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Valentin Who?—A Neglected French Master Spotlighted at the Met

October 19, 2016 / Michelle Kamhi / Art History, Exhibitions / 9 Comments

Valentin who? Valentin de Boulogne (1591–1632), that’s who! But I must confess that I had never heard of this masterly painter before the landmark exhibition now at the Met, though I’ve been studying art history for more than half a century.1

Valentin de Boulogne, Cardsharps (ca. 1615), Old Masters Gallery, State Art Collections, Dresden, Germany

Valentin de Boulogne, Cardsharps (ca. 1615), Old Masters Gallery, State Art Collections, Dresden, Germany

Valentin achieved no small fame in his lifetime, however. Ranked high among the followers of Caravaggio (1571–1610), he also inspired notable nineteenth-century realists such as Courbet and Manet. Yet, astonishingly and inexplicably, Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio is the first monographic exhibition ever devoted to him. Co-curated by the Met’s Keith Christiansen, John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings, and Annick Lemoine, lecturer in art history at the University of Rennes, it at last gives Valentin his well-merited due.

The son of a painter and glazier, Valentin was born near Paris in 1591 and by 1614 had moved to Rome—then Europe’s cultural capital—where he remained till the end of his short life. Like many of the ambitious painters who flocked to that city in the early seventeenth century, he emulated the style of Caravaggio. He not only adopted Caravaggio’s earthy naturalism; he also employed his method of painting directly from live models posed in the studio, thus dispensing with the elaborate preparatory drawings used by Renaissance masters.2

Transcending Precedents

Valentin left his own distinctive stamp on Caravaggesque painting, however. His work is marked by psychological insight and subtlety rare in Caravaggio. His Judith and Holofernes, for example, is far more believable than Caravaggio’s version of the same subject.

Valentin de Boulogne, Judith and Holofernes, (ca. 1627–29), National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta

Valentin de Boulogne, Judith and Holofernes, (ca. 1627–29), National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta

Departing somewhat from the biblical narrative—which describes Judith as a “widow” (suggesting some maturity)—Valentin’s Judith has an almost childlike face. In sharp contrast with Caravaggio’s Judith, she does not recoil from the horrific deed, but proceeds with all the tight-lipped, cold-blooded determination that would have been required to carry it out. And the clandestine drama of the scene is heightened by a starker composition, subtly illuminated in front of a cavernous darkness—not diminished as in Caravaggio by a gratuitous swath of red drapery. It is one of the most compelling pictures in the Met’s show.

So, too, Valentin’s Cardsharps, cloaked in deep shadow, have a far more sinister aspect than those in Caravaggio’s more famous treatment, which is colorful but superficial. Especially chilling in the Valentin image is the predatory gaze of the cheat eyeing his pathetic victim—who clutches his cards to himself, oblivious of the evildoer’s cross-eyed partner in crime lurking behind him.

A distinctive aspect of Valentin’s approach to religious subject matter was his tendency to focus on a rarely depicted moment in the narrative. For the story of Susannah and the Elders from the Book of Daniel, for example, he eschewed representing Susannah bathing alone in her garden, ogled by the hidden elders. That scene has served many an artist as a welcome pretext for depicting a sensuous female nude. But Valentin chose instead to represent, in The Innocence of Susannah, a later moment, in which the young Daniel points the finger of judgment at the guilty elders for bearing false witness. While one of them pulls at the garment of their fully clothed victim, he is apprehended by an officer, and she turns toward the viewer, arms folded across her bosom in a gesture of self-protecting modesty. To her left, in the lower right corner of the painting, stand two small children. One gazes out at the viewer with an anxious look, while the other tugs at her robe, as if to ask, “Mommy, what are those men doing to you?” It is a poignant touch unlike anything I know of in Caravaggio.

Equally remarkable, Valentin’s Samson (the poster image for the exhibition) shows the biblical hero neither in one of his prodigious feats of prowess nor in the act of being unmanned by Delilah—the narrative moments most often chosen by artists. He is instead depicted alone, at rest. He is leaning on the jawbone of an ass, the crudely improvised weapon with which he has slain a multitude of Philistines. Wide-eyed and agape, he seems to be reflecting, not on his victory but on the magnitude of the havoc he has wrought. Is it perhaps of further philosophic import that Valentin has rendered Samson in his own likeness?

Another remarkable painting is Valentin’s Christ and the Adulteress, illustrating a well-known passage from the gospel of John. As Jesus is intent on writing a lesson on the ground for his disciples, he is interrupted by a group of scribes and Pharisees (Valentin represents them as figures of authority in 17th-century armor). Thrusting forward a woman guilty of adultery, for whom Mosaic law prescribed punishment by stoning, they demand to know what judgment Jesus would render. On reflection, he responds that whoever is without sin should cast the first stone. Valentin’s intensely personal moral focus is clear. Electrifying highlights create a riveting connection between Christ’s stern gaze (in the biblical account, he later instructs the adulteress to “sin no more”) and the woman, who hangs her head in shame, her half-bared bosom tellingly contrasting with her accusers’ armor.

In Valentin’s hands, The Last Supper, too, becomes an extraordinarily intimate event—so very different from Leonardo’s formal scene, which he would have known from engravings. Moreover, its ingenious composition seems to leave an open place at the table for the viewer. One could easily imagine taking a seat at it, flanked by the two disciples whose back is toward us. As Jesus appears to announce “one of you will betray me,” Judas (on the left) guiltily turns away, clutching his bag of silver behind his back, the evidence of his betrayal, while the disciple on the right bends to pick something off the floor, apparently missing the moment of intense drama reflected on the other disciples’ faces.

Valentin’s ability to make the viewer feel more like a participant than a mere spectator was evident even in what was probably one of his early works, The Return of the Prodigal Son. The broad sweep of the venerable patriarch’s compassionate embrace (which spans two thirds of the image) seems to encompass the viewer along with the prodigal, who kneels contritely before his father.

Such works are yet another reminder that even the most timeworn subjects can be infused with new life by a talented artist.

Like Caravaggio, Valentin knew the rowdy taverns and bawdy night life of Rome well, and depicted aspects of that life in his paintings. Rome in the seventeenth century scarcely lived up to its epithet of “holy city.” It was instead a seething den of crime, violence, and debauchery, from which artists not only drew their secular subjects but also picked the live models for their sacred images. As Caravaggio’s biography attests, artists often became embroiled in its turbulent events. Most of what we know about them is derived from police reports and court proceedings—as vividly documented in Andrew Graham-Dixon’s Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, for example. And scholars have only begun to plumb the depths of such records to gain a fuller picture of the period. One fact that has emerged is the existence of a lively market of private art patrons—though art historians formerly tended to regard Counter-Reformation painting as driven primarily by the church. The curators even cite paintings being used for money laundering by a notorious diamond thief who doubled as a dealer!

Valentin’s numerous scenes of taverns and music-making are tinged with a profound sense of melancholy that transcends the crass vulgarity of Roman low life, however, and suggests, in the curators’ words, “a meditation on life itself—its deceptions and its transient pleasures”—as well as its uncertainties, I might add. Especially haunting is Concert with a Bas-Relief. Notably, it features a sad-eyed young boy at its center, as does Valentin’s equally melancholic The Four Ages of Man.

In this connection, the curators quote an apt passage from the sixteenth-century philosopher-essayist Michel de Montaigne, relating the following experience:

I am not melancholic, though much given to daydreaming. . . . Once, while gaming and in the company of ladies, I was suspected [of] being preoccupied with some ill-digested jealousy or with my player’s luck. But in truth, I was meditating. . . . Only a few days before, as [a friend] was returning from just such a party, his head filled, like mine, with nonsense, women, and merriment, he had been surprised by fever and death.

Montaigne unwittingly presaged Valentin’s own death a few decades later. In the summer of 1632, after a night of drunken carousing, the painter fell into a fountain, subsequently developed a fever, and died, at the age of only 41.

If you are anywhere near New York between now and January 16, 2017, don’t miss the once-in-a-lifetime chance to survey at first hand and in depth this stellar painter’s work, culled from diverse public and private collections here and abroad. Some of the paintings have never before been loaned. What I have presented here are but a few of the show’s highlights. The exhibition numbers forty-five of Valentin’s sixty extant works, many of them on loan from the Louvre, and will travel there for an opening in February. If you can’t visit either New York or Paris, you might want to console yourself with a copy of the comprehensive catalogue, Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio.

Notes

  1. Remarkably, a quick perusal of Janson’s History of Art (3rd ed.) yields nary a mention of Valentin. Perhaps more surprising, a survey of art history by Germain Bazin—then chief curator of the Louvre, which holds the most extensive collection of Valentin’s work—merely lists him among numerous “foreigners (in Rome) who were to spread Caravaggio’s style all over Europe.” ↩
  2. An infrared image of Valentin’s unfinished Abraham Sacrificing Isaac clearly reveals that he sketched the outline of his figures in broad brushstrokes on the canvas and then altered the composition on the canvas as he rearranged his studio models into a more satisfactory grouping. ↩
17th-century painting, Annick Lemoine, Beyond Caravaggio, Caravaggio, Counter Reformation art, Keith Christiansen, Louvre, Metropolitan Museum, Valentin de Boulogne

“See something, say something” Redux

September 23, 2016 / Michelle Kamhi / Art Education / 1 Comment

Pressure cooker bomb found on New York street.

Last weekend’s terrorist events in New York City have again reminded me of the dangerous folly of some in academia who purport to be art educators. In a blog post last December on the horrific terrorist attack in San Bernardino, I referred to “art educator” Kevin Tavin, now Professor of International Art Education at Aalto University in Finland.

When still teaching in the U.S., Tavin had prominently inveighed against the nationwide poster campaign “If you see something, say something,” arguing that it plays into “fears based on a socially constructed fear of difference” and encourages citizens to single out “people who don’t seem to belong.”

Lamentably, more than one San Bernardino resident, apparently swayed by similar reasoning, failed to report suspicious activity that might have averted tragedy.

Once again, the stupidity of Tavin’s viewpoint has been exposed by actual events. Thanks to the action of one New York woman, a pressure cooker bomb left on West 27th Street in Manhattan was removed by police before it could do harm. Moreover, the cellphone wired to the cooker helped lead police to the likely culprit.

Noticing the pressure cooker outside her home Saturday night, the woman had at first dismissed it as some “weird science experiment.” But nagged by recollection of the ubiquitous “see something, say something” ads, she reconsidered. As she later explained to a reporter:

“In the subway, with those ads, there’s that thought in your brain all the time. I thought it would be irresponsible not to call because it did look suspicious.”

Indeed. But not nearly as irresponsible as Tavin’s version of “art education.”

art education, Kevin Tavin, see something say something

How NOT to Be an Arts Advocate

September 1, 2016 / Michelle Kamhi / Art Education, Arts Advocacy / 5 Comments

Richard Kessler, Dean of Mannes College of Music

Google my first and last name with the words “art education” and the first item you will find dubs me “The Joe McCarthy of Art Education.”1 Which prompts me to respond at this late date to that scurrilous blog post written in 2010. The author, Richard Kessler, then headed The Center for Arts Education—a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting K-12 arts education in New York City public schools. He is now Dean of the Mannes College of Music, one of America’s top music conservatories. And he epitomizes how not to be an arts advocate.

What had provoked Kessler to launch his ad hominem attack was my Wall Street Journal opinion piece “The Political Assault on Art Education.” Focusing with “liberal” blinkers on the political questions I raised, he conveniently ignored the work of “art” that had triggered the article: Judi Werthein’s Brinco—a piece that consisted of her distributing specially designed and equipped sneakers to Mexicans waiting to cross the U.S. border clandestinely. Not exactly what most people think of as art.

Like all too many arts advocates, Kessler defends virtually anything put forward as “art” (especially if it carries the properly “liberal” message)—regardless of its actual merit as art. In his view, “art” in general is a public good, and as such warrants public support in keeping with social justice. He had therefore objected (in an earlier post entitled “Arts Education and Social Justice”) to my account of “The Hijacking of Art Education.” In that article, as in the much  shorter Wall Street Journal piece, I argued that concerns for political issues such as social justice were eclipsing concerns for art among influential art educators.

Ignoring that crucial matter, Kessler pointed instead to the urgent need to provide “kids in urban centers . . . [with] a well rounded education that includes the arts.” As if I would deny it! Lamentably, he had not a word to say about the dubious sorts of “art” advocated by art educators I cited. Nor did he consider whether such work would in fact contribute anything of lasting value to inner-city kids, or anyone else for that matter. One artist/writer/activist I quoted, for example, applauds the widespread “‘de-skilling’ of artistic craft” that has occurred in the artworld since the 1960s. Further, he praises “conceptual art” for having entirely dispensed with the need for skill and having led, in effect, to “the total disappearance of the art object.” Kessler’s silence on such points was deafening.

Arrogance Compounded with Ignorance

In fact, Kessler’s arrogantly indiscriminate defense of any “art”—however far removed from customary standards—is grounded in ignorance, as evident in a still earlier post, “My Dinner with Merce and its Connection to Cultural Policy.” In it, he urged that “great artists” such as avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham be federally funded, as generously as possible, freely enabling them “to create, to experiment, to fail, to succeed.” Moreover, he lauded John Cage, Cunningham’s lifelong partner and collaborator, as among the “great, great composers” Merce had worked with. Such a judgment issuing from the future Dean of the Mannes College of Music is more than a little disconcerting. Considering that Cage’s most famous/infamous piece, 4′33″ [video/audio], entirely dispenses with musical tones in favor of ambient noise, it was the deliberate antithesis of music.

In a comment, I argued:

If avant-gardists such as Merce Cunningham and John Cage were indeed national “artistic treasures,” they should have been able to attract generous private support. The problem is that their work (unlike that of choreographer Mark Morris, for example) has never been able to appeal to a wider audience than artworld insiders. Forcing the public to foot the bill for their “experiments” is a deplorable idea. By their own admission, such experiments amounted to anti-art (that is why the public has rejected it). For evidence, see the analysis of their work and what they said about it in What Art Is (pages 220-29)—which I co-authored. The relevant pages can be viewed at Google Books: http://www.tinyurl.com/nnvhpm.

Needless to say, it is unlikely that Kessler had the intellectual curiosity to follow that link. Instead he posted this smug rejoinder, regarding Mark Morris:

I think that Mark would laugh pretty hard being presented as a mainstream counterbalance to Merce Cunningham. Apparently, Ms. Kahmi [sic], you’ve never heard Mark speak and most likely know little about his work.

Au contraire, Mr. Kessler. Here is what I had written five years earlier in “Mark Morris—a Postmodern Traditionalist” (Aristos, December 2005), after hearing Morris speak at Barnard College:

Unlike postmodernist choreographers such as Merce Cunningham, Morris (who speaks of being “smitten by music” at an early age) understands that music–true music–is the essential foundation of dance.

In contrast, I should add here, Cunningham was notorious for choreographing his “dance” pieces without music and only joining them to a musical score (often not very musical) at the time of performance. The result was, in his own words (cited in What Art Is), a “non-relationship.”

As I further reported on Morris’s talk at Barnard:

Most provocative, given his own early reputation as a rebel, was what he had to say about the avant-garde. Asked for his view of Cunningham’s work, for example, he cryptically answered that he “respects and appreciates the fact that he’s done it,” then paused and pointedly added: “That doesn’t necessarily mean I like it.”

Thus Morris and Cunningham represent what I referred to as “wholly antithetical views of dance.” That fact was made even clearer by Morris’s subsequent remarks on the contemporary dance world. As I reported, he said

he rarely attends “downtown” (i.e., avant-garde) dance programs, even those by friends. “I’m not of the Last Wave Generation that says if it lasts all night and you can’t understand it, it’s great,” he declared. . . . Nor is he interested in watching “really crappy, politically motivated work. . . . If it works as propaganda, it doesn’t work as art.” Most telling was the advice he then offered to his audience, made up largely of students and faculty associated with the [Barnard College] dance program. They would do well, he said emphatically, to read (or re-read) Arlene Croce’s controversial 1994 New Yorker article [“Discussing the Undiscussable”] on Bill T. Jones’s Still/Here and to “think about it carefully.” (Croce had refused to see and review Still/Here, arguing that its use of videotapes of workshops with terminally ill patients was beyond the pale of art and therefore outside her purview as a dance critic.) For those who might not yet have gotten his point about such work, Morris added: “Just ’cause you mean it, doesn’t mean it’s good.”

I concluded: “Artists in every discipline could learn from him.” So could arts advocates like Richard Kessler.

Notes

  1. As of October 2019, that item has dropped to page 3 of Google’s search results. ↩
art education, arts advocacy, avant-garde, Joe McCarthy of art education, John Cage, Mannes College of Music, Mark Morris, Merce Cunningham, politicizing art, Richard Kessler, social justice in education

Healthy Debate in Academia

August 3, 2016 / Michelle Kamhi / Art Education / No Comments

When a Pulitzer-winning New York Times journalist noted for his own “progressive” views laments liberal intolerance on college campuses, we can be sure it’s not just a figment of conservatives’ “paranoid” imagination.1 Nor is it limited to the U.S. All the more reason to laud academics who have had the courage and integrity to defy the prevailing biases.Canadian Art Teacher - cover

One of them is David A. Pariser (Professor of Art Education, Concordia University, Montreal), who was bold enough to consider my contrarian viewpoint, in a fair-minded review of Who Says That’s Art? last year. Published in Canadian Art Teacher (vol. 13 no. 2), his review is reproduced here with kind permission. While expressing significant reservations about some of my positions, he nonetheless endorses the book “as a useful addition to any undergraduate or graduate reading list, . . . for it will generate debate and engaged discussion.”

Generating debate and engaged discussion—isn’t that what education is supposed to be promoting? Quite a far cry from the professor of art education who opined in an email message to me that my work wouldn’t survive the vetting process for peer-reviewed publication because my “arguments are inconsistent with current thinking.” (As I suggested to him, such inconsistency may place me in some notable company. My own favorite example is Ignaz Semmelweis, who bucked the entire medical profession of his day in his battle to protect women from childbed fever.)

In addition to Pariser, praise and thanks are due the editor of Canadian Art Teacher—Michael Emme, Associate Professor of Art Education at the University of Victoria. He not only published Pariser’s review but also welcomed my response to it (just published in vol. 14 no. 1 of the journal,2 and reproduced here with permission), made editorial suggestions that greatly improved its content, and graciously thanked me for contributing to the “rich mix of themes in this issue.”

Two more scholars merit acknowledgment for courageously fostering open debate in an often-hostile environment. One is the late Richard A. Ciganko, Professor of Art Education at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Reviewing Who Says That’s Art? for Studies in Art Education (the research journal of the National Art Education Association), he argued that it would be “imprudent” for his fellow art educators to ignore the “serious questions” posed by the book. Finally, the journal’s book review editor—Laurel Lampela (Professor of Art Education at the University of New Mexico)—deserves credit for ensuring that the book was reviewed.

Hearty kudos and thanks to these four academics, who should serve as models to their colleagues worldwide.

Notes

  1. Nicholas Kristof, “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance,” New York Times, May 7, 2016. “Universities are the bedrock of progressive values,” writes Kristof, “but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.” ↩
  2. Owing to delayed publication, the date on the journal is 2015—not 2016. ↩
'Who Says That's Art', academic debate, David A. Pariser, intellectual diversity, Laurel Lampela, liberal intolerance, Michael Emme, Richard A. Ciganko

Jousting with Mark Rothko’s Son

June 22, 2016 / Michelle Kamhi / Abstract Art / 6 Comments

Christopher Rothko—the highly affable son of the famed not-so-affable Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970)—has written a volume of essays lovingly re-examining his father’s life and work. Entitled Mark Rothko: From the Inside Out, it was published last November by Yale University Press, and its author has been promoting it with a passion inspired by devotion to the parent whose suicide left him bereft at the tender age of six.

Mark Rothko, Untitled 1968

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1968.

As my readers are probably aware, I’m no fan of Rothko’s work (see, most recently, “Barking Up the Wrong Trees in Art Education”). So it’s not surprising that I welcomed the opportunity to go head to head with Christopher earlier this month on the subject of his father’s paintings.

The unlikely venue was the New York City Junto [more]. I say unlikely because that monthly discussion forum—founded three decades ago by investor Victor Niederhoffer (who has generously hosted it ever since)—has focused on matters related to free markets, the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand, and investing. Ayn Rand notwithstanding, art has rarely been more than a tangential topic of discussion.

This month’s surprising departure from that pattern was due to Gene Epstein, the Junto’s main moderator in recent years. Epstein’s day job is as the economics and books editor of Barron’s weekly business magazine. But he happens to be married to abstract painter Hisako Kobayashi—who initiated him into the ranks of Rothko admirers, as he explained in his introductory remarks.

There was a particular irony in a Junto session devoted to Mark Rothko’s work, however, for Ayn Rand made a compelling case against the idea that any abstract work could be an objectively meaningful form of art. So I gladly accepted Epstein’s kind invitation to present my contrarian view—as summarized in these brief remarks [click on > to hear audio]

http://www.mmkamhi.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Michelle-Kamhi-remarks-on-Rothko-at-Junto-June-2016.m4a

and fleshed out in dialogue with Christopher Rothko.

Rothko’s overriding aim as an artist, his son explained, was to find a “universal language” for his work—in order to move the maximum number of people, in a way comparable to music. As Christopher put it, Rothko was actually a painter who aspired to be a musician. With the proper training that is the vocation he would have chosen. Feeling a particular kinship with the music of Mozart (his favorite composer), he sought to create a visual analogue that would convey an emotional sense of the “human condition”—the “darker side” of life along with its joyful aspect—much as Mozart’s music does.

In that connection, color was for Rothko “almost synonymous with emotion,” Christopher noted. By applying layers of color, the painter hoped to suggest different emotions. Yet he seems to have discovered for himself that the analogy between abstract art and music soon breaks down, as I argued in my remarks. Consequently, he moved away from his early use of bright colors, because—Christopher explained—people read them as more “joyous” than he had intended (in contrast, would one ever hear intentionally sad music as joyous?).

Over time, therefore, Rothko’s palette became darker and darker and his canvases increasingly “minimalist,” Christopher noted, until they reached the nearly black monochrome aspect of his murals for the Rothko Chapel in Houston. That work came up in relation to the claim, quoted by Epstein from Christopher’s book, that Rothko was a great painter in part because “he pushed painting to do things it wasn’t necessarily designed to do.” Asked by Epstein what he thought painting was not necessarily designed to do, Christopher responded that it centers on the way we need to bring ourselves to the paintings—the need to slow down, spend time, and “lose yourself in them.” Of the Rothko Chapel, he observed, it’s a space “you can walk into and say ‘there’s nothing here’ and be absolutely right”—if, he added, you don’t spend the time to complete the “interactive process” the painter aimed for.

Rembrandt - The Jewish Bride

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Jewish Bride, c. 1667.

Early in the discussion, Christopher had noted that his father believed “the most powerful expression of an idea is abstract.” Yet he loved figurative paintings such as Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride. Moreover, as I later discovered. Rothko much admired the work of another representational painter, Piero della Francesca (to whom, Christopher noted, my blog happens to be  dedicated!)—once arguing that he might have been the greatest artist who ever lived.

That is not the only contradiction begging to be reconciled regarding Rothko’s abstract work. In response to my remarks, Christopher surprisingly avowed that he actually agrees with most of what I said. In particular, he urges in his book that his father’s biography be left out of consideration in response to the work. Further, despite his prior emphasis on color, he now acknowledged that it is “secondary” to form, and cited an essay in his book entitled “The Quiet Dominance of Form.” On that point, he reported that his father was almost obsessive in adjusting the dimensions and proportions of the rectangular forms in his paintings. That limited repertoire of minimalist shapes is scarcely what I think of as meaningful “form” in painting, however—a term that instead conjures up for me the wealth of human figures, objects, and settings depicted by representational artists such as Rembrandt or Piero.

Although Christopher, like his father, loves the representational work of those and other masters, he said he struggles to find meaning in such work, insisting that to be art it must be about something more than the mere image. That is another point on which we happen to agree. Though I hadn’t touched on it in my brief remarks, I’ve stressed it throughout my work, including Who Says That’s Art?. Imagery in art is not an end in itself. It serves to embody values and a view of life.

One of the most telling moments of the evening occurred during the Q&A. Recounting a visit to the Rothko Chapel. a young woman seemed to echo what Christopher had said. “At first,” she confided,

I was perplexed by it, . . . and it felt like there was nothing there speaking to me. But I sat for a while, quietly, . . . and then I felt something. And the longer I sat there, the more I felt—the more energy and depth I felt from the paintings, which at first had felt very flat. And suddenly I realized that this whole space was humming, and it was quite powerful.

My question is, how much of that feeling was evoked by sitting in enforced silence in an enclosed, relatively bare space designated as a “chapel” (whose design had been largely overseen by Rothko)—rather than by the alleged power of the paintings themselves? In other words, how much of the “interactive process” Rothko aimed for in truth boils down to a viewer’s projection of self-generated feelings onto the nearly blank slate provided by the paintings?1

Readers can easily guess what my answer would be.

Notes

  1. In my remarks, I suggested that knowledge of Rothko’s troubled life, ending in suicide, may contribute to the emotional response some viewers have to his work. Contrary to that suggestion, Kobayashi (see above) reported that her first contact with Rothko’s work was at the 1978 Guggenheim Museum retrospective, when she knew very little about his biography. What moved her, she said, was the sense that he could “touch feeling without forms” and that he understood the “condition that we all live” in—the “pain” as well as the “happiness.” Such an account—from a fellow abstract painter who shares the same premises—does not prompt me to alter my general view, however, that emotional responses to Rothko’s work are mainly self-generated, rather than evoked by visual attributes of the paintings themselves. ↩
abstract art, Christopher Rothko, Mark Rothko, modern art, Rothko Chapel

Barking Up the Wrong Trees in Art Education

May 12, 2016 / Michelle Kamhi / Art Education / 4 Comments

What’s being taught in art classrooms these days?

Lacking a comprehensive survey, I can’t offer a definitive answer to that question. But I can point to some prominent examples that should trouble anyone who regards visual art as a potent component of civilization and thus an important part of children’s general education.

Abstract Art 101

Barbara Clover (an art teacher soon to retire after two decades at Holy Savior Menard Central High School in Alexandria, Louisiana) was recently named Art Educator of the Year by the National Art Education Association (NAEA). So it’s worth asking what we might discover if we could eavesdrop on one of her classes to observe a lesson under way.

A recent news account offered the following glimpse:

All is peaceful as [a] class of juniors and seniors concentrate on a projector screen. Students use colored pencils to sketch what they see.

Mark Rothko - Untitled

Mark Rothko, Untitled.

So far so good. But what did Clover’s students see? A typical canvas by the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970). Not much to sketch there, unfortunately—just some blurred rectangles. Nonetheless, as the reporter noted, Clover had urged her students to try to understand what’s being communicated in such work. We aren’t told their answers. But Rothko’s rectangles surely gave them very little to go on.

Rothko once claimed that the goal of his work was “expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on—and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions.”

Had any of Clover’s students wept at the sight of his work? I doubt it. My guess is that apart from some sensuous pleasure evoked by his use of color, any emotion aroused in them was probably frustration at being expected to discern meaning in such a painting. The reason why is simple. People normally “express” basic human emotions vocally and bodily. They don’t reach for a paintbrush and create colored rectangles; they do things like jumping up and down and shouting. I saw a striking example on a crowded bus the other day—a little girl who was clearly not happy to be there. How did I know that? Her brow was wrinkled into a tight frown, and she periodically stamped her foot and emitted little shrieks of anger, while tugging impatiently at her baby-sitter’s arm.

The art forms based on such direct expressions of emotion are music, dance, and drama—not painting. Visual artists can represent human emotion, but they do so mainly through depictions of facial expression, bodily posture, and gesture—as in a justly famed fresco representing the Lamentation of Christ, by the great early Renaissance painter Giotto di Bodone (d. 1337).

Like many dedicated art teachers, however, Clover has simply accepted the artworld’s dubious narrative regarding the value of abstract work such as Rothko’s. What she probably didn’t tell her students, therefore, is that Rothko, along with other famous abstract painters, was haunted by the fear that viewers would fail to grasp his deeply serious intentions and would regard his paintings as merely “decorative” rather than meaningful.

Nor would students in today’s art classrooms be likely to learn that such a fear was fully justified—as evidenced by numerous patently decorative uses of purportedly serious art (uses ranging from Mondrian-inspired bathroom designs to a Rothko reproduction marketed by the Crate & Barrel home furnishings store as a “bright yet soothing . . . contemporary color statement”). Instead, students are routinely fed the artworld’s received wisdom regarding abstract art as a major art historical breakthrough worthy of our attention and esteem.

Postmodernist “Contemporary Art”

Revelations of where a younger generation of art teachers are heading can be found in the “Instructional Resources” featured in the NAEA journal Art Education. Let me cite just two. One, from the January 2016 issue, is about the “dizzying work” of Alex Garant—a Canadian painter who uses the “gimmick” (her word) of superimposing several versions of the same face out of sync.1

Alex Garant - Comet

Alex Garant, Comet, 2015, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in.

Garant says she aims “to engage the viewer in a sensory journey” and “to create an aesthetically pleasing optical illusion.” But I defy you to gaze at one of her odd images for more than a few seconds. I found it impossible. Feeling as if my eyes were crossed, I had to turn away from what was a distinctly unpleasant experience.

Yet the adjunct professor and middle school teacher who had “explored” Garant’s work as an example of contemporary art for inclusion in her lessons concludes her article by claiming that it “magnetically draws the viewer in (emphasis mine), forcing us to question the essence of the figure before us.” Which left me wondering if she had ever actually looked at those bizarre images for more than an instant, or had questioned why she herself had emphasized their “dizzying effect.” Pity the poor middle schoolers who will receive lessons on such “art”!

Michael Beitz - Body-Brick

Michael Beitz, Body/Brick.

Michael Beitz - Belly Brick

Michael Beitz, Belly/Brick.

A passion for “big ideas” in contemporary art led another professor of art education to interview “sculptor” Michael Beitz for an Instructional Resource in the May 2014 issue of Art Education.2 Some of Beitz’s “sculptures” consist of casts of body parts attached to buildings—such as Body/Brick and Belly/Brick. Of these, he confesses: “I often work subconsciously without understanding what I am doing.” His professorial interlocutor makes matters clear for us, however. “By placing his own body parts into the construction,” she explains, Beitz “addresses issues of anonymity, alienation, and the nature of public space.” She further notes that the work reflects such postmodernist practices as “juxtaposition, recontextualization, hybridity, and layering”—terms given currency in the art ed lexicon through the writing of an influential educator named Olivia Gude.

Michael Beitz - Knot

Michael Beitz, Knot.

Other “big ideas” can be found in Beitz’s furniture “sculptures”—in which he twists and distorts familiar items such as sofas and tables out of any functional shape, to explore “relationships.” One of his favorite pieces is Knot.

Michael Beitz, Dining Table.

Another, created while he was an “artist-in-residence,” is Dining Table. Despite his intensely serious intentions about such work, Beitz candidly observes that they “look sort of funny.” Does that spontaneous impression give either him or his art ed interviewer pause to question his approach to “sculpture” and perhaps revert to one that is more traditional? Not in the least. Moreover, Professor Hoefferle assures Art Education readers that such works are “traditional in the sense that they involve a high level of technique/craft, are a translation or symbol of the artist’s experience, and are not the result of a research project.”

I must confess that my own view of “traditional” works of sculpture dealing with human relationships is a bit different. It conjures up works such as this ancient Egyptian couple, Michelangelo’s Bandini Pietà, or this remarkable latter-day Madonna and Child by a little-known Italian sculptor, Alceo Dossena (1878–1937)—not to mention a more recent example such as Three Soldiers, by Frederick Hart (1943–1999), in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A fruitful lesson might be to ask students to compare their spontaneous responses to these and other genuine sculptures with that to Beitz’s concoctions. But no such question was included in Hoefferle’s Instructional Resource.

Nor do teachers have any difficulty reconciling anti-traditional works such as those described above with the National Visual Arts Standards arrived at to great fanfare by the NAEA in 2014. Which suggests that what the standards most needed was a solidly reasoned conception of what qualifies as “visual art” and why. What was adopted instead was the contemporary artworld’s open-ended view of what art is—which boils down in effect to no standards at all.

Notes

  1. Sarah Ackermann, “Spin Me Round and Round: The Dizzying Work of Alex Garant,” Art Education, January 2016. See also “Alex Garant’s ‘Queen of Double Eyes’ Will Break Your Brain,” by Andres Jauregui, which aptly appears in the “Weird News” section of the Huffington Post, August 17, 2015. ↩
  2. Mary Hoefferle, “Michael Beitz: Objects of Communication,” Art Education, May 2014. ↩
Alex Garant, art education, contemporary art, Mark Rothko, Michael Beitz
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