And on the other hand...

Steve met me for a couple of days in Chicago – he’s a fun guy to explore with. One of the things we squeaked in was a sprint around the Art Institute of Chicago on their free night (yikes… regular admission is $16). AIC boasts some top works, including a sumptuous banquet of Impressionism, and Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte.”

I wouldn’t say that Impressionism is my favorite period of art (yes, I know - blasphemy!) Nor do I consider Seurat a fave within the genre, but I do make point of seeing the game changing works when opportunity presents, and La Grand Jatte was certainly a pivotal work in the arc of Impressionism.

One of the things I learned while teaching at JMU is that our current crop of students, for the most part, think that they know a work when they’ve seen its image. I was surprised to find when assigning a gallery visit paper that I had to clearly state “no online exhibitions.” Such is the saturation of media and imagery that, bless them, they are satisfied with that as their experience… ergo the pesky “go SEE something in a gallery/museum and write about it” assignments.

AIC let you take pix as long as you turned off the flash. So above is a detail shot of La Grand Jatte. This is one of the places where, despite being able to take home my “I was there image” no amount of pixels can compensate for seeing the real thing. The range of colors that Seurat used challenge the camera’s balancing algorithms, and the result, while great, still pales when seeing the brush strokes. The camera allows us to condense a vast canvas into our hand, or the page of a book. It makes flat every nuance of dimension in the paint. That image can’t tell the story of the blue next to the peach next to the green next to the gold. It won’t show you the lusciousness of a thick swab of paint next to a delicate glaze. It certainly won’t allow you to experience the emotional punch that the scale of a work can impart. These stories can really only be told in a face to face conversation with the work.

So here I am, debating another side of the “let us take pictures” argument. Yes, please, let us take them. But seriously, folks, don’t let them be the only way you see art.

I was there... really

Yesterday I made it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. It’s full of music and a bunch of very cool artifacts, as one would expect, but again, you’re not allowed to take pictures. The signs say it’s because the people that have loaned some of the stuff don’t want it photographed. Ok, but then surely there are decent postcards, yes? Well, no. Only books. Books you really don’t want to buy because they are expensive and take up space in your bags, and are likely to put you in the paying more category when they weigh you in at the airport. Oh goody.

I really think it’s time for it this to end. Of the thousands of people who would make pictures in such a place, how many of them would actually make a profit from their images? A tenth of one percent? A hundredth? First of all, it isn’t possible to get a great photo of anything in this museum. The archivally dimmed lighting isn’t conducive to it, nor are the richly layered displays. Really, no one would pay you for that picture of John Lennon’s Sergeant Pepper’s uniform with the reflections bouncing off the glass case. You would need a tripod and carefully set strobe lighting to get close to a saleable picture. Yes, mad PhotoShop skills might save you, but it still would pale next to a well made shot.

The pictures that interest the common populace are the snapshots. Look Mabel, there’s Elvis’ Cadillac. Johnny, you wouldn’t believe how small Bruce Springsteen’s leather jacket is, you wouldn’t fit in it. Dude, they had the ZZ Top drums with the fur on them. Honey, can you believe all that spandex Freddie Mercury and David Bowie wore? Can you believe that we tried to wear it too? Of course, back in the days before we all had cellulite…

The images we want are point and shoot – literally. They are little flash cards to jog our memories. We shoot them so that we can take them home and point at them while we tell our stories about the hat that Aretha wore to the inauguration, or Les Paul’s first frankenstein’d Epiphone. Or we snap them at a whopping two whole megapixels on our cell phones to send that image of Jimmy Page’s violin bow instantaneously to the Led Zep fan in our circle, to let them know that we were thinking about them. Truly, these are not salable pix. We don’t crave the commerce, we crave the connections.

As you get in line to pay at the Rock Hall, there is a beleaguered young person with a camera, a green screen, and a ratty no-name guitar there, trying to get you to pose for a picture that they will later try to sell you, telling you that they like to photograph everyone who comes to their museum. In the lovely words of the British bloke next to me in line: If I can’t have a picture of their stuff, they can’t have one of me. Rock on, mate.

Water and cantilevers

Yesterday the road led to Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s marvel of cantilevered terraces in Pennsylvania. The road was just narrow and meandering enough that, for a few minutes, I thought maybe the GPS was playing games with me. Before I tell you about the house though, I need to tell you that the fine print on the admission ticket says that I can’t post pictures on ANY website. So look quickly, as I expect to be told to take this down shortly.

In such carefully controlled tours, the quality of the docent can really make or break the visit. I’m happy to say that I got a good one, and a small group too. I will summarize the key points she shared: it was built in the ‘30s as a summer home for the Kaufmann family. Back then, a 3 bedroom house in Pittsburgh went for about $5K (!), and so the budget for this one was set at $30K. Three years and $150K later, it was realized. In today’s money, that would be about $2 million – which might get you a sweet custom home with a chunk of land big enough to not hear the neighbor’s kid practice violin, but certainly not this.

The building is a cascading stack of terraces and levels built around a stone core. The cantilevered terraces began to sag almost immediately, and were recently retrofitted with tension cables to keep it all together. I had the misperception that the water side of the project, the Bear Run stream, went through the house rather than around and under it. The structure was intended to really be part of and respond to the natural surroundings. The Kaufmanns thought they were going to get a view of the stream out of a window. Instead they got the water flowing under the living room and a 270 degree view of the forest and stream from each terrace.

The walls of the terraces were slung low enough to make one of my tour-mates remark upon the safety aspect. Yes, the walls were low, but not that low. Rather than worry about the potential for a fall, I found it delightful to be looking at the results of aesthetic judgment that had not been spoiled with the raised fencing and warning signage usually demanded by the legal department.

The inside of the building was made to make you want to go outside. Every room has a terrace of its own (even the servants’ quarters), and the low slung ceilings were designed to push you outside. There are no window coverings. The personal spaces are small and cozy, the master suite just big enough for the bed and a chair. The communal spaces are expansive, yet designed to foster intimate groupings through changes in ceiling height and placement of furniture. FLW designed most of the interiors too, and so there are sofas, desks and shelves that cantilever from the walls to mimic the terraces. While I’m grateful that it is being conserved and is available for visits from mere mortals like me, the fact that it no longer is truly lived in leaves me feeling a little bittersweet.

FLW designed this in his sixties, and went on to see two hundred more of his designs built before his death. Nice career.

(Image made on iPhone4 with Pano app)

New Adventure

Three years done. One MFA completed, good friends made. Time to leave the 'burg and go home... Off back to Cali on Monday via states I've not traveled through. Hopefully there will be stories to share here. See you on the left side!

Scary Stuff

Probably the oddest things I saw in Venice... a funky boutique called "Virus." Their main mannequin displays were wooden sculptures of Doges (former rulers of Venice) done in wood, but with female bodies, and wearing $800 velvet jackets. And then there were the g-strings... Certainly weirder than the tourists for a change!

Murano - the glass island

In Venice's lagoon also lie the islands of Murano and Burano. Burano does lace (I skipped this because lace is not my cup of tea), Murano does glass. I go there for the earrings.

The streets had a few sculptures of glass made by the local artisans. When I saw the blue one, all I could think was "Eat your heart out Dale Chilhuly!"

Postcard #4

The Duomo from the Piazzale Michelangelo