Archive for the 'Deep Thoughts' Category

Haiti Report: Saving a country’s priceless murals.

By SanSuzie on July 26, 2011 in Conservation, Deep Thoughts, Murals and San Suzie. 7 Comments


Cracks in the Wall: Philomé Obim’s Last Supper at the Sainte Trinité Cathedral in Port-au-Prince, display the damage of last year’s devastating quake. (All photos by San Suzie.)

Almost one year ago today, I set foot in Haiti for the first time — six months after a 7.0 earthquake had practically leveled the capital. I was in Port-au-Prince at the request of the Smithsonian, with my colleague Viviana Dominguez, a painting conservator, to examine what remained of a series of mural paintings at the Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. At that point, I was quite familiar with the televised images of the devastation. I had seen the bodies lifted from the rubble and the shots of the crumpled presidential palace. But nothing quite prepared me for the state of need we saw as we drove out of the airport and into the snarl of traffic.

Everywhere around Port-au-Prince there are reminders of the devastation.

Six months after the earthquake, much of Port-au-Prince remained in ruins. Though the air was thick with the dust of demolition, many collapsed buildings still lay where they fell on January 12. The road from the airport to the cathedral was a sea of tents where people lived without running water and electricity. We saw fax machines and barber chairs set up along the sidewalk, people bathing out of buckets, cooking over charcoal fires and washing clothes in muddy urban rivulets. Because so many roads continued to be blocked by rubble, it took nearly an hour to drive just a few miles.

Sainte Trinité, as it is locally known, had once been a simple but beautiful art deco structure. In the 1950s, the building’s walls were decorated with 14 murals depicting New Testament scenes. Done by a collective of Haitian artists associated with Port-au-Prince’s Centre D’Art, these energetic, color-saturated paintings quickly became something of an international sensation — one of the must-see sites for Haitian painting. For locals, they had a deep spiritual importance because they used Haitian people and settings to illustrate the life of Christ. This went well beyond the skin color of the biblical figures. For example, in Rigaud Benoit’s Nativity, palm trees, a thatched building, baskets of pineapple, and a waterfall that bears a distinct resemblance to a local pilgrimage site frame the baby Jesus. In Wedding at Cana, artist Wilson Bigaud set the miracle of turning water into wine in a Haitian hilltop village, complete with musicians playing conga drums and flutes of local origin. (See a pre-earthquake view of some of the murals here.)

The remains of Sainte-Trinité, Port-au-Prince. At rear, Prefete Duffaut's 'Native Procession' sits behind scaffolding.

When we arrived at Holy Trinity in the summer of 2010, both Benoit’s and Bigaud’s murals had been reduced to fragments the size of my hand. Gone also were paintings of the Annunciation, Temptation of the Lord, and Crucifixion, not to mention the building’s walls, roof, and pillars. Only three murals — Castera Bazile’s Baptism, Prefete Duffaut’s Native Procession and Philomé Obin’s three-walled Last Supper — clung precariously to walls that looked about as stable as the piles of debris that surrounded them. Doused by rain and baked by the sun for six months, the paintings were starting to fade and powder. They had to come down immediately. The question was how to do it without destroying them.

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The Big Salchicha: Our male-dominated art industry.

By c-monster on March 24, 2011 in C-Monster, Deep Thoughts, Media and Rant. 11 Comments


Wieners, everywhere. (Photo by paladinsf.)

There’s been some online kerfuffling on the interwebz about the stunning lack of ladies present in Modern Art Notes March Madness-style tournament, in which he’s asking readers to vote on the “greatest work of art since World War II.” The list, which was developed by a guest panel of five curators, features a total of 64 works of art. Of these, a sum total of three are crafted by women (Cindy Sherman, Maya Lin and Marina Abramovic). Two are by artists who are non-white (Kerry James Marshall and Lin, who is in for a two-fer). Almost all of the artists represented are from the U.S. or Western Europe. Andy Warhol makes the list five times. Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns are each represented by four works. And Gerhard Richter is in for three.

I’d never be the sort to oppose a good gimmick to goose web traffic, but it did rankle me to see this list. For one, it seems to tell a very narrow of art history.  I don’t necessarily have a problem with this, provided the labels are cleared up: In which case, we could re-baptize the tournament “The Best Art Work Created by a Dude Living in in London, New York or Berlin Sometime Between 1945 and 1960.” (But I suppose that doesn’t have that same ring to it.) Two, I was disappointed to see that a blogger who has taken arts institutions to task for being less than diverse, would publish a list that appeared to be the exact opposite. Three, I had to wonder if the world really needs that many Jasper Johns flags. I mean, really.

Green has defended his decisions on Twitter, stating that he wasn’t going to tell his invited curators which names to submit and that the list represents the “most-settled” artists in the 1945-60 canon. (Again, here.) To Green’s first point: I’d argue that the story a writer tells is colored by the sources he or she chooses to consult. Perhaps a more diverse group of experts would have yielded a more diverse result. To the second, I’d say: if the time-frame here is “since World War II” as originally stated (instead of 1945-60 as later implied on Twitter), then the canon ain’t even close to being settled.

Now, why could any of this possibly matter? After all, it’s just a silly game. Well, I think it matters a lot. For one, Green’s blog is an important outlet for coverage about arts institutions. This tournament will get linked to, it’ll get Facebook liked and it’ll turn up in Google searches when some student somewhere does a search for “greatest works of art since World War II.” Some little newspaper or arts journal might even run an item about it. In other words, it will become part of the record — a record for a system that already excels at excluding women and minorities from the larger narrative about art. (Something I’ve written about.) Which is why this is all such a bummer: an opportunity to provide a more comprehensive view of art, in a fun and interactive way, ends up being just the same old story.

For more: Brian Dupont has a blog post deconstructing the list. And Two Coats of Paint has a one- and two-part post that features various folks (Dupont, Jennifer Dalton, Michelle Vaughan, Hilary Robinson and many others) making some fantastic suggestions. You’ll find my list after the jump. (Although consider it more of a riff than a definitive list because it’s late and I’m TIRED.)

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A year-in-review (sort of).

By c-monster on December 27, 2010 in Art, C-Monster, Deep Thoughts, Obligatory Year-End List, Photo Diary and Travel. 5 Comments

Spied on our cross-country sojourn: A pick-up truck, outside of Austin, Texas.

It’s been a weird year. I drove back roads across the U.S. Threw a fish across state lines. Stared at an artist in a museum atrium. Taught art yoga. Spent the summer watching a “reality show” about art. Rowed around Randall’s Island in a handmade boat. And joined a religious procession in the Andes. I’ve covered most of these activities here on the blog (or over at WNYC). But a few things have eluded me — either because I just haven’t had time to get them down in pixels, or because I hadn’t quite sorted out my thoughts.

So, in lieu of a year-end listicle (I produce enough lists throughout the year), a little bit of stream-of-consciousness ruminating instead:

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On real estate.

By c-monster on October 4, 2010 in C-Monster, Deep Thoughts and Travel. 1 Comment

Open house, L.A. (Photo by C-M.)

In April, Celso and I drove cross-country, from Los Angeles to New York. We did the southern route, using mostly back roads: through the Southwest, into Louisiana and the Florida panhandle, before turning north and hitting the Blue Ridge Parkway into Pennsylvania. We shacked up with friends or stayed at the Motel 6. Along the way, we hung out with reality TV producers, small-town cops, artists, oil men and retired military. The whole trip took three and a half weeks.

Besides the economy, one of the favorite subjects of conversation — regardless of who we were with — was real estate. In each community, whether it was middle-of-nowhere Arizona or metro Atlanta, we’d hear about which homes were selling, and more likely, which ones weren’t. We got the lowdown on floreclosures, on the neighbors who had gotten in over their heads, on districts that were emptying out and others that were filling up. On the Gulf Coast, we talked about what Ivan and Katrina and Rita and those other first-name basis storms had done to the market. (This was pre-BP spill.) In Alabama, we stayed with friends who had been foreclosed.

In so many ways, this obsession of middle class American life imbued much of our trip. In L.A., we visited open houses, in an old African-American enclave from the ’60s that is being transformed by Hollywood types. We went on dozens of personal home tours, respectfully attending to discussions about wall paint and roofing. And in New Mexico, we hiked around a gated subdivision that channeled a rugged, mountain aesthetic. The area was wooded, the houses nestled deep into the forest and the roads were winding. But the rustic look was engineered. The place was governed by a strident homeowners association that, among other things, forbade the installation of above-ground propane tanks for cosmetic reasons. Barbecues as big as a storage shed, however, were a-okay.

Throughout the country, whether in blue states or in red, in burned-out refinery towns or genteel beach communities, the one subject that seemed to bring everyone together was property — it’s acquisition, it’s maintenance and it’s display.

Politics may tear us apart, but real estate brings us together.

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