"Art: To Look or Not to Look"

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"Don't Try to Understand an Artist" Sarasota Visual Art June 2012

Don’t Try to Understand an Artist by Pamela Beck

by Pamela Beck

I went with a friend to a local gallery where one of the featured artists was present. My friend liked a drawing and asked the artist: “What was your inspiration while you drew this?”

“I was in the zone,” the artist replied. “But I think a lot about John Coltrane and Jean-Michel Basquiat.”

My friend felt confused. Unfortunately, he wanted the artist to make sense; Do you, too, labor under the illusion that artists can explain the precise source of their “inspiration?” Then you also must think people know what you’re talking about when you describe your nighttime dreams.

We often hear artists discuss their work. But the reasons for the compulsion to make it, where that comes from and what will result, are as mysterious to artists, as the origins of our dreams are to ourselves (although both come from the same fertile place.)

Jean-Michel Basquiat, In Italian, 1983. Acrylic, oil paintstick, and marker on canvas mounted on wood supports, two panels. The Stephanie and Peter Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut

Here’s what some artists have to say on the subject:

Jean-Michel Basquiat: I start a picture and I finish it. I don’t think about art while I work. I try to think about life.

Helen Frankenthaler: There is “no formula. There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.”

Henri Matisse: I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

John Chamberlain (from an interview with Joan Altabe): All who don’t do something peculiar to their own insanity fall on their face. I feel I have an attitude and it’s being explored. The more places I can put that attitude, the more places it comes out. It’s my insanity that I’m letting out.

I dare you to describe that “insanity.” Then I double dare you to stop trying. After all, there’s a simpler way to understand artists, their work and “the zone.” Consider Jackson Pollock’s approach to defining artists and their art: “Every good painter paints what he is.”

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"A Contemporary Art Story: Artists and Collectors" For Sarasota Visual Art June 13, 2012

A Contemporary Art Story: Artists and Collectors by Pamela Beck

by Pamela Beck

I’ve known of friendships between collectors and the artists they collect, where everything is simpatico. There’s a meeting of the minds whenever they talk and the collectors get first dibs on the artists’ new work.

But that’s not the tale of this reporter, no. More often what I’ve seen resembles the ongoing turf war between mothers and teenage daughters. Here’s a peek into these rich and often adversarial-by-nature territories.

It starts out:
“I’m interested in your new work and can’t wait to see it, “ says the collector to the artist. (”I’m excited that you found a college you like and hope you get accepted,” says the mother to the daughter.)
That turns into: “When are you finally going to finish that new work?” (“When did you say that admission application deadline is?”)
And ends up: “I can’t believe it’s taking you so long; how hard can it be to complete? (“I can’t believe it’s taking you so long; how hard can it be to complete?”)

In any relationship where somebody wants something from you, you’re probably going to resent being told how quickly to do it. And whether it’s an artist or teenager pressed into service, the response is likely to be a major eye roll coupled with colorful unprintable responses that signal “don’t push me.”

Norman Rockwell, "The Connoisseur", 1962 The Saturday Evening Post, January 13, 1962 (cover) Oil on canvas mounted on board 37 3/4 x 31 1/2 in. Private collection

In the case of an artwork, a personal, complicated act of unique invention has occurred that can’t be punched out on a time sheet for an impatient collector. (The teenager parallel stops here, however. If you’re reading this high school seniors, punch the damn timesheet; the admissions office could care less about your aversion to deadlines.)

When the artwork is finally done, the artist and collector meet again. They exchange pleasantries, but their true heated feelings float above their heads like visible thought bubbles. The collector expects the artist to miraculously distill the abstract process of creation into explanations that will enlighten the collector and rationalize the purchase of this long awaited work of art.

But by this time, the artist, protective of the art and irritated by the collector, would rather donate the work to an overseas children’s orphanage or at least, find a more sophisticated collector. The collector, at this point, often feels the artist is acting entitled or suffers from delusions of grandeur. And what’s more, the collector thinks, the artist should take less money. After all, the artist gets to paint all day, and in comfortable clothes too. What’s to complain about?

But then, they both eye the artwork. The artist sees that the collector really does like it and can buy it on the spot. The collector sees the artist may have a Napoleon complex but the work is really good, so who cares? The artwork wins. It gets sold and all is good until the next round begins again.

Mothers and teens, artists and collectors, this is their story: inextricably connected, eternally annoyed.

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Art or Artist for Sale?

Years ago I spent an hour in the basement of a N.Y. gallery where I worked, during the opening night of a one-man exhibition taking place upstairs.

It was a glitterati affair: major collectors mingled with artists, and that period’s foremost art critic, Hilton Kramer of the N.Y. Times, had arrived to review the show of this up and coming painter. His words, read by countless people across the world, could change an artist’s career. The gallery owner wanted Kramer to meet the artist. There was just one problem: the artist, who had arrived earlier, could no longer be found.

That’s because he was hiding in the basement.  I discovered him sitting in one the rectangular painting bins, stacked with the stored artworks like a painting for sale himself.

Therein lay his conflict he confided.  Shouldn’t the artwork upstairs stand on its’ own?  The review should be in response to his art not his charm. This was a point of pride.  He was not for sale.

Meeting Kramer would also be too big for him, he disclosed. We discussed how rare it is to be aware that a present moment could profoundly alter your life, rather than realizing it in retrospect.  In addition, he felt to be there at that moment’s inception would toy with the proper order of things, like when humans step into nature to save one species from another.

He stayed in the bin. I sat on the floor next to him until I knew Kramer had gone. Then we went upstairs. “Where have you been? You just missed Hilton Kramer! It’s too late now,” people shouted.

The review came out.  The artist’s show went on to be a success. “It was right for me to be a painting that night,” he said to me as we were taking his show down. “Yeah,  I replied. "Good call."

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"Connection" for Sarasota Visual Art, May 2012

Connection – 300 Words by Pamela Beck

by Pamela Beck

Every time I stand in front of the elegant black forms in a Robert Motherwell painting from his “Elegy to the Spanish Republic” series, I feel it. And I feel it when I look at the pulsing spirituality of a Mark Rothko canvas, or the flat color planes of poetry from Richard Diebenkorn’s “Ocean Park Series,” or the perfect round beauty of a nude by Aristide Maillol or the intriguing psychologically charged work of Francis Bacon and Egon Schiele.

What I feel is a visceral response, a connection forged between the artists and myself based on my reaction to their work. It has little to do with right and wrong and more to do with yes or no. I bet we all have that moment when we look at a work of art before those critical “outside voices” start to crowd in.

It seems so simple; we all have feelings about the art we see. Yet comfort with our own reactions to it often seems elusive. It’s replaced with the idea of what we should like and insecurity about looking foolish.

I’m not rejecting the importance of art education. We’re hardwired for curiosity, exploration and classification. It’s natural and relevant to see art within historical and contemporary contexts. It’s interesting to understand different techniques and fascinating to talk with artists about their own work. But it doesn’t have much to do with whether I’m moved by the artwork or if it stays with me once I’ve left it.

Experiencing art trumps the explanation of it. If we allow ourselves to have unscripted responses to the work before us, we actually become part of the creative process ourselves and that’s when the good stuff starts happening. That exchange, based on our own reactions, becomes its own reward. And that’s when we feel it.

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Is That Art & Should I Like It?

An abbreviated version of this article was published in SRQ magazine March 2012

There’s that scene from the seventies film “An Unmarried Woman” where art dealer Jill Clayburgh breaks up with her artist boyfriend.  Soon after, she’s seen struggling to carry the huge painted canvas he goodbye-gave her, down the narrow city streets of NY where she lives.

Many people thought she was crazy to dump sexy painter Alan Bates rather than move to Europe with him, as he wanted.  What struck me though, was the image of a free-thinking woman weaving through a busy crowd, a painting sail in her hands, tacking toward her hard–won independence.  Shame about Alan Bates though; too bad they didn’t have Skype back then or is that too have-your-cake-and-eat-it of me?

Sometimes looking at a contemporary work of art or exhibition feels exactly like the end of that movie.  We don’t quite understand what’s before us or where it’s all leading, but recognize that our reaction is vitally alive, distinctly our own, perhaps a bit clumsy but impossible to ignore.

Federico Diaz sculpture 

It’s exciting to run into this unguarded part of our selves from time to time; especially when contrasted with the quality of the dreary ruminations that usually preoccupy us.  

Would I rather be silently fuming because, despite what I’ve been repeatedly told, strengthening my core muscles has done absolutely nothing to help my lower back?  How many more ideas can I come up with to stretch a dollar?  Do I really want to spend too much time wondering if eating a low fat banana nut muffin is considered cheating?

But what if you don’t like how contemporary art makes you feel?  What if going to an exhibition fills you with uneasy questions:  What is this exactly?  What is the artist trying to say?  Maybe you become annoyed because you think the artist is trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

MTO's Mural Caused an Uproar

Or conversely, perhaps you might really like what you see despite being told that you shouldn’t.  Then you might begin to second-guess why something strange, ugly or incomprehensible is so appealing to you.  It doesn’t help if everyone around you hates it while you want to hang it smack dab in the front entrance of your home.

In the end, there’s only one constant to expect when you’re looking at any kind of art and that is:  You’re on your own.

Does it help at this point to bring up that most every art movement is at first met with confusion and contempt?  When the Impressionists put their hazy spin on the world or Picasso rearranged a woman’s face to resemble a checkerboard, there was not a rallying cry of Eureka heard throughout the land initially.

And consider the flipside.  Collectors who are considered savvy today often purchased the work of struggling and unknown artists.  True, some may have been guided by curators or dealers, but there are plenty of examples of collectors who just bought what they liked.

These were the people whose scowling mothers told them to stop spending money like it was growing on trees.  Yet many of these art fans wound up with impressive and valuable collections years down the line, despite their mothers’ tongue clucking (or perhaps because of it.)

Or maybe a collection doesn’t turn out to be a confirmation of the collector’s brilliant foresight and they were just stuck enjoying it over the course of their lifetime.

Where I’m going with all of this is to ask the question: why do our reactions to art have to be explained or judged?  Once we start responding to the artwork before us, we actually become part of the creative process ourselves and that is its own reward.

Let’s take two contemporary Ringling Museum exhibitions, for example.  If you’re over thirty and went to the recent Beyond Bling show, chances are you wondered why kids screamed “Snoop Dog!” when they looked at a painting.  Probably scantily clad girls from the ghetto and J Lo also have nothing to do with your life.

But how else would we get that close to seeing and feeling how this generation interprets not only their world, but a world that has become ours as well by default, whether we like it or not? 

Those artists offered us a translation of our times.  As we looked at their work we experienced their interpretations through our own point of view.  That’s when the good stuff starts to happen.  As we process our reactions, we walk away with new thoughts and feelings that can impact, annoy or please but most certainly affect us, if even in a subtle way.

And what about the Ringling’s new permanent exhibition of James Turrell’s Skyspace, "Joseph's Coat?”  Is it just a very expensive hole in the roof through which we see the passing sky?  If we let go of the self-evident and enjoy its abstraction, couldn’t it also feel like a poem in light or a transformation of ordinary space into something contemplative and at moments, sublime?  If nothing else, it’s a form of liberation from two-dimensional wall art to a kind of in-flux magic that visitors can experience differently every time the weather shifts.

I’m not suggesting that I have the answer to these questions.  I don’t know that anybody does or that it’s even important.  I just know that having an interesting experience often trumps the explanation of it.

How lucky we are in Sarasota, to have museums, galleries and pop-up exhibitions that stimulate this inner dialogue and invite us to be part of such a fascinating conversation.

Recently I found out that if you get a blueberry muffin without the nuts, you could save about 100 calories.  I’ll take the shimmering light and sky through a hole in the Ringling Museum’s roof any day.

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A Pretzel with Your Requiem?

     I was smiling as I peeled potatoes earlier in the day, thinking about recent events I’ve attended. One evening I went to a lecture at the Historic Asolo about the painter, Mark Rothko, given by brilliant Ringling Museum curator, Matthew McLendon.  On a subsequent night, I watched the powerful and riveting Dancing with Jenkins at Sailor Circus.  Key Chorale & Orchestra, The Sarasota-Manatee Dance Alliance and the Sarasota Young Voices Chamber Choir performed this unique joint production.

     Potatoes, Rothko and Jenkins are not the unlikely bedfellows they may first appear to be. It turns out that on many Sarasota evenings, a stimulating lecture or a special dance performance could easily follow my favorite mashed potatoes.

     McLendon's Rothko presentation re-sparked my contemplation of the artist’s shimmering canvases that seem to say, "Dive in."  The fact that the lecture was given in a restored 18th century European theater just makes this already fascinating evening, that much more extraordinary, but not atypical for life around this town.

     The same kind of wonderful marriage between performance and setting took place underneath the trapeze of the big top. For one evening only, fifty dancers from various local dance organizations worked together to create this exciting event. This is just the sort of collaboration the newly formed Sarasota-Manatee Dance alliance is all about.

     And for music?  The singers and musicians were moving, beautiful and cohesive, creating a fresh interplay of young and mature voices with the kind of rich sound only a live orchestra could provide.

     But the pressing question of the night for me was: How do you get fifty dancers with varying levels of experience, age, ego and dance exposure to create a gorgeous thirteen section, seamless work of art, with little practice and a makeshift dance floor?  Ask choreographer, Elizabeth Bergmann; clearly she’s a high-octane super talent who knows what she’s doing.

     When it was over, I grabbed a fresh pretzel from the vendor on my way out of the circus arena; my hunger mirrored my post-show enthusiasm.  Just like at the Rothko lecture, I could feel that the audience too, left Dancing with Jenkins, energized, connected and somewhat altered by their hour spent on the magic carpet ride of great entertainment. 

     If an event is good, that stage energy comes home with us and infiltrates our everyday lives. Even the side kick potato and lowly pretzel are newly savored and flavored by the buzz of creativity that fills us up after leaving such perfect worlds as can be found on an ordinary Sarasota night.
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Appeared in "This Week in Sarasota" 2/13/12

http://www.thisweekinsarasota.com/a-love-letter-to-sarasota-by-pamela-beck/

A Love Letter to Sarasota – by Pamela Beck

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By TWIS Street Team on February 13, 2012

This newcomer to SRQ is all smiles!

If it’s true (and it is) that I wear brighter colors and more revealing clothing in Sarasota than I ever did living up north, does this mean that I feel bolder here? And if that were the case, wouldn’t the reverse be true: that up north, I was somehow a meeker version of myself swaddled in all those earth tones?

Well then, no wonder I’ve moved here.  All that time wasted trying to convince myself that cold air makes you hearty.  Who was I kidding? Cold air makes you cold. And not to be Seuss-ian about it, but I do not like to be in pain; to be in pain makes me complain.

To clarify, I’m not so free in Sarasota that you will find me singing ABBA tunes at a karaoke bar; nor will I be seen jogging over the Ringling Bridge in short shorts or wearing anything in the chartreuse family.

                                                         Noise Ordinance 2

But I will sign up at one of Sarasota’s many dance schools and learn the tango, now that I live in the sultry heat to fuel it.  And when Noise Ordinance 2 showcased a full day and night of 39 local bands at the Cock & Bull Pub, you bet I was there. Good news to learn that these groups play year-round at different venues in town.

To feed the dreamer in me, I’ll continue my frequent visits to the Ringling’s Venetian Gothic mansion, Ca’ d’Zan, and make believe I live there. What would it be like to see the world every day through the thousands of amethyst, ruby, emerald and blue stained-glass windowpanes that turn Ca’ d’Zan into Candyland? I’m not sure, but I do think I should be given the chance to try it.

In the end though, it’s the heat that’s the real inhibition buster for an ex cold weather warrior. When I step outside in a barely-there summer frock and am gobsmacked by a massive hot cloud of steamy tropicalia, all I can do is laugh and wonder how to get away with wearing even less than the flimsy dress I’ve already got on.

The warmth relaxes muscles and takes the edge off life concerns. Forget Bikram yoga or steam rooms. After a few months in Sarasota, perspective changes. That once-familiar edge appears so unnecessary now—all those bill deadlines, appointments and exercise programs. Overscheduling? Somehow it all gets done here without the mania. Autopay?  Yes, please! Leaves more time to bike to the beach with a picnic dinner after work. Better to toast to an evening swim with loved ones than to convince myself that watching MTV’s third season of 16 and Pregnant is sharing quality time with family.

Learning to balance work and play’s not easy in this town. For someone used to colder climes, it’s hard to drop the association that beaches, live music and streetside dining have with “vacation.”  This brings its own host of challenges. Waking up to that bright sunshine on a Tuesday, let’s say, makes it tough to accept that it’s a regular workday and kayaking through a mangrove tunnel will have no place in it.

Did I just say “mangrove?” Never said mangrove up north. “Apple orchard,” yes; “hayfield,” most certainly; but “mangrove”—fuhgeddaboudit. The closest I’ve ever gotten to a mangrove was when I tried to get a ticket to The Mangrove Slasher 2 at last year’s Sarasota Film Festival. (Don’t google Mangrove Slasher 1. There never was a 1. Don’t ask.)

But just knowing that the mangroves are there right around us, with all their primitive, dark, mysterious and tropical power reminds me that control is an illusion—or for those so inclined, that Hogwarts isn’t really so far away.  If a tree in a swamp can look like it’s about to ask me to dance, who am I to say no?

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Just Another Sarasota Day

The original plan was to stop by Stakenborg Fine Art gallery on Main Street to see the one man show of our friend, Nikitas Kavoukles, before we channeled Boulevard Saint-Germain and lunched outside at the neighboring café, C’est la Vie.

Greek music, provided by the artist (born on the island of Kalymnos), poured out the front door of the gallery. It set the mood for our voyage into the beautiful fantasy world of Mythos, Nick’s series of jewel like paintings.  His rich palette and deft use of glazes makes these paintings vibrate and glow as if they are lit from within. Images may be recognizable in each work but the dense layers of paint form into abstractions and possibilities that encourage viewers to linger happily in the playgrounds of their imagination.

Painting by Nick Kavoukles

Chris Stakenborg is obviously attuned to his clients’ appreciation and has decided to always keep a Kavoukles or two, including monotypes and pigment prints, on permanent exhibit at his gallery.

Maybe it was our stay on Mythos or the liberating effect of the music, but for the visitors who happened to be enjoying this show that morning, a sudden camaraderie developed during our Kavoukles Klatch.  Besides talking about Nick’s work, some other topics discussed were: the necessary ingredients of a good scotch; the use of solar panels; receding hairlines; and future residential planning for the artists and seniors of Sarasota.

Finally we reluctantly left the gallery only to be met by the motorcycle festival, Thunder by the Bay, taking place steps away on Main Street and beyond. Images of Nick’s mystical landscapes gave way to the bad boy beauty found in rows of parked Harley Davidsons lined up like so many Warhol Campbell soup cans.

As I stopped to buy a skull and bones doo rag for my daughter and a sticker for myself that read “She only looks like a good girl” (to be pasted absolutely nowhere but perhaps carried in my wallet for private encouragement), images of lushly painted fantasy worlds and brassy biker beauty mingled freely in my thoughts.  (Along with my astonishment that black leather chaps really do flatter the wearer.)

Just another Sarasota day.

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Helen Frankenthaler Packs a Punch

HELEN FRANKENTHALER  (born, December 12, 1928 – died, December 27, 2011)

Thirty years ago, when I met the abstract painter, Helen Frankenthaler, I was aware that I was a young woman standing before a legend.

The art gallery where I worked sent me to deliver a painting to her.  Ms. Frankenthaler introduced herself warmly while she scanned me head to toe; I felt she saw right through me.  And although I didn’t think I had the right to believe so, she felt familiar to me as well.

She spoke in strong statements and direct questions. While our conversation seemed harmless enough, I had the sense she was about to tell me my own secrets.

“What sign are you?” she asked, out of the blue.

“Sagittarius,” I replied.

Apparently our birthdays were one day apart.

“Ah, I thought so,” she pronounced.  And then I saw a wistful smile and sad eyes transform her expression as she said without further elaboration, “How we love and how we suffer.”

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

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Come Back, RIAF October 2011

I was very sorry that the six-day Ringling International Arts Festival at The John and Mable Ringling Museum, had to come to an end this past Sunday.  Something’s very right when the daily pressing question is which show to pick and go see.

Should it be, the campy, brilliant dance fun of Doug Elkins & Friends’ interpretation of  “The Sound of Music,” or Colin Dunn’s soulful choreographed meditation on his life as a step dancer, or Brooklyn Rider’s electrifying string quartet that made Beethoven rock?  Every day was Christmas morning.

If you were lucky enough to go to the festival frequently, then you probably got caught up in the can’t-believe-it buzz so many people were feeling from the sheer variety and number of performances.  In fact, even the actual scrambling between events became an enjoyable performance piece itself as streams of people flowed between afternoon and evening shows, studying their tickets to determine which Asolo was the right Asolo. 

Then, if you threw in the ongoing program called Ringling 360 (the very apt name given to museum events planned around RIAF), you had a veritable three-ring circus, if you pardon my John and Mable.

By the second day, strangers started recognizing each other, albeit with some understandable confusion.  “Wasn’t that a great panel at the art forum?”  I’d hear one say.  And then “Oh, sorry, I must have seen you at the Jazz Sunset.”  Opinions were offered to new friends.  “If “Canta Tango” is sold out, and you like great singing, head for Meklit Hadero.  She’s wonderful even if she doesn’t come with that incredible pair of tango dancers.”

And just when you thought you were completely 360’d out with all the forums and workshops and performances, you suddenly realized that you had forgotten to see the Zimoun kinetic/sound sculpture show which just opened at the museum.  

It sounded incredible and you really wanted to go, but you were too exhausted from all the running around.  Not to mention, by this point, you were also lightheaded from the weight you lost on the RIAF diet, because frankly, who had time to eat?

The plan was to go see the Zimoun exhibit during the opening night block party in the Ringling Courtyard.  But first, you got caught up with the musicians known as the Asphalt Orchestra. They weaved through the crowd, trumpets and saxes blasting, in funky juxtaposition to the replicas of ancient sculpture that surrounding them.

And how could you pull yourself away from watching all the talented RIAF performers walking and dancing around the museum courtyard that night?  They were so free and so gorgeous and so absolutely nothing at all like you.  Of course, there were also Baryshnikov sightings to be made and fireworks to watch.

Zimoun did not disappoint. I could cut and paste the description of how the DC motors, cotton balls, and cardboard boxes work together to create unique and powerful sounds and designs, but I’m not technical enough to really explain it.

Fortunately, motor knowledge is not important here. The elegant effect of each of these five whimsical installations set within its own pristine showcase had little to do with mechanics.

I’m not ready to say goodbye to all the diversity, talent and fun that RIAF brought to Sarasota.  Couldn’t it be longer next year?  This time I’ll be ready- I just joined a gym in anticipation.

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