A LITTLE OF THIS, A LITTLE OF THAT

Joseph Albers, 1975

Joseph Albers was born in Germany and taught elementary school for more than ten years. Along the way, he also studied art. He left teaching children to lead the famous German Bauhaus faculty in stained glass design. (Isn’t that interesting? Think about stained glass, its blocks of color and defining seams. Now superimpose that on Albers’ famous color block paintings. See? During our lives, we may jump - or crash! - from one branch to another but we take along the memory of the limb we left behind.)

When Nazi Germany shut down the Bauhaus, talented faculty scattered throughout the world. Albers was invited to head a new art school near Asheville, North Carolina - Black Mountain College. He molded the curriculum there from 1933 until he left in 1950 to head the design program at Yale.  Albers died in 1976.

Here are his four basic art exercises - from elementary classes to Yale:

1. Take 3 colors and turn them into 4.
2. Draw your name backwards and upside down.
3. Use your fingers to make newspaper sculptures.
4. Draw the spaces between chair legs.

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Illustration by Maurice Sendak

Not-for-profit fund raising events became the topic of conversation in my car twice this week. Here’s why that seems important: the conversations took place among some high-power talent - smart, competent women who have terrific organization skills and a mother lode of experience. If someone computed a bottom line, the accumulated amount of money raised by these ladies over their lifetimes probably would astound most of us!

But every single one was expressing frustration, questioning the energy expended. The questions boiled down to these:

What is the clear, consistent goal?  Is it to raise money for an organization? Bring prestige? Add to a useful - otherwise, hidden - catalog of assets? Is the event primarily educational? Is it structured primarily to aid or assist either professionally or monetarily another group, i.e. artists, writers,musicians, gardeners, small business owners? What is the true cost? (This is a tricky part. How do you put value on volunteers’ hours? infinite car trips?) What about hidden costs (facility wear and tear, security if not part of the overhead charge)? Do patrons or underwriters take most of the burden of overhead? Would they pledge to the organization without the expenditure of an event? In other words, are we merely shifting money from one hand to the other? Is this event mostly a community building exercise?

Times have changed.  “Just because we’ve always done it this way” is not good enough. Volunteers burn out.  Smart women are looking for places where their skills are both appreciated and used wisely.  Otherwise, we walk!

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I subscribe to “Brain Pickings”, an on line magazine (thank you, Kathleen).  Mostly, it’s literary with a ton of philosophy but one of the things I like most:  the editor uses wonderful illustrations throughout - primarily artists who publish for children’s literature.  Above are two favorites from today.

THE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS OF ART

I am confounded these days by the controversy over appropriateness of expression - verbal, musical, visual. ‘Politically Correct” is a term from the 1960s when it seemed especially necessary to correct a culture steeped in white male domination. Today the term is uttered in scorn, a javelin raised by arch-conservatives and aimed at liberals and intellectuals.

I resent the hijacking of historically appropriate intention but I confess that I see signs of hypersensitivity among minority groups and I can’t always find my own line between total agreement with the aggrieved  versus a disbelieving “are you kidding me?” reaction. 

“Showboat,” the landmark play written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein and staged in 1927 was converted to film in 1951. The original lyrics were “cleaned up” to fit racial sensitivity of the times. “Old Man River” originally written as “n…….s all work on the Mississippi..” became “negroes all work…” then “colored folk work…” and finally in a contemporary version we saw just a year or two ago, the line sung was “some folks work…” Obviously, the “n” word is so emotionally loaded that except in contemporary rap, no one dare utter it.

Civil war monuments are the latest target in the effort to scrub history. I am on the side of sending them all to the “Closet of Shame."  As a pacifist, I balk at any glorification of war - no matter what side anybody comes down on - and view all such statuary as little more than the promise the rest of society makes to young men: “go get yourself killed or maimed and we will put your name on a piece of marble or metal and  thereby guarantee the eternal memory of a grateful nation.” Better that we promise money to the surviving family and seven virgins in the afterlife.

But what to say about art created by an African-American depicting important historic characters of the same race but protested by another African-American?  

From the "Joy Cometh in the Morning" Suite

Black painter Stephen Towns created a series of paintings and multi-media “quilts” re-telling the story of Nat Turner.  Turner led the only significant uprising of slaves (1831). 55 - 65 whites were killed. Turner was caught and his hanged body dismembered as a warning to slaves to stay in their place. Traditional white history books depicts this leader as a traitor and butcher. In light of the facts of slavery, Turner must be given merits of leadership and bravery in mounting such a challenge. 

Towns’ suite is titled “Joy Cometh In the Morning” and was installed this August in the art gallery at Goucher College in Baltimore. The first few paintings are beautiful, textural narratives; the darkness of the Nat Turner Uprising intensifies throughout the progressive pieces culminating in full-on portraits of six black revolt participants with nooses around necks staring eye to eye with the viewers.

"the Revolt"

One employee at the Gallery complained that she simply could not carry on her work after walking past these paintings every day.  The employee is an African-American woman.  Rather than have the college and gallery director become embroiled in what could become a public “to-do”, Towns removed the six portraits himself, taping out blank spaces on the wall where the work originally hung.

Questions: should the gallery and college have allowed one employee to dictate what is displayed in the gallery? what if the images had been white? distasteful to a white employee? would the outcome have been different or any more or less justified?  This was not the first viewing of this body of work so the director fully understood the power of the artist’ work. Should he/she have insisted that the paintings remain in place? After all, isn’t one of the roles of art holding a mirror of truth up for clear inspection?  Was Towns’ action right or wrong? I believe he had a “teaching agenda” when he created this series. Should he be willing to stand behind (or in front of) and defend his art?

We live in complicated times.  Art is smack in the middle of the cultural cow pie! 

one of 6 portraits of "martyrs" of uprising, the protested paintings 

Exhibition of the 6 portraits removed by artist Stephen Towns