For Haiti

On Friday, April 28th, I attended a film screening for a movie entitled, Ayiti Mon Amour at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.  Originally, I was under the impression that I would be attending an artist lecture, but instead, to my surprise, it was a film screening.  I don’t mean this as a negative, as the film was very nicely crafted and the director and writer of the film was present at the screening and was available to answer questions after.  

Guetty Felin answering questions after the film

Ayiti Mon Amour was written, directed, and produced by Guetty Felin, a native of Haiti.  The film was released in 2016 and has appeared at the Toronto Film Festival.  Felin has also produced other films, such as Closer to the Dream in 2010, and Sacred in 2016.  For this particular film, Felin said she was inspired to create it after the earthquake in Haiti, in 2010, which destroyed a lot of the island.  However, she did not want to portray the Haitian people as victims, instead opting to speak to their ability to heel and rebuild.   In her introduction before the movie began, Felin said the movie was a hommage to the people of Haiti.

In describing the movie, it was like a documentary infused with folk loric tales from Haitian tradition.  The film was shot on site in Haiti, five years after the earthquake, and the carefully crafted scenes depicted all the beauty and trajedy that the island has suffered since.  Though the film followed the lives of three different characters, I would argue that their was a fourth prominent character, which is the sea.  Felin commentated that to her, the sea brings life, in addition to taking it away.  It is this cycle that she references, which will restore the island by taking away the destruction, death, and sorrow, and return to it life and growth.

An interesting plot point and theme I picked up on was this ambiguity between which characters were living and which were not.  For example, one character’s (the writer’s) muse seemed to fluctuate between both worlds, interacting with some of the characters in some scenes, while in others, depicted completely cut off.  This mysteriousness speaks to elements of folk tales, which Felin acknowledges as a key component to her work, thus giving the film a feel of magical realism.  Plus, there is also the point in the movie when Orphee, one of the main characters, magically became full of electricity, enabling him to charge other people’s phones.  Felin was asked to address this specific plot point after the movie, which she responded was based on an actual event that happened to her as a child.

Overall, I found the film to be an interesting fusion of the physical island of Haiti with its rich cultural traditions of storytelling.  The Toronto Film Festival used the word “lyrical” to describe the movie and I would agree.  It was constructed very poetically, balancing scenes of the landscape with scenes of character interaction and development.  The lasting image of the movie, however —getting back to my point about the sea as a main character— is the final scene, which juxtaposes the beauty of the water and its reef with all the rags and debris that are still floating and stuck in the water; a reminder of the devastation from the earthquake and also a symbol of life, death and rebirth.

Me, at BAMPFA, enjoying the exhibition "Hippie Modernism" before the start of the film

Documenting and Mass Media

On March 23, 2017, I visited the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to view the exhibition entitled, Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media.  This exhibition opened on December 20th, 2016 and will close on April 30th, 2017.  Referencing that artists have continually turned to news outlets for inspiration, this exhibition examines how the artists have interpreted and commented on news images from the 1960’s to the 2000’s.  The statement accompanying the show warns that all the work is political, and “through photographs and videos, these (included) artists have juxtaposed, mimicked, and appropriated media elements to transform ephemeral news into lasting works of art.”  Some of the artists included in Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media are John Baldessari, Donald Blumberg, Martha Rosler, Catherine Opie, Alfredo Jaar, and Robert Heinecken.

Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media exhibition statement

John Baldessari, The Meaning of Various Photographs to Ed Henderson, 1973

Though all of the work is either photography or video of recognizable people from culture (such as former U.S President George W. Bush) or scenes from mass media over the past fifty years (such as the Vitenam War), the art is all conceptual.  Images are juxtaposed next to each other to create new and interesting relationships, ultimately giving rise to new meanings and content.   Playing off of the idea about how illustrated news articles have helped to shape people’s perceptions of current events—and the many different ways they can be altered or manipulated— this exhibition recontextualizes these images into new narratives, or stories.  The bodies of work assembled by each individual artist in this exhibition speak to a documentary approach of their art making practice.  Quite literally, they are using tools and materials (photography and video) that emphasize documentation in contemporary culture.  These artists work with the idea of history as their souce material, but instead of looking back on past events, they were responding to the present— a history that had not been written at the time of their inventions.  Essentially, these artists gave their current experience both form and a language, enabling them to speak and address their specific time.

Martha Rosler, House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, 1967

As previously mentioned, this exhibition was comprised of many different artists, resulting in an exhibition with lots of work on display.  Though the space was rather large with several room divides, the work still felt crammed together.  However, the amount of art and the way much of it was crowded together created visual intensity, mimicking how mass media operates in general—busy, flashy, loud;  using anything that can grab one’s attention.  The artwork ranged in scale, but was all uniformly framed.  I found similarities to the way the art was framed and how a television set frames its image.  This simple little detail plays such an important role in the relational aesthetics of the exhibition.  As a viewer, I felt bombarded with stimuli, but not necessarily in a negative way, as this felt right for the content and context of this exhibition.

Alfredo Jaar, Untitled (Newsweek), 1994

By following through on its statement, Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media accomplished what it was curated to do.  In addressing the themes of manipulation, fabrication, appropriation, and context, this exhibition and its included artists, spoke to the idea of confirmation bias—creating narratives that fit what one wants you to believe— and the incredible simplicity in which it can be done.  Technology has allows photographs and videos to be altered with ease, allowing for false or altered perceptions of the world to be created.  As seen with Catherie Opie’s work in this exhibition, the juxtaposition of images create new relationships and narratives, so, as viewers, being aware of this device is essential in deciphering visual documentation.  In sum, given how integrated mass media is in comtemporary culture, this exhibition felt incredibly appropriate, adding to this ongoing conversation about mass media. 

Catherine Opie, In and Around Home series, 2004-05

Robert Heickenen, TV Newswoman (Faith Daniels and Barbara Walters),  1986

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, War Primer 2, 2011

How do you make an art museum and why?

On Saturday, April 8th, the department of Art at Sac State, in partnership with the art history program, hosted it’s annual Art History Symposium.  This year, the invited speakers were Rachel Teagel, director of the Manetti Shrem Museum, and Lawrence Rinder, director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).  Both speakers centered their talks around the question: how do you make an art museum, and why?

Rachel Teagel is the founding director of the Manetti Shrem Museum, over-seeing its completion from the ground up, which started in 2012 and was completed in the fall of 2016.  She has a Ph.D is art history from Stanford University, with a focus in U.S Contemporary Art.  She also curated the inagural show in the Shrem Museum.

Rachel Teagel in conversation

Lawrence Rinder is the current director at BAMPFA, holding that postition since 2008.  He oversaw BAMPFA’s move to its current location, a newly renovated $112 million building.  BAMPFA’s mission statement is to inspire the imagination and ignite critical dialogue through art and film.  (They) aspire to be locally connected and globally relevant, engaging audiences from the campus, community, and beyond.

Both speakers addressed the topic of the lecture in different ways.  Teagel, having just recently seen her museum completed, spoke more about the process of creating a museum.  For example, part of their process what to involve the public by inviting them to open meetings, so that they may give their opinions regarding what they felt the Shrem Museum should be.  She also spoke about what this museum was created to represent, which was UC Davis’ rich history.  Their collection boasts art by their revered faculty of Robert Arneson, William T. Wiley, Ruth Horsting, Wayne Thiebaud, and Roy DeForest, to name a few.  Also, the architecture of the building was inspired by their specific location in the central valley. 

Rinder spoke more to what a museum is and can be, since the beginnings of BAMPFA can be traced back to 1881, making it the oldest operating UC art museum on the west coast.  BAMPFA is considered an encyclopedic museum, meaning they have a huge collection of art from all different times and locations.  Though they started with only around 12 american and european paintings, their collection now contains well over 17,000 works of art, including a fantastic collection of Japanese prints. 

Between both speakers, the relationship of education and museum was important and essential.  As Rinder said, though collections are great, they are a huge responsibility and not essential.  Instead, art museums need to play an important role in educating and providing an inspirational experience to the public, and part of their job as directors is to figure out how to make a museum relavent and engaging in the twenty-first century.  I feel Mr. Rinder summed this up nicely, when he said that museum’s needed to do something that would add to the conversation, not just represent it.  In thinking about this need to engage with audiences in the twenty-first century, I started to question whether or not the word “museum” helped or hurt this mission.  The connotations associated with the word “museum” are generally old things and the past, so I wonder if renaming or removing the word “museum” can help an institution, like these, eliminate those preconceived notions, allowing it to speak to a larger audience and increase engagement with the public?

A Face in the Crowd….

On Saturday, April 8, at Sac State, I attended a film screening of local ceramic artist Tony Natsoulas.  The film was a documentary of Natsoulas’ career, entitled Tony Natsoulas: A Face in the Crowd, and was directed and produced by Ben Fargen, a longtime friend of Natsoulas.  According to Fargen, this project took around 15 months to complete, which included researching, conducting interviews, and sorting through archived sources and materials of Natsoulas’ career.  Overall, the documentary spanned from Natsoulas’ early career, starting with his undergraduate work at UC Davis, and ended with where he is currently.  I have had the opportunity to meet and work with Tony, so I personally enjoyed this film, as I was able to see the bigger picture of who he is.

Natsoulas grew up in Davis, completing his undergraduate and graduate studies at UC Davis under the teaching of legendary ceramic artist Robert (Bob) Arneson.  Arneson’s influence on Natsoulas’ work is pretty recognizable; Natsoulas even created several portrait pieces to honor his late professor.  Natsoulas’ sculptures are figurative, many of which are life size.  Their exaggerated features reference caricature drawings, providing humorous and whimsical elements to the work.  Natsoulas said he is influenced by childhood comics and cartoons such as Rat Fink.  In describing his work, Natsoulas says that he is interested in motion and action, and despite his sculptures being static, he tries to create a feeling like they could come alive at any moment.

Big Daddy Roth (Portrait of Ed Roth with Rat Fink)

Ceramic, wire, and hand blown glass

47"x28"x20"

Bob (Portrait of Robert Arneson)

Ceramic, Metal, and Wood

96"x22"x28"

Overall, I found the film to be very informative, as it presented an broad, but clear, summary of Tony’s career.  A career that extensive and prolific would be difficult to capture in an hour and a half documentary, so I felt it did a good job highlighting specific events and works of art—including backstories and inspiration around certain sculptures— and was completmented by commentary of friends and colleagues.

photo of Tony Natsoulas at the film screening

photo of the director/producer Ben Fargen at the film screening

A day at LACMA

My first trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) was great, as I was able to see and experience quite a wide range of art. Having opened in 1965, LACMA’s collection is vast, encompassing work from all era’s and geographical locations.  According to its website, LACMA boasts that it is the largest art museum in the western United States, with a collection that includes more than 130,000 objects dating from antiquity to the contemporary.

Being a painter, I was, of course, drawn to their collection of paintings, specifically from the modern era.  This was the first time that I have seen work by artists such as Picasso, Beckmann, and de Kooning—artists whom I admire—in person.  There was also a couple works by Jean Debuffet which I really enjoyed.  One of my favorite pieces, however, was a sculpture, entitled Disk, by Italian artist Arnaldo Pomodoro (1983).  To me, the work was very internally driven, as the inner gears seemingly wanted to bust out of its encompassing skin.  The highly polished bronze exterior reflected my own self back at me, while I stood in front of the sculpture contemplating its intricacies.  Ultimatley, I was relating this work to my own personal interest in the human cognitive internal—ideas of which inspire my own paintings.

Disk, Arnaldo Pomodoro, 1982-83, Bronze

Turbulence, Zheng Chongbin, 2013, Ink and Acrylic on Xuan Paper

Bar, Brown, Max Beckmann, 1944, Oil on Canvas

Head of a Woman with a Hat, Pablo Picasso, 1939, Oil on Canvas

On a tangent note, I was really bothered by the framing around the 2D artwork in the museum, but also all museums in general.  To me, the frames that were extremely ornamental seemed to both detract and distract from the actual work itself.  Perhaps it can be argued that the context of these highly ornamental frames fit better with work that was from the 1800’s and prior, but anything past that time was really an eyesore and did not seem to complement the art.  Yet, as viewers, I feel we almost have no choice but to accept that these frames are a part of the work, contributing to its meaning, as opposed to a support, or something that is not active or participatory in the viewer’s experience.  This reminds me of Jeff Koons, and how he used the idea of the plexiglass box to signify his works were art.  However, the frames around the works by Picasso, amongst others, operated in reverse, demanding that instead of the work be art, it became relegated to something more along the lines of decor.  I guess this leads me to propose the following questions: What are the functions of frames in art?; and how does framing a work of art change— and to what extent— its context and meaning?

Still Life with Silver Candle Stick, Still Life with Cats, Max Beckmann, 1943, Oil on Canvas

Still Life, Pablo Picasso, 1927, Oil on Canvas

Head of a Bearded Man with Cigarette, Pablo Picasso, 1964, Crayon and Pastel on Paper

Portrait of Isaku Yanaihara, Alberto Giacometti, 1956, Oil on Canvas

Group of Figures, Joan Miro, 1938, Oil on Canvas

The Effacement of Memories, Jean Debuffet, 1957, Oil on Canvas