"You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies"

Words can not express the dizzy sensation experienced after entering into the mind of Yayoi Kusama. The dark floor, walls and ceiling appear to close in around the viewer until suddenly the light show begins. She wanted the audience to "feel the vastness of her loneliness" and it was accomplished with great complexity of emotions. The fire flies appear to come from every direction reaching into infinity. It was a delightful surprise to find such an installation piece at the Phoenix Art Museum and would be a shame to miss this opportunity to visit this sparkle fun house.

Gregory Crewdson

Crewdson's work is easily mistaken as a variety of scenes from big Hollywood movies. His photos follow all the rules of a great cinematic stills. However, unlike film, these photographs capture isolated moments with no past and no future, and an imaginary possibility hangs over them like a pregnant pause, playing to photography's narrative strength.

Despite Crewdson's success, he remains low-key and accessible, sharing his vision as a teacher at Yale and speaking openly about his work. He was interviewed at SITE Santa Fe in February 2001.

Antonio López: I'm envious because you have the satisfaction of working with your hands. With your earlier work, I noticed some of the tableaus you created are almost like train sets. Is there something from your childhood that appeals to you in creating these dioramas?

Gregory Crewdson: I think that, in a sense, there's something about photography in general that we could associate with memory, or the past, or childhood. I never literally made miniature trains, tableaus, or anything. But there is something very childlike in the process.

AL: What inspired you to start building these sets?

GC: I was just very interested in museum dioramas, actually, and I've always been interested in wanting to construct the world in photographs. So I think that initiated my work in general-- just wanting to create a complete world, whether or not it's in my studio or out on location. I think one of the things we can get from photography is this establishment of a world.

AL: You mentioned something about your dreams influencing a particular series. From what I understand, it takes up to a month to do one photograph.

GC: I think there's an internal vision of some sort, like I think all artists do, and the struggle to try to present it or represent it in the world, whatever it takes to do that, I'll do it.

AL: Do you know why it is that you are in photography and not film?

GC: Yeah, because although the work is influenced by film, I'm very struck by the still image, and I'm interested in the limitations of a photograph in terms of its narrative capacity to have an image that's frozen in time, and there's no before or after. So I want to use that limitation as a kind of strength, you know.

AL: You've talked about how your childhood influenced the psychological states that you portray.

GC: I think I've mentioned that my father was a psychoanalyst, and he was always a very close inspiration for me, and I think it's what accounts for the psychological nature of the work. That's one thing. The other thing is that the setting of my work is the suburbs, or an imagined suburban landscape, and I'm originally from New York, I still live in New York, so I think that discrepancy presents the work with a sense of alien perspective, let's say, or a sense of wonder.

AL: Before I looked at your book, I couldn't help but have the recurring image of Close Encounters of the Third Kind as I walked through the SITE Santa Fe exhibit. Then I saw the stills from the film in your book. Was that a direct influence, or did you tap into some kind of pop-cultural gestalt?

GC: Everything makes much more sense when you look at it retrospectively; things seem much more linear. When I was working through all that originally, it was much more chaotic and disruptive and frenzied, and it wasn't until I re-saw Close Encounters that I realized, Oh, my god. [The work] was strangely connected to that figure, you know, this process . . .

AL: Especially the demons and obsession of the Richard Dreyfuss character. He doesn't know where they're coming from initially.

GC: Right. He's struggling to make sense of that. That's what the artist does, you know. It's a beautiful metaphor for the artistic process.

AL: There are several articles connecting different contemporary artists who seem to be working in a similar vein, about suburbia, its dark side, perhaps. Do you feel comfortable being included in this "movement"?

GC: I think that there are certain general tendencies. Artists are drawn to certain things, and certainly I feel aligned with certain things and not others. The work that inspires me sort of comes from that tradition, like Edward Hopper, Robert Frank, William Eggleston, or Stephen Spielberg. We all approach suburbia with a sense of possibilities.

AL: In past interviews you mentioned that your photos were American realist images in photographic form, and I immediately jumped to Hopper; a light bulb went off. I really see a strong correlation.

GC: Yeah, yeah. I could be slightly ironic and say he's the greatest American photographer [laughter]. What I mean by that is he's so hugely influential in terms of our understanding of ourselves. But he seems so current in terms of contemporary photography [with] his interest in the American vernacular.

AL: As a WPA artist he was a populist, so would you see your work in that tradition as well?

GC: I wouldn't call myself a populist, but I would say that I feel one of the reasons I'm drawn to photography and the subject I explore is that there's a kind of accessibility to it. I'm interested in drawing the viewer in with that accessibility. However, once they're in, then I like to sort of fuck with that one way or another, complicate that relationship.

AL: I guess that's reflected in the process of working with these communities where you photograph. It seems like after the product is complete and the people are seeing themselves in these images, there must be some complexity involved there.

GC: The Twilight pictures particularly... there's the photograph itself, which is of this final, beautiful thing, hopefully; and then there's the process of making the picture, which is very different from the final picture. I think the process, in my mind, is as important as the picture itself.

AL: In terms of working with the people in the community, what is the difference between the time that you're involving them with the creation of the photograph and then with the final product?

GC: I work very closely with the community and with my production crew, but then it becomes something much more private. I contemplate the pictures very privately, show almost no one -- and then there's the final picture image, and once I make that, then I disseminate the pictures in the town. And they usually like the pictures.

AL: They work with you, they know who you are, and I assume that they like you, as opposed to some kind of invading army coming in from New York: a bunch of weird artists messing up their community.

GC: Well, there's partially that, too. It's partially a collaboration, but it's also partially like intervention. I have to find a balancing point; I have to know when I'm overstepping.

AL: So in the process of creating intervention, do you feel that you touch people?

GC: Well, I don't know. I think maybe the process has in a sense. What I think is that we make situations, you know. And that situation could be seen as something positive and good, or it could be seen as a disruption or distraction. It all depends. Ultimately, I have an idea of a picture in my mind that I want to make, and maybe it's a measure of my obsession or narcissism, that I, or whatever it is, activate that. You have to be fairly aggressive about wanting to make a picture in certain situations, unlike the earlier pictures that were elaborately staged. I mean, they're not staged pictures in my studio, where I could just work hours and hours on end, in complete isolation. They're much more about working in an outside context.

AL: I had an epiphany once when I was in Mexico and I realized that I felt inhibited photographing people. I had met a Spanish photojournalist who could just jump into any situation and take a picture. I realized that photos depend so much on the personality of the photographer interacting with the subject of the photograph.

GC: Photography is a very complicated thing. When you're making a picture, there's levels of intrusion and levels of voyeurism and levels of exploitation, you know. And I think a photographer has to measure what lines he's willing to cross and what becomes worth it to make a picture. I think Walker Evans talks about having certain anxieties about making a photograph or not, and then feeling nervous about it. His answer for that is simple. It's like, if I don't make this picture it won't be made, right? So I think what he's saying is the photograph is the important thing.

AL: It transcends the entire process?

GC: Well, either you have the picture or not, you make the decision. It might be uncomfortable, it might be difficult, but I think that photographers are ultimately responsible for their own vision.

AL: Do you see voyeurism as an American phenomenon? Is it part of the pop culture, or is it something that's universal?

GC: I think it's built into the act of photography. Just the process of looking through a framed world separates the artist from the subject; it creates a kind of implicit voyeurism. And I think on a fundamental level, part of why we're drawn to photography is it's kind of a voyeuristic act, and there's a fascination in that.

AL: In the Duchamp installation, Étant Donnés, you look through the peephole at a naked body. I understand you had an opportunity to actually look through it, but you decided not to; you only wanted to see the piece as a photograph, the image of the image.

GC: That's changed since then. I've actually seen Étant Donnés.

AL: And so what was it like?

GC: I saw it like a photographer, you know. I still see it as a photographic piece. And you know, a sculptor will see it as a sculptural piece. I think it's such a powerful and mysterious icon; you bring your own interpretation to it. I think part of the strength of that piece is that you can't wholly understand it.

AL: I guess different kinds of artists can say the same about your work because there is the sculptural element and then there's this cinematic element, the photographic element, and even the narrative element.

GC: Well, one of the fantastic things about photography, I think, is that it kind of exists between everything, you know. It's a currency by which we sort of understand ourselves. Photographic representation exists among almost every avenue of representation.

Bas Jan Ader and Jessica Williams

I'm Too Sad to Tell You (1970)--a black-and-white photograph of him crying, with that phrase handwritten in the lower right-hand corner of the image. It's sad, funny, pathetic, dishonest, luminous and uncomfortable. It is a piece that experience does not render familiar. "I'm Too Sad to Tell You" still bothers me when I see it. It's so raw, so real, and so natural that it reaches everyone. Ader took something that was a lie--he had worked up his fit of tears---and made it more real than most news photos. Ader made three black-and-white silent films that shared this title and subject. He put aside the earliest try, shot in Los Angeles in 1970, as well as one of the two attempts he shot in Amsterdam in 1971. In group shows he exhibited a 214-second--including 16 seconds of title-version filmed in Amsterdam.

Ader made anti-spectacular art, and his reputation spreads by word of eye. Although his work has been more widely shown in the last decade than in the two before, mostly artists themselves remain his core public. They envy the simplicity of his pieces, which, like reflections on still water, appear graspable until you reach for them. They admire Ader for the little be did, for the much he preferred not to and for other reasons.

I've seen the films only at seminars and can not find a decent copy on-line. There's a really awful one on youtube if you are interested.

Another great project has spawned from Aders by the photographer Jessica Williams of Paper Heart. She has put together a great series of mock images that all relate to capturing real tears.
She explains that

"I'm Too Sad To Tell You (after Bas Jan Ader)" was originally conceived as a project to create an archive of self-portraits taken while crying. The images were to be displayed online on a website and then later made into a book. An open call was posted on the photo sharing community Flickr.com asking people to submit their crying self-portraits over the period of one month.

The website went online containing over 100 self-portraits, a third of which were found on Flickr searching through "tags" people attached to their images. A majority of the people who independently submitted images had Flickr accounts as well. Thus, the project also deals with the phenomenon of Flickr and other like-minded communities using photographs as a form of communication. The "I'm Too Sad" website then becomes an attempt to give the images back some of their integrity as images by placing them in a clean non-communication based gallery format."

Williams has a separate site for this special "I'm too Sad" project. It is worth a peak.

Also, while your at her site already...

you should check out Trust Exercises 1,2, and 3. Awesome concept and well done. Plus they are on polaroids which in my book makes them even cooler.

Kachina Doll Exhibit at the Heard Museum

The Heard Museum in downtown Phoenix, Arizona has the best collection of katsina or kachina Dolls, hands down. The kachina doll is a unique focal point of the native Hopi and Zuni culture. It is a bit of a misnomer to refer to these significant icons as dolls, as they serve a much more complicated role in these Native societies than mere children's toys. Instead they are a form of artistic expression which has profound ramifications in many of the religious beliefs, customs and traditions of these people.

The known descendants of the prehistoric people who lived in northern Arizona and New Mexico over fifteen hundred years ago are known to us today as Pueblo Indians. They live in clusters of villages in flat top roofed houses built of adobe or stone. It is from these societies that the kachina dolls are born. Kachina or Katsina literally means life bringer.

The kachina is a supernatural being whom is often impersonated by a man in a mask. Most Hopis believe that the kachina spirits travel on rain clouds and live in the San Francisco Peaks of Arizona and on other high altitude mountains. They can represent anything from the natural world to the cosmos, from a story to a moral to live by. The kachina doll is broken into three main aspects. The first is the belief that it is a supernatural being. The second are the masked impersonators of the kachina who perform ceremonies in kivas and in the plaza. The third aspect is the actual small carved dolls made of the same likeness. They believe that the kachinas take their prayers to the gods. In addition, their beliefs include another thirty-two supernatural beings. Some of these deities are recognized in the form of kachina dolls. When a man adorns the kachina costume he loses his personal identity and embodies the kachina entirely. Although most kachinas act as positive images, not all kachinas are good; some kachinas are ogres or demons.

One such example of an ogre is the legend of the Sooso’yokt. This story is about an ogre and it is a legend that keeps children out of trouble. The myth tells that the Sooso’yokt or ogre woman will scour the village going door to door looking for children. The children must be the ones to answer the door for the ogre woman. The ogre women will ask them if they have been behaving well all year. If the children do not confess to all of their wrongful doing, legend claims that the ogre woman will snatch the children up and put them in her basket. Just in case this awful fate should happen, mothers will bake cookies and pastries to offer the ogre woman instead of her naughty children.

Kachinas are given to young girls not to be used as toys, but to be treasured and to act as teaching tools. They act as gifts of fertility and aid and prepare young girls for womanhood. Boys will receive thunder sticks and arrows instead. The kachinas promote such positive messages as long life, good water supply, and a strong corn season. Most importantly they teach the young Indians how to treat the land, one another and how to live and act of humble nature. Families use the dolls as educational tools.

Hopi prayer and ritualistic ceremonies are completed for long lasting harmonious balance in the universe and for all life. The kachinas play large roles in these ceremonies. The Hopi calendar is divided into two halves; winter solstice to mid-July and mid-July to winter solstice. The Mong Kachinas take part in the five main ceremonies of the first half of the year. There are several ceremonies such as the Snake Dance in the second half of the year but the dancers are not masked for theses performances. The Niman Kachina or home dance is performed before they return to their homes on the San Francisco Peaks.

There are five main ceremonies throughout the year that are each celebrated with the aid of katsinas. Winter solstice or soyalung, is the beginning of the sun’s trip to the summer house. Arihoa marks the doors to help welcome the return of the katsinas. This ceremony is thought to ensure beautiful life and plentiful crops. The Powamuya or Bean Dance takes place after the Arihola has opened the ceremonial kivas. For four nights the Whipper katsinas return to the villages to check to see if the people are living by the Hopi way. At sunrise on the day of the Powamuya two Qoqoqli appear in the village with baskets of bean sprouts for the children. At night in the kiva dances and prayers will commence. The Soyoko ceremony continues the purification of life. After the village is inspected for continuing their lives in the Hopi way, blessings are provided at the festivities. Next, the Racer ceremony is in early spring and tests the strength of the boys and the men by challenging them with sprint races in the plaza. The Koyemsi (leader) announces blessings for a strong and healthy life. The Night and Day festival held in March has the people bringing gifts of piki bread and sweat bread that represent bountiful crops. Also a renewal of life dance for the rain clouds is performed. One favorite ceremonial figure is the Tsutkat, also known as a Hopi clown. The clown mimics inappropriate behavior called being qa-hopi. All of these ceremonies teach lessons and promote well being among the peoples involved.

The advancement of technology has lead to an evolution within the creation and artistic value of the kachina dolls. Traditionally the dolls are carved only by initiated Hopi men from the roots of a cottonwood tree. They used a penknife, chisel, wood rasp, and a piece of sandstone. The cottonwood root would be whittled into the body. Small dowel pins would be used to attach such items as snouts and ears. Before painting the figure, a layer of kaolin is applied as an undercoat. After being painted with minerals such as limonite for yellow, decorations like bird feathers are attached.

These were static figures which originally had minimal detailing carved in and were painted with paint made naturally from minerals which only allowed for more natural subdued tonality. Over the last century the colors used have become far more realistic and bright and artists often use poster paints. Also the stance of the figures have changed. Newer creations show the kachina in the middle of movement, like in a dance. In the last decade, with the use of electric tools, artists are able to create great details. This technological improvement allows for far more creative freedom and has aided artists in evolving the appearance of the kachina to modern times.

My favorite figures from the exhibit were the ogre woman. I liked tham best because they were rather scary looking. Plus the stories of how they would terrorize the children into behaving well really creeps me out. I think if I was a small child and was given some of these dolls I would probably cry from fear. I also loved the detailed carving of the from the “Angwuusi” piece created by Bennett Sockyma. The crow face is so realistic. It looks like one of the stuffed birds from the parlor room of character Norman Bates in the original Psycho film.

Alison Brady

Alison Brady makes my toes curl. She uses bright vintage wall paper, unusal body parts, faces covered in hair, kitchen appliances and a dirty mind. Her collection of photos will make any eye brow curl in curiosity.

Brady explain her work as:

a series of color photographs that work to stimulate unconscious emotions, desires, and sexual compulsions, all unified within a dynamic that vacillates between the real and the fantasized. I explore issues related to madness and alienation as they exist in contemporary culture, concentrating on expressions of neurosis, on feelings of anxiety, displacement, and loss of identity.

These emotions are depicted in terms of visual conflict through my imagery, and manifested in terms of grotesque exaggeration. While investigating issues related to the unconscious, elements such as eroticism, twisted humor, and horror come across. I strive to create dichotomies between the sensual and the horrific, the beautiful and the destructive; the result, I hope, is a body of work comprised of deeply emotional and disturbing depictions of the unknown, staged imagery that functions on a metaphorical level, and inanimate objects and settings serving to illustrate the inner workings of the unconscious.

Nearly everyone has experienced some sort of traumatic disconnect in their lives, whether it is a severance within the body/self or a break from family or friends. Much hysteria is rooted in such traumatic experience, one that cannot be integrated into a person’s understanding of the world. Freud, in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” states, “Often times we tend to repeat a traumatic event over and over even until it becomes pleasurable.” This repetition contradicts our instinct to seek pleasure but, regardless, our mind has a tendency to repeat traumatic events in order to deal with them, as a way of mastering them. This repetition can take the form of dreams, storytelling, or even hallucination; my images allude to the cryptic mental re-scrambling through which our traumatic events resurface. When I conceive my images the questions I ask myself are: What is the state of normality? How can that normality be subverted, perverted, or generally transformed? When does this overcome the real and become psychotic?

My work attempts to play on these feelings of instability. The subjects that I use - some friends, some strangers - are placed into often awkward, bizarre set pieces, and coerced into visually compelling poses. Various websites (craigslist, etc.) became a way of enlisting others into my shoots. I use the photography medium as way of documenting the experience of these performance pieces. An example of this would be smearing chocolate syrup all over a stranger’s legs and asking him to climb into a dryer, they might be completely covered with glitter or have their head stuffed in an uncomfortable place

The positions of her models and the colors she uses to contract her subjects are akwardly beautiful. The work of Brady is unique and interesting.

Observationalism and you

The following is the key to understanding everything. And I think it helps when reviewing art. Observationalism is a philisophical study of the nature of reality. At the core of Observationalism is Epistemology, the study of knowledge itself.

The best explaination of this complex idea was written and published by Brandyn Webb and can be found here. The document is meant to present the obvious as obvious, as an aid to those who would conclude the same things on their own given enough time. Basically, I thought it was neat and it makes for a great conversation piece.

Clever, Beautiful, and Quirky: Miranda July

This girl is a serious threat to all artists who wish they could just do it all and be great. She is an artist, an actress, a director, a photgragher, a screen play writer, and an author. She's hogging too much talent. She has a book coming out on May 15th and even if you have no interest in reading a dazzling collection of short stories, her website for the book is too funny to not check out. Everything you need to know about this darling little book No One Belongs Here More Than You is interestingly displayed on kitchen appliances. She seems moderately nutty, but if you have seen her little film Me You and Everyone We Know (which won awards from every important festival possible) then you would not expect anything less than a quirky master piece.

The really intriguing thing about the site is that it breaks pretty much every rule that contemporary web designers have for effective site design. The site is a linear progression of images, essentially 30 splash pages one right after another. It doesn't have any navigation except for forward/back buttons; you can't just jump to whatever page you want. July barely mentions anything about the book and only then near the end of the 30 pages. There's no text...it's all images, which means that the site will be all but invisible to search engines. No web designer worth her salt would ever recommend building a site like this to a client.

Yet it works because the story pulls you along so well; July's using the site's narrative to sell a book that is, presumably, chock full of the same sort of narrative. If you think the site sucks and quickly click away, chances are you're not going to like the book either...it's the perfect self-selection mechanism. The No One Belongs Here More Than You site is a lesson for web designers: the point is not to make sites that follow all the rules but to make sites that will best accomplish the primary objectives of the site.

Never the less, the book shall be a great read. All of the reviews I can find are positive and this one sums up what most of the critics have said thus far:

From Publishers Weekly
It's a testament to July's artistry that the narrators of this arresting first collection elicit empathy rather than groans. "Making Love in 2003," for example, follows a young woman's dubious trajectory from being the passive, discarded object of her writing professor's attentions to seducing a 14-year-old boy in the special-needs class she teaches, while another young woman enters the sex industry when her girlfriend abandons her, with a surprising effect on the relationship. July's characters over these 16 stories get into similarly extreme situations in their quests to be loved and accepted, and often resort to their fantasy lives when the real world disappoints (which is often): the self-effacing narrator of "The Shared Patio" concocts a touching romance around her epilectic Korean neighbor; the aging single man of "The Sister" weaves an elaborate fantasy around his factory colleague Victor's teenage sister (who doesn't exist) to seduce someone else. July's single emotional register is familiar from her film Me and You and Everyone We Know, but it's a capacious one: wry, wistful, vulnerable, tough and tender, it fully accommodates moments of bleak human reversals. These stories are as immediate and distressing as confessionals. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Me and You and Everyone We Know is a poetic and penetrating observation of how people struggle to connect with one another in an isolating and contemporary world. Christine Jesperson is a lonely artist and “Eldercab” driver who uses her fantastical artistic visions to draw her aspirations and objects of desire closer to her. Richard Swersey (John Hawkes), a newly single shoe salesman and father of two boys, is prepared for amazing things to happen. But when he meets the captivating Christine, he panics. Life is not so oblique for Richard's seven-year-old Robby, who is having a risqué internet romance with a stranger, and his fourteen- year-old brother Peter who becomes the guinea pig for neighborhood girls— practicing for their future
of romance and marriage.

In July's modern world, the mundane is transcendent and everyday people become radiant characters who speak their innermost thoughts, act on secret impulses, and experience truthful human moments that at times approach the surreal. They seek together-ness through tortured routes and find redemption in small moments that connect them to someone
else on earth.

Whether she is making movies to wow the indie scene, putting short stories together to publish or writing on the top of her refridgerator, Miranda July knows how to captivate her audience with an appeal so strong few can say no.

Dizzy Up The Girl: Steve Gerdes

After having a photo I once loved when I was in my youth reappear recently, it is as though I fell in love with its beauty once again. It isn't anything fancy at all. In fact, now that I am all grown up I notice that the colors are washed over on purpose, the girl is overly posed and the mix matched patterns were so perfectly chosen for contrast. But, with those ideas pushed aside, it still has this vintage snap shot appeal to it that I can not help but adore.

Courtesy of Rolling Stone Photo Archives

That goregous appeal mixed with the nostalgic fact that when I was ages ten til about fifteen I thought Johnny Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls was a musician sent from god. I had "A Boy Named Goo" on tape first, and I still have it some where. Then my grandparents bought me my first compact disc (yes, first ever, my how times have changed!), "Dizzy Up the Girl" and I instantly decided that when I grew up I want to have the same sort of "bored beauty" as the model in the cover art did.

As a curious art enthusiast I started to hunt for who made that image possible. I can't find the exact photographer but I did track down the art director, Steve Gerdes. His portfolio on his page has great name dropping power but the actual work is less than amazing, ie: this list of albums he has done. I was hoping to find more magic like what he produced for "Dizzy Up the Girl" but no such luck. His work, although a little bland for my liking, shows a broad array of style and talent. Nevertheless, I still love the one photo featured on that Goo Goo Dolls album nearly a decade ago and I shall continue to hold it in my top twenty-five of album art.

I wish I could find the other shots from that shoot that weren't used and the model, the hunt is on...

Polaroids: the steroids of film

Polaroids on the Page
The Daily Flog

I just love polaroids. By far my favorite camera to take out and have a night with. A huge 1978 Polaroid camera puts a spell on others. People instantly hover around you, no one can resist instant film.

Check out the following books and reviews, pretty solid stuff here. All are on amazon
and are totally not super expensive, especially for hard backs. Did you know paper backs have the shelf life of 10- 15 years? A few extra bucks for the hard back seems worth it now, huh?

Most Polaroids reproduce in print very well, and a handful of well-edited books published or reissued in the past two years shows off the extraordinary range of subject matter, imagination, and pathos that professional and amateur photographers have captured in six decades of shooting Polaroids. All of these volumes are nicely proportioned to show off the majority of prints at actual size.

Right: Lucas Samaras, “Photo Transformation,” December 28, 1973.

The Polaroid Book (published by Taschen)—We can’t know for sure, but this anthology of nearly 300 pictures, selected from the 23,000 images in the Polaroid Collections, is likely a balanced representation of the medium’s numerous subjects and styles, ranging from very arty to fashionista to journalistic to experimental. (Oh, and lots of nudes.) All the well-known Polaroidists are included, of course, like David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Duane Michals, and Rosamond Wolff Purcell. A surprising omission is Walker Evans, who experimented beautifully with SX-70s in his last years. Other surprises are reasons to consider picking this book up: an extreme close-up of a boy with the darkest brown eyes ever, by the master abstractionist Aaron Siskind; Bill Burke’s 1979 picture of two mustachioed gents smoking in the doorway of a San Francisco barber shop called El Artista; and Sachiko Kuru’s wild (fashion?) shot of a woman dressed in a crimson tunic and cap, half-hidden behind a mound of earth, with the hindquarters of a jet-black dog in the foreground. Whatever it’s selling, I’ll take it.

Right: Andrey Tarkovsky, Myasnoe, Russia, September 26, 1981.

Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids (Thames & Hudson)—A small paperback full of personal images by the seminal Russian director Andrey Tarkovsky. While somewhat domestic and limited in scope compared to his luminous cinematic meditations on the nature of time and our relationship to it, many of these interiors, landscapes, and family portraits from Russia and Italy do cast a mesmerizing spell.

Right: Mike Slack, Untitled.

OK OK OK (The Ice Plant)—Michael David Murphy, whose interview with Mike Slack appeared on the F’lo, has since noticed another recent article in which Mike identifies things he tries to avoid taking pictures of:

“funny-looking bushes; chain link fences; street signs; arrows of any kind; empty parking lots; painted brick walls; weeds; stairs; shadows; doors; rain gutters; tools; words; hats; the backs of people’s heads; trash; trash cans; empty roads; plush toys; food; loading docks; telephones; cracked sidewalks; shopping carts; manhole covers; water towers; inanimate objects that resemble sex organs; airplanes; shoes; telephone wires; water puddles; clouds; stray dogs; ugly office buildings; brightly colored flowers; the ocean; empty hotel rooms; long hotel corridors; birds; air conditioners; fire hydrants; curtains; framed paintings; crashed cars; cell phone transmitters; and sofa cushions.”

Hmm. I might as well give up now. From the evidence in OK OK OK, Slack sometimes gives in (an entire bed of brightly colored flowers; three painted arrows; two empty roads, for starters), and we’re very lucky he does. His deadpan eye for tightly cropped, almost airless details of the places we encounter between here and there extinguishes the banality of all those subjects on his list—and makes them sing.

Right: Found by Anonymous. Found near the Columbus School for Girls in Columbus, Ohio.

Found Polaroids (Quack!Media)—The professional collectors at FOUND Magazine have done it again: they’ve amassed a brand-new treasure trove of photographic detritus—this time, Polaroids found in the gutters, Dumpsters, condemned buildings, used books, weed patches, and motel rooms of America. One picture, of a whiskey bottle on top of a red coupe, was found in a Michigan parking lot stuck to a giant oak tree. Mostly it’s anonymous, sometimes shirtless folks doing funny, dumb, embarrassing, or sad things. Essential.

Spring feels like: Haley Wynn

She's not famous (yet) but her work with collages, color, and themes is spectacular! This sassy lady has some of her pieces on deviantart. She's a mixed media magician and the quintessential auora that is the quintessential creater for our generation. She reflects our pop culture, free spirit, and enlightenment. Plus her stuff is just clever and well put together. This girl gets it. Maryland resident Miss Hayley Wynn, really embodies the ultra hip cool kid persona in her portraits. Be sure to go browse her portfolio and take a peak at her favorite pieces by other artists, they are little pieces of eye candy.

Namuth and Cohen, Pollock and Dylan

Jackson Pollock in action by Hans Namuth


Young Bob Dylan mid strum by John Cohen.

The newly reopened National Portrait Gallery in Chinatown of Washington DC was well worth the wait for its renovations and added pieces to the variety of collections. On my trip the museum specific styles of photography most caught my attention. I have chosen two works of photography by different photographers to focus on. Each work is of an artist as well; be it a painter and a musician. I choose these works to compare and contrast the theme of making art using subjects who produce art themselves and are caught in the act of doing so in the said photographs.

The first photo I would like to analyze is in black and white taken by John Cohen of the musical genius Bob Dylan. John Cohen has exhibits in New York City Galleries as well as in Washington DC. His photo of Bob Dylan captures the subject’s raw emotion. He has him angled so he is looking upward and appears vulnerable. His clothes are tattered and his guitar appears beaten. It symbolizes the beat down youth in the 1950’s and 1960’s in America. John Cohen was always more concerned at capturing the unspoken hopes and emotions of his subjects than most. Hhe was once quoted explaining this connection in his book There Is No Eye, stating that “The lens became the center of an equation with the visible world on one side and the interior world on the other.” His photo of Bob Dylan slightly resembles a piece painted by Picasso during his blue period titled Old Guitarist. It is as if Cohen’s image was made to be the before photo of a musician and Picasso’s was the after: youth and near death. The lines to define the contours of the instruments are shaded yet strong. Since the image is in black and white the light and value show a deep contrast between shadows and where the light is hitting Dylan’s face. Implied light is also used for the well defined nooks and creases in Dylan’s clothing and the back ground. This photo was used as album art and still stands as Bob Dylan’s most famous image. It was simple and sleek which is why it was embodied with such power to captivate and move its viewers.

The other work I particularly was impressed by was another photo taken by Hans Namuth of the inventive painter Jackson Pollock in action working on a new painting. What interested me in both of these photograph is their connection to Pablo Picasso. He was greatly influenced by Picasso, especially since he studied under a Latin muralist. Jackson Pollock’s obscure style of sloshing paint onto a canvas in what appeared to be to the audience as a messy free style tactic was often compared to the artist Picasso for it’s rarity. Picasso and Pollock both allowed their painting styles to intrude onto a flat canvas and allow three-dimensional shapes to form as a result of their talent. Namuth’s photo on display in the gallery is one of a series he has of Pollock hard at work. The movement is pushing towards the camera lens with strong directional lines being made with paint and the artist’s arm. The lighting source consists of the large lights set up in Jackson’s studio. Specifically I like how in Namuth’s photo Pollock appears to be in the center of his hullabaloo, one which he created. The studio is covered in paint and other works. He is a small man in stature, bald head always titled down to the canvas on the floor with his arm outstretched empowered by paint and brush. The photo shows the strength Pollock’s talent gives to him.

Both photographs encompass an artist photographed by another artist. Conjointly, the two subjects have been influenced by Pablo Picasso and the styles of both works very much so resemble the strength of the subjects themselves. Additionally, Cohen and Namuth showcase their subjects in the center of their own passions. Furthermore, both subjects accomplished the same great acts using different mediums. Dylan and Pollock affected people with their works and inspired others to think, to examine and to begin their own exploration of talents harboring inside themselves. Pollock and Dylan inspired a generation. Namuth and Cohen allowed the curious audience to get a better look at Pollock and Dylan in the midst of their talents.

Through their acts of wanting to showcase the talent of others, they showcased their own.

Romare Bearden: African American collage artist

"What I saw was black life, presented on its own terms, on a grand and epic scale, with all its richness and fullness, in a language that was vibrant and which, made attendant to everyday life, ennobled it, affirmed its value, and exalted its presence… It defined not only the character of black American life, but also its conscience."
–Playwright August Wilson on Romare Bearden

He apparently loved cats, smoking and unusual hats.

The works of Romare Bearden act as a mirror’s reflection of all the aspects of life that he has experienced. He expresses his memoirs and tribute through the creation of collages, watercolors, lithographs, photomontages, and prints. Several themes are reoccurring within the vast collection of Bearden. He is not shy to recognize his personal connections with society through spiritual ceremonies, jazz music, and his family life. Bearden also took full advantage of the places he lived. The great places of Washington DC, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, New York, and later in life with his wife Nanete in their Caribbean island home on St. Martin are all prominent in his art. He used life as the catalyst for his life time of creating beauty that shocked and intrigued audiences.

Romare Bearden was born into a middle class African American family, both parents college educated in Charlotte, North Carolina on September 2, 1911. Around 1914, the Bearden family joined the Great Migration. This was the movement of people of the black communities of the south to move into the northern and western cities. The Bearden family moved and called Harlem their new home. However, young Bearden grew up during a time in need of change. As a black family, the Jim Crow laws limited their rights as American citizens. They were not permitted to vote, were denied equal access to jobs, education, health care, business, and land. However challenging, Harlem during the 1920’s was a vivacious center of cultural expansion in the African-American community. Remarkably Bearden’s mother held the position of New York editor of the Chicago Defender, which was a well to do African-American weekly newspaper. She ascended into a political and social position of influence and power in Harlem as a result. Bearden would call New York home and reflect its influence on him throughout his life time of works (The Art of Romare Bearden, 2006).

Bearden allowed his environments and personal interaction with others to greatly attribute his work. His artistic ambition as a youth was strong influenced by his childhood friend Eugene who lived in Pittsburgh. Little Eugene showed him sketches he had done of his living situation. He lived in a brothel with his mother. Romare's grandmother saw the drawings that Eugene had made of the brothel and immediately decided that it was her duty to bring the boy to their the boardinghouse. Unfortunately, Eugene passed away a year later. Fifty years after Eugene's death, Bearden created Twenties: Pittsburgh Memories, Farewell Eugene (see FIGURE 1), as a tribute to a friend who was his earliest catalyst for creativity. Bearden also had a strong admiration for a sculpture he met in his teens named Augusta Savage. with whom he spent time as a teenager. He was once quoted saying that she was "a flesh and blood artist with a studio which we were welcome to use as a workshop, or even just to hang out in. She was open, free, resisted the usual conventions of the time, and lived for her art, thinking of success only in terms of how well her sculptures turned out." He envied her outlook and later adapted the essence of her kindred spirit into his own attitudes (The Art of Romare Bearden, 2006).

Romare Bearden attended New York University and graduated in 1935 with a degree in education. He partook in evening classes led by German artist George Grosz, at the Art Students League. He was also hired as a caseworker for the New York City Department of Social Services. Bearden did not officially retire from his position as a social worker until 1969. He spent a lot of time aiding newly emigrated gypsies from Eastern Europe (NGA). From 1942 to 1945 Romare Bearden gave the United States Army his devoted service. In 1950, thanks to the GI Bill, was able to study at Sorbonne in Paris. His interest in historical artistic masters grew. He became increasingly interested in Duccio, Giotto, Picasso, and Matisse. African art, Chinese landscapes, and contemporary pieces being produced in the US left their impression on his style as well. the work of his contemporaries in the United States and Mexico. He continued to learn and seek knowledge (The Art of Romare Bearden, 2006).

My favorite work by Romare Bearden Early Morning, 1967, is featured in the Howard University Art Gallery. In this piece Bearden is very coy with his representation of objects and feelings within the setting. Very blunt shapes create the characters involved. Lines are sharp and create two-dimensional forms of mass. Faces are not well defined, not is the background. The man and women in the foreground resemble gawky figures drawn by such artists as Matisse and Picasso. The most capturing part of this work is the finger Bearden has made into a lit candle. The flame grazes the arm of the women while a disfigured man is in the background looking on. The man and women appear to be preparing for their day and the lit flame is symbolic to being able to light their way through that day. The abrupt contours of shapes give a sense fragmentation and are discordant. The piece is aptly named because it feels like just waking up, half-asleep and preparing for a busy day. But its also references the commute of everyone’s lives with the homeless man in grayscale, half missing from view but still in the shot. It is as though Bearden was trying express how simple it is to become consumed with our own lives and to go about not noticing others. Thus making the man off to the side literally be off to the side and ignored. The color selections in the piece are also noticeable. The man and woman are shadowed with a bright blue in the foreground, allowing the man to blend into the grey pieces of collage in the background. His presence would have been more noticeable if he too had been aided with color. This work is mimicked with influenced from main stream media and ideals from a white culture by collage artist Sally Jean. Many of her works resemble the structure and themes of using past experiences as reference points. Early Morning used colors and symbolism that suggests the day to follow the morning in the scene will be just as bleak as the colors selected to represent it.

Another work on Howard’s campus is Communications 1984. This piece is funny to me because it shows Bearden’s defiance as an artist. The piece clearly is divided between what Bearden wanted to do and what the people who commissioned him asked for. The first panels are in true Bearden style and represent early forms of communication. He exemplifies music with a drum, the style of dress, star gazing, body movement and gestures of body language. The final panel with present day figures looking at space with a technological eye doesn’t seem to fit. This piece is very diptych like, minus the hinges connecting the panels.

One of Bearden’s most recognize pieces is Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1967, which is featured in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. This piece is particularly aesthetic because it exudes despair and utter beauty. These dueling traits are over powered by the sense of lack of connectivity. The man faces away from the window looking forward with small eyes while in contrast the woman from the window peers to the distant with large eyes. They both appear trapped in their surrounding. The colors are suiting as well, a faded neutral tone to set the scene of not noticing much to miss once it is left. The title Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, is clever because it looks as though the sitting man is already far away lost in his own self contemplations. Although the collage looks disordered and chaotic the pieces are all perfectly cut and placed. The lines are sharp but small. This creates the hullabaloo like vision we see when we step back from the work. Contour lines are not well defined but their absence adds to Bearden’s style. Collaging in general can cause movement to be intensified. This piece can easily be compared to those by Johannes Wohnseifer such as Bullen, Baader, Bully 1999. Or Encounters of Mind 2004, by Katie Dell Kaufman. Both works are closely related and influenced by the style portrayed in this piece by Bearden. The people in this work are still but the layered mixed media elements make their world appear unsettling. Bearden’s senses of proportion are also disfigured. His appreciated of making shape and mass irrelative adds disorder to his works. An overall glum piece is beautiful because it isn’t perfect.

Romare Bearden was able to take a scene and transcribe it, piece by piece-literally. In The Block, he exemplifies a neighborhood. It is a dizzying site of life all swirling around. This is what he was trying to do, to make the viewer feel like they were part of the scene. He was greatly influenced by his own experiences and drew from memories to create a sort of representational art. He later said of his piece that “I [thought] of Harlem as a young boy as a place of great energy. I tried to encapsulate some of those memories and make visual concepts out of them in this large painting that I did called, 'The Block'." Large it is, made of six panels that span to be the length of a bus. Its geometric shapes create rhythm of movement. None of the buildings are the same but all follow the motif of disordered organization. The bricks, rows of windows all flow. He allows the viewer to look into apartments and to see expressions on the exaggerated faces of. Proportion is something he was select with. Although it all fits together certain objects are larger for emphasis such as the light bulb in an apartment. Similar to his detailed attention put on the light of the finger candle in Early Morning. Bearden once said that “You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that’s where it’s going to come from,” (Romare Bearden and Charlene Hunter Gault) and he did just that in his representation of a neighborhood in The Block.

At the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC there is a primitive sketch of the concepts he used in The Block in a piece he did called The Street, 1977. Drawn with a felt tip pen, the primitive and sculpture like faces protrude from every angle and crevices of the scene. It is almost as though it acts as an after thought or memory of the time he spent creating The Block which was completed in 1972. His shapes and figurines in The Street very closely resemble Artist and a Model Reflected in the Mirror by Henri Matisse. Both artists ballooned out the limbs of their people. The markings are simplistic and the lines smooth, precise, and deliberate. The structure with which he creates facial features and expressions mimics Picasso. Both artists elongated and draw in the full length of the nose. They also both connect the outline of eyes to the lines creating the nose. The dept of The Street although not collaged still emendates the same power and strength of expression.

Romare Bearden took on a powerful approach to expression social themes in his works. He pulled from memories and his culture is a reoccurring motif. As an artist he intense and the intricate beauty he creates is capable of instilling Stendhal's syndrome. Much of his work mimicked his idols and community. He holds a strong place in history as an African American Artist and a master of collage and mixed media.

Awards and Honors

2004-2005

Bearden is honored with a seven-month long New York Citywide Homecoming Celebration, held in conjunction with the traveling retrospective, The Art of Romare Bearden, at the Whitney Museum of American Art.[1]

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, New York City, issues a Proclamation in honor of Bearden’s legacy. [2]

2003

Choreographer Garth Fagan honors Bearden with a new work titled DanceCollageforRomie. The new work, which premieres at the Joyce Theater in New York City, has three sections: “Matter and Materiel,” “Detail: Down Home Also,” and “Conjur Man.” [3]

2000

Bearden's collage, Family (1988), becomes the national poster for the U.S. Census Bureau's 2000 Census. [4]

1988

Receives posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award from The Studio Museum in Harlem.[5]

1987

Romare Bearden Day is declared in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to celebrate the achievements of Romare and Nanette Bearden. [6]

Presented with the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence, by President Ronald Reagan. [7]

1985

Honored by the New York Artists Equity Association for Lifetime of Artistic Achievement and Devotion to Fellow Artists’ Interests. [8]

Receives Honorary Doctorate in Literature from Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA. [9]

1984

Receives the Mayor's Award of Honor for Art & Culture from New York City Mayor Edward Koch at Gracie Mansion. [10]

Bearden's lithograph, The Lamp (1984), is chosen for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund poster celebrating the 30th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education. [11]

1983

Receives award from The Studio Museum in Harlem along with Elizabeth Catlett and Jacob Lawrence. [12]

1982

Receives Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. [13]

1980

Romare Bearden Day is proclaimed in Oakland, California. [14]

1978

Receives Freedom Fighter Award from the Atlanta Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. [15]

Receives thirteenth annual Frederick Douglass Medal from the New York Chapter of the National Urban League. [16]

Receives Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Davidson College, Davidson, NC. [17]

1977

Receives Honorary Doctorate from North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC. [18]

Receives Honorary Doctorate from Maryland Institute of Arts, Baltimore, MD. [19]

1976

Receives Gold Medal for Achievement in the Arts by the Governor of North Carolina. [20]

Proclaimed Honorary Citizen of Atlanta, Georgia, by Mayor Maynard Jackson. [21]

1975

Awarded Honorary Doctorate of Fine Art from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. [22]

1973

Receives Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. [23]

Named Rockefeller Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. [24]

1972

Elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. [25]

1970

Receives a John Solomon Guggenheim Foundation grant to write a book on the history of African-American art. The book, AHistory of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present, was coauthored with Harry Henderson and published posthumously in 1993. [26]

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[1]-[26] Romare Bearden Foundation (2005) here

Resources

The Art of Romare Bearden. (2006). Retrieved January 20, 2007, 2006 The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC Web site: here

Jacob Lawrence quoted in Myron Schwartzman, Romare Bearden: His Life & Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990), p. 84.

Romare Bearden and Charlene Hunter Gault, "Rhythm on Canvas," discussion of Bearden's forty-year retrospective exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, WNET/PBS, "The MacNeil/Lehrer Report," June 26, 1987.

This is quite possibly the coolest interactive Romare Bearden website in existance.