Institutional Thuggery

If we let the United Airlines mugging go unpunished, we can kiss our democracy goodbye.

The Third of May 1808, 1814, Francisco Goya, Prado

For most of human history, citizens have, rightly, feared their governments or their neighbor’s governments. Ever since we ceded the power of defense to men on horseback, we’ve been in a battle for control. Much of the time the knights on horseback were the winners.

The 20^th century was the age of the dystopian novel, because it was a century where governments repeatedly killed millions of their own and others’ citizens. My generation was educated on Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Fahrenheit 451, Alas, Babylon, and A Clockwork Orange. These books warned us about our governments, but didn't see the American corporation as a possible threat to our liberty and privacy.

Every morning, when I finish writing this blog, I look at Google Analytics. It tells me the age and gender of people who read my blog and website, where you live, what you’re interested in, and how long you tarry. That’s pretty low-level data mining, but it’s as much information as I want.  Others use your browsing and buying habits for more direct marketing. That, for example, is how the ads are populated in your Facebook feed and why you keep getting on more and more email lists.

Sturm (Riot), 1897, Käthe Kollwitz

Since President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex” in his farewell address, there have been scattered warnings about the potential dangers of collusion between government and business. This week’s news story of a man being dragged off a United flight is an example of why we should worry more about this than about our government alone. A government employee (a Chicago Department of Aviation security officer) was used to drag a passenger from a plane owned by the world’s fourth-largest airline. The citizen has very few tools to resist that combination of power.

I am reminded of an incident from the end of the Roman Republic. Publius Clodius Pulcher was an aristocrat who knew that success was to be had by masquerading as one of the guys. As Tribune, he passed populist legislation that culminated in the disastrous free grain dole. He also deregulated gangs. That meant that thugs could roam Roman streets threatening anyone who opposed our man Clodius. In the end, that violence cost Clodius’ own life, but it was also the end of representational government in Rome.

Students of more modern history will remember the role played by the Sturmabteilung (SA) in destabilizing already-tottering Germany to make room for the Nazis.

St Just Tin Miners, 1935, Harold C. Harvey , Royal Cornwall Museum

Jackbooted thugs can never be allowed to function with impunity, whether they’re acting on behalf of the government or an airline. They must be ruthlessly suppressed through the courts, in the marketplace, and in public discussion. That includes through art.

Do we, as artists, have the chops and courage to paint such scenes?  Or have we been diddling with ‘concept’ for so long that none of us can describe reality with our brushes? It’s easy to spray-paint slogans on a wall and pretend that’s art. It’s much more demanding to reproduce the faces of suffering, as did Käthe Kollwitz, Francisco Goya, and many others who came before us.

Rags and bags

She’s a long, lean dash of black in the water, but up in the cradle, the schooner J. & E. Riggin had me foxed.

The J. & E. Riggin raising her sails, by Carol L. Douglas.

For someone who likes to paint to the accompaniment of birdsong, the North End Shipyard in April can be disconcerting. A general mayhem of front-loaders, trucks, hammers, power tools and a nearby radio combine into an industrial musique concrete. I enjoy it, but it’s not to everyone’s taste.

Ed Buonvecchio joined me at the shipyard yesterday and was an instant fan. “Look at that band saw!” he exclaimed when I took him to the office to meet Shary. “We should paint that.” Well, we should, but not right now. If we get in the way during spring fit-out, they’ll probably feed us through the band saw.

The J. &. E. Riggen in the cradle, by Carol L. Douglas

The J. & E. Riggin is in the cradle right now, and she has foxed me. Her bow is spoon-shaped, and she is very long and low to the water. However, there’s an S-curve to her hull that I didn’t understand. It turns out that she has geriatric back troubles, just like me. “Hogging” is when a wooden boat gets a semi-permanent crimp in its keel.

She doesn’t seem to let it bother her too much. She was launched 90 years ago as an oyster dredger in Delaware Bay, and she’s still mighty spry for her age. She’s one of the few schooners I’ve painted under sail, when she was cavorting around Castine last summer. I don’t know what hogging means in terms of sailing function, but it makes her silhouette a long, lean dash of black. In that way, she’s decidedly not like me.

The winch house and bow of the J. &. E Riggin, by Ed Buonvecchio.

That hogging means her bow sits lower in the cradle than the smaller American Eagle’s, which you can easily see by comparing Ed’s terrific painting of the Riggin with mine of the Eagle.

Yesterday, I was having troubles. I chose a close crop of the stern and then promptly forgot it as I got sucked into the rhythm of the cradle supports. I forgot painting rags and a trash bag. I dropped my coffee into my backpack, and then I dropped my mineral spirits into the gravel. Then I dropped my painting jelly-side-down into the dirt. Mondays. Hah.

Captain Jon Finger stopped to talk to us. He’s a watercolorist. Of course, owning a schooner tends to use up all his spare time. “I do one painting a year and then I paint my boat,” he laughed. There’s such artistry involved in maintaining an elderly boat that it didn’t really surprise me to run into a captain who is also a painter.

The Riggin painted by her captain, Jon Finger.

Ed asked Captain Finger how they set the waterline when they replace large sections of planking. It turns out to be more or less a sophisticated process of estimation. Buoyancy varies based on temperature and salinity. On top of that, they are trying to draw a straight line on a curved and sinuous surface.

But waterlines are among the oldest ideas in human civilization. Systems and laws for regulating overloading of boats go back as far as Crete in 2500 BC. That’s a humbling idea on an airy, light Spring morning, when everything seems so new.

The decline and fall of liturgical music

If the church organist goes the way of the buggy whip, who’s going to remember JS Bach?

Carrying the Cross, pastel, Carol L. Douglas

I go to a modern church with a praise band, but I love traditional church hymns. There is nothing like Easter to remind you of great music like “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” and the power of church liturgy.

My children were raised in the Episcopal Church, specifically at St. Thomas’ Episcopal in Rochester, NY. They learned to sing under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Ferris, music director and organist. Rob is my age, so it shocks me to imagine that he could be contemplating retirement. The real question is, is he replaceable?

A recent story in the Baltimore Sun points out the growing shortage of pipe organists in the United States. That echoes a story in the Washington Post last year. A 2015 survey by the American Guild of Organists (AGO) shows a similar demographic picture.

Just 11% of AGO’s members were younger than 37; in fact, about 60% were nearing retirement age (58 or older). Almost the same number had played at the same religious institution for at least 31 years, with only 14% doing so for less than a decade. This pattern is true for both black and white churches and is most vivid in small communities.

Rob has a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music. For a young person facing the harsh realities of the 21^st century economy, investing in such an expensive degree is hard to justify.

Gambling, Carol L. Douglas

The pipe organ is one of the oldest instruments in western music. Greek engineer Ctesibius of Alexandria is credited with inventing it in the third century BC. Since it involves both hands and feet, it’s more complex than the piano. Organ music doesn’t translate well to other keyboard instruments, since it needs an entire church nave to rumble to its profound tones.

One of my current tasks is to teach an inner-city grandmother. This week I am assigning her Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. This is one of the masterpieces of western sacred music, but it’s long and sung in German. (Since I am nice, I’m giving her a version with English subtitles, here.)

The Curtain of the Temple was Rent, Carol L. Douglas

I’ll start by telling her what a Passion is: a musical, artistic or dramatic setting of the events leading up to the Crucifixion of Christ. That’s a term that had meaning in my youth, when a majority of my fellow Northerners went to liturgical churches. Today, membership in those churches is falling, while membership in evangelical churches is rising. That’s a more serious and complicated question than just art, but it does mean that the art forms of the church, so lovingly cultivated over centuries, are in danger of falling away.

If Helen takes anything away from the St. Matthew Passion, it should be that Bach wasn’t just phoning it in. He felt and believed the story he was telling. That, I hope, is the nature of all great art, religious or otherwise. Can Helen see beyond the formal concert hall and imagine this music as it was first performed on Good Friday, 11 April 1727?

The problem with supply lists

I should KonMari my paint collection, not add to it. We go to workshops weighed down with too much stuff.

No, I don't need any more watercolor pigments.

Many years ago, I took a workshop from a figure painter who specified cadmium green. I came home with an unopened tube and dropped it in a drawer. It’s still unopened.

I have great sympathy for students faced with a new supply list. In some instances, buying from them is redundant. For example, my list calls for Prussian blue, but if you already have phthalo blue, you’ve already got an excellent pigment for that color space.

It helps to understand the instructor’s reasoning. My list is based on paired primaries because I believe it allows the greatest range in color space. It occasionally changes as my painting technique evolves.  

Students usually show up with too much stuff because they don’t want to be caught without something they need. Most of what they carry, they never use. I’m feeling that urge to over-pack as I assemble the materials for Poppy Balser’s workshop in May.  Poppy, like me, is loath to send her students on spending sprees. However, it makes no sense to drive that distance and not be prepared.

And I don't need a new mixing tray, either.

I trotted out my watercolor basket expecting to have to fill in color gaps. Actually, I should KonMari my paints. What’s in the picture, above, is probably a quarter of the tubes in my basket. Does anyone really need five tubes of ‘opera pink’? More importantly, what is ‘opera pink,’ anyway?

Manufacturers love labeling convenience mixes with historic names. Consider Naples Yellow, used from the 18th to the 20th century. The real pigment is toxic lead antimonate. Modern paints labeled “Naples yellow” are made with a mix of modern pigments. You can make your own easily enough with white and yellow ochre.

That is the only name that really matters.

Pigments are listed on the tubes of all major paint makers in the form of Colour Index (CI) numbers. These are in tiny lettering on the side of most paint tubes. If the first letter is a “P,” that’s a pigment; if it’s an “N,” that’s a lake of a naturally-occurring substance like cochineal. The second letter tells you the general color family. The third tells you the actual pigment used.

A glance at my tube of ‘opera pink’ tells me it’s really PR122+BV10. The first is my old friend quinacridone magenta. Unfortunately, the second is a dye, rhodamine B, which bleeds and isn’t lightfast at all. I should pitch all five of those tubes.

My brushes, on the other hand, need help. New Yorkers will recognize some as being from the cheap bin at Pearl Paint.

If there is more than one CI number on the tube, you’re actually buying a hue or convenience mix. Many paint manufacturers sell hues of expensive pigments like the cadmiums and cerulean blue. They’re not consistent across brands, and they never have the handling characteristics of the more expensive paints they’re meant to imitate.

As with opera pink, even if the main pigment is lightfast, its partner may not be. Almost always, using single-pigment paint gives you the most flexibility in mixing.

There are many pigment guides on the web. Here is my favorite. Although it's meant for watercolor, pigments are consistent across all media.

The good, the bad, and the downright ugly

Can objects acquire a vibe from the way they are used and treated? Boats have personality, and it comes from their pasts.

Thaw, by Carol L. Douglas

I woke at 3 AM redrafting the bow of the American Eagle in my sleep. I didn’t start her from a measured drawing, but after an internal fight about composition. The winch shed at the boatyard was trying to take over the painting, as it did last year (below). But the fight sapped my determination to draw methodically. I ended up going directly to paint. The results are, perhaps, less accurate and more expressive than usual, and I was working that out in my sleep.

American Eagle is my favorite boat in local waters, but I feel I’ve never really done her justice in paint. She is very graceful and bears the imprint of many loving hands. Launched in 1930 as the Andrew and Rosalie, she’s been captained since 1984 by John Foss, who is a meticulous craftsman. American Eagle comes out of the water looking better than some boats do going back in. In modern parlance, she has good juju.

Winch (American Eagle), by Carol L. Douglas. What a difference sun makes!

An example of a schooner with bad juju was the Amistad. Its case would go to the US Supreme Court and pit the sitting president against his predecessor.

By 1839, the United States and most other American governments had abolished the slave trade. Since slavery itself remained legal, however, the temptation to smuggling was strong. In the spring of 1839, 53 Sierra Leone captives—49 adults and four children—arrived at the depot of Spanish slave trader Pedro Blanco, who was one seriously bad dude. Most of the captives had been kidnapped, although some were war booty. They were part of a cargo of 500 people sent to Cuba on the purpose-built slaver, Tecora. The individuals in question were purchased as laborers for a sugar plantation near Puerto Principe.

American Eagle is a well-cared-for boat.

On the night of June 28, Amistad left Havana, intending to run past British patrols. She was not built as a slaver; the captives were chained in its cargo hold. And they were abused. The cook, in particular, delighted in implying that they would all be killed and eaten when they reached their destination.

Led by a farmer named Joseph Cinqué, the captives revolted. Using cane knives they found in the hold, they bludgeoned the cook to death and killed the captain. Two crewmembers escaped by canoe, and the cabin boy absented himself from the melee. Two others were ordered to sail the boat back to Sierra Leone.

Landlubbers, the Africans didn’t notice that the crew were sailing them north instead of east. The boat wasn’t provisioned for a long journey, and dehydration and dysentery took their toll. In all, the Amistad traveled 1400 miles before hauling up on Long Island. The surviving slaves were taken to Connecticut, which was still a slave state, and imprisoned.

From A History of the Amistad Captives, 1840. New Haven, Connecticut: E.L. and J.W. Barber, Hitchcock & Stafford, Printers.

The case was a legal morass. It appeared stacked against the Africans. The naval officers who captured the boat claimed it and the human cargo as salvage. The slavers wanted their property back, falsely testifying that the Africans had been born in Cuba and were not subject to the slave trade prohibition. The Spanish and US governments wanted the Africans returned to Cuba, where they would face death. Anticipating victory, President Van Buren sent a Navy ship to hustle the Africans away before abolitionists could file an appeal.

No appeal was necessary. The Hartford court ruled in favor of the African prisoners. Our government pushed the case all the way to the Supreme Court. By then, former President John Quincy Adams had signed on as counsel to the Africans. Adams accused Van Buren of abusing his executive power. In March 1841, the Supreme Court decided in favor of the slaves, and they were free to leave—except that they had no resources. Northern abolitionists raised their fare to go home.

On November 26, 1841, the 35 surviving former slaves, accompanied by five missionaries, boarded a boat bound for Sierra Leone and freedom. The Amistad was purchased by Captain George Hawford of Newport, RI, who returned it to cargo service as the Ion. It passed out of history somewhere in the Caribbean.