Libeling the dead

Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi), 1965, Norman Rockwell

In America, the dead can’t sue for defamation, so a writer who makes outrageous statements about the deceased can’t be touched in a court of law. In the past, we were protected by an unspoken code of decency: a publishing house like Farrar, Straus and Giroux would not have taken a biography like American Mirror, and it wouldn’t be nominated for a PEN award.

Saying Grace, 1951, Norman Rockwell

“The thrill of [Norman Rockwell’s] work is that he was able to use a commercial form to thrash out his private obsessions,” writes author Deborah Solomon. And what, according to Solomon, were those obsessions? That he was a repressed homosexual with pedophilic impulses.

Rosie the Riveter, 1943, Norman Rockwell

Rockwell’s granddaughter Abigail did a great job debunking Solomon’s book in this column, and it’s worth reading in its entirety.

I once made the mistake of mentioning to an instructor in Manhattan that I love Norman Rockwell’s work. That was the first experience I had of the animus some intellectuals direct toward Rockwell, who—as a ‘mere’ illustrator—achieved fame and fortune most of us can only dream about.

The Scoutmaster, 1956, Norman Rockwell

Why is it that men who paint children are suspect? A decade ago, we saw the same phenomenon with Caravaggio. It’s now received wisdom that he was a bisexual pederast—a theory that totally ignores the painterly and social conventions of his time, and is almost purely speculative (since there is very little historical record of his life). This desire to tear down icons reflects less on the artists in question than on the art world’s deeply rooted sexism and its own twisted desires.

Freedom from Fear (one of the Four Freedoms series), 1943, Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell is being accused of pedophilia at the same time as other intellectuals attempt to destigmatize that perversion. This is part of the vast value-leveling going on in our society today, an insistence that no ideals or values deserve to be elevated above others. By making Rockwell look tawdry, we can dismiss all those hokey mid-century values he painted: family, patriotism, courage, equality, freedom, faith.

Message me if you want information about next year’s classes and workshops.

Growing pain

The Yellow Christ, Paul Gauguin, 1889, is no longer the “art of the present” but it’s one of my favorites at the Albright-Knox. 

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery has announced that it plans an addition to its venerable space on Elmwood Avenue in the city of Buffalo. While it’s true that the current 19,000 square feet of floor space is crammed, one wonders—of course—who is going to pay for the addition.

The museum’s collection contains about 6,740 works, of which it can only exhibit about 200 at a time, according to Thomas R. Hyde, president of the museum’s board. “Campus development is no longer an option; it is a necessity,” he added. “We are, in many ways, a middleweight museum with a heavyweight collection.” And then he mentioned the cracks in the marble floors of the gallery’s original building.

(Veterans of capital campaigns will recognize that last gambit: throw in some deferred maintenance and people are supposed to stop kvetching about major changes.)

Side of Beef, Chaim Soutine, c. 1925, is another of my favorite Albright-Knox pieces.

Meanwhile, gallery director Janne Siren insists that plans are still in the ‘conversation’ phase. Having said that, the board has been rattling the can for expansion since publication of their 2001 strategic plan.  “Siren took over the directorship of the Buffalo gallery shortly after city fathers in Helsinki, Finland rejected a plan he had spearheaded to build a large Guggenheim museum there using public funding,” reported WGRZ radio.

In 2007 the Albright-Knox Art Gallery deaccessioned a Roman bronze sculpture that subsequently netted $28.6 million at Sotheby's. It was part of a larger deaccessioning of works that fell outside the ‘core mission’ of the gallery, which then-director Louis Grachos defined as “acquiring and exhibiting art of the present.” Alert Buffalonians immediately wondered what that meant for their own favorite works.

The deaccession vote was approved only on the contingency that the funds raised would be used to buy additional artwork. That meant that the money from the sale would be added to the paltry $22 million acquisitions endowment. (The overall endowment of the museum was then about $58 million.)

Being from Buffalo, I first visited the Albright-Knox while in diapers. Deaccessioning the Roman sculpture and clearing that exhibition space for other work was the right thing to do. But I share the Buffalo cynical mind, and I have my doubts about the viability of this project.

Buffalo is now half the size it was the year I was born, and there’s no sign that the population drain will abate any time soon. Clearly the board is counting on tourists to make up their numbers, and with the elegant expansion of the Burchfield-Penney Art Center across the street, an argument can be made that an arts corridor is possible on Elmwood Avenue.

La Maison de la Crau (The Old Mill), Vincent van Gogh, 1888, is another Albright-Knox piece that can no longer be termed ‘of the present.’ 

But that doesn’t address the question of how it will be paid for, or where the expansion will go. The Albright-Knox is landlocked, with Delaware Park at its front and Elmwood Avenue by its back door. Any kind of significant expansion would infringe on its parking lot, its neighbors, or the park.

1957-D No. 1, Clyfford Still, 1957. The Albright-Knox has a large collection of Still’s paintings. Last time I was there, I noticed how many 20th century paintings needed conservation. It’s not as sexy as expansion but still necessary. 

I await future developments with great interest.

Message me if you want information about next year’s classes and workshops.

Second Sleep

Squash stored in the off-the-grid compound. Wish I would be here in the winter.

My current travels have made me think about segmented sleep—the idea that we sleep in two separate chunks during the night. Over a twelve-hour time frame, people historically slept for 3-4 hours, were awake for three or four hours, and then slept again for three or four hours. This is not a new idea, and a lot of research supports it.

Sea captain carved by a Maine ship's carpenter some time in the last century. A few pieces by him in the off-the-grid compound.

Like all kids do, my new grandson Jake came out of the womb as a nocturnal creature. Listening to him fuss during the night, I was reminded that the first, most pressing job of new parents is to train their children to sleep at night. I remember this as the hardest job of parenting, and my own children effectively wrecked my ability to sleep through the night. I’m still a cyclical insomniac.

I'm in Maine looking for locations for my 2015 workshops. Here's surf at Popham Beach.

We’ve spent the last two nights off the grid, where the only light from 6:14 PM to 6:38 AM comes from the moon and stars or candles and flashlights. Since a lot of hay has been made about how electric light, TV, radio, and the internet confuses modern man’s sleep cycle, being off line should help, right? Honestly, I don’t think it has, but perhaps a few nights here and there can’t erase a half-century of bad habits.

Granite blocks at Ft. Popham State Historic Site, a Civil-War era fort.

Message me if you want information about next year’s classes and workshops.

What I do in my down time

The whole Northeast is beautiful this week, but my camera is broken, so cell phone pictures are what you're getting.

Having been in the Berkshires this week, I thought I’d run up to Maine and look at a few possible properties to host my 2015 workshops. Again, I’m staying in the cabin off the grid, but this time I have my husband with me.

Off the grid is so much nicer when you have your Significant Other with you.

And he loves the place. “I figured that outhouse was half a mile away, through the woods,” he teased. And then, “I’d like to come back here in the winter.”

It’s easier with company; the coyotes don’t seem so close, and reports of a mountain lion aren’t quite as terrifying when you’re walking on wooded path on a moonless night.

So many places one could host a workshop... this is just one of my dream homes that isn't on the market.

That was last night. This morning dawned clear and cold and he got a tiny taste of what winter in the woods might be like. And he’s still enthusiastic. Go figure.

The Maine landscape is so varied that I could move my workshop up and down the coast for years and it would never get stale.

Message me if you want information about next year’s classes and workshops.

Bicycle artist

Rat, Michael Wallace, 2013. The pictures are by necessity crude, and the charming wobble comes from the accuracy of GPS, which records changes of a few feet.

Michael Wallace draws pictures using his bicycle, his Samsung Galaxy smartphone, two GPS apps, and the streets of Southeast Baltimore. It’s a simple concept: his phone records his rides (the double apps are in case of crashes). In five years, he has completed nearly 500 drawing-rides.

Wallace prints out Google maps and sketches his route over them. Then he consults Google Maps Satellite View to verify that the route he’s planned actually exists. In an online interview, Wallace said he doesn’t climb or jump fences. When obstacles require changes on the fly, Wallace consults the printed map he's carrying.

Downtown Crab, Michael Wallace, 2013.

Wallace isn’t blindly following his GPS; the act of mapping out the pictures makes him memorize the route. This is analogous to what happens when an artist draws a subject before painting; he can draw it again, much faster and more expressively, because he has memorized the subject. In some way, Wallace is duplicating this drawing process, but while using his whole body.

Sailboat, Michael Wallace, 2013.

I have the same phone and a bicycle. I’m going to try this when I get back to the Duchy.

Message me if you want information about next year’s classes and workshops.