Via Lewandowsky's Frozen Limbs Break Easily at LACMA

Via Lewandowsky, Gefrorene Glieder brechen leicht, 1988
Berka (acrylic) on Canvas (on wood) at LACMA

I've been posting on the Art of Two Germanys; here's my first take on the show's narrative, here on Sibylle Bergemann's photography and political art, here on Hans Haacke's conversation at REDCAT, and here on Robert Storr's re-contextualization.

I'd like to go back and walk through the show counterclockwise. There's so much to see, and I feel like the later work gets short shrift from close-consideration-of-art fatigue. In one way, the show is like watching watching the movie Bonnie and Clyde, and leaving the theater five minutes before the end. You know the climactic ending (and the characters don't) yet when you walk out of that last gallery, you're immediate thoughts aren't of the art you've just seen, but the missing historical frame: the fall of the wall and it's repercussions for the two Germanys. Likewise, the opening frame--World War II--is only hinted at, with video of the bombing of Dresden in the exhibition's vestibule.

Gerhard Richter's November (l) and Isa Genzkin's Door (r)

In 2G's final room we see Isa Genzken's 1988 Tür (Door), which will be replaced by 1987's Saal (Room) for the German iterations of the show. Nearby is Gerhard Richter's abstract diptych November, from 1989, one from a set of three works which includes December and January. Looking at these twenty year-old works from the omniscient present, we can attribute foreshadowing by making associations to the Berlin Wall's imminent demise. Genzkin's concrete architectural casts are poured then chipped at, calling to mind the Wall's history of construction then destruction. Richter's mottled grey surface can be seen as a representation of the same, and the work's title and date (November, 1989) evokes the Wall's collapse on November 9th of that year.

The problem with these readings is that they confabulate a context. Genzken had a history of referencing architecture in her sculptures, with formal concerns that could been read along the same lines as Rachel Whiteread. Richter's large trio of canvases affect the bleakness of the months for which their named. Richter's suite was completed for a show that opened in October in The Netherlands. Interestingly in a 1991 interview for the St Louis Museum of Art, Richter misstates that he began the series in October, which can also be seen as a bit of prescient myth-making on the part of the artist.

In reality, we all live our lives with noses pressed against the opaque wall of the historical present.

As part of the Autoperforationists, Via Lewandowsky created the armature for the work that bookends this post, Frozen Limbs Break Easily. In the documentation of their proto-punk performances on view at LACMA, the armature with its basket of cobblestones can be seen in the background. During a panel discussion at LACMA, Via described the process of making the final work on view. It took several years for him to come up with he image on the fist side, an amalgam of old German woodcuts. The Janus figure combined with two sets of legs (one bound) can be seen as a reference to the bifurcated Germany--and the restrictions on expression in the East. In this context, can the spear point on the left of the canvas be read as the occupying forces (both in the East and West) holding the Frankenstein monster they've created at bay?

In 1989 Via was invited to perform in West Berlin. Lewandowski was able to get an exit visa, most likely because the GDR in the 80's was encouraging the more vocal dissenters of communism to leave. All the same, emigration from East to West was no easy task. While the Berlin Wall was in place, close to two hundred people died trying to get across. Lewandowsky could not tell his friends of his plans not to return; he only left with what he needed for the performance and to spend a few days in West Berlin. Because he wanted to bring this work with him, the wood panels that the image was made on were hidden in the construction of the crate to ship the armature--ostensibly to be used for his performance. Afterward Lewandowsky reassembled the work and painted the glove and gauntlet on the other side (pictured below); it was a gesture of "waving good-bye" to his friends in the East he would never see again.

Before the paint could dry, the wall fell, obviating his risky escape. In retrospect it could be said that frozen limbs thaw easily too.

Via Lewandowsky's Frozen Limbs Break Easily (1989 verso)

After the Art of Two Germanys - Cold War Cultures ends April 19th, 2009 at LACMA, the show will visit Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (GNM) May 23 to Septerber 6, 2009 and Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (DHM) October 2, 2009 through January 10, 2010. After that, Frozen Limbs Break Easily will return to the remodeled Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.

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LITV's Third Anniversary

My Blog's Namesake

• 3 years of typing
• ~300 posts
• ~75,000 site visits
• Over 100,000 page views

This began as a novel way to write my thesis statement, noting my thoughts, conversations, and processes as I made progress towards graduation. About a year ago I printed out all my posts for my final review, creating a 2" thick binder version. In the process of looking over these pages, I sorted them into eight categories:

• Work - Documents of my own artistic production
• Thoughts - Posts on art ideas that inform my production
• Talk - Conversations with friends and artists, or conversations about art
• Looking - Notes about exhibitions, shows, and works of art
• Gossip - Art world news and gossip
• Psych/Sex - Musings on psychology, sexuality, and culture
• Travel/Food - Self explanatory
• Other - A handful of tidbits I've reposted from other sources

Over time I've moved away from some topics and concentrated on others. I've found that certain posts generate an incredible amount of traffic. Obits, El Bulli, and jpegs of naked ladies, to name a few. Art world gossip and reposting content generates traffic, but I think there are plenty of sites that cover these areas as their primary focus. I've tried to post regularly--at least a few times a week--which had done more to help my writing than site traffic.

Like art making, the motivation for blogging falls along a continuum; on one end are those who create for the attention it generates, and on the other end, there are those who primarily create for themselves. I strive to take a position that will hopefully generate some conversation through the comments feature. At CalArts, it was all about the discourse that took place in the classroom and the conversations that spilled out into the hallways and our studios. On the continuum I've invented, I would have to place myself in an unambivalent center. Hopefully I will eventually generate an on-going conversation. The bloggers I admire most are folks like Ed Winkleman and Dennis Cooper, both who have created cyber communities that generate conversations.

If readers have favorites in my past typings, or would like to see more (or less) of something in particular, this would be the place to post your kudos, brickbats, or suggestions in the comments section.

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Arnold Mesches at SMMoA

Arnold Mesches' Coming Attractions 1, 2006

Like the artists in California, Seen at the Long Beach Museum of Art, Arnold Mesches supplemented his income by teaching and working in Southern California's movie industry. And like those artists, their canvases, mural walls, and sketch pads were an appropriate place as any for a declarative sentence. For many New Deal artists, politics and art were in support of the working class and gave voice to the oppressed. By the mid-forties, Mesches activities garnered him FBI surveillance, which recruited students, lovers, and neighbors to monitor and report on his activities. At one point his studio was broken into, and work he was making on the Rosenbergs was stolen.

In Coming Attractions, Mesches large canvases are juicy with paint, showing us the baroque interiors of what appear to be old movie palaces and opera houses. To these fantastic architectural spaces Mesches adds some dissonance to echo off the walls. Laundry dries across one space; in another, black and white images of workers inlay the paneled walls.

There's pessimism in Mesches work, but for an artist in his mid-eighties, it is articulated loud and clear, and without a hint of despair. Considering the ebb and flow of rights and freedoms under successive administrations, and Mesches persecution under the communist scare of the fifties, his work has something to tell us about the terrorist scare and hubris of today.

Arnold Mesches' Coming Attractions 6, 2006

Arnold Meches' Coming Attractions is on view at the Santa Monica Museum of Art through April 18, 2009

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California, Seen at the Long Beach Museum of Art

Leonard Cutrow's The Gravel Pit ca 1950

While Obama’s stimulus package primes the pump of our nation’s economy—including and extra fifty million for the NEA—the Long Beach Museum of Art shows us the fruits of direct funding for artists during the last big economic downturn.

Joseph Weisman's Backyards of North Broadway, 1940

Besides the government commissioned paintings, California, Seen gives us an overview of artists connected to the California Watercolor Society and the Chouinard Art Institute, where the artists both studied and taught. The work in this show predates the boom/bust cycle of the Los Angeles art scene, and even the era of the cool school's gallery row on La Cienega. Most of the artist in the show held down paying jobs, from working on New Deal projects, teaching, working as scene painters for the movie industry, and a few who worked as technical illustrators for the aerospace industry, long before the invention of computer-aided design. Perhaps something can be learned about making art despite tough economic times.

Orpha Klinker's Untitled (Fish Harbor) ca 1930's

There are a small handful of idyllic landscapes in the show, but for the most part, the New Deal’s social realism prevails. Even Klinker's idyllic harbor scene above has political undertones. Fish Harbor was home to Japanese fishermen and their families before they were forcebly removed to internment camps. A few scenes—like the pergolas along the Venice boardwalk—can still be seen, but for the most part the artists have captured the long-vanished streetscapes of Bunker Hill and the Long Beach Pike.

Dana Bartlett's A Laguna Hill Top 1936

California, Seen: Landscapes of a Changing California, 1930 - 1970 is on view at the Long Beach Museum of Art through April 5, 2009. The Museum is free on Fridays.

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Dave Muller at Blum and Poe

Dave Muller, Installation View

In the early 90’s, one could visit Dave Muller’s downtown loft for one of his now infamous “Three-Day Weekends.” To the left was his private living space, to the right was a makeshift gallery; standing at the nexus between to two spaces was Muller’s record collection, with something perpetually spinning on a turntable. These infrequent salons were happening at a low point for the art market, so the relationship between having somewhere to show your work, and and having something to fill you space was more symbiotic than lecherous. Later on, Muller expanded his gallery cum art practice to making gallery invitations, starting with his fellow CalArtian Andrea Bowers.

For I Am The Walrus at Blum & Poe, Muller brings together the public and private, showing his large-scale drawings of album covers and other personal ephemera. His first record purchase (below) and houses from his childhood neighborhood (above) make an appearance.

In the main room, images collected from his “private side” are paired up like exquisite corpses, making strange bedfellows of Jackson Pollock and Baja puffer fish souvenirs. The large-scale works are arranged like giant dominoes, bringing your eye across the floor and up the walls, matching up bovine landscapes and Beatles ephemera.

Gone from this and his previous show are the collaborative aspects that involved other artists and their exhibitions. These collaborative works could be seen as problematic, as David A. Green describes his illustration for the March '97 cover of Art Issues:

"Reproduced on it is a watercolour by Muller of a sculpture by Jennifer Pastor - a Los Angeles artist who has experienced a flurry of attention in the art press this past season, raising the spectre of conspiratorial control that haunts all meritocratic systems of commerce and fame. In Muller’s hands, yet another art magazine cover featuring one of Pastor’s hyperreal nature-sculptures becomes a three-dimensional conceptual object: one more cog in the semi-sentient Pastor promotional machine, but also a notch on Muller’s CV, and a prop for his reputation as a sharp yet self-effacing critic of his generation."

It's possible to view Muller's inward focus on his own ephemera as a case of not liking the critical game, taking his toys, and going home to play. Conversely, Muller's relational pursuits may have run their course. Still, in a time when the art world is undergoing its latest contraction, having a laid back place to show seems all the more necessary.

Dave Muller's I Am The Walrus is at Blum & Poe through April 4, 2009.

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Adam Silverman and Nader Tehrani's Boolean Valley

Detail of Adam Silverman and Nader Tehrani's Boolean Valley

Friday I attended the press preview for Boolean Valley, potter Adam Silverman and architect Nader Tehrani's collaboration for the Montalvo Art Center in the Silicon Valley. In addition to the installation, the show includes sketches by the artists as well as CAD renderings of the various iterations of the work. There seemed to be some resistance between the two collaborators; inherent in the architectural praxis is the view of ceramic as a construction material (like tile) and the drive to construct things people can fit inside. In the sketches one can see the architects vision of cobbling together the ceramicist's product to form an igloo-like structure. In another drawing, tiles, bowls and cylindrical columns are arranged by height, a classification of the limited possibilities of the medium.

In the end, the restrictions inherent in potter's wheel--the circular form--trumped the architects schemes. A conical form was thrown, molded, and cast. The resulting multiples--about a cubit tall--were sliced in two in two-inch increments, resulting in about 400 tops and bottoms of varying heights. Each piece was glazed with iron oxide on the bottom half and a cobalt blue on the top. For each installation of the work, a new rolling topography is devised.

Detail of Boolean Valley at MOCA Pacific Design Center

The artists' solo work can been seen about Los Angeles. Adam Silverman's Atwater Pottery can be found at the Heath Ceramics store, where his mottled silicon glazes recall the rough circular erosions found in tide pools. Contrast this with Nader Tehrani's BP gas station on Robertson, an angular product 21st century computer-aided design.

The resulting mashup recalls an undulating terrain which becomes claustrophobically boxed in by the architecture of the MOCA PDC baby Borg cube.

Detail of Nader Tehrani's Boolean Valley

My other reason for attending was to hear MOCA's new CEO, Charles Young speak on behalf of MOCA instead of the Bruins. First on his agenda was to announce--along with Charles Cohen, CEO of the Pacific Design Center--the renewal of MOCA's lease of the space. It also seems that MOCA's youngest curatorial department, Architecture and Design, will be relegated to the PDC for the foreseeable future. After stumbling through an introduction of the show and speakers, I pined for a future day when the museum can be returned to director that can understand the product as well as the financial ledger.

Detail of Adam Silverman's Boolean Valley

Boolean Valley is on view at MOCA Pacific Design Center through July 5, 2009. Entrance is free.
On Sunday, March 22 at 3pm the collaborating artist and architect will speak about the work. On Sunday, June 7 curators Julie Lazar and Brooke Hodge will discuss the installation.

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Donald Sultan at Greenfield Sacks Gallery

Donald Sultan's Mimosa Nov 20 2008
Graphite, conte and ink on paper

Several years ago I removed the cover on my wall furnace to clean out the dust that accumulated in the off season. In addition to covering the mechanism, the housing also covered a strip of wall. For the first time I saw a layer of wallpaper that had become hidden under the layers and decades of paint. Probably dating back to the 1920's, the pastel floral pattern was in muted shades of dove gray, dusty rose, and ecru. The thought of an entire room covered in English cabbage roses seemed oppressive, but the small sliver was mesmerizing.

Likewise the floral drawings of Donald Sultan evoke an image that extends beyond the edge of the paper; with a few deft strokes he puts us in a forest of mimosa blossoms. His conceit of a cursive title, date, and initials that run up the edge of the image evokes a Japan through Western eyes aesthetic, and manages to pull it off without a hint of either irony or imperialism.

The larger trumpet images in the first room are so crowded on the page (and hung shoulder to shoulder) that the solid blotches of color virtually blast into the room. No wallflowers or shrinking violets here. There are small, sketchbook-sized images called wallflowers on display, and these are probably the least effective at foregrounding the artist's materials that is indicative of Sultan's best work.

Donald Sultan's Recent Works on Paper is on view at Greenfield Sacks Gallery at Bergamot Satation through May 2, 2009.

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Mineo Mizuno at Samuel Freeman

Hydrating Apparatus

Once an hour, for something like a half a minute, a mist sprays down on the ceramic sculptures below. Like a bell calling you to dinner, it's a break in the Zen silence, reminding the viewer not that earth and fire make ceramics, but that earth and water make an environment suitable for life--in this case, Mizuno's moss-covered sculptures. Despite the aesthetics and attention to detail, the water/fire yin/yang thing comes across as a bit tenuous.

Mineo Mizuno's Untitled, 2008

Growing things bring a note of transience or temporality to the work, something that's not conjured up in Mizuno's large-scale color washed pieces on the patio and in the first room. For anyone who's been to the high altitude desserts of the southwest and seen a bristlecone pine growing from a fissure in a rock, there is the sense that there may be an appearance of coexistance, but eventually, living things get the upper hand. Survival goes to the fit and the adaptable.

And for all the affectations of a Zen moss garden--the gallery even provides benches for contemplation--I can't shake the thought of a chia pet rock.

Mineo Mizuno's Untitled, 2008

Mineo Mizuno's exhibition Coexistence is on view at Samuel Freeman in Bergamot Station through March 21, 2009.

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Notes from the 2009 College Art Association

Not Conference Attendees

The parking lots near the convention center doubled or tripled in price on the second day, as thousands of residents streamed into the big hall to take the oath to become United States citizens. It was a heartwarming moment to cross paths with so many people on one of the most important days in their life. The newly anointed citizens clutched little plastic American flags along with their citizenship certificate; people from all walks of life, and every race and ethnicity (except white) filled the concourse. Well there were white people there, but they were mostly the attendees of the 2009 College Art Association Annual Conference.

Matt Mullican Public Art at the LA Convention Center

It was a great opportunity to hear some speakers read their papers into a microphone, network with colleagues across the country, and apply for non-existent jobs. Compared to Dallas last year, a huge number of attendees had no affiliation on their badges; times are tough.

There were some great panels on photography, and another on land art. Certain panels seemed to be free-form; the organizer posed a set of questions to unprepared panelists in an attempt to generate conversation. A couple of panels that managed to pull of this unstructured format were both local (curators and art writers). Unfortunately, the art writers were limited to those working for dead tree publications (which are slowly becoming an anachronism). Most disappointing were the panels that seemed to draw from a close circle of colleagues, and the odd habit of throwing one semi-articulate artist creating work loosely related to a topic in with a gaggle of art historians.

Another "feh" goes to committee that came up with the idea for a conference blog, with a disabled comments feature. These are probably the same folks that read papers from the podium with their head down, effectively ignoring their audience. Every blogger who posted a question had it instantly turned into a rhetorical one, though I doubt it was their intention.

Good Ol' Matt was Never One to Shy Away from a Cliché

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Kate Gillmore, Heart Breaker

Kate Gilmore's Heart Breaker, 2004

In her 16 minute single channel video, Kate Gilmore enters a room much like the one where her video is projected. Precariously suspended from steel straps is a makeshift heart cobbled together from scrap wood. Gilmore in a yellow cocktail dress and heels (and wielding an axe) proceeds to have at it for the next quarter hour. It's a simple premise, one that calls to mind both Martin Kersels and Buster Keaton.

Like her other video pieces, Gilmore has constructed some obstacle she must work her way through in real time. But unlike kicking her way though walls or crawling in narrow passageways, Heart Breaker creates metaphors that the brokenhearted know. Like love itself, the construction overwhelms Gilmore's presence, threatening to crush her as she attempts to hack it into manageable pieces. It's messy, it's surreal, and like love, we laugh at the painful recognition of having gone through a similar process ourselves.

Kate Gilmore's Heart Breaker is at Steve Turner Contemporary Art through March 21, 2009.

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Plato Buitron

Plato's 8th birthday is today. In human years, Plato, like me, is in his mid-forties. Dogs mature fairly fast, so their first two years are equivalent to about 10.5 human years. After that, there are about four human years in every dog year.

The American Kennel Club has an encyclopedia of dog breeds I looked through when I was picking out a dog. On the left of each page was a picture, and on the right the dogs were rated along various criteria. Things like the amount of grooming needed, how good they were with children and other pets, standards for the breed, and the like. I wanted a medium to large dog that was low maintenance and relatively smart. When I narrowed my choices to a handful of breeds, I read that German Shorthaired Pointers "crave instruction." It was everything I wanted in a relationship.

I got Plato from a guy in Wilmington who used his GSP for hunting. Of the eight puppies in the litter, Plato was the only one without a saddle patch. When I picked him out he was only 4 weeks old and his tail was already docked. In the past, landed gentry kept separate dogs for scenting, pointing, and retrieving. In the 19th century Germany instituted a dog tax, so the Spanish Pointer was cross bred with a scent hound, blood hound, water dog, and a retreiver, creating an all purpose gun dog. They tend to be talkers, meaning they yowl, groan, whine, bark and yelp, depending on the circumstances.

The males are suppsed to top out at 70 lbs., which means Plato would not meet AKC standards if shown (he's about 78 lbs. and 27" at the withers). A couple years back at High Desert Test Sites, I met an older woman who kept GSPs, and she said the dogs were bred larger in the 30's and 40's. So perhaps plato is a bit of an atavist.

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Memory is the Only Paradise from Which We Cannot be Driven

The Peeled Off Label from a 1997 Chassagne-Montrachet

I stumbled upon the quote by Richter when I was working at Chateau Ste Michelle, the tobacco-owned wine conglomerate in Washington State. The Building was on the Stimpson estate, originally landscaped by the Olmstead Brothers, and it reminded me of Sully-le-Chateau, which will be mentioned below. At the time I was underemployed, giving tours and tastings at the happy chateau. The question would periodically arise as to why a person would pay extravagant sums for a bottle of something that could be polished off in a night. The answer can partly be found in the Richter quote that titles this post; vino brevis, memoria longa. Dire circumstances may prevail, but the memory of a transcendent paradise--once carved into our synapses--remains as a permanent refuge.

The Workers for the 1979 Vendange

A few years back, when I was working full time and could afford the frequent splurge, I picked up the bottle whose label was scanned above. The 1997 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru from the Abbaye de Morgeot sat in a straw-filled basket in my dining room until last week. White wines aren't usually kept for twelve years, and with no special occasion in sight, I decided to uncork the wine and drink it with Robert. Surprisingly, the wine held up well, with a bit of mustiness around the edges, a smell that bought me back to time spent in the cellars at the Abbaye almost thirty years ago.

Outside the Abbaye de Morgeot

In October of 1979 I arrived at the small train station in Chagny, in the southern part of an area known as the Côte de Beaune. With nothing but an address on a slip of paper, I hitched the first of many rides in a Citroën Deux Chevaux truck. But before the driver took me to the farm, we stopped at a relative's house where I was fed and shown off as an incredibly out-of-place, French-challenged, seventeen year-old American boy. Once we made our way to the Abbaye, the farm manager took me to the old refectory from the days when the farm was a monastery. The building was built in the 15th century, and featured a long plank table, a fireplace that could comfortably fit a half-dozen people standing up, and cold stone walls. Off in one corner was a feather bed. For the next month, this was my makeshift bedroom.

Pinot Noir Grapes, Limestone "Soil"

All the other workers were either from the farm or the surrounding villages. After a piece of a baguette with butter and a bowl of coffee with milk, we would drive or walk to different rows of vines, picking around the farm and in both Chassagne and Puligny Montrachet. The supervisor handed me a bucket, a pair of clippers, and pointed to the start of a long row of vines, "Coupez ici." was the command.

An Empty House Next to the Abbaye

When the bucket was full I would shout, "Panier!" and one of the French boys would trade me for an empty. After a couple of hours, we would stop and have a glass of wine. A couple more hours of picking, and we would head back to the farm for two solid hours of eating and drinking. After a few days the manager noticed I was only drinking the red. From then on, I was only allowed to drink white wine. At first I didn't care for it, and then it grew on me to the point where the white was put off limits, and I could only drink the red again. It was though this process, back and forth, where I was trained to appreciate both.

Looking Out from my Bedroom

After four more hours of back-breaking work, we would head back to the farm, wash up, then feast magnificently until I crawled back into bed. It was course after course of Burgundian home cooking. At dinner, the Duc and his siblings would join us for dinner, as was the tradition during the harvest. He told me of the time that Idi Amin found a card that was put in each case of wine that left the farm. It lists the available wines, and at the bottom (in French) it said, "If you're ever in our area, please visit our cellars." Amin took this as a personal invitation, and spent a week at the Duc's Chateau.

In the Kitchen with the Duc (l) and his Mother (r)

On the last day of the harvest, vines and flowers were picked to decorate the trucks and tractors. We took the long way back to the farm, horns honking as we passed through Chagny, up to Puligny-Montrachet, past the vineyards of Romanée Conti‎, and back down to Santenay and home. That night we had wines from the cellar, drinking from bottles with actual labels. The son of the farm's manager came out with an accordion that was wired to a record player in the next room. As the needle skipped across the scratchy recording, we applauded his feigned virtuosity.

The Son of the Farm's Manager

There was a severe storm that night, which briefly cut our power. You can see below that some of the bottles became makeshift candle holders. When the power came back on, the tables were pushed aside to improvise a dance floor. It wasn't the first time I over imbibed, but certainly it was one of the most memorable.

Travailleurs

Outside we smoked and breathed the cool night air. The French boy (with the endless supply of empty buckets) came over with an English teacher from a nearby school. During the harvest, the local schools were on holiday as everyone pitched in. He held my face, gave me a kiss on the lips, and said something in French. The teacher translated, "If you were a girl, I would marry you." We stood in the glow cast from the windows of the dining room; he walked away, took one last look over his shoulder and disappeared into the darkness.

Dinner on our Last Night

I stayed on the farm for a few more weeks, earning enough to extend my European adventure. I took the train to Dijon, which is fodder for some future post.

Dans les Caves

There are many memories from that harvest in 1979: the sharp flinty rocks and how they smell after a passing raincloud dampens the soil, the mustiness of the cellar, the fruitiness of the fresh-pressed grape juice, the yeasty and grassyness of the dried must floating to the top of the big fermentation vats, the smell and rough feel of the oak casks, the taste of a drunken kiss, that first gulp of wine after hours of back-breaking work, then slowly standing to look over rows of golden leaves, and down a gentle slope. And it all comes back in a bottle of the '97 Morgeot.

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Self-Censorship, From Warhol to Kylix to Book

The Vitrine of Symposia at The Getty Villa

Robert Summers critiques the de-queering of Warhol at the California Museum of Photography:

To be sure, I wasn't unsure, it was rather disappointing to sit in the auditorium of the CMP, and hear that they now own several of Warhol's (homo-)erotic Polaroids (most likely the ones he used in his "Sex Parts" and/or "Torso" Series of 1976-77. But, these Polaroids were not shown, and I quote Westerbeck, "We didn't put up the erotic images of Warhol's because we didn't want to put off, or turn away, families."

Homoerotic images are the furtive exiles of the art world, shifting in and out of view due to the constantly shifting vagaries of hetero-normative culture.

The Warren Cup

The silver cup depicted above is a good example of work that was collected and traded among the proto-queers of the 19th century, only finding their way into museums' exhibition space in the 1980's. I remember visits to the Getty Villa before they were awash in lucre and their namesake was still alive. The rooms on the east side of the villa (where the grand staircase is now) were crowded with cases of Greek pottery. Like their recent show of Bernini sculpture, the vitrines were pushed far enough away from the wall so that the objects could be viewed from all sides.

On my recent trip to the villa I went looking for some of the more erotically charged work I remembered. The top image displays works themed around the Greek Symposia, gatherings that involved boys and wine. Depending on the potency of the wine and the mix of the crowd, theve events devolved into either slurred philosophical debates, sex, vomiting, or a combination of the three. Below are three of examples from the case, along with their blurbs.

Wine Jug
Attributed to the Oionokles Painter Greek, Athens, about 470 BCE

"With his head tilted back, his mouth open as if singing, and his arms thrown out in dramatic gesturing, the man on this vase shows the effects of a long night of drinking. He appears unaware of his surroundings or even his full bladder. Luckily, a servant-boy is there, anticipating his master's needs."

Water Jar with a Reveler
Attributed to the Eucharides
Painter Greek, Athens, about 480 B.C. Terracotta

"A boy plays the double flutes for a young reveler on this Athenian red-figure kalpis. Several clues--the provision basket hanging on the wall, the wreath on the youth's head, and the boy's red ribbon--indicate that the action takes place at a symposion or aristocratic drinking party. The youth, who is shown as just old enough to grow a downy beard on his cheeks, holds a walking stick and the case for the boy's flute. He approaches the boy with a hand lowered toward his genitals, the standard gesture of young men courting boys. The inscription on the vase also refers to this Athenian cultural practice of men courting boys. A kalos inscription between the figures reads "Eucharides is beautiful." Eucharides would have been one of the handsome adolescents in Athens in the years around 480 B.C., and the Eucharides Painter received his name from his fondness for this boy. A kalpis is a rounded variant form of a hydria or water vessel. Greeks always drank their wine mixed with water, and a vessel like this one would have held the water at a symposion. The decoration on the vessel foretold the pleasures of the evening. "

Wine Cup with a Sexual Encounter
Attributed to the Foundry Painter Greek, Athens, about 470 B.C. Terracotta

"The Greek orator Demosthenes summed up a symposion as "revelry, sex, and drinking." An integral part of Athenian aristocratic society, a symposion was a social gathering at which men ate, drank, played party games, were entertained with music and dance, and had sex with female prostitutes, mistresses, or male youths. This red-figure cup explicitly depicts a sexual encounter between a young man and a woman who is probably a hetaira, or prostitute. Such erotic scenes frequently decorated vases like this drinking cup, designed for use at a symposion and in keeping with the tone of the evening. The symposion was an essential element of Athenian social structure. Athenian men did not marry until they were in their thirties, and the symposion provided an important sexual outlet. Even after marriage, usually an arranged pairing with an extremely sheltered fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl, a man probably spent little to no time with his wife. Marriage was designed to produce legitimate heirs; the symposion with its music, games, and hetairai was designed to produce pleasure. "

The Vitrine of Athletes at The Getty Villa

Rather than sorting the work by theme--as is the current fashion--works were displayed chronologically and divided geographically. The two larger pieces in the center of the case above--a wine cooler (second from the left and looks like an upside-down vase) and the wine cup (the flat footed dish showing its underside)--are both worth pointing out what gets turned to the wall. Below is the blurb.

Wine Cooler with Athletes
Red Figure Psykter attributed to Smikros Greek, Athens, about 510 BCE

"Five Pairs of men are depicted talking, courting, and cleansing on this vessel. The scene probably takes place in a gymnasion, where athletes trained and bathed. On this side, a wreathed figure scrapes himself with a strigil, while his companion unfolds a cloak to dress. The representation of the anatomy from multiple angles show the experimental nature of early red figure vase painting."

Another Detail

"The representation of the anatomy from multiple angles" that get turned to the wall are those that depict the kissing and the groping. To be sure, the case is themed around athletic endeavors, so the locker room buggery may not be precisely on point. Unlike the symposia display, this case is pushed against the wall, thwarting the appreciation of works that were originally made to be seen from all sides. In the symposia examples, sodomy is limited to the hetero kind, and homosexual courting is the ambiguous (by contemporary standards) gesture of a hand towards the genitals.

Below is a detail of the wine cup on display, along with its blurb.

Wine Cup with Pentathaletes
Attributed to the Carpenter Painter Greek, Athens, 515 – 510 BCE

"The exterior of this wine cup shows boys and men preparing for the pentathalon, which included javelin and discuss throwing, the long jump, wrestling, and the footrace. Training was accompanied by music, represented by the youth playing the double pipes. The altar evokes the religious context of athletic contexts. Offerings to the gods were thought to aid in an athlete’s success."

Detail of the Red Figure Kylix Above

If one wedges oneself next to the wall, it's barely possible to make out the figures on the other side. In it, a seated youth pulls his older male lover down toward him for a kiss. In both cases, these bits of passive censorship are not about the overtly sexual, but displays of affectionate homo-social behavior. I'm reminded of a more recent artwork involving the simple display of affectionate kissing that garnered its own controversy:

Gran Fury

Four pairs of youths in various stages of courtship and embrace
Red-Figure psykter by Smikros 510 BCE

In my online searching for this post, I came across another piece of pottery owned by The Getty, pictured above. Here another kissing pair can be seen. I didn't run across it on my visit, nor could I find it listed on their web site. Granted, it could be one of the pieces they had to return to Italy.

By no means is this kind of self-censorship limited to art. The School Library Journal points out similar situations with teen books:

"Researchers Jeff Whittingham and Wendy Rickman asked media specialists if their collections offered the most popular gay-...themed books published between 1999 and 2005, including...David Levithan’s award-winning Boy Meets Boy (Knopf, 2003). Almost always, the answer came back no.

Interestingly, Levithan says he intentionally wrote Boy Meets Boy as clean as possible so that if the book were ever challenged, the only logical reason would be because it features “happy gay characters in love.” His explanation for the study’s results? Librarians often let “fear, not principle, guide their choices, which is deeply unfair to the teens they serve,” Levithan says."

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