Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Oh, that Cunning Countess


Cross in the Mountains or Tetschen Altar
Caspar David Friedrich, 1807-08
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemaldegalerie, Dresden
(image used with the courtesy of http://www.joybunny.artfriend.com)

Art students know the situation well. It's the big critique and they have to present their work in their studio or in a classroom as if it was in a gallery. Perhaps this means painting a wall white, tidying a corner, adjusting the lighting, or preparing a pedestal among other things. But no matter how hard they try, anxious what-ifs float around like, "Would it fold this way if it was in gallery?" And a feeling of artificiality, like watching a concert on DVD, permeates the exchange.

This act of "putting on airs" characterized the setting of Caspar David Friedrich's presentation of the Cross in the Mountains in 1808. He made the painting, as one story goes, specifically to be an altarpiece in a small chapel within the Tetschen Castle in northern Bohemia. After its completion, however, it didn't have a public place yet and due to his friends' demands, he reluctantly decided to show it in his "atelier" i.e. his home studio.

As German painting scholar Joseph Koerner documents in his book Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape, educator Johann Jacob O.A. Ruhle von Lilienstern (a mouthful, eh?) wrote, "In order to counteract the bad effect of the totally white walls of his small room, and to imitate as well as possible the twilight of the lamplit chapel, a window was veiled and the painting, which was too heavy for an ordinary easel, was erected on a table over which was spread a black cloth." Amusingly, today, most of our efforts are put towards achieving white walls. One can imagine Friedrich saying, "Now, if the painting was in its proper setting, the effect would be such and such as I intended." or "Pay no attention to unwanted variables A, B, and C..."

As most art students do, Friedrich put on this show with the hope of the work eventually achieving its intended setting. The immediate display simply being a trial run for the real thing. The problem for Friedrich is that its promised place wasn't available. To explain further: Countess Maria Theresa von Thun-Hohenstein supposedly had commissioned the work specifically for placement in her husband's private Tetschen chapel. It turns out that the painting was originally dedicated to Friedrich's king, Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden and not commissioned by Maria. Only when the king was overthrown in 1809 did Friedrich then agree to sell it to Maria. He and his "circle of friends" reconstructed the story of the origins of the work to make it seem as if he had created every detail to suit the Countess' chapel perfectly.

After Friedrich had sold the work to Maria, he wrote that he would like to "oversee the painting being installed and consecrated as a working altar." However, the work was never actually going to be placed in its promised spot. In fact, there was already an altarpiece designed by Joseph Bergler, the director of the Prague Art Academy, in the chapel in question. So, when Friedrich inquired about a visit, Maria had to make up a story that the piece was actually going to be installed in a chapel in Prague. When he said he would then come to Prague, she had to "give him the slip" again.

Hilariously, instead of the work being in a chapel it was in Countess Maria's BEDROOM! She had concocted the scheme to convince Friedrich to part ways with his masterwork. No wonder she didn't want him to come and see it...it was hanging above her bed. Rather than being a central object in worship ceremonies, I'm sure Friedrich would've loved to have seen his work shaking as the countess made love to her husband! When Friedrich was adjusting the black cloth in his atelier I'll bet that he never considered the possibility of undergarments hanging on his painting...and maybe the cat at rest on top? Perhaps he would've been better off naming it "Headboard" instead of Tetschen Altar. :P

Thursday, October 23, 2008

The Boundless Landscape


Capuchin Friar by the Sea by Caspar David Friedrich
Oil Painting
(used with the courtesy of www.humanitiesweb.org)


I've been reading about Caspar David Friedrich, German landscape painter from the 1800's, and his boundless landscapes. The sentiment that I get a whiff of even by studying pictures in books is expressed exquisitely by Carl Gustav Carus,
one of Friedrich's disciples, in the following words:

Stand on the peak of a mountain, contemplate the long ranges of hills...and all the other glories offered to your view, and what feeling seizes you? It is a quiet prayer, you lose yourself in boundless space, your self disappears, you are nothing, God is everything. (1)

Immediately German filmmaker Werner Herzog came to mind. Other than with my own eyes, the times I've experienced said feeling profoundly was through Herzog's films like Fitzcarraldo, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Grizzly Man, and the portions I've seen of Encounters at the End of the World. Here's a still from Fitzcarraldo:

Still from Fitzcarraldo
(used with the courtesy of http://brzinnyc.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_archive.html)

Conveniently, this shot of actor Klaus Kinski even includes Friedrich's Ruckenfigur motif, that of showing a figure, male or female, from the back. The scene from the film that I recall so vividly, and of which I draw a sufficient parallel to the mood of Friedrich's work, is that when Fitzgerald (Kinski), is playing opera as his boat of disgruntled natives travels down the river. In this particular scene, Herzog highlights Fitzgerald's small presence in the vastness of Peru's landscape. The connection between how impossibly grand and brilliant nature is and how diminutively small Fitzgerald is easily relates to Friedrich's rendering of the monk by the sea. And Friedrich's Woman in the Morning Sun among others.

In the more than a century of separation, however, one big difference changed from Friedrich's perspective to Herzog's. Friedrich's boundlessness was a mirror of God's infinity while Herzog's is one of The Great Void. Friedrich wanted to exhibit the religious presence of nature while Herzog wants to show the terrifying, indifferent beauty of it. Don't associate "religious presence," however, with joy. Friedrich, despite God's existence, felt painful isolation in the "anxious silence" of landscapes similar to the way Herzog does.

In the Friedrich works I've "seen" (by way of reproduction), the landscape dominates the helpless figures. And while the same occurs in Herzog's films, in Fitzcarraldo, Fitzgerald attempts, unsuccessfully, to fight against the deafening quiet of nature by playing opera. It's an astounding scene in which opera represents civilization and the riverscape, the harsh brutality of existence. Herzog remarked of the jungle, "The birds don't sing; they scream out in terror." While Fitzgerald screams, Friedrich's Friar stands defeated.

(1) Taken from An Outline of 19th Century European Painting by Lorenz Eitner

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The Mirror Stage




Video Stills from Keith Sullivan's Dasein
3 channel video installation for flat screen monitors
15:00 running time
Lycoming College's Digital Media Gallery
Williamsport, PA

While I watched Keith Sullivan pantomime drumming, singing, dancing, and dunking a basketball in his multi-channel video installation Dasein (pictured above), I imagined him doing the same. As I envisioned Mr. Sullivan viewing and listening to himself, he suddenly turned into me. Then, strangely, I stood there looking at myself.

To explain: I am a video artist who has also put myself in some of my work. While I always convince myself that I do so with good reason, others aren't so sure. Some of my closest friends recently told me that the biggest flaw in my art was my "egotism." I took note of their critique but didn't agree. It wasn't until I saw myself reflected in Sullivan's art and got a glimpse of what it must've been like (fictionally, of course) to see Narcissus gazing at his own reflection that I thought, "How vain!" Whatever points Sullivan has (and due to the mention of Ginsberg and semiotics, I'm sure he has many), they are lost in his enjoyment of himself.

And, much to my dismay, what is true of him in this respect is true of me. "Dammit," I thought, "I just like watching myself do things." Sullivan and I both disguise our mirror-impulses with philosophical backgrounds. We think that since we have read Heidegger, our being is more aware and therefore, innately artistic. This point reminds me of an episode of Malcolm in the Middle in which Francis berates Malcolm for his elitism. Francis says something to the effect of, "You think, because you're so smart, that you experience things deeper than the rest of us. So, you complain until you've made sure we all know how aware you are."

The title Dasein says it all. It's an exclusive term. if you've read philosophy you're in, if you haven't, you're out. And it's a German word for "existence" or "being-here." As if that were enough. "I'm here, I'm smart, and you should care."

To not be too hard on him (and me), I'll say that Sullivan does pull off some nuanced karaoke and his Jordanesque dunking is a hoot. One can tell that he's spent a lot of time perfecting his performances and the production value of his videos is impressive. The black backgrounds achieve an atmospheric quality like those old, minimalist Shakespeare plays one can find on VHS in library basements.

But, again, Sullivan is too satisfied with doing things that other people did because he is doing them. Sullivan's work, and some of mine, fits all too well into what Rosalind Krauss calls "The Aesthetics of Narcissism."

--------------------------

Keith Sullivan is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, photography, performance, and installation. He received a Master of FIne Arts degree in visual art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2007) and a Bachelor of Arts in sociology from Emory University (2000), where he graduated with highest honors. His work has been shown in New York, Boston, and Atlanta.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Footsteps Opening Reception



Hello Friends!

Please join us for the opening reception of Moore Footsteps
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
7:00 - 8:00 pm


To celebrate Moore's 160th Anniversary, Moore Alumnae have organized the Moore Footsteps exhibition.
Darla Jackson '03 created 12 six-foot boots.
Selected alumnae have altered the boots, illustrating their ideas about women and the arts.
All of the boots will be on exhibit at Moore for one week before being installed throughout the city.
Participating artists include:

* e Bond '96
* Heather Bryson '92
* Dorothy Collins '93
* Collaboration -Aubrie Costello '07,Laura Graham '03, Darla Jackson '03
* Karen Daroff '70
* Gail Gaines '89
* Rochelle F. Levy '79
* Longina Rossi '70
* Theresa M. Saulin '92
* Jane L. Walentas '66
* Cathleen White '96
* Janell Wysock '04

Sponsored by Fran '66 and Bill Graham
http://moore.edu/

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Blindness

Futuristic or Post-Apocalyptic movies have a tendency to be ridiculously awful and this one does nothing to improve upon that history. While not as bizarrely cheesy as The Day After Tomorrow, as endurance-testing as The Postman, or as banal as Code 46, Blindness is nothing short of laughable.

One only has to watch the Sci-Fi Channel for a few Saturdays (Or any of the Resident Evil or Underworld series) to realize that the first sin of bad science fiction movies is self-seriousness. When everything is dark and gloomy and nobody's laughing, you know you're in for a tough ride. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV series that mastered the art of blending irony and humor with sci-fi drama, should be required viewing for any future director of the genre.

Try not to chuckle when people begin stripping at random times (just because I can't see doesn't mean I won't want to be WARM) or when Julianne Moore is being tackled by zombie-like blind people (who inexplicably all found her in a hurry) in a grocery store as she struggles to hold on to the food she just found.

One positive element of the film is how Meirelles enlivens transitions by weaving the camera in and out of strange spots. One never knows where a scene will start or end and whether we'll be able to see it clearly. His best tricks call to mind the hazy imprisonment of Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

The coldness of Meirelles' characters seems less like the result of a skillful hand and more like the consequence of ineptitude. So, if you enjoyed the scarily realistic City of God and the suspenseful but forgettable Constant Gardner and are hoping for another score, you'll be disappointed.