January 31, 2007
I Want Candy
I Want Candy, 20070131, HTML, 360 x 285 pixels
January titles provided by Mel Prest
Gee's Bend Quilts
This was published originally published at Two Artists Talking on December 31, 2006. I thought I'd close out January by re-publishing it here with a couple of minor changes.
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I hope that every artist who complains about their day job and how little time they have to make art saw the Gee's Bend quilts that have been travelling around the US the last three years. And then I hope that all those complaining artists just shut up. Like me. I've had my comeuppance.
Probably enough has been said about the quilts already, and anyone with half a finger on the pulse of the art world knows about it. The press release says, "Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, with the Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta, the exhibition has been on a three-year, coast-to-coast, twelve-venue tour since its premiere in Houston in the fall of 2003." I saw the show at the de Young a few weeks ago. It closed December 31. I believe this the final venue. I have to thank Mel Prest for mentioning it to me several times.
Now, here are some people who I would think have good reason to complain about their day jobs. Farmers and fieldworkers, raising families in poverty, geographically cut off from opportunity and resources- who has time to be creative? And yet their faith in family, God, hard work, and consistent and continual making resulted in beautiful and very moving objects that have shifted from functional bedcovers to concrete, visual, transcendent objects that are innovative testaments to the handmade and communal.
I found this show tremendously moving, not only because of the circumstances in which they were made. For a museum exhibition, it's not enough to be moved by these circumstances. Certainly, art objects made in a difficult situation can tell us valuable things about the people and their times, but for the object to be aesthetically powerful requires something more. And it seems the women of Gee's Bend found that.Of course, I was moved by the story of how these quilts were made, and I was especially moved that the quilts are made in spite of a day's work, often in the company of others. I found it especially interesting that a functional product- something so functional in the circumstances in which it was used that it could even barely be called craft- which implies hobby and decoration- could be elevated to art object. This is part of what I found both humbling and inspiring.
But there's more. These quilts are truly handmade- hand cut, handstitched- and while many utilize various traditional patterns, these often have little twists and interruptions in them, while many others eschew pattern and have a feel of improvised compostion, more modern collage than historical symmetric structure. Up close you can see the stitches, the fabric frayed by washing and use. But stand back, and they feel composed by a commanding and experienced eye capable of setting up rhythm and contrast, tension and surprise.
I often read press releases for exhibitions in which So-and-so's art plays with some crap notion of this assumption or that received idea or another that questions and challenges our assumptions about this or that miniscule thing that results in a paradigm shift to some other imagined nothing. Geez, they're pretentious and cliched at the same time.
But in the Gee's Bend show here are some genuine questions about where art comes from, how it's made and for whom, who makes it, art's origins and place in daily life. That's powerful stuff, and there is a real challenge to our assumptions. This show does it in broad daylight with no theoretical sleight of hand, and with a mimimum of contextual and historical knowledge required. It's just so plainly and visibly beautiful and bold. It makes me want to say lame predictable things like "celebration of the spirit," and "triumph over adversity."
It's too obvious a connection to talk about the quilts in relation to geometric abstraction- they're just different animals with a different purpose. In fact, I think it's a waste of time to make a competition between the quilts and painting. They are about different things, and anyone with a pair of eyes knows that immediately. I see these as closest to Korean wrapping cloths called bojagi, which are also made using fabric scraps.
The closest art connection I keep making is to Rauschenberg, and his reuse of materials, especially fabric. Compostionally, feeling-wise, there seems to be something shared in how things are arranged, a sensitivity to color and pattern, to the use of found materials. I'm thinking not only of Rauschbenerg's combines, but also his cardboard pieces.
But even still, this is a fruitless comparison. I really brought up Rauschenberg to make another point. There is his famous quote, "Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)" I think that for the Gee's Bend quilters that gap doesn't exist at all. There is no split. The quilts and their making are part of a greater whole- the lives of their makers. This seems unusual to me these days. It is especially unusual for art, which often seems disconnected from life's dailyness. Partly, it is unique, I think, because of the medium itself- fabric and thread, which are ordinary and domestic materials that anyone is familiar with- and because these quilts are originally functional objects; most contemorary art does not have these origins. The quilts were intended to be part of everyday life. The quilters and their families are the primary, original audience, and the primary users. There seems to be no gap between the maker, the intended object and its use, and people who use it. This wholeness is also unique because these quilters defied tradition by not settling into historical patterns, but instead used their eyes to compose and make, working by hand and responding immediately to their materials, learning from and working in the company of each other, day after day over the years. It's remarkable to see how these objects, made for a specific use in a particular place, can now function as powerful art objects for a much larger, more diverse audience.
Chris Ashley
Oakland, CA
January 2007
January 30, 2007
Fernando Botero's Abu Ghraib Paintings at UC Berkeley
This is about as close as I got last night to getting into the opening of Fernando Botero's exhibit of his Abu Ghraib paintings at UC Berkeley's Doe Library. There was some kind of color-coded ticketing system, and when I finally found this out after waiting in one line, and looked at the line of three or four hundred people waiting to get in outside in the main line, I took some pictures through the windows and left.
The paintings are not being shown at the Berkeley Art Museum. They are being shown in a large room in the library which houses computers mostly used by students for email and quick searches, through which most people walk to gain entrance to the main library. New partitions were installed, the walls were painted- it is a very serviceable exhibition space.
As is probably well known by now, the paintings have shown in Rome and New York, but nowhere else, and Botero has offered the complete collection of works to an American museum willing to take and show them. No takers.
As far as I can tell, the Berkeley Art Museum, the UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice, nor the the UC Berkeley History of Art department had anything to do with the exhibition taking place at UC Berkeley. My guess, and this is based soley on nothing except my own knowledge of the current faculty and the kind of students the department produces, is that the overt content, and the fact that these are merely paintings, does not engage serious enough theoretical and material concerns. Or, maybe they're just out of the loop, unaware, too busy, don't have the resources or budget, or simply can't respond quickly enough. Whatever the reason, it's a shame they're not involved.
Instead, the Center for Latin American Studies is primarily responsible for organizing the exhibition, which- including a room converted for the purpose, the transporting of paintings, and the development of a complete accompanying academic program- astonishingly took place in just about exactly two months.
I saw the exhibition today. It consists of forty seven paintings and drawings. There are several large paintings, and several that seem to consist of two or three panels; I don't know if those count as single or multiple "paintings"- I didn't count. There is plenty to look at, and one can get quite close and look at the paint. Due to some built-in features of the room several of the large paintings are hung with the bottom edge nearly at eye level, making one look up in a way which physically creates a sense of reverence and witness.
The imagery is horrifying, but not in quite the way a photograph would be horrifying. Botero's style of figuration places the figure a little at a remove so that one needn't turn away. This is not to say he makes the subject softer and removes the horror. Instead, the style of figuration removes us from the pain we may feel when looking at a real person, thereby creating the opportunity for contemplation and reflection while encouraging empathy, outrage, and sorrow. We are able to look longer at what we are seeing and at what is being alluded to. By staying with the paintings, and seeing how these images generalize the horror, we all feel our own range of emotions, and recognize the indictment of our times and the challenge to not let this happen again.
These paintings would not be effective if Botero were not a competent and knowledgeable painter. He creates pictorially effective arrangements and juxtapostions that makes the work formally interesting; subject matter alone does not make the paintings successful. On close look one sees Botero's fine sense of line, solid grounding of figures, subtle modeling of anatomy and drapery, sure sense of color, and confident economy with paint and brush. Formally, there are wonderful things he does in a painting's composition: the rhyming of an arc of urine streaming in from the left side with a raised leg ready to kick; the bright multi-colored head bands worn by each man in a large pile on the floor; the bright blue glove on the hand of a torturer whose body is outside the picture plane; the various skin tones of different figures; the contrast of the bright green hood on one man's head next to which his raised arm ends at a bright bloody red hand. In one three panel painting the victim changes postion from one panel to the next; in the experience of viewing this time is a component, and it is this prisioner's turning and suffering over time that drives us more deeply into knowing his agony, and knowing him as a living being, an individual.
One of course thinks of Goya and Picasso, or Grosz or Beckmann. It's not hard to see in some paintings allusions to Christ, at least through the way Christ's life has been depicted, particularly in, say, 15th century Italian painting- the wound, the suffering, the sacrifice. I kept thinking of someone like Mantegna, particularly his paintings like Calvary and St. Sebastian. Botero's classic allusions, rather than seeming a pat anachronistic device, reinforce his presentation.
This is a very important exhibition in several ways. It is important because the subject matter is crucial to America's current image and reputation, and Botero has made a permanent record of this unlike that made in any other medium. It is important for the way in which it was organized- outside of the museum and gallery channels- and for where it is shown- in the library of the university known for being the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. It is important because it shows that painting is still relevant; no photograph can function in the way a painting functions; no other medium depicts things with the same sensuous, tactile, handmade means; no other visual medium has a thousand years of history to reinforce and extend the viewer's experience. It is important because these paintings have been brought to stand before people's eyes to see up close and in person one individuals's committed outrage carried out with intelligent skill. And it is important because Botero's paintings are made with skill and craft, knowledge and wit, compassion and generosity.
Video and/or audio of an interview with Botero by poet Robert Hass on January 29, 2007 can be streamed or downloaded.
Several programs and panels are being organized by the Center for Latin American Studies.
San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker has written a feature article and a review.
San Francisco Chronicle editorial writer Louis Freedberg provides some very interesting background.
In the Brooklyn Rail, Robert C. Morgan's A Note on Botero’s Abu Ghraib.
January 29, 2007
January 28, 2007
January 27, 2007
Tethered and Untethered Stars
Douglas Witmer & Chris Ashley: Tethered and Untethered Stars, 2007. Ink, acrylic, and magic marker on found paper
Installed in Across the Borderline at Rike Art Center, University of Dayton, Ohio, January 11- February 10, 2007