The Rigidity of the Rectangle

Since I don't/can't get around much these days and haven't been able to go much of anywhere or do much of anything outside the house and doctor/dentist visits, I've taken to vicarious rambles at art shows -- LA, NYC, Basel (Switzerland and Miami Beach) and various others presented on line, including Sotheby's and Christie's auctions. I can put them up on my teevee and have a grand time for hours and hours. 

I really miss some of the galleries in Santa Fe but oh well, that's how it goes. Enjoy it while you can.

Ms. Ché has been talking about going to Europe this fall. It would be her first and probably only trip to Europe, and she figures she better do it now while she can still get around -- bless her -- and has the verve and energy needed. She's got an itinerary that includes what can only be described as an "Art Tour," to Paris, Giverny, Amsterdam, London and possibly Ireland. She has friends in London who are eager to host her there. She thought about Florence, Venice and Rome and then considered the hordes of tourists even in November and crossed those cities off her list. Vicarious tours will have to do. 

She's very specific about where she wants to go and what she wants to see -- Van Gogh, Monet, Seurat, Renoir, Constable, Turner -- and where she wants to spend her "play time." She's been recruiting friends to go with her since I'm not in any shape to do it, sadly. I think she's got a couple who are more than interested.

At any rate, we'll see. She's working on it. And when she sets her mind to something, it happens. I would say "we can't afford it," but pffft. We can, and she knows it. Just means we can't spend money on something else, that's all.

While vicariously touring art shows on the teevee, I've been pondering the "vocabularies" -- the absolute rigidity of form and often content. And I've been looking for "signs of life."

So much of what we consider "art" is absolutely confined to the rigidity of the rectangle. Artists try to break out of it and for the most part can't. The galleries and museums will only show rectangles with paint daubs within the confines of the shape. Only. Exceptions might include circles or ovals in multiples arranged in -- rectangles.

The form is so absolute that anything that breaks it is jarring and feels unpleasant. 

Content is similarly constricted. It must be abstract, nothingness, shapes, decoration, or emptiness. Representational art is most often confined to expressive portraiture or passive eroticism -- which must feature the feminine form almost exclusively. Male eroticism is a category not typically shown even now.

I look for signs of life even within the rigid constraints on form and content, and it's there, now and then, but mostly what I've seen are relentless copies of one another, artistic plagiarism if you will, all in an effort to attract the same buyers, the same 20 or 200 buyers who want the same things.

This rigidity probably goes back to the Renaissance, no? The Medici and other Florentines demanded X from the artists and got it, over and over again, And they never changed or grew or demanded anything else, so they never got anything else, and now neither do we.

It's all the same, over and over and over again. Some better rendered than others, some more or less provocative, but mostly never deviating from what the artists are told (yes they are) the buyers "want."

Sigh.

Years ago -- how long, maybe close to fifty now -- I did a set design for a 1920s play. I consciously wanted to evoke the art of the time, so I made the background into hommages to Kandinsky, Klee and Miro. I had great fun painting the flats in back, airbrushing them into my interpretations of well-known paintings by these artists, not copies but renderings "in the style of..." I used a slide projector to project photos onto a large screen behind all this, some of them my own "in the style of" Man Ray for example, others lifted from contemporary magazines and books. Again, trying to evoke the art of the era.

The rest of the sets were artistic interpretations of the times. We even had a car made into a rolling art show. The whole thing was great fun to do and extraordinary to view. Much more interesting than the play -- at least to me and some of the audience.

I never did anything like it again. Once done, I didn't think it needed to be repeated, but in the art world, artists must repeat whatever "sells."

The market is confined, and the market wants "X" not "Y" or "Z" but "X" and only "X" and if you want to sell, that's what you do. Period. End of discussion. 

That's why you see so much the same, so much that appears to be someone else's work, so much that has no real "life" to it, but is done solely to please a "market" -- ie: galleries that sell to a select client list, not really to the public at all.

Artists have tried to find ways to break free of this constraint. Some are successful; most are not. It's struggle enough to create the work; selling or creating a market is best left to someone else, no? That's a whole other struggle that can be just as consuming if not more so. Leave it to someone who knows the business.

I won't go into the nature of that business here, but let's just say it's... special. Not for the faint of heart.

I think that has to do mostly with the nature of the clients who buy art. These people are after something in particular, not unlike Renaissance buyers, and have little or no patience for something outside that rigorous, rectangular box.

They want what they want, and that's it.

They usually get it, too. 

So many artists groups in the 20th Century tried to counter this demon of empty sameness with mixed success. Ultimately what they had to rely on was full time jobs teaching because their work didn't sell, or rather didn't sell enough for them to make a living.

That is a continuing problem.

If an artist is not able to sell his or her work, then what are they to do? Online opportunities have really expanded the market for art and democratized it to some extent. That's a good thing, I think. But it is still marginal. 

Part of the problem, I've long felt, is that for the most part, teachers don't teach technique, so artists are largely left to their own devices to figure out how to do something, how to accomplish their objectives with the materials at hand. Some are able to rely on one another for technical advice, how to do something. But often every artist they know is in the same boat trying to figure out technique on their own.

Why this is so -- still - is historical going back to the abstract expressionist movement that denied the necessity for and authority of technique and technical expertise. If you're working in that style, technical proficiency is probably not useful or desirable though the style itself requires its own technical proficiency, and if you're not working in that style, you are definitely left to flounder while you hope to figure out some way to do whatever it is you hope to.

I had to figure out how to airbrush on my own. No one who knew had the time or inclination to teach me, and there was no internet at the time to show me what to do. The few instructions available were... opaque. If you didn't already know airbrush technique, they made little sense. But gradually, I got the hang of it to do what I intended but not to do anything that airbrush artists were noted for then and now. There's no way I could accomplish that kind of subtlety and detail. But that was OK since I wasn't trying for it. But what of somebody who did want to know the ins and outs of airbrush technique?

I have purchased a number of soft pastel works -- portraits and dogs -- that are very delicately and realistically rendered. They might be considered "commercial" in that they are widely produced on commission for sale to interested clients, by artists who are technically proficient. I've done quite a few works in soft pastel, but I am not at all technically proficient. What I do is rather cartoonish, really. A portrait of Ms. got me more than one sideways glance as I rendered her hair orange and did not try for a realistic rendering. It is definitely "cartoonish" and is definitely a portrait. I rather like it and so does she, but some others who have seen it scratch their heads. Other pastel works include landscapes, abstractions, and one of my favorites: "Hommage à Mark Rothko (unfinished)" an orange oops, red square on an orange background, with a little flip on one corner of the orange red square on an orange background. "What?" There. That's it.

And so on.

I've taken to kind of studying my own works because I do them in a sort of frenzy, almost a trance, and it may be a long time before I can actually look at them critically. "Is this any good? Or have I wasted time and materials again?" Hard to say.

And I realize the vast bulk of my work is costume renderings and set designs, hundreds and hundreds of them, some of it rather nice to look at, but none of it intended to be "Art." 

Come to think of it, all these renderings are rectangular. Hm. The rigidity!

I'll close now...

The Leering Sphere or The Bomb in New Mexico

Today July 16, 2018, is the 73rd anniversary of the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Trinity Site in New Mexico.

Santa Fe Opera interpretation of The Gadget -- "Dr. Atomic" 2018 Season

This titanium sphere -- or was it stainless steel? -- hung menacingly over the entire production of Peter Sellars' and John Adams's "Dr. Atomic" which opened at Santa Fe Opera last night [July 14], shortly before the 73rd anniversary of the detonation of the world's first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site in New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range (then the  Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range.)

The Gadget as it was called, memories of The Gadget, the enormity of what was created at Los Alamos -- a bare 25 miles from the semi-outdoor Opera House ("the audience can see Los Alamos from their seats" quoth librettist and director Peter Sellars in one of the talks we heard before the performance), and the aftermath of the atomic bomb test at Trinity Site, July 16, 1945, some 200 miles south of Los Alamos resonate profoundly in New Mexico, in some ways more profoundly than anywhere else in the world except Japan.

There were far more US nuclear tests outside Las Vegas, NV, and in the Pacific than in New Mexico (just one -- the first one --that we know of in our backyard) but ultimately the atmospheric tests elsewhere became a kind of twisted Cold War entertainment - "whoa, wouldja lookit that!" -- that was sometimes shown to school kids before their Duck and Cover exercises to scare the  shit out of them (how well I remember.)

"Dr. Atomic" deals with the tragic story of Dr. J, Robert Oppenheimer ("Oppie") at Los Alamos and Alamogordo, New Mexico, in the hours leading up to the first atomic bomb test and its echoes through time to today. 

It's a complex story that doesn't exist in linear time, and apparently the complexity and non-linearity as well as the often jarring contemporary musical score can be off-putting to some opera-goers though it wasn't apparent opening night. It was a full house. The audience's attention was as intense as the music and performances. The response was enthusiastic.

I overheard one rather fancy looking woman talking during intermission: "My friend told me I wouldn't like it. Well, I rather think I do," she said. Indeed.

I can't say I "liked" it, no. But I will say I was quite taken with it and had no problem staying for its 3 hours and 20 minute length (with intermission) and the interminable after performance getting-out-of the-parking-lot minuet. (I said to one of the parking boys, "At this rate, we'll be here all night." He grinned and said, "That's only because my co-workers are incompetent. Have a safe trip home!!" Chuckle,)

We got home at 2:45 am tired but moved.

We've been semi-immersed in the story of nuclear weapons and the struggle against them in New Mexico for as long as we've been here, for almost as long as we've been coming here (more than 35 years now). I've written several pieces about it, about visiting Trinity site, about going to Los Alamos, about duck and cover, and so on and so forth. No one of my generation escaped fear of the looming mushroom cloud. It was the defining image of the post WWII era, one that seems to have been largely forgotten now or set aside by the younger generations. Thoughts of nuclear annihilation, instant incineration, barely reach consciousness except under the most extraordinary circumstances these days. And then the images seem to be off the mark.

Hardly anyone seems to understand what a nuclear weapon is or does anymore. And maybe that's a good thing.

Peter Sellars said he tried to maintain the classical tragic unities of time and place, and he tried to tell the story of the tragedy of what happened not just to Oppenheimer but for many of those who worked on developing The Bomb and of course for the hundreds of thousands of Japanese who died as a result of its use.

It's pointed out during the opera that many more Japanese civilians died during the firebombings of Tokyo and Yokahama that preceded the use of nuclear weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To say, then, an atom bomb is a unique horror is something of a stretch, no? No, it's not a stretch at all when one bomb can cause in an instant more destruction than thousands dropped over a period of hours or days.

The scientists at Los Alamos agonized over the use of nuclear weapons, and hundreds tried to convince Washington authorities not to use the creation of their laboratories on populations -- ever, if possible. Of course, then and now, there was a contrary faction who dearly wanted to use nuclear weapons, not just for effect, either.

Particularly torn by his creation was J. Robert Oppenheimer himself. A point is made that he is driven mad by what he has created. He never fully recovers, and in a sense, his creation kills him -- as well as many, many more.

Sellars reconceived the production for Santa Fe. For one thing, the production takes place within sight of Los Alamos (if you look hard!), and within hailing distance of Trinity. Those of us who live here and have paid attention know these places and these stories rather well. Earlier productions (we have a DVD of one, I believe it was in Amsterdam) focused more on the story telling than on its meaning, and they were visualized much more completely. The DVD production uses a close replica of The Gadget that is brought out at a particular time to be hoisted onto the tower, whereas in Santa Fe the Sphere that represents The Gadget and much else is never not there; its presence looming -- and leering -- throughout.

Sellars said the shiny Sphere was meant to reflect the audience, but it doesn't really do that (at least not from where we were sitting in cheap seats toward the back of the orchestra section.) What it reflected instead were the lights on stage which had the effect of creating many different facial expressions, from evil and bloodthirsty to almost benign. It was remarkable and mesmerizing. The picture above was taken by your correspondent some time before the beginning of the performance, and it is one of the many instances when the "eyes" of the Sphere gazed impassively on the scene before it.

In this production, too, Sellars made a conscious and mostly successful effort to include Native Americans on stage and integrated into the story in somewhat the same way they were part of the story of the creation of the Bomb. This is Indian Country, the events happened in Indian Country, and the effects are still felt throughout Indian Country -- particularly on the uranium miners in Navajoland and at Laguna Pueblo. That deadly effect is not dealt with directly in the opera. Sellars was asked by a Diné gentleman at one of the talks whether he'd included the miners, and he wouldn't answer directly. He said something about the "effects on everyone then and now" are included, but that isn't what he was asked. In fact, there is no mention of miners at all. There is only passing mention of Downwinders -- people who were unwittingly affected by the fallout from the Trinity test,. But at least they are there -- actual Downwinders on stage -- along with dancers from the Tesuque, Santa Clara and San Ildefonso Pueblos. They performed a ceremonial corn dance prior to the performance of the opera -- as a healing gesture -- and then returned in the second act as a Presence, representing the Original Peoples upon whom and among whom but not by whom this monstrosity of war was created and perpetrated.

The presence of the Indians helped to ground the production but I felt they were not integrated into it the way  they might have been -- and that that was probably their choice. It's not their story, and they're not telling. They could and one day probably will tell their own story, though, and it will be quite different.

As we were making our way to the parking lot before the performance, there were sheriffs deputies along the road, signs saying "Ticket holders only beyond this point" and at the entrance to the parking lot a young man asked to see our tickets. He said there were protests expected, and they had to check. Hm. As we were making our way from the parking lot to the Opera House, a young man in the high priced parking area near the venue asked that we take some literature  from the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition protesting the production and the proposed increase in nuclear weapons development in New Mexico. This was intended, said the literature, to make New Mexico the sole production site for "plutonium pits" -- something I'd never heard of -- that were the essential cores of nuclear bombs.

They were protesting the production because they saw it as a celebration of nuclear weapons and war.

Uh. No. It's not. Far from it. That's the thing about tragedy. It doesn't celebrate.