YOUVE BEEN BANKSY-D

Last year’s major art “happening” — Damien Hirsch’s staged discovery of a shipwreck full of sculpture — is poised to earn somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion dollars in sales when it finally closes in December.    

To pay for foundry fees, staging, etc., Hirsch sold off a million dollars of his art. Subtracting the commission on a billion dollars worth of sales — promotions costs — a little wine and cheese — I’m guessing Hirsch still walks away from this stunt with a few million in his profit column. 

One art critic said that Hirsch “pushed kitsch to the point of sublime.” What’s so sublime about fake art?

Last week, Banksy pulled another fast one.  This one was a little less slimy — funnier by far — a little less icky. Unless you’ve been under a rock, you probably already heard about the Banksy painting that was sold for $1.3 million at a London Sotheby’s auction and just as the gavel cracked down and “SOLD” rang out, the audience watched as the painting slowly melted down below the bottom of the frame and came out in shreds. 

Wow! How fun is that?! The audience — the buyer — all Banksy-d! 

"Love Is In the Bin" by Banksy

But wait a minute! An update on the story. The painting has been retitled by Banksy himself: “Love Is In the Bin.” The high bidder is thrilled to keep the shredded picture because it’s worth more now than its winning auction price. The shredded artwork is proclaimed to be a rare, new breed, original. 

Meanwhile, the visual of a picture dripping in shreds from the bottom of its frame struck a chord in the advertising world. Ikea and Perrier nearly overnight adopted the image and McDonald’s produced posters and ads with the image and french fries dripping from below. My guess is that one of these first ad posters will be worth a bunch of money soon.

McDonald' "french fries" poster

How to react to all this? 

Artsy (online) Magazine just printed an extensive piece on Thomas Kinkade, the “painter of light,” whose images of cabins and cute animals show up in posters, calendars, and dishes. Kinkade died in 2012 at the age of 54. He was charged with sexual infidelity, drug addiction, and general craziness and some think he committed suicide. Maybe it was sweetness overload? The same year, his company earned $4.5 billion dollars. 

Kinkade’s art was the bane of serious art critics and collectors but embraced by Mr. and Mrs. Everybody-Else. One art critic asked a woman who clearly made sacrifices to afford the Kinkade $55 poster why she was buying this picture. She had tears in her eyes as she described how happy it made her — the make-believe world that it illustrated, the one she hoped to find someday for herself, maybe in Heaven if not on this earth. 

The Kinkade cabin in fog/garden/woods/snow

Kinkade capitalized on the gap between the art elite and middle America — the forerunner of our present national political scene.  In much the same way, the message was “them” (the coastal insiders) and “us” (middle America.) Right back to red vs. blue — tribes of “In the Know” and “In the Not!”

The art world has always been in on this divide.  We call it and explain it in other terms but there it is. I am part of it. When I see painted wall murals of big roses defacing a brick wall, I want to scream. The neighbors who live within those city blocks see something entirely different. I can’t explain to them why an old building has dignity and if left alone, has a chance at rebirth. They can’t convince me that with their surroundings gray and in tatters, the view of a huge mermaid swimming along the railroad underpass is uplifting. I want to yell “really?! what does a mermaid have to do with life in the inner city?” And they respond “I’ll never have a cabin with smoke curling from it’s chimney serenely sitting in snow but I want the dream.”

Can we ever find a common meeting place?  I don’t know.  Meanwhile, I am blue and you are red and I am right…and you are right…

HAWKS ARE FROM MARS: WRENS ARE FROM VENUS

A RED-TAILED HAWK

A hawk moved into my back yard. It’s either a red-tailed hawk or a cooper hawk. Both are common in the northeast; both are adjusting to life in urban environments. 

A red tailed hawk nested  on the side of a skyscraper at the edge of Central Park over twenty years ago. His name was Pale Male. Somebody produced a documentary film about Pale Male. I guess it seemed like a miracle that a hawk could live in the middle of a raging city. Now there are as many as a dozen hawks living in Central Park.  Pale Male found Lusty Louise. 

Life expectancy for hawks falls somewhere between 13 and 21 years, so Lusty Louise is a widow now. Hawks mate for life. Humans, you might want to pay attention here.

Hawks are meat eaters — rodents, insects, small birds, snakes, small rabbits. Only rarely, kittens and puppies. But be alert. A CBS newscast warned viewers that hawks are predators — lock up your puppies and kittens!  CBS didn’t warn girls about predator men. 

Stories about hawks stealing babies is pure nonsense. Babies usually weight more than 8 - 12 pounds and that’s the poundage limit for hawks. But while you’re supervising kittens and puppies, it probably wouldn’t hurt to supervise babies too, just to be on the safe side.

My yard is usually full of small birds — songbirds, wrens, finches. I like them. We put out feeders in the Fall to encourage these quirky little beauties — and so I worried when the hawk moved in.  “There goes the neighborhood,” I said. “You let one in and the next thing you know, here they all come.” I considered moving to a “No Hawks Allowed” gated community. Or maybe Florida.

It’s against State and Federal law to harm hawks. No shooting, poisoning, trapping, stoning, or gluing. Yes, that’s actually in a guideline. I don’t know what “gluing” means. Glue their feet to the ground? Glue their wings together? Glue their little beaks shut? How do you get them to stay still for any of that?  I’m thinking that some federal agent got a little too zealous.

He or she was probably a Democrat/Bleeding heart/Liberal -- a Hawk preservationist. 

Nobody else in my family or neighborhood seems too worried about the hawk influx. I can only conclude (because of my Native American roots. I’M not Native American; I just know a lot of them being from Oklahoma and all.) that the hawks were sent to me for a reason.

Messenger from the Spirit World

Native people claim that hawks are important symbols from the spirit world. If they come to you, they relay the power of clear vision and increased spiritual awareness.  They say to humans “The time is right to take the lead. Take more initiative. Be more active.”

What if their human doesn’t want any of that? What if she’s old-ish and has arthritis and feels that she’s done her share already? What if she just wants to nap? 

There goes that damned hawk making that awful screeching noise again. 

Sometimes don’t you just hate spiritual messengers?

TINKIE WINKIE GOT CRACKED!

Tinkie Winkie got cracked.

 Poor Tink!

THE ORIGINAL LIMESTONE FIGURES

Tinkie Winkie is one of a major pair of toylike figurative sculptures carved by Tom Otterness from blocks of limestone and commissioned by Memorial Art Gallery. When they were first installed at the entrance to Memorial Art Gallery in 2013, all hell broke loose. Otterness’s past sin — assassination of a puppy in the name of “performance art” —was marched around for discussion. The museum lost some community support —  a number of people gave up their memberships and never returned. 

Other sage heads justified the purchase with the argument that everybody deserves a pass from youthful missteps. And families love the childlike round-y shapes of these oversized stone dolls. Ultimately, family fun trumps bothersome conscience. 

The story line that goes with the installation is more interesting. Ms. Tinkie Winkie is carving a partner for herself. It's emerging from the solid block of limestone standing across from her.  This is the biblical story of creation turned on its head. In Genesis, God created man first but here, it’s the lady holding the hammer. And she’s building a partner who is exactly her same height and size. The material is limestone like her.  These two will be equals.

(Let’s have a round of applause for Mr. Otterness!)

But then Tinkie developed a crack!

TINKIE WINKIE WITH BRONZE ARMOR

Mr. Otterness took back the damaged limestone figure and replaced it recently with one made of bronze. Now look at the piece.  Even better:  gather a bunch of kids (ages 6 through 9) and ask them about the difference. 

Tinkie Winkie is now a comic book figure and there’s nothing “equal” between her and the mate she’s digging out of limestone. The entire meaning of the sculpture  — the axis of equality — is gone. She’s donned an Ironman skin and the “friend” will do as she commands. 

Eventually the remaining large block is likely to crack and will it too be replaced with bronze? Uh-oh….Tinkie Winkie is digging her friend out of stone…there’s no “digging” bronze.” Now what?

I can only guess that somebody predicted scenarios like these and brought all this up in discussion. I would hope that a request for a new female figure  included insistence on cloning Tinkie Winkie right down to color and surface of the original. Instead, we got the dominatrix.

Maybe it isn’t too late? Otterness’ sculptures are pretty much interchangeable. Give him back Ironlady and wait for Tinkie Winkie’s twin to come into town. I’ll breathe easier.

THE STORIES WE TELL

Kusama "Pumpkin Room"

I went to Cleveland last week. Not the ugly Cleveland. Not the rust belt-y, poverty, river-on-fire Cleveland. I went to the beautiful Rockefeller Parkway, Case Western College, Ohio Botanical Garden Cleveland. The one where international architects like Frank Gehry and Marcel Breuer designed buildings that sit among stately mansions. 

Frank Gehry, School of Business, Case Western University

One of those mansions was previously owned by the Glidden paint mogul. Glidden House was converted into an exquisite boutique hotel with original, legitimate artwork in the hallways. It’s surrounded by exquisite, perfectly manicured gardens. It charges 3X the Holiday Inn rate. I stayed two nights.  Sometimes, you just need to jump off that cliff!

I went to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibit. She’s the nearly-90 year old, diminutive Japanese “polka dot lady” with the flaming red Buster Brown haircut. Her show opened over a year ago to sell-out crowds in Washington, D.C. It equaled that success in New York City and Toronto and is now ensconced at the Cleveland Museum of Art. 

The park outside Cleveland Art Museum

People might also know that Kusama — along with her obsession with polka dots — is mentally ill, suffering from hallucinations and nervous disorders. She says that she draws repetitive patterns to obliterate the images in her head. I assumed that’s pretty much why all artists create, ill or not.  

Kusama was the only child of a loveless marriage; her father was a philanderer, her mother played the victim and Yayoi admits that she grew up with very odd messages concerning sexuality. Her early days in the art world were punctuated by her nude art performance pieces, high-profile partying and an uncanny, instinctive talent for marketing her own brand.  By the 1970s, most art intellectuals considered her over-exposed and a spotlight seeker.  

Her return to Japan drew tepid response. She had something of a breakdown, checked herself into a mental institution where she continues to live forty years later as more or less a “live-in, out patient” but with a private art studio. Obviously, given her age, she’s frail but still works and claims that “aging frees the child within us.”  I get that and her installation is full of joy — colors and lights and mirrors and more dots than any one place could ever deserve.

It’s the other thing I want to talk about…the emphasis on her mental health. 

I expected some push-back from my last review. (O.K., so the color on the walls, the framing, the lighting…picky, picky, picky!) It’s the other thing…capitalizing on the state of Josephine Tota’s mental health as a major part of an ad campaign that has my knickers in a twist.

Austrailian Hannah Gadsby delivers a powerful monologue on Netflix. Cherokee native writer Tommy Orange’s current bestseller THERE, THERE is setting the literary world aflame this Fall.  Both stress the importance of stories — stories repeated throughout our lives that go unchallenged and get passed along as truth. True or not, they inform the way we see ourselves, our history, our professions, and our sexuality.

It’s time to take a hard look at the stories repeated about artists.  The magic burden of victimization is delivered with every press release, every chapter in the art history book, that details a slip into mental illness, depression, loneliness, or addictions as though that explains a life’s work. The stories continue the mythology that to be a good artist — certainly, a great one — requires pain and damage and suffering. Logically, the reverse must also be true. Ergo, stabile family, good educational foundation, middle class most of the way…you must fail as a great artist because you missed the suffering class.

Guess what? Facts do not substantiate any of that. Several studies in recent years proved just the opposite. One from 2005 (Stanford Medical Research) found that depression and mental illness decreases creativity. Another from Sweden found that all artists for all media are most creative when they are in positive moods.  There is a tiny bit of evidence that writers and poets may suffer more frequently from depression. I’m merely speculating here but all artists may be drawn to life style choices that diminish their overall health — mental and physical. 

But I want artists to stand up. Be strong. Be proud. Reject the roll foisted on the profession by centuries of excuses: 

“We must not be good business people because’s we’re ‘artistic,’ 

“Our worthiness quotient is less because we’re really crazies. We are unreliable because…” 

“Artists are always poor and suffering, (addicted, neurotic, psychotic);  they should be grateful for any scrap of attention or reward that gets thrown their way.”

In the case of Josephine who began seriously painting after age 70, that right there gives pause. As a seamstress, she witnessed women in all their stages of marriage, parenthood, abandonment. Her paintings reflect the sadness of the female role in the society she knew honed through mature experience.

Was she all those other things — lonely, depressed? Hell, yes, sometimes! Am I? You bet! I’m past 70; let me count the ways!  Is it enough to scare my family sometimes? Yep…but I’m a writer. I’ll use the personal mental stuff because, basically, I have no shame.  

Visual artists give us pictures. And yes, background, politics and mores of their culture and era are all relevant when discussing their art. So talk about that when you’re doing those bios.   

Kusama continues to give us dots — an eternity of dots. It’s hard not to smile when you’re surrounded by Wonderbread dots. And pumpkins.

Wonderbread Dots, Kusama exhibit

SURREALISM AND JOSEPHINE TOTA

JOSEPHINE TOTA, egg tempera and gilt on board

Mary Doria Russell’s famous science-fiction novel, THE SPARROW, was published in 1996. In it, Russell tells a story of an international team of scientists and linguists, led by a Jesuit, who set out to follow and determine the source of ethereal music. They ultimately land on a foreign planet and begin interaction among its population. Things do not go well.

The story speaks to the issues of faith — religious faith and faith in cultural and scientific certainty. The instigators of such beautiful music turn out to adhere to every sort of debauchery. The explorers are murdered; only the Jesuit priest is spared and he submits to indescribable indignities. His god abandons him.

His hands are disfigured, bones removed to indicate that he is useless for anything other than as an object, to be used for sex, and admired for beauty and lust. 

It’s a horrifying tale but one practiced in not-so-subtle ways throughout history in earthbound cultures. Think of foot binding. It doesn’t take long before this trail leads through the era of corsets, binding clothing, bridal veils, stiletto shoes and the practice of total control of part of a population (usually male) over another (usually female.)

Josephine Tota

The exhibition at Memorial Art Gallery featuring the painter Josephine Tota brought the story of THE SPARROW back to me as soon as I saw the image used on the show announcement. I was already flinching before I ever walked into the main gallery to see all 90 paintings.

Tota’s back story: she was born in 1910 and died in 1996. She spent her working years as a seamstress and amateur artist.  It’s important to imagine her sources of  inspiration. She was an Italian immigrant and these paintings relate strongly to Italian Catholic iconography. They are small works, painted in egg tempera with gold gilding, and the colors she used were intense, jewel rich — rarely anything pastel.

Obviously, she knew women, their shapes, proportions (and undoubtedly their personal stories) from years of stitching their clothing. Because she came “of age” during the 1930’s, it is reasonable to assume that the great age of Art Deco left it’s stamp on her stylistically. After all, we are tattooed by those years when we are most aware of image, fashion, and the adult facade. Her women often have the same elongated bodies similar to  Erte’s illustration.

What label to classify these fantasy scenes? Surrealism comes closest: unnerving, illogical scenes but with precise detail. Surrealism combines dreams and reality. Figures are often biomorphic (think Henry Moore sculpture.) The movement began in Europe and spread to the U.S. during the 1930s and is considered one of the first modernist art movements.  Surrealism gave a unique form to feminine imagery and social institutions that previously relegated women to a lesser role among art patrimony. 

All that is evident in Tota’s paintings.  And if you are a fan of surrealism art or if you just want to see more of the form, by all means, this is your stop. 

I’ve been puzzling over this show for the past week and finally decided that while Tota’s is a unique and consistent vision, it’s one that doesn’t particularly move me. And that’s O.K. But one of the reasons I am put off by this exhibit is NOT so O.K. I think our museum has done a dreadful job of presenting this work. I don’t like the framing, I don’t like the color on the walls, I hate the lighting and I don’t even much like the explanations that accompany the paintings themselves.  

I resent the story line presented with her paintings. I met Ms.Tota back in the 1980s. She seemed to me to be a pretty confident, feisty little lady. I hate having her portrayed now as less than that. Instead, we are told in the press releases and label postings, that Tota suffered personally from loneliness, isolation, and depression. I think, in her paintings, she was saying “I am woman. Welcome to my — and your — world.” 

Surrealism by Dorothea Tanny, 1910 - 2012

Drea, reality, detail (Dorothea Tanny) Oil on canvas

MONUMENTS AND GHOSTS

When I die, do I want a monument somewhere? I can’t decide.

We are awash in genealogy at my house these days. My sweet husband in his typically obsessive way locked himself into his office with his computer for an intense two weeks and came out the side door with a colorful chart full of names and dates connecting us to our roots, some dating back to the 1300s. 

What fun! Here an Earl, there a judge, there a Civil War fatality, there a…. what’s that? A woman who “lived with” the family? In the South? It must mean…A SLAVE? No! 

The thing about roots is that you own them; you have no choice. I am proud of my heritage that contains “trouble makers” - those ancestors that challenged the status quo and the Scots who fought for religious reformation. In America, some joined in the Westward Enlightment movement and even my southern great-grandfather was a Free Mason.

But what about the other ghosts? They belong to me too. I am a pacifist but there they are - a steady line of soldiers ready to take aim and kill. What about the musician who was also anti-semite? How about the county judge who owned slaves? My former neighbor Father George says that historians must consider actions based on the era in which they took place.  Try telling that to a descendent of Jack the Ripper or Hitler. I’ll bet nobody admits to those DNA lines.

Unless we are 100% native American, someone in our past had the guts to get on a boat and get off in a place foreign to them. He or she possessed strength of character and a streak of adventure nearly incomprehensible to me. Clearly some people still have that drive. They risk everything to swim across a river, scale a wall or walk across deserted borders. I bow to their courage.

The ties that bind us to our history are sometimes faint but they're around if you look hard enough; they reside in birth and death records, in the family Bible, in ancient military service records, and in library history departments. They hide in crevices of cemeteries, in church records and on the monuments -  names and dates on tombstones.

I never thought I wanted one of those.  Now I’m not so sure.

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14000 empty shoes on the White House South Lawn representing the 7000 children killed by gunshots since 2000

Here are some examples of another kind of monument. These monuments are temporary but as powerful as any made of bronze or marble. They memorialize children who died from guns during the current century in the United States. 

Empty desks of the 17 teens shot in Parkland, Florida

BEES AND CHICKENS

Fancy F eggs

Elizabeth is a beekeeper.  You may call her an “apiarists” or “apiculturists” or a “honey farmer.”  They are all the same.  She’s a hobby bee keeper but she harvests enough honey each year to fill and sell off several jars. Once upon a time, she was a jewelry maker and I guess she still is but not so much now. She’s still an artist; artists pay more attention than the rest of us. They pay attention to everything!  That’s why I was never a good artist: I go for the Big Picture and lose the detail.

Anyway, Elizabeth pays attention and that probably helps with the bee thing.

I read that if you eat honey produced by bees in your particular locale you get allergy relief. It has something to do with the pollen.  I haven’t tested this myself even though I have some of Elizabeth’s bees’ honey; she only lives about 8 miles from me so the pollen should be basically the same. It’s the quantity part that trips me up. Exactly how much must one consume for the anti-allergy component to kick in?  And allergies to what exactly? I suspect respiratory ailments but not nut allergies or wool allergies. Another detail that I missed along the way.

Two Green Eggs

I admire Elizabeth and her hobby. It’s seems to me it’s on a higher level then say the hobby of collecting most things which can easily slip into hoarding and degrade the environment by the very nature of manufacturing more of whatever it is you collect. And while I truly appreciate all the  animal shelters and the heroic work they do, I’ve come to believe that we must begin on a much more basic level - lower on the food chain. Bees are a good place to begin, not the very bottom but close enough. 

Catherine Delphie is also a detail person but I don’t know her. She raises chickens.

Catherine trained as a medical illustrator and graphic designer and I guess she still works at that job sometimes. She fell in love with Aaron Dunn, a landscape architect, and together they bought a 15 acre farm in Hillsdale, New York, and began The Fancy F chicken farm. 

Everybody wants to raise chickens these days; it’s like the Pet Rock of urban farming. With chickens, you get eggs and the Fancy F breeds heritage and rare chickens for the colored eggs they produce and I’m totally smitten with these eggs.  Not only are they beautiful all by themselves (we’re talking shells here. I’m pretty sure that the insides all look the same  - yellow/white, a nice combination but nothing to write home about.) Catherine designed and found an old fashioned box factory to manufacture gorgeous egg crates. This is what an artist would do - attention to detail.  

more eggs

You can buy Fancy F eggs (in crates) from the Copake General Store which is where Margaret Roach lives.  Have you been there? Look up her blog -  “A Way to the Garden” - and visit her garden if you’re ever nearby. It’s worth the stop. She also is super-aware of detail but I actually think she might fall into the “obsessive” category which is a whole different kettle of fish. 

the Martha Stewart collection