I scooted over to Milwaukee yesterday, to meet up at the Milwaukee Art Museum with Ethan Lasser, a curator from Chipstone, and, in yet another capacity of working together, good ol' Rebecca Zorach. Ethan walked us through the galleries that house the combined Chipstone + Milwaukee Art Museum displays of American decorative arts. Ethan and his team are doing some really innovative curatorial work, truly bringing rare, masterfully crafted objects into contemporary relevance, and doing it without sacrificing the preciousness. Hard to describe their exhibition strategies fully. Some of the strategies are really simple, but very effective. For example, simply elevating chairs, such that eye-level apprehension of the chairs brings fresh shapes, detail, and negative space to the viewer's eye:
The video brings in issues of historical memory, antebellum realities and myths, spoken word performance, early American economics, spectres of chattel slavery, dreams of miscegenation, and layers of beauty that expands on the aesthetics of the object itself.
Ethan, Rebecca, and I gathered to talk over Theaster's upcoming project at MAM, which will be much bigger than this installation, and think about producing texts to accompany it.
After the meeting I took advantage of the complimentary museum entry to see the Warhol Last Decade show. For anybody with any interest in Warhol (and that really should be just about anybody), the show is recommended.
But the real surprises for me were 1) the War Bonds posters in the halls of the offices (where Ethan took us for a few minutes), and 2) the temporary show of art by veterans.
I am a total sucker for old posters, of course, so the War Bonds propaganda got me and my camera going, quick.
As one would expect, the art work by veterans was intense, bringing home the war experience in ways we just don't see in the news. I was happy to see a contribution by our anti-war comrade and Iraq War vet Aaron Hughes. It was a painting titled "Checkpoint."
Of course, this being the Milwaukee Art Museum, just getting to spend some time in the sparsely visited space on a weekday was a treat. Especially since this time we got to see the insides of the Saarinen War Memorial part of the complex, as well as enjoy the grand entry lobby (which I think is called the Windhover Gallery).
It was more than three years ago that I picked up a remaindered copy of Hannah Arendt's classic The Origins of Totalitarianism. It sat on the shelf for a long while before I decided to tackle it. Nobody would call me a voracious reader, but I try to read at least one difficult book a year. I mean, that's opposed to the light reading that balances my book diet, or, even lighter, the re-readings of old favorites. Anyway, The Origins of Totalitarianism was to be it. And it is. I'm about 140 pages into it.
Around when I started it, my brother-in-law, who is a historian by training and blogs on urban development issues, told me that it took him some time to understand that starting a book, or reading a book, doesn't necessarily mean reading the whole thing. That selective and partial reading is allowed, and may often be a better use of one's time. I have always been a bit of a purist in that respect, expecting myself to read a book in full, if I was going to say that I had read it. But The Origins of Totalitarianism is a big book, about two inches thick; I thought to myself, maybe this is the book I'll try that out on. Or at least, be open to it.
So I started by aiming to read only Part One of the three parts, Antisemitism. But then I talked to political science professor and Mess Hall keyholder Sophia Mihic. Turns out she teaches this book regularly. I told her my plan. And she says to me, "well, you've got to read Part Two, Imperialism, because it's amazingly relevant and current material." So I am. And she's right. Oh my god, is she right.
I'm only about fifteen pages into Part Two, and it's all there: our current situation. Arendt describes the economics of imperialism, which she defines as existing as a historical period from 1884 to 1914, and forming the transitional period between the 19th and 20th centuries, as the crystallization of expansion for expansion's sake. Part and parcel of this political-economic development was the move from a production economy to a speculation economy. The other essential element in her narrative is the subservience of states to business. When speculation ran aground, armies were called in to do the dirty work of pacifying native peoples, the better that the speculators could realize their returns, through straight plunder, if necessary.
Weirdly (or not?) the currency of Arendt's analysis was just yesterday recognized by Richard Bernstein in the New York Times. The thing Bernstein does not talk about, and what really distresses, is the fact that Arendt wrote all this in 1948. Between '48 and the period of Imperialism, only a catastrophe across Europe and much of the world brought some clarity following the decades of dysfunction. What will a political historian be writing about in 2048? What awful events, what multiple holocausts, will happen between now and then, that said historian will emerge mid-century clear-eyed?
But that all said, I'm still making no promises on finishing the book.
Nicolas Lampert and Jesse Graves came to town to lead a mud stencilling action for the Wisconsin Books to Prisoners campaign to end the Department of Corrections bad habit of denying prisoners from receiving used books from the outside. The ostensible rationale is to prevent contraband from entering prisons. But that makes no sense at all since mailings are examined anyway, and newly purchased books are allowed but present the very same threat. Moreover, the refusals seem to be arbitrary and inconsistent. And we're not even talking about books being sent by individuals; these are books coming from bookstores that sell or donate used books. And nevermind the fact that (as any book aficionado can tell you) good condition used books are hardly any different than newly purchased versions.
Anyway, it was a well-coordinated action. The super-organized Sarah Quinn got the whole thing going.
Then the twenty (give or take) people divided up into five teams, each with an assigned area, moving out from the UW campus.
Before heading out, Jesse Graves, the young artist who first perfected the roofing paper technique, gave us a quick demonstration.
Jesse, Nicolas, and myself formed one team: the smallest crew! We hit the sidewalks in front of the Memorial Union and then went up State Street. The streets were alive, it being a football Saturday–and homecoming, no less!
We made our way up the street, laying down a few stencils here and there, ultimately aiming for the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. When we got there, we saw that one of the other crews beat us to the site; the sidewalk in front of the museum already had a nice, rad image laid out in mud. We went across the street, aiming for the federal courthouse. And there, too, the quicker crew beat us to it. But their image had been deliberately stomped out. Later we got the story. Some petty dictator security guy came out of the courthouse and harassed the activists. Our people didn't back down; it's only a little dirt, they pleaded, and went on with the project. By the time we got there, the earlier work was more than a little smudged. Of course, we put down another.
But what I really wonder is, was that security guard (one of the people from the other crew thought the guy might have been, in fact, a U.S. marshall, but who knows) heavily influenced by the bas relief wall design on the side of the Overture Center, directly across the street from the courthouse? Because there seemed to be, after the guy's footwork job, some aesthetic relationship between the two art works.
Students at the school that employs me, Columbia College Chicago, have been very active in trying to save the Monetary Award Program in Illinois. This publicly funded program helps tens of thousands of young people in Illinois gain access to higher education. Right now the program is, like all worthy public programs, facing a dire threat of defunding. I am impressed by the mobilization I see among Columbia's students. They have been tabling in the lobby of my department's building everyday, and a student delegation went down to Springfield to lobby today. I hope my colleagues who teach in other schools around Chicago are seeing the same.
Here is an informative video made by Columbia students about the MAP program and what it means to students.
Go here to add your support to this important campaign.
As a human yo-yo, I do try to hit the best of both poles. On Wednesday night at the Wisconsin Book Festival going on in Madison I caught all of Lewis Koch's presentation and most of Barbara Manger and Janine Smith's, who together authored the book Mary Nohl: Inside & Outside. Lewis's work is really somthing, proof that straight photography remains the most surrealistic medium.
But Manger and Smith's work was the revelation of the evening. Mary Nohl was a legend by the time I moved to Milwaukee for grad school in the mid 1990s. I'd been told about her sculpture-filled lakefront property up in Fox Point, but never bothered to make the trip up to see it. Manger and Smith made it clear that even if I had, the best of Nohl's creative life was to be found inside the house. Simply put, over the decades this obsessive-compulsive creative spirit in the body of a wealthy woman made the whole property–especially the interior of the house and all it's furnishings–into a single, vast artistic statement. The pictures of the inside–the walls, the floors, the furniture–as well as Nohl's diaries and other writings, made an impression that will not soon leave me. Part outsider artist, part formal visionary, part wealthy eccentric, Mary Nohl is one of those oddball figures that makes the Wisconsin cultural landscape so fun to explore.
On the other end of my commuting string, tonight I got into Chicago in time for a screening of Autumn Gem at Columbia College's Film Row theater. The movie was a documentary profile of Qiu Jin, a Chinese nationalist insurgent from a hundred years ago. I didn't know anything about Qiu, so most of the hour-long documentary was informative. Still, it was very basic and could have been much deeper. There was very little said about Qiu's contemporary relevance, apart from some near-meaningless generalities about her as a precursor to later feminism. The bulk of the commentary within the movie came from historians who spoke about Qiu as a figure from a distant episode; the case was not made for why we as engaged artists and citizens should really care about this person. The movie did a good job of explaining China's state of political and governmental crisis a hundred years ago, but made zero effort to relate that revolutionary moment to the states of crisis we as a global populace are now facing. It should have. My goodness, what an opportunity missed.
In fairness to the filmmakers, they did aim for a 56-minute length and this was their first production. But even so, it could have been much more creative stylistically. The overall aesthetic was rather drab and institutional, like a high school educational video that tries to address an interesting subject but manages to bore for fear of being too adventurous or polemical. Also, the filmmakers placed too much emphasis in the visuals on martial arts, calligraphy, and too much reliance on traditional guzheng and other classical Chinese music.
An Injury to One this was not. (Can't wait to see that on the big screen; after yo-yo-ing back for Madison's Tales from Planet Earth film fest. Thanks to Nick Brown for giving me a heads up on the upcoming event!)
I am in the middle of a very busy season. Shanghype! is open now at the Hyde Park Art Center. Heartland is open at the Smart Museum. And Demise continues at the South Side Community Art Center. Well, a busy three weeks, anyway. It means making a lot of trips between Madison and Chicago, which is tiring but better than having to fly places. In these periods my car and the road become a kind of third home for me. Millions of car commuters do this everyday, all year round, but for me it is only a periodic chore. Plenty of people do it, but I don't know if I could spend two and a half hours commuting everyday. Probably not.
But even the worst forms of traveling are still traveling. And that means, in the case of my drive, which is mostly bad because it is so boring, I still occasionally see things that make me wonder. Like this vanity plate.
Okay, maybe not so interesting. But I have to take what I can get on this drive.
When my driving spikes I also get to experience one of the hidden pleasures of commuting: the relief of pulling into the driveway of our home, our castle, and appreciating it anew. The quiet joy in coming home never gets old.
