Blogging from place

Green patch of my "place": table decoration from Laumeier's 2009 gala Out of the Park.

My dear pal Mary Louise Schumacher, art and architecture critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has asked me to be here "foreign" correspondent for her own blog, Art City, link below.

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/artcity.html?tag=Marilu+Knode

(You may remember Mary Louise as my driving co-pilot in my move from Phoenix to St. Louis--she's the one who took the great picture of the burning truck.)

What she has done with her blog, Art City, is focus the energies and attention of the arts community in her region by becoming an expanded site for galleries, artists, dealers, collectors and their various audiences. The growth of the site, her addition of art maps, and features like "Pitch your Show", is an unparalled way for visual arts people to stay informed about the activities in the city. Art City is certainly a great model for other newspapers hoping to keep readership.

But Art City could only have happened on-line--no print publication could, or would, do all that for the arts, a notoriously bad sector for print advertising.

So we might well ask: what commitment do newspapers have to supporting the visual arts? They pay Mary Louise's salary--and that of the other arts writers at the paper who haven't taken a buy-out--THAT's what the Journal Sentinel is doing.

Sad that other newspapers don't gauge their arts writers' success by the same values they gauge a business writer: the interrogation of institutions and individuals, the highlighting of new trends, the health of the sector, the expansion of outlets and franchises, etc... Turns out arts writers do exactly what the business writers do (I mean that in a good way), only with more adjectives!

Exploring Laumeier Sculpture Park

Pump house, disused, Laumeier Sculpture Park.

I took another cart tour of the Laumeier Sculpture Park on Friday (note to self: when in doubt, bring a scarf). Bill Briggs, one of Laumeier's enormously talented staff (County), showed me this stone house built over the fresh water supply used by the residents of the area 100 years ago. As you can see, the original pool has been degraded, and the stream itself has self-diverted, despite the best efforts of some Boy Scouts.






















Stream on LSP grounds.

Standing in front of the pump house made me think of Robert Smithson's Partially Buried Woodshed, built on the grounds of Kent State University, Ohio, in 1970, just months before the National Guard killed students protesting the Vietnam War. As part of Smithson's investigation of entropy, he piled soil on top of the woodshed until its center beam collapsed. After the Kent State Shootings, the shed became an emblem for the collapse of social order--and of so many other things.











© Jane Crawford and Robert Fiore, Sheds, 2004, 22 min. color, sound

What struck me when looking at Laumeier's pump house was the inevitable way in which human interventions disappear--indeed, in which human marks become erased by the powerful forces of nature. As we embark on a new range of projects at Laumeier, I hope we can take into account the shifts in the ways we perceive earth works, artist interventions into--and definitions of--"public space," and the on-going, mutually affective relationship between humans and earth.

Nancy Spero, Queen

Nancy Spero installation at the Cairo Biennial, 1998, photo by Barry Iverson; all images, unless otherwise noted, are by the author

Two friends just sent me the link to the NY Times' obituary of Nancy Spero, which I had missed, here in my move "cocoon".

Nancy was an inspiration to me for two reasons.

As a young curator working at MoMA, I went with a colleague from Prints & Illustrated Books over to meet Nancy. Of course I knew her work and was thrilled for the strong visual world she created through her collages. Despite her fame within the downtown arts community, she was kind and gracious and spoke frankly about the work, which tells not only abut the past but about our collective feminist future.

Many years later, in 1997, I approached Nancy to propose her work for the 1998 Cairo Biennial, and Nancy's work was chosen. My first trip to Cairo was shocking--I had a haunting, almost out-of-the-body experience after seeing the pyramids (remind me to tell you about the Winchester house "incident"). There was something about that place that I felt in my bones, despite being Northern European stock.

Nancy's installation was deceptively simple: her three assistants were to stamp images directly onto the walls of the Palace of Arts in Cairo. However, because the building was still in litigation, four years after its completion, we had to find a quick solution to not mar the walls with the paint. The Egyptians I worked with were both proud of Nancy's use of mythic symbols from Egypt's Pharonic past, but also somewhat defensive that a Westerner would "borrow" these forms.

The day of the Biennial's opening in Cairo was the day we bombed Iraq in the first war. The official opening the day's events attacked Nancy as the American representative--shocking, given Nancy's history and politics. Luckily, the first person to speak on our panel about Nancy's work couldn't be bothered to listen to the translation of this official's rant--she went blithely on about pattern & decoration in the work of Nancy Spero. In any case, my experiences in Cairo were transformative, thanks to Nancy.

















Marwan Rechmaoui's work at Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut, 2008

In addition to visiting one of the most glorious countries on earth, I came to work with many great artists from Egypt and the region, and indeed, I have worked, traveled and written about contemporary art in the area for a decade (the last article, on Beirut's "Home Works IV", was published in Art Papers last spring). And my work at F.A.R. (Future Arts Research) @ ASU, on desert aesthetics, was rooted in my reading, writing and finding ways to travel to the region.




















Ghada Amer, Untitled (Milwaukee Love), 1998, photo courtesy the author

I commissioned works from Ghada Amer in 1998, Lara Baladi in 2004, and most recently, Ahmet Ogut, in 2008. Other artists whose work I supported include Mona Marzouk, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Halil Altindere, and Khaled Hafez. Scott Bailey, with whom I co-founded a curatorial practice program in Cairo in 1998, was a great inspiration and friend in negotiating the complex social issues of Cairo.

















Work by Khaled Hafez, courtesy the artist

I had three dreams when I was a child: sky diving (are you crazy?), scuba diving and living in Africa. Because of Nancy Spero, I did one (Red Sea) and had close encounters with another. Nancy was not just a global leader in a radical, political, visual feminism, she was a personal inspiration to many women of her own generation, and mine.

Cement in St. Louis

I went to see some art last weekend in St. Louis, visiting the Pulitzer Foundation (as well as re-visited the Contemporary Museum and stopped by Bruno David's gallery, smartly placed just across the street).

It was a gray, overcast, calm day.

Of course I don't have any pictures from the Pulitzer's show Ideal (Dis-) Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer, with paintings from Harvard and the St. Louis Art Museum--so I took pictures of the external environment to give you a sense of the light levels inside the galleries. One of the exercises of the show was clearly to show how these works owuld have been perceived when they were painted.

My favorite room was the one in the back, next to the Ellsworth Kelly, with the four proto-Renaissance works. That is the period I love for the dense emotional intensity packed into the small figures, the glittering surface of the Byzantine-influenced church that mirrors the radiant light of God. Compared to the bloodless, hyperbolic Renaissance works in the other rooms, these small works feel alive to me (many people love the Renaissance, more power to them, I find no emotional comfort in those works).

In the largest work in the room, Girolamo di Benvenuto di Giovanni del Guasta's Madonna and Child with Saints Nicholas of Tolentino, Monica, Augustine, and John the Evangalist, no date although the artist lived 1470-1524 (shouldn't they make an educated guess?), floating on St. Nicholas's torso was a disembodied head of a child. The child's disc of a head glowed in the dark, which to me was a meaningful expression of the mystery and faith embodied in religious ritual painting compared to the fleshy, Baroque-bordering-on-Rococo works in the other rooms.

It strikes me that the richness of this painting, and the story of Saint Nicholas, is a testament to the value of place in one's spiritual life. Each city, town, burg, village generates its own sense of mystery and life, and the del Guasta painting describes the joy of living in one's time, while knowing of one's history.

Floating back down to the courtyard I experienced the Richard Serra work "Joe" again, and again, felt a bit dizzy and disoriented not ten feet into the work. What imaginative glory and intellectual abuse this Serra provides.

















What I loved about the Serra, against the grimy gray sky, was that it didn't provoke depression at the advent of fall, but rather, an inevitability of the abstractions we face in our daily lives--like spirituality, community, place. Balanced against my transport from the del Guasta, I felt refreshed on that fall day by experiencing art. Fabulous.

Accidental Sculpture

During my first weekend driving around St. Louis, I saw some very interesting accidental sculpture in extraordinary public space, such as the beautiful installation above in the mid-century modern (mostly late 40's, not so much Eames) shop above, TFA on Grand.

















Driving around around the waterfront of St. Louis we saw this single wind generator next to an urban home, then below, an angel lost amongst the industrial grid that imprisons the river.

















There are two glorious strands of deliberate architecture in St. Louis, however. Most well-known is the St. Louis Arch by Eero Saarinen, commemorating Thomas Jefferson and the march towards Manifest Destiny, the conquest of the west.






















Oddly, it is the Cahokia Mounds that are the most exquisite sculpture project in the region, the sculptures that refute the Arch as a monument to the American continent

















There are many strands to tease out of all; I will continue this investigation anon.

(The bottom two pictures were captured from their respective websites; the rest are courtesy the author.)

Road Trip Art

A selection of room keys, PHX - STL:
Arizona Biltmore, Phoenix (most lush experience)
Sheraton, Albuquerque (palm trees???)
Hyatt Express, Tulsa (rather dull suburban location)
Moonrise Hotel, St. Louis (best bed)

Museums make art experiences happen deliberately. Road trips make art experiences happen accidentally.

Some of my favorite images from my four day tour with Mary Louise:

Bathroom painting, Munds Park, AZ (image of Munds Park):


















Mega-church, OK:























Sculpture Park, Coffeeyville, KS:

















Pump jacks, a selection of sizes:


















Finally, remnants of unpacking:























The efficiency of the American I-highway system made our trip fast, but our detours made it interesting. We drove through Window Rock, AZ, to see the administrative capital of the Navajo Nation, and Tucumcari, NM, a formerly thriving town on Route 66 but now a struggling enclave of dilapidated 1950s motels, to measure the impact of the highway system on small town America.

We also stopped in Coffeeyville, KS, where my grandfather Ogden grew up. The docent at the historical Brown Mansion confused our looking for the downtown (mostly empty storefronts) with their commercial strip (Arby's, gas stations), a testament to a town that hasn't yet revitalized its old real estate stock with boutiques and bars (too far from KC and Tulsa?)

The most dramatic image was outside Amarillo, TX (see previous post), which consolidated Amarillo's reputation for me.

Small town America looks like Stephen Shore to me, although Robert Frank loomed large in my mind while driving as well. Like any art experience, I learned a lot about the world in this trip, the trials and tribulations of people living outside big cities--and in our go-go, internet connected world, what a great and rare privilege it is to spend four days with a friend. We found artistic moments everywhere, thanks to the refined eyes of photographers who allow us to frame images laden with social and political content.

On a side note: I'm for the government's stimulus package, but improving roads seems less urgent than helping these smaller communities reinvest in themselves.

© all images author and Mary Louise Schumacher

Burnin' Truck Loads of Art

© Mary-Louise Schumacher

My dear pal Mary Louise Schumacher and I recently took four days to drive from Phoenix, Arizona to St. Louis, Missouri, for me to take up my new post as Executive Director at the Laumeier Sculpture Park.

We had four fun days of yakking about art, life and America. We would cover two topics per day, and eight hours was often not enough time for all our side-trips.

Our best image of the trip: this burning truck-load of cars, which threw off an incredible wall of heat as we passed dangerously close (what WAS that police car doing?)

This trip led me to reflect on my art career, which has led me deliberately, nomadically, zigzagging across the country: KS, NY, LA, MKE, PHX, STL. Each shift was triggered by a new school, new opportunity or a personal change.

The cumulative effect is that I have lived in big markets and small, each with their own great riches. We all are connected on-line, but we only live in one place, and finding that form of groundedness is what makes a move both challenging and rewarding. I have found the center in the most dispersed places, each with its own gem artists and jewel institutions that give a place, and its residents, life and meaning. With my move to St. Louis, I am honored to enter into a rich and complex society that, while outward looking, takes great meaning from within as well.

Buzz Spector, an artist friend from my LA years and recently installed dean of the College and Graduate School of Art, part of Washington University's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, sent me the lyrics from Terry Allen's 1979 double album, "Lubbock (on everything)" in response to our burning truck picture:

Truckload of Art

Recitation:

Once upon a time…
Sometime ago back on the east coast
In New York City, to be exact…
A bunch of artists and painters and
sculptors and musicians and
poets and writers and dancers
and architects
Started feeling real superior
to their ego-counter-parts
Out on the West Coast…so,
They all got together and decided
They would show those snotty surfer upstarts
A thing or two about the Big Apple
And…they hired themselves a truck
It was a big, spanking new white-shiny
Chrome-plated cab-over
Peterbilt…
With mudflaps, stereo, tv, AM & FM radio,
Leather seats and a naugahide sleeper…
All fresh
With new American Flag decals and "ART ARK"
Printed on the side of the door
With solid 24 karat gold leaf type…
And they filled up this truck
With the most significant piles
And influential heaps of Art Work
To ever be assembled in Modern Times,
And it sent it West…to chide
Cajole, humble and humiliate…the Golden Bear.
And this is the true story of that truck…

A Truckload of Art
From New York City
Came rollin down the road
Yeah the driver was singing
And the sunset was pretty
But the truck turned over
And she rolled off the road
Yeah a Truckload of Art
is burning near the highway
Precious objects are scattered
All over the ground
And it's a terrible sight
If a person were to see it
But there weren't nobody around

(Yodel)
Yeah the driver went sailing
High in the sky
Landing in the gold lap of the Lord
Who smiled and then said
"Son, you're better off dead
Than haulin a truckload
full of hot avant-gárde

(chorus)
Yes…an important artwork
Was thrown burning to the ground
Tragically…landing in the weeds
And the smoke could be seen
Ahhh for miles all around
Yeah but nobody…knows what it means
Yes…a Truckload of Art
Is burning near the highway
And it's a tough job for the highway patrol
Ahhh they'll soon see the smoke
An come runnin to poke
Then dig a deep ditch
And throw the arts in a hole

(Yodel)
Yeah a Truckload of Art
Is burning near the highway
And it's raging far-out of control
And what the critics have cheered
Is now shattered and queered
And their noble reviews
Have been stewed on the road
(chorus)

Allen's lyrics were in protest of New York's attitude towards LA / San Francisco. Both cities are getting along quite nicely, thank you, and have developed rich communities outside the East Coast.

While I would never advocate burning truck loads of art, I do agree that great art exists everywhere, you just have to learn context and history to understand the specific Modernist nuances of each community.

I look forward to doing that in St. Louis.