Fresh Eyes

Sometimes having guests make you see things with new eyes. I've lived in Saint Maarten for 2 1/2 months and have become very comfortable with everything here. From the sea creatures above to the barrel cacti, everything is a cause of comment for them, and perhaps that's as it should be.


A dessicated version of barrel cactus....


The pricky kind of cactus--trust me, I stepped on it.



Snails! Not something you would find in New York, at least not without garlic and butter.



Blogging will be rather spotty for a while. The guests are here and Friday I'm off to New York. Hopefully I'll have some great exhibitions and artwork to write about soon!

HighTension- Danger

I love having guests,like the three I am expecting this afternoon, and I go about the usual routine of getting things set up for them, fresh towels, tidy surfaces, food in the fridge. But then, of course- this being the Caribbean,the water pump stopped working. So after not being able to reach one plumber, we finally had a second plumber come by yesterday.The problem was simple, and he said he would come back in the morning with the right part. He called right on time this morning, to say he couldn't come. I can hardly fault the guy: he was driving his pregnant wife to the hospital.

All the same, it's hard to tell your boyfriend's parents that the toilet doesn't flush. Then the power went out, which means the internet went out. No water, power, or internet makes for a primitive welcome, no matter how many candles you have. Now the power is back. Hopefully the original plumber, if he can be found, will come back, while the power is on, to fix it before the visitors arrive! Isn't there a song called "Trouble in Paradise"? It should be my theme song.

Edna St. Vincent Millay's (and my) bleak shore

I shall go back again to the bleak shore
And build a little shanty on the sand
In such a way that the extremest band
Of brittle seaweed shall escape my door
But by a yard or two; and nevermore
Shall I return to take you by the hand.


I shall be gone to what I understand,
And happier than I ever was before.
The love that stood a moment in your eyes,
The words that lay a moment on your tongue,
Are one with all that in a moment dies,
A little under-said and over-sung.



But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies
Unchanged from what they were when I was young.

Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnets remain favorites of mine for their dense, explosive quality that manage to retain such poise and attitude. On a bleak morning after rain, I woke up early and came to this deserted, rickity old platform to watch the clouds part. Millay's words started running through my head. Remembering a line like "I will go back again to the bleak shore" is like finding a word on the tip of your tongue--it helps verbalize what I lack words for.

New York Agenda: First Week of March

There is never a bad time to come to New York and look at art. As it happens, my return to New York comes at the same time as the art fairs--what a pleasant coincidence. So many things are happening! This is my personal top 5 drool list;

• Scope and Pulse Art Fairs: Lots of art and people crowded in together in order to completely overwhelm, or something like that. Come highly caffeinated.
• The Armory Show: The prestigious, sprawling, and expensive ($30) forerunner of them all. Tip: start writing an art blog and then ask for a press pass, claiming you are revolutionizing the industry. Maybe someday they will believe you.
  
• Independant: The new art fair that isn't. Called a "hybrid model and temporary exhibition forum," its showing work from some top notch galleries withOUT the lame entry fee. Here here.
• Whitney Biennial: Never been to this historic show and looking forward to seeing the wide mix of artists. Bonus points for being less hectic than the fairs.
• William Kentridge at MoMA: My friend was talking to me about the production Kentridge designed for the Met Opera, the NY Times article on exhibition design touches on it, Art:21 videos remind me of it. The whole world is whispering "go see this show."

Luckily I can! I missed the art scene during this island time. It will be tough to squeeze all this into a week along with more humdrum bits of business. Then I'm off again.

Maurice Henry at The Blue Lantern

Jane at The Blue Lantern posted this cartoon of Maurice Henry's from 1947. Here at the Surrealist Museum the artworks oogle while the visitors walk around for their viewing pleasure. I thought it was quite good; see her page for more background.

Post-Minimal Museums: Reprehensible?

"After encountering so many bare walls and open spaces, after examining so many amalgams of photography, altered objects, seductive materials and conceptual puzzles awaiting deciphering, I started to feel as if it were all part of a big-box chain featuring only one brand.

The goal in organizing museum exhibitions, as in collecting, running a gallery and — to cite the most obvious example — being an artist, should be individuation and difference, finding a voice of your own. Instead we’re getting example after example of squeaky-clean, well-made, intellectually decorous takes on that unruly early ’70s mix of Conceptual, Process, Performance, installation and language-based art that is most associated with the label Post-Minimalism."

Thus Roberta Smith, in New York Times article Post Minimal to the Max, begins to delve into what she would like to see the museums of New York begin doing in their shows. Hint: the key word is differentiation. The recent shows of Gabriel Orozco at MoMA, Tino Sehgal at the Guggenhiem, and Urs Fischer at the New Museum might be zeitgeist in action rather than reprehensible, but Smith argues that focusing on one thing creates a simplified art history by that very action. She points to artists, often those whose work is hand made or seems personally driven, who might merit a show that would be more than blank walls.


These recent exhibitions have much the same feel, and Smith's point that it is at the expense of other aesthetics and styles. Ben Wadler at Artcards describes the situation as "reminiscent of one recently put forth by the White House, attributing the success of Fox News to the simple fact that it is selling the clearest narrative for people to follow. So too in the Art world do we want clarity, and the more others are following something, the less likely will it be a waste of our time to do the same." I'm not sure exactly what the solution is, but I agree that something is wrong when Smith could write that;

"the idea of seeing a survey of contemporary painting at the Modern makes me squirm. It would look — I don’t know — too messy and emotional, too flat, too un-MoMA."

Certainly the image we have of a museum ought to be one that reflects all the art in its mission. I would enjoy it if museums presented smaller, more intimate exhibitions for two reasons. It would allow for more, different work to be seen. Big exhibitions often have a big wow! factor, but not as much depth--or perhaps I am simply too overwhelmed and distracted to appreciate the nuances. However, change could be even simpler: as Smith asks, and obviously I'm biased, but why hasn't a NY museum arranged to take on the new Chris Ofili retrospective currently in London?

Curators are under pressure to make sure their exhibitions succeed, and the exhibitions listed are certainly popular. More than that, they are good in their own right. So how do you ask a museum to change its curatorial program? Do the collective museums of New York have a duty to present a comprehensive view of art?


k

In Honor of Valentine's Day Weekend: A Paper Cup Romance

Fresh from Ravels In Motion studio, a classic homage to the trials and tribulations of love. This Paper Cup Romance will give you thrills and chills as Coffee and Tea meet--and part-- for the first time.

Imitation of Picasso

The end of my neighbor's wall was puzzling me. The edged bit seemed quasi-human. I couldn't figure out quite what it reminded me off, then I thought it rather had the same sense as this view from Picasso's villa in Antibes.


Now I think it was something else I was trying to remember-- a white face formed rather like PacMan, facing left?-- but I can't put my finger on the title or artist of this imagined painting. Of course, if you look hard enough, you can see anything in a bit of wall. The island is having its effect on me; perhaps the glaring sun is creating mirages.

Do you know what I'm thinking of, or has this anthropomorphic bit of wall played tricks on my imagination?


j

Fodder from the Reader

Via SwissMiss

Taking another day for the old novel, which is still going full steam, I'm happy to say. However I did get a chance to do a little web browsing, and voila! interesting things abound:

• Hyperallergic has a lovely post contrasting museum art versus street art in terms of how we experience it, with bonus points for working in Proust.
• Innovative trend: artistic funeral urns?
• The Dull New Global Novel from the NYT Review of Books. The title says it all.
• Abstract Expression had a mother? Apparently those macho men have some secrets...
• Jerry Saltz's webpage
• Jhumpa Lahiri and Chuck Close make President Obama's advisory committee via Culture Monster
• The Royal Shakespeare Company is doing a residency at the Armory this June, maybe even one-upping my beloved Shakespeare in the Park

Unrelated thought: 'Write what you know' is rubbish advice. The whole point is to imagine and create, not replicate in dronish detail. If we did that, there would be no magical creatures, no fantasy, and no sci-fi. Not to mention relatively few happy endings, if only because it's hard to know where things end in life. You can't wrap up a person's life after the good parts like a story.


j

Back from Paradise

Little did we guess upon seeing this steep hunk of rock sticking out of the ocean that we were entering paradise. Saba was paradise. The scuba diving was fantastic, as we expected, but we didn't know this tiny, beachless former volcano would be the most magical place we had ever been.



The people, all 1,400 living there, are friendly and helpful. The pace of life is beyond slow. Life is simple. There are no beaches, there are no bugs, and there are few tourists. The top of the island is rain forest, at about 3,000 feet above sea level, and is the highest point in the Netherlands. We did some hiking, but we didn't make it all 1,064 steps to the top--we left that for next time.

It was a great break, and I came back full of focus and creative juice. So it's back to the novel for me.

Out for the Weekend

Back on Monday.

I'm taking the ferry over for a long weekend on Saba, an island near St. Maarten that supposedly had A-mazing scuba diving. Fingers crossed!






P.S. I am currently a fan of rust.

Buzz Buzz: Chris Ofili at Tate Britain

If you haven't heard, you have probably been living under a rock or on a remote island. Chris Ofili's name is popping up everwhere, and the press coverage is certainly having an effect on me: I want to go!

Installation View, Tate Britain

Ofili is having a retrospective--which feels off to me, for a 41 year old whose work is evolving to already have a retrospective--at Tate Britain, and to mixed reviews of his more recent work. Since moving to Trinidad, he has begun experimenting with new forms and pared down medium. (To borrow a phrase, he has "cut the crap.") Check out the video at the Guardian about the influence of the Caribbean on his work.

His more recent paintings are less flamboyant, minus the glitter and dung, etc. The curator Judith Nesbitt says to Culture 24:

"He says he's doing more of the listening now, working in a more open-minded way, letting it be, waiting to see where it's going to go.That's one of the most exciting factors in this exhibition. He's still a young artist. He's got some way to go."

Iscariot blues, 2007

Some of the buzz:

• Interview- Guardian

• "At a beautiful and provocative Tate show, we see the artist and his elephant droppings in a new and improved light"- Times Online

• In Pictures- BBC

• "Dazzled by an intense beauty"- The Independant

• Insider Chatter- ArtForum

Full Fathom Five

Some mornings the island seems to belong more in the world of Shakespeare's The Tempest than the present day Caribbean. I came upon an offering of sea riches from Caliban.


The beach, strewn with a multitude of coral, shells, and rocks, reminded me of Ariel's song:

Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

x

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Gauguin's Romantic Notion of the Noble Savage

"Out there at least, with winerless skies overhead and wonderfully fertile ground underfoot, Tahaitains have only to lift their arms to gather their food; therefore, they never work.Whereas in Europe men and women satisfy their needs only after ceaseless toil..." -Gauguin, Letter to Williamson, late 1890


Where did Gauguin's idealization of the savage come from? He believed that life was better or more moral during the early stages of mankind or among primitive peoples, like the Tahitians. This Romantic conception opposed Hobbes's famous statement the life was "nasty, brutish, and short," insisting instead that civilization ruined everything.

Romantic Notions: the Nobel Savage

The phrase 'nobel savage,' expressing the concept of natural man unencumbered by civilization and divine revelation, has often been ascribed erroneously to Rousseau (Jean-Jaques, not Henri). In English, 'noble savage' first appeared in John Dryden's play The Conquest of Granada in 1672:

I am as free as nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

More than a few people found this idea ridiculous; Dickens, for example, put the term nobel savage to sarcastic effect in 1851, when he used it as a title for a satirical essay. Dickens states his position quite clearly:

"To come to the point at once, I beg to say that I have not the least belief in the Noble Savage. I consider him a prodigious nuisance and an enormous superstition. ... I don't care what he calls me. I call him a savage, and I call a savage a something highly desirable to be civilized off the face of the earth."

Dickens was strongly disassociating himself from 19th century Romantic Primitivism, long before it influenced Gauguin's thinking or developed into a branch of Modern Art.

"Having lost all their savagery, having run out of instinct and, you might say, imagination, artists have wandered down all sorts of paths, looking for the productive elements that they themselves do not have the strength to create..." Gauguin, Racontars de Rapin, April 1903


Gauguin
Gauguin in Tahiti arrived in 1901 with delightful notions of what savages were--he hoped himself to develop that part of himself. His Utopian views of unspoiled paradises are apparent from his earliest travels; sic:

"For the time being we are living in a Negro shack, and it is paradise compared to the ithmus [of Panama]. Below us, the sea, fringed with coconut palms; above, fruit trees of every variety, and all 25 minutes from town. Negro men and women mill about all day long with their Creole songs and ceaseless chatter. ... Nature is at its lushest, a warm climate but with cool spells." -Letter to his wife Mette June 20 1887

In addition, he admired savages who were untouched by the false morality and the paralyzing effects of civilization. Did Tahiti live up to his expectations of unspoiled paradise?

Yes and no. Upon arriving in June 1891, he found Tahiti more civilized that he would have liked, with Christian churches and colonial offices. He moved to a more remote province and began good work, only to find himself penniless and begging to repatriated (granted in June 1893).

Back in Paris, Gauguin was as eager to explain the nuances of Tahiti as a zealot, despite the fact he had never managed to learn the language and his knowledge of their religion came from a French travelogue. He turned his studio into a wild, Polynesian style bordello and took up a biracial mistress with a monkey. This, combined with an unusual costume, made quite a stir in Paris. He wanted to return as soon as possible, explaining in an interview with L'Echo de Paris in March 1895:

"I had once been fascinated by this idyllic island and its primitive and simple people. That is why I returned and why I am going back there again. In order to achieve something new, you have to go back to the sources, to childhood. My Eve is almost an animal. That is why she is chaste for all her nakedness. But all the Venuses in the Salon are indecent and disgracefully lewd."

Unfortunately, this last passage can't help but bring to mind the string of Tahitian wives, all around the age of puberty, that Gauguin took. While his statements about paradise and savages signify more than a desire for young island girls, certainly knowledge of the artist's life influences how one understands his Romantic notions of Primitivism.

j

Paul Gauguin: Martinique Travels and Savage Ideals

Picking Mangos in Martinique

Learning about Caribbean art, I've mentioned a few times how some artists espoused European Primitivism in order to better express their own cultural background. Yes, the irony abounds. Paul Gauguin, who paved the way for the later Primitivism of Picasso and co., is better known for paintings of Tahitian women than of Caribbean subjects, yet the artist had ties to the Caribbean and South America that fostered his later desire to escape to a savage land.

Martinique

Tropical Vegetation

This painting earned Gauguin the beginnings of critical interest and accolades when he exhibited it in Paris in 1888. He had just returned from a trip to Panama and Martinique. The circumstances around its creation were haphazard. Although born in Paris, Gauguin was in many ways impressed by his Peruvian ancestry and childhood memories of Lima. He became dissatisfied with his small start painting in Breton, and wrote to his wife in 1887, "I am off to Panama to live like a savage." Unfortunately Panama for Gauguin turned into forced labor on the Panama canal rather than a cushy paradise with help from relatives. Gauguin eventually made his way to a "native hut" on Martinique and was ready to begin painting. It was here he produced his first exotic landscapes and here he began to break away from the Impressionism of his mentor Pisarro. Unfortunately, he grew ill and had to be repatriated.


Savage Tendencies

Self-Portrait

Back in Paris, Gauguin sold some paintings, including Picking Mangos to Theo VanGogh. This provided him with enough money to began painting in Brittany, a place that represented to Gauguin something inherently pre-academic. He took on the Breton's traditional dress down to wooden clogs. His works became freer, bolder in color and more imaginative. In the self portrait above, he positions himself between two recent pieces, his painting The Yellow Christ and a ceramic mug. Over the next three years, his critical reputation grew, at least among the avant garde, but he become obsessed with traveling somewhere wilder and more primitive. As he wrote to his friend Emile Bernard, "Terrible itching for the unknown makes me do things I shouldn't."

Gauguin was intent on leaving behind a land made 'rotten' by civilization. In a letter to Bernard in 1890, he describes how "I feel I can revitalize myself out there. The West is effete at present, and even a man with the strength of Hercules can, like Anteaus, gain new vigour jst by touching the ground of the Orient. A year or two later you come back robust." But Gaugiun was now planning to stay much longer than that. He wrote to Odilon Redon in September 1890,

"I will got to Tahiti and I hope to finish out my life there. I believe that my art, which you love, is but a seed, and in Tahiti I hope to cultivate it for myself in its primitive and savage state."

The Spirit of the Dead