Finding Caravaggio in Rome , June 2008

Caravaggio, The Calling of Matthew, 1599-1600

The art historical book on Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio after the town in which he was born, is that he was a bad boy and a scoundrel. Probably homosexual--or at least bi, he was accused of murder and spent the latter years of his life on the lam, heading south from Rome – Naples, Malta, Sicily. He died on the beach at Porto Ercole, penniless, ruined, all his possessions lost.

Nonetheless, he is considered one of the pillars of the Italian baroque, and his dramatic style which combines oblique and dynamic spatial construction with acute contrasts of light and dark began to be emulated even before his death. Although the baroque has been my absolute least favorite period of western painting, except for maybe its successor the rococo, I have long known about Caravaggio’s importance, have seen at least two exhibitions of his work, and admired, in principal, several individual paintings of his. But it wasn’t until my two trips to Rome in June that one could say that I really *saw* Caravaggio. Perhaps because on this trip my mission was to see paintings from the point of view of our painting students, I found myself bowled over by a number of his works. “Genius” is not a word that I like to use, nor masterpiece for that matter; however, I was struck by the uniqueness of Caravaggio’s vision and by his uncanny ability to convey the subtle, and not so subtle, drama in the situations he painted.

“The Calling of St. Matthew” was the work that led to my epiphany. Significantly, I saw this work that resides in the Contarelli chapel in the church of S. Luigi dei Francesi, outside of my function as art historical catalyst for my group of students, on a short escape to Rome. I was walking in the area of the Piazza Navona with an old friend, also a painter, when I remembered that the nearby church was alleged to have a “good” Caravaggio. I was amazed to find it was this one – always one of my favorites, perhaps because of its quiet drama, in contrast to the wild action of its companion piece showing the martyrdom of St. Matthew on the other side of the chapel. (Not to mention the work over the altarpiece showing Matthew and his inspiring angel unified by a dramatic S-curve – allegedly Caravaggio’s second try at that subject, the first rejected because it was too unconventional).

Those works characterized by intensely arrested action are certainly thrilling, and when back in Rome with the students, I spearheaded a pilgrimage to Santa Maria del Popolo, across town, to see the “Conversion of St Paul.” Caravaggio is a master at communicating dramatic action by creating a fulcrum around which the whirlwind of activity stabilizes. In the “Martyrdom of St. Matthew,” there’s a triangle around Matthew sprawled on the floor, as his mostly nude attacker accosts him and seizes his arm. In image of St. Paul’s conversion, the former Saul’s arms form a U as he sprawls blinded by the light of God in the extreme foreground, the legs of his horse standing over him, closing the shape. And in the same chapel, as he is suspended upside down on a cross, St Peter’s knees form the fulcrum of a wheel around which the cross, arms, bodies create the spokes.

In the “Calling of St. Matthew” the drama is psychological, built through two contrasting, nested triangles. Christ enters the room of the counting house from the right, along with a triangle of light that begins beyond the right-hand border and expands outward until it ends in an abrupt line at the shoulder of the figure to Matthew’s right (but on the left-hand side of the picture surface). The composition of the figures beneath it forms another triangle whose shape grows in the opposite direction: two lines converge on the left, emanating from Christ and his companion on the right.

The work is about recognition: Christ’s of his apostle and Matthew’s (formerly Levi) of himself. Christ extends his hand directly underneath a window with a cruciform pattern, his finger pointing to Matthew, calling him to a spiritual life from his mundane existence as Levi the customs-taker. A dark spatial gap under the hand separates Christ’s space from that of the seated figures of Matthew and his compatriots, but Levi-Matthew responds to Christ’s gesture by pointing to himself in amazement. This lower triangle is closed off by the body of the figure counting on the left-hand side, slumped in his seat, oblivious to the important event that is occurring in the light-pierced room.

Before really looking and thinking about the work, I had assumed that Matthew was the beautiful young boy in a plumed hat seated next to him. This youth looks at Christ with a level stare, his arm on Matthew’s shoulder, and his face directly catching the entering light across the dark gap. Then, my poor Italian, along with the rough English translation of the written material in the church, raised the possibility that Matthew could be the youth on the left, slumped in teenaged oblivion. But with further reading and thinking, it’s obvious that the work’s brilliance lies in the placement of Matthew-Levi, whose one hand forms a pair with the young counter’s, as they both still touch the coins, while he points to himself with the other, his eyebrows arched in incredulity.

My other, favorite, psychological works: In S. Agostino, a church around the corner, “The Madonna of Loreto” – on the left, a towering, female figure, standing against a column, barely contains a large, squirming child in her arms, while from the right, as if dashing in from the right-hand corner, two bedraggled figures, a man and a woman, each on their knees and holding a pilgrim’s staff, pay homage to the pair. The feet of the male’s figure are what grabbed me in particular about this work, emerging from the corner, the soles encrusted with dirt. A diagonal line moves from these feet to the feet of the child which he fondles, and to the child’s head. The figure’s head and that of the Madonna are connected by the vertical line of the pillar on which she leans.

In the Borghese Gallery: “The Madonna of the Serpent,” or at home with the Virgin, Child, and Saint Anne. On the right-hand side of the canvas, there’s an obviously aged, standing St. Anne. On the left-hand, a young mother appears to teach her child to walk, holding him under the arms. But actually she’s teaching him to trample a serpent – the symbol of evil in the world -- which she is crushing under her foot while the child’s foot is resting on hers. Overlapping and connecting the space between the two groups – the curled gesture of the child’s hand, reflected in the coil of the snake’s body, and closest to the ground-line the coil of its tale. The Wikipedia entry criticizes the uncomplimentary view of St. Anne’s age, especially since this work was made for the church of Santa Anna of the Palafrenieri (the Vatican wardrobe guard). (Shortly after it was made, it was considered too indecorous for the Vatican, which is how it ended up in the Borghese collection.) But, like the dirty feet of the pilgrims in the Loreto Madonna, Anne’s wrinkles, as her worried look, show Caravaggio’s keen desire to place these events with otherworldly portent, firmly in the substance of this world.

Caravaggio, St. Jerome Writing, circa 1604

The piece in the Borghese that really blew me away for its intense, dramatic simplicity, however, was “St. Jerome Writing.” This is a minimalist work: a figure, a skull, three books, a centrally placed wooden table. On the right, an aged St. Jerome, leans across an open book into the center of the painting, pen poised in his extended hand. On the left, a skull facing towards Jerome is perched on two books. The table legs reiterate the balance between Jerome on the right, and the skull, books, and white cloth draped beneath it on the left. There’s a jagged linear motion between the skull and St Jerome’s head, formed by his arm, the spine of the open book, the point of fabric in its crease. The color is also spare: the red of St. Jerome’s garb, the white of the balancing drapery, the brown books and table, the dark background that is modulated with reds and browns.

I have always loved the idea of St Jerome at work in his study, translating the bible, first from the Greek, and then ultimately from its original Hebrew. It is said that he travelled to the holy-land at the age of 45 to study that language, in order to be able to make a more accurate translation. For me his work and the images of it, captures the essence of the scholar’s life, its quiet and meditative removal from the daily fray. And Durer’s large engraving, generally accepted as a representation of the Vita Contemplativa, has always exemplified the subject for me: the rich, light-bathed interior, the lion sleeping like a pussy cat at Jerome’s feet – it has put me in mind of the peace I (and my cats!) have found in my study on a good day. But whereas Durer’s vision is rich in meticulous linear and domestic detail, Caravaggio’s sparse work shows the pared down, extreme quality of Jerome’s search. Time is running out, as the skull indicates, and he may die in the process, but he will use all the energy and concentration of his sinewy, aged body and mind to find the perfect word.

Passionate Kisses: Lucinda Williams’s Anthem of Women’s Desire

Barbara Kruger, 1987

Lately, I’ve been having some conversations with a friend who is in one of those “smart women, bad choices” relationships. Without actually using the word, she’s been describing how her long-term beau has been tormenting her, even though she’s smart, talented, witty, and reasonably attractive. Believe me. I don’t judge her because I’ve been there too. I know too well how despite your intelligence, position in the world, and even feminist politics, because of your deep-seated, underlying sense of unworthiness, you can learn to accept as normal a relationship that continuously and insidiously undermines your confidence in yourself, particularly your confidence in yourself as a woman.

This morning, while I was having my run, Lucinda Williams’s song, “Passionate Kisses” came on my IPOD, and I said out loud, using my friend’s name –this one’s for you! And I realized how this song is an anthem of women’s desire and empowerment. “Shouldn’t I have it?” That is, am I not entitled to have a life in which my basic, fundamental needs, my needs for expression and art, and also my need to be affirmed and appreciated as a woman are fulfilled? Of course this is a package that is still difficult for women to think they deserve, let alone to ask for and insist upon. For many years I couldn’t ask for it, and Williams’ song was introduced to me by one of my closest friends who is only now just beginning to be able to do so, herself. So on to the song….

“Is it too much too ask, I want a comfortable bed that won’t hurt my back. Food to fill me up and warm clothes and all that stuff.”
In this first part, Williams begins by posing a question: Is it really too much to ask to have the basic needs of life fulfilled? I’m not asking for much, she says, I’m not making any exceptional demands. Don’t I deserve to have those things that comprise the first levels on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: shelter, food, clothing. I want a place to sleep that’s safe and won’t cause me pain. I want clothes that will keep me warm, not fancy clothes, stylish clothes, but clothes that protect me from the elements. Likewise, I’m not asking for gourmet cuisine, five-star restaurants, I just don’t want to go hungry. A modest request.

“Is it to much to demand, I want a full house and a rock ‘n’ roll band. Pens that won’t run out of ink, and cool quiet and time to think.”
Williams again poses her needs as a question, as she moves on to a higher level of need, the needs related to creativity, to satisfying the soul. It’s interesting that according to Maslow, this is the highest level, possible only when the more fundamental human desires have been met. She wants to have access to her voice, to her creative expressiveness, and she wants to be heard. She wants to have effective tools with which to make her art, tools that won’t let her down, tools on which she can depend. And she wants time and space. She wants to be able to loaf and invite her soul, à la Whitman. She wants a room of her own, the sine qua non for a woman to actualize her creativity, according to Virginia Woolf.

“Do I want too much? Am I going overboard to want that touch?”
I want to be cherished, I want my womanly core to be respected, she says. But again, Williams poses this as a question: perhaps it is too much to expect, too much to ask for. Nonetheless, she boldly asserts that she wants passionate kisses; that is, she wants access to her sexual self. She wants that sexual self, her womanliness, to be valued and appreciated, as opposed to the ways in which it is so devalued and debased in this culture. How it is constantly being torn down and ridiculed. And like men, she doesn’t want to have to choose, to have to sacrifice her womanliness in order to satisfy her other needs.

“I shouted out to the night give me what I deserve cause it’s my right.”
“De profundis clamavi ad te.” As in the Psalm of David, “out of the depths I cry to You.” In other words, she is shouting from the depths of her being to the universe in all its fullness. And she is asserting that it is her right – to take up as much space as she needs, to have her fundamental creature comforts satisfied as well as her artistic ones, and she asserts that it’s also her right to exercise access to her sexuality and desires without being mistreated. To have *RESPECT* as Aretha Franklin demanded so many years ago, including the right to have her womanly core respected. To not be taunted, belittled, demeaned, ridiculed for her womanly nature.

In 1958, the writer Katherine Anne Porter wrote to a friend: “As a woman, I have a sexual pride quite the equal of any man’s I ever knew. Men are continually accusing women of trying to castrate them by insulting their maleness . . . but do you forget that all boys start this kind of thing with all girls very early, and they keep it up very late? I know that when a woman loves a man, she builds him up and supports him. . . . I never knew a man who loved a woman enough for this. He cannot help it, it is his deepest instinct to destroy, quite often subtly, insidiously, but constantly and endlessly, her very center of being, her confidence in herself as a woman.”

The attitude Porter describes is still alive and well in the schoolyards, sports arenas, and bedrooms of today: the worst insult to a boy is to call him a girl. Or, look at the revilement heaped upon Hillary Clinton in the recent primary contest, how many hateful epithets applied to her were related to her femininity: nagging wife, she-devil, nut-cracker, a naturalized and accepted undertone of commentary and description that totally sidestepped intelligent discussion of her ideas.

“No one can mistreat you without your permission.” Well – I beg to differ with that bit of common wisdom. But just as we can teach ourselves to be our own mothers, we can attempt to counteract our perniciously deep-seated feelings of unworthiness. We can demand the right to take up space and have our many levels of needs fulfilled. We can try to tune out the assaults of the playground jeers and demand it all.

On a lush picture surface crammed with phallic petit fours, the artist Barbara Kruger has written: “Give me all you’ve got.” I won’t suppress my appetite, I won’t hide my desire. Give me passionate kisses!

WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, PS 1, MoMA, , 20 April 2008

So this was the Big One. Had been hearing about, reading about, this exhibit since early last spring, while I was across the pond and it was happening at various distant venues: Los Angeles, Washington, DC. Didn’t feel impelled to rush down to Washington to see it last fall because I knew it was heading for New York, for me an easier destination. I had wanted to take my Contemporary Women Artists class to see it as a group, but given the current difficulties in making arrangements for group trips, my past knowledge of how undersubscribed these jaunts tend to be, anyway, and my current general cantakerousness, that was not to be. Nonetheless I could not help but see the show through the lens of that class, and to wish that my students had been there with me to see for themselves. I ended up spending over three hours there, abandoned at the end by both of my co-viewers when it turned out that, just as I was about to leave, I realized that I had skipped an entire section: one that contained portions of Mary Kelly’s “Post-Partum Document,” early paintings by Faith Ringgold, films by Rebecca Horn, among other key works. Couldn’t skip that – so I lingered.

I have to admit that I had a certain problem with the space. I’m not sure how the exhibit read in its other venues, where it was allegedly arranged thematically, as opposed to chronologically. Here, as said in the PS 1 Special Edition Newspaper, “because of the unique architectural features of the PS 1 . . . the exhibition will be less of a narrative and more about individual artists.” The “unique architectural features” are that PS 1 still retains the basic shape and format of its origin, a New York City public school. The other exhibit I can remember seeing here, huge sculptures by Magdalena Abakanowicz, made from salvaged tree trunks, must have been in the old gym. (Was her vaginal red Abakan in the New York version of the show? I don’t recall seeing it, so if I missed it, that surely underscores my issues with the disjointedness of the space)

In WACK! the works were displayed in what were former classrooms, although several are connected internally, forming self-contained galleries. Nonetheless, the myriad of doors and corridors, plus the arrangement over two floors, made the experience somewhat scattered. At some points it even felt like a hodge-podge, i.e. an undigested jumble. I’m usually resistant to over-explanation in a museum and feel that people should look at and experience the work, rather than the wall text. But in this case the dearth of commentary and direction was somewhat disconcerting. On second thought, it does strike me that lack of linearity could work well to embody the ethos of the period. There was LOTS going on, but it wasn’t necessarily following a straight, developmental path. There was no ONE feminism or feminist art. Also, as we so often say when trying to call Women’s Studies meetings to order, getting unruly feminists to obey is like herding cats……However, as I browse through the catalogue, I see that the logic therein expressed almost completely eluded me in New York.

The art on the other hand was fabulous. No poker-face, I kept ooh-ing and aah-ing and exclaiming “WOW” as I made my way through the labyrinth (ho! yet another apt metaphor). I kept bemoaning that I had structured my seminar all wrong, and that I’d wished I’d seen the show Before. What I meant is that, even though I have realized for quite a while that the alleged “first generation” (“essentialist”) and “second generation” (“post-modern”) feminist artists were working virtually at the same time, in presenting the material and the Big Questions to my students I started with Judy Chicago and the issues around Womanhouse and vaginal iconology, and didn’t get to talking about the artists who used post-modernist strategies till the latter part of the course. I think I would do it differently next time (were there to be a next time), in order to show how incredibly artistically radical many of these artists were, as well as being politically radical. That is, many reviews of the exhibit say that the work still looks fresh and that much of what has followed can be traced to that time and some of these artists. I was really struck by how true that is.

The first gallery I entered contained an entire wall of Louise Fishman’s “Angry” paintings (1973), some of which I had seen reproduced singly in books, and wondered at the time, “so?” Each of these 26” x 40” panels contains the word “Angry” and a female name, often identifiable as a woman artist or writer, many specifically as lesbian, surrounded by expressive slashes and squiggles of paint. This was definitely one of those instances when actual physical contact with the work of art was far more expressive than a photographic reproduction could hope to be. First, seeing so many panels exhibited together had a dramatic impact. That wall of color and line vividly expressed the pent-up anger and frustration of the numerous women who were named. Then, one was enjoined to look at the panels individually and compare: Angry Louise (her first image, brown green, graphite) Angry Harmony (Hammond, the two words balancing each other on separate halves joint with binding “x’s as in Hammond’s sculpture) Angry Djuna (Barnes, slanted green strokes above the word angry). If one accepts Craig Owens’s definition as text being integral to post-modernism, then this work surely fits that description, since it is built with text. On the other hand, I think of Chicago’s 39 plates in The Dinner Party (perhaps most effectively categorized as an installation, by the way). Part of their impact is in their quantity – she presents the “essences” of many forgotten women, as here the pent up anger of many women is embodied, named, and given voice.

In my class we spent a lot of time discussing performance and its use by women artists as a means of shifting the paradigm. Just the week before, one of my students had presented an excellent analysis of Martha Rosler’s “Semiotics of the Kitchen” (1975) in which Rosler is filmed in her kitchen, wearing an apron, holding up common utensils and clearly enunciating their names in alphabetical order. For the most part she presents them in a sang-froid, deadpan manner, but as she goes along there’s an edge of hysteria that creeps into her performance so that by the end she’s thrusting a knife at the viewer, dumping food on the floor, and using knife slashes to spell out the last three letters of the alphabet. Although my student analyzed this work as exemplifying post-modern theory, it’s interesting how the subject relates to Womanhouse, and its kitchens. The important gendered meaning of “Kitchen Things” (phrase from feminist ur-text “Trifles”). The way in which for many women domesticity is a trap, as in “ the problem that has no name” (Friedan), the plight of the allegedly happy housewife of the 50s – so that Rosler’s anger and frustration seethes below the seemingly benign surface – until it bubbles over, as it were.

Another video to which I gave full attention was Howardena Pindell’s “Free, White, and 21,” (1980) which I believe I had seen before in an exhibit at Brandeis in the 1990s. This is also a classic – for one thing, like so many performances by women, it deals with issues relating to the body (here as in skin color), and in class we studied an entire unit on Performing the Body, which could have been made up with videos from this exhibit. But Pindell’s work is primarily concerned with the racial body, and with the denial and invalidation the discrimination she experienced as an African-American in this culture. The video takes place as a dialogue between her unadorned “black” self and her self in white face: as her African-American self recounts a series of traumatic life incidents in which she encountered racial discrimination, a white-faced version, replete with blonde wig, dismisses these incidents by saying in a condescending voice, “you must be paranoid… I don’t know anyone who’s ever had those things happen to them.” A big part of the impact is achieved by showing the putting on and taking off of the white face – there’s a visceral response to the skin-like nature of the latex that forces the viewer to think about skin, its color, and the impact of its color in a racist society.

I think the biggest understanding that I gained from this exhibit, perhaps as a consequence of these works having been placed in historical context, is that just as the political stance expressed in some of the works was revolutionary, so to was the artistic practice through which it was expressed. I’ve always looked at feminist art between 1970 and 1985 from the perspective of its political intention, which explains for example, why I structured my course so that first we read Nochlin’s 1971 article discussing the omission of women from the canon and calling for a paradigm shift, moving on to Berger’s discussion of the tyranny of the gaze, and finally to Tickner’s article in which she posits four strategies for reclaiming the “colonized territory of the female body.”

In the 1970s women artists, or at least political ones, deliberately worked through their art, to redress their omitted and objectified status. However, this exhibit emphasizes how incredibly forward-looking that art was -- as art. Much of it is conceptual. There were a number of installations and site specific works. Non-high art media and found objects were used copiously, embodying a “filiation” from Duchamp. Many artists engaged in a plethora of different types of performances. It’s these aspects that have led many critics to characterize the work as fresh, new, “important” – because as it turns out, these elements have characterized the direction which “mainstream” artistic developments seems to have followed since the seventies. In other words, the challenges to the canon and to the methods of art making presented by artists who were acting from a feminist agenda are consistent with and perhaps even influential on, the challenges made by other artists, female and male, who might not have been making them in the name of feminism. I guess that’s the big surprise. For those who approach the work from a more mainstream perspective (as in “hey, these feminist crackpots actually were artistically savvy”) or for those like me who say, hey these feminist pioneers were actually artistic pioneers, as well. Because, the important thing for an artist is to work it out in her (or his) art. And this exhibition establishes and history has shown, that in fact these artists have done just that.

“The Enchantment”, Victoria Benedictsson, The Cottesloe Theatre, London, 21 September 2007

Another of My Back Pages

“I don’t understand what women want” – says the character Gustave Alland at one point in this play by an “unknown” woman writer of the late 19^th century. Alland is the epitome of the arrogant, egotistical male artist-genius, a role so typical of his time and place. Set in Paris of the late 19^th century this play is a wonderful window into that world, a world which has been studied by yours truly and others, for its contradictory Male-Female, artist-subject positions. Here, in this work, we hear the voice of a woman writer who at that time is also looking at that world and its social constraints from her perspective as a woman writer within it, attempting to grapple with that very question of men and their agency and women and the under-representation of theirs.

As the program notes comment, it’s significant that Benedictsson makes the female protagonist someone who does not have an artistic vocation – although it’s also significant that the supporting female role is in fact a person who is trying to make it as an artist. By setting the plot up this way, Benedictsson focuses the question not so much on male vs. female artisthood, but on that of sexuality, “free love” as it’s described within the play’s context. Especially on what it means to women vs. what it means to men – or more accurately, its impact on both male and female lives. Surprise – Benedictsson finds that there’s a gender difference. And – surprise again – whereas freely expressed sexuality is just ducky for men, women do not find it free at all (and as an aside I would add that the book I’ve been reading simultaneously, by Meredith Hall, shows how even in 1965 love was STILL not “free” for women).

Both Louise (protagonist) and Erna, her artist friend, end up having relationships not sanctified by marriage. Early in the play we see Erna with her paramour, a sullen male artist Henrick, whom she seems to scorn some, and who is jealous of her “past.” It turns out that Alland is Erna’s great past love and, as she sees Louise falling under his spell, she tries to warn her friend that he’s a user and a predator. Erna – with difficulty – broke it off with Henrick as she began to learn the inequality of their positions in love. Louise doesn’t want to hear about it and tensions develop between the two women.

Although Louise, following Erna’s advice runs back home to Sweden, she’s miserable and in the end can’t help herself from coming back to Paris and Alland like the stereotypical moth to the flame. Hence the title, The Enchantment?? Of course Alland plans on discarding her once he’s convinced her to give in, using arguments like she’s not a “real woman”. Was Gustave Alland painted with a stereotypical brush, as the self-serving male who felt entitled to female capitulation while assuming it was his right not to be committed, to be able to remain free? A fascinating characterization …. Ultimately he makes it clear that he’s ready to move on from Louise, and says so through his sculpture as well as through his proposed transatlantic trip. Of course as in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Louise ends up dealing with the situation by killing herself.

Maybe the significance of Erna’s artisthood is that she tries in her relationship with Henrick to have a relationship of convenience, not love (something that men seem so adept at….) But in the end she breaks it off – bringing us back to the point Louise makes about her own life. That she couldn’t begin to imagine “giving herself” to Alland if she didn’t love him passionately – just as she can’t imagine marrying her Swedish suitor “Mr. Muller” (not even personalized by a first name) because she doesn’t love him.

So the difference -- for men sexual relations are characterized by lack of love and commitment, while for women, whether within marriage or not, love is what’s important, perhaps it is “what they want”. Of course, I fixated on that line because it resonates with Freud’s question and the fact that he, too, did not know the answer. And, knowing Benedictsson’s biography – that she was in an unmarried relationship with an Important Man who refused to validate her art, and that she too killed herself shortly after writing this play – makes me believe that the answer is NOT simply that women’s destiny is to be a slave to love. To be heard, to be seen, to be appreciated is what “they” want. Louise’s lack of work and envy of the joy in it found by others, her condescending comment re: not “even” being interested in needlework, leads me to think that, according to Benedictsson, having engrossing work and being respected for it, just like a man, is perhaps what it is that women want. . . . As well as loving and being loved in return – cf. Lucinda Williams’s Passionate Kisses.

But in the late 19^th century perhaps there was no answer, no possibility of a viable answer. And hence the only solution, or a likely one, was to kill oneself.

“Expressions of Beauty – Objects of Utility,” New England Quilt Museum, 8 November 2007

The following is one of several earlier Culture Journal pieces:

This may have been the most mind-boggling exhibition of quilts I’ve ever seen. Or. Perhaps it was the depth of my current knowledge that made it seem particularly rich, because I well remember how I loved the famous Whitney show (1973?) and seeing quilts on exhibit at the Shelburne around that same time. Because of those early deep aesthetic encounters I never had to think twice about valuing quilts and seeing their intrinsic artfulness. When we were getting ready to leave, I looked at two people who were examining the feathered-star quilt at the beginning of the exhibition and felt jealous, the way I sometimes do at a restaurant, when I’m finishing up a delicious meal and I see people around me just ordering theirs. In other words, it was a feast, and perhaps that metaphor is not all that far-fetched but fits with the domesticity of quilting, although that was scarcely a focus of this exhibit.

I feel compelled to pick a favorite – and perhaps that’s not the most productive path, just as I could never pick a favorite book, work of art, poem or even artist or author. So maybe a better approach would be to ask myself what struck me most? Or – keeping it pluralistic, what were some aspects of the exhibition that I found particularly noteworthy or impressive?

Yesterday I found myself taking advantage of the opportunity to get up to the quilts close and personal, and to really study the ways in which they were put together. That could be the result of two aspects of my current life: the course I’m teaching on Fiber Arts, which is encouraging me to think more about quilts as material objects, and also my use of quilt patterns in my stained glass work. In any case it was a treat to get such a close look at their construction. For example, the aforementioned feathered-star quilt, justifiably used as the exhibition’s leading motif surprised me by being entirely pieced, as opposed to appliquéd. Interestingly, each square is based on a nine-patch variation, as are quilts with the Road to California-Jacob’s ladder pattern, and the Double and Triple Irish Chains.

We also spent time looking at the several Star of Bethlehem quilts and I think I understand that they are composed of strips that are then sewn together to make each point of the star. In the quilts constructed of round units, such as the Sunburst patterns, individual circles were pieced and then set into a white background with squares from which large circular bites have been taken at each corner, also creating the effect of being appliquéd on a solid piece of fabric. One more surprising construction detail: on the Mennonite Log Cabin Pineapple Variation quilt, the pieces are attached with a fold, which gives them actually dimensionality as well as plastic depth. I wish that the power point of the exhibit that I purchased had better quality photographs so that I could study the surfaces with greater clarity.

Because one other aspect with which I found myself intrigued was the use of quilting itself. The early indigo solid fabric quilt was a masterpiece of quilting technique (though I never found the maker’s initials allegedly embedded in the central area) – but I was especially impressed by the ways in which quilting was used in concert with and in counterpoint to figuration. This was very vivid in the aforementioned Feathered-Star quilt where the red stars are punched out by their grid-like quilting stitches, in contrast to the diagonal lines in the side white blocks that frame them. Or in a blue and white Sunflower or Starburst where the circular central forms are emphasized by rings of circular quilting. In the Amish quilts it is clear that although the fabric is plain and unfigured, the quilting stitches add a great degree of visual activity. But so many others, as well, display skillful quilting that works in tandem with other aspects of the design.

I also found myself enjoying the fabric qua fabric. The note to the Boston Pavement quilt describes the use of “cheater” cloth, printed elements manufactured to be placed on quilts. Those were such a gas – “oriental” scenes, dogs, cats, butterflies – interestingly, these are motifs that appear embroidered on crazy quilts of the same period. The use of cut out floral elements in the central circle of the Sunburst quilt – done with such deliberation and care. And the fabric in a 1940’s doll quilt, which reminded me so much of the one I had as a child, that somehow I preserved, without even understanding its extrinsic value.

And finally, of course, I was interested in these works as personal expression. In how their makers used the medium to comment, in some ways, upon their lives. The American eagles. The appliqué of autumn leaves in the corners of the Sunburst with sawtooth border. And my favorite in this regard – Emily Wiley’s appliquéd quilt in wool whose central square is a house with a cat and a horse under a tree -- with several squares containing horses, cats, dogs perhaps – the maker’s favorite snoots? – as well as pots of flowers. This theme of personal expression is one that I can see myself pursuing – i.e. my interest in MM Hernandred Ricard’s quilt, My Crazy Life. Lately the quilts to which I find myself being drawn have some element of this personalized quality, some element that suggests that the maker was specifically and deliberately interested in making a statement about her life.

Martha Wilson at Mitchell Algus Gallery, 19 April

This exhibit, and the one down the block, were gravy for me, having come to New York primarily to see the major exhibition of feminist art, WACK! But it was a lovely Saturday afternoon in spring, and there we were a short walk from Chelsea, so it seemed natural to participate in the New York gallery hopping scene, one of the real delights of living in a major city with an active, vibrant, art world. I remember my first experience with Saturday gallery going, when I was a student at Queens College, and about ten uptown galleries put together a mini-exhibit surveying major contemporary art movements. Were there NY gallery venues in other parts of the city at that time? Maybe -- but I think Chelsea has gained in importance in a big way since then.

Merry had already seen the exhibit of Martha Wilson’s work from 1971- 74, and along with her brother had declared it inscrutable. On the other hand, from the moment we walked in, I was in hog heaven. Since I’ve been teaching a seminar on Contemporary Women Artists this past semester, the issues Wilson deals with were in the forefront of my mind, and similarly it was so very obvious to me that, on the basis of her work here, she was one of the people who had helped to define these issues.

Identity – its construction and fluidity – was the most important theme expressed in the collection of photographs and texts. The only work included that I consciously remember having seen before, two paired photos, “I make up the image of my perfection/ I make up the image of my deformity (1974) is a great example of her strategy. In the photograph on the left she presents a close-up image of her face made-up to look acceptable – smooth skin, puckered lip-sticked lips, tastefully mascara-d eyes, all framed by a cap of puffy curls. In the other, her face appears blemished, bruised, puffy, oily – and her hair is in a butch “do”. Which is the “real” Martha Wilson -- if either?

Wilson further explores the idea that identity is performance in “Posturing: Age Transformation” (1973) where she presents a “25 year old trying to look like a 50 year old being 25” and “Posturing: Drag” (1972) where she presents a “woman who is trying to be a man being a woman.” That last put me in my mind of the English panto conceit, where female roles are played by men, and sometimes women perform as males playing women. Like panto – Wilson’s images are both funny and outrageous, as well as (unlike panto) being provocative politically.

Merry commented that these seemed imitative of Cindy Sherman. It is important to realize that, in fact, they predate Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills” although they are of a similar intent (albeit in a less polished form) of the idea that “we” women put on and take off a variety of “faces,” evocative of the phrase “putting on one’s face,” used by women of a certain age to describe the process of putting on makeup. The seven photographs in “A Portfolio of Models” explore through image and text, different roles available to woman, including homemaker, earth mother, lesbian, office worker (who compensates for her frustrating life by having wild sex). The idea of “models” is also interesting – i.e. that models are artificial presentations of particular “looks.”

A cognate concern expressed in the images discussed above, along with role playing, is the whole issue of The Body – not surprisingly one of the major themes of women artists of the past thirty years or so. No surprise, because of the role played by women in post-Renaissance art history as the subject of The Gaze. Tickner talks about strategies for reclaiming the colonized territory of the female body, and certainly images that explore the fluidity of appearance work to accomplish that end by highlighting the body’s elusivity, in terms of both its appearance and perception. My favorite of this group was “Breast Forms Permutated,” (1972) nine close-up images of breasts with accompanying text, beginning with too small in the upper left hand corner and ending with too big in the lower right. According to the text the “perfect” pair is the set in the middle.

And – the prodigious use of text. As I came to understand during the weekend – Feminism and Post-Modernism are more intrinsically linked than I’d previously believed or understood. Or maybe – soooo many feminist artists who made important interventions also used conceptual means. For example, Wilson’s “Chauvinistic Pieces”—a series of scenarios talking about scripts of unusual pairings for the purposes of producing offspring. No images. Just ideas, such as, “Determined Piece: A woman selects a couple on the basis of I.Q. test scores (high or low) and raises their baby” or “Color Piece: A dark-skinned couple and a light-skinned couple permutate. The resultant nine children are distributed in the most emotionally comfortable manner for the couples involved.”

Oh. And also. The artist herself walked into the gallery with her hair strikingly red, and wearing a fancy striped taffeta party dress (did I see this dress in a picture in some book?) She was involved in intense conversation with another visitor to the exhibit – but at least, before we left, I told her how much I liked her work.