#helloblarty

Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty almost looks like something out of a fever dream, some Dalí landscape mistakenly displaced into the real world. Under the sweltering Utah sun, you might even believe it were a mirage. The form and plain existence of Smithson’s earth art is something stranger than fiction, and I would even argue, something greater than fiction. Visiting the landscape one day takes its place of pride on my bucket list for the Spiral Jetty represents one of the noblest virtues an artwork could ever embody: putting the life before the art.

Located in a quiet corner of the Great Salt Lake, the Spiral Jetty throws a gauntlet before its travelers to complete an often underestimated, grueling pilgrimage. No matter how prepared a journey may be, there are undeniably inevitable hitches along the way that can stall or even compromise the mission. From nebulous directions to the creeping sense of anxiety from hours on the road, the trip to the Spiral Jetty is a deprivation chamber of sorts. Confined with only the time, company (or lack thereof), and space of your vehicle, should you venture to Smithson’s scroll, you will be forced to confront your identity across deep and primal lines. There are truly few experiences quite like it that can cut through the masks of formality and inauthenticity we put on to survive every day, to homogenize with our everyday.   

Due to the increasing severity of Utah droughts, the Spiral Jetty is now clearly visible for the majority of the year, but prior to the shift in climate, Smithson’s magnum opus was largely covered by the lake’s overflowing waters. Everything from the vibrant pink aura from the surrounding crustaceans to the trodden path itself was completely obscured. So why spend unrecoverable hours on the trek? Why sacrifice meaningful relationships and virtues of self-assuredness for a reward so seemingly arbitrary?

It’s that risk, that raw vulnerability alone that justifies the journey. The Spiral Jetty is little more than a cover for a personal odyssey. For better or for worse, the landmark demands its travelers to meet it halfway in the spiritual aspect of the adventure. While the natives and terrain provide enough to juggle with on the way there, what the image of self-discovery looks like, is an abstraction painted entirely within your own mind. 

639 years. That’s 233,235 days, 20 billion seconds, roughly 9 lifetimes. Even when put into specific and deliberate numbers, such a timeline is hardly fathomable to us. It is no new thought that time, much like art, is relative, but is it so simple to enhance the legacies of our creations by prolonging their mortality? If so, what’s the date of expiration? How long would it be until the parts of us we try so desperately to leave behind are invariably forgotten and eventually die?

A fascinating project that might shed some insight on such heavy questions is an ongoing performance of John Cage’s As Slow as Possible in the Halberstadt Cathedral of Germany, or more accurately, a 639-year performance of John Cage’s As Slow as Possible in the Halberstadt Cathedral of Germany. The context behind this installation’s set up can seem deceptively contemplative, surely such a project must be the brainchild of some deeply brooding cliché of an artist trying to communicate a sentiment the general public just wouldn’t get. How the Halberstadt performance came to be is much more of an Occam’s Razor type deal. A curious coalition of composers and musicians saw the potential in the practical permanence of the organ to perform the renowned Cage composition truly as slow as possible. The determination of the location and the seemingly random timeframe of 639 years was equally as straightforward. The Halberstadt Cathedral is home to the world’s oldest, permanently installed organ, an achievement the institution laid claim to for 639 years prior to the start of the music project. 

As simple as the Halberstadt performance’s motivations were, such an ambitious installation cannot help but garner questions concerning its greater significance to the art world. Of the many conversations sparked by this longstanding sentinel, I’m most excited about the performance’s implications on the death of art. Assuming perfect maintenance, this truly will become a unique capsule of change no generation for a considerable amount of time will be excluded from. Comparable projects that come to mind are Manfred Laber’s Time Pyramid and the Great Mosque of Djenne.

What you see before you are vases from Han Dynasty China. Coveted for their craftsmanship, a symbol of ancient oriental ingenuity, national treasures, and copiously slathered in obnoxiously vibrant industrial paint. If it were anyone else who committed such an atrocity, I would be viscerally cringing. But because it was Ai Weiwei, the rebel WITH a cause, the mouth who can never be silenced, the absurdist who is unparalleled in his observations of reality, his Colored Vases warrant a second look.

Art historians and the general public alike have been divided over whether Ai Weiwei’s vases can considered as art or deplorable examples of vandalism in the guise of modern art. In order to understand these perspectives and subsequently form our own judgements, context is necessary. Predating even the start of the orthodox dynasties, pottery is one of the most refined aspects of the Chinese cultural identity. Looking beyond their distracting exteriors, this incredible mastery and experience is evident in these vases.

The structure of these vases are robust and has a distinctive silhouette. In this series, the vases swell in their upper abdomen and taper off in both directions. The tops are cut off with lips that convex upwards, while the bottoms round off upon a circular foundation. The first ceramicists to throw such an unsuspectingly complex and impressive form on a wheel might not have understood the gravity of their accomplishments or even referred to their creations as “art”, but regardless of whether or not they possessed the foresight to predict the massive impact of their work, these first potters ignited one of the most iconic legacies left by any world culture.

Among the first works that are associated with Chinese art are the blue and white porcelain Ming dynasty vases, and even to this day, there’s scarcely any Eastern earthenware that hasn’t been in some way influenced by the legendary Jingdezhen ware. Any pilgrim of pottery has the rocky hills of Jingdezhen on his/her bucket list as it’s hailed as the porcelain Mecca. Oriental porcelain is an emblem of the virtues and merits of Chinese history and is universally acknowledged as one of the most important components driving the country’s aesthetic. Ai Weiwei has drastically altered the image we have in our minds, so it’s not surprising that his so innocuously named Colored Vases incited such a deeply dramatic, jarred reaction.

Ai’s critics were quick to condemn him for the blatant destruction of priceless, irreplaceable artifacts and his ferocious disrespect of his mother country, with the most extreme parties even claiming treason; however, Ai Weiwei had an actual purpose and intention to create these pieces. They are vases, yes, but like the majority of his work, Ai was constructing a mirror. He took a deeply respected image of China and sloppily smothered it. The beauty and the admiration of the vases still linger, but are nonetheless tarnished by this act. To Ai, this work was simply a synopsis of what China has endured for the past century. The nation’s legacy of scholarship, rich culture, and progressiveness has been soiled by horrible incidents of silencing those who speak out peacefully and scandal and corruption driven by vapid and dangerous incentive.

His commentary is not a work born out of hate for this cultural heritage, if anything, it’s his widely broadcasted cry for help on behalf of a country he was proud to belong to. He fears that indoctrination and denial will eventually erase what Chinese identity was to him, that future generations of the Chinese people will forget their value and history by blindly following a treacherous Big Brother government. Ai is creating off a slippery slope for many already have forgotten, and his life has been permanently put on the line. Yet he still creates out of defiance. On the surface level, his work is directly combating the machinations of the Chinese government, but Ai Weiwei’s work demonstrates a long running theme of fighting against apathy. His work seeks to evoke heated, primal reactions to coax an opinion. Against indifference, Ai’s work forces attention to be placed on it. From there, an actual dialogue can be created and awareness, whether the audience is consciously forming it or not, can be born. In Ai’s philosophy, having any opinion is better than having no opinion at all. It is indifference that destroys, and so when given the choice to live in peaceful ignorance or risk death to himself and his loved ones, Ai Weiwei does not hesitate to choose the latter every single time. In his own words, “Without freedom of speech there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.”

Sandro Botticelli’s La Primavera is hailed as one of the greatest pieces of the Florentine Renaissance. Currently housed at the Uffizi, the painting strays not far from its origins in the old master’s studio. La Primavera is true to its name as a blizzard of Greco-Roman and 15th century Italian symbols of love, peace, prosperity, and most importantly, life were lavished upon the canvas. The work brings with it a new magnitude to the label “masterful” as Botticelli showcases his sophisticated grasp over the human anatomy and botany, with La Primavera containing at least 138 accurately depicted species of plants. So how does a painting such as Botticelli’s Spring, that is brimming with so much life and celebration for human exceptionalism, act as a harbinger of the death of art?

Best known for his paintings The Birth of Venus and today’s focus, La Primavera or Spring, Botticelli was a favorite of the Early Renaissance. Though Botticelli was one of the talented Florentine artists fortunate enough to be in the generous employ of such institutions as the Catholic Church and House Medici, he was certainly the black sheep of the group. Whereas other Medici painters and sculptors such as Donatello or Michelangelo were constantly experimenting with and redefining the western canon, Botticelli was unique in that his style dwelt steadfastly and stubbornly in traditional Quattrocento artistry. Botticelli worked by a doctrine of perfection rather than proficiency, and so his career bears evidence of his noble intent to constantly elevate and refine the fundamentals so many artists that followed him sought to move past from. 

Though he founded a comfortable and consistent lifestyle off the Florentine aristocracy’s dime, Botticelli’s piety and artistry were brought at direct odds with each other come Savonarola’s reign over Florence. Authoritarian Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola briefly usurped social prowess from the Medici family in the early 1490′s. Amongst the sea of his enamored congregation was Sandro Botticelli. The first changes to Botticelli’s work eerily paralleled that which was earlier damned by Savonarola in his fiery sermons. Shortly after Savonarola lamented over how contemporary depictions of the Virgin Mary dressed her as a whore, Botticelli’s renditions of the Virgin became noticeably more conservative. His paintings gradually adapted to fit Savonarola’s severe ideal of proper Christianity until art itself became a cardinal sin. 

Likely the most recognizable act of Savonarola, the Bonfire of Vanities engulfed the decadence and luxury that practically defined Renaissance Florence in great pits of licking flames. Inspired by the intense insistence of his spiritual leader, Botticelli took some leave from painting and threw many of the pieces he did have into the Dominican friar’s violent show of fanatic spectacle. Though there is no consensus over what became of Botticelli’s career after the few tumultuous Savonarola years, the tangible effect it did have has left centuries of questioning and for some, a faint sense of loss. 

La Primavera is one of several Botticelli’s paintings that were fortunate to have survived the supposed purge, but there must be some feelings of inquisition for what happened to the rest and the extent of this body of lost Botticelli work. Personally, I see the mere existence of the question behind the unmourned tragedy of Botticelli and the Bonfire of the Vanities as a true representation of the death of art. As discussed with the Bamiyan Buddhas, remembrance is an integral component of the life of a creation. Without the soul, without the physical aesthetic, what do these lost Botticelli paintings possess but a vague conjecture of once being? Forever shrouded in anonymity, these pieces still have some strange hold, at least on me. They leave an indelible and bittersweet mark upon my impression of existing Botticelli paintings like La Primavera or the Birth of Venus in that I think I will always wonder about what potential, what great capsules of culture, were lost to the fire. 

I was incredibly lucky to be able to see Mona Hatoum’s Terra Infirma exhibition at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation a little over a year ago. All the work in the collection was incredibly diverse and highlighted Hatoum’s multitalented skillset from the intricate blown glass grenades to gargantuan mobile sculptures. In her distinctive hybrid of Minimalism and Surrealism, my curiosity was captured by the remarkable silhouettes and the brilliance in the saturation of her work. Though I was thoroughly awed by the whole of the exhibition, it was this piece, Homebound, that demanded my attention and firmly held it even as I stepped beyond the confines of the room housing the installation.

I walked in at the beginning of the installation’s cycle. Intensifying electric buzzing and a pounding tattoo of pulsing lights greeted me. The impression of a household is restricted within the space of a little over half of the room. Kitchen tables, bed frames, cradles, all furniture reminiscent of the 1960′s to 70′s made up the scene. The noise was there, as was the clutter, yet the life that would have filled that room was noticeably absent. It’s difficult to say in the least to pinpoint the exact emotions Homebound conjures within me. But that was Hatoum’s intention with Terra Infirma and the mission of much of her art: to capture the confusing, conflicting feelings that are evoked from the human experience. Life through her lens is embraced for all its nuance and contradiction. It isn’t so obviously divided between black and white, good and bad, sadness and contentment. Hatoum cites her own life as inspiration for this artistic philosophy. Born into a Palestinian family in Lebanon, Hatoum always felt like an outsider in her own life. Even within her own family, her pursuit of the visual arts was something she kept closeted. When she fled the country in 1975 after the outbreak of the civil war, she was liberated in many ways, even as a refugee. She was able to establish an artistic career, an unadulterated one at that. Hatoum focused and expressed concepts that were considered taboo at best and life threatening at worst before she immigrated to London. 

She made work that spoke to the perpetual foreigner, to female sexuality, to how grand cultural forces such as politics and power affect individuals. It’s that vulnerability with which Hatoum touches her audience. I come from a vastly different background than the artist, and yet, her art made an intimate connection to me as an individual. Homebound is Hatoum’s commentary on how conflict ravages families. There’s more than just physical separations that can drive great divides within a family, and whether a viewer is coming from a place of stability and privilege or the third world, that's a theme everyone can relate to on some magnitude or another. 

Hatoum is unique in that it is easy to see her as an artist and as a person at face value based on everything she has experienced and overcome. While that is undoubtedly a significant influence on her work, if you spend time with her art, she subverts those impressions. Her art is not esoterically specific to her life, if anything, it inspires deeper thinking and introspection of a viewer’s own answers to timeless, universal questions that have been pondered for ages. The emotional ambiguity of Hatoum’s art gives the viewer, any viewer, the power to take what they will out of it. That share of creative discretion, of opinion, between artist and audience never fails to excite me, and for me, Mona Hatoum is an exceptional architect of this inextricably intertwined power balance.

Along with the Mona Lisa and American Gothic, Edvard Munch’s The Scream has become one of the most ubiquitous pieces in all of art history. It has been parodied and referenced in TV shows and movies spanning from The Simpsons to Home Alone yet despite our virtually inherent familiarity with The Scream, we’ve forgotten so much about the meaning of its content and the man behind the canvas. The entire history of the painting’s eras of cultural progression and regression is incredibly extensive and nuanced, certainly an area of study I couldn’t do justice with a 500-something-word post (for a more in depth discussion of Munch and The Scream, I’d recommend reading So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch by Karl Ove Knausgaard). Suffice it to say, I’ll do my best to give an adequate introduction to Edvard Munch through a basic analysis of his most famous painting, a story that--for our purposes--we’ll start in 1893.

To start, Munch was a prominent artist of the school of Expressionism. Stylistically and dogmatically running along a similar vein to movements such as Neo-Impressionism and the Vienna Secession, Expressionism sought out to capture human experiences and emotions in a way that didn't conform to the traditional ideal of realism. This general philosophy is well exemplified in The Scream. In the foreground, the sexless, waif-like namesake of the work stands as the focal point of the piece. Any clue as to the identity of the figure is left intentionally ambiguous as they possess only the most elementary characteristics of a human being; they aren’t any person in particular, simply a representative of anyone and everyone. The backdrop surrounding the figure is hazy and distorted, though not calming. The fiery sky violently streaked with hues of warmth sinks to meet the cool and neutral world beneath it. Munch didn’t disguise his bold brushstrokes or the chaotic energy of the piece. The distressed character in the foreground seems to be the only one cognizant of their threatening environs as life seems to continue outside of their anxiety: two passerby stroll along the bridge and boats ferry across the horizon. Though cartoonish and obviously not a literal reflection of our world, The Scream is especially relatable in that it captures the essence of the almost claustrophobic helplessness of coming into solitary adulthood in a rapidly evolving social climate.

The Scream is Munch’s best known work, but the whole of his portfolio with such collections as his Frieze of Life, strengthens his claim as one of the most inventive and talented artists in conveying emotion. Ranging from bleak devastation to joyful celebration, Munch’s basis for his art was deeply nestled in his reality, a reality passable as a modern Greek tragedy. Munch’s childhood was shrouded in paralyzing fears of death, loss, and trauma. He lost several of his siblings and his mother at a very early age and was primarily reared by his paranoid, obsessively religious father. He spent his early life bedridden with thoughts of losing himself to mental illness and disease only to be met with an end of righteous punishment. In summary, Munch’s life was tragedy, an inescapable one at that. In his established career as an artist, Munch finally found an outlet in painting, one of the few joys he had growing up. Through his work, Munch expressed indescribable sensations of longing, contentment, feeling at home, and feeling like there was no place of belonging at all.

Though a significant portion of Munch’s work like The Scream evokes objectively negative feelings, in the same sense, there’s also a feeling of morbid comfort in looking at it. To know that, someone understands and sympathizes with how you feel even if that connection is built vicariously through their work. The Scream certainly isn’t a pretty painting, but it’s undeniably powerful. It confronts us with what we should already know about ourselves in a way that's scarcely been challenged. Though it approaches us through some inherent familiarity, The Scream and other Expressionist work have catalyzed novel discussions of how we relate ourselves to our psychology. In other words, the real legacy of Edvard Munch is his art’s propensity to inspire social change. With that, Munch will likely always be initially recognized as the painter of The Scream, but it would greatly serve us to also remember him as Edvard Munch, champion of the human experience.

Six Persimmons was painted by 13th century Song Dynasty artist, Mu Qi. Simply, yet masterfully executed, the timeless ink wash has established a legacy of eliciting more questions than it answers. While its enigma may continue to stand in perpetuity, answering the ultimate question of what the piece means is one I often revisit. Every year or so as I take the time to reflect on its significance, my answers seem to paradoxically become less assured and my familiarity with the painting more questioned. Though in the beginning I was first troubled by this, I don’t see it as a point of insecurity anymore; rather, it prompts necessary of times of self reflection and motivation to expand my mindset and reevaluate where I’m at mentally and emotionally. While some might consider this to be somewhat of a non-answer, the Six Persimmons is both an emblem of how far I’ve come in personal maturation and self-esteem and a reminder of how far I’ve yet to go. My answer may change tomorrow or next year, but the spontaneity of my regards to Six Persimmons is what initially attracted me to the piece, and it’s what continues to strengthen my bond with it. So, in a question that has no true answer that has been entertained by historians, philosophers, Renaissance men, and⁠—briefly⁠—by this art history blog alike, when you see the Six Persimmons, what does it mean to you?

It’s the dawn of the 1930’s. The Great Depression is roaring as the financial high of the 1920’s is bitterly silenced, the country has gone dry, and to top it off, you’re a gay black man in the American South. To anyone, this would be a nightmare; to Beauford Delaney, these were the trials and tribulations that defined his art; to his critics and contemporaries, these are the details that made the man; and to us, this is the background to the extraordinary life we should remember him by.  

Delaney was a Knoxville native who was encouraged by his mother Della, an ex-slave, to pursue an education and be acknowledged as a member of society, ideas she lived her entire life thinking were impossible dreams. Beauford and his brother Joseph both had a natural inclination towards the visual arts, and Beauford in particular shone through his talents. In Joseph’s words, “One distinct difference in Beauford and myself was his multi-talents. Beauford could always strum on a ukulele and sing like mad and could mimic with the best.” Though he flourished in Knoxville’s art scene, Delaney felt his calling was beyond what Tennessee could provide and migrated to New York. 

For Delaney, New York thrummed with life in a way that was exclusive to the city. He arrived as the Harlem Renaissance was blossoming and became a frontrunner of the movement. His art sought to capture what Harlem inspired in him: a wonderful conflict of feelings of being at the intimate core of a community and the thrill of anonymity in restless crowd. The Portrait of James Baldwin is just a taste of Delaney’s style. His impressionist influences are evident in the way he experiments with the vibrant palette of the work; pastel blues shade pale beiges, and the amorphous backdrop is thickly layered with stokes of everything between loud turquoises and muted pinks. While the way he indicates light within this piece speaks to his artistic roots, this portrait also tells of the pivotal transition Delaney’s paintings made in American art history. 

His obsession with the intertwined relationship between light and color long preceded the Abstract Expressionism of the mid 20th century (see the Rothko post for more information). Delaney’s experimentation and innovation with branching off from his classically trained, Knoxvillian roots not only brought the refined spirit of Europe onto the United States’ canvas, but also created some of the main sources of inspiration for one of the few uniquely American art movements; grouped jazz and baseball, the AbEx movement is one of the few things that are of complete American pedigree.

In the former half of the 20th century, there was no culture in existence that could categorize Beauford Delaney, and those that exist today, whether they remember it or not, had his hand in the making. Even if you can’t appreciate his art, Beauford Delaney’s biography and legacy are something to be admired. From black sheep to shepherd of the flock, Delaney made a place for himself and countless other outliers from premises no one else wanted to tread.