Toward A New Paradigm For Art

Re-reading art critical writings, such as Clement Greenberg, Rosalind Krauss and others from the the 1950's to the 1980's, is a reminder for this artist of how much our contemporary situation has changed because of the digital revolution connected with the growth of global capitalism.

From the instant shock we experienced as we first viewed Earth from the Apollo Mission and realized that there were not boundaries between countries, that we humans were alone, and together, on one Planet, we have created a cybernetic linkage throughout the world through the Internet. All this, in less 30 years!

During this time, the Earth has suffered struggles between International Capitalism and cultures locked into religious and tribal patterns, which due to lack of universal education and the enlightenment which follows, have not created modern technology to assist their economic, social and agricultural needs. At a disadvantage, their natural resources and people have been exploited, their economic systems overwhelmed by foreign products, and their political self-determination undermined by corrupt alliances with Multinational Corporations and military interventions.

These cultural struggles have generated wars, displaced whole populations, racial and religious persecution, with individual and collective acts of dramatic destruction.

With Globalism has come Totalitarian Capitalism: the "new world order" promised by former President George Herbert Walker Bush at the end of his term. In 1990, a full ten years before the Millennium, the new term, "Globalism," reverberated throughout mass media, even appearing in fashion magazine articles. It all sounded so wonderful! Multiculturalism was also part of the "new world order" as a component of what turned out in the end, to be a reaching for a larger global consumer market.

Globalism was, and is, a planned order of consumption, with cheap manufacturing, marketing, profits and more consumption in an "endless" loop. Sustainability be damned! The tragic consequences to the Earth environment, human and animal health is shared by Art Institutions. Nearly everyone now serves the hegemony of the Totalitarian Capitalist model. It takes great will power to avoid the lure which drags even artists into the maelstrom of Materialism with its rewards of possible fame, celebrity, wealth.

Through global interconnection, art fairs, world class museums in so-called developing countries, the art world is exposed to diverse expressions by artists whose originality is derived from their individual cultures. But, like the world music movement, such art is threatened with a homogenization that eats away at the moral, religious and social meanings behind the work of these artists.

This is the effect of business models of production which have crept into Art Institutions which have embraced a system dependent on marketing. The Art Tradition which was formerly dependent upon connoisseurship and educated eyes which provided  filters that refined the search for important talent has been replaced by a demand for easily identifiable images which can be marketed via the web.

This unfortunate state of affairs has extended to museums which have allowed themselves to become dependent upon corporate sponsorship and Trustees who come from the corporate world: a world which does not tolerate challenges to its power. A mindset which is built on mass exploitation is not going to be amenable to Art which challenges the system which the Trustees represent: the sacred role of Art to nurture the individual spirit while revealing the flaws in contemporary society.

This situation is enough to create despair among the cognoscenti, the artists, experts, serious collectors, critics and museum curators, but not, thank goodness, to discourage the Brave, who labor on in search for meaningful art, keeping their integrity and moral values intact, not catering to vapid consumer tastes.

Grand themes still exist in Art. There are still artists, such as Richard Serra, who creates work which uses and reflects the cosmic laws of physics. There are those who celebrate the natural world, such as James Turrell, the poets who walk the mountains and forests, such as Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy, expressing human awe over those cosmic forces which can be experienced in the visible world. Through mathematics, the order which it represents, the logic of a unifying idea is used by Dorothea Rockeburne to create work that expresses the ideal of a moral, transcendent Universe.

So, ART IS NOT DEAD! The banalities of Warhol, Koons and the empress-without-clothes, Marina Abromovic, are worn out. Warhol's values are passé. Koons has none, and Abromovic is a pathetic object for the admiration of libidinous men of a certain age. Art has a greater purpose than merchandise for the jaded, the bored and the visually ignorant with too much money.

The Corporate "muzak," giant video installations of meaninglessness in major museums, provide backdrops for the artistically bankrupt. A new paradigm is needed for genuine artists and their audiences to provide the spark which can ignite social forces to combat ersatz-entertainments-masquerading-as-art which dull the senses, sap the spirit, and render audiences passive. Trusting one's eye, the viewer, the curator, the critic, is led toward those artists who have the power that comes from insight to make Art which causes us to question and to act. History assures us of this.
 

New Paradigms for artists

A challenge to artists: when you have your next exhibit, request a notice be posted stating that a percentage of the artist's net income from sales will be donated to charities and foundations for the benefit of society. Such charities can be for aid to sick or indigent elder artists, food banks, health foundations, animal rights and health organizations, reading programs for children and adults, environmental organizations, etc. If you can't afford this, let your patrons know you will be volunteering for a service organization on a regular basis.

By doing this, you send a message: artists are not doing what they do for money. They are doing it because they care about the world they live in and the world they want to leave behind. It is their Art with which they aspire to change the status quo for the better. Take Materialism out of the process. Disarm the corporate-business model, the one that promotes celebrity and wealth at the expense of ideas and social welfare.

Such an action could have a ripple effect. Collectors could also match the donation of the artist, on the spot, and double the contribution to those worthy causes. And, self-interest is not likely to suffer: tax- deductions for everyone.

Artists should live their Art. That's the ethical and moral imperative.

Questions for Artists

What is Art for?

What moral responsibility does an artist have?

What obligation does an artist have to create art with ethical and moral values?

What exemplary model for the whole society can an artist create as a paradigm?

Which path to Art would you follow, as an artist? Van Gogh"s or Andy Warhol's?

As an artist, how do you see yourself?

Is Art just another job?

Please feel free to comment. These are not just rhetorical questions. And, they are not easy to answer.

Works in Progress

The lack of posts in the past few weeks is not due to lack of thoughts, or ideas for posts. It is because I can't walk, talk and chew gum, figuratively speaking. When I go into art-making mode, it's hard to express myself in words. It seems I have two sides to my brain, as an ambidextrous person, which work well together in some activities, but not when I'm deeply involved in making art, which requires my whole self.

But, stay tuned, as I am percolating some thoughts which riff off of some I have already expressed here in earlier posts, regarding the state of art, now.

A serious art critic friend of mine in New York sourly expressed that it was very discouraging that there was too much to deal with in the current art scene. I have my theories, and some of the New York Times critics have theirs. I think we are all trying to direct the discussion toward more seriousness and away from so much commercialization and corporate-sponsored stuff. So, stay tuned. I'll be back with some more ideas, soon.

Real Time Art vs. reproductions

Modern technologies such as the slide projector, film, video, and television have presented us with deceptions, rather than actual experiences of Art.

The fallacies of Art "Appreciation" presentations with the unavoidable distortions inherent in lecture slide shows have presented us with a situation which perpetuates "Lies" about Artists and their works.  These fallacies put too much garbage between us and the Art. (As does television, discussed below.)

Such deceptions subvert an Art image through technologies which translate an Art Work into altered sizes, colours, removing all tactile qualities, i.e., characteristics of media, material, and variations in surface levels, such as the 3-dimensional aspects of impasto (paint), relief, textures, projection of the piece from the wall, the work's relationship to the surface on which it is hung (if a painting), or the space in which it is installed (if a sculpture). To see the REAL THING for the first time, intimately, in Real Time, in a museum is a shock!

The resulting heavy weight of misrepresentation throws the Art Work off balance, leading to a viewer's misinterpretation coupled with an attendant lack of real understanding of the artistic significance of the Work.

As an artist who suffered the requisite art history lectures in a darkened amphitheater with faded, poorly-photographed slides of Art shown vastly out of scale with the real size of the Works, I am an advocate of the only alternative: an encounter with the Real in Real Time.

Thus, the necessity of museum visits. Any art department of a university which does not include these visits as part of the requirements for an art history or studio course is negligent. A student who does not have such opportunities on a regular basis should hold the university accountable for not living up to their responsibility to offer honest curriculum . An analogous situation would be to teach a chemistry class without a lab or chemicals, or physics without models, literature without books, law without studies of court decisions.

Thus begs the question: should every art student abandon the inferior art education in these institutions and gravitate towards art schools in larger communities where there are museums possessing significant collections? Could universities add trips to cultural centers as a required part of the curriculum be included in the price of tuition? It would certainly test the sincerity of a university's commitment to Art Education, the expertise of the professors, and the inner drive of the art student to complete his Bildung. [Bildung: a German word, meaning life-long personal growth through education, suggesting the intention of living to one's full potential.]

Personally, my answer to the question: if the institution of higher education has a great collection, such as Harvard or Princeton, and art schools, which are located in cities where access to the greatest collections are located, Chicago Art Institute, Boston School of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Academy, Tyler School of Art (Philadelphia), Corcoran School of Art (Washington, D.C.), Art Students League, New York Institute of Art, Pratt (New York) for instance, then, that is where students should study art.

The democratization of Art in America has been a failure: after a 50 year period of expansion in state university art programs, much mediocrity characterizes a large percentage of work produced by graduates of programs which have not included encounters with the great works of Art which should have been an integral part of a compleat education.

I will speak for my own education experience. I earned two degrees at one of the largest university art departments in the U.S. It was not until I traveled throughout the country and abroad over a 30 year period visiting museums in Boston, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Paris, London, Milan, Venice, Bern, and not until I lived in New York City for 10 years that I finally obtained the art education (through daily encounters with great art) which I craved as a seriously committed artist. In essence, I had wasted 7 years of my youthful energy in the 1960's rebelling against the limitations of the prevailing pattern in university art education and, for 2 more years, was mis-directed toward teaching, which, though a noble profession, was never my ultimate ambition. Working in a museum for 5 years provided great opportunities for a much wider art education by a Harvard-educated Director, Joseph Jeffers Dodge, who taught me, to give only one example, the joys of 17th Century Art and its attendant history, for which I had not developed an appreciation, for I had not been prepared, thoroughly, while a student, for understanding the importance of this period to the subsequent development of European art. From this point on, I committed to being a full time artist so that I could study art in a more focused manner.

One could argue that art education for the educated masses is a good thing. I agree. But, when that so-called education distorts the very meaning of Art, then, neither society, nor Art, benefits. Europeans, for instance, have an advantage, for, even in the most provincial places, there are examples of great art, architecture, and public art works. It would seem that many ordinary people, there, learn by osmosis as well as education, from constant exposure to art in their environment, resulting in an understanding and appreciation which allows for tolerance. Art, for them, is normal activity. Here, for the general public, it is mostly the playground of those who have enough money and time to spend on it. As for the rest, in America, art is mostly a target of outrage, ridicule, or, a matter disregarded as a serious topic for discussion; either that, or fodder for Corporate prestige. Art, as decoration, without philosophical implications.

One only needs to look around at the American landscape to see dreadfully unsuccessful examples of public art which special (ignorant, but well-meaning) civic committees, and panels of local (self-described) art professionals have judged as the "best" of American art. This is where the "Lie," or deceptive education practice ultimately leads us. Uninformed choices with mediocre results.

Perhaps, this is why, if a foreigner thinks of an iconic American image, it is the Coca-Cola™ bottle or the banal scupture in New York Harbor, The Statue of Liberty (by a French sculptor!). If we were to think of Florence, it would be Michelangelo's David, Paris, The Victory of Samothrace, at The Louvre, Berlin, The Brandenburg Gate, or the Altar of Zeus from Pergamon, Rome, Bernini's Baldacchino, The Vatican, Michelangelo's Pietá,  London, The Elgin Marbles, or Leonardo's, Virgin, Child and St. Anne, and so forth.

American media, instead, offers its consumers token, ersatz art experiences: TV documentaries featuring formulaic museum tours interspersed with brief interviews, the art in the background of the interviewee, or the art work scanned within 10 seconds or less. The other favorite genre is the prurient artist biography, focusing on how miserable his life was because of his neurosis, love life, or insanity, plus his poverty. The superficiality of such an approach erodes the impact of Art and its meaning within a cultural context, contributing to the notion of Art as perishable "entertainment." Thus, the blockbuster mentality which drives droves of uncomprehending masses to the "must see" exhibit, so they can brag that they "saw" it. Art as Fashion: art of the "moment."

There are still, in spite of the state of media and other forms of art education, significant exhibits at the major museums. From these opportunities, the best American artists are inspired, which is a tribute to their serious study of Real Art in Real Time. They are qualified to be taken seriously as artists because they truly understand what came before, through encounters with THE REAL THING: Great Works of Art, with the attendant understanding of their meaning in the scheme of a larger world of Art and Life.

©Margaret Koscielny, 2014

Enzo Torcoletti at JMOCA

Enzo Torcoletti at JMOCA and the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens

A dreary post-holidays visit to the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art provided the happy reward of an important exhibit of Enzo Torcoletti's sculptures which wed the modernism of Brancusi's elegant reductions and the material force of Noguchi's virtuosity with stone and wood, with Classical themes and mythology. This is an artist who has consistently grown his own original ideas from his masterful predecessors.

Every artist builds his work where there remains "unfinished" business from the past. Torcoletti's mature work, developed in Italy and St. Augustine over the past 35 years or more, carries tradition as a companion, but not as a straitjacket.

It is difficult for me to think of another sculptor in North East Florida with his deep awareness of past cultures married to an understanding of material limitations and possibilities, which Torcoletti utilizes in his masterful, seductively beautiful oeuvre.

The only other sculptor of note in this area is Joe Segal, whose works also reveal a dedicated development of a strong aesthetic over a career of several decades.

Unfortunately, the rest are hobbyists, or amateurs without foundational knowledge of art history and/or the skills: mechanical, spiritual or intellectual, which a serious artist must have an abundance of. In addition, artists must carry tradition with an awareness of our time in order to avoid the complacency of provincialism, with its ignorance of the larger world of art.

Torcoletti  is honored with two exhibits: one at the Cummer Museum as well as the one at JMOCA. (I have not yet seen the exhibit at the Cummer.)

At JMOCA, too little space has been provided to give each work distance for full, unimpeded viewing. It would have been better to have shown his works in the larger galleries, or at least used the other side gallery, opposite. Nevertheless, the intimacy of the small gallery allows the work to be seen in close juxtaposition, reinforcing the diversity of form and surface which he has so skillfully shaped.

The pieces are human-scaled, and the shaping of each element has the warmth of human touch, even when the work has been polished, as with the wooden elements of certain pieces, or ground to a uniform surface as with granite and marble. His choice of material is appropriate to the themes he uses for inspiration.

In only a few pieces, the bases are either non-existent or generic. Whether that is because they may be destined for permanent public placement which might be a limitation in this regard, or, whether Torcoletti has other reasons,  the absence of bases which "finish off" some of the works is not serious enough to interfere with the overall success of his works. (This is my only criticism) One thinks of Brancusi who made the base a part of the sculpture, often changing them, or recycling other bases for better effect. Torcoletti does finish, or integrate with the carving, the bases of certain pieces which adds to the strength of those sculptures.

The splendid large drawings Torcoletti has included which are studies or designs of the works shown either here or at the Cummer Museum, give insight into the meticulousness of Torcoletti's thought processes. In these beautiful drawings, one senses the chiseling and emphasis of form which will evolve from his initial ideas. Some of the works have not yet been realized, which is tantalizing for the viewer.

The finished quality of these drawings suggest that they are the final presentation, rather than working drawings, or sketches of ideas for sculpture, although there are revealing glimpses into the complexity of installation for some of the large, outdoor, public pieces. These are the works of a truly professional artist who thinks out the contingencies of sometimes difficult installations.

It would have been interesting to see some of Torcoletti's initial drawn markings from which we might learn more about the inner rhythms of his thought processes. We are presented with the virtuosity without a sense of the struggle for form which every artist goes through as part of the process. In a museum show, such as this, working drawings should also have been presented. It is the initial intuitive drawings which reveal the first response to a vision and tell us so much more about the artist.

Drawing is the foundation of any serious work of art. It is the skeleton upon which the artist builds his dreams. Torcoletti shows his strength of vision in his drawings and his deeply refined, tactile sculptures in this outstanding exhibition.

http://southlightgallery.com/enzo-torcoletti/

http://www.joesegal.com/resume/

Legato...Line in music: world class music-making

David Finckel, Cellist and Wu Han, Pianist in concert

In a digital world with snippets of thought translated into pixels of 0's and 1's, we are losing sense of the lyrical..the line that carries a thought, a sound, an idea through space and time. In music, this line is called "legato" and is used to express, to tie together, much like a sentence, separate notes into a wholeness of thought. (This also is an element in visual art and ballet, but more about that another time.)

A master of this on the cello, David Finckel, was heard last night in a performance at St. Paul's-by-the-Sea as part of the free Beaches Fine Arts Series. He was partnered by his wife, the exuberant Wu Han, in works by Russian composers of the late 19th, early to mid Twentieth century; the two, international stars in the concert galaxy.

Opening with the Prokovieff Sonata C Major, Op.119, written in 1949, Finckel gave us a range of dynamic expressiveness from the most delicate pianissimo to robust animal-like leaps with a huge sound which could compete with the athleticism of the piano part with its typical "Prokovieff-ian" bombast. If there was anything else a composer could coax out of either instrument, one would have to wait for John Cage's "prepared piano" pieces later in the century, and his composition for nude cellist, wrapped in cellophane.

Prokovieff could be quite a "rude" composer, from early in his career, breaking rules right and left, aggressively re-arranging the music world's idea of the proper order of musical notes. Another Russian rival, Igor Stravinsky, was doing the same thing in Paris, while the Austrian, Arnold Schoenberg, was whooping it up in Vienna, alarming folks with his twelve-tone rows. This was the Twentieth century, and by golly, things were just going to have to change! (Like it or not.)

But, Prokovieff still possessed enough of that mysteriously romantic, sometimes nostalgic, Russian genetic code which allowed him to create memorable melodies of infinite sweetness, overlaid with Soviet-induced cynicism, sometimes stopping at the point of irony and sarcasm. He even created some compositions for the piano entitled, "Sarcasms." He could also go in the other direction with his "Visions Fugitives" for Piano, Op. 22.

The night of my first hearing of this sonata, my sister showed me a record album by an unknown (sic) Russian cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich, whom she declared to be "the greatest cellist in the world." (This was 1964), And, so he was: a force of Nature. And, what set Rostropovich apart from the other cellists of the day was his beautiful legato, the singing quality, matching the violin in its purity of tone, with none of the "tubby" sound that the cello can succumb to in lesser hands. His sound was ethereal, like something heaven sent: a transcendental, floating sound. David Finckel is his successor, not only in time, but in technique, having studied for a time with Rostropovich. But, Finckel is his own man: what he brings to the playing of the cello he can claim as his own creativity.

The balance of this creativity is in his choice of collaborator an wife, pianist, Wu Han, who, with the difficult repertoire of the evening, the Prokovieff, Shostakovich's Cello and Piano Sonata in D Minor, Op. 40 (1934), Scriabin's Five Preludes for Solo Piano, Op. 16 (1894-1896), followed by the Rachmaninoff Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor, Op. 19 (1901), gave lie to a common  misperception that sonatas are for cello with piano "accompaniment."

In all these pieces, there is plenty of hard work to share all around! And Wu Han expresses her part with so much of what the Chinese refer to as Chi: Cosmic Dragon's Breath. Great energy in spirit, with the warmth of her particular musical nature  combined with a formidable technique, Wu Han is a great match for her husband. She "grounds" him with her earthiness, while he threatens to slip away into the Empyrean. Not that he isn't able to return the favor in certain movements of these pieces, especially, in sections of playful counter point in the second movement of the Prokovieff. Their collaboration is an example of genuine musical communication: nothing "rote" about their performance.

The Shostakovich Sonata changes moods so drastically, reflecting the internal and sometimes external turbulence of the composer's life as he lived, delicately balanced on the edges of a Soviet cultural razor blade. The legacy of moral choices he had to make remains in the music: tensions abide and underlie every phrase. Contrasting the First movement with the Second, the music moves from contemplative, tender melodies to the Second Movement, a nagging argument between the two instruments, lapsing at intervals into tenderness, only to resume, at the end, a final outburst of aggressive emotion. The Largo opens with a tragic theme which hints at futility, so often found in Shostakovich's compositions. These moments were ones which resonated so with his audiences who shared his sense of helplessness, brought about, in part, by reluctant complicity with the Stalinist totalitarian system which provided, literally, no way out. Yet, in the final Movement, his spirit rebounds with a playful, dance-like exchange of the cello with the piano, both instruments musically skipping, then running along, like children at play, asserting the joy of living. So, balance is, temporarily, restored.

The miniature Scriabin Piano Preludes provided a perfect transition to the Rachmaninoff Sonata which ended the concert. Wu Han gave a rendering of exquisite simplicity, which underscored the purity of Scriabin's mysticism. Not melodramatic as his later pieces, Fantasies, Etudes, and the coloristic, bizarre Poem of Ecstasy for orchestra, they capture more the meditative, contemplative side of the Russian character in the Late Romantic era.

Finally, Rachmaninoff's beautiful cello and piano Sonata, typical of the warmth of emotion and the loving character of much of his music, ended the program. David Finckel is a natural for this piece, expressing all the lyricism, largeness of Russian musical generosity, and most of all, creating a legato which enveloped the piece in a seamless world of rich sound, ranging from the warmth of the deepest part of the cello to its delicate mists of pianissimo. Aways, a certain melancholy lies within Rachmaninoff's music. To express this, while not descending into morbidity is important, for Rachmaninoff was also capable of humor and kindness of spirit in his personal relationships with other musicians. (To kill the time one day, while he waited for the always tardy Fritz Kreisler to show up for a rehearsal, he composed, Variations on Kreisler's violin composition, Liebesfreud, which they had been rehearsing for a recording. Kreisler was not apparently not amused, but it is a splendidly happy piece, expressing with improvisatory-like pianistic exuberance, the ever popular Kreisler piece.) Wu Han's grasp of the technical difficulties of the piano part was powerful, rhythmically interweaving the beautiful melodies of piano with cello in such a way that the total effect was unified: legato, fulfilled.

The encore was a transcription for cello and piano of one of Rachmaninoff's piano Preludes: a musical motive of tender "farewell" to the audience which showed its gratitude for the extraordinary musical quality of the evening.

I am not able to re-create this performance in words, except to say that, having heard various cellists, besides Rostropovich, play these pieces, that David Finckel and Wu Han gave an evening of truly great, inspired, virtuoso music making, making this concert the answer to a question someone, rhetorically, asked, why are we doing this? Along with hundreds of others, venturing out on a rainy evening for a 36 mile round trip to hear a concert, the answer: to nourish our starving musical souls. It was entirely worth it. Those musicians and music-lovers who missed it because of complacency, laziness, or irritation with the rain, or, perhaps, fatigued by Friday "end-of-the-week-ness" are the poorer for it: too bad. Just try to do better the next time this duo comes to town, or the music gods will punish you.

The Generosity of Artistic Tradition and Professionalism in the Arts

In my previous post about chamber music in Jacksonville, I made the statement that, in essence, the universities and the Jacksonville Symphony were "subsidizing"  free chamber music concerts throughout the city. To clarify, the musicians from these institutions receive no financial support from their parent organizations for these concerts.

The point is that Jacksonville is blessed with the opportunity to hear excellent performances by musicians on a level audiences would not be able to experience if it did not have two excellent music departments at the two universities, and, even more importantly, if it did not have the Symphony to supply steady employment. Someone has to provide the means to pay the bills, and if it is not the taxpayers, or benefactors, or patrons, or ticket holders, then, there is no music by professionals.

A quick glance at the web sites of the musicians and programs for concerts will inform the audience that all of the musicians, without exception, have been educated at the prime music conservatories of this country with many having advanced degrees, representing many years of study. In addition, all of the musicians have had experience playing in other orchestras, performing under conductors of every stripe and reputation.

Nearly all musicians teach. They do this not only for extra income, but because that is the tradition in the arts: to pass on to the next generation the knowledge of the past. Phillip Glass, the composer, commented that his teacher, Nadia Boulanger was the student of Fauré, who studied with a student of Beethoven. Just three degrees of separation from Beethoven! And, his example is not exceptional. My sister, a concert pianist and professor of music, studied with a student of a student of Liszt! Only two degrees of separation from a great composer and pianistic artist. So, teachers matter. And whom teachers have studied with also matters.

In violin studies as well as piano, there are even schools of playing which are identifiable in the performance styles of musicians going back many generations, such as the Russian School (Leopold Auer), the Belgium School (Ysäye), etc. This is probably true for all instrumentalists. The cognoscenti know about such stylistic details, which adds to their appreciation of artistic tradition and knowledge adding to their understanding of how music is performed.

These are some of the sacred values in the arts, thus demanding, I think, the respect of audiences for musicians who believe it is valuable and important to pass them on to the next generation. There are few professions with such generosity of spirit.

Footnote to my previous post: another important venue for free concerts which I neglected to mention is the Jacksonville Public Library Downtown
Program established by composer and fine arts librarian, Ed Lein. Check the Library web site at jaxpubliclibrary.org for upcoming dates and times.

Music Enthusiasts Alert!

Concerts, here and there; past and present

May I begin by stating that I am not a Critic, but a musical (not merely music) music enthusiast. My personal history includes the 12 year study of the violin, residence for 18 years as a member of a talented family, in a home with 3 professional musicians and teachers of violin, orchestra, band, and piano. My father, a graduate of the Leipzig Conservatory played the viola in the Gewandhaus Orchestra as a young man in the 1920's under notable conductors, such as Wilhelm Fürtwangler, Artur Nikitsch, and Bruno Walter, and as principal viola in the Jacksonville Philharmonic and the early years of the Jacksonville Symphony. My sister has performed in Europe and Asia and served on the piano music faculties of two major conservatories. And my mother was a violinist performing throughout this city from the age of 16 as a soloist and as member of three different orchestras, the W.P.A Orchestra, the Jacksonville Philharmonic, and the Jacksonville Symphony.

I am old enough to have heard in recital in Jacksonville, Jascha Heifetz, Ruggiero Ricci, Albert Spalding, and Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, Dmitri Metropolis conducting the Detroit Symphony, Charles Dutoit, the Montreal Symphony, in Philadelphia, Wolfgang Sawallisch, the Philadelphia Symphony, Christoph Eschenbach for 3 full seasons, again, Philadelphia, Kurt Masur conducting the New York Philharmonic for a full season (his last), Riccardo Muti, the Philadelphia Orchestra with Luciano Pavarotti at Carnegie Hall, Maurizio Pollini performing the complete Books I and II of Bach's Preludes and Fugues, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Itzak Perlman, in three concerts of the Beethoven Violin and Piano Sonatas at Carnegie Hall, Mistislav Rostropovich at Carnegie Hall, Rudolph Serkin performing Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Dietrich Fischer-Deskau in a Schubert Lieder concert, also at Carnegie Hall, Lang Lang's debut with the New York Philharmonic, Christian Tetzlaff, violinist, playing the iridescent Alban Berg Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and so many "greatest of the great" musicians of the 20th and 21st Century, too numerous to list.

So, those biographical facts are part of my musical environment, and I hope, entitle me to my enthusiasms and the expression, thereof.

As someone who has lived for 10 years in New York City, attended the best performances by many of the greatest artists of our time, I have come to have certain expectations from performers, along with a critical ear for those who don't practice enough, aren't exceptionally insightful, interpretively, having a "bad" night in an otherwise illustrious career, and those whose performances don't add up to their recordings. But, most of all, I am keen about the tendency of contemporary performers to "rush" through music caused by misunderstandings of historical data about tempo, dynamics, etc. The zest for supposedly "authentic" performances is a denial of what the ear and heart should tell the musician. And, so many times, metronomic readings were highly inaccurate, especially in Beethoven's time. Beethoven, in particular, has been ill-served by this rethinking of tempo markings. Even so, if performers want to do unto Beethoven this deed, they had better play it cleanly, clearly, and with feeling, because Beethoven was quite adamant about the expression of his music. Frankly, I haven't heard anyone, even the most acclaimed performers who have taken this tact of "speediness," live up to Beethoven's expectations in this latter regard. After all, we aren't trying to run after and catch the last train leaving from the station!

This post is meant to be a celebration of Chamber Music in Jacksonville, which is abundant, varied, frequent, mostly free and appearing in many different venues: The Civic Auditorium, The Cummer Museum (in the past 60 seasons; what the future promises is more problematic), The Friday Musicale, University of North Florida, Jacksonville University, the Ponte Vedra Beach Concert Hall, various churches: the St. Mark's Lutheran Church,  St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Riverside Presbyterian Church, St. Paul's-by-the-Sea, The Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, All Saint's Episcopal Church, and others, which I may have overlooked. There are also concerts at the two universities, although not always free.

For instance, last week, beginning on Monday night, some of the Faculty of Prelude Chamber Music Inc., an entity established by three members of the Jacksonville Symphony (Jeanne Majors, violinist, Chris Chappell, violinist, and Vernon Humbert, cellist) 12 years ago, performed at Fleet Landing a varied program, billed as a "String Quartet Sampler" which included complete compositions by Mozart and Beethoven, as well as excerpts from Borodin, Haydn, and Mendelssohn, ending with lighter fare and on a lighthearted note, underscoring the joy these musicians derive from playing Chamber Music in their not-so-spare time. This faculty which is only part of a much larger one teaches at the annual two week Prelude Chamber Music Camp which is designed for all ages of participation. They also bring internationally known chamber groups, such as the Enso String Quartet, the St.Lawrence String Quartet, and, in the coming year, the Dover Quartet for concerts and Master classes.

(See www.preludechambermusic.org for more information. They are a  IRS deductible 501 ( c) ( 3 )organization which offers scholarships to deserving students of chamber music.)

Then, the newly-resident Florida Chamber Music Project, also made up of
Symphony Members performed on Sunday afternoon a program which included a world premiere of a composition by Piotr Szewczyk, also a violinist in the Jacksonville Symphony, which was commissioned  by the Project. This was another outstanding work we have come to expect from Szewczyk, known for his virtuoso performances of commissions for short, solo violin pieces from composers around the world, as well as his own works, which have been performed by him at Carnegie Hall, by the Symphony and by other solo musicians and chamber groups.

Two Beethoven Quartets, an early work, Op. 18 #4, and a middle period work, Op. 74, "The Harp" followed. The group of five  women (they alternate in various pieces requiring additional personnel), violist and artistic director, Susan Pardue, Anna Genest, violinist, Annie Morris, violinist, Laurie Casseday, cellist, and Patrice Evans, violinist, obviously enjoy playing together, as their sound was well-blended and rhythmically coordinated.

(For more information, contact www.FLChamberMusic.org)

As I earlier posted (November 13) that same Sunday, I attended an extraordinary concert by the San Marco Chamber Music Society at St. Mark's Lutheran Church. This group has been performing in that venue for several years.

(They are also an IRS deductible 501 ( c ) ( 3 ) organization, and can be contacted at www.sanmarcochambermusic.org)

Music is alive and well in Jacksonville ( "well".......only if we attend and contribute to what are usually free concerts). Generally speaking,  concerts at universities and churches are being "subsidized" by the university and the Jacksonville Symphony. Concertgoers have an obligation to not only attend, but contribute to their continuance, especially, the chamber music groups, so that we can develop Jacksonville into a more enlightened, culturally sophisticated city.

Buddha, Astronomers, Habaneras and Russian mischief

Long ago. musicians invented the notion of multiculturalism when they learned how to program interesting music for the concert hall. Today, outside of a museum or an international airport, one could not hope to encounter more varied composer personalities than in the splendid concert by the San Marco Chamber Music Society which I was privileged to hear this past Sunday in a free concert at St. Mark's Lutheran Church.

Performed by several members of the Jacksonville Symphony, augmented by two faculty from Jacksonville University, the program opened with The Two-Fold Path, an original composition by local composer, the Canadian-born, Peter Fraser MacDonald, featuring Eric Olson, principle oboist and his wife, Ellen Olson, violist. This elegant, meditative piece played so sensitively by the Olsons, blended the two voices, seamlessly, leading one to hear the piece as if sung by soprano and alto. It was almost too short. I wish it could have been played again, immediately.* Commissioned by the Olsons, it was one of many compositions they have commissioned by local composers, exposing audiences to fresh ideas from within the community. The Jacksonville music establishment often doesn't give credit, where credit is due, to its creative citizens.

(*I've been told by another local composer for this group, Ed Lein, that it can indeed be heard, again, on www.instantencore.com, where they have posted past performances at  http://instantencore.com/contributor/contributor.aspx?CId=5130723)

The  Oboe Concerto #1 in E flat, by German-English composer and astronomer of Uranus discovery fame, William Herschel (1738-1822), composed in 1759, followed, with Eric Olson and a six-person ensemble. Including harpsichord continuo with Scott Watkins, and bass, played, richly, by Patrick Bilanchone, the ensemble displayed a rigorously Baroque, full-bodied sound of a much bigger ensemble. This was partly due to the acoustic of the room which has a wooden ceiling, and wooden pews, but mostly due to the experienced virtuosity of the players, all graduates and affiliates of major conservatories and university music schools.

Olson always delivers such joyful playing, regardless of the demands of the music, whether contemporary or traditional. A supreme musician, he never fails to inspire audiences with his total involvement with the music, nor, is he ever daunted by the technicalities. His oboe sound comes the closest to the human voice of any I have heard.

He shifted from the divergent energies of the first two pieces to a seductive solo with Scott Watkins, pianist, in Maurice Ravel's Piece en Forme de Habanera, underscoring, once again, his ability to give vocal qualities to the oboe. His artistry is one of the reasons why the oboe is one of my favorite instruments: its clarity and unique sound always adds the brightest note to a symphonic composition, whether melancholic or, as with Beethoven, an optimistic metaphor for Nature.

The concert ended with the formidable Piano Quintet, Op. 57, by Dmitri Shostakovich, with Scott Watkins performing as pianist, in a brilliant and balanced manner with the ensemble, made up of Chris Chappell, First Violin, Marguerite Richardson, Second Violin, Ellen Olson, Viola, and Betsy Federman, Cello. (Watkins and Richardson are married, and both members of the Jacksonville University Faculty and have performed widely, in New York and abroad.)

Chappell, especially, understood and expressed the spiritual side of Shostakovich in the muted, delicate passages in the outer movements, leading the group, overall, in a true, ensemble performance.

Watkins, a pianist of extraordinary technique and sparkle, provided exciting counter dynamic to the "back and forth" of the rhythmically difficult Scherzo, which can only be characterized as much more than a musical "joke:" more a recounting of a Russian drunken orgy! He was cheerfully accompanied by the witty, slurred passages in the cello, by Federman, who is an exceptionally expressive virtuoso, as well.

To return to the contemplative temperament of the first two movements in the final two movements, the Intermezzo and Finale, the ensemble underscored the outrageousness of the Scherzo's placement, at the same time capturing the qualities of Shostakovich's Russian spirit which ranges from the spiritually transcendental to the uncontrollable, to the morbid, ending with the inevitable philosophizing about the "meaning of it all."

Well done! San Marco Chamber Music Society! More to come in February, March, and April. Always varied programming, exceptional guests and the always indispensable, Eric and Ellen Olson, greatly appreciated by an enthusiastic, knowledgable audience. An oasis of great music-making.

You may make a tax deductible contribution to the registered 501( c )( 3 )Society at: www.sanmarcochambermusic.org

"Found" Art, November 7, 2013

I last wrote about "consumption media," or "Garbage" art (sic). Some further thoughts about the use of "found objects" in works of art.

It can certainly be pointed out that Picasso and Braque included cigarette wrappers, tickets to concerts, menus, wallpaper snippets, cane from chairs and other stuff from their environment in collages and paintings.

Kurt Schwitters raised the discarded to the status of precious icon, washing each piece of paper found on a sidewalk, drying and collaging into very small works of art in his "Merz" series (German, for "cast off"), as if to say that even this is precious. It was a metaphor for the neglected human being. (He was a refugee from Germany, and died in England in 1948.)

And, to this day, such artists as Anselm Kiefer have used human hair, the cast off leaded roof from a cathedral, trees, grass, hay, sand, minerals, and so many other untraditional media in his paintings and drawings.

My objection to what I call "consumption media" is that its use is a seamless connection to the pervasiveness of materialism in our culture.

Picasso and Braque used collaged elements in a formal manner, creating jarring disconnects between the "real" and abstractions of the "real."

Kiefer uses materials from nature to underscore the fragility of life, and our inextricable mineral connection to the Universe: we "are" the Universe.

These ideas are profound.

"Garbage Art" using consumption media is all about consumption. The people who are attracted to the purchase of such shallow examples are part of the complex which drives consumption. They purchase the art (sic) which celebrates their success in doing so.

Art has a higher mission.

Art challenges, comforts, inspires, entertains, and even decorates our lives, giving us moments of transcendence, deep compassion, identification with Humanity, fulfilling our deepest needs to connect with other human beings. Art makes us think. Art changes our perception of the world around us, revealing its fault lines, leaving us moral choices in its wake.

Consumption consumes. Art is the Eternal Present.

Garbage "Art" Part I

In our twenty-first Century materialistic world, the detritus of consumption has become the chosen medium for many visual artists. Employing grand schemes of repetition, with Philip Glass earnestness, "art" is made of plastic bags, styrofoam containers, bottle caps, plastic holders for beer cans, beer can tabs, old c d's, worn clothing, tires, cars, grocery carts, concrete-rebar rubble...the list goes on. Consult your weekly garbage can for possible motifs. This all began in the late 1950's and early 1960's with Pop Art and the elevation of commercial art techniques to fine art media. The added schema of endless repetition was developed in the 1970's with Minimalism.

The societal despair represented in what I call "consumption media" runs counter to the traditional definition and impulse of art: to create. Creation is a positive act. Garbage "art" is a dead end.

To enter a gallery exhibit which features garbage objects strewn about the floor and walls produces a profound depression: a sense that the End of Art, or maybe, the End of the World is at hand.

Fortunately, there are all kinds of artists who still paint, draw, cast, carve, print, photograph. There are as many possibilities for art as there are artists who create with a hopeful spirit.

This does not mean that art must be limited to "feel-good" images. Really great art is provocative. It challenges us to rethink our relation to society, to our fellow man, to the Earth.

The "obviousness" of garbage "art" is condescending to the viewer by contrast: it assumes that we don't have enough sense to have noticed the abuses of the environment and to our very souls by excessive consumption of Earth's resources. The provocateur is merely a show-off.

Classical Greek drama produced catharsis, which caused the audience to leave the theatre with a lighter heart. Even the gravest tragedy produced an opposite reaction in a member of the audience as he returned to his routine life. Great art educes a meditative process in the viewer. From this, positive action can come from the experience; thus, the transformative power of art.

Garbage "art" does not provoke transformation in the viewer, who is either turned off or depressed to the point of helplessness. Hence, when, for instance, I take my walk at the beautiful park designed by the Olmsted Bros. (who designed the New York City Central Park) and I am confronted by phony "provocative" garbage "art" in the form of plywood boxes, poorly crafted, covered with black plastic bags, or a pink yarn tutu on the Adrian Pillars sculpture of "Winged Youth rising from the chaos of war" on top of the World War I Memorial alongside the St. Johns River, I am at a loss to understand how this kind of Art Terrorism is useful as an art experience.

A librarian-composer friend of mine who, by virtue of his occupation is a genuine liberal, thinks such displays are alright for a short time as an exercise of free expression. Perhaps. But, if the action involves the desecration of a war memorial or the work of another artist, the definition of the action changes from free expression to hostile vandalism. And vandalism disturbs private and public peace. If, for instance, I should stand and shout while my friend's composition was being performed, that would be my free expression, but I would be booted out of the auditorium!

Interestingly, the first collectors who drove the art scene in New York in the 1950's and 60's were people such as a taxi-cab magnate, who gained the fame and social recognition he craved by buying out an entire exhibit of one then-unknown artist's work. This made news in the art world. This set a fashion for chasing, prematurely, young artists' works based on little or no knowledge of the tradition of art: the death of the connoisseur.

Monetary values rose: art values plunged. (And the artist who was made famous by the taxi-cab magnate's purchase? He ruefully observed that the gentleman sold the work at auction for 100 times more than he originally paid him for it. The fallacious idea that art is an investment took off with the help of auction houses. The "crash" of 1987 showed what a flawed idea that was when the art market tanked along with everything else. Artists, as well as collectors, suffered.)

Fashion has a lot to do with the prevalence of such stuff in the contemporary art scene. Fashion is driven by people with too much money to spend, too much free time coupled with too little respect for art in general. Everything moves too fast: the process of testing the endurance of artists is cast aside in favor of "the latest thing." The whole process of assigning value, other than monetary, to art breaks down. Society, in general, is the poorer for it, for the moral dilemmas of our time are not being confronted. Contemplation has been replaced with more consumption. And, more garbage.

Some further thoughts: Time in works of Art

Time is essential to the experience of works by Stephen Antonakos, a light sculptor, who died in August of this year. Antonokos, pioneered the use of neon light in art in the 1960's.

One piece, which I encountered as curator at a museum in 1969, was in neon: an outline of a glowing bluish-violet cube. Whether exhibited in a dark room or in natural light, it featured the element of time. After several minutes of being "on," it suddenly shut off for a minute, during which a yellow-orange afterglow "appeared," on the viewers' retina, in the complementary colour to the lighted neon colour. This progression of on-off-on was precisely programmed with a timer within the base of the sculpture.

Similar to music, the afterglow corresponds to overtones, which linger at the end of a piece of music for a specific time: to convey a mood or a mood change, to provide a bridge to another tone, or a bridge between separate movements, e.g., in a Sonata.

The afterglow, or the overtone contributes a mysterious, or spiritual quality to the piece. We know that Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven used silences in music to achieve suspense. Beethoven used overtones as bridges to different moods, and to different movements in his Sonatas.

Thus, in both visual art and music, time can convey an emotional quality in addition to movement.

Several modern and contemporary artists have incorporated time into their works, either through mechanical motion: Lazlo Maholy-Nagy, Yves Tinguely, or through designed construction unbalance: the mobiles of Alexander Calder and the stabiles of George Rickey, or through a combination with displacement in space: Bruce Naumann, whose neon sculptures flash on and off, in different directions, reversing meanings. Or, Naumann's videos in combination with mechanical, electrically-controlled, rotating, embalmed animals. One also thinks of Jenny Holzer's lighted word pieces which must be read in sequence for meaning. Or, Richard Long's long walks in remote areas, leaving a record of his journey with arrangements of rocks, or his photographic record of the melting impression of his body in snow. Andy Goldsworthy's interaction with the forces of nature, especially, water, which moves through space and time is also an example, of which he preserves a record through film and photograph.

In the last two examples, a deeply felt spiritual reaction is provoked by the resonances of time, nature, and atmosphere: the overtones of nature.

A final thought, here: music travels through space, as it progresses, by time and resonance and overtones. It is sound sculpture at its purest, such as that found in nature. In that way, too, it shares a quality with visual art, in the form of sculpture. Both forms of art require the audience to "perceive" the work through sensory channels, through which, modern science has shown, art and music can affect emotion, physiology, and mental health.

Time: Art and Music

Time: Music and Art                       

My sculpture (or, three-dimensional drawings) from the late 1960's through the 1980's is inspired by the idea of music, of time, itself.

Music, unlike painting, takes place in time. Paintings are read, left to right, or, right to left, without any loss of meaning. Music goes from past to future through time, in one direction, only: forward. Even in a Sonata, with its Exposition-Development-Recapitulation form (with sometimes more complex forms), the return to the original theme has some surprises in store for us before it returns "home."

However, not all visual art has the constraint of a "side-to-side," "up-down," 2-dimensional movement. (We're not considering video or performance art, which obviously track movement through time and space.) In my three-dimensional works from the late 1960's through the 1980's, visually, a progression of time similar to music takes place. Transparent panels with drawings engraved upon them, arranged into a continuum, present a transition from one plane to another, seen, simultaneously: all time is "now." When one looks from the "back" of the piece (actually, there is no front or back) to the "front," the work looks different.  Also, you can "see" the transitions (or what you would hear in music: modulations) from the sides of the works, and as you move around the work, the work keeps "changing."

Music, supposedly, might be written so that it sounded the same, beginning to end and back, but it would not be so interesting to listen to, except as a theoretical exercise, perhaps. According to Charles Rosen, in his excellent book, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, W.W. Norton & Company, 1997, Rosen implies that music is not a spacial art, because the "..order, intensity and..direction of the relations between the motifs.." is important. In a criticism of much music analysis, "..There must be a coherent interaction between the individual motif and the direction of the piece---the intensity and the proportions of its gradual unfolding." (pp. 40-41) But, to the notion that music is not spacial, I disagree. I believe that music is spacial, because time, itself, is spacial. What we would agree about is that in the space of time, the journey through the music unfolds, but not necessarily in a linear fashion.

Bach wrote fugues that inverted a theme, so that it sounded quite acceptable "upside down" as it did "right-side up." He also reversed themes and changed them in many directions, but, to my knowledge, did not "walk backward" through the music. Music seeks a resolution, and this comes through changes, as in the sonata form: from the tonic to the dominant, as it moves through time. And, then, the movement back towards the tonic to "home."

Time and The Process of Art Appreciation

There is no exactly repeated experience for the audience of any work of art, music or visual, even for the experts. The architecture remains the same in each discipline, but the perception of it will grow and change with each encounter: that is, in a successful work. There are, of course, works which just don't have enough content to hold our attention for long, especially, if it's a popular ditty, or visually, has a commercially decorative application. Then, fashion takes over, and everyone, eventually, moves on to the "next new thing" from boredom.

Art, on the other hand, does not degrade to the status of fashion, although, in the present age, it is hard to convince the art institution, e.g.,
media, galleries, up and coming curators, art schools, and, alas, many new money" collectors. The world of music composition doesn't succumb so often to this shallowness, although it can suffer the woes of overly intellectual theories in some university music departments, as well as music venues searching for a way to engage new, frequently younger, audiences. This has been referred to as, "new wave," or "cutting edge." (It's difficult to erase the image of a pair of scissors, with a question: which "side" of the "edge" matters more.) I'm reminded of the highly successful, "Next Wave" series at the Brooklyn Academy, featuring "the latest" in all the arts, or the Venice Biennale.

Having signed up, recently, for a free (!) online course on Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, emanating from Curtis Institute and taught by the young pianist, Jonathan Bis, I am rediscovering music which I have heard in concert many times over the past 30-40 years. My sister, Anne Koscielny, performed all 32 of these Sonatas in a series which she presented in several venues over a 30 year period. She says she is still learning things about them, as can be noted in recordings of her early series compared to those 20 years later.

Great art never loses its fascination. It changes as we change: as we become more perceptive based on our life experiences and greater knowledge of art. Thus, time: spacial time, time in visual art, and, music carries us on great journeys.

Beethoven, two centuries later, is, by the way, still "cutting edge."His time is our time.

                                      Beethoven, 1818, by August von Klüber

A Beethoven for Today?

A Beethoven, possible, today?

(Prompted by the wonderful things I am learning in the online course, "Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas," offered by Curtis Institute, taught by Jonathan Bis, pianist, through Coursera.org, the following thoughts.)

The world, today, abounds with many genius minds in all disciplines. However, the climate, artistically, for a poor boy from a struggling family (poorly-paid kapellmeister, alcoholic father, over-burdened mother with several children including deaths of several others, plus, her own ill health) in a country such as ours would not be promising for young Ludwig.

Beethoven, in America, would not be eligible for food stamps, because his father, mostly, would make enough to "get by," nor would his mother be able to get medical help through Medicaid, for the same reason. And, even though there would lean times in the Beethoven household, Beethoven's younger siblings wouldn't be able to qualify for free breakfast or lunch at school. Certainly, with the cuts made in the Congress, his little sister would not be eligible for head start. But, then, she didn't live beyond the age of one, so...

Imagine, there is such a boy or girl with the natural musical genius of Beethoven in America, today: it costs a lot of money for private music lessons, ($35-50-100-150) per lesson). Then, if the youth orchestra is located at a venue distant from home, inaccessible by bus (this is country with poor mass transportation) and if the parents don't have a piano, or a car, or, if they live on a side of town far from where other young musicians in the orchestra live, and thus, can't get rides, and he or she can't afford to buy a piano, a violin, viola, bass, cello, etc., nor the music scores for study....and, maybe, he or she belongs to a minority.....just imagine.

Oh, yes, there are always patrons for special talents. But, what if Beethoven is living in a provincial southern town where classical music is considered elitist, or weird, and he never gets close enough to come to the attention of a wealthy patron. And, what if the wealthy are more interested in golf and football?

What if he never even gets to find out if he has musical talent, because his public school doesn't offer music instruction.

We can be grateful that even a young man of Beethoven's circumstances was able to come to the attention of musically-sophisticated patrons in his hometown of Bonn. And, that he made friends with royalty and aristocrats who mingled more freely with common folk in 18th century Germany than is possible in America, today. Imagine.

Yes, genius is appreciated in America. It is most appreciated, however, where materialism is the motivating factor: technological inventions (not keyboard, like Bach's), financial wizardry, political consultancy, mass entertainment, and so forth. But, our society and our government doesn't honor the arts with adequate support or budgets, nor does the President ever grace the doors of classical music concerts or art museums, nor does he have classical concerts in the White House. Do his children play musical instruments? The NEA doesn't have a chief, at present. Does anyone remember who the last one was? No one of the stature of Yo Yo Ma, or Itzak Perlman is asked to testify to Congress on behalf of the Arts these days.

The Arts are slowly fading from public consciousness, except for a 5 second news "bit" about an orchestra musicians lock-out, or strike, of which there are more and more. So, if Beethoven, somehow, managed to become study music, play viola well enough to perform in his city's orchestra (as he did when as a young boy of 11) or, conduct (as a 14 year old ) that orchestra, would there even be an orchestra for our young Beethoven to play in? Or, to perform one of his compositions?

Thank goodness, Beethoven had the support group he had, and a father, as flawed as he was, who at least exposed him to the world of music, with its intricate network of associates. He was part of a society in Germany and Austria which celebrated exceptional talents because the populace was filled with amateur aristocratic musicians, private orchestras and concerts in the castles of royalty, and a critical network of musically-educated writers to spread the word.

Do yourself a favor, today. Go listen to one of his glorious Piano Sonatas! Lots of them on YouTube by Schnabel, Schiff, and others.
(And, search for the needy, promising, music talents in your town.)

What is American Art in the 21st Century?

How does an artist achieve profundity in the current climate of Art-as-Fashion?

In describing the work of the Post-War German artist, Anselm Kiefer, a curator on the web site of the  Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art uses the following descriptive phrases as keys to understanding the motivation of this extraordinary painter: "cultural myths, metaphors, personal symbolic vocabulary, addressing controversial and even taboo issues from recent history, invokes and processes history, engages with, and tries to understand history."

The painter, himself, describes his process as " [painting ] only when I have received an apparition, a shock, when I want to transform something...  something that possesses me, and from which I have to deliver myself." He uses fugitive materials, earth materials, plant materials, paints on photographs, incorporates writing, quotations from literature, poetry, etc. into the painting.

What I don't see in the landscape of contemporary American artists is a similar engagement with our national myths and failures: the violence, the inequalities, the hubris of so-called "exceptionalism." American artists seem in their careerist quest for global recognition to have skipped over the experience of being an American artist; something with its own special qualities. They mostly seem to be striving for a Rauschenbergian engagement with multi-cultural themes, expropriating artifacts from other cultures while ignoring the very forces which underly differences in American life from that of foreign countries; those forces, which, since the first global war from 1914-1917, have influenced the cultural and economic development of the rest of the world.

It is true that we live in an interconnected world, but the insistence of American  capitalist-totalitarianism, is spreading through economic globalization. What is our "culture" which we are sending out into the world? Is it all cola, pickup trucks and Hollywood? Or, is it a pastiche of everyone else's appropriated ideas?

Yes, there are examples in contemporary art of very obvious kinds of "political" agit-prop, transitory knee-jerk reactions to current events, but the underlying darkness in the American soul is not grappled with, as Kiefer has done with his native German history. His is an art that works to exorcise that brutality which has gripped the German soul for centuries, while also celebrating the spirit which has also driven the better aspects of its cultural destiny, particularly its philosophers, musicians, poets, counter-political personalities, and mythological archetypes.

What are our American cultural myths? What metaphors can an American artist create to describe, pictorially, what, and who we are, culturally? Who are our cultural heroes? Who has inspired us? How will we engage history to tell our story? What is the collective content of our artistic vocabulary? To what do we owe our cultural existence? And, what material will we American artists use to transform this into art?

Finally, the questions, for me: is our American culture, as it is, worth sending out into the rest of the world? Can we artists, honestly, identify and transform our culture so that it changes for the better? And, influence the world to be a healthier place?

Will future American art speak to a wider audience than the cognoscenti and the "galleristi?" Will thoughtful work replace sensationalism and fashion?

What is a Masterpiece?

People speak of "presence" when confronted with masterworks of art.
It occurs in that moment, when, before taking in a breath and letting it out, we sense what the Germans call, "Erhebung," i.e., exultation, uplift.

Schopenhauer said that the authentic aesthetic experience came at the moment between the gasp of recognition and uttering the word, "Ahh!"

For me, the following are two of the greatest masterpieces in American art museums: The Crucifixion, with the Mourning Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist, ca. 1460-64, by Rogier van der Weyden, Collection: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Self-portrait with Helene Fournment and their son, ca. 1630's, by Peter Paul Rubens, Collection Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. All of the greatest themes in human life and art are present: creativity in the shape of family, implying regeneration; physical death; and love, both carnal love and spiritual love, which transcends sacrifice and suffering.

The content of these masterpieces serves as models of what art should achieve in order to be universally significant. Not that art of our time should be made the same way, but, art of our time should hold its own against the mainstream of time and fashion. To matter.

Hungry for Great Art

Hunger for art: August 13, 2013

Living in a provincial, southernmost, cultural backwater, I hunger for a profound experience of art. The internet can bring me miniatures of great images, but, museums are stingy with the size, fearing illegal reproduction. Yet, one can photograph the work in a museum, in most cases, without restriction, except for flash. Thus, just before I moved from New York, I made a beautiful photographic series of Buddha sculptures in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In fact, I went throughout the museum photographing everything which was precious to me, for the purpose which drives all collectors: to hold onto that ineffable something which great art exudes, which touches our deepest thoughts and feelings.

Those Buddhas sit, in the format of enlargements, on my mantelpiece, where I installed them after one of our recent, violent, repeated, national tragedies. I look at them every time I pass though the room. I am not a Buddhist, but the calm beauty of their emotive power keeps me from shattering into a million pieces.

And, isn't that what art is really for? To keep us alive, spiritually, against all the blows of daily existence? To counter the irrational?

Yet, here, in Jacksonville, Florida, for instance, the Cummer Museum which could bring significant art exhibitions to the city, spends its limited funds on external, cosmetic features. Art resides in the back alley, as it were, while the socialites exchange their usual banalities in the new restaurant up front. Corporate leadership reasoning, which believes in paring down the essentials, maximizing on "image" to drive numbers of "consumers," is magnetically drawn to "strategic plans" which stress building projects instead of scholarship and connoisseurship. It was not always this way.

So, my hunger, as a seriously-thinking artist, grows, with no sustenance,
nor hope of any. Just as a marriage needs the stimulation of renewed energy to keep love alive, so does an artist need the visual dialogue with great art to keep growing as an artist. Even an older, experienced artist can learn from the masters. For therein lies the realm of possibilities.

Jacksonville has none that I can see for a thinking artist.

Writing the future: Hope fulfilled

As if to underscore the point I made in the previous post about young people and their commitment to fairness and the betterment of life, this past week we witnessed The 16 year old Pakistani girl, Malala Yousafzai, crying out at the United Nations, "Let us pick up our books and our pens..they are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution."

After being savagely shot in the head by Taliban militants as she went to school with other girls, she noted that, "They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed..out of that silence came thousands of voices...Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage were born..."

There seems to be a tipping point where an act goes so far as to have reverse consequences. While we wait for that to happen in this country with legislation for gun control, compassion for the poor, sick, elderly and unemployed, the impact of social media, the internet, the cell phone to build community is, in the hands of the young, potent tools to promote and bring about needed change. And, by which the voices such as Malala's can resonate.

The antediluvians in Congress, in the Taliban, in the other power structures of this world are not immortal, nor invincible. Hubris goes before a downfall; violence and power abuses create a temporary vacuum which is forcefully filled with positive counter-action. People will just, finally, not put up "with it." (Neither authoritarianism, nor terrorism.)

The unintimidated young are impatient.

Maybe, it's time for an internet equivalent of a peaceful "sit-in protest." The young have the technical skills to pull it off. They also know how to go into action instead of waiting for the grownups to tell them how and what to do.

Voter registration, education financing, immigration reform, aid to the helpless and less fortunate, reducing waste, recycling, organic gardening, alternative transportation, inter-cultural friendships, respect for Humanity and for our fellow Animals, elimination of war: plenty of agenda for the children born in the twenty-first century.

Hiatus

For the past two months, I have taken a brief "vacation" from worry: about our country, our environment, and our culture.

Instead, I have focused on the enthusiastic activity of young musicians, including my 13 year old grand-niece, a young violinist of promise. She came for her annual visit to participate in an intensive program of chamber music activities with Prelude Chamber Music, Inc.This year, she was the leader of her quintet and concert mistress of the advanced orchestra.

To see the musical development of my niece and other young people as they practice their skills, learn music theory, as well as all the other disciplines associated with playing their instruments reminded me, once again, that our hope resides in our children.

They are idealistic, rejecting war and violence as solutions to disagreements. My niece shows, not mere tolerance for people who are different from her, but seems not to imagine anything unusual about human variety, delighting in the cultures of other peoples.

Her brain is a sponge which absorbs science, literature, music, art in the context of our times, while maintaining optimistic, refreshing insights.
She is in love with Life, and she is determined that the planet will survive with its beautiful animals, plants, electric storms, and exotic peoples.

She is teaching me that I must not succumb to collective paranoia. She hasn't said as such, but I suspect she would find  "Big Brother" to be no less of a nincompoop then those who are afraid of "it."

She was born more than a year before the September catastrophe of 2001, and was too young to know or see any of the horrible images of that time. She noticed a book on my shelves, commemorating the World Trade Center as it was. She had heard of it, but didn't know what had happened. When we looked at the World Trade Center in its days of glory contrasted with pictures of the aftermath of the destruction, she was silent, perhaps, wondering what could have caused such an event. She has nothing, thank goodness, in her beautiful life to compare it with.

Next year, she will be confronted with even greater horrors when she studies the Holocaust. I wish she didn't have to know about any of these terrible, evil acts of violence. Her question to me was, why do people do these things to each other? She is without the ability to hate. She cannot comprehend it.

All children could be this pure in spirit if their elders were sensitive to the profound effects of media, violence in sports, hysterical popular music with its vapid lyrics, and the sensationalistic, gratuitous action sequences in contemporary film. No parent should allow his child to watch TV or see movies which are inappropriate.

My niece has grown up without exposure to what most young people see. She is a straight "A" student at a very demanding private school whose curriculum is sophisticated, well-rounded, and loving. It is a Quaker School, and as such, instills values which make good citizens of its graduates. All of its students are admitted to the major universities in this country. And they will graduate into positions of influence as adults.

Because these graduates have not only received a thoughtful education, they have also learned to think of others through projects which all must participate in every year, throughout the year. They grow , harvest, and deliver, in person,  food to the homes of poor people in their city, for instance. A special chorus sings to terminally ill patients; a homesick student from India is serenaded at her locker on her birthday. The emphasis is on noticing what other people are experiencing. They are learning empathy.

I believe her generation will be the one to reject the procrastinating excuses of ours by cleaning up the environment, righting social wrongs, restoring democracy and trust in the power of government to do good for its citizens. And, I believe they will make beautiful art and music while doing so. They will write their own stories of hope: hope fulfilled.

All will be well.