POSTCRIPT NUMBER ONE

     I have decided to include a few musings of my own by way of a postscript to my reviews of shows at NAC.  My tenant Andrew, who has been posting my Blog for me recently, suggested I do this.  He is quite a movie fan and has been getting DVDs from the library for the two of us to watch.  It is so long since I have been to the movies that they are quite new to me.  The latest one we watched was "Fame" ( the original 1980 movie starring Irene Cara amongst others ) and Andrew asked me to review it.

    I took a lively interest in it because one of my Southern nieces attended Julliard School of Music and when last heard from was playing in the Houston Symphony Orchestra.  She had plenty of encouragement from her father, the musically gifted pediatrician Bill Bucknall, who made her her first viola.  In a similar way, my librarian nephew, Tim Bucknall, is getting  his daughter Carolyn trained for an artistic career.  He has all the more reason to do this as she is dyslexic and has no skill in handling words.  But his primary motive is to follow the trail blazed by his father, Malcolm, who opposed an adamant resistance to our father's attempts to divert him from art and shunt him off into what that man thought was a more lucrative career.  Although his father called him a fool, Malcolm had done very well for himself and even has fans in Australia.  So I was interested to see what all these lively young people in New York were doing with their talents.

    The first thing that struck me about this movie was the title "Fame."  I immediately thought of what the poet John Milton had to say on this subject. 
"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
( That last infirmity of noble mind )
To scorn delights and live laborious days."
All these young actors, dancers and musicians may not have scorned delights because they certainly enjoyed what they were doing to the extent of its containing the whole meaning of life for them, but they did lead most laborious days and scorned any attempt to divert them from it.  Milton speaks of the desire for fame, from a Christian point of view, as "an infirmity," a weakness, but as an English critic has remarked, although the poet Gray talked of a "mute inglorious Milton" lying in a country churchyard Milton himself would never had tolerated a life that was mute and inglorious.  Otherwise, why would he have described his poetic talent as "that one talent which is death to hide?"  Like all creative geniuses he opted for fame, although his Christian conscience told him to prefer humility.

     But part of the truth to reality of this movie is that only some, no matter what their talent, actually end up getting fame.  They risk everything to end up waiting tables, perhaps,  The movie is fiction, but as Jean Cocteau put it, this fiction is a lie that tells the truth.  This is what makes this movie supremely worth watching, unlike the remake.

PASSAGE AND RECALL BY KRYS KACZAN

                                      PASSAGE AND RECALL BY KRYS KACZAN


Restored to memory,
As the dawn breaks upon my sight,
I recover meaning
From the shadows of the night.
Memory, open the door
To so much and so more,
Hold the door open,
Now that I have awoken;
Not that I slept much at all.
I have lain awake
More than half the night,
Wondering how we gather meaning
From all the vestiges of seeming,
So we read our life like a book.
Again and again we look
For the meaning of a smile,
A tear, a laugh, a cry.
And memory, careful memory, supplies the answer why.
Open Sesame,
You have to say,
But it is no use forgetting
The word to unlock the hoard.
As the pen is mightier than the sword
Because it is able to record,
So the paint brush can do this as well.
The memory is one of sight,
Born fresh and new upon the light.
Krys, a Niagara artist, has been able to recall
Across the passage of the years,
That time when she was a child
And when she first smiled
To see the apple blossom break
Into snowy clusters to burst forth and shake
Along the gnarled and twisted boughs
Of the many orchards on her family farm.
Away and away the trees rolled
In green clumps and ridges,
Quite green again, once the blossoms fell,
After having burst forth in such an orgy of white.
She remembers it so well
That she has been able
To tell it like a fable
Of Creation on its first days,
When God turned His gaze
On the world He had just made
And saw that it was good.
That is its meaning
Contained in shape and seeming,
In every shade and hue,
Old, preserved in the mind,
And eternally fresh and kind.

FOUR RESCENT GRADUATES - FOUR MEDIUMS

     Modern art really began when Diaghilev brought the Russian Ballet to Paris in 1909.  His message
to the musicians, choreographers and dancers who worked for him was "Amaze me !"  They rose to the challenge in ways that astounded, mesmerized, disgusted, fascinated or shocked their audiences at the time, and creative types have been trying to produce the same effects ever since.  The artists in this show, judging by the elaborately impressive way they describe their own works are no exception.

     My brother, the painter Malcolm Bucknall, once told me that when he was reviewing another artist's work, what he tried to do was not so much to express a final objective judgment as to evaluate the work in terms of the artist's intentions.  He said this seemed to work and he advised me to do the same.  So, taking a stab at the idea that these four artists, like so many others since 1909, want to amaze us, I ask myself, "How did they go about it?"

     The work that struck me immediately as most amazing, so that I wondered when I first saw it if it was a work of art at all and not a curtain hung to signal the absence of a work of art which would appear later on, was the first of two works labeled "Ornate Fiction" by Alexandra Muresan.  Looking more closely at it, I perceived that what looked like a drape carried a picture in ink that was quite detailed but not a depiction of reality.  It also afforded glimpses of drawing on a panel underneath.  Both works labeled "Ornate Fiction" reminded me of successful works of speculative fiction in the way they combined the representational with the inventive and imaginary.  The title suggests that this was what was intended. 

     "Play Food" by Katie Mazi was what my eye fell on next.  Digital photographs of breakfast or snack foods which, as the artist explains, might appear in an advertisement, are, she appears to say, intended to disconcert rather than tempt us to consume, unsettling our notions of reality and what we can generally expect.  The fried egg that just sits there, enjoying its state of being, is a striking example of this. 

     The bunches of patterned textiles hanging from hooks and labeled "Untitled" by Jennifer Judson are also disconcerting.  We look at them and wonder if they are intended to be pot holders, cleaning rags, dish towels and so forth but they refuse to be identified as any of these things.  I was tempted to take them off their hooks and see what they could be used for, but because of the respect we have been trained to show for a work of art, I didn't dare.

     We see the influence of people like John Cage and Marcel Duchamp in some of this, but when we come to the three quite pleasant large abstracts by  Matt Caldwell we see them in a different light, largely because we have become quite used to abstracts so that they no longer shock or surprise us.  Judging by the artist's statement, they count as amazing because they turned out to be so different from what he was used to doing.  First of all, he amazed himself.

     I suppose this is true of all four artists, who are quite self reflective and appear to have started with an idea at least as much as with an image.  Maybe this is typical of recent graduates and they will become quite different later on.  That should be interesting to watch.

Puppet a-go-go

     As you look in the window of NAC, you see five enormous grotesque heads which seem to be made of painted papier-mâché.  Two are placed on the floor on either side of a rotating pole displaying the other three.  This gives you fair warning that tremendous effort and ingenuity has been expended and you are in for a surprise. 

     The participating artists do not tell you much about themselves.  No names are attached to the grotesques in the window and there is no indication of what they represent, what is meant by their huge size or what will happen to them once the show is taken down.  Visitors to the show are simply handed a little card informing them that four artists, Christine Cosby, Alexa Fraser, Trisha Lavoie and Clelia Scala, are responsible for the whole show, bringing together 1,000 finger puppets from far and wide in Canada and also showing an installation of four life size puppets, dressed but with animal heads.  They include a deer, a bear, a leopard and a lion.  There is also a crash derby featuring toy cars.

     No names of artists are attached to anything in the gallery anymore than to the heads in the window.  The participating artists are just out to have fun rather than to go down as movers and shakers in art history.  Making finger puppets is such a modest form of artistic activity that even children can join in and some of the finger puppets look as if they had been made by families for Halloween.  The grotesque heads in the window, now that I come to think of it, would be a good installation for a front garden for Halloween. 

     Ingenuity is on display and quite a few of the finger puppets are cunningly crafted in some detail.  I particularly noticed one set showing Little Red Riding Hood, her Grandmother, the Wolf and the Woodcutter.  A couple of other really striking sets were the Greek gods and the planets.  I also noticed the complete alphabet and a great many animals.  But what blew my mind was the sheer impact of the variety and quantity. 

     More and more artists are invited to join in, whether they think they are qualified artists or not, and free finger puppet workshops are being held throughout the "In the Soil" art show, which is running concurrently in downtown St. Catharines.  The organizers of this finger puppet show obviously feel that art is for the people and everyone should join in.  Too many people say "I have no artistic talent.  I can't even draw a straight line."  But if you are making finger puppets you don't have to draw straight lines - just lines that will fit over your fingers.  If you have fingers you can do it, and the organizing artists hope to set up an entire finger puppet festival in five years' time.  Good Luck to them!

Rodman Hall Show

   When I went round the Rodman Hall show at NAC on April 21 2016, Steve Remus, who was showing me round, had to explain to me that each exhibit in the show was a comment on Brock University's move to withdraw from its commitment to support Rodman Hall as a public art gallery for at least 20 years.  These comments were all so subtle that they simply could not be heard by ears used to the loud voices of commercial advertising or indeed to the cutthroat competition  that goes on in any modern university for status, recognition and grants.  So it is highly unlikely that they will be heard by the Brock administrators who are making this decision.
 
   They are certainly not being heard by the general public in spite of the fact that this show was featured in an article in the "St. Catharines Standard."  When I mentioned this move to some friends who are quite lively and aware, they were astonished.  They had no idea of it.  In spite of its appearance in the local newspaper, the news that Rodman Hall, after having been a real centre in St. Catharines for the visual arts, will probably be obliterated, seems very much a private affair between the artistic community and the university.

   I am tempted to speak in the voice of a child and say "The Emperor has no clothes."  But that would be futile when Brock dresses up so much as a patron of the arts and spends so much money to do so.  The projected move will probably go forward with nothing being broken but a few hearts and a few careers and at least part of the future of the visual arts in Niagara.  An important pillar of the cultural community will have been removed with really very little fuss or embarrassment. 

   I feel this shows how little genuine creativity for its own sake is valued in the modern world.  We chiefly want commercial success.  And yet how badly we want creativity in our everyday lives.  Even a little creativity would suffice to save some people from the depression, the addiction, the various types of mental illness and the temptation to suicide which besets so many in the western world today.  Even such a minimal attempt to support the creative urge as keeping Rodman Hall going might be a finger in the dike against the flood of meaninglessness that threatens to engulf us. 

   I imagine what chiefly concerns the Brock administrators is the drain on Brock's finances that subsidizing Rodman Hall might represent.  But Brock did have faith at one point that this might not be a losing proposition.  After all, it did look at one point as if  Brock University itself might be a losing proposition as all the universities seemed in danger.  I remember it because I was on the faculty myself at that time.  One of my colleagues suggested that I might find alternative employment decorating ceramics.  I forget what he thought he might do, but it was nothing very elevated.  This did not come to pass.  We had faith in ourselves at Brock and survived.  Let us have faith in the arts and have faith to the end, not just part of the way.  
  

                                              

Small Feats Sunday April 10 2016 

As always with Small Feats, what really strikes me is the sheer variety.  Given that there are 200 works in the show and on average each artist has submitted three pictures, even I, with my limited capacity for arithmetic, can tell that there must be between 60 and 70 points of view represented.
   When I come to Small Feats each year I like to select a few pictures as my favourite and actually buy one.  I am trying to economise at the moment and in any case I picked up a dozen pictures for free at the memorial service for George Sanders, an artist whom I greatly admire and from whom I bought a half dozen pictures in his lifetime, so I am not buying a picture at Small Feats this year.  But if I were I would have a hard time to make a choice.
   In spite of the variety there are certain themes that tend to turn up.  I was struck by the news, some years ago, that when one monkey starts washing a potato before eating it, pretty soon all the monkeys start doing it, even ones who have no contact with the innovative monkey, although none did it before.  And one of the few things I remember from my course in philology is that when people start making a grammatical mistake it occurs across an entire generation and ends up as accepted usage.  So in any group of sentient beings telepathy is definitely at work and this seems to be the case here.
   The animal kingdom, especially birds, seems to be represented in this show at a level above chance.  There is a whole series of crowned owls poised above excerpts from Machiavelli, there are several brightly coloured parrots, there is a songbird depicted with detailed realism and one young woman is shown cuddling a goose against a background of flowers.  But animals also appear.  The same young woman is shown cuddling a fox against a background of flowers, a bear appears with a Russian hat, there are two charming squirrels back to back, and I particularly liked a picture of a horse's head and mane depicted in a variety of vibrant and quite unrealistic colours and wildly flowing brush strokes.  Also very appealing was a painted skull with embroidered flowers.
   Even so these are not the pictures for which I would have lashed out $200 each, that being the set price.  That accolade would have gone to one of three truly beautiful pictures of sunrise and sunsets over Lake Ontario.  But that is my personal preference and there is something for  pretty well every taste, which is just as well, given that this is a fundraiser.  I hope it is a successful one.


                                                                                                                                          

BANANAGANZA: Kristin Stahlman & Co. at N.A.C.

I suppose the root word for Bananaganza is Extravaganza. The artist who organized the whole show, consisting of photographs of banana peels found lying about, is Kristin Stahlman. Because the banana peels were actually found, the show made me think of Marcel Duchamp's Objets trouvés or Found Objects, such as a bicycle wheel mounted on a kitchen stool, a urinal labelled Fountain and a bottle rack not labelled anything but simply signed "Marcel Duchamp."  For this reason, I though of giving my review the title, "Pelures de banane trouvées" or "Found banana peels."  But that would be a misinterpretation of the purpose of this show, which is simply to have fun.

Dada, the group which influenced Marcel Duchamp, was not out to have fun.  In its efforts to undermine the seriousness of the ideals, including artistic ideals, which in their opinion led to world-wide war, the Dada artists were quite seriously subversive.  Reason and logic were their enemies and they were deeply pessimistic.  Duchamp wanted to shock and succeeded.  Compared to him, this group of photographers gathered together from as far away as Venice, Italy, are a bevy of childlike innocents, celebrating banana peels in the same way in which, I suppose, they celebrate life.  I am told that on their Opening Night, they did not open NAC's doors to the general public, but instead held a banana-themed party, eating and drinking bananas in every shape and form and holding a competition to enact slipping on a banana peel.

This banana peel art is quite disposable, but only because they do not consider it important.  I don't suppose that anyone who contributed a photograph of a banana peel to the show expects to go down in the pages of art history as striking a blow against consumerism and materialism, as most of the exponents of Found Art have done.  They can't even be said to be going in for conceptual art as the quirky labels they put on their photographs, such as "Banana in the crotch of a tree" for one phallic, only partly eaten banana, do not illustrate ideas but are only added after the event, by the power of suggestion.  Any connection with ideas is based on their associations and nothing more.  All those people with an axe to grind were "so much older then."  Kristen and her friends are "younger than that now" (with apologies to Bob Dylan, whose fervent fan I was in the sixties).

The one thing that was lacking, as Steven Heinemann of the Write Bookstore pointed out, was a trompe-l'oeil rendering of a banana peel, such as a street artist might draw, to make people afraid of slipping.  But they were, after all, photographs. Perhaps if Kristin puts the show on again, she might think of this suggestion.  In the meantime she has already included a banana peel on a shelf of toys and a banana peel in a washroom.  Banana peels may crop up anywhere. 

Perhaps there were banana peels on Jacob's Ladder and that's what put his hip out of joint rather than wrestling with an angel.  Perhaps they eat bananas in Heaven, throw the peels in Purgatory and those that slip on them end up in Hell.  Long live bananas!  So says Kristin Stahlman and so say I.  Down with serious intent!