I am not really sure why the L.A. Times chose this image for the article, but as an art historian, this photo fascinates me. The props are spectacular – check out that hideous sconce on the wall behind her head, and the fuzzy moccasins on the window sill behind her. What does this mean?! Look at the blackberry in her hand! (Wait, are there two of them?)! And the flag (omg – I think it’s plastic!) casually placed on the chair for her to “lean on.” I posted this to my FB page and my friends started to analyze too. One person pointed out that the electrical outlet near the floor has a safety cover only on one of the two plug holes. Another was nauseated by the U.S. Army banner; using her son’s deployment as a prop. If you look closely at the carpet, you can see her tennis shoe marks on the freshly vacuumed carpet. You can almost imagine additional poses for earlier frames in the film.
The image is so carefully composed, and reminds me of Thomas Eakins’ 19th-century portraits of the learned men and women of his day (many of them very peculiar), depicted at work in their professional lives. Compare her to this painting by Eakins of Frank Cushing, who was one of the first anthropologists to “go native” by living with Zuni Indians in the southwest. Cushing was a bit of a rogue–and a maverick–in his day, too. Is it just me? Or is there a freakish resemblance in these compositions? On the other hand, of you turn Sarah’s portrait clockwise 90 degrees, it starts to look like an odalisque. Ouch – did I just say that?
At U Penn this year, incoming Freshmen are taking a twist on the old classic summer reading project. Instead of reading a novel together, they are looking at a painting, Thomas Eakins’ Gross Clinic. This painting is rich with historical and cultural meaning, and opens the door to study of many topics, from American history, to medical practice and history, to psychological studies, and oh yeah, art history too. I love this painting and spent weeks in an art history seminar in grad school (ehem) dissecting it. The university is using the project as a way to create community bonds between the local arts organizations and the students, between campus and community.
But I love it because it foregrounds the importance of visual literacy, something that I have always felt is ignored in our culture (it’s not one of the three Rs), yet which is becoming increasingly important in our world where we’re swamped with imagery. Learning how to evaluate what you see and interpret meaning from images is not innate; it is a learned skill. Reading, in my mind, is no longer just about interpreting the syntax of spoken and written language. It’s heartening to see a major university embracing a visual expression as a way to explore and read about larger historical and cultural issues.
Went to LACMA’s late Night Art event last night. They made very good use of the space between the Ahmanson and BCAM buildings, behind the Urban Light installation—a space I started to call the “crack in the Lac” with my friends. DJs pumping out the German techno and outdoor seating with bar created a very pleasant outdor hangout space. The best part though was behind the projection screen, where some LACMA staff (perhaps education staff? They always have the most fun) were there with art-making supplies for making puppets and photocopies of Franz West’s face for mask-making, and a mini installation of liquor bottles plastered a la Franz West (hidden treasures for sure).
The art was a bit difficult to see due to the crowds, and the readings in the galleries, which sometimes blocked the art from those of us who didn’t want to listen to the spoken word. Franz West was not for me (except as a cut-out puppet I made), but the Art of Two Germanys exhibition was quite impressive. It was huge though, and although the art was a bit depressing, you got the sense of something that must be important. Highlights included some great still photographs of performance events, including artists like Josef Beuys and Nam June Paik; and some monstrous Anselm Kieffer paintings. In one room, a chocolate sculpture by Dieter Roth proved how experiencing art through unexpected sensory information can make you take a second look (see object on left in image below). I had dismissed it on first glance, but then smelled chocolate and had to find the source of the smell. Those little terracotta monkeys are actually chocolate (and lions). One well-placed performance inside the gallery was a musician playing a leaden sounding composition on a double-bass in a room with a glasnost-era oil painting of Ronald Reagan looking skyward, and a red carpet leading away from him across the room.
We had a record turnout in the election on Tuesday. I waited in line for an hour, bonding with my co-voters. But we got nothing on Switzerland, with its “direct democracy.” The people in local cantonments gather in the town square to vote by show of hands. It’s called “Landsgemeinde” and thousands show up.
The first presidential debate is over and I still had PBS on the tv when Bill Moyers comes on with a very impressive guest: Andrew Bacevich. I have been completely sucked into this interview with this person who has such a deep and clear understanding of history and what it can teach us about where our country has ended up at this moment in time. I agree with so much of what he is saying, especially that we have created an “Imperial Presidency” over the past 40 years. I was surprised to find out that Bacevich is a conservative. Educated at West Point, with a PdD in History from Princeton, he served in both Vietnam and the Gulf War
I returned from my trip to Ethiopia on June 15. Six weeks later I have shared the photos and stories with many people and in many formats! I decided to take the time to be really organized and comb carefully through all of my photos (1,000+) to choose the best, and to place them in order and caption them to re-tell the story of my trip, my thoughts, experiences, and recollections. (See the highlights of my Ethiopia trip here.) After going on a number of trips over the past 3 years, I have learned that if I don’t do this right away, it just doesn’t happen. And then all my memories slowly slip away. I look at the photos 3 years later and wonder what I was thinking when I took them. So this time, I had a really strong sense of “it’s now or never” driving me to organize, annotate, and share. And having the ability to post everything online and share with friends across the globe was a great motivator too. There’s a real sense here of not just creating a record of my traveling experiences for me and my friends, but of contributing to a larger education (in the West) about the country and history of Ethiopia, as well as about the joy of travel.
This trip was also unusual because of my family connection to the country. Soon after I returned back to L.A., I gave a pecha kucha slideshow (20 slides, 20 seconds each) presentation about my trip and my dad’s life living there, in which I reconstructed some of his photos from the early 60s. That, in turn, inspired me to re-create the slideshow on Flickr. And then from there, I decided to create a book, which I published myself on Lulu.com, based on the pecha kucha: Connecting to History in Ethiopia, A Travel Reconstruction.
On my recent trip to Ethiopia I took along with me some copies of the photos my dad took while he lived there in 1962-64. Dad lived in Addis and among his photographs were some images of the neighborhood he lived in. I got him to show me on a map before hand, and in Addis I set off on a quest to find the same locations and document them again. It’s really amazing how little things have changed there. The trees are bigger, and some short walls have been made taller, but that’s about it.
Below, left, is an image from 1964 of the walkway/alley leading to the house my dad lived in with his roommate, Charlie, seen in the photo. Access to the house (the one with the chimney) and its yard was through the gate behind Charlie. On the right, I am standing in front of the same gate in 2008 (less than 2 weeks ago). The same gate is there–they just added wood to the top section and painted it green.
Below are two images of the street leading up to this alleyway, at the top of the “70 steps”. The top image is from ca. 1964 (Dad’s camera had a much nicer lens on it than my little Cannon digital Elph), the bottom one from today. You can see the same stone wall to the right (extended upwards today), and even the same green shack on the right of the telephone pole (also the same!).
One thing that is very clear to me as I travel in Ethiopia is that the people here have a very strong sense of being a part of ‘history’. And it’s a long, long history. From pre-biblical times, their kings ruled the entire area of Sudan, Yemen, parts of Somalia and present day Ethiopia and Eritrea. They also claim to be one of the first Christianized cultures and have a Holy Land pedigree, as their first king, Menelik I was the son of King Solomon; his mother the Queen of Sheba. Menelik is said to have brought the Ark of the Covenant to Axum from Israel, (along with thousands of Jews, whose mixed decendents are now called the fallasha), which still rests in a secret chapel in Axum to this day, and is seen only by one monk, chosen to guard it with his life.
The land is full of reminders of thousands of years of powerful kingdoms — ruins litter the land in the far north, from the Axumite stele and palaces in the north from the pre-Christian era, to the rock-hewn churches in Tigrai and around Lalibela from the 6th through the 13th (?) centuries, and the castles built by Fasilides in the 17th century. More recently, they are the only African nation to have resisted European colonization (despite a brief occupation by Italy, which is still evident in some of the food, architecture, and pasta on most menus that serve foreign (farengi) food). I get the sense that during the rule of the last king, Haile Selassie, Ethiopia saw many improvements and began to be modernized. Much of the modern architecture we’ve seen in cities was clearly built in the 60s and early 70s. One gets the sense that after Selassie was overthrown in 1974, and a Communist government called “the Derg’ took over (until 1991), things went downhill fast and are not really recovering very well.
That these histories are Ethiopia’s is not in dispute. But the specifics of the histories–how they play out over time and the details of why and how, are not clear at all. We have been hearing contradictory stories continually. The Ethiopian version of the history sometimes is doubted by European scholars. When I listen to Ethiopians tell their story, it is clear that they have a very strong faith about and certainty about their version, which has been passed down from generation to generation, and is often tinged with Christian prophecy. The most famous of these is the story of the Queen of Sheba and the ark of the covenant. Is the real ark in Axum? Did the Axumite kings bring Christianity to the horn of Africa peacefully, willingly abandoning their pagan beliefs? In Axum, we saw so many ruins built by unquestionably powerful cultures. But many of the sites are un-excavated, or only partially investigated. Scholars have been slow to spend time here to explore the history of this land, which I think must have rivaled that of the greatest cultures of Europe and the Middle East. I suppose there will be some more unfolding of the story in the future….
At long last, the exhibition surveying video art in California is here. California Video opens to the public tomorrow.
Curator Glenn Philips made a really great point in the L.A. Weekley today about how contemporary technology (specifically YouTube) has affected how we view video art today:
“The weird thing for me is that I think people will receive this show better now than if I’d done the exact same show 10 years ago. It’s kind of silly, but I honestly think YouTube has something to do with it. We all watch YouTube now and it’s prepared us: People are now comfortable with the idea of someone alone with a camera, turning it on and doing whatever they want to in front of it. That’s really what ’70s video art is. You can theorize about it all you want, you can make as many high-minded claims as you want – and most of the artists that would be applicable to – but they’re really just playing with the camera, and your average museum visitor is now a little more comfortable with that.”
He’s right. It’s amazing to watch the activity online around this exhibition as bloggers each curate their own mini versions of the show, embedding video from YouTube into their online galleries.
Just watched this promotional video for Barack Obama’s campaign on YouTube. It’s basically a music video with lyrics spun together from Obama’s speeches (which drip with allusions to the history and mythology surrounding race in this country), sung by various famous and semi-famous people.
The video is beautiful and moving. The message is a clear one. But it highlights my main issue with Obama’s campaign. I share his hope. I share his ideals. But I see little evidence of a real strategy to achieving these ideals. The campaign slogan generically for “Change” is a red herring. Dude, the Republicans want change too! The right-wing wants change! I want more specifics about what that change will look like. This video, with its black-and-white images and parade of stars is no more than a new form of name-dropping and celebrity endorsement. There’s just no substance there. Obama’s Web site says it all: “I am asking you to believe…” He wants blind faith…sound familiar?
