Long Sorrow

 

In the thirteen minute film by Anri Sala, we are pulled into a small room, slowly. The camera image deliberately controls our pace. There is something there beneath the open window but we can't yet make out what it is. Sounds of a saxophone are audible. We are made aware of the camera's presence. Our perspective changes as the camera rolls in. From radiator to window to saxophone to mouth-piece, the camera is constantly reframing. We are given fractional sites of embodiment, shifting, as the notes are heard. This fragmentary presentation adds to our intensity. 

 Image and sound articulate one another.  

 Captivated by the soulful and sorrowful whaling of the free-jazz artist, Jemeel Moondoc, we are drawn into the music in an empathetic response.

Michael Fried brought in this film to help give credence to some of his theories on art. 

In this film we are made aware of the saxophonist playing while sitting on the ledge of an apartment building. He is absorbed in his music. He is unaware of being viewed. Fried talks of the absorption as its  "to be seen-ness."

Fried has long complained of Donald Judd and the "literalists," of not owning up to the theatricality of their work. 

In, "Long Sorrow," the emphasis of the activity of the camera is seen by Fried as the "owning up" to its theatricality. We are made aware of the camera but we are drawn in by the music. The music takes us inward, into the soul of this man and into ourselves as well as taking us outside where we hear church bells and traffic. 

I loved the music in this film. And yet, thinking back on the evening, it is also Fried's voice that I hear, rapidly firing his words as though there was an urgency in his getting out all that he had to say.

The music of the film held conviction. We were caught in the moment, spellbound by the improvisation of the saxophone. "Like a high wire act," Fried said, "at any moment it could fail." We "experienced" the intensity through each moment. 

 

 

 

Georgia Granite Circle

Walking quickly through the museum I couldn't help but be struck by Richard Long's "Georgia Granite Circle." While there were many works that were interesting and warranted further attention there was no doubt that I would spend my fifteen minutes with the circle of granite. Having grown up in a scientific family and spending summers in the New Hampshire woods that are strewn with granite boulders I recognized the rocks as granite immediately. Indeed when I sat with the work many childhood memories came flooding back to me. More than anything I could imagine how it would feel to walk across the rocks. I would have to struggle to keep my balance walking on top of the rocks as they moved under my feet. As a child I was also an avid rock collector so I was drawn to the many small glinting crystals in the granite, these are good specimens, the kind I would have taken home as a child. Indeed it occurred to me that Richard Long's main emphasis with this work may be nothing more than a celebration of the childhood joy of rocks. It also made me remember throwing rocks into lakes and rivers, where one goal was always to through the largest rock you could. While all these reactions to the work engaged me and drew me in I wouldn't say I lost myself in the work, or was embodied in the rocks. I definitely empathized with Richard's and indeed all humans love of rocks.
I found that after sitting with the work for several minutes I began to imagine myself shrunk down so the rocks were like mountain peaks. Standing on top of one of the rocks I could look out at the vast expanse of jagged granite peaks, like I was in the middle of some great mountain range. My sense of scale then shifted so the rocks were like large boulders that were several times my size. This reminded me of badlands type landscapes that I really love. I could imagine hiking amongst and climbing on the rocks. I really did begin to lose myself in the work, and I became embodied in the rocks.
Kenneth Baker the art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle called the work "defiantly uncommunicative", and perhaps he is right, but maybe it's the lack of overt message on Long's part that does make it relatively easy to lose oneself in the work.

Size matters

Viewing the "Gates of Hell"(To your Right) by the French artist Auguste Rodin is always very pleasant. I admire Rodins craftsmanship in modeling 180 figures in despair, and the carefully placement of each and single one of them. But, do I feel the horror of loosing my soul? No, I didn't. I felt that the figures emotions were a bit cliche, in their positions and facial expressions. I also had a hard time relating to the figures which were 15cm-1 meter tall, maybe if I was the same size as them, the whole thing would have had a stronger effect on me.

Take an artist like Ron Mueck (To your Left) who uses scale to have a impact on the viewer, and does it ever! His ordinary models and the positions of them, are powerful and intense. The scale is so big and successful, that it changes the figures from ordinary to extraordinary.

Deborah Butterfield's work

I am impressed by Deborah Butterfield's work: a horse made of bronze branches. What I am admiring her work is that she managed to create a form depending on her personal feeling. I was also shocked by the sculpture material which appears to be real branches but is made of bronze. At the first glance, it looks like a horse painted by Beihong Xu, a famous Chinese painter. The character of the Chinese traditional painting is to express the spirit of the artist by the Chinese writing brushes. I feel that those bronze branches are just like the strokes which represent the artist inspirational moods. When I looked at this piece closer, branches are connected very well to form inner and outer space in a horse in an abstract manner. The hollow space between branche brings us a lot of imagination. In Chinese painting, the virtual and the real are most important expression techniques. In this horse sculpture, the artist took advantaged of the negative and the positive space in the strutures so that the whole form shows grace and ligtness. To some extend, Deborah was exploring the material expression and the relationship between inside and outside. She digged out the unique character of the material which embodied the artist's mood and interest.

On Fried's talk

Sitting at the lecture I was pondering Michael Fried’s discussion and it’s relevance to contemporary representational painting, and found that this was going to be another experience, like most lectures I attend, to take in as an experience, and an addition to my mental art history dictionary.

The video by Anri Sala, titled "Long Sorrow," was a perfect example of the experience part, which is what I think Fried was getting at in his talk. So, here I am with four friends, with interest invested in this talk, and a small auditorium of complete strangers, as Fried presents a brief overview of his earlier work, then shows Sala’s video.

The first scene in the video shows the interior space of an empty white room, from the vantage point of the middle of one wall looking out a window in the center of the opposite side, with a radiator under it, with something propping up a hinged window. There is a saxophone playing. Whatever is propping up the window is placed a little to the right of the middle of the window creating asymmetry in a symmetrical composition.

The saxophone is playing and I am staring, and having an experience. At this point I am not fully invested in the movie. The strangers are around me, and I am intrigued, confused, and aware of myself trying to be aware.

The camera slowly moves towards the window.

I am uncomfortable at this point because I am becoming part of the scene and subconsciously I don’t know if I want to be. As the camera draws nearer the window it is becoming very obvious that what is propping up the window is the head of someone playing the saxophone we are hearing. This moment is the switch from an abstract image to the conveyance of some form of narrative, but I just want the image. As the video plays on it remains very abstracted, and presence, or “presentness” as Fried calls it, is always there. There is a need though. At the very moment of my engagement I am in dialog with the director (Artist), trying to show me, where everywhere else in the video I am looking. This, and the on the spot question from Professor Raysnford after on how I liked it, followed by a sparatic answer from myself, made me rethink my experiences in general. I look, watch, listen, answer, etc. and this moment of "presentness" is everywhere, and the video, Fried’s talk, Raynsford’s question, and my paintings are all an image of "presentness."

The exterior shot of the window further on in the video shows the saxophone player cropped out of the lower left corner of the picture plane, overlapping the offset window, which is framed beautifully by the exterior of the building, and small vertical abstraction to the right of the view beyond the building. There is a relationship to this aesthetic that I think is the “presentness” we all relate to, and is Fried’s topic for discussion. These moments we grasp to, that encode our existence, which we usually take for granted, is what experience, or language is all about.

I am sitting, typing now, and as I am thinking of what else to say, and about how I need to go back again and reread Art and Objecthood, I look out the aluminum framed, old, open sliding glass door of my parent’s house. The sound of traffic from the near highway hums, and framed in the bottom of the door, cut off to the right side, is my dog sleeping on his side. Breaking the plane of the window, he also overlaps the table and chair behind him, which is framed by the darkness of the shadow further away. I look for a split second more. I laughed, and turned to write this, and looked back for that experience, and the dog walked inside.

A moment, or "window" of clarity

Walking around the Cantor looking quickly, and passing all these great moments in time, I kept walking back to where I usually go when I have been there before, and that is the contemporary art wing, and specifically the Bay Area painting section. Maybe the placement of Diebenkorn’s “Window”, visible from both entrances, set it so I am constantly engaged with the painting. Yet, when I finally stopped and engaged with it as a solo experience, I am instantly walking into the painting.

The chair on the bottom right corner of the large canvas (92” x 80”) breaks the picture plane making the interior part of my space. Upon studying the metal folding chair at a slightly awkward perspective, it is lit with a cool light that overlaps the sill of the window and my perception of the flat surface is projected back into space of the warm, intense exterior of the building. For now, I am in the building. I am in the painting. I am fully engaged and embodied by the work, and my investigation and associations become amplified.

Frames within frames, complementary warms and cools, relatable and ambiguous subject matter intertwine the composition. The application of the paint is very direct, as is the information presented at first glance. This is a space recorded at a specific moment in time. The pairing down of information, making the scene more abstracted creates further directness to the composition, as if we are dealing with just the formal tools of painting, which are working to convey some sort of mood.

Knowing about Diebenkorn, and reinforcing my background from the simple wall text, I know that he was follower of Matisse’s work, who had a great influence on his decision-making. In particular, comparing “The Window” to Matisse’s “View of Notre Dame,” one would make obvious relationships, not only between these two paintings in regards to there formal qualities, but also the influence this particular painting has on Diebenkorn’s whole “Ocean Park” series.

Windows looking out into the world, with incorporating interior space, make it very easy to engage with what is happening in Diebenkorn’s work. That is the beauty in it. A simple looking, yet complex break down of shape, line, color, light, perspective, and so on make this piece a window that is personal to Diebenkorn, yet part of my space in the world too. Upon further investigation of this work I am continually impressed with Diebenkorn’s eyes and hands, and I equally surprised and intrigued by images within this image, and other works of his, like the simple horizontal lines of color creating light and shadow in the frame of the circle to the left of the painting, which appears to be some form of a railing or piece of the architecture of the building. And that bright, bold orange shape (roof top) is just undeniable. The space in this painting is part of our world, because he says it is.

There is something about Dick

After strolling around at the museum and viewing some of my old favorite artists, I surprisingly got most excited to view the "Georgia Granite Circle", 1990, by Richard Long.
The 7.5 tons of striated marble stones was placed in a large jagged circular pattern. It takes approximately 8 seconds to walk around the whole piece, but somehow the scale of the piece felt larger when viewed from 65 cm from the floor, at a still motion. The rocks were light colored and around 20 cm tall. Some had stripes and some had natural silver/gold glitter inside of them, but still the all looked the same. The brightness of the rocks and the jagged circle felt elegant and calming, to me as a viewer. I think that the usage of a natural and organic media such as the rocks, strips some of a complexity away. It then leaves the work in a vulnerable and naked state, which I find beautiful and peaceful. Not only did I find these emotions in the piece itself but also within myself. The rocks pulls the viewer in and leaves the surrounding, in this case the museum, in a delete form.
So how can some granite rocks placed on the floor invoke a lot of emotions inside of me. Could it be the colors or the placement of them...or, the glitter? There is something about Richard Long precise usage of the granite. The unity the rocks shared in their size and colors, and a clear non egotistical need of grabbing attention by being different. All the rocks had simplicity and shared equally their space with its neighbour rock. None of the rocks had something more, nor, less then the other rock that was placed around the circle. Dear I say that it reminded me about a dreamlike socialistic point of view between the rocks. A point of view which I grew up with, and therefor I felt more of a connection and familiarity with these rocks, over any other work at the museum.