ART: LACMA, Variations: Conversations in and Around Abstract Painting

"The dichotomy between figuration and abstraction is untenable. All representation is abstract, and all abstraction, no matter how rigorous, is funneled through the language and habits of mind that are representation.  It's not even that one can't have one without the other, but that they are simultaneous."

Helen Molesworth, Exhibition statement

Amy Sillman

Simultaneous funneling?  Sounds like a hydraulics system - the "black box" cognition theory, a mental "push-pull" process of birthing images.  

I love this painting - it looks like an earlier work by the artist, but the color sense is sure and right, and the shapes are at once playful and beautiful, colliding and then erect on the left side of the painting - a no-man's land if one tends to "read" paintings visually from left to right like a text - which I have trained myself not to do.

The idea that all representation is abstract is of course, fundamental to understanding human perception of reality.  "The map is not the territory".  It destroys the "primitive" use of figurative imagery.  Think of all those stone gods worshipped, the "captured soul" perception of portrait photography.

I wish to expand the idea of simultaneity   beyond a linear metaphor and imagine it as a unimaginably dynamic open-ended process involving time, space, somatic perceptions, and mental constructs - like a Julie Mehretu painting come to life, or those exploding images we see at the beginning of movies.

I chose paintings from this exhibit that I "liked" - a "simultaneous" and seemingly pre-verbal process.  For me, finding language to analyze and explain experience, whatever it is, has a desperate, pressured feeling, like being at bat in the ninth inning with 2 out and the bases loaded. 

My liking of them is not merely an intellectual exercise. I love each of these paintings and feel great energy about them and from them that is entirely an emotional response.

Then the struggle begins, to find the words, for they are hiding in those mental caverns that gave me the experience.

Amy Sillman

Oh what colors here - that grey seems to be delivered direct from analytic cubism, but the purple and sly pale yellow slices of color beneath the coffee pot and the lovely violet and lavender blocks to the right of the forms and part of the forms seems to speak to me: I'm perfect here, this is exactly the way it should be - like a Giorgio Morandi does.  All perfect form but exciting directions and finally harmonious balances resolve within and around the volume and mass of shapes.  All flattened illusion.

Mark Bradford

I love this particular Mark Bradford painting - a welcome and recent appointment to the MOCA board - because I am drawn to maps, directionality, and grids. How easy it is to move among the colors here, then halted short by that dark blocky section, then permitted to move around and above it.  I don't wonder what it is.  It's for me to have color, to move in the blocky, accreted directions and be stopped by the "shoreline" of exquisite mint green. 

I think there's something rather retro 50's about the overlapping blocks and their orange color.  How unstable the crazy blocking seems, ready to tumble but never doing so, making for fascinating and repressive energy within and between the forms and colors.

Bradford's body of work is really interesting to view.  His exploration and direction seems so right, yet so fresh.

This last painting I love, but its a very different painting.  The tactility and tonal quality call me to think of Antoni Tàpies, another favorite painter.  How I love that line moving over the rich and hatched surface.  How puzzled I am by the two triangles seeming to quarrel with each other and the painting whether they are below the surface of it or above.  

And that line - free, swinging, yet compressed from the sides of the canvas and the top it seems, forced to slow,curve and turn, pick up speed again, then slow again, until it arrives at a place which concludes the movement, rather like a work of programmatic music - something earthy, like Dvorak. 

The shapes are doughy, and childlike, and the line seems patient and then scribbly. I love the pressures against each other, rhythmic reversals.  At the same time, it's still  flat, a denial of depth and space even as it references it.  Like maps do.

FILM: The Great Silence

Spaghetti-croissant western with Jean-Louis Trintignant Klaus Kinski, filmed in the Dolomites in a deep snowy winter in 1968, this is a film that ends with a bad surprise.


It's based loosely on the excesses of bounty hunters in the late west, who massacred an outlaw group in Utah that seemed to be Mormons hiding until amnesty was granted. 

Klaus Kinski plays a sadistic bounty hunter named Loco and Trintignant a righteous but mute vigilante called Silence - after he's been in town and the shooting stops, that's what you get.

We're denied the virtual cinematic pleasure of a duel between them, and Silence and his girlfriend both die defending the outlaws being held by Loco in the saloon.

The Dolomites are astonishingly steep and deeply snow-covered, and their looming white silence is breath-taking and compelling.

A shocking and quite good film. 

FILMS: Dear White People, The Skin Game

Go ahead, white people, try making funnies about blacks.  Or maybe not.  My working principle is to only make fun of my own stuff, though these days white female old lady jokes aren't even safe, because then people try to make me feel better because because I'm old. Then I can't own my own age after all.  They don't want to think about their own futures.

I once discussed with a black friend how a white person can work for racial equality without blundering.  Her advice, was, "just keep trying, dear,though you may be misunderstood".  Wise words. Maybe someday I'll get it right.  

In the meantime, I go to PC movies for etiquette coaching, and some that aren't so I can actually laugh. 

A wise friend, a southerner whose special area is Faulkner, once chatted with me about "permission to laugh" at stereotypes, whether those of black comedians satirizing black cultural behaviors, or whites laughing at them.  He advised that we should, because it's just another PC trap not to. It's all in the level of awareness, as I understand his point.

It's a very timely issue - consider the removal of a scene from The Death of Klinghoffer portraying a New York Jewish family scene which evidently had stereotypical Jewish types in it.  Not going to be caught laughing during this opera, no sir!

By the way, this film has a smart, really funny musical score - lots of clichéd masterpieces that stand for the boring, materialistic yet well-intentionededucational institution.  (One time at a party on the East Coast I heard two old guys discussing the size of their schools' endowments - each mentioned sums in the millions of dollars, but it was definitely a "mine is bigger than yours" conversation.)

I liked Dear White People a lot.  Yes, students actually do have racist-themed parties; I found six listed on the web, not all black.  Equal op racism. I'm almost more disappointed with the privileged college fun scene portrayed. Where is the intellectual journey part? It's the back story, you make it out in the distance, as the literary "cuties" try to out-do each other with clever party themes, pretentious literary magazines and blogs.

Skin Game, a comedy western (1971) with a young Lou Gossett and James Garner, is surprising.  Lou Gossett is a free black pretending to be a slave as partner in a con with Garner.  The "n" word is used casually and frequently, racism is presented in all its ugliness, and Gossett fakes black southern slave dialect, and we'd call his acting "coding" his behavior to suit his surroundings - all very non-PC, but the comedy gets away with it, despite my raised eyebrows. It's naiveté and date seem to have slipped it by the PC police.  

In a plantation scene, Gossett's character discovers Songhai Africans kept in the barn as cowboys.  They speak no English, and Gossett, who has pretended to speak an African dialect in an earlier scene, makes up words until after a few missteps, he hits on words they understand, and all become fast friends.  It's such rich send up of fake dialect.

The film does include chains, a whipping scene, slave auctions, the Kansas slave/free vote, and in the framework of the comedy, is very hard-edged and unpleasant to watch - who thought this was ever funny? (Despite my earlier statements about comedy, I still have my limits.)

All the folks Garner cons seem to richly deserve it, rationalizing the deceit,and Garner is a good guy when prevailed upon. 

ART: VAN GOGH'S CONTINUING SIGNIFICANCE

Another "new" Van Gogh to me: I don't know this one, because it's been in a private collection, now going to the auction block.  It's expected to sell for $30 to 50 million.  No museum will ever be able to afford this and so it will go away again, a kind of sleeping death. It confirms the bedrock of economics, of commodity, of capitalism, that art elitists must not deny.  Their bedfellow is a jailor from which there is no escape.

So I look at a picture and yearn.

50th High School Reunion

"We are old, Father William, the young man said...Take down this book, and slowly read... dream...and murmur, a little sadly, how time has fled..."  (Lewis Carroll & W.B. Yeats paraphrase)

But we were. Old. It was mildly shocking to see them all - the handsome kids I went to high school with, pretty girls' marvelous bee-hive hairdos, boys with  lettermens' jackets, slim shoulders filled out by the padding, hanging cool.  

Fellow students, once just beginning adult lives, now have retired, or transition to the challenge of slower energy and newly-fashioned opportunities.  

About 1000 students walked the stage that day in Long Beach, June 1964. The reunion gathered about 150. Where were they all? Suddenly I wished to know, though it's a bit late for that.  But we're used to going on with missing pieces now, aren't we?

The memorial slide show, sad and final, showed me over 150 18-year old faces and names I hadn't concerned myself with for 50 years. We mark passings, and the room is quiet. In my mind, they were all merely older, not dead from cancer, Vietnam, heart attacks already.

My two best high school friends, Linda and Diane, were there, and I was glad to sit with them, a warm embrace and gentle smile shared between us. Linda's face still has its openness, and Diane's lovely smile lingers. 

We have children, grandchildren, have lost our parents, and we are now solid and certain, grounded by the fact of our motherhood and old times, knowing that it will always be the same for us. We tell each other the truth.

Kids who'd been at best casual friends chatted each other up.  I walked around checking out name tags, because I recognized almost no one.  The polish of 50 years has given us new names, white hair, dyed hair, no hair, weight, limps, canes. We are not who we were. Do they see that?  Do I remember them?  Do they remember me?  Yes and no, but that's okay.

It's like a field of poppies suddenly blooming across a swath of dry desert hillside.

We all had old boyfriends and girlfriends to find - a reunion ritual practice. "Mousie" and I "went steady" (I think) in 7th grade.  We didn't talk again, even in high school, until 1970 on a plane flight from Danang to Guam.  Joe Vernon was a Marine rotating out from his Vietnam combat year, and I was a flight attendant on that plane. There we were, astonished to recognize each other, our nation tangled in war and conflict. 

Years later, seeing him living; he'd made it home and I was very glad. It was a celebration of the particularity of our lives, a memory path that finds our place in the history we lived.  

Stan and I were friends and then began to go out on dates in our senior year.  As graduation activities began, we moved on. His intelligence, attractiveness,and the experience of being known remained with me, like an heirloom charm, kept carefully put away. 

A few years ago, a newspaper article I chanced to read while back East brought news of him.  He and his partner were instrumental in  securing gay rights legislation in Vermont, I read.  I had to think for a time over this news but wasn't surprised to know of his accomplishments.

I always knew that Stan would lead a life of conviction and testament.

He was there.  We laughed over the old songs the band played, and danced as I haven't danced in years, though Stan is practically ready for "Dancing with the Stars" while I might be voted most improved. I was touched that Stan remembered our friendship - he is vital at 68, charming, now poised and certain, too. 

The tentativeness I sensed in him sometimes has become a communication space to enter and talk; he is a church deacon and therapist, most fitting, I declare. 

The night drive home was congested, miles of Los Angeles' industrial yards finally leading past a skyline burning like far-away lanterns through dark heat.  An evening I'd almost passed on had surprised me. I thought my quota was used up. I found myself smiling and laughing a bit, and then Yo Yo Ma playing Fauré's Elegy began to float from the radio. Perfect.

.

  

Travel: Natural Bridges State Park, Utah

In the small town of Mexican Hat we rested after Monument Valley in an unexpectedly comfortable motel with a warm sunny pool.

Dinner at the "Swingin' Steak" was a first for us.  Meats are barbecued over an open wood fire on a gimbaled grill which moves the steak into the flame then out, searing and browning it without burning the meat. 

The salad and steak floated atop a gooey mess of refried beans, coating the greens with bean goo as well as salad dressing, and warming the cool salad as well. The steak was OK, however. 

The outdoor patio was warm and was visited by flies quite frequently.  John, the hublet, was underwhelmed, though the recommendation was sincerely made by our Navajo guide in Monument Valley.

Beside Mexican Hat flowed the muddy, army-green, rocky San Juan River.   

Depending on upstream flash floods, the river is "red" or "green" - one tributary empties Chinle Wash with its Halgaito shale deposits. McElmo Canyon has Mancos shale, and is the source of heavy green sedimentation.

Leaving Mexican Hat we viewed the amusing balanced rock which gave the town its name.

web photo

I chose to take Highway 261, not noticing a small area of road marked Moki Dugout.  This turned out to be a gravel-dirt road cut out from the side of the steep mesa.  Built by a uranium mining company in 1958, Utah has not seen fit to improve this highway.  The weather was good our Jeep sturdily climbed the hill, conducted with aplomb by hublet John.

In Goosenecks State Park, we saw one of the world's finest examples of an entrenched river meander. An upward shift of the rock beds caused a rapid incision of the river into the sandstone with a symmetrical path.  The riverbed lies in a 1,000 foot deep gorge, and the one meander area measures 6 miles long in a 1 ½ mile direct measure.

Rocks exposed here are 300 million years old, dating to the Pennsylvanian Period.

We weren't able to walk in the deep canyons and their spectacular oxbow pathways through the rocks, but we could see them from the top of the plateaus they have eroded so powerfully.

satellite photo - Goosenecks State Park

The landscape is gray and sandy, dull, and wrinkled like the tough hides of elephants or dinosaurs. Open, open, I feel my mind stretching to know time and events here.

We zip across the desktop of Cedar Mesa, and quickly come to Natural Bridges State Park. Here the rock is warm cream and sienna, and it is astonishing - my first view of a rock bridge I've wanted to see for so long.

Sipapu Bridge

The road has been lain for car touring, and I'm so grateful.  My husband cannot walk well anymore and views he can no longer earn on foot are still offered to us, courtesy of an environmental access philosophy that is more generous than Edward Abbey's.

Owachomo Bridge - means rock mound in the Hopi language

These bridges, perhaps 5,000 to 30,000 years old, have been eroded by river waters, different from the arches in Arches National Park. Silt from Permian Period sea and beach became sandstone layers of varying density.

diagram of Rainbow Bridge erosion process

Meanders undercut the sandstone of the river beds, and softer areas washed out, leaving harder stone above. Flash floods pounded boulders down the river course, too, knocking out the yielding sandstone, and leaving the arch, temporarily firm, above. 

This bridge is staunch, wide and high, and I hiked down to stand beneath it and marvel at its span and the wonderful empty space beneath it. There is still a river moving through this canyon, too, adding freshness and a sense of current time to this seemingly timeless place.

Like a child, I was curious to stand beneath the bridge and gaze up at its span, so like and yet so not of the mechanical wonders that span the world's rivers and bays. Desert varnish stripped the sides of the span, making the bridge look like a sienna-colored lizard.

Beneath the span and beyond lay a tumble of riverbed, boulders, and willows, angled silted rock slabs canted against each other, disorienting me slightly, yet delighting me, alone beneath this hallowed place.

My worries about John's boredom while I hike are alleviated when I come back up the trail and find him chatting with another traveler who isn't hiking anymore, but waiting for his friends below.  He's good at this, chatting up  people, and enjoys it.

TRAVEL: Day 5, Monument Valley

Earth's dynamic processes use time to its own ends, creating innocent forms unpossessed by the admiring gaze. 

commercial photo 

"…nothing is fair or good alone…" (Emerson)

"…cast a pale eye…pass by" (Yeats)

To humans is left the act of naming that will endow Gaia's spires, pinnacles, and mountains with memorial purpose.

When the trail fades, build a rock cairn to guide the next hiker passing by, silently assure his steps into wilderness. 

With a mighty surge, raise an obelisk to your country's heroic victory.

Place a headstone for your beloved one and then inevitably, turn and walk away, back to your future.  

Endow a museum, for that will hold the strange and beautiful work of many human journeys.

I consider these and other fundamental rituals of humans,humbled as we are by grief and the insult of death.

Monument Valley and its haunting sandstone bluffs, towers, spires, and ship rock formations has such singular poignancy to me.

I can make of it a memorial ground, a place of spirits gathering in the dust and wind, calling each other to witness.

"More than this, there's nothing
 More than this, tell me one thing…" (Roxy)

"The ill-concealed deity…" (Emerson)

But I see its beauty, standing separate, in need of nothing.  Even poignancy and formal feeling fall away.  The wind removes the wispy shrouds wrapping emptiness. 
  

Now I have the will to climb, to stop, to become empty.

model Navajo hogan

People live in this place, their lodges earthen, low and humble.  There is space between them. The village was unneeded in the old days, a modern and necessary inconvenience.

Juniper logs are stacked without nails,  ingenious, sinew-like, raise a shelter.  Unjoined, merely balanced, but so sturdy, they can be moved and raised in another place, some other time, for reasons or not.

Emerson's Nature gave him a center, it seems, a Deity.  Perhaps a male soma becoming archetypal.  I find no holding center, nor have I concern.  I see a open door to maya,  endless, direction-free, transparency and deepest space. 

Ford's Point, modern day Navajo model

I, too, watch, then alas, I leave.