Robert Motherwell Wisdom

[caption id="attachment_818" align="aligncenter" width="408" caption="Image by Robert Motherwell, from the Lyric Suite, Ink on Japanese Paper."][/caption]

From "On the 'Lyric Suite.'" 1969, essay excerpted in The Writings of Robert Motherwell, edited by Dore Ashton with Joan Banach, University of California Press, 2007.

"On an impulse one day in a Japanese shop in N.Y.C., where I was buying a toy for a friend's child, I bought 10 packets of 100 sheets each of a Japanese rice paper called "Dragons & Clouds". . .

"Some weeks later--early in April, 1965, it came to me in a flash: PAINT THE THOUSAND SHEETS WITHOUT INTERRUPTION, WITHOUT A PRIORI TRADITIONAL, OR MORAL PREJUDICES OR A POSTERIORIONES, WITHOUT ICONOGRAPHY, AND ABOVE ALL WITHOUT REVISIONS OR ADDITIONS UPON CRITICAL REFLECTION AND JUDGEMENT. GIVE UP ONE'S BEING TO THE ENTERPRISE AND SEE WHAT LIES WITHIN WHATEVER IS IS. VENTURE. DON'T LOOK BACK. DO NOT TIRE. EVERYTHING IS OPEN. BRUSHES AND BLANK WHITE PAPER!"

Inchoate Jargon

[caption id="attachment_816" align="aligncenter" width="517" caption="Painting--Nancy Charak, 2010, Primordial Soup 10, 16"x14", watercolor, pencil, prismacolor on birchwood panel."][/caption]

At Sapere Gallery, 1579 N. Milwaukee, Chicago, IL.

The annual College Art Association conclave (CAA) has been meeting in Chicago, so as a committed former member I went to a couple of the free panels. On Thursday, February 11, the panel was "Investigating the Need for Women's Art Galleries, Exhibitions, and Organizations: From our Center." Joyce Owens, Beate Minkovski, Amy Galpin and Joanna Gardner Huggett were on the panel. While the conversation and audience response went somewhat off target (as such are prone to do), there was general agreement that until such time as the high-end market (galleries and museums) is completely responsive to the work of so-called minority artists whose voices have been squelched, then so-called alternative spaces will be necessary.

My own added view is that the member institutions of the CAA graduate so damned many artists out of its BA and MFA programs that there is in essence an over-supply of very, very good, well trained people. The CAA should be teaching artists what the realities of the job markets are.

Then I went to another panel discussion yesterday, Saturday, February 13, titled "Feminist Painting, What Does it Mean to Paint Like a Woman and How Might that Differ from Painting as a Feminist?" That room was jam packed, standing room only. The panelists, Harmony Hammond,Carrie Moyer, Paula Wilson and Amy Sillman offered up what I can only summarize as "inchoate jargon." At one point the question was asked and answered whether or not this particular panel could have been titled something like being about lesbian or queer art. In addition to the mind numbing jargon there was constant reference to the battles of the 70s, 80s and 90s. My thought is that women have been making art much, much longer and I would have liked a longer historical perspective rather than one tied to the academic squabbles.

A quote was offered up from, I believe, Arthur Danto, that for a woman to engage in abstract expressionism, which is my oeuvre, is for her to engage in aesthetic cross dressing. I had to do everything in my control to keep from blowing my lunch. I'm not saying that I didn't understand what the panelists were talking about, because I did; what I couldn't deal with was the fixation on the academic squabbles, of the big fight against the male dominated establishment, which clearly still isn't won, as evidenced by the talk in the other panel discussion that I attended, of the continuing need for alternative spaces.

My last plaint is that each of the artists, perhaps logically, talked almost totally about their own work, with some slight references to those women who have gone before. I wanted to stand up and shout out the following names, Helen Frankenthaler, Linda Karshan, Sandra Blow, Katherina Grosse, Joan Mitchell, Pat Steir, and Agnes Martin.

Judith Roth and Joyce Owens Two of My Favorite Artists

[caption id="attachment_810" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Joyce Owens, A Love Puzzle"][/caption]

Joyce Owens and Judith Roth, two of my favoritest artists are being honored today by the Chicago Women's Caucus for the Arts for Excellence in the Arts at the Chicago Cultural Center at 4:00 pm today. I won't miss this.

[caption id="attachment_812" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Judith Roth, the Tangle"][/caption]

Judith and Joyce are artists, advocates and educators. They believe in and act on the power of community for artists, women and minorities. They care about art and artists of all stripes and colors. I am proud and pleased and honored to know them and to call them friends.

You Need a Scientist to Tell You This?

So I'm reading an article from the esteemed Wall Street Journal titled "How Art Affects the Brain", (hat-tip to Painter's Post). Here's the amazing quote that one must put into the snarky category of "You Need a Scientist to Tell You This?" HAH. This is from a discussion about how scientific research is assisting the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore enhance or increase their potential audience.

In 2007, the museum experimented with a show of landscape paintings by Gustave Courbet which included classical music playing in the background. The lighting changed subtly every 60 seconds to create a variety of moods.

The result was that visitors spent four times as long in the exhibit than they did in other shows of the same size. Science could be used to come up with similarly creative—and cost-effective—ideas for making exhibitions more engaging for visitors.

Sorry, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell viewers of art that it's much more pleasant to listen to music, while sitting and listening, look at great works of art. Geesh. This is a plea to all art museums, galleries, sculpture gardens, please, please put out the chairs and turn on the music.

When You Don't Have Anything To Say, Show a Picture....

[caption id="attachment_191" align="aligncenter" width="504" caption="Counter-Structure #0053 8x8in.; watercolor pieces collaged on clayboard 2009"][/caption]

It's a collage of pieces of trimmings of watercolors done on 140# Arches paper mounted to an 8"x8" clayboard. 2009. View the whole series here.

The Visual Arts ARE NOT an Educational Luxury...

[caption id="attachment_142" align="aligncenter" width="445" caption="16x14x2in.; watercolor, prismacolor pencil, pencil, graphite on birchwood panel 2009"][/caption]

From an article by educator and professor, Daniel Willingham in the Washington Post, quoting Jerry Kagan, on why children don't like school, Six practical reasons arts education is more than a luxury. I paste in the first two reasons:

First, he estimated that something like 95% of children are capable of doing the work necessary to obtain a high school diploma, yet the dropout rate hovers around 25%. Too many of these students quit because they decide (usually in about the fourth grade) that school is not the place for them. This decision is based largely on their perception of their performance in reading and mathematics. The arts, Kagan argues, offers such students another chance to feel successful, and to feel that they belong at school.

Second, Kagan argues that children today have very little sense of agency—that is, the sense that they undertake activities that have an impact on the world, however small. Kagan notes that as a child he had the autonomy to explore his town on his own, something that most parents today would not allow. When not exploring, his activities were necessarily of his own design, whereas children today would typically watch television or roam the internet, activities that are frequently passive and which encourage conformity. The arts, Kagan argues, offer that sense of agency, of creation.

Johns Hopkins University and the Dana Foundation hosted a conference titled “Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts and the Brain.” As the title implies, the goal was to bring together researchers considering, from an educational point of view, the impact of the arts on the brain. A book-length summary of the May conference just became available as a free pdf, available here.

As a shy, but extremely curious, very hard-of-hearing girl, art classes and self-guided tours in museums in Chicago gave me the confidence to meet the world. The image is my latest watercolor on birchwood panel, 16x14x1-3/4in., from the "Simkhes Toyre" series.

Who Does The Stuff Belong To-Part II...

[caption id="attachment_801" align="alignleft" width="208" caption="Nefertiti, not from around here"][/caption]

Per a recent article in the New York Times re the ongoing fulminations of the Egyptian Minister of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass, demanding that Nefertiti be returned to him, by John Tierney of November 16, 2009, referring to the position of the director of our own Art Institute of Chicago, James Cuno:

“As the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, Dr. Cuno has his own obvious motives for acquiring foreign antiquities, and he makes no apology for wanting to display Middle Eastern statues to Midwesterners.”

““It is in the nature of our species to connect and exchange,” Dr. Cuno writes. “And the result is a common culture in which we all have a stake. It is not, and can never be, the property of one modern nation or another.””

The Renaissance, wherein the west climbed out of the dark ages into the light, would not have happened without a serious examination of the Greek and Roman antiquities. It is time for the inheritors of past empires to stop feeling guilty for the wrongs committed in history. Sending Nefertiti to Egypt from the newly rebuilt Neues Museum in Berlin, (which is, by the way, in its own right, a remarkable story of rising out of historical ashes) is in no way a return to a rightful owner, nor does it in any way expiate old sins.

We must all enjoy and learn from our collective histories, not stake out specific territories of ethno-centric meaning. Down that path is cultural isolation, down that path is the destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan, for instance.