Thursday, May 7, 2009

Walking through a museum is always overwhelming.  There is so much to see and observe.  The Cantor Center is full of every genre of art.  I was specifically drawn to the Native American Collection.  When I stand before these works I am mesmerized by the simple line work, and of the beautifully painted animals and patterns so simple and elegant.I appreciate that these pieces tell a story, recording their past. It is like deciphering code. The longer I gaze at the work I start to notice the smaller things, where the fire licked the side of the pot, small chips and wear and tear..  I am continually reminded how beautiful and timeless they are.  For me this experience is embodied more that visual, mainly because I relate so closely with clay, I know the process in which the piece was made and what the steps were to finish it.  While observing the work I  want to sear the images in to my memory, but I generally end up sketching them, trying to capture the strong simplicity of line and design.

Perhaps I'm Being Too Literal...

So, perhaps I'm being a bit literal but Duane Hanson's Slab Man is a piece that has caught my eye every time I have been to the Cantor and could, perhaps, be the literal embodiment of embodiment...(?)  Now, I am an object maker so it makes sense that I might be drawn to Hanson's piece due to it's display of technical mastery, or perhaps it's the fact that I have done my fair share of manual labor and can relate to this disheveled, rough, depiction of working-class fatigue.  While these things may be true there's more to it than that.  The most intriguing thing about Slab Man is that no matter how much I know that he is an artificial construction of synthetic polymers and everyday clothing, the fact remains that he constantly startles me!  During my time in the gallery he remains in my peripheral field as a member of the general museum goers and then I turn to focus on him and I am startled once again!  Is there a problem with my short term memory?  Do I fear manual labor that much?  Or is it the instinctual reaction to the perceived physical presence of a large human  in my vicinity that causes this reaction.  I do empathize with him; the apparent fatigue, the dirt, the disheveled appearance, all reminders of a past life that I honor, but have made great efforts to enrich in other ways.  There is honor there and pathos...  Yet I am still impressed by my repeated physical reaction to the piece.  Though I value a controlled perspective in my own work I think Hildebrand got it wrong with this one; it's the fact that we can interact with this work, that it does come into our space as an equal member of the crowd and that we appear to have no control over it except our ability to retreat from it that gives it its power.  Plus, I'm pretty sure he had B. O. ...

Gender and Embodiment at the Cantor







The work of Tom Rippon, Women Finishing a Novel, 1982, is an excellent example of an embodied experience, as well as the embodiment of a woman. While it appears to be a painted wooden chair, the piece is porcelain with glaze on a wooden base. The size is approximately large enough for an average ten year old to sit comfortably. If it weren’t for the raised position of the piece displayed, the thin legs of the chair and the size, one would assume it was a utility piece. Additionally, the familiarity of the object, the physical openness of the chair and the open book resting on the arm of the chair draws the viewer into the work.
Society has established colors which are more closely associated with each gender; this includes the pink for girls, blue for boys and yellow for gender neutral. The gender associations are often established from birth. The use of colors of pink, light orange and green seem to have the sparkle of fingernail polish, instead of the deep colors of red, blue or brown, which are often considered masculine colors. Colors contribute to gender performance from an early age. The artist also suggests feminine qualities in the use of lines, curves and the pattern on the floor, which seems similar to kitchen tile-again references presumed gender associations.
The experience of viewing this piece in the museum setting, provides a different result than had I viewed the image in a book. The supporting text further leads the viewer to the same conclusion of the importance of gender and embodiment.

Empathy, Embodiment and Abstract Art




My first experience of an empathetic response to a work of art happened in the second floor galleries of SFMOMA when I encountered Mark Rothko’s prosaically entitled No. 14, 1960. I was magnetically drawn to this 9 x 9 foot painting that seemed to project its presence from across the room. I felt compelled to enter the gallery and seat myself on the bench in front of it. What happened next was totally unexpected and slightly unsettling. After I calmed my mind and focused on what was directly in front of me, I experienced the sensation of literally falling, tumbling directly into the artwork. It wasn’t that the art had become an extension of myself or that I had disappeared and had merged with it, it was more that I had entered the universe that the painting had opened up to me and that I was experiencing this new world from within the frame.

Reproductions of this work do it no justice. I was aware of myself sitting on the bench but at the same time I felt enveloped, almost smothered, by the hot stickiness of Rothko's glowing golden rectangular. I was inside this fiery mass looking out through its orange-red skin. I could smell the dusky, smoky, sweetness of honey in beeswax and could feel the sensation of heat, like the hot summer sun, on my body. I felt as if I could explore the outer contours of this viscous but fluid mass by swimming through the channels created by the artist’s brushstrokes until I slipped through one of them and plunged into the deep indigo blue below. I hit the cold, brown bedrock beneath it that silenced all sensations and I continued to slide right out of the painting. I could imagine that the drips and splashes on the surface of the work were the traces, the visible evidence of my presence.
.
What came to mind immediately was Icarus of Greek mythology who was able to fly using wings made of wax and feathers. In his exhilaration with flight he ventured too close to the sun, his wings melted, and he plunged to his death into the sea below. Icarus became my own personal title for this painting. I learned later that in an earlier Surrealist and more figurative stage of his career, Rothko’s interest was in developing an art based on myth. It was later that he began to create softly contoured rectangles of luminous color that seemed to float within their monumental canvas enclosures of which No. 14, 1960 is a prime example.

I didn't realize it at the time, but in a contemporary art museum, I was creating my own narrative that connected an ancient Greek myth, 19th century German aesthetic theory, and an American abstract painting. Robert Vischer and his theory of empathy has given me a framework for understanding my own experience. I've learned that the experience of an artwork does not have to be limited to the intellectual and visual, but can be fully embodied in unanticipated and rewarding ways that can open us to a greater understanding of the world beyond our limited view of self.

feeling of death


The most interesting work to me was "Splendid Grief: Darren Waterston and the Afterlife of Leland Stanford Jr". At beginning, I didn't know that closed black gate was a gate could lead us to a exhibition. I only found some black paper butterflies decorated on a small room outside. I followed these butterflies and then I pushed the gate and entered into the Ruth Levison Halperin Gallery, which has been transformed into a mourning parlor that serves as a memento mori to the late Leland Jr. Well, be honest,  I didn't plan to stay in this gallery for long. I started from the left side. When I pass by some oil paintings on the wall, felt some communication with the paintings on the wall.  I stop in front of the panting. I felt something is surreal.  





The first one that got my attention was a painting about Leland and an angle. This is one of the museum collection. In this painting, the size of leland and angle is in an interesting contrast: the angle is in front but she is small. Leland is behind the angle but the size is much bigger. The angle is crying and Leland is staring at the lens. The color is in contrast too. The crying angle hide her face in her arms, the overall color is dark and brown. Leland is standing straight behind wearing light blue, and everything is in details. As all of his other portraits, Leland looks proud and no face. I felt some connection because I know this life (Leland) was exist, and this panting was painted after his death. It was a strange feeling.  Every time when I  take a walk in a cemertary park, I feel I have some connection with these passed people, especially if i see their black and white photos on the stone. Does Darren Waterson had the same impression when he saw Leland's portraits in the museum? Does he has some special interest of "death"? The first time when I saw his water color painting, the flowers were beautiful and inspiring, but they remind me the dying flowers. And then I start to think why Waterson use "after life" on his title. From a Buddhist perspective, the current life is a continuation of the past life. Does Waterson want to build up a connection by making this show? In eastern philosophy, we should not bother lives in the other world. It is all about "feeling", I realize I cannot explain too well.  
 

I have to pass by a large installation that placed on the center of the gallery. It was from the ground to the ceiling. The bottom was designed a circled couch that allowed the visitors to sit and rest. A The installation was fully decorated with black butterflies. They were elegent but it was a little bit too pretty and too busy to my taste. 

Some pictures of our fieldtrip to Stanford

Gates of Hell, Auguste Rodin
Photos © Hedwig M. Heerschop 2009


"What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes."
Auguste Rodin

Finding myself in a big room filled with more than 50 sculptures by Auguste Rodin I felt as if he put them there temporarily if to say; “ I be right back”. It seems overwhelming and creates some sort of a “presence”. I can feel the emotions reflecting off the sculptures. The forms and lines of the sculptures playing with the light create a magical harmony in this room. Although as fascinated I am in this room, Le Penseur, or The Thinker, mesmerized me most.

Photo © Hedwig M. Heerschop 2009
The immense figure sitting in the middle of the room created quite a focal point. I could sit here for hours and see myself in the same position in unguarded moments when I am drifting away in my own thoughts. I drift back for a moment to my home country where seven bronze sculptures were stolen last year January from a Dutch Museum near my hometown in the Netherlands. One of the bronze works was The Thinker. It was found but was badly damaged by the thieves who were probably after the bronze for money. They had already taken off one leg and made a start on the head.
Photo ANP
The museum decided to exhibit The Thinker in damaged state to show the public how these thugs managed to ruin something so irreplaceable. But is it irreplaceable? What is not replaceable is it’s unique place in the line of reproduction. The image could be replaced the provenance can not. After Rodin’s death in 1917 the state of France inherited all his works and molds with no restrictions on quantity. Rodin made all his sculptures out of clay and then made plaster molds. Rodin poured the first sculpture of The Thinker in 1902 and after that there were twenty more replica’s made. The one in the Dutch museum was one of the earlier ones. So is this one than considered an original, or the one here in Stanford’s Cantor Museum, or all the other ones spread around the world? Each one is unique as unique as our individual responses to it.
Rodin created The Thinker originally for his monumental Gates of Hell also to be seen at Stanford University. They are a pair of bronze doors intended for a museum of decorative arts in Paris. He didn’t cast The Gates of Hell during his lifetime, but it gave Rodin a rich source of ideas for individual figures and groups that he worked and reworked for the rest of his career.
The theme for Gates of Hell was taken from Dante's Inferno, and The Thinker was Dante himself. The initial plan was to put the figure on top of The Gates of Hell. It was not until 1880 that Rodin started to exhibit The Poet/Thinker. Many more were cast in a smaller size made from the original hand-made clay model.
Here I sit overwhelmed by the powerful emotions created by being surrounded by such incredible work. It makes one think.

Photo © Hedwig M. Heerschop 2009

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Long Sorrow


 
In the thirteen minute film by Anri Sala, we are pulled into a small room, slowly. The camera image deliberately controls our pace. There is something there beneath the open window but we can't yet make out what it is. Sounds of a saxophone are audible. We are made aware of the camera's presence. Our perspective changes as the camera rolls in. From radiator to window to saxophone to mouth-piece, the camera is constantly reframing. We are given fractional sites of embodiment, shifting, as the notes are heard. This fragmentary presentation adds to our intensity. 
 Image and sound articulate one another.  
 Captivated by the soulful and sorrowful whaling of the free-jazz artist, Jemeel Moondoc, we are drawn into the music in an empathetic response.
Michael Fried brought in this film to help give credence to some of his theories on art. 
In this film we are made aware of the saxophonist playing while sitting on the ledge of an apartment building. He is absorbed in his music. He is unaware of being viewed. Fried talks of the absorption as its  "to be seen-ness."
Fried has long complained of Donald Judd and the "literalists," of not owning up to the theatricality of their work. 
In, "Long Sorrow," the emphasis of the activity of the camera is seen by Fried as the "owning up" to its theatricality. We are made aware of the camera but we are drawn in by the music. The music takes us inward, into the soul of this man and into ourselves as well as taking us outside where we hear church bells and traffic. 
I loved the music in this film. And yet, thinking back on the evening, it is also Fried's voice that I hear, rapidly firing his words as though there was an urgency in his getting out all that he had to say.
The music of the film held conviction. We were caught in the moment, spellbound by the improvisation of the saxophone. "Like a high wire act," Fried said, "at any moment it could fail." We "experienced" the intensity through each moment. 
 






 
 

Georgia Granite Circle



Walking quickly through the museum I couldn't help but be struck by Richard Long's "Georgia Granite Circle." While there were many works that were interesting and warranted further attention there was no doubt that I would spend my fifteen minutes with the circle of granite. Having grown up in a scientific family and spending summers in the New Hampshire woods that are strewn with granite boulders I recognized the rocks as granite immediately. Indeed when I sat with the work many childhood memories came flooding back to me. More than anything I could imagine how it would feel to walk across the rocks. I would have to struggle to keep my balance walking on top of the rocks as they moved under my feet. As a child I was also an avid rock collector so I was drawn to the many small glinting crystals in the granite, these are good specimens, the kind I would have taken home as a child. Indeed it occurred to me that Richard Long's main emphasis with this work may be nothing more than a celebration of the childhood joy of rocks. It also made me remember throwing rocks into lakes and rivers, where one goal was always to through the largest rock you could. While all these reactions to the work engaged me and drew me in I wouldn't say I lost myself in the work, or was embodied in the rocks. I definitely empathized with Richard's and indeed all humans love of rocks.
I found that after sitting with the work for several minutes I began to imagine myself shrunk down so the rocks were like mountain peaks. Standing on top of one of the rocks I could look out at the vast expanse of jagged granite peaks, like I was in the middle of some great mountain range. My sense of scale then shifted so the rocks were like large boulders that were several times my size. This reminded me of badlands type landscapes that I really love. I could imagine hiking amongst and climbing on the rocks. I really did begin to lose myself in the work, and I became embodied in the rocks.
Kenneth Baker the art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle called the work "defiantly uncommunicative", and perhaps he is right, but maybe it's the lack of overt message on Long's part that does make it relatively easy to lose oneself in the work.

Size matters


Viewing the "Gates of Hell"(To your Right) by the French artist Auguste Rodin is always very pleasant. I admire Rodins craftsmanship in modeling 180 figures in despair, and the carefully placement of each and single one of them. But, do I feel the horror of loosing my soul? No, I didn't. I felt that the figures emotions were a bit cliche, in their positions and facial expressions. I also had a hard time relating to the figures which were 15cm-1 meter tall, maybe if I was the same size as them, the whole thing would have had a stronger effect on me.

Take an artist like Ron Mueck (To your Left) who uses scale to have a impact on the viewer, and does it ever! His ordinary models and the positions of them, are powerful and intense. The scale is so big and successful, that it changes the figures from ordinary to extraordinary.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Deborah Butterfield's work

I am impressed by Deborah Butterfield's work: a horse made of bronze branches. What I am admiring her work is that she managed to create a form depending on her personal feeling. I was also shocked by the sculpture material which appears to be real branches but is made of bronze. At the first glance, it looks like a horse painted by Beihong Xu, a famous Chinese painter. The character of the Chinese traditional painting is to express the spirit of the artist by the Chinese writing brushes. I feel that those bronze branches are just like the strokes which represent the artist inspirational moods. When I looked at this piece closer, branches are connected very well to form inner and outer space in a horse in an abstract manner. The hollow space between branche brings us a lot of imagination. In Chinese painting, the virtual and the real are most important expression techniques. In this horse sculpture, the artist took advantaged of the negative and the positive space in the strutures so that the whole form shows grace and ligtness. To some extend, Deborah was exploring the material expression and the relationship between inside and outside. She digged out the unique character of the material which embodied the artist's mood and interest.





On Fried's talk

Sitting at the lecture I was pondering Michael Fried’s discussion and it’s relevance to contemporary representational painting, and found that this was going to be another experience, like most lectures I attend, to take in as an experience, and an addition to my mental art history dictionary.

The video by Anri Sala, titled "Long Sorrow," was a perfect example of the experience part, which is what I think Fried was getting at in his talk. So, here I am with four friends, with interest invested in this talk, and a small auditorium of complete strangers, as Fried presents a brief overview of his earlier work, then shows Sala’s video.

The first scene in the video shows the interior space of an empty white room, from the vantage point of the middle of one wall looking out a window in the center of the opposite side, with a radiator under it, with something propping up a hinged window. There is a saxophone playing. Whatever is propping up the window is placed a little to the right of the middle of the window creating asymmetry in a symmetrical composition.

The saxophone is playing and I am staring, and having an experience. At this point I am not fully invested in the movie. The strangers are around me, and I am intrigued, confused, and aware of myself trying to be aware.

The camera slowly moves towards the window.

I am uncomfortable at this point because I am becoming part of the scene and subconsciously I don’t know if I want to be. As the camera draws nearer the window it is becoming very obvious that what is propping up the window is the head of someone playing the saxophone we are hearing. This moment is the switch from an abstract image to the conveyance of some form of narrative, but I just want the image. As the video plays on it remains very abstracted, and presence, or “presentness” as Fried calls it, is always there. There is a need though. At the very moment of my engagement I am in dialog with the director (Artist), trying to show me, where everywhere else in the video I am looking. This, and the on the spot question from Professor Raysnford after on how I liked it, followed by a sparatic answer from myself, made me rethink my experiences in general. I look, watch, listen, answer, etc. and this moment of "presentness" is everywhere, and the video, Fried’s talk, Raynsford’s question, and my paintings are all an image of "presentness."


The exterior shot of the window further on in the video shows the saxophone player cropped out of the lower left corner of the picture plane, overlapping the offset window, which is framed beautifully by the exterior of the building, and small vertical abstraction to the right of the view beyond the building. There is a relationship to this aesthetic that I think is the “presentness” we all relate to, and is Fried’s topic for discussion. These moments we grasp to, that encode our existence, which we usually take for granted, is what experience, or language is all about.

I am sitting, typing now, and as I am thinking of what else to say, and about how I need to go back again and reread Art and Objecthood, I look out the aluminum framed, old, open sliding glass door of my parent’s house. The sound of traffic from the near highway hums, and framed in the bottom of the door, cut off to the right side, is my dog sleeping on his side. Breaking the plane of the window, he also overlaps the table and chair behind him, which is framed by the darkness of the shadow further away. I look for a split second more. I laughed, and turned to write this, and looked back for that experience, and the dog walked inside.

A moment, or "window" of clarity



Walking around the Cantor looking quickly, and passing all these great moments in time, I kept walking back to where I usually go when I have been there before, and that is the contemporary art wing, and specifically the Bay Area painting section. Maybe the placement of Diebenkorn’s “Window”, visible from both entrances, set it so I am constantly engaged with the painting. Yet, when I finally stopped and engaged with it as a solo experience, I am instantly walking into the painting.

The chair on the bottom right corner of the large canvas (92” x 80”) breaks the picture plane making the interior part of my space. Upon studying the metal folding chair at a slightly awkward perspective, it is lit with a cool light that overlaps the sill of the window and my perception of the flat surface is projected back into space of the warm, intense exterior of the building. For now, I am in the building. I am in the painting. I am fully engaged and embodied by the work, and my investigation and associations become amplified.

Frames within frames, complementary warms and cools, relatable and ambiguous subject matter intertwine the composition. The application of the paint is very direct, as is the information presented at first glance. This is a space recorded at a specific moment in time. The pairing down of information, making the scene more abstracted creates further directness to the composition, as if we are dealing with just the formal tools of painting, which are working to convey some sort of mood.


Knowing about Diebenkorn, and reinforcing my background from the simple wall text, I know that he was follower of Matisse’s work, who had a great influence on his decision-making. In particular, comparing “The Window” to Matisse’s “View of Notre Dame,” one would make obvious relationships, not only between these two paintings in regards to there formal qualities, but also the influence this particular painting has on Diebenkorn’s whole “Ocean Park” series.

Windows looking out into the world, with incorporating interior space, make it very easy to engage with what is happening in Diebenkorn’s work. That is the beauty in it. A simple looking, yet complex break down of shape, line, color, light, perspective, and so on make this piece a window that is personal to Diebenkorn, yet part of my space in the world too. Upon further investigation of this work I am continually impressed with Diebenkorn’s eyes and hands, and I equally surprised and intrigued by images within this image, and other works of his, like the simple horizontal lines of color creating light and shadow in the frame of the circle to the left of the painting, which appears to be some form of a railing or piece of the architecture of the building. And that bright, bold orange shape (roof top) is just undeniable. The space in this painting is part of our world, because he says it is.



Sunday, May 3, 2009

There is something about Dick

After strolling around at the museum and viewing some of my old favorite artists, I surprisingly got most excited to view the "Georgia Granite Circle", 1990, by Richard Long.
The 7.5 tons of striated marble stones was placed in a large jagged circular pattern. It takes approximately 8 seconds to walk around the whole piece, but somehow the scale of the piece felt larger when viewed from 65 cm from the floor, at a still motion. The rocks were light colored and around 20 cm tall. Some had stripes and some had natural silver/gold glitter inside of them, but still the all looked the same. The brightness of the rocks and the jagged circle felt elegant and calming, to me as a viewer. I think that the usage of a natural and organic media such as the rocks, strips some of a complexity away. It then leaves the work in a vulnerable and naked state, which I find beautiful and peaceful. Not only did I find these emotions in the piece itself but also within myself. The rocks pulls the viewer in and leaves the surrounding, in this case the museum, in a delete form.
So how can some granite rocks placed on the floor invoke a lot of emotions inside of me. Could it be the colors or the placement of them...or, the glitter? There is something about Richard Long precise usage of the granite. The unity the rocks shared in their size and colors, and a clear non egotistical need of grabbing attention by being different. All the rocks had simplicity and shared equally their space with its neighbour rock. None of the rocks had something more, nor, less then the other rock that was placed around the circle. Dear I say that it reminded me about a dreamlike socialistic point of view between the rocks. A point of view which I grew up with, and therefor I felt more of a connection and familiarity with these rocks, over any other work at the museum.