Category: Arts

Performance Art – SIX VIEWPOINTS

by Hazel Anna Rogers for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

I arrive in the room. Other students are milling around, some stretching in the blinding winter light stretching in from the tall windows on the far side of the room, others laughing in little clusters, some silently penning down notes in blank-paged cahiers.

We are still new to one another. We do not yet know each other’s gaits or humor. Regardless – the mood is high and we greet one another jovially and warmly, like old friends.

A woman arrives a few minutes after myself. Her face is obscured by a thin blue surgical mask, and she has a mustard yellow bobble hat on. All I can see are her eyes. She takes off her coat and places it tenderly over the back of a chair, then beckons us all over to her. She has a gentle Spanish accent, and her tone itself is soft. The students and I come to sit in a semi-circle around her, and the woman begins speaking. We listen, and smile beneath our masks, but we do not yet know what is to come.

The woman, whom we discover is Isabel Sanchez, introduces the term Viewpoints into the room. We toy with the word, placing our own pre-learned attributes and meanings to it, then let it drop as Isabel continues to speak. At one point, Isabel suddenly points at a line on the floor before her. The line is one of wear and tear, likely created by the sliding foot of a dancer or actor. Isabel lies down and begins caressing the line, speaking of its beauty and wonder, of how fascinating and unseen this line previously was, of how she could not believe she had never noticed such a line before. We laugh at this spectacle, at once befuddled and intrigued by Isabel’s attentive and overt curiosity.

Isabel brings herself back to sitting, then gasps and points at Giulio, one of the other students. She remarks on the extraordinary form that has been produced by the creases on his jumper, and by the complexity and magnificence of the shape that his body has produced by sitting as he is, with his legs outstretched in front of him. Isabel jumps up and goes over to Giulio, then asks him how he managed to create such a beautiful thing so effortlessly, and inquires as to whether he was indeed trained at Harvard, so astonishing was his shape. We laugh at Isabel, and at Giulio’s shy charm.  

This was our introduction to Viewpoints, a postmodern theory that we engaged with for four weeks. That is to say, we trained with Isabel in Viewpoints for four weeks, but, at least for myself, this training lives on, for it is itself infinite.

Mary Overlie, the founder of the Six Viewpoints (often known simply as ‘Viewpoints’), was a deconstructing postmodern theater practitioner who lived from January 15th 1946 until June 5th 2020. She was the woman who taught our teacher Isabel Sanchez. Mary was not known in the sense of fame or celebrity; she was unafraid of obscurity in her work. She preferred to let her work shine above herself, as this enabled her greater creativity in her practice. I marvel at this humility, especially considering the conflict that Mary encountered when Anne Bogart initially took the title ‘Viewpoints’ and attributed it to her own work. Isabel told us, during those too-short four weeks, that this was the one thing that really upset Mary during their time working together. It was a relief when Anne finally released the name Viewpoints from her work and acknowledged Mary’s precedent in the Viewpoints practice.

Carl Kruse Arts Blog - Mary Overlie

Mary Overlie

“Observe the ingredients, the materials of performance, contemplate the particles.

Once you find them, train yourself to listen, allow them to become your teachers,

embrace them as profound partners. Allow them to create.”

For many years, Mary attempted to simplify and fully encompass Viewpoints as a complete practice, a practice that could hold and feed actor, audience, and the materials simultaneously. In 1998, a national Viewpoints conference was held in New York, where Mary succeeded in articulating a basic and highly functional postmodern art training. Her Viewpoints, though they can indeed be employed as a methodology in dance, are predominantly centred around theatre.

Mary was born in Terry, Montana. She spent much of her youth with her neighbors: Robert and Gennie Deweese, who were notable modernist painters in the Montana contemporary arts community. Mary would fall asleep listening to conversations about innovations in the art world, and, somehow, these words landed so deeply within Mary that they inspired a profound interest in the materials of performance and art that would eventually lead to her working in such establishments as The Whitney Museum, Mabou Mines Theater Company, and The Experimental Theater Wing of the Tisch School of the Arts. Instrumental in Mary’s ultimate creation of the Six Viewpoints was Yvonne Rainer, an American experimental artist especially prominent in the field of dance. Yvonne herself was inspired by the procedures of chance illustrated in the work of John Cage and Merce Cunningham (whom she trained with for eight years in the 1960s). Yvonne’s work was, in simple terms (as I have not the space with which to articulate the sheer breadth and honesty of her work in this article), a blend of quotidian pedestrian movement, such as walking and standing, with aspects of classical dance. Mary was besotted by Yvonne and followed her work until the end of her life. To more concisely describe the nature of Yvonne’s work, one might look to her ‘No Manifesto’:

NO to spectacle.

No to virtuosity.

No to transformations and magic and make-believe.

No to the glamour and transcendency of the star image.

No to the heroic.

No to the anti-heroic.

No to trash imagery.

No to involvement of performer or spectator.

No to style.

No to camp.

No to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer.

No to eccentricity.

No to moving or being moved.

As you will see, these rejections of the expected nature of performance have some similarities with the doctrine of the Viewpoints (though I hesitate to use such a dogmatic term to describe the Viewpoints approach).

According to The Six Viewpoints website, Viewpoints is:

‘a study that establishes and expands the base of performance by inquiring into the vocabulary of the basic materials that are found in the creation of all art. The Viewpoints theory involves three intertwined sections:

The SSTEMS, an interrogation of the materials; Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement, and Story.

The Bridge, a set of nine philosophical interrogations into the nature of performance.

The Practice Manual, a set of practical exercises that lead the artist into a dialogue with their work process.’

Using these approaches, the artist can exponentially expand their creative processes from a deeply horizontal standpoint which rejects the hierarchical structure of Classical and Modernist art forms. Most notably, Viewpoints work aims to destruct the ‘creator/originator’ of preceding methods of art creation in favor of the ‘observer/participant’ which the artist is ultimately aiming for in their practice of Viewpoints. The Viewpoints do not wish to erase the history of art, nor to condemn other art forms for their hierarchical nature, but the Viewpoints do wish to shift the perspective of the performer by starting from a point of careful and respectful deconstruction (separating the whole (theatre) into its essential parts/materials) with the eventual objective of reifying these materials with greater clarity. This, the Viewpoints proposes, is truly postmodern.

Carl Kruse Arts Blog - Dance Students

Students at the Alvaro Prats Bertomeu studio in Spain, practice Viewpoints theory

I think that, at least for myself, the term ‘postmodern’ has been so carelessly abused throughout the 21st Century that it almost lost its meaning. Isabel herself told us of a show she went to see which dubbed itself ‘postmodern’, but which was inherently hierarchical in its artistic proposal; there were bright lights and booming music coupled with an obvious ‘protagonist’ situated center stage for the majority of the performance. Even I have been known to throw around the term ‘postmodern’ when referring to the evolution of advertising, or in relation to various cultural phenomenon that I have been exposed to, such as the platform of TikTok and its enabling of fast fashion. These things are not postmodern, I now realize. Postmodernism is a wholly specific term which refers to a disparate method of artistic practice which is a great departure from anything we have yet seen in the world of art. It is inclusive, non-hierarchical (with regard to those that practice it, those who observe it, and the materials which feed it), and fundamentally anarchical. This does not mean that the work is within discipline and strict guidelines; freedom does not mean that one can do what one wants without thinking. The Six Viewpoints website suggests that:

‘this work does not have a pre-existing idea of what theater is, how it should be created, what it should say or how it should say it. In entering this work the artist finds that they take possession of the stage and are anchored in its realities free of the opinions of others about how to make theater.

[…]

The simplicity of The Six Viewpoints is based on one on one contact with the basic materials. This approach aligns itself with the eastern practices that rely on the student to find their own truth as part of the understanding encompassing all of life. In this work there is no teacher, no authority to pronounce achievement or failure beyond understanding that any part is a part of the whole.’

It was oftentimes difficult to engage with this practice during my time with Isabel. Some days, I would come into class and find myself unable to focus fully on the SSTEMS and what they were saying to me. It is difficult to let go of oneself, of one’s ego, of ones ‘creator/originator’ when these are the sole elements of theatre that one is initially ordered to create with. The SSTEMS, to clarify, are the materials that the Viewpoints artist has a dialogue with in their practice. These are: Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement, and Story (or Logic). There are many separate aspects of these SSTEMS, for example Space can be deconstructed into Architecture, Direction, Location, Trajectory. This is a minimalist, conceptual art, wherein all performers are particles making up the whole. These particles are interdependent and co-dependent, but not independent. These is no ego in the postmodern practice of Viewpoints. This is perhaps due to the influence of Transcendental Meditation and Buddhism on Mary throughout her life. In the practice, the performer does not have the aim of CREATING a product. The performer may be writing a dance in space, but their work is improvisational in nature and rejects the self in order to achieve the truth of the essential nature of things. The practice is one of experiencing and perceiving which ultimately leads to a higher level of consciousness. In Viewpoints, the act of waiting can CREATE art. The performer does NOT create art, it lands on them and they experience it.

It is difficult to write about Viewpoints, for writing about this practice cannot possibly convey the experience of finally noticing the material of Time when standing in a room facing another particle on the other side of that room. How can I articulate the true nature of Time with words? How can I communicate the feeling of the material Space TELLING me where and how to move? How can I express the gentleness of the materials, how they hold and care for me as a performer, how they lead me to places I never even conceived of? In writing this article, I fear that I am intellectualising Viewpoints beyond recognition, when this is not at all my aim. I fear even that, upon reading my article, Isabel might point out errors in my terminology, in my interpretation of the Viewpoints, in the unsubtlety with which I have written about this beautiful and indescribable practice. I will be forever grateful to Isabel for bringing Viewpoints into my life. It has certainly been a transformative journey, and one which I will continue to pursue for the rest of my days.

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Find the blog home at https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Hazel Anna Rogers include: Metropolis and Reflections on Montmarte.
Also check out Hazel’s article focusing on Stanislavski’s take on acting over on this other Carl Kruse Blog.
The blog’s last post was on Yury Kharchenko.
Find Carl Kruse on Goodreads.

Metropolis

by Hazel Anna Rogers for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

The stage is set. Three pyramids built up of myriad buildings and angles forge forth unto the screen. Spotlights dance in symmetrical lines, lighting up sections of the structures like a stage. The buildings blur into three black pieces of machinery plunging up and down, then these blur and a montage begins showing cogs and valves and compressors and axles whirring around and turning and grinding. The screen dissolves and we are shown a clock with numbers from 1-10. The hour of 10 is about to strike. Another image of cogs churning covers the screen. The second-hand ticks forward and finally hits the hour. The image switches to another scene where a jumble of pipes sits amongst a cityscape, this time ta view of the ‘Below’ – the worker’s city (the first city was that of the above-ground). These pipes begin bursting with clouds of steam from every hole. The screen turns black, reading the words ‘Shift Change.’

carl kruse ars lumens - metropolis scene 1
Opening scene of METROPOLIS

A new scene. Crowds of workers clothed in black overalls stand in rigid lines behind a gate to the left of the screen, and, to the right, another crowd of workers stands in front of a separate gate. Each gate lifts, and the workers on the left walk forwards to begin their shift. The workers on the right walk towards the other gate to rest briefly before they must work again. These men move like puppets, mechanically swaying side to side in unison as they shuffle. Their heads are bowed, and each man is indistinguishable from the next. They are the tools of the machine, the people who hold up the city from deep below the earth’s surface while the rich dine and drink and dance and merry away the hours. This is the introduction to Fritz Lang’s 1927 film, Metropolis.

Carl Kruse Blog ars lumens - Worker shift change Metropolis

Workers change shift. METROPOLIS


It had been some time since I had watched a silent film when I came around to watching Metropolis. Though to call such a film ‘silent’ seems to diminish the visual and philosophical noise that perpetuates the entire 153 minutes it runs for. Furthermore, the film is near-constantly accompanied by the haunting militaristic soundtrack of Gottfried Huppertz, so to call this movie silent is somewhat inaccurate in all senses of the word. The last silent film I had watched prior to Metropolis was The Artist, Michel Hazanvicius’ 2011 part-talkie (whereupon sparing dialogue is used in an otherwise silent movie) black-and-white picture made in the style of a 1920s Hollywood silent film, full of romance and hilarity and warmth – a world away from Lang’s dystopia.

I recently learned that I have been accepted for an MA Acting degree program at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, during which I will have the opportunity to experiment with different theatrical techniques from various acting theorists, predominantly those working during the twentieth century. Among these myriad approaches to learning the art of acting, there is one theorist who I am most excited to discover: Jacques Lecoq. Lecoq worked primarily in the realm of physical theatre (using movement to tell stories, as opposed to words). His method involves the use of six different types of mask – the neutral mask, larval mask, expressive mask, commedia mask, half mask, and finally the clown’s eponymous red nose – to encourage his students to act from a base of ‘newness’ or ‘unknowing’, as the mask works as a blank canvas upon which an actor can express themselves playfully and openly. The final stage of mask work, the red nose, is the stage at which the student may finally discover their own unique ‘clown’, because it allows them to finally use their face to express their emotions and thus to communicate through facial AND physical mime.

Carl Kruse Ars Lumens - Metropolis poster

Original poster for METROPOLIS, 1927.

The reason that I am bringing up this method is because I note similarities between the acting in German expressionist films, such as Metropolis and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari – the 1920 silent horror directed by Robert Wiene – and the techniques used by Lecoq. Most of the emotion and action in Metropolis is explained by dramatic movement and facial expressions, along with the occasional use of mouthing and captions, though these are limited. In a time where language seems to be the most prominent device used by contemporary film to guide and explain a storyline, it is refreshing and fascinating to watch a film that relies on the skill and versatility of its actor’s mime to develop and carry a storyline. Maria – the love interest of protagonist Freder and also the ‘saint’ of the underground workers, who prophesizes the arrival of a ‘mediator’ who will unite the ruling and working classes – has her face ‘taken’ and transposed onto the face of a robot by the dictator of the city (Joh Fredersen, Freder’s father) in order to quell the possibility of a rebellion by the workers. Maria is a mesmerizing character, because her actor – Brigitte Helm – takes on both the role of the innocent Saint Maria and the robot, or The Machine Man. Helm’s captivating use of body contortion and facial expressions makes her equally credible in both roles; the robot is highly sexualized, with heavy eye makeup and a malicious, crazed grin, while Maria is meek, near-bare-faced, and gentle.

Carl Kruse ars lumens - maria and robot, Metropolis
The transformation of Maria into the robot. METROPOLIS

Watching Helm work made me want to discover more about the Expressionist film movement, and to learn how I could learn to use my body and face as tools upon which to create stories and words without ever opening my mouth to speak. I have always relied on language throughout my acting career to date, though this might sound like an obvious claim to make. For most acting jobs, one is required to learn a script and is then told how best to move in order to create meaning from this script. I would generally consider myself to be a method actor; when learning to play a character, I find my thoughts and feelings begin to become one with the part I am to play, and even sometimes implementing aspects of these characters into my ‘real’ life. When learning the script for Measure for Measure (Shakespeare’s 1604 dark comedy), I quickly understood the advantage I had over some of the other actors in that I understood what Shakespeare was saying, whereas those from a less-literary background (I studied Literature for my Undergraduate degree) found more difficulty in interpreting the early modern vernacular of the play. But when I look back now, I think that what may have seemed to be an advantage – the ability to dissect and interpret Shakespeare’s work from a linguistic point of view – might have impeded my ability to freely embrace and embody my role as Isabella. I placed too much importance on what I was saying, and not enough on how I could say just as much by using movement and facial expressions. I was complimented on my performance, and I do believe that I did justice to Isabella’s character, but I find it interesting to think back on the methods I used to approach my role and to consider how I could have bettered my interpretation.

In the 1920s, countries were beginning to experiment with new techniques and styles of cinema, partly due to the poor economic states of many European countries after World War II. Many directors started to create dystopias and science fiction works to illustrate the changes that were occurring around them in technology, authority, fashion, art, and writing. Some of the earliest Expressionist (art which employs a distortion of reality to express the ideas and emotions of its creator) film creators were forced to be innovative in their approach to film-making due to the limited budgets they had to play with. This led to such techniques as painted shadows (see The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari) and paper set-designs (Metropolis) which create a sense of distortion and unease due to the oddity of the images they produce. In Metropolis, the images of the city are terrifyingly oppressive due to their harsh angles and oddly inaccurate shadows. The trend in these films was a rejection of realism and an emphasis on the possibilities of the future and whatever shapes, textures, and emotions the director might have believed the future would materialise in.

German Expressionism was cut short after the 1930s, but its impact was long-lasting and Nazi films made use of the tropes of Expressionism to create anti-Semitic propaganda. Later on, directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Tim Burton, and Ridley Scott would use techniques in their films influenced by the Expressionist film movement. The acting in German Expressionist cinema was just as impactful in the cinematic world as the sets and styles of the films themselves. During the filming of Metropolis, Lang forced his actors into near-perilous circumstances in order to increase the veracity of their performances. When, near the end of the film, Maria (Brigitte Helm) as The Machine Man is burned at the stake, Lang insisted on using actual fire to burn the detritus beneath her tied-up body. This purportedly led to Helm’s dress catching fire. Prior to this moment, Maria is forcefully dragged by her hair by another actor (Grot, the man who works the ‘heart’ machine which keeps the city running), which she said was ‘[not] fun at all’ in a later interview. Lang wanted to create an environment whereby the actors would be forced to act more genuinely in their roles, and despite the controversy of such techniques, it certainly did lead to an astounding performance by all of the actors in the film. The suffering, anger, distress, and panic of the characters in the film is almost haunting in its sincerity, and almost all these emotions are conveyed to us without the use of any dialogue.

Human language has evolved so far as to develop the unprecedented ability to use words to form abstract thoughts about the future, to recall past events, and to create new ideas in the present. How wonderful it is that we have the capability to produce innovative works of fiction using our complex grasp of language and our knowledge of literary history. In theatre and film, however, I think that language can sometimes impedes an actor’s ability to freely embrace their art because they find themselves too focused on perfectly regurgitating lines as opposed to really feeling what those lines actually mean. Metropolis was, for me, a perfect study on how powerful physical acting can be, and how easily one can follow a narrative without the need for dialogue. This form of theatrical expression seems intrinsic to humans; children, while they might lack the linguistic ability to communicate freely with other humans, learn to navigate their world by reading the faces and bodies of people around them, and by taking in stories through picture books and objects around them. We need only look at a young child’s face to understand if they’re happy, hungry, uncomfortable, distressed, or tired. If we look to one of the most popular children’s television shows, Pingu, we see that it uses a fictional dialect to tell its stories, yet we have no problem understanding its narratives because we can use the visual cues it offers as well as the tonal implications of the language it employs.

Metropolis ends on a happy note, whereupon the ‘mediator’, Freder Fredersen, joins together the ‘head’ (the ruling class) with the ‘hands’ (the working class) using the ‘heart’. Trumpets blare an uplifting final hoorah as the workers walk up the steps to the cathedral in a pyramid formation and watch as the head and hands shake hands. A black screen covers this happy scene with the words ‘THE END’.

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The home page of this Carl Kruse blog is at https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Hazel include Reflections on Montmartre, the Legacy of the Satyr, and the World of Wearable Art.
Also find Carl Kruse on the Princeton academia site.

Upcoming: Adele Schwab Photo Exhibit in Berlin

by Carl Kruse

My friend Adele Schwab has organized a photo exhibit in Berlin on two dates:

19 November 2021 (Friday) from 21.00-22:30.

20 November 2021 (Saturday) from 17.00-18.30.

Adele Schwab. Photograph from the artist’s website.

Her exhibit is titled, “Seeing the Unseen” an audio visual project that attempts to make air “visible” and investigates the issue of how to capture the unseen. The exhibit explores methods to capture an important yet unseen element, air.

Her work is part of a series on the environment, and was part of the “48 Stunden Neukölln Arts Festival,” which took place this last summer. This is the first time it is shown in a public exhibit.

The interior of the space will be darkened at first, then alit by photos of trees as they turn during the year, sometimes in rain, other times in glaring sunlight. The concept is for the viewer to be immersed in it.

The exhibit takes place at St. Clara Church, which is on Briesestrasse 13, in Berlin, Germany

Much of Schwab’s images show everyday life in a manner that is ultra real. She is captivated by the relationship between nature and people, and by how the environment shapes culture.

Adele Schwab has a BS in Physics from MIT and studied photography at the Ostkreuz School of Photography in Berlin. She currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.

The Carl Kruse Arts Blog invites all of its followers to what should be a special and unique exhibit. I will be there the night of the 19th if anyone would like to say hi personally.

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The Carl Kruse Arts Blog homepage is at https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other blog posts focusing on photography include, Steve McCurry: Vulnerability Made Immortal and Between Introspection and Surrealism – the Photography of Francesca Woodman.
The blog’s last post was on David Bowie’s alter ego Major Tom.

Upcoming: An Artist Talk With Yury Kharchenko

by Carl Kruse

Our artist friend Yury Kharchenko joins a debate titled “Art, Culture and Memory” at the Wallraf Museum in Cologne, Germany, on 5 October 2021 from 19.00-21.00.

The chat will deal with issues surrounding Holocaust remembrance, the culture of remembrance and the cult of guilt.

Yury Kharcehnko - Portrait

Yury Kharchenko. Photo: New York Times.

In his more recent art works, Yury has dealt with the Holocaust in a seemingly offensive way, using iconography that takes up well-known figures and ideas from pop culture and mixes them with references to the Holocaust.  He confronts viewers with violent fantasies, breaks taboos, shocks sensibilities. We see Scrooge McDuck guarding his money at the gates of Auschwitz. Bugs Bunny has sex in front of a concentration camp.  Goofy trots along happily in front of Buchenwald. Batman stares at us as in front of Auschwitz. These and other works are part of Yury’s series “Waiting for a Superhero,” where he seems to ask, among other things, why didn’t any of the superheros or pop greats save the jews from genocide? The discussion at the Wallraf Museum will take up the role of Yury’s art in the context of Holocaust remembrance and the extent it can (or cannot) contribute to the discourse surrounding the holocaust. 

Carl Krue Art blog - Bugs Bunny
Carl Kruse Art Blog - Goofy



The event will feature Yury, Rita Kersting (Deputy Director Museum Ludwig), Prof. Dr. Micha Brumlik (Publicist, emeritus professor of Educational Sciences University, Frankfurt), Kay Heymer (Head of Modern Art, Museum Kunstpalast Foundation) and will be moderated by Dr. Michael Köhler (freelance author, moderator, editor).

About Yury Kharchenko:  Yury was born in Moscow in 1986 and studied from 2004 to 2008 at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Between 2010 and 2012 he devoted himself to the study of the Torah, Talmud, Jewish ethics and philosophy as well as the topic of Jewish thought influences in postmodernism with a focus on Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas. He lives and works in Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Registration with address and telephone number (for contact tracking) is required at miqua@lvr.de  Registration closes on September 29, 2021

Corona information: Due to restrictions related to the corona pandemic only a limited number of spots are available. If you plan to attend, please review the corona virus precautions for the event at: www.miqua.blog

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Blog home page at https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
We covered Yury during his last exhibitions here.
The blog’s last post was Reflections of Montmartre.
You can find Carl Kruse on TED.

The Legacy of the Satyr

by Hazel Anna Rogers for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

The passing-down of literature fascinates me. I find something utterly awe-inducing in the ability of human language to convey a narrative generation after generation, and for us to have the knowledge and ingenuity to understand the importance of preserving great stories and characters. I suppose the process must be akin, in some sense, to that of a distillation chamber, in that it consists of years of inter-generational storytelling that distill the story to its essence, to the very narrative blocks that birthed it to begin with. And, from then on, the story itself is open to interpretation, thus presenting us with endless possibilities of adaptation. Tales have been pummeled, pressed, and forced into eternally variable forms, starting from anonymous fables and ending in popular animated entertainment. But do we lose something when we carve away all the layers of a story, or a character, and place in it instead our own values, our own narrative, our own words? If we present a character or story to an audience as de facto, that is to say an original work, why need our audience doubt it? I wish to present here the origins and developments of one such character, the Satyr, so as to suggest the true importance of literary and cultural heritage in the modern day.

So…the Satyr. A half man, half beast creature that allegedly emerged in works of Classical Greek mythology, and was most prominently associated with the god of ecstasy and wine, Dionysus (or Bacchus/Liber Pater in Rome), son of Zeus and Semele (the only mortal to father a god, Semele was Zeus’ mistress but swiftly found her death through the wrath of Zeus’ wife, Hera). Dionysus’ artistic importance in Greek society stems from his purported powers – to produce or inspire ecstasy – and many theatrical performances were attributed to him in festivals bearing his name. His legacy was one of exaltation, pleasure, and sexuality, thus many of the ceremonies ascribed to him involved the phallus and the theme of fecundity in the form of spirits such as satyrs.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - 2 Satyrs

Two Satyrs, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1618

The Satyr differs from the Roman ‘Faunus’, Saturn’s grandson who was revered to bring abundance to the pastoral, in that the Satyr is endowed an (erect) phallus along with horse ears and tail, whereas Faunus is half man half goat. However, in the Hellenistic era Satyrs were also presented as being part goat and man, so this distinction can sometimes be arbitrary. Perhaps a more prominent distinction can be observed in ancient Greek artwork, where Satyrs were often painted alongside women (mortals) and nymphs, whom they would attempt to woo. In Classical Athenian theater, the triad of plays performed for the Dionysia would consist of two tragedies proceeded by a bawdy tragicomedy known as the ‘Satyr play’, in which satyrs would take on the role of the chorus. Not many complete plays of this ilk remain from the period, but Euripides’ ‘Cyclops’ is one such play that we have in its entirety. As is characteristic of ‘Satyrs’, Euripides’ play is founded on debauchery and immorality, the main themes of it being gluttony and excessive ingestion (testimony to Dionysus’ title of the ‘god of wine’). The Cyclops’ belly itself is described as the ‘greatest of all divinities’, and Silenus (Dionysus’ satyresque companion) along with his chorus of satyrs are eager for Odysseus to give them his wine in exchange for the Cyclops’ food. It is a wondrous satire of one of the scenes from Homer’s epic The Odyssey. [Carl Kruse: As an aside, Prof. Emily Wilson has released a new, modernized translation of The Odyssey, which I highly recommend).

Interestingly, the lewd and sexual nature of the Satyr and the figure of Silenus have been lost to time if we look to references of them in 20th and 21st Century literature and media. Mr Tumnus, the faun-like character in C S Lewis’ ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ (1950) is exceedingly tender and tame, despite his appearance being a sort of faun-satyr hybrid (he has a long, horse-like tail but also horns and goatish legs). The ‘Nymph and Satyr’ (1908) painting by Fauvist artist Henri Matisse is distinctly unsexual, aside from the nymph lying in front of him (which I suppose could be interpreted any such way), and with the satyr looking distinctively man-like.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Matisse painting


The Nymph and the Satyr, 1908, Henri Matisse

The satyr Grover Underwood in Rick Riordan’s popular children’s series of ‘Percy Jackson’ novels is also decidedly domestic, acting simply as a loyal friend to protagonist Percy, despite the fact that the series itself is supposedly based on Greek mythology.

Why is this important? Why is it significant that a character that continues to be portrayed in popular culture has lost its defining traits to time? Surely poetic license allows for us to make these changes? Well, yes. I agree. But I also think that this example is perfect in showing us how easily our literary and cultural heritage can fade away. In a few simple sentences, Rick Riordan has replaced the legacy of the satyr with something completely different, and I think it’s a shame to forget where these stories and characters came from in the first place. We are all influenced by what we read, listen to, and watch. As we increasingly rely on fast-paced pleasures such as social media and video games, our interest in the past wanes. Everything is moving faster, everywhere there are new possibilities, all around new futures tempt fewer people to go to university. We don’t need to spend three years learning about one field anymore in the hope of pursuing a career that brings enough money in. We can do short entrepreneur courses or make money through social media outlets. Increasing your intelligence through persistent long-term study is no longer as desirable – it has become a waste of time. You can get all the answers you could ever want through the internet.

I think there’s an alarmingly steep uphill trend of shortening attention spans aligned with the increasing normality of seeing six-year-olds with smartphones, and I find that disarming. Classics and robust tomes of literature were most definitely not shoved down my throat while I was growing up, but the names of such authors as Austen, Lawrence, and Homer were certainly not unknown to me. I loved to sit down and read thick, musty novels through day and night, often becoming so invested in the storyline of a certain protagonist that it would take an almighty level of strength to pull myself away from a book so as to have an agreeable amount of sleep. I used to get reading lights in my stockings at Christmas which only exacerbated my unhealthy night-time habits.

Through our increasing reliance on the internet to solve every question or dilemma, I do believe we have become, or are becoming, quite base thinkers. We are more inclined to rely on the satisfaction derived from a ‘like’ or ‘share’ on a social media post, our primary mode of communication, than to seek it from reading or researching the shelves in a library. Popular classic novels have been turned into graphic novels so they’re easier to ingest, and there is an ever-growing market for pseudo-babble texts that tell you how to improve your life with various methods of spirituality and finance-management. These books employ lists and short phrases to cater to our inability to concentrate on a single idea for longer than a page. Complexity seems unappealing, and ease and speed of ingestion of information is what we now seem to seek.

Reading a long book takes discipline, and time, something many of us don’t have a lot of anymore. But it also takes passion, and with a world endlessly bombarding us with all of the exciting and different things we could be doing with our time we often feel inclined to leave the quiet, secular activity of reading to one side. Even just a hundred years ago, primary and secondary schools often still taught Latin, and reading the ‘canonical’ works was non-negotiable. Though in saying that, there is much to be said about the validity of ‘canonical’ works, and I value the attempts by many university institutions to vary this ‘canon’ to include non-native English writers and literature from marginalized authors.

Why not delve deeper, why not exchange a moment of time you would normally spend binge-watching a television series on something that takes more work, more imagination? Why not pick up a fat book, one that makes you feel when you open it to the first page that it is so impossibly long that you could never possibly finish it? Why not read the books that have influenced timeless authors through the centuries, and see if they inspire you just as much? Why not invest time learning about the history of all of the art and literature around you, all that made us what we are today?

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The blog homepage is at https://carlkruse.net.
Contact: carl At carlkruse DOT com.
Other articles by Hazel Anna Rogers include When Did We Stop Criticizing Art and Paper Books, E-Book Dreams.
The blog’s last post was on Brunelleschi’s Dome.
Carl Kruse is also on the Goodreads book site.

Filippo Brunelleschi and his Dome

By Asia Leonardi for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), architect and engineer, sculptor and painter, is universally considered the pioneer of the Italian Renaissance and the creator of an approach to architecture that would dominate the European art scene, at least until the end of the 19th century. Through a passionate study of antiquity that brought him several times to Rome starting from 1402, he reacted to the anti-classicism of late Gothic architecture and artistic culture, referring consistently to the language of the ancients and proposing new design systems based on modular structures. The keystone of this cultural and technical turning point was the invention of the vanishing point perspective in which the great technological tradition of Tuscan architects and masters was combined with the new trends of scientific thought, all converging towards the ever-increasing use of mathematical tools in the study of reality.

By unifying all orthogonal lines towards a single vanishing point, the scientific rules were built to objectively measure the decrease in depth of bodies inserted in space. The  Florentine artist was among the first to elaborate and use rules and numerical relationships in the architectural construction of space and figurative representation. And this, together with the effort to identify the geometric principles used to organize the reproduction and creation of space, was the basis of a return to antiquity.

Architecture was for Brunelleschi a tool for mathematical control of design. Classical architecture is understood as an example of the exact measurability of space, as a clear example of the concrete possibility of subjecting the whole substantial reality of architectural space to rigorous mathematical formulas.

 

With Brunelleschi, a new system of organization of the construction site and of construction work came about and the new social figure of the architect was born.

The architect was no longer a superintendent of works, endowed with equal dignity concerning workers to a large extent operating on an autonomous level concerning him, as was the case in the Middle Ages, but an intellectual, cultured, an updated figure, who conceived and prepared the project and the details of the building, to which the activity of the workers, artisans, and contractors engaged in the work had to be instructed.

It was the end of the ancient organization of building activity, which had supported and achieved the great Florentine, and more generally Tuscan urban expansion of the 12th and 13th centuries. In a new relationship with the client, the new artist, as was outlined in the Bruneschellian experience, was a well-defined figure in his individuality, who ventured into the field of artistic innovation with a new, freer and more secular spirit.

But the figure of Brunelleschi would still be unclear if we did not put him in his historical context, in his place, that is, in Florence at the height of its territorial expansion and closely linked to its republican institutions. In the first sixty years of the fifteenth century Filippo Brunelleschi, Masaccio and Beato Angelico, Donatello, Nanni di Banco, and Lorenzo Ghiberti, Paolo Uccello and Filippo Lippi, Leon Battista Alberti, Luca Della Robbia, and other artists lived and worked in Florence, all animated by the same effort of cultural transformation, all converging in outlining the contents of new art and a new artistic figure.

Why, we might ask, did this constellation of artists come together in Florence? The early Renaissance artists, like few other examples in history (and the comparison with the Athens of the 5th century BC, although abused, may be useful), was configured as the expression, in the work of artists, of a cultural renewal that affected the entire city.

Thus, the desire of the artists to revive the noble classical prototypes was linked to the fervor of literary and humanistic studies and above all to the investigation, the enhancement of the virtues of the ancients, to the awareness that they could relive – indeed, that they were living – in contemporary Florence.

The Search for Measures and Proportions: Inspiration From the Classic

The trip to Rome (between 1402 and 1404) with Donatello was decisive for the formation of Brunelleschi’s architectural ideas. While his friend was more interested in the still visible examples of ancient sculpture, Brunelleschi studied the proportion of buildings and construction techniques. From Rome he returned with the idea that the architect should invent the overall structure of the building in proportional terms: concentrate on those, as the value and beauty of the work depended on them, and abolish the superstructure of the decorative elements, so dear to Gothic architecture. The assumption of ancient orders served this purpose: to limit the structural and decorative uncertainty of the Gothic to a reduced and correlated case study, according to ancient rules. The distance between two columns, to give an example, does not determine the height of the pointed arch thrown above them but instead defines the height of a round arch that joins them and allows to proportion the measures of the base and those of the height of the arch. The column, the pillar, the pilaster, the entablature, the round arch were the indispensable ingredients of an architectural practice that had, as its primary purpose, the creation of modular structures and the geometric rationalization of the plans and elevations. This is the radical innovation of the architectural practice made by Brunelleschi, who gave concrete proof of it in the buildings, secular or ecclesiastical, entrusted to him by the Florentine public groups and, more rarely, also by some private clients.

 The Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.

Brunelleschi’s meditations on radial harmony developed during a long gestation resulting in one of his most daring and complex projects, the very symbol of the Florentine Renaissance and one of his best-known works in the world: the Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.

He was involved in it from 1417 until his death, through successive phases in which the various components of the colossal project were progressively developed: the huge converging caps raised in the void upwards, above the drum; the final lantern, keystone of the dome (completed around 1460, after the artist’s death); the dead stands, decorative elements but also buttresses of the formidable lateral thrusts caused by the large dome. Brunelleschi’s genius in this undertaking, as has been repeatedly noted, did not consist so much in the conception of the pointed arch shape of the dome, which was forced by objective requirements (for such dimensions it was not possible to think of using a hemispherical shape ), as in the ability to prepare the tools to complete the work (construction systems, machinery) and in the correct planning of the work phases.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - diagram

Problems Posed by Construction.

The conclusion of the large apse tribune of Santa Maria del Fiore, by Arnolfo di Cambio (1367), and the subsequent erection of the massive octagonal drum (1413) with its four meter-thick walls, had left open the difficult problem of completing construction of the cathedral through an enormous dome, already foreseen by the original Arnolfian project. The opening that was intended to be covered by the dome, almost forty-two meters in diameter, was slightly smaller than the largest dome of antiquity, the Pantheon.

Following the competition launched at the Opera del Duomo in 1418, the construction of the dome was entrusted to Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, who were proclaimed winners after their joint a model of the project. The work began in 1420 and with that also disagreements between the two artists, and in 1426 Brunelleschi found himself with sole responsibility, something new for him, of the direction of the works.

The great innovation he introduced in the construction of the brick dome, supported by eight large white ribs, was the use of a load-bearing structure in every major phase of the work. The choice was a must: at this distance above the ground, it was not conceivable to use wooden reinforcements (ribs), as the traditional technique required.

Project and Organization of Works.

By adopting a double cap, internal and external, Brunelleschi simplified and strengthened the construction, placing the external one, parallel to the first, on twenty-four supports raised above the segments of the internal dome. The external dome was designed for practical and aesthetic purposes, to better protect the building from water, and to make it appear, as the work of the cathedral demanded, more magnificent and spacious.

It was up to Brunelleschi to think of the mechanical devices necessary to solve the complex problems of installation. For example, to lift the building material on the scaffolding he provided platforms for the workers; he even designed special boats for the transport of marble and bricks along the Arno. He designed every aspect of the dome covering, a first in the history of modern architecture, the position of sole manager.

Religious Significance and Earthly Significance.

After sixteen years of intense work, the dome was consecrated on 25 March 1436 by Pope Eugene IV. From a symbolic-religious point of view, it represented the triumphal crown of the Virgin to whom the Florentine cathedral was dedicated. But far more important was the earthly, social, and political significance of the work. Emblem of a city that had expanded its borders, the dome rose, with its expanded volume, over the roofs of the medieval city, detaching itself from the underlying body of the basilica, demonstrating a new way of considering history and space. Admired from afar, against the background of the hills that surround Florence, the dome, for the essentialness of its lines, for the visual effect induced by the contrast between the red brick of the caps and the white curvilinear ribs, becomes the pulsating center of a large urban system; dominating the entire region. The effect it had on his contemporaries must have been great because, as Alberti wrote, it seemed to “cover all the Tuscan peoples with its shadow”. It is a work still linked to the spirit of the Gothic because it is based on the  calculation of structural forces in equilibrium, but the result of a new mentality as it redefines and re-proportioned the underlying building redesigns and subdues the surrounding area. However, it is a Renaissance work because, as the architectural historian Leonardo Benevolo wrote, it is the first “where the architect is not only a high-level consultant for a collective body of executors, but the only one responsible for the form, decoration, structure, and construction site organization”.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Sketch of Dome

 

Construction Techniques of the Dome

The size of the dome that was to be built forced Brunelleschi to adopt new solutions to solve extremely difficult technical problems, also aggravated by the considerable height. The work was entrusted to him not because he had presented a particularly compellingly shaped dome model, but because he had provided a coherent work plan for its construction.

Brunelleschi found solutions to thousands of practical questions, capturing the wonder and admiration of his contemporaries. Vasari lists some of these measures: Brunelleschi had organized a lighting system for the stairs and corridors that run, at various levels, between the internal and external envelope of the dome and had placed the iron support points there to make it easier go up and walk through those tunnels; he had arranged the support points for the scaffolding of whoever, in the future, would have wanted to decorate the inner shell with paintings or mosaics, as in fact happened.

 He had designed an elaborate rainwater drainage system; on the outside, he had even provided for “holes and several openings, so that the winds break, and the vapors together with earthquakes could not cause damage”. He went to the kilns to check that he was supplied with flawless bricks; he chose the stones one by one, making sure they weren’t cracked. He provided the stonecutters with models in wood and wax, and even carving them in turnips, in order to show them how the joints were to fix one stone to another. Nor could he overlook the problem of the organization of work. When the construction site gradually moved to higher altitudes, Vasari writes again, “workers lost a lot of time in going to dinner and drink, and they suffered great discomfort due to the heat of the day. It was therefore established by Filippo the order that taverns should have been opened in the dome with the kitchens, and wine should have been sold; and so no one would left work, except in the evening; which was to their convenience”. But the workers needed solid scaffolding to work safely at such high altitudes. At the beginning of the work, when the dome wall was still almost vertical, the scaffolding was supported by beams inserted into the wall, both inside and outside the building: but lastly, given the strong inclination of the masonry, he had to think of a different system. Filippo Brunelleschi designed a scaffolding suspended in the void, located in the center of the dome, probably supported by long beams on platforms fixed at lower altitudes. these platforms were also to serve as warehouses for materials and work tools. Brunelleschi had to take steps to lift the heavy bricks to the height of the installation.

He partly used traditional machines, derived from the construction practice of Gothic cathedrals, but he had to invent new ones, applying the multiplier system, invented for the manufacture of watches, which was able to increase the effectiveness of the strength of winches and pulleys. In such machines, the engine was driven by a couple of horses. By walking in circles, animals could rotate a vertical shaft. This, in turn, impressed it on a horizontal shaft from which the ropes that supported the loads, fixed at a height to pulleys, rolled and unwound. In this way bricks and stones could rise and fall through a difference in height of tens and tens of meters.

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Homepage: Carl Kruse
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Asia Leonardi focus on Maria Abramovic, Frida Kahlo and Forgotten Places.
Check out the other Carl Kruse blog at https://carlkruse.at
For those interested in green building construction find Carl Kruse at the USGBC here.

From Pop + Optical Art to the Rejection of the Artistic Object – the 1960’s.

by Asia Leonardi for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

It will be inevitable, in this article, to feel a certain sense of unease and difficulty in orienting oneself in front of works that are very different from each other a few years later. You will find all and the opposite of everything. In the past it was easier when faced with a painting, a sculpture, an architecture, to establish the period, to propose a probable dating, because the spirit of the time (what marks an age in itself and determines a taste) resisted longer, it stretched out, without encountering serious obstacles, for decades. Yet the speed of societal and cultural change is reflected in the speed and change in art. The spirit of the times today has certainly not ceased to act; but its range of action no longer differs over decades but over every handful of years, because the changes are more rapid than in the past.

From the end of the fifties the reaction to the informal, to its desecrating and nihilistic fury, passed through different experiences, somehow opposed, such as “Optical Art” and “Pop Art”. Optical art (mostly known with its abbreviated term op art) includes those artistic manifestations interested in the analysis of perceptual and kinetic phenomena. In this context, the artists created, on the one hand, works with their own movement, on the other works that, thanks to a study of perceptual tricks, create different visual effects according to the movements of the viewer, thus soliciting his participation.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Victor Vasarely

Victor Vasarely; Op Art


With these interests, op artists grafted an aversion to any romantic individualism into a line of research connected with the rigorous scientific spirit through groups such as the German Group Zero, the Swiss Kalte Kunst, the French Group de Recherche d’Art Visuel, the Yugoslavian Nove Tendencije.

In the context of op and kinetic art, the production of multiple works designed by the artist but made according to industrial procedures in smaller series of copies, often numbered and signed, began. The artist’s intervention is limited to the design phase: one understands how the multiple is placed side by side and often confused with industrial design, and how it also risks lending itself easily to commercial operations and mystifications.

With the so-called pop art (short for popular art) the artist’s interest turned to the world of consumerism, to the Babelic profusion of objects imposed on a daily basis by the system of production and advertising: it’s therefore obvious that this trend would mainly develop in the United States. By isolating the product of daily use, decontextualizing it, transforming it into an idol, a totem, a fetish, pop art alluded to the depersonalization of a world dominated by the profit of things, and ironically celebrated the triumph of goods and launched a cry of alarm. 

Artists such as Robert Raushenberg, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein demonstrated their discomfort by reproducing the most usual objects or images favored by the mass media, sometimes with meticulous, hyper-realistic technique, or by remaking them in natural or hyperbolic dimensions, or by using the objects themselves. In 1964 the pop artists were presented, with great success, in the U.S. pavilion of the Venice Biennale: it was the decisive push for the start of a short but intense pop season throughout Europe.

The second half of the sixties, in the whirlwind succession of fashions, saw the affirmation of minimal art (sometimes labeled “Primary Structures”, from the title of a 1966 New York exhibition), not without ties to pop art. The term “minimal” refers to the fact that artists of this trend minimize the complications of form, and aspire to elementary forms using simple and non-traditional materials (concrete, iron, steel, wood, aluminum, plexiglas, etc). This is how often large-scale works of geometric evidence are born,consisting of isolated or repeated modules, with the intention of involving the surrounding space in some way.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Primary Structures, New York

Primary Structures, exhibition 1966, New York


The artists of minimal art, pugnacious opponents of the com-modifiable object and in search of elementary volumes (almost in an attempt to trace the origin of forms) were already close to conceptualism, a trend (the term was used for the first time by Sol LeWitt in 1967) which, having abandoned any intention of representation, will make reflection on art prevail and will underline the phase of planning over actual realization. But conceptualism is a phenomenon with rather vague outlines and it is really difficult to frame, given that from time to time poor art, land art,visual poetry, those forms of spectacularization of art represented by happenings and performances. Poor art, however, well underlines the predominant trend in the late sixties, namely the rejection of the traditional artistic object.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Allan Kaprow’s “Happenings”, 1960, New York

Allan Kaprow’s “Happenings”, 1960, New York

One of the reasons that underlie many experiences of recent years has been the anxiety of renewal at all costs (we could also define it as a revival of the spirit of the avantgarde), the rejection of everything that even remotely resembles “already done”. This novelty race combined with a spirit of revolt, distraction, profanation in the sixties and seventies. The artists have reached insurmountable limits: they have applied the label of artistry to practically everything, they have exhibited themselves in the halls of museums, they have even really hurt themselves. The protest against the traditional system of arts has been radical, and often a reaction to the commodification of works; however, we must warn that the market has been able to seize seemingly elusive experiences, by putting into circulation, for example, photographs or recordings of performances, body art events, land art and so on.

Of course, many experiences imbued with such a strong radical spirit have had the merit of demythologizing the aura that surrounded the work of art, but at the same time, a large part of the public has pulled back, unable to understand or even in horror.

In the artistic events after 1945, it must be said, the tools of expression have multiplied, from cinema to video-tapes to electronic instruments and now NFTs, resulting from the most advanced technology, and the artist has seen an increase in her possibilities of manipulation and intervention, able to fully realize demiurgic wishes. Numerous operators were active with very different means: the case of Andy Warhol teaches, with his decisive contribution to the development of underground cinema.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, 1967; New York, collection of Leo Castelli

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, 1967; New York, collection of Leo Castelli

Andy Warhol’s position is highly critical of mass media-induced distortion. The artist works on sensational images, the faces made famous by the news (Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy), the photographs of a disastrous fire, of a spectacular car accident. The media repeatedly propose the same images to us, manipulate them, deform them, and Warhol thus renders them, almost unrecognizable, insisted on some detail, half-erased for the rest. They are the same fragments of reality that are offered to us every day by newspapers, television, cinema, but which no longer have the power to strike us, they leave us indifferent (and very soon reality itself does not arouse different reactions in us).

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The blog home page is at https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Asia Leonardi include those on Frida Kahlo, Charlotte Salomon, More on Action Painting, and Jackson Pollock.

Frida Kahlo: Flowers Are Born From Mud

by Asia Leonardi for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

On 6 July 1907 in Mexico City, Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon was born to German parents who emigrated from Hungary. She claimed to be born in 1910, with the Revolution, with a new Mexico.

Frida Kahlo is a revolution. An artistic revolution, a revolution of thought, an overwhelming hymn to life that is born with every lively stroke of color; some approached her to surrealism, but Frida was the first to break away from this definition: “I have always painted my reality, not my dreams.” Pure energy, a living fire and an intoxicating passion, Frida Kahlo looks like a character straight out of the pen of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, small, proud, survivor of polio at six, and of a terrible car accident at eighteen that will leave her invalid, the art of Frida is born from her survival instinct. She dyes her pains with color, transforms them into beauty.

 “I paint flowers to keep them from dying.”

Carl Kruse Arts - FRIDA KAHLO IN BED

A strong, tenacious woman, a fighter: Frida is a disarming and full throttle scream, born from the awareness that you can always survive pain and that you must have the courage to be who you are, and to love yourself beyond the limits of your body. Frida paints herself crudely, in front of a mirror she observes and depicts her naked suffering with bright colors, the labor of her body, with pride, her eyes are always pointed, straight and motionless, giving the impression of probing the soul of the beholder. Facing a portrait of her, we are almost inclined to lower our heads, in front of the majesty of her figure, tense, suffering, proud.

“I lived from art, I lived from love.” A life between suffering and passion.

 At the age of six Frida falls ill with polio: her right foot and leg remain deformed, so much so that Frida hides them first with pants and then with long Mexican skirts. So, if when she is little she is nicknamed by other children “Frida Pata de Palo” (wooden leg), when she grows up she will be admired for her exotic appearance.

 In 1922, at the age of 18, Frida enrolled in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria in Mexico City intending to become a doctor. During this period Frida is part of the “Cachucas”, a group of students who support socialist ideas of the Minister of Education, Vasconcelos, calling for school reforms; she also shows interest in the visual arts but has not yet thought of pursuing an artistic career.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Frida Kahlo Self Portrait
The very first self-portrait: Self-portrait in a Velvet dress, 1926, Frida Kahlo

 On September 17, 1935, the bus bound for Coyoacàn, on which Frida Kahlo had boarded with her boyfriend, Alejandro Gomez, to go home after school, collided with a tram.

“I got on the bus with Alejandro… Shortly after the Sun train bus of the Xochimilco line collided… it was a strange collision; not violent, but deaf, slow, and massacred everyone. Me more than others. It is false to say that it makes us shocked, false to say that we cry. I didn’t shed any tears. The impact dragged us forward and the handrail went through me like the sword goes through the bull. “

Frida remains between the metal rods of the tram. The handrail breaks and goes over  her from side to side. Alejandro picks her up and notices that Frida has a piece planted in her body. A man puts his knee on Frida’s body and takes out the piece of metal.

The first serious diagnosis comes one year after the accident: fractures of the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae, three fractures of the pelvis, eleven fractures of the right foot, dislocation of the left elbow, deep wound in the abdomen, produced by an entered iron bar from the right hip. Acute peritonitis, the patient is prescribed to wear a plaster corset for 9 months, and complete rest for at least 2 months after discharge from the hospital.

“For many years my father kept a box of oil paints, a couple of brushes in an old glass and a palette … during the period when I had to stay in bed for a long time I took advantage of the opportunity and I asked my father to give them to me … My mother had an easel prepared, to be applied to my bed, because the plaster bust did not allow me to stand up straight. So I began to paint my first picture.”

 Frida’s mother, Matilda, transforms Frida’s bed into a canopy and mounts a huge mirror on it, that Frida, immobilized, can at least see herself.

Thus are born those self-portraits that remind us of her, with her eyes dominated by dark eyebrows, particularly marked, which join the root of the nose like bird’s wings: “I paint myself because I spend a lot of time alone and because I am the subject that I know best.”

The Broken Column, Frida Kahlo, 1944

With these representations, Frida breaks the taboos relating to the body and female sexuality. Diego Rivera, her future husband, will say of her: “the first woman in the history of art to have faced with absolute and inexorable frankness, in a ruthless but at the same time calm way, those general and particular issues that exclusively concern women.”

As the months passed, Frida devotes herself with growing awareness to painting. She advances slowly, produces in small doses and small formats: what her health allows her to do: “my paintings are painted well, not lightly but with patience. My painting carries within itself the message of pain. “

Only towards the end of 1927 did Frida recover enough to be able to lead a normal life despite the pain caused by the various braces, and the scars left by the operations.

In 1928 Frida joins a group of artists and intellectuals who support independent Mexican art, far from academicism and linked to the popular expression: Mexicanism, which is expressed in mural painting, particularly encouraged by the state, almost certainly for the purpose of sharing national history with a large illiterate mass.

For her part, Frida creates her own figurative language to express ideas and feelings; the world contained in Frida’s works refers above all to Mexican popular art and pre-Columbian culture; there are, in fact, popular votive images, depictions of martyrs and Christian saints, anchored in the faith of the people; moreover, in the self-portraits, Frida is almost always represented in country clothes or with Indian costume.

In early 1928, German Del Campo, one of her friends from the student movement, introduces her to a group of young people gathered around the Cuban communist  Julio Antonio Nella, who is in exile in Mexico and who has an affair with the photographer Tina Modotti. It was Tina herself who introduced Frida to Diego Rivera: a very famous painter and muralist, even though the two had already met in 1923, while Diego was working in the Bolivar amphitheater. Of that meeting Diego remembers this girl … “she had a dignity and self-assurance that was completely unusual and a strange fire danced in her eyes.”

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Frida and diego
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

When Frida meets Diego for the second time, he is a heavy, gigantic man, Frida teases him by calling him “elephant”: he has already been married twice and has four children.

On 21 Agust 1929 they get married. She is 22, he is almost 43.

Due to the pelvic malformation caused by her accident, Frida is unable to carry out her pregnancies, and so, three months after the wedding, Frida has to have an abortion. In November 1930, Frida and Diego moved to the United States for four years for artistic and political reasons. In Detroit, Frida becomes pregnant for the second time, but the triple fracture of the acinus hinders the correct position of the baby. However, Frida decides to keep the baby, despite her poor physical condition and the risk.  However, on July 4th she lost this baby to a miscarriage.

 In 1934 they return to Mexico, Frida is forced to have an abortion for the third time and separates from Diego who, in the meantime, had had several adventures with other women, including Frida’s sister, Cristina.

Frida begins to have relationships with other men and other women and to be active politically. During the 1936 Spanish Civil War, Frida commits herself remotely to the defense of the Spanish Republic, organizing meetings, writing letters, collecting necessities, clothes, and medicines to send to the front.

In 1937, she hosted in her Casa Azul, Lev and Natalija Trotsky, who had been traveling since 1929, expelled from the Soviet Union.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Frida Red
Tree of Hope, 1946, Frida Kahlo

In the 1940s, Frida’s fame was so great that her works were requested for almost all group exhibitions held in Mexico.

In 1943 she was called to teach at the new art school: the Esmeralda. Frida, for health reasons, is soon forced to give lessons in her home. Her methods are unorthodox: “Muchachos, locked up here, at school, we can’t do anything. Let’s go out into the street, let’s paint the life of the street.” Her students remember her “the only help she gave us was to stimulate us … she didn’t say anything about the way we had to paint or about the style, like the master Diego did … She taught us above all the love for people, she made us love popular art “.

In 1950 Frida underwent seven  spinal operations and spent nine months in the hospital. After 1951, due to pain, she was no longer able to work except by resorting to painkillers: perhaps this is why her brushstroke is softer, less accurate, the color thicker and the execution of details more imprecise.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Frida and hammer and sickle

In 1953, at her first solo exhibition, set up by her photographer friend Lola Alvarez Bravo, she participated lying on a bed, the doctors practically forbade her to get up. It was Diego who had the idea of ​​carrying the large bed, drinking, and singing with a large audience. In August of the same year, the doctors decided to amputate her right leg.

Frida is destroyed, withdrawn into herself, reflects, and writes in her diary a phrase born from this period that becomes famous: “Pies. para que los quiero, si tengo alas pa’ volar.” (“Feet. why do I want them, if I have wings to fly?”)

In 1954 she fell ill with pneumonia. During her convalescence, on July 2, she participates in a demonstration against the U.S. intervention in Guatemala, holding a sign with the symbol of a dove carrying a message of peace. Frida died of a pulmonary embolism on the night of July 13, in her Casa Azul, seven days after her forty-seventh birthday. The night before she died, with the words “I feel that I will leave you soon,” she gave Diego a ring, which was to be her gift for him on their upcoming Twenty-fifth anniversary.

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The blog home page is at https://carlkruse.net

Former articles by Asia Leonardi include those on Simonetta Vespucci, Charlotte Salomon, and Jackson Pollock.

The blog’s last post was “Are Memes Art?“

Carl Kruse has an account on Behance.

Are Memes Art?

by Vittorio Compagno for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog


The digital era gave birth to unique trends tied to the advent of the Internet. The source of many of these trends is as old as the internet itself, which is to say online forums. From these fountains of discussion, as in the ancient Greek “agorà,” emerged all sorts of culture and knowledge. A new form of communication emerged, based on inside jokes, common experience, and led to an iteration of the finest forms of communications: art. Bear with me.

If trends like being “Rickrolled”, the infamous “Gangnam Style”, or the “Ice Bucket Challenge” seem to have nothing to do with it, I’ll explain why memes are art.

First a quick look at two takes on memes:

meme noun
\ ˈmēm \
: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.

Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.
—by Richard Dawkins , source Merriam-Webster.com

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Image of Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins, British
ethologist, early in his life

In 1976 the author of this last quote, Richard Dawkins, the father of the word “meme”, couldn’t predict the explosion of globally available digital social media through which this kind of “idea, behavior, style” could spread.

That memes were part of early internet culture was clear in 1994, when Mike Godwin, in his now famous Wired article “Meme, Counter-Meme” wrote:

A “meme,” of course, is an idea that functions in a mind the same way a gene or virus functions in the body. And an infectious idea (call it a “viral meme”) may leap from mind to mind, much as viruses leap from body to body […] When a meme catches on, it may crystallize whole schools of thought.

The evolution of memes


Internet memes have evolved since the text-based ones that Godwin was referring to, but the perception that a form of communication so powerful
could influence trends or ideas was already clear at that time.

The power of memes grew, from simple lines of code sent via the
56 Kb per second connections of 1994, to their current medium: images and short videos.

Images have strong evocative power. They can express a thousand words, because the unspoken often overtakes what can be said in conversation. The introduction of images represented a leap in meme development, as this new form of communication evolves rapidly. Dawkins would be proud.

Memes got better not just in visual quality but also in their communicative techniques, their appeal, and, their ability to describe cryptically a certain moment in time, or event. That is one of the most intriguing things about memes – if you don’t know the inside joke behin them, because you’re not in a specific group, someone has to explain them to you. But the moment that you understand what’s going on, why that meme was created, what made it funny, you suddenly become part of that circle. They are the externalization of what’s private and protected inside a group of people, that couldn’t be known explicitly perhaps until expressed by the creator, and that today, in this digital age, serve as a stand in of our ways of living and thinking. And isn’t much of art not that? Something we know to be true yet could not fully express ourselves to be revealed by the artist?

The reason memes have become more than text or images is they are now art.


Pop Art of our generation

Think about how, in the late ‘50s and ‘60s, the “Pop Art” movement wanted to set a new standard for itself, moving away from centuries of conventional art, trying to, as the name suggests, popularize art, and how the public perceived artworks. This emerging form of expression represented an evolutionary trend in art that goes generally towards the focus on an abstract interpretation of the artwork, and a tendency to bring into it what is common among the people like trends or celebrities or famous brands.

We’re living a new iteration of Pop Art, where, in line with the trend of previous years, what’s made by an artist is transcendent. This new course has been engendered by the Web, the main pilaster of a new vision of art that revolves around the dematerialization of the artwork.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Marilyn

Marilyn Diptych, 1962

Why memes


Memes are a form of art because they are not presented or appreciated for their beauty, nor for the little details, but because they express something the public can relate to. In still images, just like in the ‘50s and ‘60s, you don’t get just funny quotes, or dorky images, but the sub product of society. The only difference between the two movements is that there won’t be another Andy Warhol, or a James Rosenquist, because new memes travel at the speed of the Internet, gigabits per seconds of quotes, images, references, jokes, that are created and forgotten, and just like the iterative and perpetual process of evolution, only a few are remembered, often created by people hidden behind a
Reddit username.

That’s right, they describe our generation, along with other forms of art, like music, or movies that have been dematerialized from their conventional shape, and have transformed from the vinyl, or the dvd you had to buy, to your monthly subscription to Spotify or Netflix. Memes have become so important to our common culture that an online “library” archives thousands of them, avoiding the inevitable loss that the speed at which they are made causes.
When a form of communication becomes popular, you suddenly start seeing ads popping in using that same medium. That is the case with popular art in recent decades.

Today, with the rise of social media promotions, the same companies who didn’t know what a meme was, started to commission thousands of them in an attempt to appeal to young people. Some of them were actually good, but not all.

It’s clear by now that memes are not just ordinary pictures you find on the internet, they are art. Like Leo Tolstoy said, art is:


To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in
oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling – this is the activity of art.

Carl Kruse Art Blog - Ceiling Car



================
Carl Kruse Art Blog Home Page: https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
The blogs last post was Thinking About Realism
Vittorio also writes about internet culture and technology at carlkruse.at
As an aside, Carl Kruse is a member of the Richard Dawkins Foundation – find him here.

Museum of Old and New Art

by Fraser Hibbitt for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

Photos from MONA, Carl Kruse and Blooloop


In 2006 the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities closed for a huge revamping and after the input of $75 million and five years of construction the Museum of Old and New Art emerged (MONA). Located in Holbart, Tasmania, the museum has since conversed with the world of art in an idiosyncratic and spectacular way. 

David Walsh. Photo: Blooloop.

The man behind the mission, David Walsh, made his fortune as a gambler. When MONA opened he would go on to describe it as a “subversive Disneyland.” The eclectic collection gathered in the museum are tied by the twin themes of sex and death. Ancient art, such as the mummy of Ta-Sheret-Min, resides close by the famed “Cloaca”: a series of vessels conceived by the Belgian artist Wilm Devoye that holds a functioning digestive tract. The vessels are fed in the late morning; excreting occurs by early afternoon.

The museum is statement, not of high art or the understanding of such, but of a playful experience and attendance to art. The account of the construction of MONA highlights this dynamic that the museum is trying to communicate:

“This is a mistake. People will think you don’t know what you’re doing, like you’re a rich man and you’ve just got all your toys around you – your big gallery, your tennis court. You won’t be taken seriously.” And David said, “Exactly.”

Carl Kruse Arts Blog - MONA from the Sea
Approaching MONA from the sea. Tasmania. Photo: MONA.

Statements from MONA radiate this playful irreverence: “Bars, café, restaurants and cemetery on site,” and again when describing what MONA is: “a museum, or something.” Of course, there is a seriousness to this mask of indifference. It is an invitational strategy; everyone is welcome to find and experience this strange world.

The Ferry from Holbart to MONA – Sheep as Seats. Photo: Carl Kruse

Things become clearer when we think about the space made to house David’s vision. He says the best way to approach the museum is by sea: “to ascend from the water as the ancient Greeks did to go to their temples.” There the visitor is met with a single-story entry, nothing overwhelming, until inside a spiral staircase takes them down to three large labyrinthine spaces. There are no windows, there is only the stony silence of the descent.

Descending staircase into MONA. Photo Blooloop.

It is all for the experience of viewing art, of creating a space where the visitor can give themselves to the spectacle and possible meaning of art. David fashioned his museum in direct opposition to what he had found in other museums – the building shouldn’t dwarf the visitor nor impose its stateliness upon them but facilitate the interaction between the visitor and the art.

Visitors are recommended the ‘O’ app, either provided or available for download on their phones. The ‘O’ app was introduced so that visitors wouldn’t have to spend time reading the small prints on plaques by each art piece, instead they can immerse themselves freely. The visitor does not need to feel “that they haven’t appreciated the piece or understood it without the plaque.” The ‘O’ app has a menu where the viewer can learn about the art under the title ‘Art Wank’; it can also recommend what food to try and where the toilets are. 

“Besides Myself” by James Turrell at MONA.


David Walsh’s “anti-museum” theme has proved something in its wake; the attraction of, to use Richard Flanagan’s words, “the ultimate senseless chance.” It this direct wish of Walsh’s to “piss of the academics” which has found such exceeding popularity – in 2015 MONA was ranked as the world’s best modern art gallery, above London’s Tate modern. It is one of Carl Kruse’s favorite museums in the world.

It is not that we will find all the pieces on display as beautiful or even remotely interesting; we may even be repulsed. It is this rapid juxtaposition of chance that offers up this experience of being face to face with something of life, something like a drunken night filled with half-memories and unexpected turns. MONA is a playful provocateur entering into the high-minded conversation about art.

The provocateur broaches the subject from a different point of view. Most people attending, it may be presumed, have visited another art gallery with its prestigious formal ordering of art. Any ordering of art tells us something of how we should think about art. MONA has opted for the fully immersive, nonchalant, experience; it may be anti-museum, but it is not anti-art – It is asking us to speak about it, to experience it, in a different way.

Carl Kruse Arts Blog - The Snake by Sydney Nolan in Tasmania, Australia.

Sydney Nolan’s “THE SNAKE” at MONA.

Walsh’s playground doesn’t require us to have done our homework or that we understand the cultural and historical significance of a certain piece; and, if it is culturally significant, that we too find it astonishing. MONA finds much to say in the playground itself without caring if there is anything meaningful to say about the equipment. It is answering a need for collective experience in a reality unlike our own, something like a ritual.

In 2018, Walsh spent a further $32 million on a new wing in the MONA complex. It was named Pharos. This section has been spoken about as, in some ways, the antithesis to the MONA. Walsh wanted to create a “changeless thing, a totem, a legacy.” As the name suggests (Pharos being one of the ancient wonders of the world – the Alexandrian lighthouse) it is a beacon of light, but it also acts as a procession; a ritualistic walk for the un-believer.

Carl Kruse Blog - The Topmb of the Kamizakes in Pharos, MONA
Inside Pharos – the “Memorial to Sacred Wind or the Tomb of Kamikaze” by Swiss artist Jean Tinguely. What initially appears to be a pile of scrap lunges to life unexpectedly and moves about the room. Photo: Broadsheet.

Walsh’s idea to suffuse this section with assemblages that will never be moved has its reasons. Basing this conception on ancient rituals where it seems the idea is to “merely walk around them,” Walsh has created this space so the visitor can commune with their inner selves. It brings to the foreground what the museum is about: sex and death. If the rest of MONA is this chance, transient, sex, then Pharos is the acknowledgment and appreciation of changeless death.

It is with Pharos that we are aware of the magnitude of the MONA enterprise. It is not merely an eclectic arrangement of contemporary and old art, but a monument towards why and how art is created. It is a space which confronts the visitor with something of the wonder in which art finds its source.

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Check your email! List your top 10 museums in the world and email us back at info@carlkruse.net for a chance to win $100 in bitcoin (of course, void where prohibited). We’ll publish the community’s consensus within a week.

Carl Kruse Arts Homepage at https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
The last blog post was on Simonetta Vespucci.
Other articles by Fraser Hibbitt include the Art of Journaling and Google Glass.
Carl Kruse is also on Hacker Noon – Kruse