Milwaukee rocks on gallery night!

Lake in Catskill Mountains (Woman throws crutches), Joel Meyerowitz

January is a gamble in Milwaukee. We all know that below zero temperatures and blizzard conditions could have killed any desire to go out on a Friday evening. Gallery night also is a bit of a gamble. There are a great many venues from which to choose and wide variability in the types of art being proffered by them. The very success of the venture can lead to crushing crowds in a few of the more popular locations and more of a carnival atmosphere than one conducive to art appreciation.

Last night, however, the stars must have been in alignment. Everything seemed to click, at least for me. I hope it did for you as well, if you went out. Every gallery my wife and I visited had healthy but not bruising crowds along with a wealth of wonderful art from the well established to the unfamiliar. The remarkable 40° temps earlier in the day left a balmy feeling that helped keep my spirits lifted between venues.

If Milwaukee is indeed one of the top 12 “art places” in the U.S., as recently reported, then gallery night was supportive evidence. (I attended a listening session on Monday hosted by ArtPlace, the consortium of foundations, gov’t. agencies, and banks that awarded the designation. The designation specified East Town and the Third Ward rather than Milwaukee as a whole, which neglects the overall fabric of a city that supports those arts districts as well as overlooking other significant places to find art in the area. But, mea culpa, I spent most of gallery night in East Town and the Third Ward!)

I don’t have time to do more than provide a taste of what we saw last night. Almost everything we saw was just opening and is ongoing, so check them out at your leisure.

We started with the trio of new shows at the Haggerty Museumof Art. Dark Blue: The Water as Protagonist sprawls through several of the galleries. As the name indicates, everything in this show of both contemporary and vintage photography relates somehow to water. Like the subject, it is a tenuous, fluid connection that assembles and juxtaposes conceptual with documentary, monumentality with banality. We raised our eyebrows now and then, but agreed that overall it’s a strong show. (And, hey, it includes my favorite Misrach image. How cool is that?! The Meyerowitz image at the top is also from this show.)

Swamp and Pipeline, Richard Misrach

Compressed within the tight space of a side gallery, local photographer Kevin Miyazaki has created a kind of chapel devoted to Lake Michigan. In a two-week period, Miyazaki drove 1,800 miles and circled the lake. One wall features portraits of people he met along the way and the facing wall is a grid of lake views in which the horizons are precisely aligned. The result is a surprising mediation on the not-so-subtle variations in color and texture of the water and sky. The two sides of the room suggest the interconnectedness of the human and natural aspects of the environment. 

Perimeter, Kevin Miyazaki

Gallery M at the Intercontinental Hotel is hosting the finalists in the Pfister Hotel’s artist in residency for the coming year. Once again there are a few surprising choices among the contenders and it will be interesting to see who is selected.

After that we headed to the Third Ward and lucked into one of precious few free parking spaces on the street, not far from Translator, a design firm that is hosting a show called Art in Unexpected Places. The work in this show was all done by participants in the Alzheimer’s Association’s Memories in the Making program. The watercolors are unpretentious and fresh. Each is accompanied by a short story about its creator. It is a fitting reminder not only that life is short and memory unpredictable, but that genuine art doesn’t have to be about marketplace values. 

Although we had other places on our to-see list, we ended up spending the rest of the evening in the Marshall Building, which was humming from top to bottom. Quick hits, descending from the top:

Plaid Tuba, the arts incubator created and led by Reginald Baylor, has moved from its first floor digs to an expanded suite of studios on the sixth floor. If any place can “manufacture creativity” as its motto insists, this is a good candidate.

Every year in January the Portrait Society Gallery commissions a local artist to create a “Winter Chapel.” This year Kevin Giese has installed a grove of hollow birch bark tree trunks culled from the northwoods near Bayfield, stripped and then carefully stitched back together. It provided a magical, quiet interlude in the midst of the clamoring crowds.

Sculptor James Toth has returned to the art scene after a long stint as Director of Exhibits at Betty Brinn Children’s Museum. His evocative abstractions made of polished “cementitious” materials with the appearance of marble grace a pop-up gallery on the third floor.

Along with the regular fare in The Fine Art Gallery and Gallery 218, always worth a peek, Blutstein Brondino Fine Art is hosting artworks by the Grand Avenue Club. The club provides services for adults who have experienced mental illness and displays its members’ art regularly on its own walls at 210 E. Michigan Street. It’s nice to see it acknowledged by a commercial gallery. Kudos to BBFA!

Last but not least, Elaine Erickson has anointed two long time members of CoPA (Coalition of Photographic Arts) with her first ever show of photography, called Eye of the Beholder. George Sanquist and Yong-ran Zhu are an appropriate match, each following the tradition of classic black and white silver gelatin printing process, which has become far from common in this digital age.

AKA Peace

Bran Symondson is renowned for being one of the finest reportage photographers working in the world today. The winner of the 2011 Amnesty International Media Award, Symondson was a serving soldier when he began documenting the Afghanistan war, which became a hugely lauded and controversial exhibition in 2010 entitled The Best View Of Heaven Is From Hell. Now he returns with a new exhibition named AKA Peace for which he has asked artists such as Damien Hirst, Gavin Turk, Sam Taylor-Wood, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Antony Gormley and the Chapman brothers  to reinterpret AK-47 assault rifles - the most recognisable and devastating worldwide killing machine - as arresting artworks of intrigue and even beauty.

(The above is reprinted from the British GQ website where it was posted in Sept. 2012.)

Check out the concept and images of the completed works of art on You Tube.

The best of 2012?

A dozen years ago or so, around the turn of the century/millennium, I was appalled to read a column by someone I’ll leave anonymous. She was asked who she thought was the best artist of the twentieth century. This columnist was not a specialist in the arts and in fact had no business, as far as I could tell, prognosticating about art in any way let alone passing judgment on who epitomizes the “best,” however one might construe that subjective concept.

And that is the most salient point, it seems to me: how do you define “art” before you decide who represents the best of it? She didn’t try. Her choice of Norman Rockwell (I’m not making this up) was bad enough in any case – even if we grant a definition of art that is limited to painting (which I definitely do not.) I won’t go into the pros and cons of her choice, except to say that it is not only a populist one but a blatantly culturally biased one. If it must be a painter I’d have to go with Picasso, but that’s not how I’d approach the question.

In order to get a handle on who might be the “best artist” of the twentieth century I believe we must decide what art form best represents that century. I didn’t at the time and still don’t think the answer is painting. In my opinion, it was the new medium of film. Since I’m not a film critic or historian I have never presumed an opinion about which of many great filmmakers best represents the art form. But I definitely am of the opinion that if one is to decide the best artist of the twentieth century that a filmmaker should be at the head of the class.

I do love the movies, though. All of this is to introduce my thoughts on films I saw in 2012. Again, I don’t presume to pronounce them “best” in an objective way. Some among my favorites, listed below, appeared on some actual film critics’ lists of the best of the year. Some did not. Some that I didn’t like also appeared on a few of those lists, including my choices for “most disappointing” and “stupidest.”

My list must be qualified by admitting that I have yet to see some of the films that are on many “best of 2012” lists. Several are in my Netflix queue. But that, I think, is the value of these rituals, isn’t it? To provide suggestions, encourage audiences for what might otherwise go unnoticed.

For instance, it won’t surprise anyone who has seen them (or read any of the “best of” lists out there) that Lincoln or Argo are among my own favorites. But they aren’t at the top. That spot is held in a tie by Life of Pi and Beasts of the Southern Wild.

However, rounding out my six favorite films of the year are two far less well known.

The Intouchables is a powerful and moving story about a paraplegic millionaire who hires a down and out ex-convict as a personal caretaker.

Robot and Frank is a heartwarming futuristic story with some surprising twists and quirks about a man whose family gives him a caretaking robot in lieu of placing him in a nursing home.

The biggest disappointment I mentioned? The Hobbit. I almost didn’t go to see it in fact, because I suspected as much. I love all three parts of The Lord of the Rings, but, of course, Tolkien wrote it in three volumes. Not so The Hobbit, a much lighter tale. I won’t waste money on the next two installments, which seem like the most egregious example of milking the franchise since the third trilogy of Star Wars came out. Perhaps worse.

The stupidest of the year: The Avengers wins hands down. (Of course this is still only considering movies I actually went to see.)

I don’t mind a good cartoon movie, either. My list of guilty pleasures, if that’s what they must seem, includes the latest iteration of Spiderman. I enjoyed all three of Tobey Maguire’s impersonations of my favorite cartoon character – to varying degrees. But Andrew Garfield simply was more suited to the role. It was worth the remake, I thought.

I also liked Skyfall. Bond movies have been all over the board in terms of quality and excess. So, this wasn’t a given by any means. After the success of Casino Royale, the last one with Daniel Craig (the name of which I’ve blocked from my memory) was awful. Skyfall is better than most Bond films and if it’s milking a franchise, at least it’s doing it well.

Although I waited until it came to the budget cinema, I was pleasantly surprised by The Hunger Games. I hope it’s not a prescient look at our future. My wife observed, astutely I think, that it was a combination of a futuristic version of what the Romans did in the colosseum and any number of “reality TV” shows taken to their logical extreme.

Was Magic Mike a guilty pleasure or something better? Raunchy but fun, I’m going to leave it in the guilty pleasure category.

Finally, my choice for favorite documentary of 2012: Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry. (If there were comparably good ones, as there must have been, I missed them.)

So, a few suggestions to add to your Netflix lists. Or not.

The year in art and architecture

If you read with interest, as I did, the article by Mary Louise Schumacher in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, it's worth double checking online as that version is longer and even more interesting! Here, for example, is what I consider one of the more trenchant questions she poses:
"Is Milwaukee investing in the aura of art rather than actual art"

Read the article: The year in art and architecture

Merry Christmas!

Paraguay's "Landfillharmonic" Orchestra

According to a story in the Los Angeles Times, the village of Cateura is a section of the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion that is built "practically on top of the city's main landfill." That misfortune has been turned into opportunity by Favio Chavez, who is "a local ecologist and musician."

Using instruments created from recycled trash Cateura now has a "Landfillharmonic" orchestra. What a fantastic idea!

Photo by Jorge Saenz, Associated Press

I first read about this story in an article in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, however a search of their website turned up only a photo essay, not the article. The story originated in the Associated Press, though, and I found it on NBC World News.

A documentary film is being produced about Favio Chavez and the Landfillharmonic. I recommend checking out the 3-minute trailer for it on You-Tube. Reading the articles was fascinating, but actually listening to even this brief sample of the music itself, was quite moving.

Someone was quoted in the trailer saying that a violin is worth more than the typical house in Cateura, Paraguay. It says volumes about what the society values, doesn't it? And here in the most privileged society on earth all we can think about is cutting taxes by (among other things) cutting the arts from our public schools!

(Having said that, there is at least a smidgeon of good news--unrelated to the arts but related to taxes and funding--about MPS in today's Journal Sentinel: "Residents blame parents, students for MPS failures.")

Fiction vs. nonfiction: a false dichotomy

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“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

So declared Holden Caulfield, one of the most memorable in a long cast of characters that has taken up residence in my own personality, consciously or not.

When I was young I was an insatiable reader of novels, short stories, poetry – anything except nonfiction. Many a tortured soul lingers in the catacombs of my neural networks, like Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment). A fair number are villains, just plain creepy, or both. In my mind, Dicken’s immortal Uriah Heep rises to the top of these unforgettable characters like foetid cream, a testament not only to that incomparable author’s ability to sculpt believability from his imagination and love of language, but also to the fact that the most compelling characters aren’t always the protagonists.

They don’t have to be human, either. In what was my favorite book during my middle school years – I reread it 18 times – Cruella de Vil, that eponymously evil antagonist, played one hundred and second fiddle to 101 delightful Dalmatians. And of course, we mustn’t forget that ever-humble hobbit, Frodo, reluctant hero of Middle Earth.

Tragedy also looms large in my remembrances: Are George and Lennie mice or men? Heroism and transformation in the face of tragedy has special power: think Scarlett O’Hara. Or my favorite character of all, Yossarian, the haunted, tragicomic survivor of Catch 22.

The one thing all these characters have in common, aside from lingering in my otherwise spotty memory, is that they are fictional. The stuff of literature.

My riff on memorable fictive characters was inspired by Alan Borsuk’s editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel entitled “Shift to nonfiction in schools becoming reality.” Borsuk’s regular beat is education. In today’s article he observes, “A broad shift is under way from fiction to nonfiction, propelled by the Common Core English and language arts standards that are being implemented in 46 states and the District of Columbia. It almost certainly will mean fewer classics, more historical documents, fewer personal essays, more analytical writing.”

Yet another assault on creativity and imagination. As an artist and art educator I long ago got used to having to defend the value of my discipline. Art, music, dance – all the creative and expressive arts – are defensible on many grounds but I never thought it would come to this. Not literature. It’s axiomatic that every student takes English every year, while “the Arts” suffer second-class status as elective, or worse, are dispensable. But now literature, too?

The importance of English has always been unassailable, or so I believed.

“Why?” asks Borsuk rhetorically. “In general, advocates say, nonfiction gives students better preparation for college and careers by developing such things as analytical skills.”

Ridiculous!

I learned how to write an expository essay in freshman English under the profound tutelage of Mrs. Wiggenhorn, one of few high school teachers whose name remains in my mental catacombs along with a library full of imaginary ones. She delivered without sacrificing Romeo and Juliet, as the new Common Core Standards do.

Today I read and write far more nonfiction than fiction. I have no ambition to be a novelist despite my admiration for those who do. But I wonder how I would feel about writing today if I’d been forced in high school to read “FedViews,” written by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, or “Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences” instead of Hamlet or The Little Prince. (I didn’t make those nonfiction titles up; they are on the official Common Core Standards list.)

Great literature, like great art, is more than an educational tool. Reading fiction does far more than provide lessons in vocabulary, grammar, style, and content. To paraphrase author Lloyd Alexander, fiction is not an escape from reality but a way of understanding it. Fictional characters and stories are memorable because they insinuate themselves into our psyches. They express emotions, debate moral dilemmas, suffer consequences. They live in us. They help us figure out how to be human.

Borsuk assures us that there is still room in the English curriculum for fiction; however, the balance will be shifted. As much as 70% of all reading in the 12^th grade is destined to be nonfiction.

James Piatt, principal of Brown Deer High School, is quoted as saying "I believe it's a strong disservice to kids to spend too much time on fiction when they don't have good nonfiction skills." Borsuk continues, “Nonfiction prepares kids better for the real world, he said.”

Nonsense.

I believe in a more nuanced reality, one expressed well by author Yann Martel, who famously imagined a riveting and philosophical narrative of a boy trapped on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger in Life of Pi. He wrote, “Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths. As for nonfiction, for history, it may be real, but its truth is slippery, hard to access, with no fixed meaning bolted to it. If history doesn't become story, it dies to everyone except the historian.”

The value of fiction is not confined to writers themselves, however. The arts have been recognized for their unquantifiable but demonstrable role in increasing the bottom line in the corporate world, too. Annette Byrd of GlaxoSmithKline says “We need people who think with the creative side of their brains—people who have played in a band, who have painted…it enhances symbiotic thinking capabilities, not always thinking in the same paradigm, learning how to kick-start a new idea, or how to get a job done better, less expensively.”

My world would be so much poorer without all those characters in my head. I know it would. I possess analytical skills but they have not helped me weather the news these past few days. It is a comfort, however, to have Atticus Finch ruminating up there – and Scout, too.

And even Boo Radley. Maybe especially Boo Radley.