Nalini Malani’s immersive animated installation at the National Gallery London plunges us into a world of bizarre figures, creatures, and energy waves that swirl and constantly change shape as they invade the complacency of the people in famous European paintings, bit by bit . Nalini Malini
(That’s a clip from the installation. It has to be downloaded, but it is short)
Chosen for the first National Gallery Contemporary Fellowship, gave Malani the opportunity for a new direction in her multimedia work. She selected a group of 24 paintings from the National Gallery, London, and several from the Holburne Museum in Bath, then bascially attacked them with dramatic animation drawings created with her finger on an ipad.
The amazing complexity of pattern, color, texture and image speaks to the artist’s command of this new medium which she has been working in for several years in short animations that she posted on Instagram.
The animations are agitated, threatening and occasionally playful.
We see only fragments of the original works.
The result is a dizzying array of images that are in constant motion, accompanied by a sound track that is a long lament by Cassandra who predicted the Fall of Troy, but no one believed her. What better mythic character for our times, when no one is changing their ways as we approach the precipice of no return on our climate
The overall theme is an attack on colonialism and white patriarchy based on the idea that “My Reality is Different”
So for example
Johann Zoffany’s The Auriol and Dashwood Families 1783 to 87
an image based on a painting of three influential families in Bengal India. The man in the green jacket on the right receiving a letter was an administrator of the East India Company. It shows the hierarchy of wealthy white British and their Indian servants
On the right you see clearly that same man with the green jacket, as well as some of the other members of his family, but the portrait is torn apart and basically undermined by Malani’s caricaturesque drawings.
Here is another example, harder to see. Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmeus and Malani overlay. You can see the detail of the Supper in the middle.
Nalini plucked the face of Darius from the huge painting by Veronese The Family of Darius before Alexander. The painting is an example of Alexander treating the defeated Persian king kindly, but the subject of course is imperialism as Alexander marched through country after country all the way to India.
Most of the source paintings Malini chose are examples of either arrogance, colonialism, or, in some cases feminism ( as in the Head of John the Baptist or Samson and Delilah).
In the gold cirecle is only the head of the Angel Gabriel, half of an Annuciation scene from the 15th century.
Malani most frequently excerpts heads and hands from the original paintings, it is fun to spot them and trace them to the original works.
But of course that is so Eurocentric of me! The main point is the many many other figures that race through the video, and those shadowy portraits of people exist on the margins of this imperial world of white people.
As you immerse yourselves in the room, surrounded on four walls by animation, the dizzying array of images overwhelms us ( that is the point). The source images disappear or flash by in small fragments as we see their decimation and fragmentaion.
The installation is an attack on Western imperialism as seen in these paintings full of complacent white people, conquerors, rapists and even a scientist suffocating a bird.
The artist projected a 9 channel installation in what she called the “animation chamber”. Each channel had three looped videos of about 3 minutes each. In the catalog she lists all the source paintings, but she illustrates only the ghostly figures who have been added by the artists so the “subaltern can speak”
Here is a sequence that almost captures the effect of constant metapmophosis, you can recognize some repeated figures ( note creature in a heavy yellow outline, and running figure to left) and at the end the traces of that same painting by Zoffany of the East India families and their servants of color.
In addition to the layers of animations, the installation also includes a sound track, it of course is also consisting of several elements:
the sound of a sailing ship on the sea, “Rule Britannia” interrupted by a folk song sung by an Indian woman. Thefocal point, though, is the long chanted poem in the identity of Cassandra who is of course the prophetess of Troy who precidted its fall and no one believed her.
She could not be more pertinent today. ( it was adapted from Christa Wolf’s Cassandra:A Novel and Four Essays by the artist and Alaknanda Samarth)
This entry was posted on May 27, 2023 and is filed under
Art and Politics Now,
art criticism,
Feminism,
Uncategorized.
I just read an editorial by Eddie Chambers in the Art Journal, that women artists are still being slighted in the art world and by art historians. Price wise their art has much less value and they are not given the same attention in museums because, Chambers declares that curators say they are “in hock” to commercially successful contemporary artists.
Hopefully that is changing. I saw this book The History of Art Without Men, for sale at the National Gallery, London, when I went there to see the amazing Nalini Malani exhibition ( more on that soon), and at the Tate Modern there were three major exhibitions of work by women.
The first is Cecilia Vicuna, just discussed above.
The work of the second artist Maria Bartuszová. (1936 – 1996)
you see at the top of this review.
A sculptor from Slovakia,
first a Communist country, then a former Communist country ( a monumental fact that is oddly omitted from her biography- as is much else) she was not seen in exhibitions outside her country during her lifetime.
Bartuszova’s exhibition is part of an initiative at the Tate Modern that includes Cecilia Vicuna and Magdalena Abakanowicz, presenting women artists who have revolutionised modern sculpture. All three of these artists are from outside the “Western” world, Communist Czechoslavakia-Slovakia, Peru – indigenous, and Poland also Communist.
Bartuszová is the least well known of the three artists. She was able to support herself under Communism with public commissions. But her public work was not ideological, but abstract.
She learned about mainstream art from books while she was living in Košice the second largest city in Slovakia, deep in central Europe not far from the border of Ukraine and Hungary. She moved there from Prague and its exciting intellectual community lured by possibilities of public art commissions in a rapidly expanding city, and inexpensive housing.
As she was raising her small children she had the idea of casting plaster over balloons., often submerging the forms in water in a technique she called “gravistiumlated shaping” as th weight of the plaster determined the shape of the sculpture.
From there she began to blow into the balloons and poured plaster over them , she called it ‘pneumatic casting’ the result was a fragility that evokes eggs or shells.
She also created temporary works in nature and later in her life hung her work in trees.
The playful quality of the work pairs with an intense feeling for nature and original forms that create a lyrical presence. She was familiar with Luca Fontana and Brancusi, and we see that in these works.
So we can place her in the cerebral, sensual category of contemporary sculpture, courting the line between abstraction and naturalism.
Magdalena Abakanowicz “Every Tangle of Thread and Rope”
While Maria Bartuszová creates fragile intimate works, Magdalena Abacanowicz creates large muscular pieces made from sisal as well as horsehair and hemp. The works called “abacans” to indicate her originality (named after her) moved in her early career from the wall
to the middle of the gallery, taking on a creature like presence. As we walk among them we feel the innate energies of nature. in this one we see a fibrous connection between two lung like shapes.
Abacanowica was born in 1930 to Tartar Russian Polish nobility, at the beginning of the war they retreated deep into the forest, then they lost everything. that experience in the forest deeply marked the artist, and she feels strongly the power of the forest.
In her late work she turned to trees themselves
“Arboreals symbolise our concern with nature, which neglected and abused by man, now turns against him with vengeance. They remind us that a tree is our friend; it gives shade and oxygen, bears fruit, shelters birds and animals and makes climate hospitable to all ”
“I use the tree as a metaphor for the ecological architecture of the 21st century, just as the human body served as a metaphor for the shape of a Romanesque cathedral. ”
Both of these artists are immersed in nature, and concern for its future. Both grew up under Communism, but supported themselves as artists. Abacanowicz gained great esteem while Maria Bartuszova was unknown. I am thankful they are side by side now at the Tate, as it gives us in both cases a highly original approach to sculpture using organic materials.
This entry was posted on May 21, 2023 and is filed under
Contemporary Sculpture by Women,
ecology,
Uncategorized.
We missed the Cecilia Vicuña full installation. It was being taken down when we were there, but the label and a piece of it was still
visible
Since I didn’t fully experience it, I give you the label information:
“In the Andes people did not write, they wove meaning into textiles and knotted cords. Five thousand years ago they created the quipu (knot), a poem in space, a way to remember, involving the body and the cosmos at once. A tactile, spatial metaphor for the union of all. The quipu and its virtual counterpart, the ceque ( a system of sightlines connecting all communities in the Andes) were banished after the European Conquest. Quipus were burnt, but the quipu did not die. It symbolic dimension and vison of interconnectivity endures in Andean culture today.” Cecilia Vicuña
“27 meters pale ghostly, quipu sculptures hang from the ceiling at opposite ends of the Turbine Hall. Cecilia Vicuña’s Brain Forest Quipu continues her long-standing work with the ancient Andean tradition of the quipu. Woven together from different materials including found objects, unspun wool, plant fibres, rope and cardboard, the sculptures are combines with music and voice that emerge at mements as you move through the space.
This multi-media installation is an act of mourning for the destruction of the forests, the subsequent impact of climate change, and the violence against indigenous peoples. It is also an opportunity to create a space for new voices and forms of knowledge to be heard and understood, as we take responsibility for our part in the destruction.
Vicuña’s reimagining of the quipu contains a number of layers, sculptural, sonic, social and digital. She invites us into the “Dead Forest Quipu,” a pair of sculptures whose skeletal forms draw attention to the severity of the climate crisis and the delicate nature of our ecosystems. Their bone-white colour reminds us of bleached bark of trees killed by drought or intentional fire and other dried-out substances like snakeskin.
Placing the sculptures at either end of the Turbine Hall, Vicuña creates an alternative architecture binding the two ends of the space. Made from a range of organic materials and items collected from the banks of the River Thames by women from local Latin American communities, the work extends Vicuña’s practice of assembling found, imperfect and modest materials that she calls precarios (precarious).
The ‘Dead Forest Quipu’ sculptures are accompanied by a ‘Sound Quipu’ playing from within the sculpture and under the bridge. This sonic element, conceived by Colombian composer Ricardo Gallo, brings together indigenous music from several regions, compositional silences, new pieces by Gallo, Vicuña, and other artists, and field recordings from nature.
The interwoven moments of sound and silence span 8 hours of sonic breathing and symbolize the earth’s life in the face of the loss taking place across the globe.
The ‘Digital Quipu’ weaves together videos of indigenous activists and land defenders from regions around the world who are using digital platforms to amplify their calls. Shown on video monitors throughout the building and online, the Digital Quipu offers political and economic context for the material realities faced by communities in the ongoing struggle to protest and preserve their respective ancestral territories, communities and traditions.
What Vicuña describes as the ‘social weaving’ will extend through a ‘Quipu of Encounters: Rituals and Assemblies’. This series of global events, or ‘knots of action’, connect ancient Andean tradition and contemporary culture, inviting visitors to become active participants in the prevention of climate catastrophe.
Vicuña writes ‘ the Earth is a brain forest and the quipu embraces all its interconnections.’ Brought together , the elements of Brain Forest Quipu emphasize the contradiction and complexity of our time. This entanglement of our bodies – with both the material world of nature and the places that we live – is enmeshed in the hive-mind of technology that connects us with each other, while isolating us in new and often uncertain ways.
Vicuña suggests that we are at the beginning of a new time, one where we must first become aware of our collective responsibility in order to change destructiveness, injustices and harm. Through Brain Forest Quipu she invites us to create spaces for imagining and dreaming so that we can ‘bring our heart-minds together to give life to a new forest in a spirit of reparation.’”
Here are a few press photos:
We had a Cecilia Vicuña exhibition in Seattle in June 2019 that I wrote about on this blog. On that occasion I was fortunate to attend a poetry reading performance at which we created a community by winding a quipu around us.
We can hope that the survival of this ancient knowledge which colonialism tried so hard to wipe out, will also provide us with a way to the future on our troubled planet.
This entry was posted on May 12, 2023 and is filed under
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“Extinction Beckons” by Mike Nelson gives us decay, nostalgia, destruction, resurrection, all layered in profoundly moving installations.
I first saw his work in Istanbul at the Büyük Valide Han, a caravanserai built in 1561.
That installation is one of several recreated at the Hayward, but my experience of seeing it in its first incarnation is worth quoting here:
Entrance to Buyuk Valide Han Istanbul
“Mike Nelson lived for several weeks in a crumbling market building in Istanbul, defying the usual segregation of Biennial art from ordinary people. He set up a dark room, took photographs of the Büyük Valide Han, made friends with the elderly craftsmen living there, hung up his negatives and photographs, and then left town.
Not far from the more famous Grand Bazaar, it required alert navigation through streets packed with people shopping to find the Han. The quiet courtyard felt like a dying historical space, but on entering the shop of a weaver the loud slam of his enormous antique loom filled the air. He took pride in his work, as did his father and grandfathers. In Nelson’s workshop, in semidarkness, hung his photographs of the weaver and other people he met, as well as of the ancient building itself. ”
[Here are my photos of the installation in Istanbul in 2003; in London it has some of the same elements, but lacks the total context of the building as a whole and the people who worked there. ]
“But Nelson’s work was not about him, nor about the photographs—it was about respect for the history and the poetry of the building and its workers—soon to be swept away by disintegration and globalization. Most art critics found Nelson’s area shut and believed they had missed seeing the art work. In fact, they had missed seeing the point of the art work, which was about the life and history of the ancient building and its aged workers. The fact that they thought they had missed something was perfect “poetic justice.” ( quoted in my book Art and Politics Now, 2010)”
“Poetic Justice” was the title of the 2003 8th Istanbul Biennial, curated by Dan Cameron, in which Nelson showed this work. He has subsequently shown it in Venice and now at the Hayward, where it is embedded in a series of disorienting installations that require us to again navigate carefully.
We had a personal guide through the exhibition. Her name was Charity
Henry entering the Deliverance and the Patience series of rooms
These strange objects, belong to various odd reference points.
a gambling den, a captain’s bar and a travel agent’s office.
“The rooms are deserted, but convey a feeling of unease as if they have only recently been vacated . . .
The title refers to a 17th century shipwreck, the survivors of which ( many of them prisoniers or indentured laboureres) attemted to create a free society in Bermuda before they were forced to build new ships The Deliverance and the Patience – to continue their journey to Virginia. ”
So how does the title fit with what we experience and what we see. Ideals of travel as freedom as opposed to forced travel, gambling as a hope for a better life usually lost in addiction, a Marxixt manifesto, again a hope that has not been realized.
The next part of the exhibition called “I Imposter” recreated Nelson’s photographic studio in the Buyuk Valide Han.
Another major installation “Triple Bluff Canyon”
layered references to Smithson’s early work “Partially Buried Woodshed,” with references evoking the deserts of the Middle East destroyed by war.
The exploded tires were gathered near the M25 motorway and Nelson sees them as sculptures that speak to the violence of our society.
Note the reference to Shell in the buried pipeline.
The next part of the exhibition included extensive references to obsolete tools now enshrined as sculpture.
Assett Strippers (Khorsabad)
Assett Strippers Lamassu
Assett Strippers Solstice
Assett Strippers Ziggurat grinder
The next installation Amnesiac referred in its title to a fictious biker gang. Imaginary creatures and an imaginary fire from junk
The largest installation and most peculiar had this strange title;
‘Studio Apparatus for Kunsthalle Munster – A thematic instalment observing the Calindrical Celebration of its inception: Introduction; towards a linear understanding of notoriety, power, and their interconnectedness, furtuobjext ( misspelt); mysterious island** see introduction of Barothic Shift”
I don’t know what most of this means, but here is the installation.
The whole experience was unsettlng to say the least. Let’s go back to the title “Extinction Beckons” and that helps to put it all together. All of Nelson’s materials are gathered from junk yards, extinction, but he has brought them into a new environment, an art gallery! at the same time extinction is beckoning us, and part of the reason is a profligate disregard for what we throw away and the companies packaging all that plastic. So yes, extinction does beckon, and walking through a series of disorienting spaces can perhaps give us pause about what we are doing to our planet.
This entry was posted on May 11, 2023 and is filed under
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Curator Pamela McCluskey lecturing about a man’s sash or woman’s head cloth, 19th century from Myanmar
Curator Pamela McCluskey began the tour of her dazzling new “Ikat” exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum by pointing out that almost all the clothes we wear are made from oil based polyester with toxic dyes.
“Ikat” celebrates cotton, harvested and dyed by hand in a technique used for centuries. Ikat means binding, and it refers to a specific technique of binding sections of cotton to resist dying during weaving.
I was skeptical of the exhibition at first because I am not at all familiar with textiles. I thought it might be boring! I couldn’t have been more mistaken! The exhibition is riveting in so many ways, that I have been three times, and still haven’t nearly absorbed everything.
Before you enter the exhibition watch one of the videos of contemporary weavers in Indonesia and look at the work in the adjoining gallery; they provide insights into the gathering of the sources of the dyes in the jungle, the process of preparing the yarn, and the weaving, particularly featuring Tamu Rambu Hamueti queen of the Prai Yawang kingdom on the island of Sumba, Indonesia.
Ritual cloth (geringsing), 20th century Collection of David and Marita Paly Cotton, double ikat 72 × 32 in.
We also begin to learn of the ritual, mythological and symbolic meanings of the textiles, particularly the “geringsing,” a ritual cloth for coming of age girls.
But each of these textiles has a deep spiritual significance. As one weaver explained:
“The spiritual force in natural dyed cloth is amazing. Sometimes people feel as if the cloth has a soul, as if it is alive.”
—Madi Diavi, dyer and weaver in Bali, from the “Touching the Ground” documentary, 2021
The historic textiles in the exhibition are all anonymous, so this contemporary gallery provides an invaluable opportunity to more fully understand the role of Ikat in these cultures.
In the main entry to the exhibition we see a spectacular contemporary art work that blows up the technique itself to a huge scale. Zurash/Slipped took artists Chinami and Rowland Ricketts an entire year to complete. The process involves special organic cotton, here in over one thousand bundles bound to resist the dye. The pattern emerges only in the weaving process. Zurash/Slipped has a stepped (slipped) pattern, but the installation is like a giant loom ( 6000 verticals) of 200,00 warp yarn
strands
For the historic textiles, galleries have been entirely transformed: each region is a different color and the fabrics on the wall are now protected not by plexiglass, but by sinuous wooden platforms that prevent us from getting too close.
The regions and colors in the order we walk through them are
Japan gray blue
Africa raspberry red
India mustard
Southeast Asia Cinnamon
Uzbekisan lime green ( above)
Indonesia dark blue
Europe pale blue
Americas pink
Contemporary US white (!) and
Contemporary Ikat dark gray
Another helpful aspect of the exhibition is what the museum calls “living labels” short videos in each region that provide more insights into the process by contemporary weavers.
Indonesian looms
These historic fabrics require us to immerse ourselves in their complex patterns and meanings.
Kimono, 20th century, Japan, Paly Collection
Also crucial to remember is that they originally were an active part of life, as a kimono in Japan, or a ceremonial robe in Africa worn as a political statement in opposition to British colonialism. Here we see the textile immobilized as a flat shape on the wall. It was usually worn by someone in movement
Woman’s Sarong Hainan Island, China
Pardah hanging, late 19th century, Silk Road (Uzbekistan), silk, warp ikat, cotton weft, 90 x 65 in., Collection of David and Marita Paly
Uzbek Pardah hanging, late 19th century Collection of David and Marita Paly Silk warp ikat, cotton weft 61 × 45 in.
In Uzbekistan Ikat weaving filled the houses as carpets on floors, walls, pillows, and room screens. Women laboriously raised the silkworms for the weavings themselves.
Uzbek Woman’s coat (Munisak), late 19th century Collection of David and Marita Paly Silk velvet warp ikat, cotton weft, silk embroidered edging 50 × 54 in.
The imagery evokes the flowers, plants, birds and insects of a paradise. The colors all come from natural sources:
red from the madder plant, yellow and green from buds of a Japanese pagoda tree, black from pomegranate peel, magenta from scale insects obtained from galls on pistachio trees, and indigo blue imported from India.
The Uzbek weaving traditions were wiped out by the Soviets, but in recent years have seen a huge revival.
Indonesian Galleries
To quote the wall label:
“Indonesia is a polestar of ikat. Like a vast net supporting Asia’s southeast region, its 17,000 islands are home to many who revere cloth as a means of honoring relationships, old and new, personal and environmental. Indonesian dyers and weavers hold on to difficult, time-consuming processes sanctioned by tradition. Some of these cloths are worn daily, and others are brought out for ceremonies and to assist in times of crisis.”
Ritual cloth (pori situtu), early 20th century
left and center Man’s shawl or hip wrapper (hinggi kawuru), early 20th century;
The Americas are also represented with their own weaving traditions and materials.
Poncho, 20th century Collection of David and Marita Paly Sheep wool warp ikat 69 × 52 in.
There are even contemporary Ikat examples: artist Polly Barton states:“When tying a knot of resist on thread, this act encodes the thread, locking in the mark of design which carries memory, an historical marker, a global or locally identifiable story which is passed down culturally in the woven membrane or fabric. My own challenge with ikat is when the threads resist, push back, push me forward as an artist while keeping me connected to the web of woven history.”
Polly Barton US Prey, from the DARE series, 2017 Silk, double ikat with additional dye, soymilk and sumi ink, 64 1/2 × 31 1/2 in.
This is just a brief taste of an extraordinary exhibition by the amazing curator Pamela McCluskey. She has travelled to Bali several times to meet artists at the “Threads of Life,” an organization that has been helping traditional weaving to survive since 1995.
“Ikat” gives us immersion in a rich tradition. Each of these textiles requires intense viewing to appreciate their process and meaning.
And the next time you buy a garment, think about who made it.
So I end with a plug for Flood my favorite environmentally friendly clothing designer based right here in the Northwest. Their hand made clothing is made from fabrics that are 100% upcycled!
This entry was posted on April 2, 2023 and is filed under
Uncategorized.
Nesting from the series Flower Serenade: A Gift of Time 2021
“Rita Robillard Time and Place”,
Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem Oregon
Tuesday to Saturday noon – 5pm Until March 25, 2023
Rita Robillard was a colleague of mine in the art department at Washington State University in Pullman in the 1980s. Later she moved to Portland State University and became chair of the department. We have remained close friends, partly because we have a common childhood experience growing up in downtown New York City. Here is a detail of a print she gave me of Gramercy Park where we both grew up. As you can see it is a gated park to which only people who lived on the park could gain access. As I remember it the park was hostile to children playing, so it was gated in more ways than one.
She declared at the opening that growing up in New York, where nature is scarce, led her to a love of nature and the outdoors. I feel the same way.
She moved from Manhattan to California, and then Brazil from 1971 to 1974.
The experience in Sao Paolo and in a rural village in Brazil was especially crucial. She learned new mythologies, as well as music and dance that have stayed with her all her life. She immersed herself in the luscious tropical environment as she taught art to children and also learned from them.
Above we see Heroes in the Seaweed, 1980 one of the works in the exhibition based on her experiences in Minas Gerais, Brazil near the Sumidouro River that “disappears under the earth to form a network of underground caves full of stalactites”
After returning from Brazil Robillard attended graduate school at University of California, Berkeley in the late 1970s early 1980s. Robillard responds to the “time and place” in Berkeley with a few geometric works, but soon shifts to evoking the luscious soft forms of the Sumidouro River which she describes as having “eerie beauty.”
She called this mystical and mysterious series “Spirit Ground.”
Robillard declares an affinity with the Northwest School mysticism with their emphasis on Asian Art techniques and philosophy. Ongoing study of Asian Art has been another focus throughout her career.
Robillard is a master printmaker.
Doves in Space 2007 from the series Luminous Frontiers
The entire exhibition consists of prints some very large in scale, from multiple plates. Technically they range from etching and screen prints, to more complex processes that create subtle textures. In looking closely at her work, we can explore layers sinking deep into another world. The work Doves in Space, 2007 ( screenprint and colored pencil on paper) from the series Luminous Frontiers suggests some of those subtle textures.
Orbs of the Forest II from the Series Waters of March 2019, screenprint and acrylic on panel
Some are views of a glowing sky imprinted with a lace pattern, and trees in the foreground. The lace pattern suggests a reference to early abstractions and patterns that connect to nature. It also includes her grandmother who created what were called anti-macassars, lace doilies that protected upholstered furniture from hair oil (maccasar). She also refers to them as a reference to a domestic environment and a type of reclamation, a type off “hopeful and protective element, a talismanic element and a shield” (Linda Tesner).
Or in contrast there are details of flowers , Queen of the Night 2021 in a recent series, “Flower Serenade: A Gift of Time” created during the pandemic.
Altogether the exhibition includes ten different series. They make a type of poem, I have mentioned several, here are all of them: Spirit Ground, Cottonwoods of the Palouse, Votives for Hanford, Essence and Artifice : Views of Spokane” Lookout/Outlook” “Time and Place”
“Luminous Frontiers” “Thicket Threshold” Polarities: Patterns in Time 1880- 2016 2.3 Degrees Fahrenheit, ” And Then Again: Rifts on the Forest and Time””Flower Serenade: A Gift of Time”
Several stand out as engaging specific places, for example the Cottonwoods of the Palouse, 1993 – 1995, painted while Robillard was on the faculty at Washington State University. There are hardly any trees in that region, but she found these beautiful cottonwoods to celebrate. ( Apparently they are no longer there)
Two of the most striking and specific series are “Votives for Hanford,” and “Lookout/Outlook.”
In the Hanford Series, here in Annunciation, we see a vision of holocaust in reds and blues, a flaming earth. The artist faces the intractable problem of nuclear waste with angels as witnesses to our “enchantment with invisible powers, questioning the omnipotent attitude of human beings creating a product that will have to be safeguarded for a millennium. “
Detail of textures in background
“Lookout/Outlook” 1996-2009 depicts forest fire look out towers where the artist stayed for a summer. We see a panoramic view in small digital photographs suggesting a flaming landscape against a subtle background based on filigree patterns from medieval stonewalls. Robillard points out that the lookout towers are now anachronistic, replaced by digital surveillance.
Other themes are more general but address the planetary crisis as in Conflagrations and Rain from the series Polarities: Patterns in Time 1880- 2016 2.3 Degrees Fahrenheit, 2016
The artist states: ” a mix of observation and appropriations seeking to layer sensual, tactile images that encourage the viewer to ponder the future of this planet. . . . I juxtapose flat and iridescent colors with screen printing and sand and carve each layer to create a visual history. ”
Pillars: Trees in the Hills from the series And Then Again: Rifts on the Forest and Time, 2017
Robillard sees these tall trees as “Stand -in for the people who have gone and will go before. They are pillars and graceful sentries”
Thicket/Threshold I 1989 from series Thicket Threshold
This intense work suggests nature under stress from fire and wind.
Many of her works ( not possible to show here) included reprinted historical prints from 19th century books on landscape. Here she connects to the generation of the pioneers, as the first to come into the pristine wilderness and deeply alter it.
Robillard’s work engages nature with a romantic passion. She celebrates its beauty, its complexity, and its fragility. The range of her themes, approaches, and techniques all center around different aspects of our stunning natural world. She gives us a new intimate yet majestic look at what is still surviving our onslaught. Hopefully, we will continue to be able to see these places, but if not, we have the paintings of Rita Robillard.
This entry was posted on February 9, 2023 and is filed under
Art and Ecology,
Contemporary Art,
landscape,
Printmaking,
Uncategorized.
Note: this article was published in a slightly different form in Art Access, and Leschi News.
Sámi reindeer herder, Woodland Park, 1898 photographed by Anders Beer Wilse
Mygration : Tomas Colbengtson and Stina Folkebrant
National Nordic Museum until March 5
Did you know that Rudolf, the celebrity reindeer of Santa’s sleigh would have to be a female. Male reindeers shed their antlers in the winter. This is one of the many facts I have learned in order to understand “Mygration” a new exhibition at the National Nordic Museum.
In March 1898 Woodland Park visitors would have seen a surprising sight: Sámi reindeer herders and their reindeer. They came from what was then called Lapland, in Scandinavia, on a contract to teach reindeer herding to Alaskan natives! The expedition had the dramatic title of the “Lapland-Yukon Relief Expedition.”
“Mygration” addresses a strange plan to bring 100s of reindeer and Sámi herders from “Lapland” (now Sápmi ) to Alaska in order to “civilize” Native tribes there ( then called Eskimos, now Inuit and Yupik) . It was the misguided plan of Sheldon Jackson, General Agent of Education in Alaska. He spread the idea that Alaskan Natives were starving. He had first tried to bring in a much smaller number of reindeer and herders from Siberia in 1893 , across the Bering Straits, a much shorter trip!
But that effort failed.
So in 1898 he declared, as the Alaska Gold Rush was at its peak, that the Gold Miners were starving, as a ploy to raise money. The Gold Miners were devastating the environment ( the topic for a separate show, and something we never hear about) and local food gathering was in a decline, but no one was starving.
Jackson’s real agenda was actually part of the late 19th century efforts to “civilize” and assimilate Native peoples-in this case the Alaskan natives, who had not been touched by the boarding school and other policies in the lower 48 states.
Like the Alaskan natives, the Reindeer were also to be domesticated, to be used as draught animals as well as providing food.( Someone pointed out to me that Santa Claus was using reindeer as draught animals!)
It was a very long trip from Sapmi territory ( as it is now known) and Alaska!
Initially the expedition included 87 Lapps (now called Sámi), some Fins and Swedes and 530 reindeer. The Sámi were touted as “model” Indigenous people as they travelled across the sea and across the country.
By the time they reached Seattle many of the reindeer died of starvation because their diet of lichen was not available.
They stopped in the Woodland Park, perhaps for the reindeer to eat, but not surprisingly, the grass didn’t suit them.
The first small gallery of the exhibition features several photos of the Sámi by Anders Beer Wilse. In one they are disembarking from the long train ride, in another about twenty herders (it isn’t clear if that was all that survived), pose along with their families, including very young children and a few Swedes who came along.
The herders stand out in their distinctive crown-like hats and clothing made of reindeer hide.
Also in this gallery is Sheldon Jackson’s, Report on Introduction of Domestic Reindeer into Alaska, and Wilhelm Basi’s ( a cook on the expedition) Diary, 1897 – 1946
In this first gallery, don’t miss the small ceramic works by Tomas Colbengston, a Sámi artist works include two examples of photo transfer with historic Sámi images (the artist collects them). He is South Sámi and grew up in a tiny village in central Sweden. The third ceramic work depicts the reindeer, and a rendering of a figure perhaps based on a ritual drum (one of which you can also see elsewhere at the Nordic Museum).
In the second gallery life size paintings of reindeer by Stina Folkebrant surround us.
The artist is inspired by Chinese ink brush paintings: all of the paintings are in shades of gray. Her focus is the relationships of animals and humans and here indeed we feel that we are wandering in a field of reindeer.
Each large painting presents a one of the eight seasons of the Sámi mountain year. We feel the powerful presence of the reindeer as we gaze back at them in the gallery. We can sense the artist’s deep feeling for her subject.
But climate change is affecting these cycles and the reindeer. As the artist told me on email:
“time is circular that is the seasons, something that returns over and over again. We also think about time as the past , present and the future. The past meets the present in our exhibition.
Climate change affects the reindeer herding because the winters are warmer and the snow melts and then it gets really cold and the ice prevents the reindeers from eating so they starve and die. The seasons are changing and that’s a problem also when the reindeers are giving birth to calves in springtime. If its to cold they die and if there is no food… etc. So climate change affects reindeer herding a lot when the seasons change.”
As described by Alaska writer Vivian Scott “Both male and female reindeer grow antlers. In early December, after mating season, male reindeer shed their antlers (unless they’re castrated males, then their antler growth has a similar cycle to female deer). Pregnant females retain their antlers throughout winter until spring.”- (Capitol City Weekly). Thus Rudolf was a female!
Her article includes many other fascinating facts about reindeer such as “Reindeer antlers are the fastest growing ‘bones’ in the world, growing up to ¾ inch per day. Reindeer have the largest and heaviest antlers of all deer species.”
Hanging in the center of the gallery are transparent plexiglass panels as well as a panel with a mirror in the center all suspended from the ceiling. Sámi photographs have been printed onto the plexiglass by Colbengston. Herders seem to move among the life size reindeer in the paintings. We are also reflected in the mirror in the center and become part of the movement.
The artists also state in the exhibition that they are evoking the Sámi concept of herd mentality
Reindeer are herd animals and being together offers protection from danger. The whole herd becomes a single organism with a thousand eyes that can detect danger; if one turns around, the others follow. People are also herd animals; they want a sense of belonging.
The story of the Sámi and the reindeer in Alaska follows many twists and turns, with various odd power plays, including being taken over by a Gold Rush family, but in 1937 the Alaska indigenous people were given ownership of the herds from the Sámi ( we are good at taking things away from people) . Alaska natives mostly didn’t like herding which required them to be away from home for months at a time, although one woman was famous for her success. They let them go to join their caribou cousins.
In other words instead of assimilation to white man’s ways, they assimilated the reindeer to their own habitat.
Some Sámi stayed in Alaska and intermarried with the Indigenous people. They are still very much part of Alaska today as evidenced in a recent exhibition in Juneau.
“Mygration” is a celebration, not a documentation of the next parts of the story. As the moving plexiglass images of the Saami intersect with the reindeer the installation perfectly conveys the magic of nomadic herders of reindeer.
National Nordic Museum
Until March 5, 2023
This entry was posted on December 27, 2022 and is filed under
climate change,
Uncategorized.
The New Installation of the American Art Galleries at the Seattle Art Museum*
Outside the first gallery is this work by Nicholas Galanin, Architecture of return, escape (The British Museum), 2022, an appropriate commentary on removing stolen Native artifacts from the British Museum. Nicholas Galanin is one of the three consulting artists for the project, he will be installing another work in the Spring.
Community and Conversation highlight Capitalism and Colonialism in the American West in the newly created American Art installation at the Seattle Art Museum. In addition to the three lead artists, the museum worked with a team of community curators and artists. This was not an advisory committee that just met once, they met many times to think about how to reinstall the collection. Seattle is fortunate to have curators and artists from a wide spectrum of perspectives:
Rebecca Cesspooch, Northern Ute/Assiniboine/Nakota visual artist and educator
Juan P. Córdova, elementary school teacher at New York City Public Schools
Fulgencio Lazo, artist and co-founder of Studio Lazo
Jared Mills, librarian at Seattle Public Library
Chieko Phillips, cultural administrator
Jake Prendez, owner and co-director of Nepantla Cultural Arts Gallery
Delbert Richardson, ethnomuseumologist
Juliet Sperling, Assistant Professor of Art History, Kollar Endowed Chair in American Art, School of Art + Art History + Design, University of Washington
Asia Tail, Cherokee artist, curator, and co-founder of yəhaw̓ Indigenous Creatives Collective
Mayumi Tsutakawa, writer with focus on Asian American history
Ken Workman, Duwamish Tribal Member and descendant of Chief Seattle
Theresa Papanikolas, Curator of American Art, seen above, and Barbara Brotherton, Curator of Native American Art began to “interrogate and re-contextualize the collection” with the help of 11 community advisors and three artists in the summer of 2021. Certainly, the death of George Floyd, and the protests that followed sparked elite predominantly white institutions across the country to rethink their own unacknowledged racism.
309 and 310 galleries before the 2022 American Art reinstallation.
Consequently, the American art galleries formerly dark and dreary and filled with art by predominantly white artists, have been entirely transformed.
Barbara Brotherton, retiring curator of Native American Art declared that the museum is following a “dramatically different approach, bringing the historical American art collection into conversation with Native, Asian American, African American, Latinx, and contemporary art. This new interpretive framework brings forward historically excluded narratives and artistic forms. Instead of seeing these communities as parallel to the so-called mainstream history, the museum now is looking at intersections. “
No longer organized chronologically, “The Stories We Carry,” features five themes some with two parts: Storied Places,
Transnational/ Trade and Expanding Markets
Transnational/The Internationalism of Objects
Reimagining Regionalism
Ancestors plus Descendants/ Faces of America
Ancestors plus Descendants/Memory Keepers.
Wendy Red Star. “Áakiiwilaxpaake (People of the Earth),” 2022. Seattle Art Museum Commission Archival ink jet prints, dibond, LED lights, electrical components, wood, milk plexiglass, 84 x 62 x 12 in.
The first theme is “Storied Places”
At the entrance the delightful Wendy Red Star, one of the lead artists, confronts us with a large lightbox: Áakiiwilaxpaake (People of The Earth). Red Star humorously and seriously speaks of how excluded she felt from the American art galleries by the boring American art genres, portraiture, and landscape.
Portraits of 70 native women, youth and even babies stand in front of the Northwest icons Mt Rainier and the Space Needle. Contemporary Native people are front and center in the present and future, rather than their usual position in the past as a prelude to white America.
Shaun Peterson (Tulalip/Puyallup, Qwalsius)’s Song for the Moon (2022) presents the Puyallup creation myth in a banner like painting. The label declares: “Native philosophies offer different ways of knowing the land, including the belief that all animate and inanimate beings are alive and indivisible from the land. Nature and its many features are thought to be sacred, not scenic.”
Next to it is Sanford Robinson Gifford’s Mount Rainier, Bay of Tacoma – Puget Sound (1875) with tiny figures dwarfed by the landscape and its golden light. These paintings, as the label comments “cast the region’s original communities as characters in the myth of the American wilderness: wild, remote, and poised to be taken over. “
The next section is Transnational
2
It features the sculpture of George Tsutakawa as a connection, in a work inspired by kelp called Mo (Seaweed), 1977. It is based on the seaweed that we see just beneath the surface of the sea. Near it is a short video with an interview with Meg Chadsey, kelp specialist and Gerard Tsutakawa the artist’s son who assisted in the execution of many of the works and is an artist as well.
Transnational Trade and Expanding Markets native artists responding to colonizers artistic conventions. This exciting idea moves beyond the tired and condescding concept of “deriviative” to the idea of cross fertilization. In this section we see the eminent Charles Edenshaw’s argillite totem among other works. Only Haida artists can work in argillite, but Edenshaw was brilliant at adapting to Victorian conventions in his work ( not necessarily visible here). He was commissioned at a time when Native cultures were being suppressed, to create a totem for the Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Below is a bottle covered with traditional cedar basketry techniques and a model canoe. Canoes of course are embedded in Native Culture, but this model would have been for sale.
The Internationalism of Objects white artists working with materials like Ivory from Sierra Leone, or silver from Peru both colonial extractive practices
Reimagining Regionalism
Inye Wokoma, the third consulting artist, worked as a curator here. He excavated works of art buried in storage to curate an entire gallery that “Reimagines Regionalism.” Then he wrote long interpretations with his insightful perspectives.
He is standing next to Marie Watt’s Blanket Stories: Three Sisters, Four Pelts,Sky Woman, Cousin Rose, and All My
Relations, 2007. Each blanket has a story.
Leading off is Roger Shimomura 1978, Minidoka Series #2: Exodus, 1978 from his first Minidoka series, in the Ukiyo-e style.
Next to him, the mid-century modernists Kenjiro Nomura and Kamekichi Takata are finally given the prominent place they deserve.
My favorite juxtaposition in Wokoma’s gallery was the overlap of an elevator door of the Chicago Stock Exchange in front of a painting of Puget Sound by Albert Bierstadt. Apparently, Bierstadt never saw the Puget Sound, the painting is entirely fabricated.
Then Wokoma pulls no punches!
“The Indigenous figures along the dramatic shoreline seem inconsequential to the grand possibilities of the land: the subtext for this painting commissioned by a wealthy merchant. . . The elevator screen from the Chicago Stock Exchange (ca. 1893-94) by the “father of skyscrapers” Louis Sullivan is an utterly literal symbol of economic expansion, the overwhelming might of colonialism. Now installed so that visitors can move entirely around it and look through it, the screen offers an opportunity to consider what this gateway was leading to—and what it kept out.”
Regionalism Gallery Rudolph Franz
Zallinger
Northwest Salmon Fishermen, 1941
Kenneth Callahan building a logging railroad
Kenneth Callahan The Accident restoration project
Inye’s selection included several images of w orkers by Kenneth Callahan and other artists of the thirties, rather than the usual glorification of the Western myth of progress.
Ancestors + Descendants
Faces of America
is equally radical, for example it juxtaposes paintings by such as the well known work of Thomas Eakins and John Singleton Copley with paintings by Kehinde Wiley and a talking tintype by Will Wilson of a Lummi violin player
.
Will Wilson portrait of Nicholas Galanin
Portrait of Gwen Knight by Augusta Savage
In the last gallery “Ancestors + Descendants/Memory-Keepers” includes the only Latinx artists Alfredo Arreguin, (above) acquired only this year, and Cecilia Alvarez,(below) a gift to the museum in 1992 and never before exhibited.
Danielle Morsette Colors of the Salish Sea: Coast Salish Hybrid Tunic Dress,
The grand finale is the extraordinary basket by Suquamish artist Ed Carriere. He recreates weaving techniques from thousands of years ago by working with archeologists to recover fragments from waterlogged sites. As Brotherton states “Carriere’s precise work challenges notions of artistic hierarchy and provides a nuanced view into the brilliance of transforming humble materials into works of memory and power.”
“The Stories We Carry,” entirely rejects traditional myths of the American West such as Manifest Destiny. Instead the stories told here by a diverse cross section of voices, explore questions of conquest and colonialism, as well as exchange and tradition.
* This model for the Seattle Art Museum is far more radical than that discussed by two NY curators in this NYTimes article
In Seattle, the curators collaborated with people in the community, as well as inviting artists as co-curators. Inye Wokoma is an artist, as well as founder of the institution WaNaWari, a vibrant cultural institution that hosts all media, predominantly by people of color. it was founded to keep African American presence and culture in the Central District of Seattle which was an historically black neighborhood now going rapid gentrification.
~Susan Platt, PhD
This entry was posted on December 14, 2022 and is filed under
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I start with a short clip of the wonderful musicians, especially the trumpet player who was music director. The musicians played parts in the skits and changed instruments ( the tuba player switched to a tiny flute for example and he was Bishop Romero) . You click on it and it downloads so you can view it.
musicians before
Here is a short clip of the opening
opening movie
Bread and Puppet amazing performance. They were last here in 2007 with Mother Courage honoring Rachel Corrie. Now they have the Apocalypse Defiance Circus that includes COVID epidemic, Palestine, exploitation by Big Dairy, Bolsonaro’s havoc in Brazil, history of reparations, and much more with insanely huge puppets great music and staggering energy.
Here are a few images
Women on stilts riding zebras! This is the crazy fun. The women on stilts started by reading the New York Times and throwing it down in disgust, then the zebras came in and picked them up. Our connection to nature and animals, that we need them to save us, might be a message here.
The weatherman predicting disasters, and monsters and devils threatening her
Supreme Court outlaws Circuses. A clever idea, instead of hitting on the actual cases, the nightmare of so many rights being lost. But the Supreme Court is set on by lions and lion tamers and ripped apart.
. 
Big Dairy trying to do away with workers by creating a self milking cow. Of course it doesn’t work and the workers come in and carry Big
Dairy away
Palestine and its tragedy.
This connected to the Rachel Corrie piece from 2007.
Assassination of Bishop Romero The placard says
“Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (Formerly the School of the Americas) continues to train death squads from Latin America
Brazil 684,000 Covid Deaths, 23,000 killed by Police, 8,069,000 sq acres of Amazon destroyed
Relentless Covid Epidemic has a fight with underpaid nurses. They win at first but then death is brought back to life and comes after them again.
History of Reparations from Haiti to the present
The finale. I have a video with music also. Click on it and you can view it.
closing movie
Elka Schumann died August 2021, the brilliant creative brains behind it as well as all the administative work and ten other things. But they are certainly still going strong.
Bread and Puppet is also in Turkey at the Istanbul Biennial!! That’s a giant Mother Earth made in Turkey with collaboration of a famous contemporary puppet artist Cengiz Özek Follow the link for a larger image
This entry was posted on October 26, 2022 and is filed under
Uncategorized.
“George Tsutakawa: The Language of Nature” at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art includes drawings, watercolors and sumi works as well as oil paintings, one of his famous fountains, several large photographs of others, and even his furniture.
The unique exhibition borrows many works from the Tsutakawa family that have never before been exhibited. The thoughtful installation emphasizes the interplay of two- and three-dimensional work.
But the dominating theme of the exhibition is the artist’s connection to nature. In a striking photograph near the beginning of the exhibition we see him sitting on the beach at low tide sketching the sea with his paper on the sand.
Tsutakawa explored both East and West aesthetics: his painting and sculpture are profoundly based in nature even when they appear abstract.
We see subtle observations in sumi sketches of shrimp, lobster, codfish, squash and leeks. birds, and trees. They are both filled with an abstract space and detailed in their realism. Tsutakawa observed the shrimp from many directions, as they gathered.
His watercolors of landscapes, particularly two of Mt. Rainier, one in transparent watercolor, the other in black, opaque sumi ink. demonstrate his close observation of changing light and atmosphere For all of us in Seattle who experience the constantly changing view of Mt Rainier, these two works resonate and represent two extremes of a spectrum from light to dark.
One of his favorite forms was the Obo, the rock that pilgrims in the Himalayas pile up to create a memorial. In his sculpture, you can see that reference, as he creates cedar or teak sculptures with both highly polished and carefully textured surfaces. These models and the painting are based on the obi shape. Once you see it you will recognize it everywhere.
Tsutakawa is best known for his bronze fountains of which there are twelve just in Seattle, and seventy-five around the country. The first and best known is “Fountain of Wisdom,” 1957–60, in front of the Seattle Public Library. These elegant metal sculptures subtly incorporate a water flow that interacts and completes their form. Here is our most familiar work, Fountain of Wisdom at the Seattle Public Library.
This entry was posted on October 21, 2022 and is filed under
Art and Ecology,
Uncategorized.
