fighting nagging voices
and numbed so thick my jaw denied its misery
I floated down the road for retail therapy
at a thrift store where I like to search
pragmatically among the picked-through pieces.
I tongued my fillings, my jaw began to pinch
so I headed home for lunch.

The soreness and sick feeling of responsibility
both came flooding back at the same time.
I packed a beer and am headed over shortly
to my studio where if I'm good I'll possibly
do some shit and maybe even cross from my list
the real shit from my clients who I treated like slime
who have waited much too long and now are pissed;
in my churning mental mill, they are the grist.

II.

It's night now and I've left and come back
from my friend's house where I rent his spare bedroom
to fill with a big easel, empty frames, canvases, a storage rack
and chopped up women's magazines in a slippery stack,
a china vase sprouting rolled-up art-school projects
still unfinished, manilla folders in the corner of the room
packed with collage material: a ziplock baggie that protects
several thousand one-inch cut-out squares of pictures of skin; each connects
via a wrinkle, they're scotch taped into abstract collage components
that I someday plan to link together and meld to vinyl backing.
But that'll take a while so they're mostly still in quadrants
on top of four other folders filled with remnants
of my research, accomplished esoteric acumen
from another project sitting halfway in the making
labeled, "Black women," "black men," "white women, and "white men,"
for a painting series about media tropes that are usually hidden.

Tonight I re-shot some photos of a tiny cut-out lady
standing duck-faced over a nest of bridal tulle
from which a strand of pearls spilled, held steady
with hidden cardboard anchored with a penny.
She stands on the keyboard of my Macbook, which I've transformed
with a picture of a hardwood floor from Elle
in front of the screen, which shows Holbein's Henry VIII, adorned 
with a "curtain," a scarf that's brightly zigzag patterned.
Henry cuts a commanding figure: at his feet a pile of gold
made from candy-bar wrappers; at his groin, through illusion,
the woman's head. The photo is less pedantic, less ribald
that what I've described; the starkness is anulled
by the sensual chiaroscuro effect of the warm side lighting,
the cutesy diorama offset by academic allusion
and a slickness that allows for different materials mixing
without a "crafty" look-- at least that's what I'm hoping.

These folks belong to an ever-growing series
of photos that explore the messages sent
in media and ads about gender: cool clothes, hot bodies,
why they're desirable, the interwoven histories
of sexual domination, capitalism, colonialism,
and how those power struggles inform our present
how the old recognizable symbols of misogyny, racism
have shifted shape, surviving to postmodernism.

I wasn't sure at first what I could possibly say
about a society in which one's benefits obscure struggle
of others, concerns which my blinders keep at bay,
something I'll never fully un-learn, but may
through empathy comprehend as I am able
based on my own experiences of trying to label
what I'm not supposed to, with no words to assemble
because others claim the rights to language. So I settle
on removing what They say from any context that justifies
degradation, objectification, toxic role play drivel
such as beauty mags, pop videos, what-to-buy's,
that cut insidious paths into our personal lives.

III.

I'm hoping the juxtaposition of Henry and Tiny Lady
and the various materials will create new contexts for each other:
the king with gold, the woman with the reproductive situation, maybe
horrified or chickenheaded, the curtain hinting at a British colony
all together in an uneasy coexistence. The secondary associations,
of Henry's wives, slavery, wealth, sexual shame, controlling one another,
are meant to be stirred up and left to stew. But in previous iterations
I used gray pearls, so I'm re-shooting with white for clearer implications.

But the freshwater necklace isn't large enough to cover the cardboard
that holds her upright, so I made the impromptu pink nest
which I rather like. But she keeps tipping forward
which turns her face into a reflection on Henry's scabbard.
I like the light in front so the gold glitters,
but that casts a coldish glare on all the rest
and when I move it to the side the shadow renders
the foil dull but it's her face that matters.

More Scotch tape. Low light f-stop, trouble focusing, she's indiscernible;
Henry'll have to be blurred; we all know what he looks like.
The curtain slips, I add binder clips, fluff it; now my Macbook is visible
I move the light-- perfect!-- the gold wrappers topple.
I'm squatting on the floor so I lay on my stomach,
Because the composition begins to look trite.
I prop up on my boobs so my arms have free movement,
and shoot different angles, keeping the head-crotch alignment.

I take a break and crack open the beer. Something's wrong,
it's too busy, too flat, I'm not taking advantage
of the Henry the VIII in lit pixel effect, the curtain is hung
at a really weird angle, so I have to crop out where the pearls are too long.
I watch some TV, Dr. Phil is just ending.
A woman is listening to experts on stage.
I'm tired and ready to go, but I'm buzzed
so I cannot drive anywhere for the time being.

I go back to the camera and it falls into place:
A strong composition if I scoot her upstage
It's the contrast by shining less light on her face
with the glowing groin, echoed in white in the necklace.
Re-arrange the pearls into a nice pleasing "J,"
snap some pictures, then I note with outrage
that my battery power is fading away.
It expires, and I am done for the day.

A detail from the photo with gray pearls that didn't make the cut. [Image: to the right a young white woman in a high fashion floral jumpsuit and Bridget Bardot hair and makeup leans over a strand of pearls. Brightly colored chevron fabric hangs on the left in partial shadow. A screen showing Henry VIII is visible in the background, but only his leg, hands and torso. The woman leans over childishly and grasps her cheeks in possible surprise, worry or horror.